15.

Easter Sunday we pointed the Buick east and headed home. Once again Little Chris was behind the wheel, smoking and grimacing at the shit sandwich he’d made for himself. He’d sold zero pills in Austin. He saw the entire place as being a Potemkin village of coolness disguising the ugly reality of what he was and what he meant to the people there he once called friends. For no other reason besides stubborn foolishness, he rejected any thought of staying anyway if only for the simple matter that certain people in Baton Rouge wanted him dead.

“Fuck it,” he said as Texas whipped by. “I used to own that town.”

For me I couldn’t wait to get out of Baton Rouge for good. I had been poisoning that place off and on for nine years. Friends had gotten in and out of LSU and come back for law degrees and here I was still trying to pass college algebra. No license, no girl, nothing but a lot of debt and a half dozen suspensions. But for now I had clarity. That last bad trip had scared me more than any of the ones before. Even that hellish day in New Orleans, with carnival ringing in my ears and the uncertain thoughts of whether I was alive and experiencing all of this or simply having that last incident at Owl Creek, so to speak, no, none of that could compare to what I felt in those few moments in San Antonio. I had willed myself to not lose my shit. I had become an Acid Christ. For now I knew they were everywhere.

I had met one this past Mardi Gras day. He was a salty old Mick who marched with a crew of his fellow Hibernians. Two years ago I took a random black and white photo of him while I was partying with my friends. The next year I spotted him again at the same intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles. I pointed him out to Mrs. A. and then snapped his photo, that one in vivid color. Then I saw him again. Three years in a row this clean shaven, white haired, gleamy eyed Irishman crossed my path. In the middle of my freakout, my eyes hidden behind sunglasses to hide the terror I felt, I approached him. We were about two blocks from Canal Street and the parades were passing like one continuous riot. In all directions we heard sirens.

“Excuse me,” I said. “You don’t know me but my name is Gabe Doucette.”

“Hello Gabe,” he said with a boozy smile. He was in full green and white silk costume with a jesters cap on his head. He was carrying a tall sheaf of paper flowers which he’d been trading for kisses and he wore the look of a man who’d kissed thousands of strange women in his life. I told him that I’d seen him three years in a row and twice taken his picture and now I had to meet him. I’m not sure he understood me. He was heavily sedated and I was tripping on acid. But he listened patiently and when I was finished rambling he clapped me on the back.

“I just got off the phone with my brother in Baltimore,” he said. “You know what today is in Baltimore?”

He paused to let me think about it. Sirens were blasting. Drunks walked the streets in profusion. Freaks in costumes, freaks in my head, the parades blowing down the street in sheets of screams and brass bands. I searched my mind. Baltimore. What was happening in Baltimore today? Drawing a blank I looked at the old Mick and said, “No, what’s today in Baltimore.”

“It’s Tuesday,” he said, casually looking around at the chaos that surrounded us. “In Baltimore, today is Tuesday. That’s it. Tuesday.”

Then he shook my hand and walked away.

That clarity. I loved it. I needed it. And on the ride back to Baton Rouge, something happened that made things even clearer, more obvious that there was no one more worth saving than myself. It was a simple thing, as always. A jeep blew past us outside Houston. The girl I had met a few days ago, Sunny, was behind the wheel and I pointed this out. Little Chris made a face like he’d just smelled his own shit.

“That bitch,” he said. “Another liar. She said she was leaving a lot earlier than us. She just didn’t want me riding back with her.” He stubbed out his 10,000^th cigarette and rolled the window back up. Adjusting his battered jockey body in the soft bench seat he said, “I’m glad I fucked her ass that time she passed out at Starr’s party.” He laughed real mean, a scrathchy laugh from the back of his throat. “Hell yeah,” he said. “I tore that shit up.”