Rise of the Meth Ninjas

"What does all of this have to do with us?" Alastair asked me.

"Yeah," I told him, "that's what I asked...Say, did that seem like an unusually long pause to you. For some reason, that second felt like a week."

"I thought so, too," he said, "it's weird how that can happen sometimes. You ask a question and then it seems like it takes forever to get it answered."

"I know," I says to him, "maybe time is just an illusion."

"What makes you say that?" he asks.

"I dunno," I respond, "it was just something I read on the back of a bag of bagels a couple of days ago."

"You read that time is an illusion on the back of a bag of bagels? What kind of bagels were they?"

"Well, I started getting these 'philosophy bagels' cause they were on sale. I wasn't much interested in what they said on the back, I really just wanted the bagels. Of course, I may have just made that whole thing up, I've been drinking pretty heavily for the last couple of days. I'm not even that sure that any of this is real."

"How do you cope with that?" he asks me.

"Well, I just try and take it on faith, really. Right now, this is the only experience I have, so I don't really have anything to compare it to in order to determine whether it's real or not."

"Wow," he says, "that's really weird."

"I know," I tells him, "why do you think I drink?"

"I can't say I blame you. I may need a drink now, too."

So, I goes into the house and grab a couple of mason jars full of white lightning and we sit on the porch sipping it as he tells me all about the squirrel monkeys and their long-standing rivalry with the meth ninjas.

A while ago, a group of ninjas got real tired of working for other people all the time; killing when they were told to kill, sneaking around, breaking up all the best parties. They wanted to be the ones giving the orders. They wanted to be the ones throwing all the best parties and THEN breaking up the parties by killing the guest of honor. So they refused to take any more contracts and they withdrew to a set of caves to meditate deeply on their future. They decided the first thing they needed was a really cool and dangerous sounding clan name. They went through all the possibilities, but all the dangerous animals (dragons, hawks, tigers, bears to name a few) were already taken. It was really a problem until one day a member of the clan came back dragging a man whose leg was full of poison. They gathered around him and asked what animal could have possibly done this to him. Unfortunately, he was unable to tell them because he didn't know its name. After they ran through all the poisonous animals they could think of, snakes and spiders and whatnot, they had the man tell them where this had taken place.

They took a journey to the foot of the mountains and into a swamp. It took a week of searching, and they lost four ninjas to poisonous swamp bears. They would have then named themselves "Clan Poisonous Swamp Bear," but the embroiderer told them that an poisonous swamp bear embroidered onto a uniform looks almost identical to a grizzly bear embroidered on the uniform. This would have been very bad for them because Clan Grizzly had recently angered the demon Kal'Ah from the land of wind and ghosts by telling his wife she looked fat in a pair of coo lots, and the demon had vowed to wipe out the clan. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the demon Kal'Ah is incredibly near sighted, but he will never admit to it and so he refuses to ever go get glasses. So, the possibility was high that Clan Poisonous Swamp Bear would be wiped out by Kal'Ah before they ever got started, so they were forced to continue searching.

When they finally found the creature, they stood around and marveled at its beauty and excellence. It had sleek fur and poisonous spines. They asked the embroiderer if he could sew it on to their uniforms and he told them, "Yeah, I could probably work something up." Thus was born Clan Platypus.

"Wait, wait," I told Alistair, "Clan Platypus? Are you serious?"

"Absolutely," he responded, "The platypus is an aggressive, dangerous animal. In addition to being a fierce predator in the water, it defends itself on land with poison claws on the backs of its legs. If you saw a platypus, you'd be best advised to turn around and walk away."

"Well, guess you learn something new every day. Continue."

And he did. Once Clan Platypus had their symbol, they began to recruit other ninjas who were tired of the kill-a-day ninja lifestyle. They allowed those ninjas to recruit other ninjas and eventually, they had built the world's first ninja pyramid scheme. Once that was in place, they began their quest for world domination. They struck on the idea of using mind-dulling substances to make people into their slaves pretty early on, but since this was 1000 years ago, the most powerful thing they could get their hands on was opium. They plied that trade for a long time, spreading their distribution network worldwide, one addict at a time. The plan didn't really work out, however, because opium addicts are extremely lazy. And, really, what good is it to have a bunch of slaves that are lazy? You send them to fetch the head of your enemy and they come back a month later with a bag of potatoes and no shoes. So, they tried different things for awhile, occasionally resorting to being killers for hire, but they always kept in mind their larger plan.

