Sunday, December 31, 2006

Strike Me Down, Big Man: A White Trash Vignette

Strike Me Down, Big Man
by
James Robert Smith


There were seven of us: Scot, Robert, Brayboy, Tina; and Brayboy's sister, Reddog. And there was Phil, a garbage scow of a guy we all called Fat Bastard when he wasn't around to hear. At nineteen, I was the oldest, so I had dropped into the liquor store and bought the rum. The rest had brought coke; and me and the other braves were gulping the cheap, shitty rum and chasing it with Coca Cola. It tasted truly awful, but we were feeling good and drunk. I wasn't as high as the rest of the boys, since I weighed in at better than two-fifty, so I held my rum pretty good, and Phil didn't drink (the pussy). But Brayboy weighed one hundred thirty pounds, and even though he was only sixteen years old he was already a boozer who loved the stuff. He was going to make a sloppy drunk. Some of his teeth were rotting from too much booze and not enough food. He was drunk enough that I think he'd forgotten how much bigger I was than he, so I'd already had to tell him to shut up a couple times.
The girls weren't drunk, at all. Maybe a little. They were fifteen year olds, but they had plenty of experience when it came to males chasing after them. They well knew we were hoping to get them drunk enough so that we could talk them into lying down for us. Reddog wasn't a problem. She loved dick and everyone but her brother and me had had a taste, and I really wasn't so sure Brayboy hadn't had a go at her. But I just didn't think she was attractive with that pale skin and all that red hair. No thanks. Tina, though, was another matter. She was short, maybe not even five feet, but she was well built. She had great tits, and her hips flared out from a narrow waist and her legs weren't bad, either. If you bothered to look, she had a cute face framed with short, brown hair. All of us wanted to fuck her.
Earlier that day, I had stopped by the Brayboy house, and Reddog and Tina had been in the back yard. I went back to talk to them, and noticed Brayboy's barbells sitting in the dirt. Sandspurs had started to sprout around the concrete-filled plates; it had been so long since the little guy had used them. I bent down and picked them up, figuring he had about one-twenty on the bar. I was wearing a tank top and began to curl the weight easily, pumping up my biceps.
"My gosh," Reddog said. "Look at his muscles!"
I smiled and curled the bar a few more times, getting the desired result. But Tina looked up for a minute and said nothing. Shit.. I tossed the bar back to the weedy ground.
"How did you get so strong," Reddog asked.
"Heck. I'm not that strong," I lied. I was as strong as a fucking bull. I was so strong that nothing less than a gun scared me. Truly, I loved beating the shit out of other men. I had the lackonooky disease, so I walked around pissed off all the time. Tina was standing there wearing a halter-top and very short cutoffs so my dick was hard just looking at her. I did my best to hide my erection. I’m a gentleman.
"Where's Steve," I said. I rarely called her brother by his first name, but since I was on Brayboy property, I figured I should show some respect. I liked Mr. Brayboy, the father. Too bad his daughter was a slut and his oldest son was a rummy in training. He had four other kids stuffed into that five-room house, but they were all young ones and I didn't even know their names. Didn't give a damn, either.
"Him and Scot are off doing something," Tina said. I knew she really liked Scot. If any of us was going to get any action from Tina, I figured it would be Scot. She seemed to perk up a little at the mention of his name. Damn.
"Well, when they get back, tell them that I want to get up a bunch and go to the cemetery tonight. We can all smoke weed and get drunk and raise hell. You tell em for me, okay?" And I vaulted the chain link and trotted to my pickup.
So. We had all ended up in the Port City Cemetery, right in the middle of it at eleven at night. The rest of the boys were too drunk to notice the mosquitoes eating us alive, and I was too intent on trying to figure out how to get Tina alone and on her back to worry about the little bloodsuckers. We had come to the cemetery in a brand new 1978 Chevy pickup, just purchased by Scot and Robert's dad. It was a beauty: shiny white with four wheel drive and lots of polished chrome. I hadn't asked them how the hell they had talked their dad into letting them drive off with it. He must be out of town, I figured. Right then, it was parked out on Mane's Bluff Road, in a little turnaround area shrouded in by a couple of old live oaks and a line of scrub. The cops hardly ever came down there because the washboard road was hell on your suspension. Cops do love a smooth ride.
"Let's go look at that mausoleum Brad keeps sayin he gonna bust into," Scot said.
"God, that's one crazy fucker."
"He scares me."
"He scares you? You mean you ain't fucked him yet, Red?"
Reddog made a savage grunting sound and clawed at Scot. But he was too quick and danced away from her, bounding lightly over half a dozen graves. I could see his blond hair, even in the dark.
"You shouldn't do that, Scot." It was big, fat Phil. He stood, as usual, behind the group, watching us.
"Shouldn't do what?"
"Walk over the graves like that." Phil pointed, his fat paw kind of pasty looking in the half moonlight.
"Why the fuck not," I asked him.
"You should have more respect for the dead. You should fear God, man."
I laughed. Scot laughed. "Fuck that!" Both of us.
Scot hopped to a granite slab all polished and carved with the names of some family. We couldn't read it in the dark. He began to do a jig. "I'm dancin' man! I'm dancin'." He hopped about while I laughed. No one else was laughing. "Strike me down, Big Man. Strike me down!" Nothing happened, except that Scot and I began to laugh: big belly laughs while we made fun of everyone's religious beliefs.
"Hell," I said, pointing to the starry sky. "He ain't even got a cloud to pop some lightning out of." Scot looked up, thought that was especially funny, and laughed some more.

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