Part 17E: Night reveals itself

They stayed for about half an hour before it was decided that it would be better if they didn't.

They continued to recommend that we go to Gordon/Gomorrah. Robert continued to say I looked like Bon Scott. He continued to ask us what we were doing here. The novelty was wearing off. The drunk, not wearing off so much, the Hurricane takes a few days to really taper off, but mixing with drowsiness. We were dividing back into our own social classes, subconciously, bitterly. This was probably a mistake, bringing them here, but we couldn't seperate, not while we still under the spell of Whiteclay and the Nuggis and the ruins of murder houses and songs that may or may not have been about dead ancestors. But what is there to say? We were back in a heated room with basic cable. We were back to our world, or at least a loose thread to it. These men drank, that's what they did. We were using them to satisfy some undefined morbidity, and they knew it, well enough. No bitterness, no hatred, just an understood annoyance.

"You've got your degrees, you've got your philosophies, but you don't live the life."

I've lived the life more than you know, Robert. Keep yourself high and on autopilot until death gets rid of all the decisions you're putting off. That's all there is that there is to know about the life, except that there are places where the drugs of the life are better and the danger is more immediate and sexier and their are places I could have gone where I could have wasted three years of my life so much more productively and had a better time. And how many wasted years have you had, Robert?
How much regret and self-loathing do you sleep with at night? And what was up with the crack about Jews? Where in the sweet fuck did you learn anti-semitism? There arn't any Jews for five hundred miles. "We're not savages, we're not Jews... We're not the bad Indians." You want me to go Breakfast Club on your ass? We "rich" white folks have lives to live too. And no kind of life is pretty, and I'm taking the wide spot by the TV to sleep on and you're on your own.

Dan decided to take the locals back to their plague-shacks. He would take Paul with them.

(Beautiful idea Dan, yes, go home friends, go home.)

(Are you fucking mad? I know you're drunk, you'll never make it.)

"Are you sure Dan?"
"Yeah dude, I'll be fine."
"Are you really sure?"
"Yeah, it'll be better this way"
"If you go in the ditch call me first"
"Alright"

Right, call me first. No need to get the authorities involved. I'll just walk there myself. I'll pull the car out of the ditch with my bare hands, administer O-Negative to the wounded.

"Where are we going" asked Robert.
"Back to Whiteclay" said Tony.
"Why did you even bring us here?"
"Comon, these people need to sleep."
"We should of just stayed there."
"Comon man"

And they were gone. It was time to sleep, Becky was long out. Just me now.
Not time for me to sleep though, time for me to play the mother, make sure the boys got home okay and spring to the rescue if they didn't. What would I tell the Sheriff? Mom, (Speaking of mothers) would you mind driving two hundred miles to pick me and a friend up? And if it's not too much trouble, could you get out of bed and start coming now? We really need to be gone by noon tommarow, before they figure out that the DUI casulties brought friends along.

Turn the lights out, keep the TV low, back in the shadows where the Hurricane shows its true self. You already know the worst is true. The worst is the only possible truth. CNN, Bill Maher is really dull when he's not in his own environment. I thought I saw on the crawl that Chuck Hagel was running for president. I saw wrong, he was only paying his respects to Magritte. It will take them forty five minutes, there and back. No excuse for taking any longer.

Fifty minutes passed. I called Dan, I called Paul, no answer. They're dead, you know very well they are. They're dead Becky. We're stranded. We're at the mercy of the locals. Mark will be on the jury, he'll have his way with you. I'll be at the oppisite end of the Sheridan County jail servicing men who traded their Harleys for crystal meth and got kicked out of the KKK for beligerence. They'll brag about it to their adoring girlfriends sporting the armcasts that their men got locked up for.

And it's my fault. I should have been the community hero, ripped the keys out of Dan's hand and declared that the Indians were spending the night here. I'll figure something out. But the dancing shadows, the mild hot flashes, the sour carbonated blood, makes things difficult. Don't panic boy. Go outside. You'll think of something there. I'll throw a brick through the Pump n Pantry and steal a cup of coffee. That will be a good start. That will get things rolling.

I walked outside and heard a dying old man from the other side of town. Where the hell have you boys been?