The Send Off

“Who the hell is that? Did you call the cops again?” Dotty yelled from the background, her voice rising to hysterical notes. “You better call the goddamn cops on yourself, you…you…triflin’ bitch!”

“Mom?” I said to my cell phone for the millionth time. “Mom…I applied to Martindale.”

“That’s nice. You’ve always been very smart,” Mom said. “Let me tell you what Steve did today. He said he wanted to buy me a taco from that little place down the street…what’s it called?”

“Taco Stocko,” I said deflated. Of course from that point on it’s been impossible for me to get that stupid Taco Stocko billboard sign with the stupid cartoon tortilla out of my head. It’s like every time I think about Martindale, I have to remember that Taco Stocko sign. I’m going to puke my guts out if I ever have to eat there again.

“Well, I thought he might be changing his tune. You know he’s never asked me if I wanted anything before,” she continued.

“What? Now you’re going to tell Justin about this stupid taco shit? Why don’t you tell him that you’re trying to kill people up in here?” Dotty screamed. “What about that…you pervert!”

I sighed and asked, “What happened Mom…with the taco?”

“So he brings it home, smiling in my face as bright as ever. Later I looked in my purse and there was ten dollars missing. Ten dollars!” Mom’s voice rose as high as it could in a whisper, as if Steve had busted up the Bellagio. “No wonder he bought me a taco…his conscience must have been killing him!”

“I know you’re not talking about somebody getting killed!” Dotty yelled. She was starting to get on my nerves, and that doesn’t happen very often. “I know you don’t think a mail man and you are smart enough to do anything to me. Me!” she laughed manically. “You know you’re both too stupid! You’ll see.”

“Mom…how long are you going to let her go on like…this?” I asked, really worried.

“You know your sister,” she said. “Pretty soon she’ll wind down. I can’t afford to do anything about it right now. The insurance is maxed out and besides…she’s just mad because I told her that Willy is as scatterbrained as she is.”

“Stop calling him that,” I said. “His name is William. You’re going to scar him for life…even more than he already is.” Nobody could live in that house and not be stark raving mad. I tried to do it when I first started college and twice I almost pissed my pajamas I was so nervous, and I was an adult.

I can’t imagine what goes on in that kid’s pull ups in the middle of the night.

You might be thinking that we don’t care about Dotty and her having some screws loose, but it’s not true. Mom and I have been through all the psychiatric mumbo jumbo: the great doctors we can’t afford and the cheap quacks, the experimental medications that make her crazier than ever, and, of course, the successful drugs she refuses to take. Both my mother and I are so exhausted with Dotty’s ups and downs that we’ve had to do the worst and only thing we can do: let her craziness run its course. Boredom is not a problem we have around here.

There’s nothing quite like having to bust down the bathroom door at the age of sixteen because your sister’s been locked up in there all day and your Mom’s going ape shit thinking she’s hung herself from the shower rod or something. Dotty did it again two years later, except that time she really did slit her wrist. In a small town like Big Rock where nothing ever happens attempted suicide’s pretty much on the same level as blowing up the police station. For three days afterwards the jackass reporters asked us what was so bad at home Dotty felt she had to kill herself. It wasn’t until they realized she was a damned nut job that they left us alone. It’s funny how quickly news becomes old when it doesn’t involve a psychopath stacking up a bunch of headless victims.

By mid-February my main source of income remained Bucky’s, where I somehow continued to make life happen on third world wages and was absolutely no closer to raising the money I needed. We were pretty busy because of the Valentine’s Day rush, so Mr. Spelt hired a new guy named Tony. He was introduced to us as Miguel’s cousin because that’s what those two Mexican bastards told everybody, but later I found out that Tony was just a friend of Miguel’s family. Tony was there a few days before I realized he didn’t belong, like a shark in the seal pit. He seemed a little…dangerous.

“Don’t get involved with Tony,” Miguel said directly after the second time I shared more than two words with the interloper. “He’s not the type of person you want to get involved with.” Then he went on to tell me about all the times Tony had been in trouble. He didn’t give me any particulars, but I got the impression Tony was the kind of person that considered handcuffs and cavity searches a great time.

Now, I’m the last person on earth that would judge him because I’m such an oddball myself. Not that I’m a world traveler or anything, but I haven’t been to a single damned place where I feel normal. So I started up a conversation with Tony one day, mostly because I can’t leave well enough alone. I should have known when he began the shady as shit routine that the best thing to do was run in the other direction.

He certainly didn’t waste any time.

