The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (20 page)

I
agreed to his one-sided terms and heaved Jay off the ground by myself. He was
able to walk a little, but the force of Harley’s punch had left him bewildered.
I had to throw one of his arms over my shoulders to get him to the passenger
seat. Once he was safely belted in, I walked around to the driver’s side.

This
was all my fault. I felt like the shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe. This
had all happened because of a cigarette. If I hadn’t been so careless with my
Marlboro, we wouldn’t have gotten pulled over and Jay wouldn’t need dental
work. I sensed major apologies in my future.

One
of my favorite proverbs is “An eye for an eye.” A great chunk of my belief
system is rooted in it. I wanted revenge. I needed vindication for my stupefied
friend lying in the car. But Harley was a parish deputy. There was a uniformed
squadron of men and women standing behind him ready to support his every move.
What the hell was I going to do, go to war with a cop? No way. But, goddammit,
I could do the next best thing.

As
Harley walked back to his cruiser, I called after him. With his headlights, I
could see the conniption on his face when he turned around.

Fuck
that abusive prick.

“Hey,
man, don’t worry about this. Whatever happened with Jay and your mother was a
long time ago. And if you’re thinking we’re gonna report anything, don’t fret.
We don’t want any more problems than you do. The public
needs
people
like you out here, Harley, and we wouldn’t want to strip the commonwealth of
such an upstanding example of protection. We
know
that a career in law
enforcement can make the sanest man snap. After all, it’s widely known that
some of you just  

F
orget

A
bout

G
oodness

S
ometimes.

“You
just need to take up a hobby and vent your inner hostility. That’s all it is.
Have a good life, Harley.”

I
got in the car, made a Y-turn, and beamed a smile when we passed. He was
scratching his head, looking at me like I’d recited the theory of relativity in
Latin. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him petrified to the ground, his
fading face turned crimson from the taillights.

As
far as I know, Harley Suckston is still standing in the middle of that lonesome
gravel road wondering what in the hell just happened.

***

Thank
God, the rest of our trip was uneventful.

We’d
just gotten back to the city limits when Jay started coming around. As I pulled
his car into my driveway, I thought about what could’ve gone wrong: not only
could we have been sitting in a jail cell for possession of crystal meth,
but—worst case scenario—we very well could’ve been speaking with Saint Peter at
the Gates trying to talk our way into Heaven and feign repentance for all the
shit we’d done. Between the two of us, we would’ve been there for a
while
trying to sell him on the worthiness of our souls.

I
turned off the ignition. “Hey, dude. You alive?”

He
was reclined on the passenger side gazing through the window. Blood dripped
from his mouth when he spoke.

“Yeah.
I’m alright. I can’t believe that dirty cockthucker knocked out three of my
teeth, man.”

“I’ve
got ‘em, dude. Picked ‘em up before we left. You’ll probably have to get
partials, but they’re here if the dentist needs ‘em.”

“Thankth,
Innith.”

“No
sweat. What you wanna do? You gonna come inside or what?”

“Nah.
I’m gonna go home and thmoke the largetht joint I’ve ever had. Keep the thpeed.
I don’t even wanna thee it.”

“You
want me to save you any?”

He
slowly turned his head and looked at me like I’d insulted his intelligence.
“What the hell, Coxthman? You know you’re gonna do it all before we thee each
other again.”

“Well,
yeah. You’re right. Can you even drive?”

“Yeah,
I’m good. But hey, thomething I wanted to run by you. You remember Alotta
Thith?”

“Tits?”

“No, Thith.”

“Dude, are
you saying, ‘Blech’?”

“No,
motherfucker—Thith! Alotta
Thith!
Quit being a dickhead, Innith!”

“Hahaha!
I’m sorry, man. Yeah, I know her. Alotta Shitz—that slore who got ‘IF YOU DON’T
EAT IT, YOU DON’T NEED IT’ tattooed above her pussy. What about her?”

“The
athked me to take care of thomething for her and I’m gonna need your help. Come
by the Needle on Thunday. We’ll talk about it.”

“Cool.
I’ll be there, Swizzlestick.”

“Fuck you, Coxthman!”

When
I initially read that line, my associates and I were in a bank lobby making a
large withdrawal. Though the situation at hand demanded my full attention, the
passage was so profound that I holstered my .45 and diverted focus away from
the teller.

I
reread the line ad nauseum: “Your enthusiasm is a bit intimidating.” I became
lost in an amusing memory, thinking back to an incident that personified Mr.
Friend’s statement with truth and clarity.  

***

Tell
me something, good people: did you know that pieces of your car audio equipment
have serial numbers? From the wires in your radio housing to a chip in your
amplifier. Including that one speaker in the rear passenger door that plays
nothing but static. Nearly every part of the system has digits burned, printed,
or stickered on for easy identification. Well, in case you didn’t know that,
I’m here to tell you that they most certainly fucking
do.
And I became
privy to this fact when a few of America’s finest scattered the pieces of my
car audio on the shoulder of a highway early one morning.

