Driving Back To Jodie

Well I never should have settled down
Hanging around in a one horse town
And everyone started sleeping around

The Thrills: ‘One Horse Town’

My place down on Susie Hollow is just a good spit off River Front Road and is what the old timers used to describe as a ‘shotgun shack’, although I like to think of it as somethin’ more akin to a house with both history and character, though I’m willing to concede that in this case history just meant plain old, while character gives a clue as to its somewhat run down demeanour. Hell, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried over the years to maintain some semblance of order and integrity. It’s just that, well, since poppa passed away things just ain’t been the same down at the family home, and the old place has become just that. An old place. But heck, I ain’t exactly got a lot of time on my hands, what with holding down that broom pushin’ job at Downton Chemical, visiting mommy three times a week at The Fullerton Institute For The Criminally Insane over at Belva and helping out weekends in the choir at the Rich Creek First Church Of God. What with all that, plus my seemingly endless list of household chores, it’s a miracle I’ve got anytime at all for what the state police have now dubbed ‘a one man crime wave of chilling proportions’ but what I prefer to think of as my extra curricular activities. Sometimes I read about it in the papers and watch it on Channel 7 News, although my ariel got busted when that last big twister brushed through the edge of town and I haven’t been able to get much of a decent picture since. Which is why I took to staying out nights cruisin’ Route 39. To begin with it was just looking for kicks – you know, girls out for a good time, the odd drive-in movie or occasional roadhouse out near Gauley Bridge. But after a while that started to bore me – the girls were cold and unresponsive, the movies dull and lifeless, and the bars hot and claustrophobic. That’s when I started to get interested in the other stuff. The stuff that made the papers and the nightly news. The stuff that keeps me awake at night. The stuff that’ll eventually send me to The Chair.

I guess it all began one August night last year. I’d been cruisin’ Dixie Highway in search of some action. You know – just greasy kid stuff; teenage wildlife lookin’ to shake some action. But all I got were sniggers and put-downs from spotty faced would-be Miley Cyrus’ with more attitude than you could shake a stick at. Boy, did that get my blood boiling. Them and their crooked sneers, Gap Girl knock offs and Virginia Slims. You’ve sure come a long way baby, although apparently not far enough to see yours truly as worthy of any time or effort outside of condescending smirks and barbed wire put downs. So if any of you big city liberal types out there with your four by fours and subscriptions to Psychology Today are reading this and looking for signs of a tipping point then I guess that particular summer Saturday night was the one. See, I was mad. Real mad. Tired of being ridiculed, laughed at, ignored. Shit, it was like I’d taken some kind of invisibity pill. People just didn’t seem to see me anymore, and I ain’t just talkin’ about those White Trash wannabies hangin’ around outside the local drug store, suckin’ on soda pops while trying to look big with their six inch heels and king sized smokes. No, it was much bigger than that. At the job I was just some guy who shuffled around with a bunch of cleaning materials and tidied up the trash that others dropped. I wore a name badge but it might as well as have been written in fuckin’ Chinese for all the good it did. They ignored my ‘good mornings’, or at best responded with a Neanderthal grunt and a pair of eyes that simply looked the other way. Those execs in their Brooks Brothers shirts and designer suits, layered hair and snow-white teeth, all masters of their own little universe. Them and their women – the secretaries, PA’s, office runners and receptionists. They all made me physically sick. God, how I hated their casual arrogance, studious indifference, their college educations, shiny new Subaru’s, medical plans and endless affairs. I detested the ethically sourced organic fillings on the whole wheat bread sandwiches they had sent in each lunchtime along with the freshly brewed latte’s, mocha’s and cappuccino’s from the local Starbucks. Christ! I almost lost count of the times I nearly gagged on my bologna and pickle on white and can of warm shop brand soda. It wasn’t just that they didn’t notice me. It was more the way I didn’t seem to count. There I was, pickin’ up paper dropped with a casual disdain, a minimum wage slave forced to eke out an existence pushin’ broom and emptying waste bins. Hell, I know I never got past fifth grade, that momma was a two bit hooker with a heavy duty habit and daddy liked to think of himself as king of the off track betters, a crown he only managed to wear on the rare occasions when one of his tips made it in first past the post. I don’t have a career, just a job, and I ain’t paid no salary, just a wage. Hell, I can’t even pay no union dues, not since the plant was taken over by some Chinese consortium whose first act was to sack all us ancillary workers and then promptly rehire us on reduced wages and contracts that ain’t worth the paper they’re printed on. So in the stroke of a pen wielded by some slant eyed yellow man in a city I ain’t ever heard of, let alone could spell, I lost my union membership, pension entitlement, statutory sick pay and paid annual vacation time. In short, I stepped out of the twenty first century and back into the Dark Ages. Jeez! When I come to think of it, I ain’t much better off than my granddaddy, and he spent half his days doing hard time on the County Farm. So don’t ask me why I’m mad while you’re sitting in your comfy armchair in your centrally heated house, sipping your red wine and thinkin’ ‘bout which part of the world you’ll explore on your next summer vacation while reading these words on some expensive gadget made in the Far East on slave labour wages but sporting an expensive price tag and the name of some American corporation. You can feel all the repulsion you like but until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes you simply have no idea what it’s like to be a nobody.

