The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (4 page)

Sweetbuck
and Goodyear survived their injuries and the trio were charged with aggravated
assault, conspiracy, and stalking. Pops had a friend on the department who told
him that Internal Affairs had been on to John for over a year. They’d been
building a case against him that included wiretaps, video recordings, and
surveillance photos. This incident was the final nail in his coffin. The three
detectives were stripped of their badges as well as their reputations. John’s
two cohorts received sentences for their role in the ambush. John shouldered
those allegations
plus
the malfeasance charges and the murder indictment
for slaying the Puerto Rican six years earlier.

In
one of the most freakishly appropriate twists of fate to ever fall in someone’s
lap, John was sent to the same state penitentiary as Esteban’s brother. The
last anyone heard of Sweetbuck, he was lovingly known as “Sweet Butt” in the
cell blocks.

My
father was cleared of any wrongdoing the night of the attack. In an
off-the-record conversation with the district attorney, he was admonished for
not just killing all three when he had the chance.

Pops
tried to put the situation behind him and go on with life at the apartments. It
proved to be a challenge. His reputation for bloodlust circulated the complex
like crabs on a porn shoot. Some offers for murder contracts from unhappy wives
played on his need for violence and he was forced to move out, lest he succumb
to temptation.

But
to this day, you can hear the legend of Hardwang Fuckemall Coxman echo through
the breezeways like late-night gunfire.  

***

After
my parents divorced and the media circus died down, Pops and Labi were married,
despite the trickery over her past. Against all odds, they lived happily
together, until the day came when she developed an affliction known to husbands
the world over as
cheating-bitchitis.

It’s
a disease that advances slowly in the female, usually visible to everyone
around her male except
him
. It begins with subtle hints to the men she
sees on a daily basis, letting them know her libido is hot and ready for
action. In Labi’s case, the progression was no different.

The
first to notice any symptoms was the mailman.

The worst beating I ever got from my father was the one I made him
work for.
It involved a few laps around the house with a chase through the
neighborhood. What I had done was deplorable and if he wanted to give me that
ass whipping, he was going to
earn
it, by God. Hurdling fences, skirting
a double-dutch mob, and punting a Schnauzer from my path were key to avoiding
capture. But it wasn’t a question of
if
I was getting pinched, just
when.
I held my own for many blocks but eventually fell victim to his tenacity.

Now
to be fair, I deserved stripes on my ass for what I did; my hatred of another
boy at school had been festering for ages and a day of reckoning was finally
upon him. And while we can hypothesize for eons about who was really to
blame—me or the other guy—it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re mature adults who've
grown beyond petty tripe. It’s now just an amusing anecdote from my junior year
of high school that I can whimsically reflect upon when I’ve had too much to
drink.

But
the more I write about this, the more I can safely say that it was all Douglas
Kuntinflapp’s fault.

***

Douglas
Kuntinflapp was class president, star pitcher, captain of the football team,
and all-around cockhole to anyone sans uterus. If he couldn’t give you a
finger-bang you were beaten and bullied, hence the girls adored him while the
boys prayed for a meteor spearing his heart. A blonde, blue-eyed sadist who
never wore the same shirt twice, the girls succumbed to his charm and fawned
over his Aryan good looks. The faculty followed suit; he was given quarter for
failed exams and missing homework on a daily basis. The administration saw it
as a small price for multiple state championships.

Coming
from a privileged background, Douglas was used to preferential treatment. His
father was a successful criminal attorney who specialized in high-profile
cases, traversing the country and defending CEOs and drug lords alike. Mother
was a member of The Junior League whose prescription overdoses were handled by
an on-call physician.

Douglas’
athletic prowess and economic status bought him impunity for every boy he
pummeled in gym class. His cackle could be heard all the way to the locker
room. He was a slug of many talents, the most adorable of which was finding
your deepest vulnerability and taunting you with it. In my case, it was my
parents’ divorce. Douglas had been vexing me ever since he’d found out about it
my freshmen year. (You would think the hilarity of my broken home would’ve
waned over the intermittent two years. You’d think HAHAHA!
wrong
.)

He’d
go around chanting witty insults like a third grader: “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah,
nyah
! Your parents are divorced! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah,
nyah…
..(
?)…..
they’re not to-ge-ther!”
Eventually
his atrocious rhyming pissed me off more than anything.