All
four-hundred-and-eighty-two of them.

***

It
was a particularly hot and sticky night, even for the South. My balls were
chafed and itchy. I hadn’t had sex in months so I knew it wasn’t crotch rot. I quickly
deduced that it was my nutsack rubbing the day’s sweat against my thighs,
creating a deliberate friction to burn if ever I’d felt one. My abundant
perspiration was the result of riding around with a pound of Mexican bud at 4
o’clock in the morning while attempting to corral two idiots, making futile
efforts to squelch their baked rendition of “Guantanamera” as they hung their
bodies from the windows like limp, diseased stalks of corn.

***

Connie
Langus and Burt B. Trippin were two of but a handful of friends I’d made in
high school. They’d been a couple since junior year and were still going strong
in our late teens. Back when we were prisoners of the school system, we talked
of pooling our meager resources to form a risky venture with great returns.
Once we escaped the dungeon of secondary education, our trifecta turned
nebulous conversation into substance.

We
became pot dealers.

Not
long after we went into business, the coffers of good marijuana in Louisiana
were in depletion from a statewide crackdown. New laws written by the
legislation made it harder than ever before for someone to hit the bong
unmolested. Users caught with so much as a seed in their vehicle were levied
hefty fines and an overkill of jail time; they made an example out of a friend
when they handed him five years for two joints. Many suppliers in our part of
the state decided it wasn’t worth the risk anymore, not for the punishments
being given by the courts.

Before
this stance on the plant went into full swing, the stuff rolled in like fog
from a placid lake. Being as we weren’t old enough to buy alcohol, obtaining a
quarter-key from across town was easier than finding someone to purchase a
six-pack. When these Draconian penalties were etched in stone, however, getting
a small quantity locally became a headache. Our quandary was two-fold as we
weren’t like most people who wanted to score a handful just to get high; our
interests were greater than scrounging for pithy bits left on the cutting
floor. The way we saw it, if you’re going to catch a case, why let it be over a
dime bag?

Go
big or go home, by God.

We
wanted
weight,
and we knew that tapping the source of all incoming
product would be the lynchpin of our success. Fortunately, Connie knew someone
south of the border who could secure the amounts we needed to stay afloat.

***

Immediately
after graduation, Connie reunited with Merle, her gay/adopted/drag
queen/dropout brother who’d moved to Matamoros, Mexico following a fallout with
their father (must’ve been something “Meralda” had said). Through his
connections, we were able to purchase kilos of primo border bud at rock bottom
prices. The only people getting it cheaper were the Mexican cops. We exercised
extra care in trafficking our product back into the country; the consequences
for our standard shipment were brutal. Once stateside, we funneled the product
into the lungs of our adoring public. After setting aside a pound or two for
personal use, of course.

AND
THAT’S WHEN THE LOCUSTS CAME!

No.
That’s a lie. But that
is
when one of the worst droughts in Dixie
increased from more governmental interference.

As
if Louisiana politicians striving to please (some) voters wasn’t enough, the
DEA and Federales had created yet another joint task force to put a dent in the
cartels, performing a sweep of the Mexican countryside that netted hundreds of
arrests and a
plethora
of our dope. It was so bad that people back home
were breaking their glass pipes and scraping resin from the stems. Some even
tried their hand at manufacturing shitty homegrown. Granted, the local boys did
their best, but the weed didn’t get you high and it tasted like a cauliflower
queef.

Now
don’t get me wrong—it was around for those who were willing to pay, but forget
about making any profit. As what usually happens when a drought rears its sober
head, the city was turned into a dealer’s paradise. Sure, people could buy a
pound of weed no sweat. At an insane markup. Getting anything more than that
was nigh impossible. Even through Connie’s brother, we had some difficulty
obtaining an order.

Gone
were the huge blocks of bud lovingly shrink-wrapped by an illiterate
Latino.
The only amounts being moved were small bundles,
mainly half-pound to one-pound bricks.

And
anyone who got it was lucky to have it.

***

Matamoros
is directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas. It’d grown steadily by
the time we went into business, and the city fathers acted accordingly, hiring
additional police officers to safeguard its citizens from the inevitable boom
in crime.

Leaving
late in the afternoon wasn’t my idea. I’d thought it was better to stay the
night and travel in the daytime rather than run afoul of police and be
subjected to the thrills of the Mexican justice system, much less the graveyard
shift at Customs and Border Protection. But Connie was ready to get back to her
cat. She said it’d been suicidal as of late. Said that her sister was staying
with the feral beast to make sure it didn’t hurl itself down the stairs again.
Burt and I laughed and pointed at her until she cried. Nobody believed her.