"And that brings us to the modern day," Alastair says.

"Before you launch into that," I stop him, "can I freshen up that drink for you?"

"You bet," he tells me, "it's just like mom used to make."

So I got up and went into the house for drinks.

Finally

Well, a month came and went and I heard nothin from them squirrel monkeys. I thought I'd seen them a couple times, but then it turned out that was just white lightnin in my eye. For a week or so I thought I'd been goin crazy and then recovered. I mean, hyper-intelligent squirrel monkeys? I was in for it bad, I thought. I tried talking to Douggy about it, but he kept tellin me that he'd seen a lot weirder stuff on the internet. He said that there'd been a couple of guys a little bit ago that found themselves a Bigfoot and put it in a freezer, then, when they thawed it out, it was really a rubber gorilla suit. What Douggy wanted to know, though, was how the Bigfoot got itself thawed out and then how'd it slip the rubber gorilla suit into the freezer before wandering off. After that, I figured I might not get no answers from Douggy.

Every time I started to think I was crazy, though, I''d go out and look at my truck. It sat there moldering away with a burnt up couch through the bed, scorched leather and paint job serving as a testament to my sanity. So I sat. I sat on my porch and waited for them dang squirrel monkeys to show back up. I was gettin ready to give up. But then, they come last night. They gathered around my truck and sat there lookin at me with their crazy glowin eyes and it looked like somethin was amiss.

The leader, he comes up to me and says, "So, it turns out you need our help after all."

And I says back to him, "I guess so. When did you learn how to talk?"

He replied, "We grow more intelligent all the time. We have just recently reached a plateau in which we are able to modify our own bodies for new purposes. We installed voice boxes into ourselves so that it would be easier to communicate with the humans. Also, we can now yell at dogs, and this confuses them long enough for us to get away. If that doesn't work, we have also installed laser eye beams and so we can fry them."

"Well, that sounds downright convenient," I tell them, "Is that where you've been all this time?"

"That, and watching the Olympics." he says.

"Yeah," I concede, "they was pretty exciting this year. Phelps got himself all them medals. What do you think about the gymnastics?"

"Look," he says to me, "I may just be a super-intelligent, genetically engineered cross of at least 104 different animals who just happens to look like a cross between a squirrel and a monkey, and I may have only been on this earth for a couple of years, but even I know that Chinese girl couldn't have been more than 13. I mean, Fred over there is taller than her." He pointed to a shadow lurking near the woods, and I jumped a little at seeing a 4 foot tall squirrel monkey.

"Holy mother of Jehoshaphat!" I yelled, "He's a big'n!"

"Part whale," the leader explained. "He's got an enormous tongue, too."

"I guess that would make sense," I concede.

"Yeah," I say.

"Yeah," he says.

Then we stood and looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. You know, those silent moments can really stretch out. I didn't want to be a jerk and ask him to fix the truck right away, but I didn't think we really shared enough common interests to have an extended conversation. I mean, if it was Douggy, or even a human, that might be one thing, but when you're talking to a genetic experiment, you're really on shaky ground. I don't know if they even have hobbies beyond the physical alteration and stuff.

After a little while, the leader cleared his throat and said, "By the way, I'm Alistair."

"Is that catching?" I ask.

"No, that's my name," he says, a little too uppity.

"Oh," I tell him, "what kind of name is that?"

"It's English," he says and I'm starting to feel kind of stupid.

"Are you from England, then?"

"No, I just found it in a British newspaper and I liked the way it sounds."

"Huh." I grunted and sort of looked off in the distance.

"So," he started, "you hung the lantern?"

The ice had been broken, I could go ahead and ask him about the truck. Finally. I explained to him about the flaming couch and asked him if he could fix it. He looked concerned for awhile, then went back and consulted with his friends. I don't think they was speaking any kind of language I'd ever heard before. When he came back, he told me,

"I'm sorry this has happened to you. We never meant to get you in this deep. We only needed a front to fund our operations. Now, however, it appears that we must tell you the whole story. We were not created by any government. We were created by a crime syndicate that is attempting to destroy everything held precious in this world. They are attempting to stop people from sleeping so that they can be turned into automatons and live only to serve the crime syndicate. They can then take over the world and live a life of luxury while the rest of the human race becomes their slaves."