It
was decided amongst a ring of math nerds that I would quarterback Douglas’
demise. I spent weeks plotting his undoing and whittled it down to a few
possibilities:

There
was the go-to “bucket of sewage sitting on a slightly open door waiting for Douglas
to enter,”
the standard “kick to the balls when Douglas rounded a
corner,”
or my personal favorite, “drag Douglas to the locker room with
a plastic bag taped over his head and slam his dick with a toilet lid.”

Any
one has proven effective in academia for centuries.

Ruination
of this prick required a different sort of blow, however, one that would
permanently teach him respect. He had been a stain on the mattress for way too
long and it was time to scrub him clean. In the end, his chosen flop was easy
to formulate, for I had a finger on the pulse of his perversions.

I
knew that Douglas was a peeping Tom.

***

Lunchtime
found Douglas on his perch. There was a women's bathroom located by the
basketball courts nestled in a corner of school property. A thicket of
blackberry bushes behind the structure had made it an unappealing hangout for
the masses.

This
was his theater.

Access
to the ladder was easy. He had caught Mrs. Suckston hoovering the janitor a few
weeks prior and was given a key to the work closets in exchange for silence (my
high school was ran by Pee Wee Herman).

The
bathrooms were built like the ones you’d find at a camp or an interstate rest
stop. The wall stopped a few inches short of the ceiling and he peered over the
edge. Leering at the girls from atop his metal stilts, Douglas unbuckled his
jeans and let them fall to his knees. The faint whimpers of pleasure soon eeked
from his throat as he fingered his skinflute, feverishly pumping for that
sticky payoff. His load was coming any time now, and the wetter a girl’s fart,
the closer his eruption:

Almost there.....Oh God.....yes.....yes
!.....
FUUUUUCK!

I
jettisoned from my hiding spot in the bushes, ramming the ladder like a bull
and slamming Douglas into the wall so hard they both ricocheted downward in a
majestic arch. He crash-landed and cried like a sex offender on his first night
in jail, squealing as his constituency raced over from the main building to see
their president with his pants around his ankles. Murmurs began circulating
about his appearance as cheerleaders from the bathroom circled him like
buzzards:

“What
were you doing here, Douglas?”

“Why
were you on top of that ladder, Douglas?”

“Why
is your dick out of your pants, Douglas?!!”

Good luck explaining
that,
cocksmoker.
 

Having
tied a knot in his beatfest, I fired up a Newport and began trekking to the
main building. That’s when I heard a teacher scream the words that stopped me
in my tracks:

“Oh
my God! He cut his finger off!”

I
spun around and told that bitch that liars go to Hell. I didn’t want to believe
her. But her statement was confirmed when I saw blood pouring from the stump
where his finger used to live.

This
wasn’t in my blueprints.

A
fucking psychic couldn’t have seen it coming: Douglas fell in such harmony that
he was still clutching a ladder leg with his right hand. It snapped shut when
he landed and
cut off his goddamn pinky finger like a deli slicer!
Cheerleaders
passed out from the sight of his lone digit on the ground. My exhilaration plummeted
with his erection. He flopped with agony as someone rushed to the principal’s
office to call for an ambulance.

And
my father.

***

I
dove through the Vadgastank’s rose bushes with military precision.
The
thorns were of minor irritation, though their new razor wire ripped into my
flesh like a scythe. Shaking free of the snags, I shot up and jerked my head
this way and that. A heavy presence loomed on my neck. I slowly turned around
expecting the hands of madness to encircle me.

It
was my own shadow.

I
gathered my nerves and blurred through Mrs. Vadgastank’s backyard, jumping her
topless body as she tanned by the pool. Whizzing over her busty figure, I
proffered sexy salutations:

“Hello,
Saggy Tits!” The plastic surgeon hadn't done shit for those milkflaps.

There
was no time to lose. My life hung in the balance and the string was unraveling.

What’s gonna happen to my weed when I die?
Kind bud
is expensive. I can't just let that shit go to
was
-

I
couldn't afford to think about that. I had to keep running.

Running
kept me alive.

Running
kept me safe.

The
Hellhound was close at hand.

***

My
father picked me up from school after getting the phone call he’d always
dreamed of—the one informing him that I was responsible for maiming another
student and that the heft of my actions had failed to impress.

