Monsters Live Among Us

 

By Patrick Best

“We stopped checking for monsters under the bed when we realized they were inside of us.” –Stephen King

You should have done something, dammit. You should have ripped open his door, dragged him out into the street and punched him until the police came and arrested you both. You should have done something.

That’s the thought that's been echoing in my head since last Tuesday. Something happened on my ride home from work that night, and I can't seem to shake it.

I'm the editor of a small weekly newspaper, and we have to send our pages to the printer every Tuesday in order to hit the streets by Wednesday afternoon. This week was a rough one - our most popular columnist missed her deadline and a couple of advertisers dropped out at the last minute - so we didn't get everything done until after 11 p.m. My drive home takes about 40 minutes, so it was close to midnight by the time I rolled into Conyers. I was beat, and I had that little twitch I get in my shoulder when I’ve had too much caffeine and smoked too many cigarettes. I was stopped at the red light on West Avenue in front of the railroad tracks when it all started.

The Rush Limbaugh-wannabe I was listening to on one of the AM radio stations was ranting hysterically about welfare mothers when something caught my attention in the rearview mirror.  There was a beat up old Mustang idling behind me. The driver was a musclehead around my age who had a high-and-tight haircut that made him look like a Marine. He was yelling at someone about something, and his lips were peeled back in a way that reminded me of photograph I’d recently seen of a coyote in National Geographic.

The woman in the passenger seat next to him was staring forward, her head moving ever-so-slightly back and forth. Back and forth. Her eyes were puffy and her board straight bleach-blonde hair was stuck to her tear-soaked cheeks.

I couldn’t hear what the man was saying, but the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He was angry as hell, and he wanted the world to know it. He was looking into his rearview mirror, too. As I watched, he lifted one of the big fists - that had been tightly wrapped around the steering wheel - and started bringing it down hard and fast onto something in the backseat. His arm was all over the backseat. Up. Down. Up. Down. He looked like he was playing that carnival game Whac-a-Mole. But instead of a soft black mallet, he was using his sledgehammer of an arm and fist to wop the moles back into their holes.

I hadn’t seen anyone else in the car, but, after watching for only a second or two, I caught a brief glimpse of the man’s target. For some reason, I’d figured it was some kind of animal - a yapping little dog that had peed on the backseat. It was a little boy. He was eight or nine and he was moving from one side of the car to the other to get out of the path of the man’s blows. He was fast, but this seemed to make his attacker even angrier because he turned more in his seat worked that hammer even harder. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.

The light changed to green and the bright color reflected off my hood and filled the cab of my truck. I reached for the door handle, my eyes still focused on the horror movie that was playing on mirror. I was ready to jump out and run to the boy’s rescue. I wanted to make that man – that piece of human garbage – pay for what he was doing. The crying woman dropped her face into her hands as I watched and started crying convulsively. This made the man turn his attention to her, moving his big blocky head right next to her ear as he screamed. She made no sudden movements. ‘She knows better,’ I thought. ‘She’s been down this road before.’

I put my car into Park, gripped the door handle and pulled it. Before I knew it, I was standing next to my truck, staring through the windshield of the Mustang at the man who looked like a pissed off drill sergeant. He must have felt me staring at him because he turned away from the weeping woman and looked at me. His eyes were as big and round as the silver dollars my grandfather gave me when I was a little boy. And while he pointed a thick finger at me and screamed soundlessly through the thick glass that separated us, I could see a hint of embarrassment on his face.

Visions of my own family filled my head – my wife, my son, my daughter. ‘What if he has a gun?’ I thought. ‘What if you try to be a hero and end up dead?’ I’m in the newspaper business, so I read stories like that all the time. Some sees a bad situation, tries to do the right thing, and he gets a bullet right between the eyes as his reward. I took one step toward the Mustang, then I froze. My hands were balled into fists, and I truly believed in my head and heart that I could take down that abusive bastard. ‘But what if he has a gun?’

