Let me set this straight. I am not a reliable narrator. From the outset, I have to tell you that I am not going to pull a “Fight Club” on you at the last second and try to wrap everything up in a neat little package of “oh gosh, he was dreaming it all along.” Nor am I going to introduce some “god in the machine” right in the middle of things so that I can extract a failing plotline or stupid character from the fire before it or they get burned right up. Also, before you start thinking “hey, this guy is telling us he is unreliable, but maybe he is trying to confuse us when he says that…” stop it right now. I am being completely straightforward here: this whole thing is made up. It is fiction. It is a lie. But it happened.

My brother and I were very close even after we grew up and moved out of our abusive parent’s house. I moved first, because I got sick of the daily assaults first, but he was older by one year. We both went our separate ways as brothers tend to do, but we always kept in touch and we always met for dinner and drinks at least once a month. Seth is an important businessman sort and I am an unimportant bum type sort, but that never really becomes an issue for him. He’s not the type of “ashamed sibling” you hear about or read about, he is pretty much just a loving older brother. Hey, I told you we were close.

Want to hear an example of how close we are? Well, get this. When we were teenagers, I had the unluck of stepping right on a copperhead. A copperhead is a type of venomous snake that will fuck your shit up if you aren’t taken care of right away. We had been fishing all day in an abandoned quarry that had been flooded and stocked with bass. We were on this long pier that extended like a finger into the manmade lake and as we were leaving for the day, we were engaging in some mischievous tomfoolery that normal brothers tend to get into when they are in good moods. Seth socked me in the arm and I went sprawling off the end of the pier into a stand of grass that was on the bank. Inside that stand of grass was a copperhead about a foot long. The thing bit me on the upper calf and I immediately knew that something very terrible was happening. I never even saw the snake itself, but Seth said that he did and automatically went into (as he called it) "older brother mode.” Seth carried me for the entire two miles worth of path that led back to our parked car while I began to daze in and out of consciousness.

Can you imagine that situation? He actually carried me on his back in the hot woods for two miles. He thought that it was his fault that the snake had bitten me. He took it upon himself to carry me that whole way, crying while he did it, to the sun-baked car in the quarry parking lot. I don’t remember very much of the trip to the hospital, but I do remember how hot the seats in the car were as he set me down in the passenger seat.

Of course, after I was safely in the hospital and on the mend, our parents were contacted and Seth got the beating of a lifetime. I am not sure, but I think that the day I was discharged from the hospital, I got a good thrashing as well…there were so many, I can't remember them straight. That incident, the fishing trip, snakebite, and extended stay in the hospital did more to make me decide to leave home when I could than any other incident of my childhood and post pubescent years. I stood through beatings, verbal abuse, irrational shouting matches, and adult alcoholic rage that came out of nowhere, but that snake and his little love nip did more in one brief second to force my resolve in leaving than any of it. It took my brother a few more months to see what I saw.

So now I guess you are waiting for me to reveal this incredible insight I gained while immobile in a hospital bed, my leg propped up to keep the blood flowing properly, but what I have to say really isn’t all that enlightening. While in that bed, a nurse came in the room to take my temperature or to draw some blood or something, and I noticed that she had a lattice of scars on one arm. Not all that earth shaking is it? she was a cutter. She liked to deal with her pain by taking an Exacto knife out and giving herself a series of cuts…and somebody had let her be a nurse.

My parents were drunks. They weren’t what I like to think as functioning alcoholics who only drank on the weekends. They were rocked out of their minds pretty much through my whole childhood. This sort of behavior ranks somewhere higher on my scale of “fucked up” than cutting does…and somebody let them be parents. But seeing that nurses arm, slashed so perfectly, solidified something inside of my mind. An idea began to form that there were no rules, or, the people who were making the rules only did it because they could get away with it.

I talked to Seth about this, and while he understood what I meant, he also wanted to live by those rules for a little while longer. He wanted to graduate from high school and then he felt that he could get out. I didn’t, seeing that I felt that high school was just another set of rules and I had had enough of that bullshit. I got out, moved into a shit-hole apartment in the dumpy part of town, and called him to let him know where I was. I also told him that if the beatings got too bad, he had a place to crash.

Once my parents had figured out that I was gone for good, they pretty much didn’t do anything extra special. They continued to be drunks, they continued to fight, and they continued to let Seth have it if he happened to get in the way. It kind of hurt me that they didn’t even feel that my departure was worth an extra bottle of whatever it was that they swilled. I figured that Seth would have at least gotten a clout on the eye or something, but no, it was just business as usual.

Seth went to his counselor and explained that he wanted to finish out his high school career on an accelerated pace. He didn’t come right out and tell the counselor that his parents were beating the shit out of him every night, but he didn’t really have to at that point, between myself and him coming to school every so often with a shiner or a busted up lip, everybody already knew. For his junior year in high school, he was allowed to take advanced courses that would speed his graduation and count for some of his college credit. He graduated at the Christmas break of his junior year and for a present to him; I let him move into my apartment.

He didn’t stay with me very long. He had plans for himself that did not include living in the ghetto where the sounds that came through the paper-thin walls mialcoholiced the sounds of his own childhood. I didn’t really care and just turned the stereo up. After a few months, Seth moved himself into student housing at the local college and began working on those plans. We kept in touch, but we didn’t see very much of each other due to the fact that he was a full-time student and I was a full-time bum.

I sank into the obscurity of my twenties while Seth went to college. I worked in fast food joints while Seth worked on grants and dissertations. I graduated from cashier to head chef while he graduated sum cum laude with a degree in business administration. During that time, Seth managed to get married, become wealthy, divorce, and lose most of his fortune, while at the same time; I had managed to get a new bed and a new apartment…just down the tenement hallway from my first room. By thirty, we were both where we started out at when we were twenty-four, but I had managed to expend a hell of a lot less energy getting there.

Because he was freshly divorced, I brought up the subject of perhaps taking a vacation. We should get away from all this, I said. We hadn’t seen the whole wide world out there, maybe it was time? After several months of this sort of urging, I finally got him to finance a trip to Yellowstone. It seemed like a great idea, Old Faithful and all. Being raised the way we had been raised, we never got to see very much of anything besides our own back yard or pictures in books, so getting to someplace big, wide, and free appealed to the both of us. In the room we shared while growing up, both of us had a small store of books that we would escape into when things got bad. One of those books was a picture book called “Wide Open Spaces: A Photographer's History of the Wild West” and I recall that book as being the most beaten up, dog-eared, and re-read book in our whole collection. It seemed a given that we would one day have to travel out there if only to verify that books grand pictures as real.

We made plans to drive to Wyoming and spend a whole month inside of the national park. To this day, I have never seen inside of that park, even though I want to with all my heart. While in Indiana, on the interstate, a lug nut shot off of a ROADWAY truck’s wheel and struck my brother square in the forehead. The noise the lug nut made when it smacked against the windshield was like what you see in a comic book: the word “zap!” surrounded by a jagged lightning bolt-shaped balloon. The noise that the lug nut made when it hit my brother and killed him was like nothing I have ever heard before or since. It was more of a feeling than a sound. But if I were asked (forced) to describe it, I would have to say that it sounded like a piece of uncooked steak hitting black asphalt at a high rate of speed. Yes, it was a slapping sound, but it went beyond a mere bash and into the wet kind of strike that is associated with destruction of flesh.

With Seth being dead, nobody was in control of the car and it swerved into the culvert that ran alongside of the highway. I can remember this part only because like most accidents a person is involved in, I saw it in slow motion. The car hit the dip of the ditch and then rocketed over the small rise on the other side. We became airborne for a brief second before flipping entirely and slamming into the concrete divide that made up the back of the highway gutter. Being upside down probably saved my life as the energy of the wreck was transferred into the underside of the car instead of the front. I was tossed around like a rag doll and hit my head on the dashboard a few times, but other than that and a few scratches from the shattered safety glass, I was in perfect condition.

I stood beside the highway in a daze, blinking at the suddenly extra bright sun and watching other cars zoom by for what seemed like hours. Nobody stopped to help, so, like that other crazed accident in my life, the snakebite, I was cut off from help. Only this time, my brother wasn’t around to carry me…or so I thought.