“Hey…I heard you need to make a little money,” he started while we sat waiting behind the store for another shitty shift to start. “Miguel told me about that fancy school. Congrats.” He passed me a cigarette, and I took a couple of puffs before passing it back. I hate cigarettes, but that has nothing to do with being social.

“Thanks…I guess,” I replied. “I haven’t gotten in yet, so…”

“Hey..look…anything not to be broke in this world…you know? Go for it. It sucks being broke, man. My sister is pretty pissed about how I make money…that’s why I’m here doing this shit…temporarily.” Tony pointed back at Rusty, who was wiping down the windows from the inside. Poor little bastard…we always gave him the crap jobs. “It’s okay though. Lexie will call me back out soon.”

“Who is Lexie?” I asked like an immature moron. It seemed like the easiest question I could ask without becoming an accessory to a felony. I was wrong.

“What if I told you I could help you out?” he said instead of answering, staring intently at me. “That I knew where you could get all the money you needed…and probably a lot more. Go to that goddamn big apple in style.” He took another drag. “It’s really a pain in the ass being broke. I know I couldn’t take that shit for more than a day,” he said laughing.

Now don’t think I’m a dumbass. I know enough about life to know that the whole deal was going to end up a suicide mission.

There was also a little voice in my head that kept telling me this was different and I didn’t have to solve all of my problems. I just had to grab up enough dough to clear the application fee.

“What do you mean? Is it something I could go to jail for?” I said.

Tony leaned in dramatically. “Not if you do it right,” he said smiling, before sitting back up. “Besides,” he continued, taking several more drags. “How else are you going to get through New York? Do you know how expensive that damned city is? You’re going to shit your pants the first time you have to spend twenty bucks for a drink.”

“How do you know?” I said. You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff smart asses think they know. “Have you ever been there?”

“I spent a summer there with my cousin during one of my little breaks,” Tony said. “He had a job in one of the high scale restaurants and we laughed about how much those idiots paid for a slice of buttered bread. It was stupid as shit!”

It was the difference between me and most people. I knew that it was obnoxious to spend twenty dollars for a drink, but I also knew that most of those rich bastards were able to focus in on the things in life that make life worth living. What was the big deal about twenty dollars when you could get up every day and do something you want to do instead of a nonstop parade of monkey robot bullshit like wiping down grocery store windows?

“So…you want to learn more?” Tony said. “Think about it.”

I did hesitate, but as we know, hesitation is not denial. It’s the writer in me. I’m curious about every damned thing no matter how sleazy, and so there I was, one gullible black bastard taking one idiotic step in the wrong direction. I haven’t learned a single damned thing about my situation since the day I was born.

What I did learn is that my nephew had a tooth that was about to grow out of the side of his head and nobody at the house seemed to be in a very big rush to do anything about it.

“Uncle Juswin,” William said to me on the phone. “My toof hurth my fwace.”

“Tell grandma to take you to the denthwist,” I said back like an asshole.

“Thee thed thee wood but thwere’s noth money.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. No fwucking kidding.

Rob’s an idiot. Rob is a friend of mine who attended undergraduate studies with me. He’s a jackass by birth. His parents give him everything he wants and tells him he can own the whole damned world if he wants it, but he’s also a jackass by nature. One time he was driving and a car cut in front of him and he literally followed the poor bastard home to yell at him. He almost got arrested because the guy turned out to be a chick and she was scared to death by this fat, white maniac. I told him to chill the hell out because I had no doubt that the racist cops would arrest me as soon as they pulled up and saw a black man sitting in the car. Black men have been killed for less.

“No they wouldn’t,” he said stupidly with the annoying personality of a person who has never experienced racism. “It’s the 2010’s, Justin.”

“Yeah…that’s what they say,” was all I could tell the naïve bastard. Some people wouldn’t know how to survive if they took courses on it at MIT.

If you ever want to laugh your ass off, notice how old ladies merge on the freeway. One time I was driving in the fast lane and there was a huge semi in the slow lane a little behind me. I was passing him, which means I was also a nervous wreck. I hate those damn things because you always imagine one of them is going to come cruising over and smash your shit up against the railing. So I had a ringside seat to this blue Honda trying to merge in front of the semi, except that the little old woman behind the wheel would not merge. She kept driving about five miles an hour which would put her underneath the truck by the time she actually got over. The entire time the semi-truck driver was laying on the horn full blast. So the little old lady sped up and ended up about two inches in front of the truck, both of them coasting at about sixty-five miles an hour and getting ready to have massive aneurisms until the lady drove right off the highway on the next ramp. I almost shit my pants laughing.

That poor old stupid chick.

So that’s the kind of asshole Rob is. He would be the kind of bastard that would probably get out of his damn car and shoot the old lady in the temple for being such a shitty driver. No joke.

