Maybe I'm paranoid. Or maybe they really are out to get me.

I think they have some kind of vendetta against me. They are looking to get some pay back. I killed one of theirs, doesn't matter to them if it was an accident or not. I'm sure they are out to get me...................

I suppose I should explain. It all started about 2 weeks ago. I've been running routes 7 nights a week, every week, for the last 10 weeks or so. About 2 or 3 weeks ago is when it all went down. I know, 2 or 3 weeks is a big spread, but the nights are all running one into the other. This ridunculous work load is whats kept me from doing much writing, or much of anything else for that matter. They tell me it's all going to wind down by the 5th of November, I can't wait, I definitely need a break. I'm just worried I may not make it until the 5th. They may get to me before then. If that proves to be the case, if they manage to take me out, I want it on record. Need to leave a trail for the cops to follow.

Back to that night.

I'm driving south on 65 highway, a few miles outside of Warsaw. Hillbilly country. At least this time of year. It's getting too cold for the lake crowd to come down. They've mostly all pulled their boats out of the water, winterized their lake cabins. Now it's just the locals. I haven't seen so many pickup trucks since my last trip to Oklahoma. All the stores I've been delivering to in these parts have that same vibe, heavy with B.O. and lots of Camo clothing.......

Let me back up for a minute, try to explain what I mean. I've been running a seasonal product to various locations of the nations largest retailer. The one with blue haired  greeters in blue vests. Yeah, that one. Occasionally I'll run some of the local stores here in KC, but for the most part I'm spending my time running up and down every two lane piece of shit "Highway" in the rural areas of Missouri and Kansas. Now you would think that a retail store that sells everything from T Bones to Televisions would have plenty of hygiene products on hand. Soap, deodorant, shit like that. And they do, but judging from the pervasive odor of armpits and ass these Billy Bobs are spending all their cash on skoal and Taylor Swift posters, rather than soap and Right Guard. Doesn't seem to matter if I'm in Warsaw Missouri or Hiawatha Kansas, they all smell the same. Reminds me of prison, same smell.  So now that you get an idea of where I'm spending my nights, back to The Night it all went down...........

Like I said, I'm running 65 mph down 65 highway. It narrows down to just a narrow 2 lanes a few miles north of Warsaw. I crest a hill and just as I notice that the oncoming traffic has stopped, it happens. The stupid fucker just walked right out in front of me. A deer. About the size of a Great Dane. I hit the furry fucker before I can even touch the brake pedal. You know how you can look back on an incident that took a matter of seconds, and you recall all the minutia like it was in slow motion. This thing was like that. I notice the pickup trucks lights aren't moving in the oncoming lane. I see a big ass buck standing on the narrow shoulder to my right. Next thing I know the now dead doe is right there in front of me. I've still got some of her hair in my grill, kind of my way of sending out a message. Problem is, I think it's pissed off the rest of the deer community. When I hit her I got mad lucky. Normally you hit a deer at 65 mph in a small 4 door modern-ish car, you can pretty much kiss your car goodbye. If you are lucky, a few grand later and your car is about the same as pre-collision. If you are unlucky, you end up on the 6 O'clock news. Man dies from deer antler to the face. This time I was lucky. I hit the deer, she does a triple back flip across both lanes of road. Max is snoozing in the passenger seat, never even wakes up until I stop the car. I pull to the narrow shoulder, rattled. The Billy Bob in the pickup drives on, never so much as a " You okay?". So much for country hospitality. You cant get the pricks to stop waving as they pass you on the road, but that friendly farmer bullshit goes right out the window if it requires actual speaking. I examine my car. I come away with a dent in the front of the hood, a cracked headlight cover, and a bunch of deer hair embedded in the grill. I cross the road, the deer is as dead as a door knob. I spit on her just for good measure.

I've run that same route about 4 or 5 times since. Every single time I've had at least one near miss with a deer. I'll see them standing 3 or 4 deep off the side of the road, just staring at me. It's like being mean mugged in the prison yard. Some prick giving you the fish eye, trying to size you up. Whoever looks away first loses. Last night I had like 5 of these fuckers just step out on the road, stand there, looking at me like they are Sam Jackson, daring me to say "What" one more time. I'm so jumpy I locked my brakes up when I thought I saw a deer standing at the edge of the road. Turns out it was a mailbox. One of those stupid mailboxes that looks like a giant fish, a bass or something. I get home at night, I've got to self medicate with a stick of hippy lettuce the size of my thumb. It helps, don't judge. When I started running these routes, before I killed the bitch, I was relaxed, driving through the dark, having fun winding through the curves. Now, I'm hunched over the wheel like your grandma, trying to scan both sides of the road. I ran over an already dead coon or opossum last night. A little effeminate shriek escaped my lips before I could check myself.  It's a fuckin embarrassment.

I know what you are thinking. " MM has lost it. Dude has sugar in his tank"  Maybe so, maybe I am losing it, but I tell you these deer are fuckin with me. They know. I figure its come down to this, Fight, Flee, or Climb a Tree. I'm afraid of heights, and I'm too stubborn to run, so I guess it's on like a pot of neck bones. Its either me or them. I'm gonna blow up a couple of these Jason Miller pics, stick em to the side of my car. I figure the deer don't know shit about this guy. All they'll see is some whack job holding one of their cousins melons. Far as they know, dude is like a deer Al Qaeda or something. Next time I see one of these furry hoofed rats standing on the side of the road I'll do the old open car door clip on em. It's on like Donkey Kong, if I quit now, the deer terrorists win. But just in case I don't make it. If they manage to take me out in some crazy suicide brown bomber type plot. Just know I didn't lay down. I went out sitting up.