The Mustang’s engine revved and inched closer to the bumper of my truck. Sgt. A-hole’s face was blood red and his square chin was pushed out over the steering wheel. I couldn't hear him, but I imagined he was saying something  a new recruit would hear on the first day of boot camp: "What are you looking at, maggot?! You think you can kick my ass?! Well, go ahead and try!"

‘Get his license plate number and call the police,' I thought. 'Get back in the truck and go home to your own family. Let the police handle it.’ I took a deep breath and I got back into my truck. When I looked back into my rearview mirror I could see that he had a big grin on his face. A "shit-eating grin" as my dad would say. I felt like I had acid in my stomach.

He inched closer to my bumper, flashed his headlights and punched his horn over and over. It sounded like a trumpet player who’s having a coughing attack. Hunh. Hunh-hunh. Hunh-hunh-hunh. I wanted to throw it into Reverse and silence that stupid instrument forever.

He must have been reading my mind because the next noise I heard was the Mustang’s squealing tires as the slammed on this accelerator and pulled around me. I tried to see his license plate, but he was moving fast and he took a left on the road just beyond the tracks before I could get a good look at it. I saw the top of the boy’s head through the side window and this filled me back up with some of the rage and courage that pushed me out onto the pavement a minute before.

I hit the gas and roared after him. He made a right turn a hundred yards down the road, so I took the street straight ahead because I knew would eventually be able to cut him off using the little side streets in the neighborhoods. My nerve had returned. My heart was back in charge. All I wanted to do was wipe that grin off his face once and for all.

When I got to the intersection where I figured we’d meet up, I quickly rolled down my windows and listened for the sound of his exhaust system and big muscle car engine. I heard nothing but the sounds of two dogs barking at each other through backyard fences. He must have turned off on another road. I missed my chance to stop him. He's still out there.

A shorter version of this story was published in Atlanta Press in April, 2000.

Teenage Drinking Problem

 

This story is excerpted from a chapter in the yet-to-be-completed book I'm writing about my childhood. I'm not sure this goofy little memory nugget is going to make the final cut, so I figured I'd at least let it out of its cage to roam around in the blogosphere.

by Patrick Best

"Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and answer to, all of life's problems." -Matt Groening

My friend TJ and I rode our bicycles down to the Phillips 76 station off Highway 231 that was less than a quarter mile from his house. We wanted some beer for a camping trip we had planned for that evening, and we figured we could easily find a trucker or ex-con down there who'd be willing to help us out. We were 15, but we'd been drinking at least a few times a month for a couple of years.

We didn’t want the store’s only employee to see us creeping around and get suspicious, so we put our kickstands down on the side of the cinder block building and sat on the curb near the entrance to the putrid restrooms. We had to hold our noses and breathe out of our mouths to deal with the stench, but it was the only place we could be out of sight from the cashier and still have a good view of the customers in the parking lot and at the pumps.  

We’d only been there for about five minutes when I saw a woman walking toward the front door to pay for the gas she’d just pumped.

“I bet she’ll do it,” I said as I nodded in the direction of a tall, thin woman in a short blue jean skirt, white tube top and red high heels. She had bleach blonde hair, really skinny legs and the leathery jaundiced-looking skin of one who’s smoked too many cigarettes, drank too much brown liquor and spent way too many hours in a lawn chair covered with baby oil and south Alabama sunshine. She looked like the kind of gal who spent a lot of time in bars where George Jones and Conway Twitty songs dominated the playlist on the jukebox. She was smoking one of those long, thin Virginia Slims cigarettes that I always thought made the women who held them look wealthy and mysterious. She dressed like she lived in a trailer park and her car was 1970-something blue Chevy Nova with a dent in the back quarter panel, but her long, fancy cancer stick still made me think of Joan Collins, Linda Evans and John Forsythe from “Dynasty”.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. My cheeks were hot and my palms were sweating. “Would you mind doing us a favor?”

