Shim-Sham

By Cameron Sugar

When fifteen-year-old Ramazac is thrown from a Malaysian oil derrick by his wildcat father with the admonition, "Bon voyage, bitch boy! Hope you float longer than your mom did," the only thing he could think about was missing his rig tail. On the other hand, when Troy, the Newport Beach High School quarterback, gets shipped off to religious camp as punishment for downloading music, he's convinced it's a death sentence designed to ruin his life. The result is Shim-Sham is a coming-of-age story celebrating two fantastically unique souls with only one thing in common: a Fijian princess. In Shim-Sham, we experience the implausible misadventure of Ramazac and the torturous journey of Troy as only they could tell it. While the two boys don't actually know each other, they are about to get introduced and it will change their lives. But before they meet at summer's end, they're introduced to demolition experts for the KKK; preachers drinking sake, rigging lotteries and fleecing dances from strippers;, a redneck thug with a powerful addiction to Rocky Mountain oysters who sings Dixie in Spanish, crazed lawyers, crooked judges, puppy love, Navy SEALSs, kidnappings, fraternity scams, three continents, several states, and one hell of a history lesson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644629680

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Shim-Sham

Cameron Sugar

Copyright © 2019 Cameron Sugar

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64462-967-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64628-536-5 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64462-968-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Artwork by Josh Zipper

Part I

Ramazac

Chapter 1

Last thing I remember, we were sitting on the beach next to a raging fire on a beautiful summer night in that glorious lover’s paradise known as Tijuana, Mexico. Granted my girl was missing a few teeth and of dubious sexual distinction, but hot damn I was in love . In love and sinking deeper and deeper with each tug on the mothers’ milk some call Cuervo. Who knows, if I hadn’t got carried away and yelled, Viva la Mexico! while tossing the remainder of the last freaking community bottle straight into the bonfire, we might have had a future together. As it was, I was in for the first of many ass kicks at the hands of angry Mexican nationals.

You would have thought I had learned my lesson, but much to my dismay, this was only the beginning. I was fifteen years old, still sprouting and living on a steady diet of penicillin and whatever grog I could get my paws on. Given an option, this would not have been the life I chose, but sometimes you have to play the cards as they are dealt.

Don’t get me wrong; growing up on an oil rig off the coast of Asia has its advantages. My upbringing had exposed me to a good deal of adventure, not to mention more than a fair share of chaos and dread. Mostly, however, it had taught me how to survive. Asian wildcatters are a wiry lot to be sure, and I learned a thing or two during my stay with that lot. So when the nationals came at me for a third time, I gave them the Malaysian shim-sham and adjourned into that good Tijuana night.

Bloody but unbowed, I made it to the corner of Avenida Revolucion and La Negra Dulce and watched the chaos unfold like a three-act play. I was tired and needed to rest. The town was rhythmic, and I gradually sank into the curb. I missed the laughter on the oil rig. But mostly, I longed for three squares, a cot, and all the booze a fifteen-year-old could drink. In hindsight, maybe life on the rig wasn’t all bad.

If nothing else, it was a surreal upbringing. I saw more in a few weeks than most teenagers ever will. Sadly, I never knew my mother. For as long as I can remember, inquires to my father regarding her identity earned me a grunt at best and a backhand if I caught him at the wrong time. As it was, the closest thing I ever had to a matronly figure in my life was the occasional caring female encountered on one of our many stops around the globe as part of my father’s nomadic lifestyle, which took us across three oceans and multiple continents as he moved from one oil derrick to the next. For the most part, my dad wasn’t shy about bringing women around, but they were for his pleasure only. He did not leave much time for nurturing.

Most recently, he was knocking it out with a sassy little cocktail waitress from the Malay Peninsula. Because my dad was the chief mechanic on the job, he didn’t get much leave. As a result, she spent a good number of nights on the rig. At first, I would just pretend to be sleeping in our shared quarters while Dad pounded away. That big sissy never lasted more than a few minutes, and that just doesn’t cut it with rig tail. So from time to time, she would tease me about giving her my stuff. This went on for quite some time until an errant elbow knocked my old man out of the sack as he tried to do something she deemed unnatural. He blamed me, of course, and proceeded to beat me senseless. As I was being thrown over the rig’s central piping zone otherwise known as the pig zipper, I heard him yell, Bon voyage, bitch boy! Hope you float as long as your mom did.