"Wow, that sounds pretty bad," I say.

"I know," he concurs, "but it gets worse."

"Worse than all of mankind being their slaves?"

"Yeah," he says.

"Ok, are you going to tell me how?"

"Yeah," he says.

Then we just look at each other for a bit.

"Soon?" I ask.

"What?" he says, shaking himself back to reality, "Oh, sorry, he says, I was just thinking about that gymnast again. Seriously, how can they expect anyone to believe that girl is 16? Anyway, yeah, it gets worse, they're Ninjas!"

"Ninjas?"

"That's right! Ninjas!"

Then one of the squirrels pulled out a little systhesiser and played a very dramatic chord. I thought it was a little over the top, myself, but I didn't want to say anything and risk my truck not being fixed.

"So, Ninjas attacked my truck with a flaming couch? Is that what you're telling me?" I ask, not really believing any of this, but I'm just drunk enough to go along for the ride.

"Yes, that is what I'm telling you," he says. "But it gets even worse."

"Worse, huh?"

"Yeah..." he drifts off and comes back again, "You can just look at her and see that there's no way she's 16. And the Chinese expect us to believe that they wouldn't fake a passport so she could compete? Unbelievable! And you know what else is unbelievable? They're Meth Ninjas!"

"That is unbe..." I begin, "Wait, what's a Meth Ninja?"

"That's their group, the Meth Ninjas," he explains, "They're trying to spread the use of methampetemines around the world. That is the drug they're using to lure people into slavery."

"That's pretty harsh," I tell Alistair. "So, where do you come into all of this?"

Well, it looks like my coffee's done and I got some yard work to do, but I'll tell you the rest of the story tomorrow.

It's gone! Gone!

Oh my dear sweet Betty Mable Lou! My truck is destroyed! My aqua-green, new leather, fender-complete truck is gone! And for once, I had nothing to do with it. It was hit by a flaming couch that fell from the sky. I dunno where that couch came from, but I know it ended up on end sticking through the bed of my beautiful truck. Sadly, I'd just finished waxing the truck just before the couch hit it. I have found, in my many years, that bacon grease makes a really fine truck wax. It's water-proof, readily available and it makes your car smell like bacon all the time. Sure, you occasionally have to shoo dogs and obese people away, and you've gotta eat a heck of a lot of bacon to have enough grease to wax a truck, but it's usually worth it. Fortunately, I pay attention to the nightly news. Every time you see someone on that there news that's a hundred and whatnot, they always say they eat a pack of bacon every day. So, I'm pretty sure that's the secret to long life. That and not dying for a long time, that is. Well, that bacon wax had helped me all my life. As it turns out, though, covering your car in pork fat isn't a good idea if your truck is going to be speared through by a flaming couch from out of a clear blue sky. In the very unlikely event that happens, the car almost instantly becomes engulfed in flames and your years of hard work and your proof that super-intelligent flying squirrel monkeys exist are both down the tubes. I guess I need my car repaired, so I'm gonna hang this lantern thingy out the window and see if the squirrels can come fix it.

I'm gonna pause here for a bit of philosophatin. Here's the thing I been thinking about: if those squirrels come and fix my truck, they're gonna be replacin the exterior and most of the cab. Well, I've had that truck a long time, I've replaced all the belts and hoses, the starter, rebuilt the carb and done other small repairs. About 10 years ago, I replaced the engine because the last one had a cracked block. I've pulled out the transmission and replaced the gear box, got myself a new exhaust system after I started feeling woozy driving around. In short, I have replaced every piece on that truck. So, is it still the same truck? I dunno. Douggy says yes because it's got the same VIN and the lady at the DMV said "Stop wasting my time, sir," when I asked her. I guess it's just between me and Albert now. Maybe I'll ask the squirrel monkeys when they come, they're pretty smart.

Do I need a new job?