Look. I’m sorry ‘n all for losing it a bit back there and I don’t want you getting no ideas about the precarious state of my mind. Hell, I ain’t no Kenny Rogers, just checking in to see what condition my condition is in, ‘cos if I’m honest, I’m way past caring on that score, ever since that first time out on County Road 81 and that elderly couple in a broken down jalopy who saw salvation in my approaching headlights. Don’t ask me why I did it, ‘cos I can’t really explain, outside of all that pent up rage that had been burnin’ like a bonfire deep inside my head. But you’ve heard that stuff already. What you really want is the details of what I did, of how I took that shotgun daddy kept hidden in the outhouse and put a slug through each of their skulls at a range close enough to blow their faces apart. Faces that, for the split second before I pulled the trigger, looked at me with tired eyes that seemed to say, “Son, we have been waiting for you to show us the road to the Promised Land. Thank you for releasing us from our daily toil and opening the doors to The Kingdom Of Heaven”, as the words from Jeremiah 51:20-26 echoed through my head: “with you I will shatter men and women, old people and children…” Well they were male and female, well past retirement age, and they probably had kids who by now had kids of their own, so I’d managed to tick a couple of boxes along the way, and all told it wasn’t a bad evenings work. I could literally taste their gratitude as tiny fragments of skull and brains splattered the hood of their ancient Dodge, a vehicle which looked like it had more mileage on the clock than those two combined. After I’d despatched them I said a short prayer, wiped the goo off my face, and headed back home, a sense of enormous well being washing over me like the waves from a Waring Blender. That night I slept longer, deeper and safer than since I was a little kid lying in momma’s arms, breathing in the comfortably soothing intoxicating odour of cheap bourbon and stale tobacco, while listening to her gentle snoring as she slept off yet another forty eight hour bender.

I guess after that the genie was well and truly out of the bottle, but don’t get me wrong; I didn’t go on no spree or nothin’ like that. In fact, I laid low and carried on as normal until the heat died down, livin’ life as always, with a smile on my face and a dream in my heart. I attended choir every weekend and began to really study the good book, especially that Old Testament. Boy, how I love those pages, full of eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth, and none of this offering the other cheek to any two bit punk who steps up and socks you in the jaw. Hell, I like my God to be mean and angry, vengeful and bad tempered. That’s been the problem with this country ever since we got our asses kicked in ‘Nam. No backbone. I mean, that guy Travis something or other, I forget his last name. DeNiro played him in some movie I saw late one night on Channel 6. Drove a cab, hung out in porno theatres, had the hot’s for some broad who was in that tv series with Bruce Willis, dressed in combats and had a real cool haircut. A man you could get to like. A man who wanted to make a mark, to make a difference. In short, a man like me. After all, what’s life if you can’t make a difference? And I ain’t talkin’ about coffee mornings and cake bakes like they have at Rich Creek First Church Of God, worthy events that they no doubt are, uniting the community and sowing the seeds of love. No siree, that’s not what I’m about, although to truly understand where I’m coming from you’re gonna have to stick with me a little while longer.

