Velociworld

A Scabrous Sequel

I promised you scabs a-molting, and the viscera that must necessarily accompany such painful incidences. And I will, I will. But first, I must backtrack to the Road, as I had forgotten a few bits of minutae that tend to flavor this story. Here:

As the Senator tore down Georgia asphalt and I, peanuts and Coke in hand, gazed out the window at the skittering rabbits and copulating goats, life seemed , if not great, at least in Drive. Not bad stuff. Too many pine trees, too many pecans, but we were making Progress, and I'd seen enough of Disney's show to know Progress was our Friend.

Well, Progress took a screeching diversion to the befouled latrine of Currahee when I glanced over at the old man, and beheld a spectacle of horror. His face was purple and bulging, eyes apoplectic, lips drawn in a thin white crease, turned down at the corners. To make matters worse his head was shaking, nay tremoring, side to side, as if he were afflicted with St. Vitus's Dance or something, and his knuckles were gripped white upon the steering wheel.

So this is Death, I thought, and watched for a moment. Miraculously our path was true, barrelling down the highway oh so fast, but steadily within the white lines. Angels, I thought. They guide your hand when you're dying to protect the innocent.

But that was a short lived moment of realization, because the Senator then immediately burst forth with an enormous exhalation, a great Wheewww! Beezlebub's flatulence ain't in it, I say. Sputum on the windshield, he heaving all aquiver. Dad! I said terrified. Are you all right?

The old man turned a gimlet eye to me, considered my mild frame and innocent fear, and laughed. "Hell, boy. I had the hiccups. Had to hold my breath to get rid of the bastards. What the hell is the matter with you? See a ghost?"

Indeed I had, but it would be some years before that particular apparition manifested itself again. I thought he was a goner! I was also very sulky, because I knew the only way to get rid of hiccups was by fear, and he'd just scared the hiccups out of me for the next seven years.

I also remember fidgeting in the front seat a bit. Cars, even fancy ones, were bereft of play pretties back then. The radio was AM only and had a mere ON/OFF switch. The air conditioner read OFF and ESKIMEAUX (Fords said ESKIMO. Lincolns said ESKIMEAUX. Pretentious? Yes).

Tired of the Road? You anxious beasts. I'm going to quit calling you Intrepids, and call you Impatiens. Although I never could figure out why a flower that was impaled in the ground was in a hurry to go anyhwere. Queer, that.

One more Road note. We did not see the Goatman that trip, and I was incensed. Of course the probabilities of seeing the Goatman on the side of the road in rural Georgia circa 1967 were slim indeed, but once you had seen him as a child he was Legend, and just as you did not realize a brand name of a product was just a brand name, and not something anointed by God, well, then, you expected to see the Goatman.

I promised you a washed off scab, though, and you shall have it. My puncture wound, caused by a piece of lighter knot slung by a bush hog, had left a very neat 2 inch deep hole in my shin, just astride the shinbone. A nice round hole, one that a person could put a forefinger in to that depth, should they be so perversely inclined. Now, my parents, being Depression Era babies, thought stitches were for pussies. And only a total fucking mambypamby Little Lord Fauntleroy would assay to call them sutures! Oh, ain't he high and mighty, with his fancy fucking Sutures holding his face together after that mad plummet throught the windshield. I'da put a butterfly stitch, or 40, on that, I would have!

But we are not here to belabour class struggle, are we? I rule, you worship. It's very neat that way.

Anyway, my PUNCTURE! wound had been glossed over by primeval Band Aid butterfly stitches for the previous 4 weeks, and my dog had smelt no gangrene, nor the savage canines patrolling Camp Wahsega, so it seemed healthy. Or not deadly. But here is where I fucked up, Impatiens:

Upon finally escaping from the clutches of the Dread Pirate Senator, and seeing my siblings splashing for what must have been the third! day in the surf, I took the plunge. Calvinist asceticism be damned, I forgot, and frolicked in the Gulf surf for an hour or so. I was a dolphin! I was a seahorse! I was a horseshoe crab!(?) But in the end, I was a kid who forgot he had a nasty-assed puncture wound, and I dragged my way back to the room, my parents' room, too, not the boys', with ecru and grayish lo mein stringers hanging out of the hole. Nasty stuff. The little old ladies around the pool were murmuring blood poisoning! but I didn't know what that was. Nor did I understand the red striations running up my calf were not scarlet begonias.

My parents did what any parent would do in that time: they promised a severe ass whipping once I had passed the stage of survivability, and then proceeded to pour horrid Merthiolate, that iodine whore, into the gaping, sand-encrusted hellhole.

To call it a wrap, I did get the ass awhomp two days later, but it was laced with motherly kindness, the Senator even being so gracious as to decline his turn with the cat 'o' nine tails, and then I was the aggrieved, injured little fellow. Ice cream was purchased to celebrate, as I recall. And we all lived heavily ever after. Nice, eh?

Tomorrow: Nigras show up at the motel next year!