“Ma’am?!” she shouted and placed a hand on one of her nearly non-existent denim-covered hips. I noticed that her fingernail polish almost matched the color of her heels. Almost. “Just how OLD do you think I am?!”

“I’m sorry. You don’t look old at all.” My heart was racing and my eyes were as big and round as the Frisbee TJ and I had been tossing around an hour before. “My momma makes me say ma’am to anyone who’s older than me.”

“Riiiiiight,” she said sarcastically. “I asked you a question. How OLD do I look to you?” She expected an answer.

“I… I really don’t know, ma’am. I mean… shit.” She looked several years older than my mother, but she was dressed like a teenager.

“Come on. I want to see how close you get,” she said, insistently.

“No older than 36…” I searched her eyes for a reaction. She looked to be in her early 40s, so I figured I was giving her a compliment without going so low that she’d know I was full of it. “I’m going to say you’re 35…”

She didn’t react. She just stared at me. No, glared.

“I think you’re 23 or 24,” TJ said in the syrupy sweet tone of a very bad ass-kisser. 

“Thanks,” she said to him, flatly. “Now what’s this favor?” I could tell she wasn’t happy with either of the numbers we gave her.

“I was just wondering if you would be willing to buy us a six-pack of beer if I gave you the money. Busch Light.” My voice was shaky, and I thrust out a five and two ones toward her like she was holding me up at gunpoint and all I wanted to do was get away. “You can keep the change, too.”

She stared at me, then at TJ, and took a long drag off her cigarette. Her eyes narrowed, and she gave a smile that wasn’t the least bit friendly or cheerful. Smoke drifted out of her mouth and nose in thick twisting streams that looked like they were dancing as they disappeared above her head. She now reminded me of Cruella Deville from “101 Dalmatians”.

“You want ME to buy YOU beer?!” she said with a chuckle. “And I get to keep the change?”

“We’re going camping tonight and…” I managed to stutter.

“How old are YOU?” she said. “13?”

“15...” I said self-consciously. “16 next month.”

“I have a 16 year-old daughter,” she said. “But she looks a lot older than you two.”

“I’m already 16,” TJ lied. “What’s your daughter’s name? I might know her.”

“You don't know my daughter,” she said through tight lips that were covered with lipstick the color of an over-ripe watermelon. She snatched the money out of my hand and stuffed it into her big brown purse. She then turned and walked toward the front door of the store, leaving TJ and I standing outside confused and excited all at the same time.

“What the hell was that?” TJ asked. “Is she going to buy the beer, or what?”

“I think so,” I replied. “Even though she totally saw through your ‘you look 23 or 24’ bullshit.”

“Whatever, man. You’re lucky I was here to save your ass. She bought it hook, line and sinker.”

“Whatever, dude," I said, shaking my head.


“She probably wants me,” TJ said with a smile.

“Huh?! That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

We moved around the corner of the store and peeked through one of the big windows that covered the front of the building. The woman walked to the cooler, grabbed a twelve-pack of Budweiser and carried it toward the counter.

“Check it out, Pat!” TJ said with excitement. “You see that?! She grabbed a twelve-pack!”

“She is totally hooking us up!” I yelled. "Maybe she does want a date with you."

“Hell yeah, she does. Because I am Kid… DYN-O-MITE!” TJ did his best JJ Evans impersonation, the character played by Jimmie Walker in the ghetto sitcom Good Times. He did it a lot. It was so bad that I couldn’t help but laugh every time.

“You’re an idiot,” I said and punched him in the shoulder.

We watched as the woman said something to the guy behind the counter and they both laughed. She reached over and patted his hairy forearm as he handed her back her change.

“Why do think she acted all pissed at us before she went in?” I asked as we watched her walk toward the door with the cardboard suitcase full of beer.

“I don’t know, man,” TJ said gleefully. “But she’s obviously not pissed now.”

