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“Wide-Load! Get your shoes and socks off and roll up your pant legs and stand in the wastebasket!” Janus ordered.

As Wide-Load nervously followed Janus' directions as slow as possible, the unruly, boozed-up actives yelled and cheered, pushing past us, wanting a better look at what was happening. With Wide-Load standing barefoot inside the wastebasket, Janus sprayed Wide-Load's feet with liquid cheese from a yellow, plastic squeeze-bottle.

“What's the big deal?” Rainey whispered to me.

“Beats me.”

Then Mike Thurley, wearing a purple and yellow satin Lakers jacket, held a tan shoebox over the wastebasket. “You stay inside until we count to ten or you're out of here,” Thurley instructed Wide-Load. The crowd roared their approval as Thurley dramatically opened the lid of the shoe box, dropping a rat inside the wastebasket!

“One…” was as far as the actives counted, before Wide-Load's piercing screams rang out, followed by panic and hysteria, causing him to fall over onto the brick deck trying to climb out of the goddamn wastebasket that seemed to stick to the soles of his feet. But even while on the ground, the rat kept snapping at his cheese-covered, kicking feet trying to gnaw them.

His continued, terrified, wailing suddenly was drown out by the rumbling engine of a black and white helicopter that became increasingly louder until its humming vibration was almost directly overhead and the beam of its bright searchlight shined directly down on us!

Almost at the same time some sheriffs came running in the yard through the side gates shining their black, five-celled flashlights in our faces!

Actually there weren't that many cops there. I'm sure there were more at presidential assassinations. The cops, dressed in their tan and olive uniforms, stared at each of us, one-at-a-time, pointing and laughing like we were Martians. Then they started walking around the yard, searching and sniffing, no doubt for the source of the heavy, pungent pot smoke still hanging in the
air like a giant umbrella. Meanwhile two other deputies were standing in front of each of the open side pathways preventing anybody from leaving. They probably thought we were scoring the biggest dope deal since
The French Connection
.

Janus must've had nothing better to do tonight than screw around with us. He quickly pulled out a black wallet revealing a gold sheriff's badge, flashing it to the cops. “I'm a reserve!” he yelled. Then he rushed over to the red-headed sergeant with the shiny brass name tag that said McCALL. “What the fuck you doing here, Mack?”

“What the fuck you doing here Janus? Thought you already graduated from college.”

“I did. Last year.”

“So why you here?”

“Having a little fun. That's all. Helping my old college fraternity razz these guys a little.”

“Who lives here?”

“My folks,” Janus answered. “But it's for sale. You saw the sign outside.”

The sergeant looked around at us. “We don't care what's happening unless somebody got hurt.” His eyes scanned the crowd. “Anybody injured?”

Nobody spoke up.

“Where they from?” he asked Janus.

“College at the Sea in Santa Monica,” came Adams' slurred answer.

“How'd they get here?”

“Yel-low truck outside,” Adams answered, his eyes glazed like a blind man's.

The sergeant spit lightly with each word he spoke. “You're drunk.” He looked around at the rest of us again. “Anybody here think they can drive the truck back over the mountains?”

“Me!” Rainey called out. “I'm sober.”

The sergeant approached at Rainey. “What're you dressed as?”

“Muff Diving Melvin the Methodical Muncher,” he answered straight-faced as the sergeant sniffed the air from
Rainey's breath.

“You seem OK to drive. Take everybody out of here who came in the truck.” Then he turned to the rest of the guys. “Everybody with a car, give us your keys. You can pick them up in the morning at the station.”

The sergeant pointed to a stocky, blond deputy wearing yellow-lens sunglasses who looked unhappy about something. “Gabe, you find anything?”

“Just two kegs and a couple of joints. They must've dumped the other shit in the ivy as we arrived.”

“Any stash, bongs, baggies, owe-sheets, scales?”

“No,” he answered disappointedly. “But almost everybody's under age for drinking. We got them on that.”