I was a mess yesterday. I spent the whole night before that tossing and turning, thinking about whether or not I should join those Squirrel Monkeys. Sure, the income on a body shop would be nice and it seems like the work would be pretty easy. It had to be a whole lot better than my last job at the shoe factory. When you go buy shoes, there's always that bit of paper wadded up in the toe. I was the guy who put it there. It was murder on my hands and it was a very unappreciated job. Sure, it was what they called a "vital service", without that paper in them toes, the whole shoe would collapse in shipping and we would all be walking around with bunions and corns and blisters and whatnot. And maybe them blisters would get infected after you waded in a river when you were noodling for catfish because your son wanted fried catfish for dinner. And maybe that infection would, for a reason the CDC can't say, smell like a female deer in heat. And then, maybe, while you were sleeping with your window open because it was hot, a male deer would happen to come by and try to mate with your leg. And then, just maybe, when you woke up screaming because there was an overly amorous deer in your room, the deer would get all worked up and bite you. And then maybe that bite would get infected because the deer had been licking a salt lick that was meant for llamas and had big ol' sores on the inside of his mouth, like deer scurvy, and that stuff that was in the deer's mouth got into your leg and it had to get cut off. It's happened. It happened to my Aunt Rita and now she has no leg and she can't go noodling for catfish anymore and so now me or Frank has to go get her catfish for her. But, you know how Aunt Rita is. She says the catfish has to be noodled, not line caught or (heaven forbid) store bought. If you don't know what noodling is, it's when you walk along a riverbank looking for holes in the dirt, just under the water line. Then, when you find one, you stick your hand in the hole and wiggle your fingers until a catfish tries to bite you. Then, when your hand's in the catfish's mouth, you lift it out of the water and toss it on land. Aunt Rita says that it makes the meat softer, but I've never been able to tell. And I'll be darned if she don't always know when I've line-caught a catfish.

Sorry, looks like I got sidetracked there again. After Aunt Rita lost her leg to the collapsed shoe, I worked real hard at stuffin that paper into the toes of them shoes so it didn't happen to no one else. I worked at that job for 15 years, then I went to buy a pair of shoes one day and saw the store clerk just pull that paper out of the toe and throw it away without thinking about it. I grabbed that paper and saw it was a #8.3 grey paper inside with a #7 white tissue on the outside cleverly joined with a #4 Smith Ducktail. When I tried to point this out to the shoe guy, he called security. I was plannin for that to be my last trip to that mall anyway so it doesn't matter that they asked me to never come back. Well, after that was done, I realized that only the small group of craftsmen who did the work would ever appreciate the trials of a toe stuffer, and most of them were 6 year old Malaysian kids who knew nothing of the real passion. On top of that, I had me the arthritis real bad, so I was put on disability. I haven't had a job for the last 5 years, but the disability checks and my stock options in the shoe company keep me from sufferin too much. But still, it would be nice to have a little extra money coming in, especially for just runnin some errands.

On the other hand, though, I'd be working for a bunch of highly intelligent, genetically engineered, not to mention uppity, flying squirrel monkeys, and who knows what they're up to. Sure, they need a cover for something, but it could be anything. They could be art thieves working for the Chinese or maybe pirates or maybe they're like Superman or something and they're protecting the world or something. All these was running through my head when Rita's son Jeb called. He was in town for a couple days and he wanted to see me. We'd hung out some when we was kids, but he'd gone off for his job and had been traveling pretty steady for 20 years or so. He's got a pretty easy gig, that Jeb. He's technically a PR guy for a band, but that doesn't really cover it. You ever hear of the band Slayer? If you've been in a men's room at a rest area or rock club or pretty much anything else, you've heard of them. You know how in the men's john, there's always the word "Slayer" written on the wall somewhere? Well, Jeb's job is to write that. He says there's about 4 or 5 guys cross country who do it, but they never see each other. The band pays for his RV and his gas and food, plus pays him some hourly. All he has to do is go from town to town writing "Slayer" on the walls of the men's rooms in town. He usually spends two days to a week in a town, depending on the size, then he moves on to the next. He ain't got no schedule or nothin, just his area that he has to cover. Jeb's always been kinda a loner, so it was a great job for him.

Because he travels so much, Jeb has seen a lot of weird stuff so I thought I should ask him what to do about the Squirrel Monkeys. So, we met for a beer yesterday and discussed it. After I told him the whole situation, as far as I knew it, Jeb told me, "Look here, Pat, I seen a lot of stuff in my day, and I've heard me some yarns. If I've learned one thing during all of that, from the fights with bouncers and the 'Here I sit broken hearted' guy, it's this: never trust genetically engineered, computer enhanced animals. You'll always get in over your head."

