The white ’61 Chevy sailed through the night, as much like a
ship at sea as it was a car on the road.
Not only was the front end pretty clapped out by then, the ball joints
loose in their sockets and the tie rods tired, but Shifter had fitted it with a
foam padded steering wheel that was all of 8” diameter, like a huge fat donut
attached to the column. On a back road
like this one somewhere near Elma, with a pronounced crown to the road and the
memory of thousands of log truck loads imprinted in the blacktop, driving the
car was an exercise in controlled drifting from side to side as the slack
shifted from one wheel to the other, requiring correction by the driver. That’s probably what caught the attention of
the cop who was behind them at the time.
Under Lefty’s seat was a pound of the lowest grade of cheap Mexican pot,
so when the lights came on it was a special thrill.
Shifter was Lefty’s high school buddy. He was lean and mean, and could grow a beard
years before some of his classmates, the cause of much envy and status among
the boys. They worked together at the
smorgasboard restaurant and partied often.
The Chevy was his car, handed down from his big brother. They had spent all of one night working on it
shortly before that trip to Ocean Shores.
They replaced a used clutch disc with a different used clutch disc for
some stupid reason. It didn’t help much
that they put it in backwards, either. They
didn’t know any better. He had to tow it
up to the local shop to get it fixed for $20, and for that they stayed up all
night and got all dirty. Good thing they
had lots of peed spills.
So the way it started, there was this musician guy, and he
had quit his band, but they held on to some of his equipment and promised to pay
for it, but never did, and he wanted to repossess it. A friend of his was an entrepreneurial sort,
and he arranged for Shifter and Lefty to accompany him to the band’s house and
be the strong-arm goons in case there was any trouble. There wasn’t, and the payment for their efforts
was the bunco Mexican dope, which the musician guy had been burned on during a
setup deal in a parking lot on the side of Aurora Avenue North where you pay
your money and hope they come back with something and sometimes they do, but it
isn’t worth a shit. They didn’t know any
better, so they took it. It quickly
became evident that they were stuck with this stringy bale of raw hemp that
smelled bad, and tasted worse than it burned, which it didn’t, much.
Getting rid of this stuff was the problem. They started in White Center, of course, their
home stomping grounds. In the parking
lot of Lou’s or Herfy’s they ran into Pat Goonbart, one of the local potheads,
whose claim to fame was that he could roll joints faster than anyone, having
practiced to the point where it was one smooth motion, very impressive. He got stoned a lot for free with that skill
of course, which showed he was a pretty sharp guy. “Hey, Pat”, Lefty yelled out the window.
“What’s goin’ on?” “Not much”, he said,
leaning in. “Hi, Shifter; what are you
guys up to?” “We got a bunch of dope we
want to sell”, Lefty replied. His ears
perked up at that. “Why don’t you climb
in the back and take a look?” “Certainly!”,
he said. “Fuckin’ A!”. That proved to be a mistake. Pat was no fool, and he quickly realized what
they had. “This stuff is bunk!” he
said. “Let me outta here.” So their goose was cooked, since Pat knew
everybody and talked to all of them.
They had to get outta town with the dope, find somewhere the local
denizens of wouldn’t know them. Ocean
Shores was the place. Everybody knew it
was party central on weekends, even in October.
Yeah, right. So off they went,
figuring to sleep in the car or get a hotel room with all the money they made
selling dope to the tourists at $10 a bag.
Sure, Eddie. They didn’t know any
better, and it sounded like a good idea at the time.
When the lights came on Lefty went into flashback mode, to
the time when after the community meeting at the drop-in center he noticed that
someone had left their keys in their car in the parking lot, so Shifter snatched them out of the ignition and they
came back later and stole the car. They
went for a joyful joy ride until they ran a stop sign on Roxbury at high speed
in front of a cop just getting off duty, which in retrospect turned out to be a
mistake. The cop peeled out after them
and caught up by the old reservoir, which was surrounded by a thick salal patch
in a forest of madrona and hemlock that was the hangout of all the kids in the
neighborhood. As the cop pulled up
behind the stalled car, Shifter turned to Lefty and said, “Scoot over next to
the door and hold the handle open, but don’t open the door till I say
run!”. Then he rolled down the window as
the cop approached. “You got a license
and registration?” asked the fat old officer as he reached the driver’s
door. “Sure”, said Shifter, and then
pulled down the visor as if looking for the registration, which wasn’t
there. Then he scooted over a bit and
pulled down the other visor, likewise empty.
He scooted over a bit more, opened the glove box door and shouted,
“Run!” Lefty threw the door open and
they took off like track stars. That
salal patch had to be 40 feet wide and a good 4 feet deep, and they blew through
there like two gazelles beating feet from a hyena. All the old cop could do was stand there and
say bad words out loud. They stopped to
catch their breath on the other side of the patch in the woods, and listened
for signs of pursuit. They knew the
patrol cars would be out looking for them, so they had to get through the
projects, which were between them and the safety of home base, before he could
call out the reserves.
That proved to be a good strategy, as the police naturally
assumed it was a couple of bad boys from the projects who did it and
concentrated their search in that neighborhood.
They only ran into one prowl car on the way home, cruising down the
perimeter road shining his spotlight on all the houses and driveways. They just had to keep the house itself
between them and the spotlight for a bit, then slipped out over the fence in
the corner lot and got away clean. It’s
interesting that poor people projects are fenced to keep people in, while rich
people projects are fenced to keep them out.
But this time they were far from home in unfamiliar territory,
and would have to bullshit their way through it. Fortunately, they didn’t have any beer with
them, and had been smoking only cigarettes on the road, so they got off with a
lecture about defective equipment when they said they were headed for Shifter’s
uncle’s house in Ocean Shores.
When they got to town they realized they had a problem. They didn’t know anybody, weren’t old enough
to get in the taverns, and there didn’t seem to be any local public events
happening that Saturday night where they could mix with our potential
clientele. So they resorted to the
desperation move of pulling up alongside some likely customers in a grocery
store parking lot and asking out the window, “Hey, do you guys know anyone who
wants to buy some pot?”
The first time they tried it actually worked. Three guys climbed into the back seat and
asked to see the merchandise. They
bought one bag for $10 and stole three more from them, assisted by Lefty
handing over the entire grocery bag and enabling the old switcheroo con. I’m sure they had a great laugh over it
later, until they smoked the first joint and discovered how badly they had been
burned. By then Shifter and Lefty were
already out of town, having realized there was no future in selling bunk dope
to strangers in parking lots. As they sailed
down the highway toward home, Shifter and Lefty looked at each other, and, by
unspoken agreement, Lefty rolled down the window and threw the remaining bags
of worthless dope into the night. Sic
transit Gloria mundus, caveat emptor, and carpe diem.
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