I am not sure when it was that my leg started to itch, but it was probably within a few seconds of my brother’s demise and I am certain he had something to do with it. Deep in my upper calf, a hot itch was spreading slowly, like somebody was pouring micro-waved maple syrup on my pants leg. As I crawled out of the wreckage, I remember digging my fingernails into my leg, trying to find out what the itch was. I wanted to go to sleep, but that itch... it writhed like a parasite within the muscle itself, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I think it’s probably silly for me to assume at that point that I knew what was wrong, or that there was something going on other than the shear insanity of the situation: standing above a culvert, the car’s wheels still spinning, my brother dead inside, and me scratching like an idiot at my leg while cursing the cars that flew by and didn’t stop. It is stupid to think beyond those boundaries. Who in their right mind would see that despite all of those other wreck-related things, something truly strange might be occurring. Yet somehow, I knew. Was Seth keeping me awake, keeping me from drifting off to where he was?

Soon, that itch spread out inside me, covering my whole body like a blanket of energy. I was scared to move, fearing that I would discharge that energy like a static spark you get from walking across carpet in socks. Only this spark would knock me on my ass like getting hit by a rabid linebacker, and kill me from the sheer power grounding itself out or expanding into the air. I stared at my hands, expecting to see electrical sparks, like little tentacles, crawling across my skin, but I didn’t see that. That casual perusal of my hands seemed to calm down the itching and the feeling of being a human battery. I realized that I hadn’t exhaled since crawling out of the wreckage of the car. Breath escaped me like a rush of sobs, shaking my whole frame.

After some time, me standing above that sunny culvert, somebody realized that there was a problem. Soon the wreck was converged upon by ambulances, fire trucks, and emergency people. They all told me what I already knew; that my brother was dead…and he had died the instant that lug nut had impacted with his skull. I was ushered into an emergency vehicle and taken to a nearby hospital.

After a few x-rays of my head, it was discovered that I had a minor concussion and would have to be extra careful over the coming days; advice that both the doctors and I knew i would ignore. Even still, the hospital people kept hovering over my leg.

“This wound,” one of the ER doctors was speaking at me, “This wound really bothers me, Mr. Bellows. How long is it since you were bitten?”

“What?” I said, twisting my leg to examine the location of the old bite. “That happened when I was in high sch—“ I stopped dead. The bite mark looked like it was brand new, as if it were just given to me by some sneaky snake. A thin rivulet of blood trickled from the punctures.

“This bite isn’t fresh?” the doctor asked, looking over the sheaf of papers he was holding. His curious eyes seemed to look at me for the first time and I got the idea that all of the sudden, he wasn’t just going through the motions.

“Honestly doc, I got that bite when I was a freshman in high school. Is there some way the wreck could have torn something open…y’know maybe opened up the scars?”

“Look at the way the flesh is destroyed near the bite,” he was gesturing with his pen. “I don’t think this bite is more than a week old, look at the way the leg is swollen.” He walked over to a small, plastic intercom on the wall and asked for a nurse. “And I need an antivenin kit as well, full range.”

“Don’t waste your time, doc. I am willing to bet you a hundred bucks its copperhead venom.”

He gave me a queer look and turned off the intercom. “what makes you think that? Did you see a copperhead out by the wreck site?”

“No doc, I’m telling you, this bite isn’t new…yeah yeah yeah, it looks new, but it isn’t. “ I thought about it for a second then added: “if you feel like it’s a new bite, go ahead, do your thing, and don’t let me stop you, but I am telling you, if you find anything, it’s a copperhead wound.”

I didn’t spend as much time in the hospital as I did with the first bite accident, this set of bites and the accompanying damage seemed to fade over a short amount of time, healing so quickly that my nurses and doctors were baffled by the process. I say that the damage healed, but a better term would be that the wounds eroded away, as if they were a sand castle on a beach during high tide.

The swollen flesh seemed to melt and slough off in time-lapse photography. Speaking of pictures, several photographs were taken over the course of the limb’s healing and were used in a case study and probably in some textbooks. The whole thing made me feel like a lab rat, trapped in some human sized NIHM experiment, only this one didn’t make the rat any smarter.

One week and one day from the day of the accident, I was released from the hospital and I didn’t even need a set of crutches to walk out the front door. Outside the hospital, I was greeted by the bright Indiana sunshine, a soft wafting breeze that smelled of freshly cut grass and all good summertime things, and a vast chasm of emptiness. I was alone, without money, without help, and without my brother. I began to walk off of the hospital campus and made my way to what seemed like a town strip. Perhaps I could find someplace to get some work; I was good at finding quick no-brainer jobs.

● Global Warming (verb) An act whereby the successful are punished for being successful.

ex: When the white boy won the race by 1.7 seconds faster than his culturally diverse opponent, the gym teacher global warmed him an extra two seconds to keep things fair.

● Racist (noun) The victim of a political witch hunt.

ex: If you disagree with the President, you are a racist.

● Movie (noun) One of a handful stories told by the Greeks and then transferred to film, repeatedly.

ex: I think I have seen this movie before, but I can't tell because of all the cool special effects.

● Freemason (noun) A society, known for its bizarre rituals, that is indirectly responsible for every ill known to mankind.

ex: When you became a Freemason, did you unstabilize the global economy before or after you were raped by several old men wearing black robes and drinking blood out of a skull?

● Children (noun) A machine that takes approximately 18 years to build but can be used for free or cheap labor after their fifth birthday.

ex: Take those children over to the packing plant, we need some orders filled before midnight.

● Wiki (noun) A public opinion poll where voters are asked to cast their votes in the form of long winded text under the guise of being informative.

ex: Judging by this wiki page on Chris chan, he must be a very bright and well turned out fellow.

● Sasquatch (noun) A person who has the slightest amount of hair below the neckline.

ex: Did you see that Sasquatch at the pool today? I think I could see five o'clock shadow in her armpits.

● Cigarette (noun) A small pleasure giving device that is also a ticket for the cancer lottery.

ex: He had fifty cigarettes a day for his whole life and died at 90 of liver failure.

(verb) The act of angering, by toxic fumes, every other person in the bar.

ex: Buffy, I swear to God, if he cigarettes up on the dance floor, I am totally not giving him a blow job.

● Abuse (verb) The act, often physical but sometimes mental, of getting your way every time.

ex: Since he got bad grades, mother abused Billy until his grades improved.

● Fellate (verb) An act, always physical, whereby a female gets her way every time.

ex: Since he got bad grades, mother fellated Billy's teachers until his grades improved.

● The Internet (noun) A massive collection of convicted pedophiles and sex offenders who, inexplicably, are still virgins.

ex: The Internet always makes me laugh as it is such a paradox.

● Pretzel (noun) A weapon of mass destruction.

ex: Be careful with those pretzels, Eugene. Somebody could get hurt.

● Fettucini Alfredo (noun) An expensive form of (or synonym of) macaroni and cheese.

ex: Go warm this Fettucini Alfredo up in the microwave, Becky, the sauce is runny and cold.

● Healthcare (noun) A free system used to create extremely long waiting lines.

ex: If it weren't for this Healthcare, we would have to pay to be late to the party at uncle Bob's ranch!

● Cashier (noun) A person whose job it is to stand around wishing they were someplace else while also annoying you beyond all reasonable levels of sanity.

ex: This cashier won't refund my purchase because she is too busy texting her bff on her cellphone.

● Waiter (noun) A person whose job is to hover over you as you eat. Often they ask you questions just as you have put food into your mouth.

ex: The waiter filled my water glass, took my order, and then disappeared for six hours.

● Teller (noun) An employee whose only job is to inform you that your account is overdrawn.

ex: Since my debit card won't work, I should probably consult a teller.

● Liberal (noun) A person who believes that a fairy with a magic wand can cure the world's ills out of thin air.

ex: Hey, look at that liberal over there, isn't he planting gumdrop trees next to that rainbow pond where the Butterfly Nymphs water their winged unicorns?

● Conservative (noun) A jackbooted and grim enemy of all light, life, and love. Often seen carrying a sword that doubles as a crucifix.

ex: When that conservative guy, Jenkins, enters the room, I swear the temperature drops 30 degrees and the lights dim just a little.

● Music (noun) The intellectual property of someone else which you have on your hard drive.

ex: Teddy always has the best music to listen too, I wonder where he gets it?

● Beer (noun) A tool, used alone or in conjunction with other mood altering chemicals, by which young men remove the clothes of young women.

ex: Sandy, I had so much beer last night, I cannot remember what happened!

● Pistol (noun) An implement used to cause assisted suicide.

ex: Brady pointed his pistol at Robert, the highway patrol officer.

● Gullible (noun) A word that is repeatedly removed and then replaced in most dictionaries.

ex: Did you know they took gullible out of the dictionary? What? They put it back in? I had better go check.