If I hadn’t clipped my shoulder on one of the rig’s security beams dislodging a piece of wood large enough to keep me buoyant, I would have been eaten alive by the intake system. Things didn’t go so well in the frigid water, but anything was better than commingling lap lobsters with your Mongol father. Rather than swimming back to the rig dock like I usually did after this type of punishment, I floated around until morning and then caught a ride to the mainland with the supply boat. A series of adventures as a working stowaway on an Egyptian petroleum tanker landed me in the United States. My dad, I doubt he even noticed I was gone until I sent him a telegram requesting that he wire money to San Diego. Once Western Union released the cash, I made my way south to Mexico to make my mark on the world.

It didn’t take long to realize that life wasn’t so different from the rig at this Mexicali crossroad. For the most part, I fit in with the other pelagic fools, floating on some broke-down promise of trying to stay clean and evading temptations from the senoritas that roam the streets like raggedy tumbleweeds ready to prick the next sorry bastard that pokes at them. I realize it’s no use. It must be genetics, but I’m addicted to it all. Life isn’t right unless I bank it on a good dose of sin. And here, this is where you get it.

I stumbled my humbled carcass down the narrow street alongside the Rio that runs directly across from the open market. The place is Mecca for pimps who will hook you up with whatever transmittable disease that’s in vogue these days. It isn’t pretty; it’s just business. I didn’t walk down there to solicit another case of the clap. Heck, I can still feel the burn from what I suspect was the last batch. No, this was personal. I wanted my beach girl back.

Her name was Kiki, and she was hard-riding Lolita that honed her skills on every Tom, Harry, and Dick around. She smells like gardenias and walks like a fox but looks like she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Before you judge my taste in babes, spend your formative years on an offshore oil rig. This hussy smoked Camel nonfilters through her pouting brown lips like most girls her age might work a fifty-fifty bar. In either case a beautiful thing, but with Kiki it stirred not only my prurient interest but something I’d thought I’d lost the day I set foot on the rigs. To wit, the dreaded schoolboys crush.

While I wasn’t yet an expert in the science of love, I recognized that a higher power had seized my motor functions, such as breathing and blood flow, and this sinister invader controlled my mind and emotions as well. It was making my skin tingle for Christ’s sake. I laugh now, but at that time, I literally couldn’t think of anything else. Such was the force of this sizzling senorita. Sure, she was four or five years older than me, but I figured I had a couple of things going for me. For one, even though we never actually spoke because I couldn’t get a handle on Thai or whatever language that sea hag spoke, I’d learned a thing or two about pleasing a woman from my tryst with the aforementioned rig tail. Plus I’d diddled around with my cousin Meg a couple times when she visited the rig to help my Uncle Rico drop off supplies. Meg was no looker, but she wasn’t shy about letting you know what she liked. Meg was at least sixteen, so I figured I could handle a twenty-year-old. Boy, was I ever wrong!

Aside from her brazen sexuality, the other thing you need to know about Kiki is that she never stayed in one place too long. Tiempo es dinero was more than a motto to her; they were words to live by. She did everything with a purpose. On the day I finally found her again, her purpose was apparently to ignore me as she ran by and jumped into the cab of a Ford pickup with Wyoming plates and bed full of what appeared to be middle-aged black cowboys. Since they were wearing ponchos, I would have thought them Mexicans, except that their skin color seemed more natural than sunbaked. Plus, they were listening to Kool and the Gang. Since then, I’ve been from Arizona to British Columbia and have never seen anything like it, but I still think they were just your run-of-the-mill cowboy soul brothers looking for a good time in TJ.

The driver, however, was unmistakably a petite middle-aged Asian woman wearing a green turban. Go figure.

Chapter 2

Being something of a man of action myself, I couldn’t watch my soulmate run off without a chase, and chase I did for about three blocks. Instinctively, I knew where they were headed. That’s right, the United States border. Once they got to the other side, all hope would be lost. I ran like hell, a boy possessed. I figured at worst I would catch them in line at customs. I certainly would have too had not one of those legless street beggars stuck out her grubby little paw and tripped me. Traveling at such a high rate of speed made this something more than your routine face plant. No, this was more like a stock car crash. Instead of flying machines, I was the projectile. To say I went airborne is an understatement. It was more like a space shuttle launch. Because I was fixated on the truck, it came as quite a surprise when I landed not on the slimy hot cracked asphalt that passes for a sidewalk in Mexico but on thick but not-terribly-strong glass. Well, not quite glass but rather porcelain and lots of it. Porcelain monkeys riding a surfboard, porcelain elephants, porcelain rhinos smoking cigars—you name it. If it was a passenger on Noah’s Ark and could be fashioned out of porcelain, I smashed it but good.