After that, we didn't talk too much more. He got back on the road that night and I thought long and hard about what he said.

I did want the income, and think of the stories I could tell about being with the Squirrel Monkeys. On the other hand, maybe they were into something dangerous. Really, the only danger I like in my life is an extra shot of tobasco in my bloody mary once in awhile. I'm just not built for it.

The squirrel monkeys came last night and I told them that I appreciated all they did to fix my truck and all, and that their offer sounded nice, but I didn't want to get mixed up in no weirdness right now in my life. They seemed to understand, but didn't really write anything. They just looked at me for a long time and then walked into the forest. When I got up this morning, I found a package on my front door with a card in tiny writing. It said, "Things are in motion. If you change your mind, hang this on the antenna of your truck." I opened the box and found one of them antenna toppers shaped like a banana. I put it on my desk to remind me of those Squirrel Monkeys. I hope I made the right decision. Gotta go, the phone's ringing.

Meeting The Flying Squirrel Monkeys

One mystery solved, but a whole lot more just opened up. As I planned, I stayed up last night to wait for the car decorating flying squirrels to show up and explain to me what the heck was going on. I took a long nap in the afternoon and then drank about 4 pots of strong coffee to help me keep awake and to try and stave off the fainting. It happened like it did the night before and the night before that. One of them flying squirrels clambered on top of my truck and looked around for fifteen minutes or so. I don't really know how long it was, partly because my watch stopped running and I just haven't thought about repairing it in the last couple of days, and partly because I had to take a whiz while it was still standing there, what with the four pots of coffee I drank. When I came back, there was a whole army of them squirrels standing on my truck, just starin at the house. It was pretty creepy, I'll have to admit; four or five rows of flying squirrelly things standin stock still on their back legs, their eyes glowing yellow in the moonlight. At first I was scared that their little claws were gonna ruin my new paint job, but then I figured that if they had painted it once, they could do it again. But then I began to wonder where they got the paint from. I don't feel too comfortable having my truck painted with stolen paint, but I can't imagine how a bunch of squirrels got money in the first place unless they worked for the circus or something like that. But then I wondered, even if they had money, how would they be able to buy paint? Old George down at the Ace Hardware sure as shootin ain't gonna sell paint to a bunch of flying squirrels. Not that he's a racist or anything, but, really, who's gonna sell to squirrels?

While all of this was running through my head, the main squirrel gets tired of waiting and comes up to ring the doorbell. I go to the screen door, still confused as all get out, and he stands there with his little squirrel arms crossed. Well, I finally get my first good look at this thing, and I'm not so sure it's a squirrel any more. It's about 6 inches high with a piece of skin stretched between its arms and legs. I guess it couldn't weigh more than 10 pounds or so, and that's a pretty heavy estimate. On lookin at just the body, it could be easily mistaken for a squirrel. But, when you look at the face good, it looks almost human. It's got these big saucer eyes that glow yellow in the dark, but I can't tell if it's a reflection, like when you take a picture of a dog, or if it's glowing from the inside. It's got a stubby nose from which its upper lips split off, just like on a monkey. Well, we stand there gettin a good look at one another and I figure one of us has to break the silence so I say, "All right, first things first, are you a squirrel or a monkey? Cause when you bit me, I thought you was a monkey, but then Douggy tells me you're a squirrel, and he was pretty convincing, I tell ya. But now, I'm lookin at you, and I don't know what you are, so which one is it? Are you a squirrel or a monkey?" When I ask this, he furrows his brow and looks over his shoulder at the lines of creatures on my truck. They all look at one another, pretty perplexed, and then one turns back to the one at the door, who I think is the leader, and shrugs. I tell ya, you have not lived until you've seen a flying squirrel monkey thing shrug. It's little skin goes up and down with its shoulders and its knees lift up just a little, like the whole body is involved in the shrug. Well, the leader gives me this long look, and then sighs.

He pulls out a little notepad and pencil and starts writing. When he's done, he holds the paper up to me and it says, "Is that really your first question?"

"Damn straight, that's my first question," I reply, "I ain't doin nothin until I know what it is I'm dealing with."

