The Feet of God

85 - I HAD TO MAKE MY MOVE

“You, you there...you men!” a voice hollered.  “What are you doing?  You should be helping tear down the tents.  We move in less than three hours.  Chop-chop.”

It was Stumppo.  I couldn’t see him because I was hid behind stacks of hay in the back of the truck, but I recognized his commanding tone.

The leader hollered in return, “The only thing movin’ is gonna be this here truck, you freakin’ fuck-lover.  I mean, fuckin’ freak-lover.”

“What did you say to me?”  Stumppo sounded real irate.  “I’m giving you ten seconds to get back to work, or you and your crew are terminated.”

The tall thin dude pulled a big silver gun outta the back of his pants.  “And you can go to hell and take your tribe of abominations with you.”  He opened fire.  Pop!  Pop!  Pop!  Pop!  Bullets flew.  Then he shouted to the dark sky, “Sick simper trellis!”

I couldn’t see how effective the gunshots was, only that the other two guys stepped back from the open end of the truck while screams reverberated in the big hollow space around us.  I wasn’t sure who exactly was screaming, but it seemed like all hell broke loose.

“Come on, time to make tracks,” the shooter jumped off the end of the trailer.

I unburied myself from behind my haystack and crawled to the open back doors to sneak a peek at what was goin’ down.  About a dozen feet from the trailer laid the bloodied and bullet-holed body of The Amazing Stumppo and…no!  No!  Not my beautiful Patti and Cathy!  But, yes.  They was both lay’n there deader’n doornails.  Off to the side I noticed the mime was down and badly wounded, and flailing around like mad.

Mr. Harry appeared from nowhere and knelt down next to Cathy and Patti, hold’n their bleedin’ skulls in his lap.  He looked up, sobbing, “Who killed the Kennedys?”

“It wasn’t me.”  I retreated back behind the bales of hay to plot my next move.  Suddenly the trailer truck’s back doors swung shut and was bolted.  I heard at least two more gunshots before the truck’s gears begun to grind and the engine started to rumble.  Moments later we was moving.  I was a prisoner trapped in the pitch-black back end of a big-rig, and I had no idea what might happen whenever I saw the light of day again.

I figured there was just the three of them, and if I was lucky, only one was armed, so I figured that at worst, I had a two-out-of-three chance of successfully jumping out of the truck when they opened the doors, and running like hell away from these crazy assholes.  (That is, assuming the cops didn’t stop us in a hail of bullets first.  Oh, police and gunfire and winding mountain roads in rural Tennessee; I could end up the loose bean in this freakin’ tin maraca.  Shit.)

No.  That couldn’t happen.  I’m sure Lady Luck had something more in store for me.  So I’m sticking with the escape scenario.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  I just gotta be ready to jump and make a slick getaway once the doors was unlocked.  And with them thoughts and some warm scratchy hay to burrow down into, I sorta drifted off again…which, I guess accounts for me not hearing the truck coming to a screeching stop.

Next thing I know, I was abruptly awakened and alert to the fact that the trailer doors was open, and the sun streamed in, and then I heard voices.

“…Yep, we’ll clean out your hen house for free….”

It was the leader talking and doing some wheeling-and-dealing.

There was some strong, silent American male quiet after that.  In the background was a raucous cacophony of chickens clucking.

“…Well sure, I understand it’s good fertilizer, but we only need…but we’ll just be takin’ the one load…no, no it doesn’t cost you and it’s tax-free…c’mon, you can spare some chicken shit for the good of the country, right…?”

The manly mumbo-jumbo seemed mostly affirmative, so I figured the deal was done.  This was confirmed not too long after, as I found out, when the trio of former workers from the Cirque De Bizarro begun to shovel the shit into the back of the truck.  They was amazing fast and efficient, I discovered to my dismay.

I couldn’t hide or take it no more.  I arose from the heaping pile of chicken dung and headed toward the rig’s back doors when they spotted me.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Oh hell and damn.  We got us a stowaway freak.”

“What do we do with it?”

I stood there clad in just my jeweled loincloth and covered in bird droppings.  “You could turn around and when you look back, I won’t be here,” I nodded and smiled.  “How’s that sound?”

“Get him down boys.”

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