‘Go West, young man’ was the rallying cry of our pioneer forefathers, so west I went, taking Country Road 2 out to where it meets Route 77 at Chelyan, which is close enough to Charleston so the folks there can pretend they live in the suburbs, but far enough away to be out of the jurisdiction of the city cops. Like I said, I’d waited until the heat from the August despatch had blown over before I found my next true believers, a middle aged couple involved in some heavy petting in the parking lot of a long deserted diner, a bit like the one David Vincent was looking for in the opening credits to The Invaders, although the only invasion taking place here was my wrath all over their sorry asses. Hell, I can remember stopping there a bunch of times back in the day for fresh baked apple pie topped with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. Daddy used to call in on the way back from ball games in Princeton. Said he loved the java, although from the look in his eye I figured it had less to do with the cup of mud in his paw and more to do with the waitresses figure and the way those dangerous curves used to swing underneath her orange uniform, the nylon crackling like an electrical pylon in a thunderstorm as she shimmied up and down the aisle between the plastic tables, coffee pot in one hand, order pad in the other, givin’ all the good ol’ boys the proverbial eye.

So, like I said, this couple must have been in their mid-forties, dressed in middle management threads and both sporting wedding rings, although somethin’ ‘bout the way they were going at it hammer and tong told me they weren’t married to each other. Hell! No couple that age would screw each other with such ferocity if they were long time hitched. Just doesn’t happen, at least outside of the movies. No. Those two were definitely having carnal knowledge of an illicit kind, the kind that instantly brought to mind Leviticus 20:10. ‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death’. Well you can’t argue with that, so I didn’t, and neither did they. One shot each in the back of the head through the rear window. Made an awful mess but hey, I wouldn’t be the one who had to clean it up. As I headed back home along the deserted back roads I felt as if I had accomplished something truly profound in ridding the world of two sinners. I’d leave it up to St.Peter to do the rest.

That Christmas I marked the festive season by taking my sleigh (in the shape of Pa’s old pick up) out along the Midland Trail, crossing the river on County Route 13 and cruising Deepwater Cotton Hill for a couple of miles until I spotted a semi parked up just outside of Kanawha Falls, the flickering light of a portable tv illuminating the cab of the rig. Closer inspection revealed that the trucker was tuned in to some out of state hard core porn channel while simultaneously enjoying what I believe is commonly known as hand relief, administered by a woman of dubious virtue dressed in a red cotton blouse with beer stains across the front that scarcely covered her tired, sagging breasts, and matched the colour of her cheaply died hair. She had to be fifty-five if she was a day, and the bored look on her face suggested she’d been in that particular line of work longer than she cared to remember. Now, despite what you may believe from what you’ve read about me in the scandal sheets, I’m not a stranger to emotion and, as a man, I’m familiar with the sheer sense of joy, release and exhilaration the climax to a much needed five knuckle shuffle can bring, which is why I waited until the precise moment when the trucker was about to scatter his seed in the direction of the harlots throat before making my entrance. Then I let them have it. One shot into the back of his head, which passed through his skull, out through the neck and down into the top of her cranium. For a moment I thought I’d got two for the price of one, but the anguished cry of stunned surprise followed by the low pitched gurgling sound as the blood oozed from a nasty looking head wound told me that this was in fact not the case. I was all for leaving her there in order to contemplate the error of her ways as she slipped in and out of consciousness until that little voice in my head suggested that it may not be such a good idea. After all, she could survive, which would totally defeat the object of my intention. She had to be despatched swiftly, for my own safety and that of her general well being. After all, I am not a man who revels in cruelty towards others, and unnecessary pain has no place in my world. I placed the cold steel of the barrel between her cracked teeth, watched the desperate pleading in her bloodshot eyes, and pulled the trigger. Her head exploded in a thousand different directions, painting the cab a lurid shade of red, the kind you only see in candy commercials. I closed the door, stepped down off the footplate and strolled back to my motor, the song of Jeremiah 48:10 sweet on my lips: “Cursed be he who does The Lords work remissly, cursed he who holds back his sword from blood”.