Well, he starts writing furiously and shows me the paper again, which says, "You're sure you don't want to ask anything about why we can write or why we painted your truck or anything like that? You just want to know if we're squirrels or monkeys? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," I say. I hate to admit it, but all of those questions were much better than mine, but I didn't think of them, and I didn't want to be shown up by no squirrel monkey.

"Fine," he writes. Then he starts scribbling and giving me sheets one by one. "We are neither squirrels nor monkeys. We are genetically engineered hybrid creatures. We were created to be scouts in war zones. Those who created us combined the DNA of several creatures, including Rhesus monkeys and flying squirrels as well as badger, salmon, eagle and a little giraffe for some reason, and then placed super computers into our brains. We are conglomerate creatures the likes of which the world has never seen. After being subject to experiments for several years, we learned of the world outside the laboratory, a world where people did not stick lipstick into our eyes or ginger in our butts just to see what would happen (we get pissed off about it and our farts smell like ginger ale for a week). We learned that there was a world in which we could do good works. And so we escaped. There were 200 of us at the time, but now there are only 50. We have suffered a great loss and we need your help."

"Well," I said, "that's quite a story. What do you need my help for, though? I don't think I got anything to offer a group of cyber squirrel monkeys."

"We need you to be our human face. Run errands for us. Have you ever tried buying paint when you're a 'cyber squirrel monkey'? Old George down at the Ace Hardware was more than reluctant to sell to us."

"So how'd you get the paint?" I asked.

The leader looked back at the group again, who all shook their heads. I think some were cradling their heads in their hands, but I can't be sure. The leader looked at me long and hard, then cocked an eyebrow and shook his head.

"We snuck in after dark, took the paint and left the money. Do you have any more inane questions?"

Well, I was kinda hurt by that. I mean, I think anyone would want to know about the paint. Maybe it was just the wrong time or something.

"We will offer you a deal. You be our human face. You run errands for us. In exchange, you open a car detailing and repair business and we'll do all the work. You'll make money and we'll be able to do what we need to do."

"And what's that," I ask.

"You'll know when the time comes," he writes, "Do we have a deal?"

"Well, I dunno about this. Can you give me some time to think about it?" I ask.

They gave me 48 hours. I'm really not sure what to do. I mean, it would be a nice income. But on the other hand, I'd have to deal with those uppity squirrel monkeys. But then again, what else am I doing?

I cannot begin to tell you how strange my life has become in the last two days. All right, maybe I can and maybe I'll fancy it up just a little bit, though it don't need no fancifyin. Two days ago, I come out to see my truck sportin four brand new fenders. I try not to be surprised about this, but I gotta admit I'm a little puzzled. I wander out there to inspect my fortune and I see a little note tucked under the windshield wiper. I open the note and it just says, "Sorry" in these tiny little letters. Well, I'm really not sure what to make of all this. I go back in the house and give Douggy a call. I ask him if he'd fixed my truck and he tells me that he's been working all night plus some overtime, what with all the extra pages needed for the Olympics and election and whatnot else that's goin on now. So I tell him, "I got four new fenders on that truck. You know anything about that?" and he tells me he has no idea what I'm talking about. Well, I make some more calls around and no one knows anything. I go to bed that night thinking I'm the victim of a prank. But I can't really complain none because I got some new fenders out of the deal.

The next morning, I wake up and the fenders have all been covered in primer, so now the whole truck matches and I'm totally convinced that Douggy's been pulling something on me. I call Douggy first and he gives me the same line. He says he was working overtime and wouldn't have come out and primed my truck in the dark no how. Well, I don't entirely believe Douggy, but he had a point about painting in the dark. I decide to find out once and for all so I call up Douggy's boss Larry. We've been fishing together a couple of times and I was there when he pulled an honest to goodness shark out of the Mississippi. To this day, none of us know how it got there or how it survived in the fresh water so long, but it was good eating. Larry tells me the same thing as Douggy. He's got his entire back room working overtime and they'll probably be doing that until November and what kind of nut primes a truck in the dark in the first place? I really don't know what to do, so I decide to stay up that night with my gun to see what's going on.

