Beam & Coke’s

Elvis took me to the Shed House Bar, a seedy little hole-in the wall tavern. We drank several Beam & Coke’s ran into people I haven’t seen in years and years. Suds, a former lover of mine says, “you’re lookin great, cute as ever.” Not much of a complement coming from her. She was a looker back-in-the-day, but 20 years has past and well you know what 20 years on the back of a scooter, livin hard, drinkin hard, smokin a pack a day will do to ya.

Elvis was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala, painted cherry red, with a 327 in it. He says, “I got to go do some business…lets go.”

We went over to see some mutts on the messy side of life. (W)hole gang was there. All in all not a bad group of individuals. Elvis went to do his business and I struck up a conversation with an old running buddy of mine.

I ask him “how is Scuzzie?”

He said “I went out on my own after he killed 3 people… Scuzzie is good people but I’m headin in a different direction these days.” He trailed on some tangent or another.

Scuzzie was a good kid. He is doing time and that’s what he’s been doing for most of his life. He did not have a fighting chance or should I say that’s all he had, because his mother had died and his father was a marshal arts instructor to an organized conglomerate of criminals, hoodlums, if you get my drift. His father once shot himself in the heart, tearing a hole in his back, as big as Texas and the fucker lived.

I met Scuzzie and Elvis when I was in the 7th grade. The three of us were inseparable, often could be found hanging out by the old train trestles, passing a “j” and a bottle of Malt Duck between us. Elvis was a laid back kid and for the most part he is today. Scuzzie and I were well on our way to a life of crime, already having been picked up by the cops many times.

We brought guns into highschool, dealt all sorts of drugs, got into fights with our rivals, steeling whatever wasn’t nailed down, we were notorious and we liked it that way.

Scuzzie, time after time would break into peoples houses, line up the loot and then he proceeded to drink all the booze in the house and fall asleep. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happen next. The owners of the house came home and seeing Scuzzie fast asleep, they called the cops. He got busted several times like that.

To say he fell into the wrong crowd as a teen is an understatement and it went down hill from there. Elvis and I got into a biker crowd and Scuzzie got into more and more trouble. In and out and back in jail again and again. I bounced in and out of those facilities, too but Big Wheels taught me how to be a man and I learned how not to get caught. I did my last stint at the age of 22. Scuzzie did not have anybody to turn to, and by 22 he logged more time in than out. Scuzzie seemed to like it there. I suppose it was a place that brought to his life a little bit of structure. I don’t know. Elvis and I would see him every couple of years and then the next thing you know he would be right back in prison, again.

Then the murders, well what can anybody say?

Accept, that I know him and he was a good kid. I love him.

I can still see his childish grin, smiling back at me.