The
events between Beaumont and arrest are foggy. We’d been smoking one after the
other since Houston, close enough to home that we felt safe sparking up on I-10
in the middle of the night. Burt lounged in the back, twisting joints out of a
Ziploc bag laid next to him on the seat. Even aerating my vehicle with cracked
windows, the beige interior reeked of ganja and Newports. I wasn’t really
worried about being pulled over, though. Every light, signal, and windshield wiper
on my red Pontiac Sunbird worked perfectly. My license and paperwork were in
order, and I followed the speed limits. Except for the horn, my car was
ship-shape (I’d gutted the innards under the horn cap to store small quantities
of narcotics). The only annoyance I’d had was somewhere around Beaumont when
Connie swung around in the front passenger to give Burt a handjob. His long,
dirty-blonde hair fell gracefully over his ears as he stared at the ceiling,
moaning in ecstasy. He unloaded on the front of his Van Halen t-shirt so it
wasn’t a big deal. I shook my head, took a hit, and turned up the music.

***

Everyone’s
heard of spidey-sense—that feeling you get when you know something’s amiss.
Well, drug users have what’s known as a “shitty sense,” especially when they’re
carrying a sizeable amount of drugs they’re going to use. My shitty sense was
no different. It began to dump peanuts and corn husks on the back of my neck
about the time we drove into Louisiana. I should’ve heeded the warning and snagged
a hotel room in Lake Charles, Connie’s cat be damned.

Being
so close to home made me too comfortable. I’d gotten cocky, driving a few miles
over the speed limit, my fuck-up doing it on a lonely stretch of country
highway that was famous for hiding cops amongst its trees. The sudden
appearance of a state trooper bursting from the inky blackness filled my car
with bright lights and paralyzing fear. Connie twisted around on her knees, the
incandescent beams distorting her face to that of a demon. Burt had been dozing
under the spell of a weed nap, unaware of our predicament. I shouted at him to
wake up.

“Burt!”
I yelled into the rearview mirror. He didn’t budge.

“Burt!
Wake up! We’re being pulled over!” Connie fared no better, her white blouse
rapidly changing colors from the trooper’s twirling lights.

I
threw my right arm over Connie’s head to push Burt back to life and discovered
that his sizable cock was still flopped out of his Levi’s. He’d never holstered
himself before passing out. I grabbed a handful of rubbery shaft as my palm
landed in his lap instead of his leg.

His
face.

His
armpit.

His
nutsack.

The
seminal crust on David Lee Roth’s smiling face.

Fucking
any
where else, man.

The
feeling of a phantom hand on his dick roused Burt from his slumber. One look at
the blue light special illuminating Connie’s face told him all he needed to
know.

Burt
B. Trippin fulfilled his name and promptly lost his shit.

A
pound of shrink-wrapped marijuana sat in the trunk, wedged in a space between
the carpet and the back seat. The inside of my car looked like a Dutch holiday.
I felt a churning in my lower gut.
There was no way out of this.
I
swallowed hard and pulled to the shoulder of Highway 165, a road bisecting the
greater portion of Louisiana. The alternative entailed flooring my poor Sunbird
and getting hit with additional charges when we eventually hit the spike
strips. Either that, or going out in a hail of gunfire. It took me exactly two
seconds to weigh my options before hanging my head in defeat.

I
came to grips with the fact that we were going to jail.

***

The
state trooper killed his front bar light and exited the white Crown
Victoria—presumably washed by a trustee earlier that evening—perching his
Smokey Bear hat atop his shiny, bald scalp. Even in the murkiness of night, I
could see the creases in his royal-blue uniform pants were sharp enough to cut
diamonds. You could tell he was one of those who
lived
for this shit. He
sauntered up to my window. I didn’t try to stall.

He
was jaunty and celebratory when he spoke. “Mornin’! Goin’ a little fast, eh,
boy? License, registration and-”

The
smoke hit him in the face like a brick. His right hand instinctively went to
the Glock .40 caliber on his hip without drawing the weapon.

“Step
out of the vehicle. Put your hands on the car and don’t move.” His tone was
deep, flat, and no longer jaunty. He crouched down to assess the other
occupants with beady eyes. “You two. Lemme see your hands. Don’t y’all move a
fuckin’
muscle.
”

From
the back seat, “Well, which is it? Do you wanna see our hands or not move a
fuckin’ muscle?”

Oh
my God.

We
were clearly breaking the law with our actions; cops tend to frown on motorists
who are motoring while smoking that sticky icky.

He
confidently showed us who was in charge; you could smell the overpowering
aromas of authority and Brut as he radioed for backup and threw us on the hood
of my car.

I
then watched as said car was stripped like a porn star’s ego once she found out
she was only good enough to be a fluffer.

Once
the other
boys he blew
Boys in Blue arrived on scene, we were split into
three different cruisers. The cop that’d originally stopped us shoved me down
to the cheap pleather seats in the back of his patrol car. I landed on my
tightly cuffed wrists, the snug steel cutting harshly into my delicate skin. He
slammed the door and I righted myself enough to see through the cage. It wasn’t
easy with three coats of Armor All (incidentally, the theory of
one-size-fits-all cuffs is a crock of
shit,
man).