● Couch (noun) Where a man sleeps after he has had a mid-life crisis.

ex: After Wanda slammed the bedroom door in his face, Reginald prepared the couch by covering it with a sheet. It was going to be a long, cold, and lonely night.

● Basement (noun) The place where everybody on the internet lives.

ex: Stanley, do you even have any windows in this basement? Oh, I see, you have them covered up with anime posters.

● Emissions (noun) A rough analog of Satan in the new government imposed global religion.

ex: I have sacrificed a goat in order to keep emissions low.

Who hasn’t heard of John Cazale? Well, just about everybody. They haven’t heard of the guy, but they sure do know his roles and the creepy intensity he goes about acting them.

John, while only active for a brief 6 years in Hollywood, has given us some of the most memorable characters of all time. He starred in 5 feature films during those short years and all five of those films were nominated for Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy—a very special and unique achievement held only by Cazale.

Cazale was known for playing weak, sickly characters who were emotionally vulnerable, but were also capable of causing great damage to those around him. He is most known for his character Fredo Corleone in the classic films Godfather I and Godfather II, but his greatest role was perhaps his portrayal of the quietly menacing Sal in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. Set against Pacino’s violent and flamboyant Sonny, Cazale is a threatening and sternly intimidating presence who, despite his general lack of intelligence, will chill you to the bone. In one scene, Sonny asks Sal what country he wishes to go to, which Sal (in an ad-lib by Cazale) replies “Wyoming.” The utter hopelessness, violence, and desperation of the whole movie is summed up in that one word reply, and Cazale delivers it with such idiotic sympathy, the viewer cannot decide whether to laugh or be frightened.

The following films, while being “must see” for any true movie fan, are also John Cazale’s brief resume, as he died of bone cancer in 1978:

* The Godfather
* The Conversation (opposite Gene Hackman)
* The Godfather: Part II
* Dog Day Afternoon
* The Deer Hunter (opposite Robert De Niro)
* He was also shown briefly in The Godfather: Part III in archival footage.

You know who Donald Gibb is. He has appeared in everything from cheesy fluff shows like “Boy Meets World” and “Quantum Leap” and he has played in such Hollywood large-production behemoths as “Hancock” and “U.S. Marshalls.” He is usually cast as a character with such names as “Wolfman,” “Ripper,” or, most famously…”Ogre.”

Donald is one of the alumnus of that comedy classic “Revenge of the Nerds” along with other such acting talents as Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards, Curtis Armstrong, and James Cromwell—all of whom could be called the “best of the best” when it comes to character actors. Because of his popularity in that film, he has been able to parley Ogre’s success into a durable career that has encompassed three decades of both film and television work.

Donald was originally a professional football player for the San Diego Chargers when he took a step sideways and tried his skills at acting. Because he has a very certain “look” about him, being 6’4” and burly, early in his career he was cast as thugs, rednecks, athletes, and barbarian type characters. Little has changed in that respect, as Donald’s size (both on and off screen) have not diminished. However, later in his career, he has branched out away from the tough-guy roles he is famous for and has attempted lighter, more dramatic parts like soap operas. Of course, this has backfired on him and he was eventually written to be a heavy.

Like most character actors, he has appeared on just about every major television show of his day, and with Donald, the appearances are too numerous to count, however he has appeared on the following television hits:

* Alice
* The A-Team
* Magnum PI
* Knight Rider
* The Facts of Life
* Night Court
* Macgyver
* Quantum Leap
* The Young and the Restless


And some movies you may wish to check out, if not just to see Donald acting like a husky biker-type, but just because the movies are good:

* Conan the Barbarian
* Any Which Way You Can
* Transylvania 6-5000
* Revenge of the Nerds I, II, and IV
* Bloodsport I and II
* U.S. Marshalls
* 8 of Diamonds
* Hancock

Richard Lynch, born in 1940, has been menacing the screens (both small and silver) for nearly 50 years. Once you have seen his threatening face, often playing the lead psychopath, you will most probably have it burned into your memory for a long time. Moreover, that’s the interesting part; Richard Lynch burned his body to into a grizzled mockery of his former smoldering good looks by igniting his gasoline drenched self during an acid trip in 1967. If it were not for this incident, chances are, you would have never heard of this guy, but because of his disfiguration, Richard began to catch work in roles that would have normally flown beneath a better looking actor’s radar.

During the early 1970’s, Hollywood was flooded with leading men. Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, and Warren Beatty all struggled with each other for the top roles while other actors such as Robert Duvall, James Caan, Harry Dean Stanton, Eli Wallach and Hal Holbrook soaked up the most popular supporting roles. this massive glut of acting power and talent even affected the way we view and how Hollywood treats antagonists and bad guys. Leading men, often losing out on major parts, would wisely opt to play the main character’s adversary just so they could get the kind of work that would garner them precious screen time. This left only henchmen roles for the taking, and Richard Lynch, reaching up with gnarled and scarred hands, took as many of these roles as humanly possible.

Richard Lynch is the guy you see in every movie and say to yourself “hey, it’s that guy again,” then you usually forget about him until you see him the next time.

Often called “the poor man’s Rutger Hauer,” Lynch got his start in 1973’s “Scarecrow,” where he plays Riley, a jailed antisocial, yet likable dreg who befriends Al Pacino while his main character is incarcerated. It can be argued that any person acting in a role opposite both Pacino and Gene Hackman is fast-tracked for stardom, but it can also be said that any actor, given only 20 minutes of screen time between two such cinematic and egotistical giants had better make the most of that stunted portion of time. Lynch did, and translated that miniscule timeframe into decades of quality work.

Those roles have translated themselves into nearly 40 years of solid performances, if such roles as thieves, rapists, knife wielding baddies, and murderers can be called solid. After Scarecrow, his performance in “The Seven Ups” (opposite Roy Scheider) which had but a handful of lines, cemented his typecast for the next 4 decades. If you needed an actor to play some sort of psychopath for your 1970s, 80s, or 90s television show, chances are you gave Richard Lynch a call on the telephone. For the remainder of still busy career, he has made a huge mark on the small screen, playing in such notable television series as “Starsky and Hutch,” “TJ Hooker,” “The Fall Guy,” “Baywatch,” “Six Feet Under,” and even “Charmed.” The list goes on and on, because any role is open to this master sleazeball.

Still currently active, Lynch has been trying his hand at producing, helping make 2006’s horror film “Wedding Slashers,” which did not do well with critics, but since these movies never actually do well with critics, can be easily forgiven. And speaking of what actors are up to these days, it must be noted that Gene Hackman, that great 1970s icon who first crossed paths with Richard Lynch way back in 1973…well, Gene is doing voiceover work for Lowes Hardware commercials.

Some Great sleazeball performances by Lynch:

* The Ninth Configuration
* Invasion USA (opposite Chuck Norris)
* Savage Dawn (opposite George Kennedy)
* Lockdown
* Halloween (2007 version)
* Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy (where he shocks us by playing the President of the United States)

There is an old saying that goes something like this: you have to have seen it to have to believe it. What this means, is that watching things modifies how your belief system works. For example, if you grow up in an abusive household, chances are you are going to be abusive as well. I am very aware that this is a generalization, but as I grow older, I find that generalizations have a way of increasingly being truer than they were just a few years before. I like to apply my generalizations to several parts of my life as well, viewing actions, stories, and even others through a fine mesh that I like to think strains things in a slewed manner towards my sweeping opinions.

You will, if you live long enough, probably do this too. No matter how you try to play it, no matter how you allow your youth to deny it, when you become a fat old fart, you are going to start thinking that the younger people in your life are crazy…and not just in a “normal crazy” manner, oh no. you are going to see these young punks come up with all these ideas, ideas that they love, and ideas that you think are totally moronic. It’s just the normal progression of life. Back when the Sex Pistols were new, parents reviled them, saying they were damaging to children and to values the world over…now they are accepted and gasp, dare I say it, given honors for their music.

It is good that I mention a media figure and how the conception of it (or them) has changed over time. I want to talk about media here. I watch a lot of movies. How many? In the last year, I have downloaded 574 individual full length films and by a rough estimate (I put the ones I have watched into a separate folder), I have watched 540 of them. This translates to about one and a half movies per day, every day, for the last year. since I am so high on my self-made ideas concerning generalization, it is only natural that I apply it to this large portion of my life.

