The Familair Marine
What was it made him so angry? Was it his upbringing? Was it his wife? Was it himself and his feeling of never being good enough? Doesn't matter, he was an asshole.
I'd never met the Marine and beyond our weekend together with my grandpa, I've never seen him since. I don't even remember his name. He was the son of a grand cousin of mine name of Lawrence. Another in the long line of drunks I come from, not that I'm complaining about that.
This grand cousin had a trailer home in Lake Isabella and actually, it was right at the other end of the road where I'd finally met Mike Donovan, right up by where the dirt meets the pavement. The trailer, with its awnings and trees seemed to be built right into the ground, a landfill all its own and so dark inside, and depressing, it gave off that that Texas Chainsaw feeling. Just murder murder murder. Dirty light blue and dirty white, when you could see it, other wise, it was dirt and Juniper. Isabella neighborhoods have no sidewalks, adding their desolate nature when the homes are not taken care of. This was one of those places you don't even walk by when your a kid, you just crossed the street and went on, free of the demons trapped in its walls.
Lawrence was never around, ever. He lived somewhere else and used this place as a... I don't know what. Maybe he fished in the lake and needed a roof to drink under when he was done. Maybe he was a creep and needed a worthy shack. Only once in my life had I ever see it lived in and it was by Lawrence son, the Marine
The Marine had done his tour of duty and, strange to me, decided to slack off in Isabella in his dad's shack in the high and hot desert. With him, his fucking psycho, straight out of germany, non-english speaking wife. You'd think, being a Marine, having gone through the training and the becoming a man and all of that, he'd pick right up and move on with life, searching for the highest seat he could get but not this weirdo. He went where lonesome paranoia hides you out in a dark shack, rent paid, and a squawking german hollering in the unlit living room. Where depression is acute and the surroundings alone make a man go mad.
He came by grandparents place once, the Marine, talking high and honorable about defending our country and my grandad, the masked patriot he was, became full of the visceral "go get 'em" this man was spouting. So full, he took the man up on the offer to go out shooting up Erskine Creek Road the coming weekend.
Erskine creek road starts pointing east toward the red part of the valley and just past the flume curves south to nowhere. The pavement rolls past giant pieces of property that line the mountainside and up past the elementary and junior and high schools. If you go far enough, the pavement ends and you're in the driest woods you ever saw. Further down the dirt road, you might see a run down mobile home or two, both of them blue and white, and it's so dead you can feel it creeping into your skin and you have to get away. It's badlands out there, like that irrational fear of the dark as a kid, you have to leave it, you have to run. Dawn or dusk, noon or night.
The Marine showed up late Saturday morning dressed to the nines in all of his combat gear. Looked to me like we were gonna drop on some viet cong but you know these types, when feeling small they dress up. He says he's ready to go kill some cans and, from the looks of him, he wasn't lying.
So, we go up Erskine Creek Road, past the properties and the schools and the pavement. We didn't go too far down the dirt road though, just past what would have been the creek, all dried out from summer and deader than a doornail. I had the creeps just being out there, luckily he brought every kind of gun known to man. He had with him shotguns, rifles, handguns, everything legal though, no "I got this machine gun off a dead gook" kind of shit. Either way, my grandpa and I are looking at this guy like he's over the top. We're out here to shoot cans off a rock and he brings all hell with him. And dressed up in camouflage and a handgun on his right calf, on the outside, and a knife on the other.
The Marine lifted our targets out of Lawrence' old trash he left behind last time he'd been up drinking. There were a lot of them. Olympias. The Marine set them up on a big old boulder in a line and handed me a gun and a away I went. I was picking them off pretty good until we heard the rattle of a snake.
Now this man... Now this man... me being about ten or so, we coulda just left, or kept shooting, it wouldn't have mattered, we were about 20 to 40 yards off the rock, if the snake was going to get us, we'd see it but no, Johnny Hero has gets all tactical, takes his pistol off his leg and sneaks around the rock and, taking aim as if his life were at stake, shoots the snake in the face. At that point, grandad and I'd had enough shooting for the day and we made him take us back. Just the spectacle of it. "This commie snake must die" we had to go. This guy here, wasn't right.
A week or two later, I had to go up to Lawrence' shack, to hang out by the Marine and his crazy German wife. Somehow this was an obligation,maybe he'd asked my grandparents if I could come around, maybe in connection with that he wanted to instill in me a good wor ethic or a love for firearms or whatever. Anways, I had to go.
I walked up the dirt driveway to the right of the run down cars that were there. It was near dark and the place could have never seemed so wrong. Dark and desolate and bad and wrong and dead and only death. Blue and white and rust. I crept between the cars and the home and in the front door into the dark dark living room with its wood panneling and stolen cheap art on the walls, velvet and paint by number. There was a smokey old hide-a-bed opened up and bedding thrown all over and all the lamps were dead. I moved forward and turned left toward the back through the kitchen, the only lit room in the house and by one bulb, bare and hanging from the ceiling. A fridge from the fifties half open and covered in black finger and hand prints to my left and a sink full of dishes to the right, most of them broken and bloody. Streaks across the scratched up linoleum floor back toward the bedroom where I heard a scream and the door burst open, the wife in underwear and a bloody t-shirt, screaming for her life in german and the Marine close behind, finally catching her at the hide-a-bed, her neck in his hands and the screaming and the yelling and the blood.