By now I was getting something of a reputation in the press and the law had finally cottoned on to the fact that this wasn’t a bunch of random drive-by’s but rather the work of ‘a lone disturbed individual preying on unsuspecting residents of The Valley region of West Virginia’, as the press release from the Sherriff’s Office so eloquently described me. There’s an old saying around these parts that a man should never take a dump on his own doorstep. Which is why I set my sights to the east.

If you head out of town along Turnpike Road where it runs alongside Little Elk Creek you end up by Keenan Cemetery. It was there that I offed a bunch of teenagers having a blanket party amongst the tombstones, drinking warm Schlitz from ten ounce cans and puffing on what appeared to be a badly rolled communal joint. As the last of the bunch crawled like the serpent that he was, blood spurting from a hole in his leg behind which resided the remains of a severely shattered knee, he begged for mercy then asked me why. Why? Isn’t it obvious, I told him, recalling that as I’d approached the group from behind the cover of a large hedgerow, I’d spotted a number of girls appearing to kiss each other while their male companions surrounded them in a tightly knit circle, encouraging ever more assiduous acts of gross indecency in order to further fuel the fires of their lust. Wasn’t it written in Leviticus 21:9 that ‘ a priest’s daughter who loses her honour by committing fornication and thereby dishonours her father also, shall be burned to death’? I could tell from the blank stare that this poor deluded fool had no idea what I was talking about, but sadly ignorance of the scriptures is no excuse, and for that reason alone he and his compatriots in carnality deserved to die.

I don’t know why, but that night I had a compulsion to keep moving, so I motored along good old Turnpike Road for the best part of an hour, feeling a strange sense of security in its abject loneliness, the comforting cloak of darkness enveloping me for miles, save for the odd light of an eerily isolated diner or gas station, or the illuminated sign pointing the way to one of the residential side roads that flecked the endless grey ribbon which was Route 39. Passing the incandescent harshness of the West Virginia Tire Disposal Yard I noticed it was almost three o’clock, a time when I was usually back home tucked up in bed, dreaming the dreams of the righteous ones. But that night was somehow different. I knew that at Summerville Lake Wildlife Area I’d find a campsite, populated by out of town vacationers; city types, foreigners, mixed race couples, people who followed religions that were clearly not the true way. ‘Whoever sacrifices to any God, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed’. So predicted Exodus 22:19. That would take care of them. As for the non-believers amongst the nocturnal hordes, did not Chronicles 15:12-13 reveal that ‘everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman’? So they were. I don’t recall how many were despatched, although I seem to remember hearing first reports on the radio as I drove home saying that early indications were that there were eighteen dead, the oldest an eighty five year old grandmother, the youngest a fourteen month old baby, while a dozen others lay critically ill from gunshot wounds in Morgantown Hospital. My initial joy was tempered by a feeling that I’d let my emotions get the better of me, encouraged impulse to encroach, and allowed things to get very, very messy. As I pulled into the driveway a little after five, the early morning sun was just breaking through the last remaining moonlight, painting the dark shadows a dull shade of yellow. It was at this moment that I realised this was most probably the beginning of the end.