This series of articles are about character actors. Character actors are actors who are described as bit players, secondary parts, and individuals not integral to the part, while also helping the plot move along. Type-cast cookie cutter parts are made for character actors. But sometimes, despite the writer’s shackles and the director’s prison-like ideas, a talent will rise above the constraints that the term “character actor” bestows upon the poor individuals, rising like some modern day Phileas Fogg clinging to his balloon. And like Fogg, when they do this, they are catapulted into brilliant careers that, literally speaking, are comparable to brilliant careers.

Now I want to shift your thinking a bit here. At first we were talking about character actors, which is fine, but I want to narrow this chat down a bit, to focus our mind’s laser beam a bit more acutely so that we can excise out just a different chunk, a similar chunk yet darker, of the whole character actor “body.” You may know of several character actors, guys like Alec Baldwin or Donald Pleasance, guys who, despite their grand talents, just didn’t have that UMPH, just didn’t have that one thing to hurl them over the precipice of “Leading Man” and then shoot them into true Hollywood stardom. But these two examples, these guys are what the industry calls “straight men.” They play (normally) the guy (or gal, as the case permits) off to the side who, despite doing a great job, is only there to expedite the plot or to serve as cinematographical cannon fodder. The beam I am using wants to cut further than that and wants to cut out the really sinister guys. The guys who give your girlfriends the creeps as you drive them home from the theater. The guys who might have been good looking if they didn’t have “rapists eyes” or that long scar running down their right cheek. I want to talk about Sleazeballs.

These guys may or may not be the “almost leading man,” and they may or may not be central to the plot. But somehow, their looks, talent, or a combination of both literally drips like a poison off of the screen and into you, sickening yet causing you to wonder; just why is this guy so despicable? Why does this guy make my skin crawl like I have just seen a spider in the shower stall? Why is this guy so seducing, yet so ugly at the same time?

So with much ado, and a lot of typing I have found myself here, introducing my first sleazeball character actor, and that actor is: Jack Elam.

Jack Elam was a character actor sleazeball who’s walleyed appearance immediately propelled him away from ever playing good guy or hero roles and accelerated him straight into the world of bad guys. He mostly starred in westerns and early on in his illustrious career, usually played one of the thugs that the main antagonist would employ to do his dirty work. Conversely, in real life, he was a kind man who was remembered as a great friend. But that’s not the point!

He played several emotionless killers, most notably “Snaky” in the western classic “Once Upon A Time In The West” but as he was used more and more (in both film and television) in humorous roles it was discovered that Jack had a (forgive the bad rhyme) knack for the comedic. Roles for such Disney classics as “Hot Lead, Cold Feet” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang” cemented his longevity in both acting career and genre.

One of his most remarkable performances was his portrayal of drug abusing Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing in the 1981 comedy “The Canonball Run” where he held his own against such acting talents as Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Burt Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett, Sammy Davis Jr., and Roger Moore. If you haven’t seen this film, do so, as it is a great and sweeping comedy that will have you gaping at all of the cameo appearances that occur during its 95 minute run. Also, look for Adrienne Barbeau in her souped up suit while she drives a Lamborgini at scandalous speeds.

Sadly, Elam left our lives in 2003 after a life of entertainment that spanned 50 years and over 100 full length features. Since his television appearances are beyond count, here are some of his movies, should you be inclined to check out some of his work. Within this list, I have tried to give equal time to the sleazeball as well as the funnyman roles that both worked together to make Jack Elam famous:

* The Far Country
* Jubal
* The Way West
* Once Upon a Time in the West
* Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County
* Hannie Caulder
* The Apple Dumpling Gang and The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again
* Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II
* Suburban Commando

Josie was a big girl. She had a grease burn pattern of freckles that only splayed out on her nose and under her pale green blue eyes. Her hair was that half way point between red-ish and brown-ish, and looked like kinked wire most of the time, and most especially when she was huffing and puffing at work. Like most girls of her size, she had a tendency to be bossy. “Do-this-Do-that, yarr,” was something you could find coming out of her mouth as she pulled a hank of hair out of her face while she hefted boxes or tossed items onto a cart. She wasn’t mean, just had a misunderstanding with the world that made you think she was always demanding. I am sure she had a heart of gold someplace inside there, but to tell you the truth, I had never seen it. Our relationship was purely a business coupling. She was my frozen food manager and I was her boss. When time came around when she needed something, she had a way of turning you off by challenging you for it rather than just asking nicely. But for all that, I understood her as well as I understood any woman, and I thought of her as one of the people on my team whom which I could “go to” when I really needed a job to get done.

“Trucks comin in, boss,” her wide, almost child-like, face popped into my office. “I’m gonna grab a couple of these guys off the front end to help me unload it…six hundred piece truck…”

I didn’t even bother looking out the door to see if the front end was busy or not, it didn’t matter. She was going to take the people she needed regardless of the situation going on out there, and if I were to argue, it would have only made matters worse. I got up to go help the cashiers and baggers if they needed it while she physically maneuvered two of my cart boys towards the back room and the waiting truck.

“Gotta big one,” she said to one of the boys (who looked scrawny next to her presence and girth). “You sure you can pull a twelve hundred pound pallet off a reefer truck?” She added a hard clap on the back that only added to her jovial sarcasm towards work, towards men, and towards life most of the time.

When you meet a girl like Josie, you think they never cry. They have this untouchable attitude and swagger that belies the fact that at one point in time, during their lives of “being one of the boys,” they were somebody’s pretty little girl. I knew this about Josie. I knew that once, not quite so long ago, her mother had dressed her in lace, had gotten her pictures taken at Wal-Mart for framed nostalgia hung on the walls in the hallway. I knew that Josie had wished to be Sleeping Beauty, waiting for her kiss. She cried all right, and she cried just like any other woman. Because of this, I was the one who let her be the bossy slob she wanted to be.

On the day that Josie died, I found out that she had been involved with someone. I hadn’t known about it up until that point, but while she was in the hospital, her lover, one of my butchers, had called to let us know the bad news. From what I gather now, they had been pretty happy together and had plans to be married. Tentative plans yes, but there had been some discussion, so I guess it wasn’t just another one of those “work romances” that always ends badly while someone gets fired. He was a tall skinny guy who didn’t look like he belonged with her. In every way, he was the exact opposite of her.

He has this almost-handlebar mustache that he would finger nervously when she was around. Listening to her boss him as he cut meat in the prep room had almost cost him his hand, but he didn’t seem to mind. She was talking loud enough that you could hear her out on the sales floor and he was using the band saw to cut country style pork ribs. I only mention that it was country pork ribs because there is a spur of bone in that cut that is always tricky even if you are using a band saw. She was doing her brassy thing while he wasn’t paying attention, the saw caught on the bone and he ran his hand into the thing at an odd angle. Only a last second jerk had saved the hand, but he did manage to cut the top of two fingers and his thumb off…at a diagonal. Later, they put the pieces back on and he was fine.

So they had been lovers and it seemed that things were okay. Again, I have to stress that I had no knowledge of this, and was completely in the dark when the butcher called me on the phone. Josie and her lover liked to go horseback riding. Her grandfather had died and left here about thirty acres and a barn, and the two would spend weekends out there, getting drunk, riding the horses, and doing whatever an odd couple like that does under the sheets. He called me and his voice was even more shakier than normal.

“I-I-I d-don’t know how to tell you this, but Josie…she’s really sick. She’s in the emergency room and the doctors have given her a double mastectomy. “
“What???” why would they give her a double mastectomy? What was really wrong with Josie?

The butcher tried to explain to me as best he could what had happened. It seems that Josie had been climbing over a barbed wire fence on her farm and had scraped herself just under her pendulous and gargantuan boobs. The scratch, just a minor irritation, had been ignored and pretty much forgotten. A month went by and since she was no longer thinking about it, she didn’t think that her stomach pains had anything to do with the old rusty wound. But something was wrong with it. Some microbe or virus was on that barbed wire and the scrape had provided an entrance for it to enter her body. He was crying now, making little sobs into the phone. He then hung up, leaving me in my office, wondering what the hell was going on.

A few hours later, the phone rang again and all he could blurt out was “She’s…dead…” and then a nurse was on the phone, telling me what had happened. Somehow, horse manure had gotten on the fence and in that manure, there was a flesh eating virus that had attacked her through the scratch. Since it had taken so long to become a problem, nobody was thinking about the scratch at all, and were worried that something sinister was going on here at the store. More specifically, in her freezer. The county health guys came out and shut down my frozen food section for a month while we all got over the shock and loss we were feeling. Josie might not have been the nicest person in the world, or the most generous, but she was one of us and even if we didn’t like her, she was part of the team.