“Oh, come on,” Janus pleaded. “Big fucking deal. A little booze and a few roaches. “We'll pour out the beer. OK?”

“Fine, but nobody drives away except the Muff Diver guy.”

“Thanks a lot, Mack,” Janus mumbled. “The other guys can sleep here tonight.”

A short, skinny deputy with high cheekbones and hollow, deep-set eyes walked around collecting sets of car keys.

“You guys going in the truck, get out of here now,” the sergeant ordered. “We're going to follow you a little down the hill to make sure you're driving OK.”

Adams followed us outside to the truck. He seemed a little more sober all of a sudden. He looked around at each of us slowly, counting on his fingers. “Pledge count,” he said, rubbing his glassy eyes. “Grossberg, do a pledge count. Somebody's missing.”

Grossberg walked around and counted us three times. “Wide-Load's missing,” he finally announced.

Great news! That fat-ass bastard's gone now, leaving just sixteen of us.

Adams smiled, opening the back of the truck. “You guys got a reprieve tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow we'll play the other games we didn't get to tonight and some new ones too.” He paused for a second before adding, “And more importantly, to narrow down the pledge class some more.”

Tuesday, January 21
3:15
P.M
.

“W
ANT TO SEE MY CLIT RING?”
a throaty voice called out from inside the brightly-lit bathroom through the open door at the Venice Sober Living House.

I flinched, mostly from surprise but partly from revulsion. With a face the size and shape of a coconut, she was hardly my choice to turn me on with a preview of a golden stream.

Unashamedly, she stood up, wiped herself with toilet paper, flushed the toilet, and kicked her jeans off from around her ankles. I guess she forgot to wear panties.

“Look,” she said pointing to the silver loop that seemed to go right through her clit. “Come on in. You can see it better.”

“No thanks.”

She twisted around and mooned me, facing the mirror over the sink and ran her left hand through her shoulder-length, brown hair that must've been brushed with a rake.

“I'll do all three inputs for some shit to get high on.”

“Sorry. Don't have anything.”

I walked down the hall and into a front bedroom that Vysell and I were painting.

Before I could tell him about this screwball, she walked in the room.

“Hi, I'm Jackie D,” she said, lightly licking her tongue while staring at Vyell's crotch. “Know why they call me that?”

“No,” he answered, partly looking at her while still sliding the white paint roller up and down the chipped walls.

“Because I've gripped the necks of Jack Daniel's bottles more times than you guys have gripped your cocks.”

Me and Vysell started laughing at the daughter of the couple who also raised Tarzan.

“The missing link,” Vysell muttered. “Darwin's favorite.”

“Look at this,” she said, casually pulling off her black tank top with the NINE INCH NAILS logo, revealing a braless torso of elaborate, multi-color tattoos of dragons and sea serpents blowing fire and smoke at each other.

“Wow,” Vysell uttered, “beautiful artwork.”

“Know what I traded the lesbian tat artist for these tats?”

“What?” Vysell asked.

“Minutes. We kept records. I ate her for each minute she tattooed me.”

She laid down on the bed on her back with her fingers laced behind her head on the pillow looking up at us. Thick gobs of black hair sprouted from her armpits.

“What's those letters on the back of your shirts after it says HELP WEEK NOT HELL WEEK?”

“Fraternity name,” I answered. “Greek letters. Sigma Omicron Lambda.”

“What's it mean?”

“Something like sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”

She smiled. “Cool.” She paused for a few seconds. “Give both you guys head for one joint or even a roach.”

“What if you get caught for getting high in here?” I asked. “They'll throw you out.”

“Already got rolled up. Going back to court Monday. Starting a year then.”

“Why don't you jump bail?” I asked, knowing Nuppi would wholeheartedly agree.

“Can't. If I jump and get caught sooner or later, I'll do three years in the joint. This way it's only a year, meaning about nine months.”

“Still a lot of time.”

She shook her head. “Not too bad though. I like pussy too.”

