Six or seven days later, the cross country journey finally came to an end. Two Nose cut me off as I tried to make a hasty exit. Greasy Hands immediately pulled up to my rear and Georgie Germ heralded our passage with a heavy barrage of wet, viscous germ spewage.
“Tell your kid to cover his mouth,” I said loudly to a mother, who was too busy playing on her phone to monitor her child. Of course, until I said something about her son, and then she became a Kodiak bear, protecting her cub. Her shrill screams of “Mind your own fucking business” are still etched on my eardrums.
Greasy Hands was making our last few feet out a free for all. As soon as we hit terra firma, I turned and slammed him back into the bus. He licked his lips at me.
I clenched my fists and was about to make him pay for our encounter, when Tracy alit from the shuttle.
“Ah, Talbot, I see you’re making friends again. I really can’t take you anywhere, can I?” Tracy said, laughing.
Greasy Hands winked one more time and got back on the bus. Obviously, this was something that got his rocks off and it looked like he had been doing it the entire holiday season. Tracy grabbed my tensed shoulder. “Come on, let’s go,” she said without turning back around to witness what I had.
We had gone a few feet from the bus when I made a great showing of patting my pockets down. “Aw shit, hon! I left my phone on the bus. Go in, I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’ll be right there. Go in; get warm.”
I had hit the right button; she headed towards the mall entrance.
I jogged back to the bus. Greasy Hands was sitting in the empty bus on the seat that I had previously rejected due to the supposed Orange Julius contents.
“Back for more?” he asked, standing up.
I pulled my fist back somewhere around Detroit and let fly. I caught him flush on the cheek as he attempted to dodge my blow. He sat back down heavily. He would be sleeping for at least the next few bus rides.
“Fuck, that hurt,” I said, shaking my hand around.
“You can’t do that here! Get out of here!” the bus driver was yelling at me.
“Calm down, I was just getting my phone. And why don’t you clean this pit up while you’re waiting for people? Starting with Sleeping Beauty over there.”
“Get your ass off my bus or I’m calling security! And don’t try to get back on, you’re not welcome!”
“I’d rather walk on my hands and knees back to the lot than get on this lab, gone bad.”
Tracy was by the mall directory board when I came in. “Your phone, huh?”
“My what?” I had already forgotten my lying premise.
“Remember? You went back to get your phone.”
“Right, right.”
“Did you find it?” she asked.
“I had it in my pocket the whole time.” I explained, trying to get my most innocent face in place.
“Your knuckles look pretty raw,” she said as I jammed my hand into my jacket so she couldn’t get a closer look.
“I fell,” came stumbling out.
“And you braced yourself with your knuckles?”
“It was a very awkward fall. I was lucky to even get that to stop me or I would have landed square on my chin.”
“Oh, and then your new boyfriend would have been so upset.”
“He could have at least taken me out to dinner before he started to take liberties with me.”
Tracy laughed. “Let’s go, we’ve got a lot of shopping to do.”
We hadn’t even started and I was already wiped out.
The mall was packed, but fortunately not as bad as the bus, but much more so than my living room, which I so desired to be sitting in. Most folks looked panicked. They were running out of time, and as of yet, not picked out their significant other a proper gift. This led many to go over the top, and at least one jewelry store was the beneficiary of that panic.
There were two competing jewelry stores on either side of an opening that led down to another string of shops. There could not have been fifty feet separating the vendors, yet one was filled to the brim with customers and the other had three people in it, two of which were employees and one who had yet to look up from her split ends she kept pulling up in front of her face.
The packed one was Kay Jewelers, you know the one. I bet you’ve already sung the jingle without any prompting from me. “Every kiss begins with Kay.” Sorry, now you’ve probably got that stuck in your head. The other was a place I’d never heard of called J.D. Robbins Jewelry. The only difference I could discern in the two stores was that one had a fancy ad campaign with a catchy jingle and the other didn’t.
I pointed this out to Tracy, but she didn’t seem nearly as intrigued about it as I was.
“I’ve thought of a jingle that I think would get that store packed!” I told her excitedly.
“I’m sure you have. Do I even want to hear it?”
“Okay, you know the one “every kiss begins with Kay?”
She nodded.
“Now use the same jingle only with these words, Every Jerk-off begins with J! That store would be fucking packed right now!”
Tracy nearly snorted on the cookie we had been sharing, but she quickly recovered. “What is the matter with you? It’s Christmas!” She was trying to sound disgusted, but I could tell she was inwardly laughing her ass off.
“I personally couldn’t think of a better gift,” I said lasciviously.
“Go find your bus buddy!” she laughed as she pushed me away.
One short year removed from that story, I find myself huddled in the cold with the remnants of humanity. How I wish I was back on that bus, not with Greasy Hands, mind you. I hope he was patient zero, but I’d even take Georgie Germ as long as he was on the far side of the bus. I could maybe do without Two Nose and the bus driver and maybe Georgie’s mother, but I think everyone else would be fine. This story has done what I’d hoped it would accomplish. It has brought a smile to an otherwise tired, scared man.
Blood Stone Part 2
Corporal Tenson could not believe his luck of late and he attributed it all to the blood red stone he had found two weeks previous at the destroyed Lakota village. He had been promoted to sergeant. His commanding officer, whom he could not stand, had swallowed a bullet and he was unimaginably wealthy if he could ever bring himself to sell the stone.
He had been so paranoid about possessing the stone, he had not even showed anyone, not even his best friend Aaron Gentry, a corporal in the same regiment he was in.
“What gives?” Aaron asked. He had been sleeping on his cot when he heard his friend rustling around.
“What are you talking about?” Scott Tenson asked back, stashing a small bag quickly into his front pocket.
“I’ve seen you pull out that bag at least a dozen times and you just stare at it.”
“You should just mind your own business,” Scott shot back a little testily.
“Sorry, just looking for something to talk about. It’s been so boring around here since the old man shot himself. I can’t believe he killed himself. I guess I would have too if I came home and my whole family was murdered. Some are saying that it was the shaman from the Lakota tribe we destroyed, seeking revenge.”
This had been a favorite topic of conversation within the unit since it had happened. The stories ranged from the mundane: the colonel had come home and discovered his wife was cheating and had murdered his family then killed himself; to the semi-paranormal and favorite among the men: that the medicine man’s spirit had done it as revenge; to the completely farfetched: a white witch had taken the colonel’s family hostage and forced him to attack the Indians. Not many believed that particular story, but speculation on it made the long nights go by quicker.