Indian Hill Read Free

what the hell am I going to tell this lady?”
    “So what do you do?” I couldn’t believe it. His family sounded as dysfunctional as mine; apparently all was not well in Smallpole.
    “Well mostly I just nod and go yeah, uh-huh, exactly. Luckily my sister loves to yack so she takes up the majority of the time .”
    “What does your dad do during all of this fun time?”
    “He sits on the couch, watches sports and drinks bourbon and coke.”
    “I thought you said he went to AA.”
    “He did, but he didn’t like the part about complete abstinence regarding booze. He doesn’t get smashed like he used to, but I can tell he’s definitely getting buzzed.”
    “Your mom, I mean, Barb doesn’t care?”
    “Oh hell no, she’s t o o busy with her nose in some parenting book trying to find new ways to cope with teenagers.”
    “Dude I thought I had it rough.”
    “Don’t sweat it I’m pretty much used to her now, besides I read the books she’s looking at so I know how she’s going to approach almost every scenario.”
    “ B rilliant.”
    “Yeah, not bad huh?”
    “Where’d you get the beer? We’re running low.”
    “Well, we can’t get it in this town, the friggen mayor would know about it before dinner. If we go to the town over, Norwood , they have an area called the Flats. Sort of the seedier side of Mayberry. There’s a bum there. If I give him the money and one of the beers he’ll buy for me.”
    “Awesome, I have five bucks. You got anything, maybe we could get a twelve-pack.”
    “Yeah I’ve got four, that should be plenty.”
    We split the last beer and climbed down a little groggier than when we had climbed up. “So how do we get there from here?” I asked, more than a little pleasantly buzzed.
    “You can’t get there from here.” Paul did his best impression of a M aine resident. “We’re going to have to be very careful, we have to get out to Main Street and hitch.”
    “Hitch? Really?” I had visions of my mother pulling over to give us a ride on our shortened school day.
    Paul, seeing the trepidation on my face, piped up. “Dude don’t worry we won’t have to be visible for long. I’ve done this a dozen times and I never had to wait more than ten minutes.”
    “Ten minutes is a long time to have your dick blowing in the breeze,” I said out loud.
    “Come on man, we’ll be fine,” as he wrapped an arm around me.
    “Well I don’t know, maybe we should just go and see Ratsniffer.”
    Paul stopped dead in his tracks and eyed me suspiciously thinking that perhaps he had let me in on too many things. Then he realized I was joking, once he saw the grin on my face. “You ass, you had me there for a moment.” And then he chased me to the street.
    Eight minutes later, according to Paul’s Timex; we were in the back seat of some old VW van. The driver was a serious hold over from the sixties: Long hair and beads abounding. Luckily for Paul and I, this was a short drive, because ‘Windstar’ as he liked to call himself rambled on incessantly about how ‘The Man’ was trying to keep the people down. I don’t think ‘Windstar’ picked us up for any altruistic reason. I think it was so he could have a captive audience for his rhetoric. The bum had been right where Paul had said he would be and we made our business transaction. T his time it cost us two beers. By the time we were able to hitch a ride back to the supermarket, school had long been over and luckily my buzz had worn off. At least the ride back had been a bit more normal. It was just a businessman finishing up his day. The ride might have actually been enjoyable if it weren’t for the jazz blaring through the speakers. Maybe he thought he was giving us some culture. Zeppelin it wasn’t. The only thing I wanted now was maybe a hamburger and a nap. I figured it was going to be about twenty to twenty-five minutes of listening to the ranting and raving at home before I got either of those things though. We climbed back