During the double mastectomy, air had gotten into the wound and sped up the flesh eating process. The doctors, trying to race ahead of the ravenous virus, quickly amputated her arms and legs. It was like they were taking her apart to keep her alive. The virus got into her heart and liver and she just faded out of life within a few short moments.

The store sent a few of us to the funeral and of course the casket was closed. It was a bright spring day and there wasn’t any of that cliché dark rain falling. The butcher stood at the end of the group, not saying anything and avoiding Josie’s family. Then we all left to go back to the store. When I got back, I put my jacket over the back of my chair and walked back to the freezer in the back room. I opened the door, breaking the county health department’s yellow seal tape, as a cloud of fog rolled out into the back room like a spooky wave. I walked into the freezer and wondered what I was going to do next.

One of my high school math teachers was a retired marine who had served a few tours in Vietnam. He was a really likable guy who often told funny stories about the screw ups and practical jokes he saw perpetrated by many of the men with which he served. I say that he was likable because I want to point out that this guy was a firecracker. He could go off at any time on any person when the topic of death in Vietnam was raised. It was an odd juxtaposition; one minute he would be laughing and telling stories about how his company commander had bollixed an order form so that instead of the intended 1000 telephone poles, 1 million of the things had appeared at camp, to the next minute when some dumbass would ask him how many people he had killed while “in country.”

Doing that was like punching him in the stomach. He didn’t like to remember all the gruesome stuff that went on over there. He dealt with the monsters in his past by only remembering the good times. This was true for my four years in high school except for once. One time he slipped and talked about the death of one of his buddies in Vietnam, and when he told it, there wasn’t the tiniest bit of humor or that gleam that came to his eyes when somebody mentioned telephone poles.

He began his story by hitching up his pants and then casually tossing the chalk he constantly carried onto his bare, almost obsessively Spartan desk. The original question had been raised by one of the students: Should I buy a motorcycle?

Well, he said, you may like the idea of motor cycles, but let me tell you-hitch of the pants again-I had a friend die in Vietnam because of a motorcycle…

At the sound of the words “die” and “Vietnam” the class grew instantly quiet as if frozen by some glacier of grisly interest. The same kind of unmoving and uncaring stares you see when people go by a car wreck in slow motion. The class knew something was up, all those frozen eyes were on the math teacher.

“My buddy,” he began, “was in such-in-such company, doing work for such-in-such division, while also running errands and notes from such-in-such platoon to such-in-such commander. While I was on duty watching the camp’s main border at a checkpoint, he raced up to me on one of those army green painted motorcycles that you can't tell who made. He wanted to stop off at my guard shack to grab a couple of smokes for his trip. “Going up to such-in-such today, want me to grab you a case of beer or something?” he asked the young math teacher. “Nah, “ the teacher continued, “but maybe you could bring back a few of them such-in-such whores or something?” My teacher was always saying something about the whores in Vietnam, but I think he just did it to shock the young suburban kids who he was teaching.

“I dug a few cigarettes out of my pocket and gave them to my buddy. He stuck them in a pocket on his arm and then fetched out his army issue motorcycle helmet. This helmet was one of those kinds of helmets that has a small ridge just above the forehead and underneath that, a face visor that covered the wearer from the forehead on down to the chin. He revved the motorcycle’s engine once, grinned at me even though I couldn’t see his face, you just knew it was a grin because his eyes crinkled. Then he put his foot up on the peg and sped off down the gravel and dirt road that led away from me, my guard shack, and the camp. Routine business, be back in two hours.”

This is where that firecracker change came over my math teacher. This was where you could tell he was angry and sad and mad all at once about something that happened back then, and he was uncomfortable about it to the point where his skin turned a shade of Fourth of July. He started gesturing with his hands while he talked, it looked like he was trying to shake hands with an invisible somebody and it looked like he was swatting at invisible flies all at once. “The thing was,” he said cautiously, “was that it wasn’t routine business that day. For some reason, after eleven months of no action and absolutely no excitement, the Viet Cong decided to launch a mortar attack on our camp. The attack probably lasted only fifteen minutes, but when bombs are going off and buildings are getting pulverized and all you hear is the thud and thump of those mortars, everything slows down. It felt like that mortar attack took an hour at least. My buddy was on his way home during that attack. No, he wasn’t hit by a mortar…that would be stupid and have no point in me telling you to be cautious about motorcycles. So he was driving down the dirt and gravel road that led into the camp. I could see him from my crouched position in the guard shack, he looked to be going about sixty miles an hour and by the way he was jerking the bike around the road, I could tell he was having trouble keeping control of the thing on the slippy-slidy gravel.

My math teacher paced back and forth, more talking to himself than the class now. I pictured a young man, his blue eyes peeping above the sill of a window in a guard shack as he watched a distant man who was racing down a road on a motorcycle. The eyes were wide and incredulous as they roved under the green helmet he was wearing. A look of total concentration on his face, as if he were willing the motorcycle to maintain control and make it back in once piece.

"A bunch of things happened all in the same few seconds,” the teacher said. “My buddy’s front wheel hit a mortal round hole in the dirt of the road while at the same time, the back wheel got out from under him and started to slide sideways. I actually stood up in the guard shack to watch the accident even though there were explosions going off around the compound. Machine gun fire rattled the panes of glass in the windows. “

“The bike jumped,” he motioned with his hands as he said this. “It didn’t lurch forward or anything like that, it just hopped upwards like it was surprised or something. My buddy looked like a bronco rider in a rodeo. His hands left the handlebars and his body was thrown forward by the speed and force that the bike had once had. He did a flat somersault in midair and landed about fifty feet from the bike, which was dumbly staggering around on bent wheels until it hit the grass on the side of the road and collapsed in the ditch there. But my buddy didn’t just land. He bounced. It was like watching a skipping stone as it flashes across a pond. His body shuddered each time he struck the dirt and gravel and his head rebounded each time he hit. Somebody grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me back down into the security of the guard shack.”
“I struggled amid the broken glass, flying papers, and upturned furniture of the shack as a scrambled to the open doorway. I was trying to see if I could peep around the doorway. Maybe my buddy was okay. He had taken a horrible spill, but he did have helmet on and that was something…right?”

“Within five minutes of his wreck, Sarge Such-in-such came running to the shack, he told us that the helicopters had spotted the enemy’s nest and was really pouring it on. The all-clear should be sounded in a few minutes. I didn’t wait that long. I got up off the floor and sprinted down the dusty road trying to get to my buddy before somebody in my unit stopped me. Nobody did and I got to his stretched-out form. Underneath the cracked visor, dirty with scratches and grime from his journey, I could see that his eyes were open. He had a strange grin on his face that didn’t look quite right. People talk about how clowns are creepy and it think it’s because of the smile they paint on. Well, my buddy’s smile wasn’t quite that creepy, but it still looked out of place on his normally brown alive mug.” My teacher took a short deep breath, more like an involuntary gasp than anything involving respiration. Then quit his pacing and turned to face the class, head on. All the firecracker red had left his face. The explosion was over, and you could only see the pale refection of a man who has gone beyond normal limits and is pushed out into the grim savagery of reality. He spoke slowly now, measuring each word.

“My first thought was to look after his wounds. After a quick glance, I saw that most of the blood on his uniform was from road rash. Bits of gravel stuck into his bare arms and he was going to walk with a limp for a while because he had landed badly on his side. No big deal, anybody who has ever ridden a motorcycle knows you are going to take a spill or two, and you will probably eat some gravel at some point. Then I figured I had better get the helmet off of his head. He wasn’t moving but I was sure he was alive and was going to need all the air he could get. I struggled with the straps for a few seconds before bringing my service knife-we called them k-bars-up to his chin. I cut the strap and while my hand was carefully pulling it out of the way, I noticed it was damp with tacky blood.”

“Oh shit,” I thought to myself, and my teacher actually said “oh shit” to the classroom. Yet another boundary we had crossed that day. “Oh shit,” my teacher thought to himself. He may have cut an artery or a vein in his neck. He told us that he searched around the throat of his friend and found nothing. Now was time to get that helmet off.

“I put my hands on the helmet like you would do anytime you were taking one off. I put my palms against the sides with my fingers towards the back. I could feel the dirt of the road under his helmet, but I could also feel that the helmet had been slammed pretty hard. Bits of plastic and jagged edges stuck out from the back of the thing, so I gave a quick tug and took the whole thing off his head.”