A
pervert got his finger amputated as he spied on chicks during the most private
activity known to man. I couldn’t even shit concern, much less fake it.

Of
course, Pops couldn’t grasp this logic. He couldn't view my courageous act for
what it was: a heroic gesture that stifled a loose sexual cannon and quenched
my thirst for vengeance. In his mind, I’d hoisted unprovoked violence on
another human being.

He
parked his new Cadillac in the driveway and killed the engine. We shared an
uneasy quiet as the shiny dice dangling from his rearview mirror shot dancing
beams of light on the upholstery. I’d always wondered what a “deafening
silence” sounded like. I found it to be
thunderous.

After
a few pensive moments, he turned to me and said in a guttural voice, “Just
run.”

Who
was I to argue with such sound advice?

***

Pops
was gaining as I hauled ass toward the Quieftons’ gazebo.
Standing in their
pagoda bent over with my hands on my knees, I panted and marveled at his
endurance.

"Motherfucker!"
I gasped out loud. "How can a three-hundred-pound smoker
move
so
fast?!" It seemed that I had underestimated him.

As
I cowered in the Quieftons’ summer house, I quickly tallied my odds and
concocted a plausible theorem: Pops was older and more accepting of failure,
whereas I was young and motivated to lose my virginity someday.

Survival
was possible.

I
heard him approaching with quaking steps and hurled over the railing, straight
into Mr. Quiefton’s attack dogs that he used in his security business. My
Adidas hit the dirt and I looked up to find four hungry Rottweilers staring
back at me in a dog pen only twenty feet in diameter. At least I think that was
the breed. The shoulder width and muscle structure gave the appearance of
two-thirds Rottweiler and one-thirds
holy shiiiiiiiit!
Their naps had
been interrupted, the rumbles coming from their throats revealing immense
displeasure with my intrusion. Had I known there were bloodthirsty canines
blocking my escape route, I would’ve let my father’s insanity take its course.
They growled and bared fangs, waiting for me to run so they could snack on my
nuts. Giving up seemed like my only option. I reconciled myself to becoming
Alpo.

Just
when I felt the last rays of my sun sinking below the treeline forever, I
spotted a rolled-up newspaper a couple of feet from me that’d been hurled into
their backyard because the paperboy threw like a bitch. I knelt down and
snatched it up, hoping to have some defense when the land sharks pounced.

I
quickly discovered that those “ferocious attack dogs” Mr. Quiefton had bragged
about for so many years were a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool pussies, man.

Sometime
after this incident, I found out that Mr. Quiefton had trained them with
something as unsophisticated as
Rolling Stone
magazine. They couldn’t
tell the difference between that and an ordinary newspaper. They instantly
heeled, bowing their enormous heads to the soil, whimpering and lying on their
bellies with total submission. After the realization that I wasn’t going to die
a humiliating death—not right then anyway—I crawfished toward the gate with the
newsrag still clutched in my sweaty hand. I flipped the latch on the other
side, tiptoeing across the threshold while keeping my bulging eyes focused on
them, locking it when I was safe.

***

I
emerged from Mrs. Quiefton’s trimmed hedges and viewed my surroundings like a
paranoid squirrel. Their house was a couple blocks over from ours. I didn’t see
my father’s frothing chops anywhere. The only notable activities were some
children playing basketball in a driveway across the street, and Walford, the
twelve-year old special kid, pissing on a fire hydrant. Everything appeared to
be normal.

Racking
my brain for a plan, I concluded that the best course of action was to give
Pops some time to process the day’s information.

My
plan necessitated that I avoid him like the plague.

I
decided to double back and grab my bike that I’d bypassed during my dash from
the Caddy. I had left it lying in our backyard due to the not-insignificant
issue of Pops trying to tear me a new asshole. As I walked, I stayed
ever-vigilant for an angry wad of malice and navy slacks to come lunging at me
from the bushes of a neighbor’s front yard. The fact I was in the middle of the
street in broad daylight didn’t make me feel any safer.

Pops
will strangle you on the pitcher’s mound of Yankee Stadium during the World
Series. He doesn’t give a shit.

I
didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when I approached our front lawn.
Standing on the street by the mailbox, I viewed the telltale signs of a man in
the throes of acute psychosis. Pops was more pissed at me than I’d realized;
he’d left behind his briefcase and fedora.