It was almost a full moon, so I turned off all the lights in the house like I was going to bed and staked myself out by the living room window. Round about 1 am, I see this little figure come up to the truck. It gets on the hood and looks around, sniffin the air. I can't quite tell, but it looks like a flying squirrel. Well, that's not nothin, I figure, so I'll just wait until whoever it is comes along. After standing on the hood of my truck for a few minutes lookin around, the flying squirrel in question starts flappin its arms. Now, I spent some time when I was young as a telegraph operator, but I've forgotten it all in the intervening years. I know just enough to recognize morse code when I see it and I'll be durned if that squirrel wasn't using morse code. Like I say, I don't know what he was flashin, but it looked just like dots and dashes. Well, not 30 seconds later a whole swarm of flying squirrels comes running out of the woods carryin buckets and brushes and even some drop cloths. By this time, I'm pretty well convinced that I've fallen asleep and I'm dreaming. Next thing I know, I'm awake again, the sun is up and it's a beautiful day. I renew my resolve to stay awake tonight to see if those miscreants come back and make myself a pot of coffee. After my coffee, I go around back and check my tomatoes. They're coming in pretty well. I pull some weeds and then make myself a breakfast of fried greed tomatoes and toast. Finally, when I can think of no more tasks to put it off, I go out and look at the truck. Then I faint. Then I wake up, make myself a pot of coffee and pour a shot of JD into it. Then I go look at the truck. And I almost faint again. There, in front of my eyes, stands a magnificent machine. The primered, battered and used truck that I been driving for 30 years looks just like it did the day my daddy bought it new. It was a beautiful sea green with chrome trim and little metal flecks in the paint. The bumpers had been buffed back to a high shine. Even the wheel covers and hood ornament had been replaced. For a while, I just sat and stared at it, gettin myself coffee drunk. After a couple of hours, I see that there's a note on the windshield again. In tiny letters it says "Interior, white or aqua?" Well, I figure it was white when my daddy bought it, it should be white again. I left a note to that effect and asked what the heck was going on. This morning, I get up with, of course, a brand new white interior and a tiny note that says, "We need to talk." Right now, I'm gonna go take a nap, because I have a feeling it's going to be a long night.

Back up and about

I been laid up for just over a week, but I'm back up on my feet and ready to start movin about again. You see, I hurt my back last week and so I just been layin on the couch and eatin donuts since then. I don't blame Douggy none for what happened to me, even though it prolly wouldn't have happened without him. That's the way it was when I first hurt my back, too. See, I first got my back out on a trip to California in '81. Douggy and I were having a grand old time down there on the beach when I spot some television cameras. We was drunk and really wanted to be on TV so we wandered over to see what's what. Turned out they was filmin one of them Strong Man competitions. To this day, I don't know how Douggy talked me into joinin up, but the next thing I know, I'm standin there in one of them muscle shirts with these men who coulda ate me if they wanted to. At the time, I wasn't no toothpick or anything like that, but I sure as shootin wouldn't have been in that competition if not for my friends Douggy and Jack Daniels. Anyway, the first challenge was the keg toss. You're supposed to take these big ol kegs and throw them over your shoulder over a 20 foot bar. Well, by the time my turn came around, I was startin to sober up just enough to be stupid. I figured that I could probably get them kegs over that bar a lot easier if I lightened the load a bit, if you follow me. I just happened to have a tap on me (take note, when you go on vacation with Douggy, you never know when you'll need a tap), and so I kept trying to jam it down into the keg. What no one told me was that the kegs weren't really filled with anything and that they were really made of rubber. Well, after one minute and thirty eight point eight-four seconds of this (I know cause that's what the timer said), I slipped a disc and was out of the competition. The organizers said that was the fastest Strong Man career they'd ever seen. So, at least I won something. Plus they gave me a tape of my performance, which I've still got.


So, that's how I hurt my back the first time. I still get it out of whack every once in awhile and it'll lay me up for a week or so. That's what happened this time. Here's how it went. The day after we turned my truck back over, Douggy called me up to tell me he was real sorry about pullin off all my fenders, but he'd been talking to his cousin Tina who works down at the Donut King. It turned out her husband, Skeeter, who owns a junkyard just out of town, just got truck like mine in that blew a head gasket, but had a good body. Skeeter said we could come get all four fenders off that truck for $20, if we'd take them off ourselves. Well, I couldn't pass up a deal that good, so I headed out. When we got to Douggy's house, he told me that we had to stop by the Donut King first. When I asked him why, he told me that the lady who works in the Classifieds section was tellin him about this bio-diesel stuff and all about how you can run a diesel engine off of old grease from fast food places and stuff. He'd called Tina and she told him he could take as much grease as he wanted from the grease trap at the Donut King. Then he'd called Skeeter and convinced him to let Douggy try this stuff out on one of the old cars sitting in the yard. I wasn't too keen on it at first, but then Douggy told me Tina was gonna throw in a couple of dozen day olds that they was ready to throw out. I never been one to turn down free donuts, so I took him on down to the Donut King to get the grease.