When she came through the door she stared straight ahead like we were completely invisible to her, like the conversation we’d had just minutes before had never happened. Just as I was about to call out to her, she said, “Y’all wait around the corner of the store. I’ll drive around the side and meet you.” She strutted across the parking lot as cool as one of those hot chicks from ZZ Top’s “Legs” music video.

“Yes ma’am… I mean… okay,” I said as TJ and I quickly moved toward the side of the building and out of view of the cashier and the other customers who were pulling up to the store. We grabbed our bicycles and moved out a little toward the road that led to TJ’s neighborhood. We wanted to be ready to roll when she handed off the goods.

“Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s nineteen ninety-nine,” TJ sang. “Man, I love Prince. I don’t care what anyone says… Prince is the man!”

“Totally,” I agreed. “He’s a weird-looking little dude… but he’s totally the man.”

We watched from the side of store as she got into her beat up Chevy Nova, cranked it, put it into drive and sped down Hwy. 231 and out of sight. We stood there straddling our bikes without saying a word for at least 90 seconds.

“Damn,” TJ finally broke the silence. “Guess we’re not drinking beer tonight.”

“Nope. Guess not.”

Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dorothy Hamill, the Boy Scout and the Attack of the Yellow Jackets

By Patrick Best

I rode my bike up to the Stark’s house to see if Dean and Lucy wanted to play. It was the summer of 1978 and I had just celebrated my eighth birthday. They had a sister a few years younger than me named Traci, but I had no interest in playing with her because she was in kindergarten. I'm surprised I even remember her name. Dean and Lucy never wanted to play baseball or jump ramps on their bicycles, but I still enjoyed hanging out with them. When you’re a kid who lives in a town with a population of 1,500 or so, you learn to deal with differences or you’ll spend a lot of time talking to your imaginary friends.

The Stark family lived up the street from my grandfather’s house on Washington St. in Ft. Gaines, GA. They had a nice little yellow house with fresh paint and trimmed bushes and flower beds that were tended with care. Dean was in the Boy Scouts, and, for some reason, always seemed to be in his uniform. Always. I don’t know if he had meetings every night of the week, or if he just really liked wearing that tan and green get-up with the yellow neckerchief. I went to one meeting with him and I knew within five minutes that I wasn’t a merit badges kinda guy. I have nothing against the Boy Scouts, but tying knots and lighting fires with sticks wasn’t - and still isn’t - my idea of a fun Friday night.

Lucy had a haircut like Olympic gold medalist figure skater, Dorothy Hamill, and a smile just as bright. Unfortunately, Lucy was not blessed with Hamill’s coordination. Watching her weave and wobble down the road on her bike with its over-sized wheels and fat cushiony seat made me crazy. We were friends during my I-Want-To-Grow-Up-To-Be-Evel-Knievel stage, so anyone who couldn’t ride a never-ending wheelie down the sidewalk was prone to get the occasional eye roll and slow condescending head shake from me. My fascination and adoration for Knievel was off the charts. I had the toys, posters, t-shirts and the patented Evel Knievel red, white and blue number one license plate that I attached to the front of the handlebars on my bike.

“Let’s go into the woods behind the house,” Dean said. “I need to get some leaves from different kinds of trees.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Scouts,” Lucy said, exasperated. "He needs to get the leaves for some Scouts thing."

“Oh,” I replied. “Okay, fine. Let’s go into the woods.”

Dean, Lucy and I jumped the fence behind their house and walked into the trees. Dean was our leader because he was the oldest and in uniform. 

“We can’t go to the stream today,” Lucy said as she walked. “I’m wearing my new shoes and Momma will kill me if I get them wet.”

“You should have changed before we came out here, Lucy,” Dean barked. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hush, Dean. I wanted to wear them!” Lucy snapped back. “I’m still out here, aren't I?”

“I hate new shoes,” I said. “They make my feet hurt.”

