Egregious

You’re not going to like me. I’m used to it.

It’s as hard to justify as it is to understand. Some people call it sleeping rough. Government calls it unsheltered homeless. I call it home.

You have to understand though. I choose this. It’s cheap. Many years ago, in countries like Mali, Lebanon and Zaire, I got into the habit of sleeping in any conditions, on any surface. I don’t talk about that much.

I avoid homeless aggregations though. They’re a magnet for drugs, fleas and dirt. Also for do-gooders, police, city council, religious nutcases, thugs. Aggregated homeless. Congregated? Anyway - easy targets. The Latin verb ‘gregare’ means to gather, to assemble. Yeah, yeah I read books. Suck it up. ‘Gregare’ is the root of the word egregious which originally meant outside the group or the society, as in outstanding or distinguished. I like that. It’s come to mean ‘really bad’ which is a pity. Call me egregious.

Also – cities. People in a centrifuge. Money at the top and no-money at the bottom. You can shove your social stratification up your over-worked and under-funded sewer. In ancient Rome they called it the cloaca. I love that word.

I have a sleeping roll and a blanket which doubles as a cloak in cold weather. I travel light, sleep mostly under bridges way out in nowhere land. Usually a few miles from the nearest town. I aim for towns with a diner next to a gas station. I walk into town, get a coffee, get a ride.

I don’t stick my thumb out. That’s old-school. When folks could be trusted.

I aim for a person who sees me as a part of their tribe. It’s as simple as that. I buy a coffee and spread my carefully protected SIG-Sauer weapons brochure on the table. That’s all there is to it. Seriously. I can talk about guns till the sun sets.

Someone in the gun community is bound to stop and chat. Good people. Kind people. People who ask where I’m going and do I have a lift. No sir/ma’am I don’t but I’d be grateful for one. Where are you heading? Well bless me but I’m heading in that direction too. I tell them I don’t have a weapon on me – it’s important not to appear a threat. Somehow that’s ironic but I won’t dwell on it. Sometimes I even get offered a bed and a shower.

I stay clean. That’s important. I’m familiar with trucker’s showers, YMCAs, laundromats, low bar motels.

I try to make sure the road is clear when I slip down under a bridge for the night. Sometimes roads are busy and people see me. Sometimes people with a poor sense of what is righteous and what is wrong think that punishing me for my choices will improve their path to heaven or at least impress their thick-headed friends.

They soon learn how wrong they are. I maintain my self-defence training. Always have. Any town with a cheap gym or boxing club will see the colour of my dollars. Survival matters. I learnt that you have to work at it though. It don’t come easy. Just like John Lennon said.

Threats to my survival are just an occasional annoyance. They soon learn I don’t die easy. I don’t bruise easy. I get in first and close down the threat.

I don’t waste time like a cat with a bird in its mouth. It’s over quicker than they imagine. Imagine. Just like John Lennon said. Though I might be getting the context a little skewed.

So, anyway, enough about me. Aaron was a small, thin guy. A diner at a nowhere town in Nebraska called Gurley. I had to stop there because my name is Erin Gurl. Also the diner was called The Outlaws. Hard to resist. Across from the grain silos, and just down the road from a disused garage with broken windows. If I didn’t get a ride I could slip in there for the night and be gone before sunup the next morning.

Aaron saw the SIG-Sauer brochure and slipped into the seat opposite. Unusual. People usually stand and chat for a while. Jeans, check shirt, face rippled like he’s had bad acne in the past, a sharp nose, eyes that flicked here there and everywhere. Sometimes you get them. The world’s a circus and some are clowns.

“You got a gun?” he said, pointed at the brochure.

“Nope, just looking.”

“Damn!”

“Damn? Why damn?”

The diner door banged open and two men in hunting gear stormed in, looked around. Their gazes settled on skinny Aaron and me.

“That reason,” he said and stared down at the laminex. Like they’d go away if he just didn’t look at them.

They came over to our table. The shorter one with a long red beard and an angry, sunburnt face limped. The other one was heavier, with a shaved head and a trimmed back beard. He stood back while redbeard leaned on the table and looked at the skinny guy.

“Aaron Sleeman,” he said in a mean, high-pitched voice. “Got company I see,” and he turned to me.

I looked back. Straight back. He didn’t expect that. Expected me to look away, to be a little scared, anxious. I don’t do those emotions.

He looked at his big bud who took over staring at me. He turned back to Aaron.

“Not too many options left Aaron. Sleeman.” Turned the name into an insult. I guessed Aaron was Jewish. I’m not Jewish, but now I was all on his side. Can’t abide rudeness.

“Probably more options than you realise,” I said. “Aaron was just about to buy me a coffee, which means I owe him a social debt, if you can understand that kind of language.”

