36

A Valuable Lesson

A little ways north of the refinery, on the other side of the
Canadian river, there's an old ghost town. It died when they built
the new highway from Borger to the county seat and bypassed it. But
the local legend is that the place dried up when most of the kids died
in the "Spanish Lady" flu epide mic in 1918 and then blew away after a
fire in the school killed the rest. Imagine that, if you can, living in a
town where the kids are all in the graveyard. Shite, I wouldn't hang
around either.
When I was a teen age punk, I used to go out there with my
friends Jerry and Time and get drunk off Crown Royal that Tim stole
from his dad. We'd sit out there in the burned-out rubble of the
school house, under the brick arch of the doorway which was all that
survived the fire, besides the concrete foundation, and we would get
drunker than fuck.
We usually did it on Sunday afternoons; Jerry and me 'cause
it was the only time we could get away with it, and Tim 'cause, being
a strict Baptist, he liked to get drunk on Sunday.
When we were so drunk that we couldn't see straight, we'd
get out our .22's and just blaze away --shooting at a wide variety of
junked cars, abandoned refrigerators, rotten furniture, and anything
that was stupid enough to move. It was funner than hell, although I
eended up puking most times.
Jerry shot himself when we were 16. It fucked everything up.
Tim and I never saw much of each other after that; I knocked a girl
up and had to get married. Then after high school, Tim joined the
navy and I never heard anymore about him, except for the rumor
going around that he got send to Leavenworth for cocain possession
and going AWOL.
I got a job at the refinery and pretty much forgot all about it.
Except once in a while, like when I would have to go out to the bug-
ponds-which're these pits they dump PCB's, dioxins and all kinds of
industrial poison in. Supposedly they're trying to breed som kind of
bactera that'll eat that shit. It's horrible, you're always seein' deer
carcasses out there, rotting on the ground. It would all come back
especially clear when I had to go out there at night.
The lights of the refinery shine and twist in the greasy water
at the bottom of the pits, and when the flares go off everything gets
at the bottom of the pits, and when the flares go off everything gets
lit up with this weird orange glow. And when I'd stand up at the edge
of those fucking poison holes in that glow, looking down into the
pits I'd almost always think of Jerry and Tim and all those dad kids.
And If I stared down at the lights on the pond for a long time, I'd see
faces. And one time I thought I saw a little old crippled man at the
bottom. He was grey and he kept asking me to reach down and give
him a hand. Man, after that I really hated going out there.

34.