Appalachian Galapagos (4 page)

Jimmy and Lukas sat down hard, their laughter making them choke. Long moments passed before they were able to return to their own version of normality. Frank was frowning, but you could tell he really wanted to smile.

"You done?"

Lukas nodded and grabbed a beer.

"Yep."

"Good, help me carry this boat to the shore. My back hasn't been the same since our little rock climbing expedition three years ago. My back
still
hurts and I had to wear that cast for four months. When a subway rattles by, I can feel it straight through my spine."

"Fun as hell though, right? You felt more alive than ever? Come on, Frank. You have to take some risks, man. It's the risks that separate us from the animals. Better to be dead than a coward, you know?"

"Okay. Okay. It was fun," Frank said, grabbing his end of the boat. "But I can't keep from thinking of that Clint Eastwood film
The Outlaw
Josey
Wales
. This bounty hunter says to him, '
I aim to kill you. Bounty
Huntin
' is what I do for a living
.' Then Clint says, '
Dyin
' ain't much of a living
,
boy
.'"

Jimmy laughed, his belly shaking like a mound of lumpy mashed potatoes during an earthquake.

"I love that movie. I like the ones with the monkeys better, though. It's fuckin'
amazin
' what they get them monkeys to do. What the hell are they called?"

"You gotta be fucking kidding me, Jimmy. You like Clint Eastwood's monkey movies more than you like
Josey
Wales
? My God, man, I don't even know what the hell to say. Why don't they just put a fucking monkey in every movie, that way you'll be sure to enjoy it?"

Jimmy nodded. "Actually, that ain't a bad idea. If you think about it, you can't go wrong if you put a monkey in your movie. Things is always more
entertainin
'." Jimmy kept his voice dry, but Frank knew that his friend was merely playing it up. "Clint Eastwood is cool and all, but if you put a monkey with him, he's even cooler."

"Clint is the fuckin' man," Lukas said. Then his eyes widened considerably and he ran towards the truck. "Jesus, I almost forgot it!"

Frank glanced over at Jimmy, cocking an eyebrow.

"Watch this," Jimmy said.

Frank was reminded of a redneck joke that he had heard as he observed his friend scampering back to the truck. It was said that anytime you heard a redneck say,
Watch this
, chances were you'd never see him alive again.

Lukas returned with a large, bizarre stick clutched in his fist. More than a stick, it was a staff about six feet long. Instead of wood, however, it seemed as if someone had stacked about a dozen Budweiser cans on end and then welded them together. At the very top end of the stick, like a large diamond-encrusted jewel, sat a broken bottle, wickedly embedded. Just below this, hanging upon thick wires, were a dozen bottle caps falling like fringe and jingling as Lukas moved.

"What the fuck is that?" Frank asked, wondering if his friends had finally degenerated into the insane, nose-picking country bumpkins the rest of the world believed them to be.

"This here is the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick," Lukas proclaimed, placing the staff in the boat as if it were made of glass. "My cousin Judd gave it to me for Christmas. Says it's good luck. Helped him out of a jam once."

"That the same cousin that got bit in the dick by a rattlesnake?" Frank asked.

"Yep," Lukas said.

Frank sighed and climbed into the boat. "Oh wonderful."

Wet Dog…Noah's Acid Trip...Chimney Sweep...Banjo Boy…B-Movie
Titties
...Kung Fu Fighting...Brother
Siskel
and Cousin Ebert…
McGyver
...Sissy Boy Screams...Suicide Serenade

Frank's throat felt scoured. All the screaming he had done in the last ten minutes had burned his trachea raw. Barely able to control his hyperventilation, he inhaled the fresh, clean air in deep adrenaline-filled gasps. Reaching down into the two feet of water in the bottom of the boat, he grabbed a beer can as it bobbed by. His hands still shaking, it took three tries for him to open it. Seven seconds later, he hurled the empty can into the slow water they were now floating gently in and leaned against the back of the boat.

"This has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever done," Frank said to no one in particular.

Lukas and Jimmy were inhaling beers of their own, the wildness of the ride still flashing through their eyes. Their cheeks were flushed like little boys who'd been caught spying their first breast. Their hair hung in lank ropes covering their eyes, like a sheep dog after a shower. Water dripped from Jimmy's beard.

They finished their own beers at the same time, tossed the empties over the side, and grabbed another. They took their time with these, casting wild-eyed glares back towards the insanity they had somehow lived through.

Frank was as drenched as his friends were and couldn't help but feel he had just been through the spin cycle of God's great washing machine. At least now, no one would notice he had pissed his pants in their ride through the Devil's Shoals.

Besides the occasional
caw
of a crow and the constant undertone of cicadas, the sound of water dripping was all he could hear. The rush of the rapids had disappeared around the last bend and was muffled by the half gallon of water that had surely entered each and every one of his orifices. He slammed the heel of his hand against his ears in an attempt to dislodge the water.

"What the fuck were we
thinkin
'?" Lukas asked, pushing his mop of dripping hair back against his head. "And who's the asshole that came up with this insane idea? No one runs a river after forty days and nights of rain. I feel like Noah on acid."

"And the beers went two by two," Frank said.

Jimmy and Lukas craned their necks and stared back at him. Frank answered their stare with one of his own, finally crossing his eyes and opening another beer.