I knew that if I was going to go out at all then it had to be in style. I had to leave a mark, the kind that wasn’t going to disappear after the tv news crews had packed up and left town. So in late July, after kicking my heels for months, sweating it out wondering if the law were gonna show up on my doorstep, I decided to hit the road for one last crusade, my mission – to turn sinners into saints. That Sunday I’d returned from choir and bible studies with a new set of words fresh in my head, like an oasis of light leading the way through a desert of darkness. ‘As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself’. Pure words of Wisdom 3:5-7, and all the inspiration I really needed. I’d show those unbelievers who ignored me at work; those secretarial sluts who teased me with their low cut blouses and hip hugging pencil skirts, throwing temptation in my path as if they were tossing bread to a duck in the park. They saw me as a loser, a loner, a pent up ball of confusion, but they were wrong, every last one of them, for I have been sent here to undertake the will of The Almighty. For I am The Chosen One, The Righteous Messenger, The Divine Intervention. Forgive them Father for they know not what they do, although I hear every word they call me behind my back. They think I’m a square with my corkscrew hair, navy blue overalls and work boots. They think the words LOVE and HATE tattooed on the knuckles of my fists are some kind of pose, etched in washable ink, taken off every night before I go to bed. Now I ain’t no Bob Mitchum, but I sure as hell know a doubter when I see one. I just have to look in their eyes when I push the barrel of daddy’s shooter in the direction of their face. I see the fear as they realise that the game is finally up. You can run and you can hide, but sooner or later God’s gonna cut you down, and they know it, even though they like to pretend otherwise, pleading for mercy, begging for release. I’d like to help but that ain’t my call. Like I tell ‘em, I’m just The Despatcher, there to send them on their way. What happens when they get to the other side is out of my hands, although I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character.

That evening I left home just after nightfall and headed north on Highway 77, sticking to the speed limit and keeping a close eye on the rear view mirror. At Parksville I stopped for gas at a Shell station, paid cash and then blasted the chink behind the counter for the sin of coming from a country that stole my future from under me. Feeling suitably inspired I continued on my travels until I hit Vienna, which ain’t much more than a bunch of wooden houses that straddle the highway like a hooker straddles a mark. I stopped for coffee and carrot cake in a Mom ‘n Pop diner before blasting the coloured waitress and two Mexican grill jockeys to kingdom come. Boy, did that make me feel good!

Back on the road I continued in a northerly trajectory, passing the Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Airport before hitting Marietta just before midnight. The whole town looked like it had turned in for the night, but as luck would I have it I found a late bar, had myself a cold one, and then deep sixed the barman, two spades playing pool and a high yellow chick in a skin tight number who had the audacity to address me as ‘honey’. Bet she didn’t think I was so sweet as I hiked up her dress, put my gun between her thighs, and banished her from The Garden Of Eden. She sure as hell weren’t no Eve, but she’d never see snake eyes again after that bullet ripped most of her stomach out and tossed it across the stained linoleum floor.

I decided at this point to call it a night. After all, you can have way too much of a good thing, so I swung south on Route 7 and then jumped north west on to 124 before hanging a left on to 33 just outside of Ravenswood, which took me back on to 77. That way I’m not going back on myself, inviting attention from the law, although I’m pretty sure I wasn’t spotted anywhere along the road to salvation. On the way I pass through Kenna, Sissonville, Rand and Belle, small towns scattered like specks of dust along the lonely highway, before picking up County Road 81 at Cedar Grove.

So there I was; three fifteen and I’m driving back to Jodie, just like I’ve done so many times before. I was born there, raised there, and I’ll most likely die there too. Sometimes I wish I’d never seen the place, or had the guts to git, split ‘n quit while the gettin’ was good, but I guess I’m just a small town boy at heart, although I can’t say I haven’t been tempted on more than one occasion by the bright lights of the big city At least until I found my callin’ and got to thinkin’ that a hole in the wall like this is just about the best place in the world to fade into the background. Like I said, I’m virtually anonymous here, which ain’t such a bad thing. After all, no one’s ever gonna think of looking for God’s Despatcher in a quiet little backwater like this. Like Lee Harvey Oswald before me, I’m learning to be invisible, but like Lee I know that one day I’m gonna have to take the fall. But until that day I’ll keep on doing The Lords work, spreading love and happiness to all who cross my path. After all, I’m just a small town boy living in a small town world.

Jodie is my salvation, but I know she’ll end up being the death of me.