At this point, his voice was barely above a growl. The whole class was zeroed in on him and giving him undivided attention.

“When I got the helmet off, it was the only thing holding his skull together.” The class physically reacted as one. Just like a being repulsed, the students all moved backwards and gasped at the same time. It was involuntary. My teacher finished by telling us that the only thing left of his buddy’s head was a leaky puddle of destroyed tissue and bone…and only a barely recognizable face that was flattened out against that “god damned” road in Vietnam.

"And that is why I wont ride a motorcycle..."

Of all the stories I was told by that teacher, that was the only one that had any instance of sadness, regret, fear, and anger in it. And while the story was far too gruesome to be one that you would tell your students, nobody ever complained. Nobody ever bothered that teacher about “how many kills he had made over in ‘Nam,” and as if a little spark of sadness gives respect, it also humbled and made him more real.

There is a truth that underlies the buzz you hear every day. It is a hard truth that does not give when it is questioned or measured against other things that are believed to be true. We go day in and day out, in this world full of 24-hour news aimed at selling the story, but that isn’t what the truth is, the truth I am talking about lies under all that bullshit, a slab of dark bedrock, and it holds everything up. The funny thing about that truth, nobody wants to believe it. Maybe it is “law,” I don’t know. I shouldn’t say that it is funny either, but that is how I deal with it; I look at the world and think of all the chaos and the confusion, and then I see that truth and I laugh. I laugh as if it is an easy thing to see for everybody.

Billy knew the truth. Billy the bum. I was working in a grocery store and I had been there several months, running the night shift, and then after a promotion, I was now being brought to days. Because of this, my daily cast of characters dramatically changed from the old familiar night people to a new crew of strangers. Yes, the night guys had their fair share of homeless people who would come into the store and buy or steal the things they needed, but during the daylight, there were far more bums to deal with. You may think its callous that I say “deal with” when I am talking about bums, but that is the only way I can think to describe it. I was always bargaining with them. There was never a “hi, how are you doing, some weather we got here,” moment with these guys. The second they saw you walking across the parking lot, or down a grocery aisle, they were asking for things. Food, money, help, whatever they wanted they came to the boss running the show, and it was “Let’s Make a Deal” time. Billy was no exception. He would find me in my office or out on the floor, fixing a display and he would ask me if there was anything I needed done, anything I could spare him.

When I first met him, I was just as unimpressed as I was whenever I met any of the usual cast of homeless that lived in the area of my store. He had the generic look that being on the streets produced: unshaven, stain darkened skin, bleached gray hair, shambling walk, worn out second-hand clothes, and a stare that seemed to be defeated. Upon closer inspection, Billy was far older than the usual band of drunks that milled around the parking lot and the back of the store during the day, and he had something else odd about him, his eyes smiled and sparkled. I soon grew fond of him and actually looked forward to “Let’s Make a Deal” whenever he came around. Billy had that truth I was talking about. He understood the way gossip and talk and all the bullshit that people worried about wasn’t the real problem, he understood that under all that dead skin, there was a real truth that could be seen if you scrubbed hard enough.

“Hey, there’s some carts back in the alley behind the store, up the street.”

I was in my office and Billy had popped his bearded head into the doorway, a baseball cap was on his head backwards and he had a spry expression on his face, as if he had just heard an exciting story that ended with a funny punch line. I swiveled my chair around to face him completely.

“Two bucks each, also, if you have time, some bastard shoved a bunch of garbage underneath the compacter out back, while you’re getting those carts, I’ll give you another ten if you clear out that shit.”

It was our standard price for him getting carts that were out in the neighborhood. Sometimes I gave the job to Billy; sometimes I gave it to somebody else. There was never any argument about how the jobs were assigned, it was all first come first served. I also knew that I shouldn’t be giving out any jobs to any of the bums that lived around the store, if my bosses had found out about it, I could have lost my job, but as it was this sort of thing had been going on since before I had gotten there, so why mess up a good thing. It was an unspoken rule between the office manager and me that the payouts that went from the safe to one of the bums would be fixed through petty cash every time the safe was balanced. Nobody ever was the wiser.

Billy was happy with the work and leaned further into the office. He held up his hand to give me a high-five and I looked at it to make sure it wasn’t covered in some sort of crap. It wasn’t and I high-fived him with a great smack. He turned and strode across the front end of the store like a man with a mission, doing the job in half the time one of my paid employees would have taken to do the same work.

Billy had survived on the streets for a long time. He wasn’t a war veteran or some sort of mental case that had been thrown out of the hospital. He was just a man who had once had a marriage and a job and all the crap we put up with in our lives. He gave up one day and that was the end of the marriage and the job…and most of the crap. To survive the way he did, you had to have some sort of skill. You can't just expect money to fall from the sky or food to appear in your pockets when you were hungry. Billy had cunning and he was always on the lookout for the next deal to get him along to his next hit or his next bottle. Sometimes these deals were a bust, like the time he had tried to break into the flower shop at the end of the mall. That hadn’t been Billy’s best moment, but at least the cops had let him replace the lock he had screwed up with an ice pick and then sent him on his way without beating the shit out of him and then tossing him into a jail cell for a few months. Billy had kept on chugging after that, if the break-in plan had failed, there was always something else coming along; it was a day to day hustle that never ended.

After a while, I went out back to see how far along he was with the compactor job, and also to have a cigarette. I took my key ring out and opened the big back doors that swung out into the back lot and gave a quick glance under the compacting machine. The big beige thing was a hulking box of metal that connected to a dumpster that had a locking top. We didn’t want the neighborhood to toss all their excess crap into it, and they would have the second nobody was paying attention, so the locks stayed on. Under the huge metal box was a little area to crawl around and fix the motors that pushed the garbage. Some dipshit yoakle in the neighborhood must have moved out and had no place to store his junky furniture, so he had decided to toss it in our dumpster, only to find that it was locked up tight. I could see it in my mind. The guy had pulled up, all smug and crafty in his pick-up truck, and had found the top of the dumpster screwed down tight. Unable to open it, and at the end of his rope with the garbage, he had said “Fuck it,” and just started shoving the crap under the box. I am quite sure he actually said that “Fuck it,” when he realized he wasn’t going to be able to use the compactor, and then with a silly grin on his face, he’s started cramming. People are assholes.

Billy was on the far side of the compactor, smoking one of those long thin cigars that smell like crap, and he was poking a long rake handle under the box, trying to dislodge some piece of shit. I stepped off the back dock and walked around to his side of the machine. He glanced up at me, took his ball cap off and wiped some sweat off of his forehead with a dirty sleeve.

“Just about done, somebody had stuff wedged under here pretty good.” He said and smiled. The day wasn’t very hot, but he was dripping with sweat. The streams of it on his face had made little rivers of clean spots on his skin around his eyes and on his cheeks. I handed him 14 bucks.

“Good work Billy,” I said and took a drag on my cigarette. He nodded and went back to poking. I watched him for a bit and then tossed the cigarette into a puddle that had filled up an indentation in the blacktop. I made to go, but Billy gave a motion. It seemed he didn’t want me to go just yet, he had a conversation he wanted to start.

“Can I bring in a bunch of change to the office?” he asked cautiously.

“Sure,” I said thinking that this must be the new scam. “Make sure you roll them up before you turn them in to Betty. Also, don’t try to scam or low count them…we’ll be checking random ones.”

Billy seemed to be shocked that I would question his honor, but he never really realized that I had kept him at arm’s length for a reason, and I never, ever, paid him before a job was done.

“No, this isn’t like that, I just have a buncha change I need to get rid of…y’know from aluminum cans.”

“Okay Billy, come around front and get some change wrappers from the office, then roll them up and we’ll give you bills for what you give us.”

Billy beamed at me, but if you looked carefully, there was something sly in that grin.

I went back into the store and worked on some receiving bills for a while in the back room, when I went back up to the front end, I asked betty, the office manager if Billy had stopped by.

“Yeah,” she said through her yellow teeth. “Picked up about 300 dollars worth of rolls and said you gave him the go-ahead.” She was blaming me for Billy taking all the change rolls. I didn’t like Betty very much, and she didn’t like me either, she thought my promotion was wrong and that I was too young to be doing the job I had been given. But we were stuck together in that shithole of a store, so we tried not to tread on each other’s territory much.

“I didn’t tell him he could take three hundred…” her head was nodding, making her wiry white hair shake while I talked to her. “Just order some more, I’ll take care of it if somebody asks.”