"Never mind," he said.

"Man, the city made you ignorant," Jimmy said.

Instead of replying, Frank's gaze went to the right-hand bank. He had noticed movement, and sure enough, there was a man, clad all in black, standing on the side of the river. He was unusually tall. A top hat rested on his head. Shaggy white hair fluttered around the sides of his face. Leaning on a thick gnarled cane, he appeared to be studying Frank and his friends, his upper lip rising beneath his Van Dyke mustache. Even from a distance, the man's eyes could be seen enlarged through the thick spectacles that rested upon the crook of his large patrician nose.

"How you doing, my friend?" Frank shouted towards the shore as Lukas and Jimmy finally noticed the man. "Need a hand? Want me to throw you a beer?"

The man removed his hat and bowed, a sneer parting his face.

They drifted silently past. Frank and the boys watched the man until he became nothing but a black blot off in the distance, finally disappearing as the river wound once again through a break in the mountains.

"Who the fuck was that?" Lukas asked. "Talk about weird."

"It could have been worse," Lukas said, burping. "Could have been that retarded Banjo Boy from
Deliverance
. If we saw that dude, I would have started to cry easily. Talk about
sissification
."

"Hell yeah," Jimmy said. "Whatever happened to that Banjo Boy, I wonder? He never did any other movies, I don't think."

"What the hell kind of movies could he do?" Frank asked. "There ain't a lot of parts in Hollywood for retarded banjo players, I don't think. His look isn't in. I don't think
Forrest Gump
would have been all that good if the Banjo Boy starred in it."

"Would have been
entertainin
', though," Lukas said, looking thoughtful. "I bet there's lots of people that would watch it. Hell, I know I would."

"I heard he works at a gas station near where they filmed that movie," Jimmy said. "Still plucking away on his banjo and
scarin
' the
livin
' shit
oughta
people who actually recognize him. And you know, I bet that whole thing pissed off that city boy, no offense Frank."

"What city boy?"

"You know, the one who tried to outplay Banjo Boy. He smiled when he left, but you know he was pissed off."

"That wasn't real, fool," Lukas said. "He was an actor."

"
Nuh
-uh. The city boy was an actor. The Banjo Boy, he wasn't no actor. Can't you tell he was retarded just by
lookin
' at him? You can't fake that amount of
inbreedin
'. And anyway, if he was an actor, and I ain't sayin' he is, but if he was an actor then how come he ain't acted in
nothin
' else? The way I heard it was that they were
practicin
' a scene and the Banjo Boy joined it. It was so good that the director decided to do it for the movie."

"No shit. That'll teach 'em. Just because someone might be a redneck don't mean they ain't good at
somethin
'."

Frank nodded, the strange man all but forgotten.

"I think the more important question should be what happened to Burt Reynolds. A couple of
Cannonball Run
s and his career was history."

Lukas grimaced as he squeezed water from his mullet.

"Frank, there are things I will tolerate, and things I won't. One of them is someone
makin
' fun of the
Cannonball Run
movies
.
You can't never go wrong when you put Burt Reynolds and Dom
DeLuise
in a flick. Fuckin' never. Even that Kung Fu
fightin
' fella with his
flyin
' drop kicks was cool."

Jimmy nodded emphatically.

"Shit yeah. And you throw Dean Martin, James Bond, and Jack Elam in that little mix and it's entertainment heaven." He grinned like a child, his red chubby cheeks cherubic. "And last but not even least, you throw some of them Adrienne
Barbeau
titties
in there?
Great God Almighty
." He crossed himself like a dyslexic Catholic.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Frank said. "You boys are still lusting over the breasts of a woman who hasn't made a movie since fucking
Swamp Thing,
and had her best days as Maude's daughter. Sad, man. So sad. And that
Cannonball Run
movie may be one of the worst films ever made. Complete garbage. Hell, Burt's fake hair can act better than he can. How the hell can you like that movie? Is there a monkey in it or something?"

Lukas and Jimmy groaned at the same time.

"Frank, maybe it's best if you just changed the subject," Jimmy said. "Because I know the next thing
yer
gonna do is either make fun of
Smokey and the Bandit
or
Convoy.
And I'm
tellin
' ya, if you do that, we're gonna throw down right here in this boat. I ain't
talkin
' no sissy boy
flyin'suplex
. I'm
talkin
' cobra hold, pure and simple."

"I agree," Lukas added. "A man that does not appreciate the
titties
of Adrienne
Barbeau
can't be much of a man, really. Even an asshole like Jimmy likes them
titties
."

"And I'm pretty sure there is a monkey in
Cannonball Run
now that I think of it," Jimmy said, shooting Lukas a look for the asshole comment. "Monkeys and
titties
, two things guaranteed to make a movie worth a dollar."

"Wait a minute," said Frank, holding up his hands. "I don't even understand how the fuck we got onto the subject of Adrienne
Barbeau's
titties
. You guys fucking kill me." He stopped, looking them both over affectionately. "God, I miss the hell out of both of you. I miss retarded conversations like this. You guys are talking about the
titties
of a woman you lusted after in high school. Your idea of a crackerjack comic team is Burt Reynolds and Dom fucking
DeLuise
."