Now I respect street vendors as much as the any other self-sustaining urchin, but this was not my fault. Moreover, I had business to take care of, and it didn’t include arguing about damaged art with a truculent Mexican hoochie mama. So I grabbed a sombrero off the rack, screamed, Ariba, ariba! and resumed my run for the border.

The line at customs was thick. A sea of cars snaked their way to the guarded entrance into Los Estados Unidos. Frankly, the sight of the stars and stripes, made me want to puke. Armed guards, dressed in uniforms of white and black, wore dark shades and scowls that said, You’re guilty. I knew I had to find my girl and fast.

I snatched a box of Chiclay from a fifty-year-old Mayan woman carrying a kid over each shoulder while breastfeeding a toddler who had my eyes and other familiar features. It was at precisely that moment I swore off mescal and briefly wondered how many more I might have out there. Time was of the essence, however, so I put aside any further introspection. At top speed, I zigzagged between cars, orphans, and stray dogs until I reached the HOV lane. I spotted the truck two cars from the border. I gathered myself together and began to walk toward her when a clumsy voice shattered my concentration.

Well, well, well, it’s nice to see you again, Ramazac, the voice echoed in a strange foreign accent even I couldn’t place.

Ramazac? What? Who the fuck are you? I shot back.

Oh yes, the ‘I don’t remember’ bit. Clever, very clever, he said decorously. There are a lot of people looking for you, Ramazac. Now, get your ass in the car. Somebody would like to see you.

He didn’t look at all familiar, and his accent was a mess—perhaps on purpose, I couldn’t be sure. He wore a C-shaped scar above his eyebrow fairly well. Probably the result of the fight that landed him the head dickhead gig for whatever organization he was representing. He was surrounded by three or four goons, all wearing a fresh flat top and a T-shirt they’d owned prior to beginning weekly steroid injections. All of them that is, except for the guy in the back. He was tall and skinny. He had wire-framed dark glasses and sported a Kentucky waterfall mullet, proudly if you can believe that! My immediate thought was that he must have had it rough as a kid with that mop.

You weren’t really going to cross the border, were you? Did you think we wouldn’t know? Did you think we would let that happen? This time it was the muleteer speaking as he threw his hair to the side.

Listen, assholes! I shouted. You see that truck full of black cowboys about to cross? Well, they’ve got my girl Kiki, and they’re going to systematically enter her, too, if you don’t get out of my way. I don’t know who you are or what you want. So I’m just going to get my girl and y’all can go fuck yourselves, all right?

My eyes darted around like a forlorn crank dealer. I backed up slowly and looked to the border. I could see my girl slipping away. I took off and got about two steps away before whack. One of the goons who I later found out was actually a roadie with Alice Cooper during his European jaunt aptly titled Alice Cooper’s Euro Right Tour hit me in the balls with an oar he had grabbed off the roof of a ’86 Ford Elite station wagon. It must have been an interesting site for the folks returning from paranoid yuppie family outings. In any event, I went down like a KFed song on the pop charts. The goons carried me to their ride, which was nothing more than a beat-up old taxi van, and chucked me in back. The dashboard had the entire nativity scene and bits and pieces of the crucifixion, which was nice because not having read the Book, it answered a few lingering questions I had about how and who, but other than that, this ride had few redeeming qualities.

As the cab began to race into the hills of Tijuana, I overheard the driver say into a cell phone, Yes, we have him. Is the helicopter ready?

Chapter 3

Surrounded by nothing but desolation and the echoes of lonesome coyotes, we rode for two hours into the Mexicali night. As the cab came to the crest of a hill, my captors blindfolded, cuffed, and I guess I have to add ball-gagged me. But hey, that’s a different story. Anyhow, sans most of my senses, but my masculinity remarkably still in check, the cab finally rolled to a stop. Needless to say, I paid the fare.

They dragged me from the vehicle and knelt me down on what I had to assume was a driveway. I tried to squirm away, but it was no use. From the point where the cab stopped, the goons pushed and kicked me another fifty yards or so. When they finally let up, I was prone on the ground and in some serious pain. From above, a gregarious voice bellowed down. Silly gringo. We don’t need no stinking ratas en our casa. Remove his blindfold.