_____

“Stafford,” Adams said, sitting next to me on the lawn in front of the alky house where we took a lunch break. “Parker told me and some other actives last night that he's going to get you to quit before Hell Week is over. And if you don't, that he's blackballing you out of here. That getting rid of you is going to be his personal mission.”

“Why's he got a hard-on for me? I never did nothing to him.”

“Said you're the most cocky, arrogant bastard he's ever met.”

I didn't answer. Lyman was sitting a few feet away on the lawn, winking at me like an exclamation mark when Adams finished the sentence.

For the first time, I noticed that the pledges were mostly in two groups; Lyman's group that included most of the pledges and my group with Vysell and Batman and occasionally a few other guys who came and went. But most everybody was with Lyman. This obvious division made me damn uncomfortable; like battle lines were already drawn up. But what I didn't understand was, battle lines for what?

Adams looked over at everybody. “Tonight's going to be rough for a lot of you. The actives were pretty mad last night that the cops broke up the party before it really got started. Especially since we never got to see you guys play any of the KY games.”

Nobody said a word.

Adams smiled. “Too bad you guys couldn't think of something to diffuse the situation.”

“How? What do you mean?” Grossberg asked quickly.

“I don't know. Provide something that would be more fun for the actives than fucking around with you guys.”

_____

Like he was demonstrating to preteen girls how to give a blowjob, Buckskin was slowly, deliberately licking pistachio ice cream off the top of a dark cone as he stood on the sidewalk in front of us. Taking very small steps, he walked over to us on the lawn, twisting and squirming, obviously still in pain.

“Afternoon, gentlemen. Shirts look good.”

He winced a little as he bent his knees and placed both palms on the grass, lowering himself down slowly next to Grossberg.

“You injured?” Grossberg asked.

“Just had an operation.”

Buckskin was really enjoying the ice cream since he thrust his tongue out with each lick, letting us all enjoy the sight of the green ice cream that almost completely covered his tongue before he swallowed it.

“Gentlemen,” he began somberly. “There's a serious problem here.”

“What is it?” Adams asked.

“You guys know anything about a car accident last night? Around the corner from your fraternity house involving a motorcycle?”

“What time?”

“About the time Dean O'Neill and I left there.”

Grossberg shook his head slowly. “No.” He looked over at us. “You guys know anything about it?”

“No,” most of us mumbled, shaking our lying heads.

“What about it?” Grossberg asked innocently.

“A police detective telephoned Dean O'Neill and I this morning about it. Some lying bastard said the Dean tried to run him off the road. Also we got a call from a woman lawyer, threatening to sue Dean O'Neill after he gets out of prison.”

“Sorry, don't know anything about it.” Grossberg said. “But if we can help, tell the detective to call us.”

Rainey pointed to the gun rack on the back of Bucksin's Bronco. “You a hunter?”

“Yeah. I hunt deer, mostly.”

“Me too. I'm not from around here. Any local places to hunt?”

“I've got a brochure on it in my truck,” he said to Rainey. “Come here and I'll give it to you.” With considerable effort, Buckskin forced himself up.

Rainey and Buckskin walked over to the Bronco and were standing there on the passenger side talking. Even from the short distance I saw that the dashboard was covered with junk: papers, coffee cups, soft drink cups, Camel cigarette packs, mail.

Rainey was holding a booklet when he walked back to us and sat down.

Buckskin was still standing. “Where was the Ryder truck last night?” he asked Grossberg.

“What do you mean?”

“Me and the Dean went back to the fraternity house around midnight. Nobody was there. Truck was gone.”

“Got no idea.”

Buckskin squinted, his eyes darting around checking our silent reaction. “Got to take a piss,” he announced, walking stiffly past us and into the house.

The second Buckskin was out of sight Rainey burst out laughing. “The fucker had a penile implant!”

“How do you know?” G-Spot asked.

“See all that shit on his dashboard?”

“Yeah. So what?”