conversation with the desk guy at the aubange french foreign legion office at 2:18 am
by John Crawford
Things went south for me after THE JUGG was crowned by-and-huge Mr. Truancy in that part of the city from Broadway to Milton Avenue. He was only fourteen and still cellulite-fat like a jug and he rode around on his Schwinn looking much more no-vacancies than anyone else by far. Kids who used to listen to me sat down and listened to him instead and Gurk told me no hard feelings Mr. Kranz but it’s because THE JUGG knocked up some old woman all the way over on St. Paul and got away with it somehow. Everybody sat and listened though he never said nothing and he was mute.
Why don’t they want me anymore is what I was asking Moe at the union office later that week and he said Leonard you’re pushing twenty-eight, so at what point do you become the weird geezer freak offering booze to kids instead of the truancy deity the truant kids need. I said I don’t know.
Once me and my boys were down there on Gay Street in the senior home parking lot and we were being real cool and burning dime-sized holes in things with a big magnifying glass Gurk bought from a magazine. He said look at this magnifying glass I got from a magazine Mr. Kranz, and I said now this is something we can have a good time with.
My boys were championship-grade truant. They gave up making truancy cops like they used to. My boys could sit plain-sight and throw things at cars or tear up some lady’s petunias to nothing. Gurk was nine days and Raymond was six and little Thorne-Michael was some lousy one and a half but it was cool because that meant he slipped out. They came to me because I always knew what to do.
I was showing my boys how to really fuck up an anthill and they were looking interested and ready to try themselves when THE JUGG pedaled up from wherever on his Schwinn and looked over my shoulder and looked no-vacancies and said nothing because he never said much of anything. I said hey there THE JUGG and I said would you like to try. He stared and shrugged and got back on his Schwinn and pedaled away, and my boys just got up and left me and followed him because he’s THE JUGG even though he didn’t say follow me or nothing. They just left me there in the parking lot. That’s how I knew I was finished.
Like again then two weeks later I was grounded bad for burning dime-sized holes in my bedroom carpet, and after my boys spent the better part of three days unsuccessfully petitioning my dear-sweet aunt to let me out, they went dwelling down on Hoffman looking for this stiff called Cap just because they heard from somebody that Cap owed THE JUGG some money. Cap was owing everybody money just on account of his charm-city-something and you’d ask him for it and he’d show you his palms and smile real big like he’d got nothing to hide, and he didn’t. It didn’t much matter how much you gave Cap on loan or charity. He made it gone the next day on payday loan back-pay and hot pockets for his little boy.
If they’d asked me I would have told them to leave him alone. But the boys got it in their heads that they were going to get Cap back for stiffing THE JUGG, and so they got in Thorne-Michael’s parents’ basement with the phone and got Raymond to put on his daddy-sells-cars voice and he rang Cap at home and Raymond said listen Cap this is your payday repayment guy here from Kwik Kash. He said to Cap your shit has gone to collect big time and I’m going to make you pay up.
Now they told me Cap didn’t say nothing for a little while because Cap’s seen some nasty collectors in his day and he’s hard to faze. But after Raymond hushed down the boys from laughing he said to Cap (he said) you’re overdue and snowballing Cap buddy and I’m going to more-or-less make my youngster associates kidnap your boy and do nasty things to him if you don’t pay up. And they told me that the Cap blubbered and slobbered into the phone and said he just don’t have the money, and Raymond (still daddy-sells-cars) told him he ought to meet the youngsters out near the cemetery down-block in an hour to strike a deal.
It was near ninety degrees in May but they got on their jackets and tough-clothes and rode their Schwinns out down-block to the cemetery to wait for Cap and they leaned against the fence there with their arms crossed and waited until he got there, Cap grey like dead, and the first thing he said was where’s my boy. Where’s my little boy. Cap’s boy was very safe at school. He was a straight-A student. He used to shovel my aunt’s driveway when it snowed.
The boys went ahead and posed and told him they’ll forgive his payday debts and leave his boy alone and even hand him a check for a hundred clams if he can climb to the top of that tree right over there. It was a nasty tree and it was tall.
Cap looked at it and swallowed and said okay and tried to do it, and he tried. He hopped the cemetery fence and tried to climb right up and fell flat on his back. The boys just about horsed over and died first. They watched Cap get up and try again, and again, and he kept falling down, and down a few more times. And each fall was either nasty or nastier, until his face got all gross because he was face-falling instead of back-falling sometimes. And that there was funny until it wasn’t, and then it was awkward, and then worrying, and then slowly and then all at once it was queasy.
After seven or eight falls Gurk and Thorne-Michael called out to him that he could stop now and Cap kept saying that wasn’t the deal and kept climbing and falling nastier. He wanted those paydays forgiven or something, is what they were telling me later. I’ve never even seen a hundred dollars in my life.
Cap had already gotten red and mud smeared all over his square face when THE JUGG pedaled up from wherever to see what the commotion was all about and he rode up next to Raymond who was sweating clean through his tough-clothes and feeling something almost identifiable. THE JUGG looking no-vacancies and staring at the scene and watching Cap get up and climb and fall twice. THE JUGG then watching the boys watch Cap snivel and cry and call for James-Cap. And then blinking and climbing back on his bike and pedaling that thing off and back toward wherever. The boys watched him ride off, and they watched Cap fall one more time, and they waited and then followed.
Meanwhile I was getting the works at home. I cleaned my room. Thorne-Michael relayed the whole thing to me via flashlight-morse at half-past eleven. I transcribed the whole thing on the back of a Superman comic book. I was dismayed.
I went down to the union office in the morning that Monday and lounged on the couch and told Moe and said how am I supposed to compete with something like that. He said Leonard that’s literally a felony. I asked Moe am I washed up. I said what is someone supposed to make of themselves. I said I’m beginning to think that I’ve been going about this all wrong.
Moe asked me for the names of my boys, and he’d gotten his pen and paper out, but I was already out the door and moving back up Broadway. I needed to go somewhere else. I did the only thing anyone can do when they’re in a condition like mine. I got my things together and kissed my auntie goodbye and left to join the foreign legion. How you say. Oui, c’est vrai.
Picture of John Crawford
BIO: John "Jack Crawford" Crawford subsists on lamppost condensation on 33rd Street in Baltimore, Maryland. His work appears in cool places like Bruiser, Don't Submit!, and BULL. Find him anywhere @jcrawfordwrote.