The next day, early in the morning, I pulled into the store’s parking lot and saw my stock crew all sitting outside, smoking cigarettes and bullshitting around. That’s a good sign. If they are still inside, that means the store isn’t set up for the day. I walked up to the stock manager and asked him how things were, how the store was, and if any trouble had occurred the night before.

“Fuckin ambulances out back all night,” he said.

“Oh Christ, did somebody fall off the roof trying to steal an air conditioner unit again?”

“Nah,” he said. “Y’know that bum who sometimes sleeps back there? Somebody stabbed him last night.”

“Billy?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy. The ambulances came and took him. He’s gonna be okay, but somebody tried to kill him. Ended up just a scratch.”

I went inside and dialed a cop buddy of mine to see if he knew anything about it. He didn’t, but he promised me that he would find out about it when his shift started. He was going to need to talk to whoever had worked this side of town last night. I went about my day and over the course of the day’s stresses and little dramas, I forgot about Billy. I forgot about him until I got a page for a phone call. It was my cop buddy and he had just arrived at the precinct.

“Billy got stabbed over some money or something. He’s down at Riverside and he’s gonna be released tonight. They kept him over more to keep him sober than anything…and to feed him up a bit.”

“They stabbed him over money…that doesn’t make sense,” I said into the phone. “He never has any money…”

My buddy cut me off. “He didn’t give them anything at all, but when we got to him and put him in the ambulance, he had seventy five dollars in rolled change. He’s still got it. its in a bag in his room, and he’s sleeping with it like a teddy bear.”

I laughed, that sounded like Billy. I could see him in my mind: his freshly cleaned hands on top of sterile white hospital coverlets, gripping an old paper sack like death as machines hummed and beeped in the background. I thanked my cop buddy and hung up.

I didn’t see Billy for about two weeks after that. Whenever any of the bums around the store came into some unexpected money, they usually found a cheap room with a bathtub and a bed to sleep in for a few days. They would soon be back, but they would be clean for a while and their attitudes would be brighter for a minute or two. I figured that Billy probably did whatever all the other bums did and found a nice warm place to quietly and safely drink up his seventy-five bucks. When I did finally see him, he looked better than I had seen him in a long time. Evidently, he had saved up some of that money, gone to the thrift store, and purchased himself some new clothes. He had on a pair of work chinos that had belt-loops for paintbrushes or hammers; the kind that carpenters wear when they are out on some building’s roof. He also had a brand new t-shirt on under a worn out, but clean flannel shirt. He had a great big smile on his face as he walked across the front of the store and found me just outside of my office.

“Got any work boss?” He asked; his grin was crinkling the skin around his eyes.

“Yeah, there are some carts back in the neighborhood and I can give you the going rate. Just go out and get them, then come see me and I will write out a pay voucher.”

He made a small salute and walked back out of the store. A few hours later, he was back in the store, just as lively as ever. “Seven carts!” he said when he saw me. I asked him into my office and offered him a seat while I wrote out the pay voucher. He kinda glanced around the room, looking at all the monitors for the computers, paying close attention to where the security cameras were pointed. I gave a small chuckle.

“Okay,” I said as I tore off the top voucher on the pad. “Fourteen dollars…just take this up to the office and they will cash it, I don’t have any money on me right now.”

He took the voucher and began to lever himself up out of the office chair. He gave a slight grimace while trying to get up and I remembered the stabbing and the hospital. I asked him what the hell had happened.

“Some bastards wanted to take my change...,” he said quickly. “And…” he looked out the door of the office to see if the coast was clear. “And…they wanted to know how I got it.”

“Well yeah,” I said. “Seventy –five bucks is kinda odd to just come up with. Don’t you think?”

“I didn’t just come up with it,” he said and winked. “I got a new scam and I don’t think nobody is ever gonna figure this one out…as long as I keep m’mouth shut.”

This piqued my interest. A new scam might mean the store was getting ripped off.

"A new scam huh?” I asked, all ears.

He could see my interest and sought to allay my fears quickly. “It ain't got nothin to do with the store or the parking lot. Don’t you worry bout nothin. They tried to get me to tell them how I was doin it, even stabbed me, but I wouldn’t tell. Ha ha, those punks won’t ever get it out of me.”

I still didn’t quite believe him, but I gave him a smile and told myself that I would keep more of an eye on the guy.

After his cryptic little conversation with me, he settled into a pretty regular routine around the store. On a Sunday or a Monday, he would come in and ask for change wrappers. On Tuesday or Wednesday mornings, he would come back with the wrappers full, usually between fifty and seventy dollars worth of change. He would disappear after that and the whole store would lose track of him for a full week until he came back that following Sunday or Monday. Whatever his scam was, I was working well for him because this went on for the next two months. On the odd day when whatever he was doing didn’t work out, he would see me and ask for any jobs around the store. I always had something for him…more because I was trying to find out what he was doing rather than the store needing a job done. I never found out what it was that he was doing while I was at that store.

I was moved to another store by my supervisor and forgot about the whole thing, until my cop buddy ran into me. One spring day, during a businessman’s league softball game, I ran into my old cop buddy who was playing for another team. He handed me a beer and took a pull from his own. “They found your old buddy in Edison Park,” he said.

I opened my beer and asked him what he was talking about.

“The bum…that guy who got stabbed out back of your store.”

Realization dawned on me. Billy! I quickly asked my cop buddy what had happened.

“He got hit pretty hard over the head. Somebody wanted whatever he had because just about every stitch of clothing was gone and his cart full of cans was ransacked and strewn all over a playground. He was dead when we found him.”

I had never known Billy to be a “can collector,” but evidently he had gone on to do that after I had left that old store. It was a pretty heavy blow to me that he had been killed, but to be honest I would probably forget about it by the third inning. For lack of anything better to say, I sighed and said “Oh well…”

“Get this,” my cop buddy went on. “When one of the medics was picking up his body to put it in the bag, they found a key under him…you’ll never guess what the key opened.”

“Oh god, not the store—“

“No, not the store, the Golden Goat in the parking lot across the street from the store.”

For those of you who don’t know what a Golden Goat is, it’s a machine that will take your old aluminum cans and exchange them out for cash; usually loose change because aluminum cans don’t weigh that much and its cheap anyways. These machines are big green things that have a locker on the back of them were a machine crushes down the cans into a manageable block that can be hauled away. On their front there is a receptacle that will take your cans, or whatever other scrap aluminum you have, and then a coin return cup fills up with whatever the going rate for aluminum is. There aren’t many Golden Goats in nicer parts of town, but if you drive around the ghetto, you will see them in mall parking lots and near liquor stores. Somehow Billy had gotten a key for the back of the machine across the street from my store.

As I trotted out to second base, I had a little smile on my face that didn’t have a right to be there. I was imagining Billy, covered in grit and working in the middle of the night, messing with the lock on the back of the machine like mad. Then, once he had the locker door open, he would gather up as many cans and scraps as he could and run around to the front of the machine to begin shoving them in the receptacle as fast as he could. He would repeat the process until the Golden Goat quit spitting out bills and refused to take any more cans. About seventy dollars worth of cans.

Billy had that truth, or now that I think about it, he had that honor and he had taken it to his death. They had tried to beat and stab it out of him and he had ended up dead to defend his own version of the truth. He was valiant in his own way. Sure, he knew he was a homeless drunk and he would often admit to it, especially after a particularly bad bender when he would get violent and had to be thrown out of the store or off the parking lot for causing trouble. He knew what he was. He saw what the world was and what was going on. It didn’t matter if you were a drunk or a doctor, if you didn’t lie to yourself everything was going to work out.

A hot grounder came at me, I laughed, and the game was on.

Wait…what? That’s right, I entitled this article “Kissing A Dead Man.” I have done it and I am proud to say that I have done it. In fact, when people ask me…I tell them with a straight face that I have kissed a dead man. The fact that people ask me I if I have kissed a dead man may be rather odd, but the fact that they ask me and I answer them is even odder still.

But, as you know, there is a story behind this sort of thing. That’s what I have been doing so far in this group of stories isn’t it? Well, I guess I had better buck up and get going with this one, hadn’t I? when somebody says something as bold as “I kissed a dead man,” the story kind of demands to be told.

Years ago, when I first made management in the grocery business, I worked third shift. That meant that I worked from ten o’clock at night and didn’t get off until seven o’clock the next morning. The nights were filled with a lot of hard work. My crew and I used to work like army ants trying to get the store back in order after a busy day of customers raping the shelves.