One of the greasy henchmen removed the soiled cloth that served as an eye shield, and I found myself in the center plaza of a casita surrounded by a convention of Tony Montanas. Cigarette smoke plumed throughout the courtyard, the waft of urine overtaking the scent of fine agave, enough gold to make Mr. T’s look like a starter kit, and of course, the defining item of all Puerto Rican gang lords, the unmistakable smell d’ rigor, Old Spice. Obviously, this was far from the warmth of the septic vents back in my Tijuana lair.

The voice sounded again, Ramazac.

I turned my head to catch a glimpse of this ominous presence. It was him, a man I had heard of in the past but with whom I had never expected to cross paths. If my recollection was correct, his given name was Bonderman Crunchtop, but most people called him Bonecrusher, or Crunch for short. No one knows for sure, but it is believed that he gave himself these nicknames before they were earned. In fact, if my father is correct, he settled on Bonecrusher only after a failed stint attempting to grow grass in the US under the self-styled pseudonym the Notorious BONG.

In any event, Crunch ruled a good chunk of the criminal activity in the central deserts of Mexico between Sonora and Chihuahua. His drug paraphernalia cartel has been running a highly profitable racket on the glass and plastic bong and pipe trade for years, but lately their sights have turned to a more accessible medium, porcelain.

Turns out, the world’s leading supplier of porcelain is Crunch’s own hometown of Jakeluke, Georgia.

Unfortunately, this was a town with which I was all too familiar. You see, next to Bondy Crunchtop, Jakeluke’s most illustrious native was none other than my own Uncle Rico. Although truth be told, I suspect that if it has not happened already, cousin Meg and her twin sisters will soon make most of the natives forget Uncle Rico and, depending on how they filled out, perhaps Crunch too.

As long as we’re speaking the truth, I may as well confess that I’m not really sure of Jakeluke’s actual location. Suffice it to say, it is hidden from the rest of America by either the Appalachian or Smoky Mountains or both. If I had to mail a letter, I wouldn’t know whether to send it to Georgia, Tennessee, or Alabama. The only thing for certain is that it’s in the back country somewhere in the Deep South. In addition to some rednecks, the place is populated with trucks, dead ducks, and If heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t wanna go bumper stickers. The single paved intersection in town has the confederate flag hand painted in the middle of the nexus between Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Jeff Davis Place. Get the idea? No, still don’t get it? Well, most of the male inhabitants spend their leisure time swilling moonshine, shooting guns, and kneading their love sacks. Not necessarily in that order and sometimes concurrently.

How does a place like this become the world’s foremost manufacture of anything, let alone something as esoteric as porcelain, you ask? I have no worldly flipping idea. According to Meg, the place was originally an artist colony growing out of the Confederate conscientious objector movement. Apparently, some of the faithful were fine with torturing slaves, but they couldn’t bring themselves to kill whitey, regardless of his position relative to the Mason–Dixon. Accordingly, to finance the war movement, they decided to make statues of such Southern luminaries as Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, as well as other heroes of Johnny Reb. Because anything resembling steel was needed for the war against northern aggression, these artists were forced to improvise for which society has been rewarded with porcelain statues. While the war heroes never caught on, the town nevertheless got rich during reconstruction, selling what are commonly referred to as lawn jockeys. These profits allowed for the financing of the predecessor to today’s massive porcelain-manufacturing operation located somewhere in them dern hills.

No one is sure who owns the plant. My old man always assumed it was US Tobacco or maybe Mormons. Even though Crunch took a good deal of the porcelain business with him to Mexico, I doubt we will ever know who controls the interest in Jakeluke. In any event, they are as shrewd as they are sneaky. Of course, the locals aren’t exactly the inquisitive types. They’re happy with a regular paycheck, credit at the company stores, and most importantly, the glory of knowing that they will never have to answer to any of the degummed reds that run a union.

All of this came back to me as I stole a glance at Crunch. Instantly I knew that somehow my Uncle Rico had gotten me into this mess. I figured that he also held the key to any hope I had at rapid extradition. I desperately scanned my memory banks for anything about my father’s wayward brother. I wasn’t boasting about Uncle Rico’s near-legendary status in Jakeluke. If anything, I probably underestimate.

