10.

We visited some of Little Chris’ friends. These were people from Baton Rouge who long ago abandoned that septic city of pothead busting cops. Here the music ran through the water system and weed was so easy to find that it was practically legal. Their bungalow was in my old neighborhood and a few of them were on the porch smoking cigarettes when we pulled up in my antique car. They eyed Chris warily as he approached them with a broad smile and an outstretched hand. They were cordial to me and thought my dog was the bees’ knees but for Little Chris there was a big plate of Fuck Yourself. We went inside and sat around the TV set watching music videos and passing a bong. I was introduced to a young woman named Sunny, girlfriend of one of the guys. She shook my hand but would not even look at Little Chris. No one offered us a beer or even water. Little Chris asked a few questions about people they knew. He was surprised so many lived in Austin now. None of them had ever bothered to contact him. He was one of the reasons they had split.

I could easily relate to that feeling. Several years earlier, my buddies all ganged up on me to tell me what a shit I had become. It was true. My closet was filled with my friends’ clothes. I’d lied and cheated and gotten fired from every single job I ever had, wrecked cars, wrecked motorcycles, screwed over all my girlfriends, on and on they laid it on me, making me feel like the insect that I was. They weren’t without faults of course. Peter for example never had a penny (‘I have to cash my check’) yet drank his share anyway. TC would bang your girlfriend as soon as look at her. Russell and Maginnis were incorrigible drunks. But I was singled out simply because they all knew I was different and they encouraged that difference, that need to taste from the well of sorrows, that need to walk through the doors of perception, that need to be lashed to the mast as the Sirens scream, if just to say I’d been there and done that. They knew that and they wanted me to do it and so like any good tribe they drove me from them, sent me off to sea and acid eating seasons of endless summers. They wanted me to feel and do all the shit they wouldn’t be feeling or doing. And if I lived and if I didn’t become completely mad, bad and dangerous to know then I’d share some secret with them, some elixir of beauty that I had extracted from years of wickedness.

In Little Chris’ case, I’m sorry to say that his crew wasn’t ready to welcome him back to the pack. Even I was somewhat shady despite the car and the dog and the money. They were rather unimpressed that we were driving to the border tomorrow to buy a bunch of drugs. Austin was full of drugs. Acid, X, mescaline, coke, good old stinky bud, it could all be had here. Sadly, nobody in this house had any to sell. In fact they wanted us to leave. The TV went silent, the bong stayed unpassed, the silence grew like noise itself until no one could stand it. I got up, Little Chris got up, we said our goodbyes and I called my dog.

Someone had the grace to ask us when we were heading back and I said, “Easter Sunday.” That person mentioned that Sunny was heading back that day as well. She was finishing up her last semester at LSU, same as me.

“Maybe we could caravan,” said Little Chris, making that last effort to be human. His intentions were completely kind, I’m sure of that. Later he would become almost unrecognizable to me but that first morning in Austin, Little Chris was still as sweet as chess pie. It didn’t matter. The road to our own personal hell is paved flat with our best intentions. When Little Chris suggested caravanning, Sunny’s face morphed into a mask of hurried fear, as if she’d just glimpsed herself being hacked to bits.

“I’m leaving really early,” she said. “I might even leave the night before.”

With that we were done with Little Chris’ friends the way they were done with him. It was almost as sad as losing Crazy A. to another man, but not half as shocking. I remembered Big Chris’ words. ‘Be careful. That dude is bad news.’