I'd never met the Marine and beyond our weekend together with my grandpa, I've never seen him since. I don't even remember his name. He was the son of a grand cousin of mine name of Lawrence. Another in the long line of drunks I come from, not that I'm complaining about that.
This grand cousin had a trailer home in Lake Isabella and actually, it was right at the other end of the road where I'd finally met Mike Donovan, right up by where the dirt meets the pavement. The trailer, with its awnings and trees seemed to be built right into the ground, a landfill all its own and so dark inside, and depressing, it gave off that that Texas Chainsaw feeling. Just murder murder murder. Dirty light blue and dirty white, when you could see it, other wise, it was dirt and Juniper. Isabella neighborhoods have no sidewalks, adding their desolate nature when the homes are not taken care of. This was one of those places you don't even walk by when your a kid, you just crossed the street and went on, free of the demons trapped in its walls.
Lawrence was never around, ever. He lived somewhere else and used this place as a... I don't know what. Maybe he fished in the lake and needed a roof to drink under when he was done. Maybe he was a creep and needed a worthy shack. Only once in my life had I ever see it lived in and it was by Lawrence son, the Marine
The Marine had done his tour of duty and, strange to me, decided to slack off in Isabella in his dad's shack in the high and hot desert. With him, his fucking psycho, straight out of germany, non-english speaking wife. You'd think, being a Marine, having gone through the training and the becoming a man and all of that, he'd pick right up and move on with life, searching for the highest seat he could get but not this weirdo. He went where lonesome paranoia hides you out in a dark shack, rent paid, and a squawking german hollering in the unlit living room. Where depression is acute and the surroundings alone make a man go mad.
He came by grandparents place once, the Marine, talking high and honorable about defending our country and my grandad, the masked patriot he was, became full of the visceral "go get 'em" this man was spouting. So full, he took the man up on the offer to go out shooting up Erskine Creek Road the coming weekend.
Erskine creek road starts pointing east toward the red part of the valley and just past the flume curves south to nowhere. The pavement rolls past giant pieces of property that line the mountainside and up past the elementary and junior and high schools. If you go far enough, the pavement ends and you're in the driest woods you ever saw. Further down the dirt road, you might see a run down mobile home or two, both of them blue and white, and it's so dead you can feel it creeping into your skin and you have to get away. It's badlands out there, like that irrational fear of the dark as a kid, you have to leave it, you have to run. Dawn or dusk, noon or night.
The Marine showed up late Saturday morning dressed to the nines in all of his combat gear. Looked to me like we were gonna drop on some viet cong but you know these types, when feeling small they dress up. He says he's ready to go kill some cans and, from the looks of him, he wasn't lying.
So, we go up Erskine Creek Road, past the properties and the schools and the pavement. We didn't go too far down the dirt road though, just past what would have been the creek, all dried out from summer and deader than a doornail. I had the creeps just being out there, luckily he brought every kind of gun known to man. He had with him shotguns, rifles, handguns, everything legal though, no "I got this machine gun off a dead gook" kind of shit. Either way, my grandpa and I are looking at this guy like he's over the top. We're out here to shoot cans off a rock and he brings all hell with him. And dressed up in camouflage and a handgun on his right calf, on the outside, and a knife on the other.
The Marine lifted our targets out of Lawrence' old trash he left behind last time he'd been up drinking. There were a lot of them. Olympias. The Marine set them up on a big old boulder in a line and handed me a gun and a away I went. I was picking them off pretty good until we heard the rattle of a snake.
Now this man... Now this man... me being about ten or so, we coulda just left, or kept shooting, it wouldn't have mattered, we were about 20 to 40 yards off the rock, if the snake was going to get us, we'd see it but no, Johnny Hero has gets all tactical, takes his pistol off his leg and sneaks around the rock and, taking aim as if his life were at stake, shoots the snake in the face. At that point, grandad and I'd had enough shooting for the day and we made him take us back. Just the spectacle of it. "This commie snake must die" we had to go. This guy here, wasn't right.
A week or two later, I had to go up to Lawrence' shack, to hang out by the Marine and his crazy German wife. Somehow this was an obligation,maybe he'd asked my grandparents if I could come around, maybe in connection with that he wanted to instill in me a good wor ethic or a love for firearms or whatever. Anways, I had to go.
I walked up the dirt driveway to the right of the run down cars that were there. It was near dark and the place could have never seemed so wrong. Dark and desolate and bad and wrong and dead and only death. Blue and white and rust. I crept between the cars and the home and in the front door into the dark dark living room with its wood panneling and stolen cheap art on the walls, velvet and paint by number. There was a smokey old hide-a-bed opened up and bedding thrown all over and all the lamps were dead. I moved forward and turned left toward the back through the kitchen, the only lit room in the house and by one bulb, bare and hanging from the ceiling. A fridge from the fifties half open and covered in black finger and hand prints to my left and a sink full of dishes to the right, most of them broken and bloody. Streaks across the scratched up linoleum floor back toward the bedroom where I heard a scream and the door burst open, the wife in underwear and a bloody t-shirt, screaming for her life in german and the Marine close behind, finally catching her at the hide-a-bed, her neck in his hands and the screaming and the yelling and the blood.