And somebody, Feed Max.

Late night thoughts from the road...................

It's been a minute. Then again, I've been on the road every night since my last post. They've been working me like a white mouth mule. I wrote a long post on the trials and tribulations of this newish job, it's still unfinished and I'll probably get around to wrapping it up eventually. But first I want to tell you about a kid I knew way back when. Funny thing about this new gig, it gives me huge chunks of time to think, to recall, yet it leaves me with little time or desire to write it down. This past 5 or 6 weeks, I've spent the better part of nearly every night driving the rural roads and highways that wind through Missouri and Kansas. There's little to see at night, just dark shapes slipping past, and the occasional deer jumping out in my path like a hoofed kamikaze. I pass through these small towns, that are already sleeping well before midnight. Small towns at night are the exact opposite of city nights. Even late into the night and dark early A.M., the city doesn't sleep, it dozes. There's always someone out there, moving. It's still lit up. Small towns go dark at night, save the occasional motel sign, it's neon partially lit. Vacancy glowing in red, maybe a letter or two missing. I suppose passing through these towns at night reminds me of my youth, summers spent in Oklahoma with my grandparents. And Brent Riley. It all reminds me of Brent.

I don't know if Parents still send their kids off to stay with the grandparents for the summer. From the age of 6, up to about 12 when I just became to much to handle, I spent virtually every summer in Marlow Oklahoma. I made maybe 2 or 3 friends during those years. Brent was one and probably the only one I'd really count as a friend rather than just some kid I hung out with for a few days, before they annoyed me with that Okie twang and Opie Taylor like personality. I just never was able to find any common ground with small town kids. Ironically, I picked up that okie twang as a kid, still carry it to this day.

Brent was a wild kid, fearless as rough neck kids from working class roots tend to be. His father went by the name Pee Wee, short guy who ran a D X service station on the east edge of town. I remember him as a quiet type. Always smelled of oil and gasoline, never much to say. In 6 summers I imagine I saw him sleeping in a chair in his living room, more than I saw him up and moving. Brent's mother on the other hand never seemed to stop moving, and talking. Really more like yelling. She yelled everything. Not in a particularly angry way, she was just a loud woman. What I recall about her is strange, the things our memories attach to people. She had gray hair, was probably in her mid 30's and completely gray. She was also the first woman I'd ever seen who didn't shave under her arms. She wore those shapeless summer shifts that were common back then. Some kind of floral pattern, the material thin and the color all but washed out. She had hair on her legs, and even on her chin and upper lip. An attractive woman she was not.

The Riley's were strict, or at least the mother was. She was quick to the belt, and more than once I noticed Brent or one of his brothers walk stiffly from one of her getting your mind right sessions. That said, I don't think she was a cruel woman, I just think it was how she was raised. It was what she knew. Also it was a reaction to an older son who had died in a car wreck on some Oklahoma dirt road. Liquor and the wrong crowd cost her a child, and she would be damned if it would ever happen again. At least that's how I see it now. They never talked about that lost brother. I heard about it from Clara, my grandmother. For some reason Brent's parents thought I was okay, I was one of the few kids ever allowed in their house. One of the few friends that Brent was allowed to have.

One of Brent's older brothers, by a couple years, was a fat kid. The thing I recall about him is that he would eat just about anything. A couple miles outside of town was a spot we would all go hang out at. Beaver creek. The local swimming / fishing hole. Okies noodle, everyone else fishes. Noodling is when you get down in the water and feel for holes in the bank. Feel in those holes for large catfish, and pull them out with your bare hands. Brent noodled, or at least tried to. While I never witnessed him catch a fish I did see him stick his arm up to the shoulder in holes along the banks of Beaver creek. Brent's brother on the other hand was a bait fisherman. We would stop off at Pratts Redbud grocery store and the brother would buy a box of frozen bait shrimp. Brent and I would go about the business of swimming and unsuccessful noodling, while his brother would thaw the block of shrimp in the warm brown water. He might bait his hook once. Beyond that single shrimp, the remainder of the shrimp found it's way down his gullet. He would start a small fire and roast the sand filled shrimps like marshmallows on a stick. He was fat for a reason, and like I said, he'd eat anything in his path.



It was during a trip back for a funeral, I don't recall which one, that I heard the news about Brent. He had also outgrown his childhood, if not his small town roots. His mothers belt no longer to be feared, no longer enough to keep him in line and safe. Not even in a small town like Marlow. The details were sketchy, and I recall it was my aunt that informed me of Brent's death the previous summer. At the local drive in , where the small town kids hung out, filling their coke cups with cheap whiskey. A fight broke out, Brent was stabbed once through the heart and bled out in the gravel lot. A good kid, from a simple background. Belts, protective parents, and a sleepy town wasn't enough to keep him safe.

It was while driving through a string of small central Kansas towns the other night, that I thought of Brent. Just me, the dark shapes sliding past my window, and ghosts from the past. Funny how a kid like Brent could meet such a fate, tucked safely away in some small town. While I tempted fate on a daily basis, year after year, and grew old enough to try to make sense of it all. Driving through the night, thinking of people and places in the distant past. Trying to make sense of it all. Coming up blank.