I bring it up because this is the same idiot that always wants to give me a lecture about what I should do. One day when we were stuffing our faces I told him about going out to Lexie’s ranch and I must say, he protests too damn much.

“You know you’re going to blow everything with this, right?” he said, the bastard.

“Blow what? If I don’t come up with the application fee there won’t be anything to blow,” I said. “Besides that, if this thing pans out I really need some money to help Dotty.” It did not take much for me to see that Dotty was getting worse by the moment. We’d only had one suicide scare and one was more than enough. She was going to crash hard this time and I wanted to stop the train wreck before it could happen. She had two kids for heaven’s sake.

“Look…I can’t tell you what to do,” Rob said like an empirical bastard. “I just think you should ask yourself how much this means to you. Martindale’s not going to want some convicted felon mixed in with a bunch of ascot wearing nerds.”

“True, but once again, they aren’t going to let me get by with not paying the application fee. They want people who are dedicated to education, not some jackass who can’t even come up with the application fee.”

“I still think you should ask your uncle,” Rob said, like a moron.

There was no way in hell I would ever go behind my mom’s back and beg for money from Uncle Dave like a damned homeless hobo. For starters, my mom would die of a heart attack. There was also a very good chance he would say no, or even worse, try to make me into a mini-Uncle Dave. It wouldn’t be above him to try to turn me into some fucking white collar parrot. The lengths some people will go to just to rub smelly crap in a family member’s face is ridiculous.

“Maybe he would change his mind once he found out what you were trying to do,” Rob said in the midst of my silence, like an idiot.

“It’s different than your family,” I tried to explain. “This shit has been going on before I was even born. That stingy bastard is not going to wake up one day and think he’s wrong about shit.” I was pretty angry so the only thing left to do was insult him so he would shut the hell up. “For heaven’s sake, Rob. We’re not white people.”

“Look…I’m just trying to help,” Rob piped in like an angry bastard. “Do whatever the hell you want. Just don’t be one of those assholes that talk about how white people fucked up your life. You did this shit on your own.”

I hate when I say racist stuff. I’m not a racist but sometimes I get so angry at the residual wealth of white people. It’s not that I wish they had less, but only that my family had more, that I could depend on parents and grandparents to give me help when I need it.

That’s all I can say about race. Sometimes it’s not about hating others as much as hating what you lack, and then you get an asshole like Rob that constantly reminds you that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing on top of everything else. It really was hard not to wish him into purgatory.

“Are you going to come to my graduation party?” Rob asked like a person who could care less about anybody else but himself, which was exactly what he was.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Explain to me again why you guys are having it so damned early anyway.”

“Because the end of March is the only time my cousin can get off from work, the stupid prick,” he said. His cousin was a hot-shot attorney in Long Beach, and Rob hated him with the passion of a dedicated monk.

“That’s just the kind of asshole you want me to ask for money. How would you like to ask that dipshit for money?” I said.

Rob thought about it for less than a split second, just like a bastard would. “Your uncle is a jackass and rich. I would ride that green jackass Justin. It’s your future…it’s for a great cause and it’s not permanent. To fuck with what your uncle thinks. Ride the green jackass. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Fucking Rob.

The only thing more idiotic than being a beggar is punishing yourself for the failures of other people. It’s the most illogical crap in the fucking world. Take my dad for example. I know he’s an asshole and that abandoning us when he figured out his life wasn’t going to be all grits and gravy was a punk move on his part. It’s still really easy to think about how my family is struggling because of his shortcomings as a human being. When Dotty was about two my mom left dad for a couple of weeks and would have divorced him but then she found out she was pregnant again. She went back to him, and if you think that shit doesn’t weigh on my mind then you don’t know very much about a guilty fucking conscience.

You ever notice people only get mad when they are stupid enough to think they love something or somebody? Dotty, for example, will curse out a priest if the mood so strikes her, and will decide the rotating mail carriers are Satan’s spawns, that I am a smartass—which is the most accurate description of me ever—and that she’s not taking any shit off anyone. Then she will turn right around and do anything for that Steve asshole. She will let him completely get away with murder. The reason being that she imagines she loves his stupid hobo ass and also because she threatened to abort Travis when he left that one time, and he made her feel guilty about it. He asked her what kind of mother she was, and never mind that he is a dickwad extraordinaire who had no problem abandoning his crazy fucking girlfriend when she needed him.

Asshole.

What kills me is no one cares about the damn kids. I swear to God, if this is the state of things everyone should just pull up their underwear and say goodbye to the human race. It’s fucking pitiful.