“My new shoes feel just fine. They make my feet feel good - a lot better than my old shoes.”

“I want to go to the stream, so you’ll just have to stay away from the water,” Dean said emphatically.

“Fine,” Lucy said. "We'll do whatever Dean wants."

We got to an area of the woods where the trees were so close together that it was impossible to walk. Lucy and I got on our hands and knees and started crawling underneath the branches.

“What are y’all doing?” Dean said. “We can just walk around if we go that way a hundred yards.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said as she trudged through the leaves. “I got my shoes off the ground.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I added, careful not to put my face into a spider's web. “This is the faster way.”

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Lucy shouted. She sounded like a pistol firing three times in a row, but instead of “Pow!” she was said “Ow!”. The quick little gunshot sounds were followed by a blood-curdling scream that scared the bejesus out of me. I jerked my head up and struck a branch that was just above me. When I opened my eyes, wincing from the pain caused by the knock on my noggin, I saw Lucy flailing her arms in all directions. She was slapping at her face and neck like she was possessed by the devil.

“Yellow jackets! Yellow jackets! Lucy! Get out of there!” Dean shouted from behind me. The first stings I got were on my face and neck and it felt like I was being pinched with needle nose pliers that were being slowly twisted to increase the pain they inflicted.

"Shiiiiiit!" I yelled. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

The world became a blur as I began to hit myself and shake my body in much the same way I’d seen Lucy reacting to the yellow and black attack. Dean grabbed my ankles and pulled me toward him. I didn’t make it easy for him to drag me out. It was if the yellow jackets’ stings were injecting paralyzing venom into me that made my arms and legs dead weight.

Dean had dragged me out for enough for me to stand and run away, but I couldn’t get up. I watched as he bravely moved to where I had been under the branches and grabbed his sister’s legs to pull her away from the mass of yellow and black demon bugs that were dancing from side to side in the in the air around Lucy’s head. There were so many around my body that I was able to grab hands full of them and smash them in my palms. No matter how many I knocked away there were more behind them.

“Go!” Dean said as he lifted Lucy off the ground. “Go, Pat! Run!”

I stood up as they moved past me, Dean dragging Lucy like an old rag doll that’s stuffed with cotton that’s become clumped and hard from being thrown in the washing machine too many times. I started running toward their house as fast as I’ve ever run in my life. I could feel thorn bushes tearing the skin from my shins and thighs, but I didn’t pause or look down to see the damage that was being inflicted. We were all screaming as we ran. Not words. Horrible, animalistic howls of agony and fear.

The yellow jackets were still with me, still buzzing in my shirt and hair. I could feel the skin on my face swelling and tightening. Dean and Lucy got to the fence that separated their yard from the woods, and they were climbing over together as they bellowed for their parents to come out and help them. For some reason I thought I could jump the fence. I was eight years old, and the top strand of barbed wire was at least four feet high, but I never slowed down. I ran and leaped like a hurdler. Believe it or not, I almost made it. Almost. My front leg made it over, but the fence caught my back just above the ankle of leg number two. In an instant I was hanging upside down, the barbed wire holding onto my blue jeans with a death grip. A few yellow jackets were inside my shirt and straining to get free from my heavy sweat-drenched hair. I hung there, weak and whimpering, for what seemed like an eternity.

“Help!” I called out weakly. “Help me!”

Dean and Lucy’s father burst out the back door and ran over to me. His voice sounded frantic... on the verge of hysteria. “You’re going to be okay, son. We need to get you kids inside. You’re all going to be okay.”  He lifted me up and away from the fence. I closed my eyes and hugged him as he rushed me into the house.

“Take off your clothes,” Mrs. Stark said, her eyes filled with tears. Lucy was standing next to a window unit air conditioner in just a t-shirt and white cotton underwear, her arms lifted at her side. She looked like a baby bird whose about to jump from the nest and test her wings for the first time. Her face and neck were swollen and red and she was making a wheezing noise that scared me. She marched in place and looked at me with the blank stare of a blind person.