With customers out of the way, all sorts of non-grocery related work was also scheduled. The floors would need waxed and buffed. The freezer cases would need to be torn apart and cleaned. In the deli department, they would haul the grease traps out and dump them. generally, when closed, a store does all the nasty things they don’t want a potential customer to see. Many of these things like maintenance and cleaning were done by outside contracted workers.

A store uses a ton of light bulbs. If you don’t believe me, the next time you are shopping, take a look at the ceiling and the fixtures. There are literally thousands of lights; both fluorescent and incandescent. Most of these bulbs are hard to reach, either they are on the ceiling or they are in some out of the way place like a freezer case…and that means they need to be changed carefully.

The company I worked for decided that they could cut costs by hiring a company from outside to change the store’s lighting. That means that over the space of a week’s time, these guys would come in and change every single bulb that was in the store. From the huge 220 bulbs in the ceiling to the little tiny bulbs at the registers, these guys would slowly work their way across the store. The company also figured out that they could save some money on insurance by hiring a bonded electrical company rather than use their own workers to perform some of the more dangerous bulb changes.

On Monday, the first day they were supposed to work, the crew came in and I met each one of them individually, then I took their boss, a guy named Randy, around the store and explained what was expected. Things were going well, despite the fact that most of these guys were parolees and a few of them were going to be going back to prison. Randy laughed and told me in spite of all that, the crew was a good bunch of dudes.

Our walk and talk took quite some time. The store was 87,000 square feet, so there were many hidden places where light bulbs could be found. This store also was a “Plus” store. That meant that besides normal grocery store items, this store also had house wares, electronics, hardware, automotive, bedding and clothes. For the light bulb crew, that meant a lot of extra lights to change out. For me, that meant I was going to have to keep an extra sharp eye out for thieves.

The light bulb guys got started. They began at one side of the store and slowly changed light bulbs each night, getting closer to the grocery side of the store as the week progressed. On Thursday night, they had made it into the produce department and were now changing the really big light fixtures there. These bulbs were 220-volt halogens and they were designed to be wired directly into their own fuse box—at least that was how it was explained to me. I’m no electrician, so I am not entirely sure. Also, these lights were around 30 feet above the floor, so that meant the guys who were changing them had to use an electrical scissors lift to pluck them out, replace them, and then move on to the next fixture.

Because these things were so dangerous, there were two men on the top of the scissors lift. One guy would turn off the power to the fixture, the other guy would then take the old bulb out while wearing an insulated glove—those bulbs got incredibly hot. After they had replaced the bulb, they would steer around the various grocery items and drive the scissors lift to the next fixture.

On that Thursday, the crew started out in the produce department. Randy, the boss I had talked to the first night, was alone. For the whole first part of the week, he had been running the scissors lift with another guy by the name of Mark. Mark had called off on that Thursday night due to illness, so Randy thought he would do the scissors lift work alone. Big mistake.

For the first half of the night, he zipped around the produce, doing twice the work because he wasn’t distracted. He got most of the produce done and was going to move over into the dried goods, but he had only five more bulbs in the back of the store to change out before he could do that. For some reason, he was rushing. I still, to this day, do not know what made him work so fast, I just know that it probably led to his death. See, Randy was alone, so he didn’t have Mark there to remind him to turn off every electric box before trying to change out the bulb. On one of his last bulbs, he didn’t turn that box off.

I didn’t know it at the time, but when he did that, he shot 220 volts through his body and the scissors lift. This had the effect of cooking him literally inside out. He was dead the second he grabbed hold of that bulb, but it didn’t seem that way.

Over on the other side of the store, I was building a display and doing my basic job duties, when one of the bulb crew guys came running up to me. “Call an ambulance man,” he yelled. “Randy is electrocuting himself!” I dropped what I was doing and sped over to where I saw the scissors lift.

Something curious hits me now, twenty years after I saw all this happen. When you see somebody on television or in a movie get electrocuted their body jumps around and does a little dance. The moviemakers are trying to show you how the body loses control when current zaps through the human body, but that didn’t happen to Randy. When I came around the corner, I came upon an odd scene that I was not, nor ever would be prepared for. The scissors lift was motionless and its engine or batteries were making a crazy whining sound. Thirty feet above us, Randy was still standing. His teeth were gritted and his hand was frozen to the light bulb fixture. Aside from the whining sound, everything looked normal albeit frozen in time. For all the world, he was just standing there working and somebody decided to snap a picture of him…

One of my stock crew guys gave a start and tried to reach out and hit the scissors lift emergency release lever. I grabbed him and hauled him back, I didn’t need two people frozen to that lift and getting fried. I looked around for something to fix the problem.

When tragedy or catastrophe occurs, people will tell you that life slows down. They see things in slow motion during car accidents. They can feel the air blowing past them like a soft breeze when they fall off a roof. Things like that. For me, during those minutes after the discovery of Randy being shocked, things were not like that at all. My mind kicked into high gear. To this day, I don’t understand how I became the way I did, but I sized up the situation and began snapping orders to the fellows standing and gawking around me.

You, go get some of the winter coats over there on that rack.

You, call 9-1-1 then go wait by the door to let the paramedics into the building.

You, go get that box, we are going to need to elevate his feet.

You, go get me that mop out of that mop bucket, I need the wooden handle.

I said all these things in the brief span of about three seconds. As if kissed by Prince Charming, the boys on the crew woke from their seeming slumber and leapt into action. To their credit, they all performed their tasks without any grumbling at the young kid barking orders and they did them incredibly fast. I guess they realized the gravity of the situation and knew that speed was God here.
Once everything was assembled, I took the mop handle and used the wooden stick to pop the emergency release lever on the scissors lift. The machine became like a boned fish and dropped down with a clang. Because it had come down so fast, the momentum of the fall made the whole thing topple over with another clang and clatter. Metal dug into the floor tiles causing chunks of them to go flying into the nearby vegetable racks. Randy tumbled out of the machine and rolled to a position flat on his back. His hands were by his side and he looked like he was sleeping.

The boys covered him in coats and elevated his feet. Another guy on the crew named Andy got down by randy’s face and used his fingers to check his pulse and breath. Randy had neither. We prepared to give him CPR. I checked his mouth and throat for blockage while Andy used his fingers to find where Randy’s sternum was. One of the light bulb crew guys ran up and told us that the ambulance was on the way.

I had never done CPR for real. I was as nervous about this as I would be if I had to get up on stage and give a speech. Once I was sure his throat and mouth weren’t blocked, I eased my head down to start breathing for him. Since this all happened a while ago, I have taken many CPR courses and I tell them flat out before we get started that it is one of the creepiest things you will ever perform.

So I bent down and I did Randy’s breathing for him. At first, his body would give little shakes and at one point he tried to talk. I gave him CPR for twenty minutes until the paramedics came and started setting up. One look from the main paramedic and he said “get up, that guy is dead…he was dead the second he touched that light fixture.” I was crushed.

But he tried to talk…he was moving! I told the paramedic. He shook his head and told me that sometimes when a person gets electrocuted, there are still little bits of signal floating around the body. These signals can come out in funny or odd ways. Randy’s signals chose to escape as nonsense words and a few flicks of his wrists. No, the paramedic told me, he was dead and he had probably been cooked inside out by the massive charge that went through his body.

After the paramedics had arrived, I got up and got my boys back to work. I then went to the office and called my boss. He wasn’t very happy, but he was understanding and decided that he was going to come in to take charge of the fallout that was sure to happen as the young day got older. The light bulb crew used the phone and called their own boss. He was going to come in as well.

The day ended and I went home at seven in the morning to my empty apartment. I was very shaken up by what had happened. Finally, around 2:00 p.m. I called the store to see if there was any news. My boss told me that yes, Randy was dead and that he would take care of anything that needed attention. I should just take that night off and get calmed down.

The funeral was held three days later. It wasn’t much of an affair, Randy had been cremated and his wife didn’t even show up to the proceedings. Later, I visited her just to see if there was anything she needed or wanted. She was kind of angry with me. I couldn’t understand why. She let me in her house and told me to sit down on the sofa. She explained to me that Randy dying had been the best thing to ever happen to her or her kids.

What? I asked, incredulous.

Yeah, she said. Randy was a wife beater and had hit her the very night that he had died. The abuse had been going on for years and she had been thinking of taking the kids and running, she just never seemed to have the guts to do it. Now, Randy had made it so that she wouldn’t have to make such a choice…he had killed himself through his own negligence. Also, the electrical company had settled out of court with her and she had received a large sum of money from them. She had won…

And I had kissed a dead man.