“You got some lip old man.”

I’m not that old. 70 isn’t that old, though the grey hair suggests.

“You got some bad manners leaning on our table,” I said.

The diner boss, Shawn, brought my coffee over. Leaned in front of redbeard, put my cup down.

“Haven’t see you fellers round here before. Can I get you anything?” Good man Shawn, reducing the tension. Must come by Gurley again some time and try that pulled pork.

They sized him up, looked at me and Aaron. “Just passing through,” redbeard said and they backed off and left. A Dodge RAM spat dirt and gravel and they headed south on Gold Rush Byway. Shawn headed back behind the counter, shaking his head.

“You already bought a coffee,” Aaron said to me.

“Buy yourself one. No sense leaving here for a while with Bib and Bub out there on the highway.”

Turned out Aaron had gone guarantor for a cousin in a car purchase with a Sidney car dealer. The cousin had defaulted. He suspected they were calling in his guarantee but he didn’t have the money.

“Why did you go guarantor if you don’t have the cash?”

“He said he was fine for it. He knew the dealer and was getting a good deal. It was just a formality, he said”

“Relatives,” I said. Like a curse.

“Relatives,” he said, sad, miserable.

“Have you spoken to your cousin?”

“I called but he’s not answering. Lives in Sidney.” Fifteen minutes down the road.

“How much are you down for?”

“10 grand.”

I whistled.

“Why don’t we go and visit your cousin?”

“He’s not a very nice person.”

“Even better. Why you?”

“Why me?”

“Why did your cousin ask you to be guarantor?”

“He thinks I’ve got cash. I just finished a season on crab boats out of Anchorage.”

“You should be loaded.”

“I was.”

I looked at him.

“My Mom’s in a care home in Cheyenne. It all went covering her for the next few months. They charge like a wounded rhino.”

“You got wheels?”

“Subaru outside.”

“What are you doing in Gurley?”

“I thought an old friend might stump me the readies.”

“No luck?”

“He drowned in a grain silo a few weeks back. Just my luck eh?”

“Not so good for him either.”

“Drowning in wheat. Who knew?”

I was going to say I did but he seemed depressed enough.

“Let’s go see your cousin,” I said.

“We still don’t have a gun.”

“We don’t need guns. We’ve got righteous on our side.”

The cousin’s house was barely standing. Poles on one side jammed into the ground and against a beam screwed into the stick-built wall. Paint flaking everywhere. Screen door with a flap of screen hanging in the breeze. A cold, hard late fall day. Dodge Charger parked on the dead grass.

“That the car?”

He nodded, knocked on the front door in a pathetic, embarrassed manner. Oh yeah, that will get the asshole out.

“Banger?” he called out, timid, anxious.

“Banger?” I said to him.

“He likes to be called Banger. His name is Barry Banbury.”

I nudged Aaron aside. Hammered on the door, hard, like a pissed cop.

“Banbury. Get out here,” I yelled. Why does the smell of herbal smoke always seep out of the doors of drooling fools. Sure enough, here he comes, a drooling fool and his drivelling little toke. I can say toke because I’m 70 and once had long hair and a T-shirt with a peace sign. Get over it.

“Fuck you want asshole? Oh it’s Aaron and someone’s grandfather. Fuck off, you signed the paper, pay the man.”

He went to slam the door. I kicked hard through the fly screen. The door slammed back into his nose. He buckled over, holding his face with his left hand, blood dripping through his fingers. Left handed. No-one grabs a pain centre with their secondary hand. I pulled screen door. It fell apart. I kicked the bits aside.

“Sorry about your screen door,” I said. “Give us the keys.”

I knew he was going to take a swing with that left hand. I kicked the door into his approaching fist. He yelped in pain and grabbed his left hand with his right. Both hands busy. I punched his face, enough to hurt his nose some more and close up one of his eyes. He staggered back moaning, mumbling. A glass-eyed woman watched from a sofa. She giggled. She was not going to be any trouble.

“Car keys?” I said. She pointed at a wonky sideboard decorated with cigarette burns. I grabbed the keys out of a chipped saucer. Some people have interior design skills, some don’t.

“Take me to the dealer,” I said to Aaron as I walked past him to the Charger. I always wanted to say that, never had the chance before. Barry mumbled and gurgled into his pain and spat blood at our backs.

HUGE CARS, TINY PRICES – Lets make a deal.

I guessed CBS lawyers hadn’t made it to Sidney yet or that sign would have had to change.

Anyone with half a shot glass of common sense would know this was a car dealer to avoid. Windows needed a wash. Grass poking through the lot bitumen. Price signs faded from too much sun.

“Why would you sign anything in this place?” I said to Aaron was we got out of the cars.