You see, according to my old man, several years ago, Uncle Roy (at that time, he was called Roy; the name change came later as will be described below) had managed to catch on to a couple of yokels’ plan to rig the State Powerball contest. Being an entrepreneur by nature, Roy found a way to become a partner in the scheme. Although a bit of a scammer, Roy is a charmer by nature, so it was not difficult to get in on the action. Still, Roy had his doubts that anyone could actually fix the lottery. Rather than rely on the numbers coming in, Uncle Roy quickly went about letting everyone in town in on a scam he described as foolproof. For the minor price of $100, he sold an interest in the ultimate proceeds of the swindle to others anxious to get rich quick. It wasn’t long before the cost plummeted to whatever someone had in their pocket when Uncle Roy made his pitch. Nevertheless, he eventually raised a princely sum just in excess of three thousand dollars.

On the night before the drawing, Uncle Roy found himself at the proverbial crossroads. He could split with his cash before his partners found out or let them in on what was a pretty decent scam since rigging Powerball was a pipe dream at best. This was no easy choice, so Roy decided to get away to do some serious thinking. He finished the rest of the twelve-pack he was nursing, loaded up a couple of flasks with moonshine, and headed off to his favorite watering hole, Francois. A dozen dances later, Rico had his answer. He would line up all the dancers on the main stage and give them five dollars each to join in his private spanking tunnel. The best girl would be selected as his new partner and recruit the other girls to purchase an interest in the bogus future lottery profits. If nothing else, Roy figured he’d be in for perpetually free lap dances. The perfect score! His partners? Roy had forgotten them the moment he walked through Francois mirrored doors.

To a girl, the dancers weren’t much to look at, but from behind, they all felt good (hence, the spanking tunnel). The big ones were soft and smooth and wiggled to the touch. He loved this. As the song says, The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’. Roy’s corollary was the tighter the tail, the more exquisite the ping of the slap. Properly executed, it felt and echoed like a tight snare drum. It was the sound of a particularly crisp slap on a young vixen’s tail that brought Roy’s next revelation. Eliminate the middleman. Trade the lap dances directly for shares in the Powerball profits. Sure genius. Unsaddled of the need to pick a winner, Uncle Roy retreated to his booth and ordered champagne with cheese puffs and watched the gals line up to trade a little lovin’ for future riches.

Some things are just too good to be true, and that proved to be the case for Uncle Roy. It wasn’t long before the other customers couldn’t get a drink, let alone a dance. The manager was pissed because the girls weren’t making any cash, so there was nothing from which to take a cut. Plus, Uncle Roy was being an asshole. He taunted the now lonely patrons as sausage lovers, threatened any girl that dared consider dancing for someone else that not only would she be out of the Powerball business but risked eternal damnation in a fiery hell with no heels or vanilla perfume whatsoever.

It all came to a head when a shot glass hit Uncle Roy square in his good eye. That was it. He stood on the table, yelled, All right, you sausage queens, you want some striptease? I’ll give you a dance y’all never forget. With that, Roy made his way through the girls to the main stage and started to get down. Of course, Roy was already darn near buck-naked, so the show didn’t take long. What it lacked in drama and style, however, it more than made up for in laughs. You see, Uncle Roy in all his glory was something less than awe-inspiring. Everyone in the joint laughed his or her ass off. The cat calls abounded to the point that Roy was so embarrassed he didn’t even bother to get his clothes and ran straight out the door and got in his truck.

Apparently, it was Roy’s trademark to always back into a parking spot and leave the keys in the ignition so that he could make a quick getaway when necessary. This time, it looked like the move backfired as Roy slammed the truck into reverse and hit the gas. Tailgate first, the truck plowed through Francois swinging doors and stopped right next to Uncle Roy’s booth. And this is how Roy became famous. As everyone else scrambled for cover before the whole building tumbled down, Roy calmly got out of the truck, found his trousers, and removed his wallet. He set a twenty on the table and drove off into the dark night nude, just like the girls he’d left behind.

Roy wasn’t too worried about the cops. He simply drove the rusted old shadow of a truck to the next county and rammed it into the first government building he could find, which conveniently happened to be a bus depot. In the resulting confusion, Roy reported the truck stolen and bought a ticket for a bus ride back to Jakeluke. It was on the ride home that Roy realized that, at minimum, he’d be banned from Francois for a couple of months. This was unacceptable. Fighting off tears, he hatched a plan. Life in Jakeluke, like most other places, simply isn’t worth living without access to strippers.

