One night, I was sitting at a river party near Eastport, Mississippi on the banks of the Tennessee River, on a cooler full of cheap beer, smoking a joint of the dirtiest weed I have ever had the displeasure of inhaling, when the curly-haired meth head sitting crosslegged in the pine needles next to me pulled a gun.
He raised it slowly, as in a movie, and aimed it directly at my head. I stared incrediously at him but before I could protest, he calmly said, "Move out of the way. This is gonna be loud and messy."
I moved.
He was now aiming directly at the face of an asshole we had all grown up with and hated, although most of us were too afraid to tell him so. He always carried a gun, was infamous with a knife, and sold dope to everyone from the sheriff to the serf. Including myself.
The last words that I heard before the shot cracks out were, "Go ahead, cuzzin. I think you're scared but, who knows..."
He wasn't.
I ran. I am not ashamed to admit it, I ran. I felt that I had no need to involve myself in a homicide on a Saturday night on a creekbank that I held no deed to. I ran like a cat with turpentine smeared on it's ass. Like a scalded ape. Like a...well, you get the point.
The shots continued to pop, the wind kept blowing pine chaff past my face, and my balls continued to draw into my stomach as I ran. By the time I ran full frontal into the local sheriff, I was winded beyond the 2 packs of cigarettes I had smoked that day.
"Whatchoo doin', boy? Ain't you had enuff trubble tonite without assaltin' an occifer of the law?"
to be continued....