“Take off your shirt!” Mr. Stark said to me. “We need to make sure they’re all gone.”

I didn’t move fast enough, so he grabbed my shirt and pulled it over my head. My arms flung up in the air then flopped back down like a marionette whose body parts are being controlled by a toddler puppeteer. He knocked away the remnants of a few yellow jackets that were on my back and chest. I could feel my pulse in my eyebrow.

“Do you feel any of them on your legs?” he said as he kneeled down and stared at my face. “Do you have any in your pants?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I could feel the wetness of the blood sliding down my shins thanks to the thorn bushes and barbed wire, but I didn’t want to take off my pants. “I wanna go home.”

Dean was standing next to me with his shirt off. He was crying, but it wasn’t for the same reason as me and Lucy. We were crying because we were in pain. He had been stung a lot, but Dean was worried about his sister.

“Is Lucy okay, Momma?” Dean said through sobs.

“Yes, Dean,” she said as she patted a wet wash cloth on Lucy’s cheeks. “Everyone’s fine now. Don’t worry.”

I saw him in a completely different way than I had before. He had saved us. He was a hero. He had dragged Lucy and I out of the brush even though he was getting stung, too. I still didn’t want to be a Boy Scout, but my opinion of them had definitely been elevated by his actions. 

We were all taken to the hospital and treated by my grandfather and his nurses. He gave me a shot that made me sleepy and a little less worried about the painful lumps all over my body. I don’t remember going home, but I do remember Momma helping me out of my clothes and into my bed.

“You poor thing. You were stung more than 40 times, Pitter,” Momma said as she rubbed my head. I liked when she called me Pitter. Made me feel special to have a nickname.

I could barely see her face - both my eyes were nearly swollen shut. Momma was sitting on the bed next to me and it felt so good to have her there, no matter the circumstances.

“Is Lu-pee okay?” I asked. My lips and the inside of my mouth had been stung several times, so my speech was being affected. I sounded a lot like Mushmouth from the Fat Albert cartoon.

“She’s going to be okay, baby,” she said with worried eyes. “Your Papa said she was stung more than a hundred times, but she’s going to be just fine.”

“Hunbred times?” I said. This probably sounds crazy – and I still feel guilty about it all these years later - but I was a jealous of Lucy at that moment. She was in the hospital getting treated by my grandfather and the nurses, and I knew the news of our incident in the woods would spread around town quickly. ‘Did you hear about that poor Lucy Stark?’ someone would say down at Hall’s Drug Store. ‘She got stung more than hundred times by yellow jackets,’ another would say at the City Market. ‘That boy who always wears the Boy Scout uniform and Patrick Best got stung a lot, too… but Lucy’s still in the hospital, bless her heart.’ Dean and I would be an afterthought. Forty is a lot, but it pales in comparison to more than 100.

“Are wu sure I onwee got stun forbee times?” I asked.

“Only? That’s more than most people get stung in their whole life, sweet boy. You’re lucky to be alive.”

Momma continued to stroke my hair as the medication dragged me toward sleep. My jealousy was fleeting.

“Lucy’s going to be fine, baby. You rest now.”

“Don’t leeb me, Momma," I said sleepily, but desperately. "Stay wib me.”

“Momma’s right here. I’m not going anywhere.” She smiled at me as she bent down and kissed me lightly on my forehead. She stroked my hair, and even though it hurt just a little when she touched the places on my scalp where the yellow jackets had been, I didn't say a word. I would have taken 1,000 stings if I could have guaranteed that feeling would last longer.

‘Is this why momma’s always sick?’ I thought.  ‘Does it make her feel as loved as I feel right now?’

“I lub you, Momma,” I said as I closed my eyes. “I lub you more dan any-ting.”

“Momma loves you, too, baby. More than anything.”

Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.