Rather than face that dismal music, Roy ignored the Jakeluke stop and stayed on all the way through to Atlanta, where he ran the Powerball scam at every Rotary Club, church, and strip club in the city. By the time he was forced to skip town, he did so in style behind the wheels of 1977 green El Camino with Centerline rims, bed liner, and instead of the traditional bench, a bucket seat for the driver and an ice chest in lieu of a passenger chair. This was a sweet ride by any standards, even if it was littered with Mary Kay bumper stickers. What followed was fifteen months of sheer pleasure as Roy ran the scam throughout the South. Although life on the road was tough on Roy as he missed Meg and the twins, it otherwise suited him well. As far as his girls were concerned, Uncle Roy had known since they were conceived that they were better off in their mother’s care even if she were an exotic dancer of some renowned in the area.

In any event, during his time on the road, Uncle Roy developed what would prove to be a canny, nay, invaluable, ability to skip town just before the hammer fell. Although fingered by many, he was never actually busted by the cops and had to admit that by almost any measurable standard the venture was a smashing success. It also helped him that with the major exception of his aversion to work, Roy was a very likable guy. In any event, by the time he ran into Bonderman Crunchtop at an outdoor barbecue and topless bar in North Carolina, Roy had amassed almost forty grand in cash. And cash it seemed was exactly what Crunch needed at that point.

In fact, when Crunch saw Roy, he was meeting with a local television evangelist in the hopes of raising money to finance an expansion of his burgeoning business in the manufacture and sale of porcelain paraphernalia. Crunch had apparently decided that he had gone as far as he could go at the porcelain plant and wanted to branch out. The good reverend had more cash than he knew what to do with and was always looking to make more without the necessity doing the hard work required to expand his flock. Crunch was in no position to be picky about his investors, so he thought, why not bring Roy into the business as well?

This chance meeting was fortunate for Uncle Roy on a number of levels. First, he was tired of lugging all the cash around as it took up an inordinate amount of room in his cooler. Investing with Crunch seemed a natural. Second, the good reverend, Stryker Alves, was kind enough to promise to introduce Uncle Roy to his congregation at the next service. Roy knew that this would be fertile ground for the Powerball play as these folks were always expecting that the Lord was about to bring their ship in, and they were most certainly used to dealing with crazy schemes, or they wouldn’t be part of the Rev’s devoted and large following. It also didn’t hurt that the Reverend Alves would back up the scam by proclaiming that the Lord worked in mysterious ways and his flock shouldn’t look this godsend in the mouth. Third, Roy had recently learned that the federal government was none too pleased with his activities and were about to charge him under the federal statute known as the Racketeering Influence and Corruption Act (RICO). The rev was always flirting with RICO charges, so he was in a good position to offer advice. Ultimately, Uncle Roy would do what Reverend Alves suggested and changed his name to, naturally, Rico. Like the rev, he would also later flee the jurisdiction from time to time to, among other places, Crunch’s compound in Mexico. Finally, it was here, in the heart of the Bible belt, that Uncle Roy / Rico learned a far easier way to get free dances than promising riches in a rigged lotto. It seems in the South, preachers are entitled to free dances and lots of them. Praise Jesus was all Uncle Rico could mutter by the time closing rolled around. Everything was good for Uncle Rico until the maturing Powerball payments ceased and Crunch, who by that time had become Rico’s creditor, wanted to collect on his annuities.

It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see that Crunch’s affection for Rico was a business necessity and nothing more. At that point in time, Crunch needed financing for the porcelain side of his empire, and Rico needed customers and protection. Subsequently, as often happens, the partnership soured. Apparently, in order to assure an equitable distribution of the assets, Crunch required me as ransom. That is how I found myself bound, gagged, and surrounded by gangsters in the Mexican desert.

Chapter 4

Perhaps it was NAFTA or maybe the ACLU, but at some point in time, Crunch felt the need to relocate his manufacturing sector to a more profitable and corruptible locale. Hence, Crunch moved to Mexico and in a touching tribute to his Southern roots, incorporated the small village of Jackoluka. As things were beginning to become clear, I knew my safety hinged on Rico’s family allegiance. It was difficult to see this as anything other than the middle of my last stand. Figuring that I was alone in the middle of the Mexican desert and the man who was my captor owned every portion of this seedy outpost, I had to come up with something quick.

Get Crunch, I yelped from my prone position.

Right on cue, Crunch stepped out from underneath the shadows coughing and addressed me.

Ramazac, what can you tell me about your Uncle Rico?