I bent down to tie my shoelace beside a 2010 Mustang that had seen better days

“I didn’t. Banger brought the papers to my place,” he said “The finance company’s Fidelity Insurance. Big name.”

I stood up. “Have you got the papers there?”

He pulled them from his glove box and handed them to me.

“How do you spell Fidelity?”

“Like that.” He pointed to the paper.

“F.i.d.e.l.t.y. Missing an i.”

“Seriously?” He grabbed the paper and stared at it. Looked at me, at the dealer’s office. Through the glass we could see someone was getting up from behind a desk. Someone large. A lifetime dedicated to beer, beef and bacon. I squatted down and tied my other shoe then led Aaron through the dealership door. Mr Big approached with a smile he’d learned from a Cheshire cat or maybe a crocodile.

“Come to make that payment then?” he said to Aaron. Then to me as he held out his hand: “Gordon Huge. Huge by name.” He grinned. How many times had he made that same stupid joke, expecting the other person to say ‘huge by nature’? I didn’t.

“Erin Gurl.”

“Girl?” he said

“Gurl by name,” I said, squeezing his hand harder than he would have ever expected a 70-year old to squeeze. Daring him to say it. He didn’t. I dropped his fat, wet hand. It was like holding a slimy toad.

“We’re bringing the Charger back. So Aaron is off the hook.”

“He can’t be off the hook, he signed the papers,” Huge said, shaking his hand to get the blood back. His face red, sweat drops popping on his forehead under his comb-over.

“I get a lawyer over these papers and you’ll be in court before your next piss,” I said.

“Sorry bud, but that’s as legal as hell. You can’t afford a lawyer as good as the one set up that deed.”

“OK, let’s say that, for once in your miserable existence, you’re telling the truth.”

Huge smiled, that arrogant, I’ve-got-you kind of smile you get with small-brain crooks who think they have got one over you. Tech bros probably have the same smile when they sell their company and screw over their employees by making their shares worth zilch. I’ve seen that smile before. It makes me want to puke. Then I remembered. Tech bros pay big to the bankers who set up the deals.

“Who gets a kick-back from the $10k?”

“Ha ha. You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t know.” I looked at Aaron. He shook his head.

“Barry Banbury you damn fool,” Huge said.

“He gets a cut of my money?” Aaron gasped. “My own cousin?”

I slowly turned to Huge. Slow, like something was about to go down.

“Cute little set-up.”

“It’s all above board.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Huge backed away. “Nothing you can do about it. Deal’s a deal.”

“You got goons to chase the money. Not bailiffs. That smells.”

“It’s quicker. You know how long it takes to get through the courts these days?” He dropped into his chair. Wish I knew the chair manufacturer. I’d buy shares. It didn’t collapse.

“It’s legal. You got nothing,” he said. Then: “Jeesus!”

He leapt from his chair. Smoke was pouring from under one of the cars in his lot. He grabbed a fire extinguisher by the front door and trotted outside as fast as a huge man can move.

I reached over to his desk, ripped the cables from the back of his laptop, helped myself to one of his branded keyrings, grabbed Aaron’s arm and pushed him out the door.

“Drive,” I said quietly into his ear. He got the message, we jumped into the Subaru and we were gone. Huge had put out the fire of dead grass and an oily rag I had picked up off Banger’s porch. He stared at us leaving, shook his head and headed back into his slime den. He’d catch on soon enough.

I hadn’t closed the laptop. If you close it you have to sign in again with a password. But if it’s already open…

“Don’t take any usual routes. Don’t go to your place.”

“Where can I go?”

“Do you use the wifi anywhere else in town?”

“The library.”

“You know the password.”

“Sure. What are you going to do?”

“Some people might call it blackmail. I call it retribution. Every scum deal he has done will be on this.”

“He’ll have everything on the cloud. He just has to sign in with another PC.”

“Yes but this Huge Deals keyring has a memory stick. I’ll copy his cloud folder and then hand back his laptop. After all, to keep it would be theft. Theft doesn’t pay. But blackmail, well, blackmail works a treat.”

“How can we blackmail him?”

“Are you kidding me? This laptop has to be a treasure trove of illegal bullshit. Scumbag like that.”

“Yeah, OK, makes sense. So I’ll be off the hook.”

“Damn right.”

“But I’ve got to live in Sidney. Huge knows where I live…my cousin…”

“Yeah, I’d look at moving on real soon,” I said. “But at least you’re not going to be beaten to a pulp for ten grand.”

Aaron looked out the window.

“Do you own much?”

“I could fit everything I own in the trunk. Working crab boats makes you very mobile.”

“Pack your stuff in the car. I know a place where we can get a great pulled pork lunch.”