Douggy started pumping the stuff into this 20 gallon water tank he'd had sitting in his backyard for who knows how long. Well, after about 5 minutes, this thing starts to leak somethin awful. There's grease goin everywhere and Tina starts yellin at Douggy that we better get that grease outta there before her boss thinks she don't know how to dump a bucket of grease anymore, so we grab our day olds and got outta there before Tina blows her top.

After leaving the parking lot, Douggy looks back at the grease tank and sees that it was leaking because there was a hole near the top, but it looked like it stopped. There was still some grease in the bed of the truck so we left a trail behind us that smelled like donuts. When we got to the junkyard, Douggy and I split up. Skeeter showed me the truck that he had. The fenders were great. Sure, they were a different color than the rest of the truck, but I still had a bucket of primer the rest of the truck was done with so I wasn't worried none. They jumped in my truck and Douggy told me he'd come get me before he started his experiment.

I was looking forward to seein a car run on donut leavings, but I needed to get those fenders off before it got too hot. After about 15 minutes, I turn around to see the biggest dog I seen in my life. This thing looked like a St. Bernard had gotten together with a horse and they hit the town and ended up in an awkward situation with a tractor. Now, I'm no stranger to junkyard dogs, and I coulda shaken off the size of this thing, if it weren't for the fact that he was slowly eating the dirt. I stood there for a while watching it, trying to figure out if Skeeter had somehow bought a dog that could live on dirt, when I realized that it was eating the trail of grease the truck was leaving. Right about that time, Douggy yells that he's all ready and I walk over to where he and Skeeter are standing next to an old VW Rabbit that had no doors or wheels or hood. Douggy was in the diver's seat with a giant smile on his face. He looked like he was already drivin down the road in his grease-mobile, wind in his hair and all was right with the world. The problem was, the thing wasn't even running yet. When I got there, Douggy leaned out the door hole and asked "We ready?" Both Skeeter and I slid back a little bit and nodded. Then Douggy turned the key and nothing happened. Not even a hiccup. Skeeter and I looked at each other then at Douggy, who looked like his dream had just dissolved. Then Skeeter lit up, "The battery!" he said, "give 'er a jump!"

So, I pull my truck up and we hook up the jumper cables. When we get those on, Douggy hits the ignition again, and it starts to turn over, but still doesn't catch. Well, I gotta get in there and do something before Douggy goes all nutso on me. You don't want a nutso Douggy on your hands. Last time he really lost it, he ended up in a tree throwing spark plugs at people. His doctor said that his medication was all balanced now and everything, but I'm not sure I believe that. I seen too many blowouts. So, I lean over the engine while Douggy's still cranking, just to see if there's anything I can do. Just as I lean over, the engine catches and roars to life. What I didn't know is that this engine had a pretty big hole in the fuel pump and so I ended up getting sprayed with donut leavings. I stood up, wiping off my face, just in time to see tractor dog comin right up on me. It had left a wet ditch behind him all the way around the yard. Just as I got the grease wiped off, tractor dog and I made eye contact. I could see that he thought he'd just hit the mother lode and he could see that I was about to run. I think I made it about 4 feet before this dog hit me in the back, knockin it out again. I was just hopin that he would eat me quick, but he just licked away. As was layin there, Skeeter explained to me that the dog had lost all its teeth chewing on tires. The threat of being eaten passed, I just lay there and let that dog clean me off. As soon as he was done, he fell over dead. It turned out later that the dog had died from a heart attack because of all the grease that it ate. Needless to say, Skeeter was pissed. Douggy and I hightailed it out of there as fast as we could move, which wasn't too fast. In the end, I ended up with no fenders, Douggy needs another place to test his fuel, Tina got reprimanded by her boss, and Skeeter had himself a dead dog. Oh yeah, and I had to lay on the couch for a week.