Not having seen Rico since the oil-rig days, my last memory of the fellow was of him cornholing a Siamese twin and having to leave Malaysia in haste because the other filed sodomy charges. At least that was the story floating around the rig.

Rico was crossing the border right when you guys grabbed me. He was heading to Wyoming to start a new porcelain factory with some born-again brothers. They’re probably in LA at 29th and Figueroa by now chowing down on Rico’s favorite double-wrapped bean and cheese burrito, chili cheese fries, and a jumbo Cherry Coke.

I knew it! Crunch screamed. Get the trucks ready, round up the boys, load your weapons, and don’t forget the sneaka. We’re going north.

Now, duping Crunch into releasing me to go pursue my sweetheart, Kiki, was the intention. Making the excursion with Crunch personally was not part of the plan. Let’s just hope they have plenty of Camel nonfilters and enough common sense to get through customs without landing me in a Mexican foster home. Believe me, a ward of the State is not something to which you aspire, even in Mexico. Quite frankly, I was petrified.

Chapter 5

Unlike most kids my age, I don’t have a healthy fear of adults. I do, however, dread more than a drunken dentist the mere possibility of living with a foster family if for no other reason than they would make me do homework. If the Mexican government got to me, you can bet your last peso that a foster family is where they would send me, and in turn, I would be enrolled in school as that would entitle the family to about fifty dollars a month from one of those world health organizations. Guess what the afterschool program would be? That’s a right, street hustling tourist under the watchful eye of my foster parents. Or if I was lucky, pimping for my foster sisters. Perks aside, who needs that?

Nevertheless, I was contemplating giving myself up at that border. Crunch’s threats of maiming certainly weren’t enough to keep me quiet. Truth be told, I could probably have toughed out a couple of semesters and enjoyed myself, but there was one thing about a Mexican education that I simply could not stomach. The metric system. Like every creature with even a little American blood in their veins, I loathe the metric system. My old man might not have been Ozzie Nelson, but he was old school, and he taught me to hate dried fruit, top 40, and metric tools. I’d rather make change with an abacus than buckle under and learn metric. Such were my thoughts as we drove back to the border.

The prospect of this life was causing me to sweat like Prince’s hairdresser when the border guard got done messing around with the muleteer and turned her attention to me. Escuela es no bien, senorita was all I could stammer when she wondered why I wasn’t in school. She didn’t seem to like my response and shot me a look. Fuck her. I sneered like Burt Reynolds sassing the cops in The Longest Yard. Listen, sister, do I look like the kind of kid who recites the Mexican Pledge of Allegiance every day? Hell, bitch, I live it! Booze, broads, and as little work as possible is my thing. If that isn’t Mexican to the core, I don’t know what is. No need to go to school to learn how to do that. I’ve already got a PHD from the street, baby. But that’s not what came out of my mouth. Instead I offered in broken English that I loved school and my escorts were taking me up to the San Juan Capistrano Mission to be baptized during my stay at Vacation Bible School. In America, I would learn about not only the twenty-third Psalm but also math and American history. Well, that did it, I think she was as uninterested in this as I and waved us through with an admonition to mind the speed limit.

Speed limit? What universe was this plough horse living in? Confronted with a car full of international banditos in the middle of a kidnapping, every single one of them higher than a Grateful Dead roadie and all she can think to do is rag us on the speed limit. Ray Charles in his current condition could have told you that the rig we were in couldn’t reach fifty miles per hour going down the steep side of the Grand Canyon. Oh well, we were in the US, and I wasn’t in homeroom, and that crisis had passed.

As we drove north on Interstate 5 in the rusted 74 Oldsmobile, I had more questions than answers. The first obviously was, Why in the name of Freddy Fender was I riding in this piece of shit? Four or five hours ago, I was expecting a helicopter flight, and now I was stuck with five guys who lacked any compulsion to groom in a car that predated air conditioning. Where was Crunch? He’d slept all the way from Jackoluka and then jumped out of his truck just before the border. I hadn’t seen him since. What type of twisted torture would I apply to Uncle Rico when I got my hands on that worm? Finally, what would I do in the odd event that we actually caught up with Kiki, the cowboys, and the towel-headed Chinese woman who leads them?

Oh yeah, another thing. I recognize that my upbringing was unconventional to say the least, but I had to be the first fifteen-year-old to be kidnapped in Mexico and taken to the United States. Did I not?

I bummed a Camel and decided to take stock of my position. I eased my head back, finished a