The Shed

Every warm day we spent on the beach. My brother and I set up this huge canvas tent on the sand and we’d sleep there at night. My sister was too small. Between our house and the river was a giant Willow tree that had three or four trunks. During the day we’d play under it. I’d create highways in the dirt where my toy cars would have horrific accidents.
At night we kept our distance from the tree cause bums would hang out under it drinking, we’d find empty bottles of cheap wine and Sterno cans in the morning. One night there was a loud ruckus and my mother came down to the tent with a flashlight in one hand and a big kitchen knife in the other. She told us we had to go up to the house. Shortly after, the cops showed up and I guess took the bums away cause it was quiet after that.
A friend of my mother’s helped us build a Tom Sawyer type raft; logs tied together with twine and rope. It weighed a ton but we had a lot of fun on it until a storm busted it up. We soon found replacements in a shed a few houses down. There were five houses along this stretch of beach. One of the houses had a long low shed behind it. It was about the width and length of a double-wide trailer, only it wasn’t. It looked really old with peeling paint and windows so filthy we couldn’t see through them. We were really curious what was in there and since we never saw any activity around the place we decided to check it out.
The end facing the water was comprised of double-sided doors connected by a rusted padlock. One night, me and my brother along with a neighbor kid went over there and smashed the lock off with a hammer. When our eyes adjusted to the dark we saw that the place was filled with coffins. They lined the walls and looked to be the cheap kind you imagine poor people are buried in. I saw a pile of lids and got an idea, “We can use those for paddle-boards.” We each grabbed one and dragged them down to the beach where we hid them under some bushes.
The lids were heavy but floated, although they were always an inch or two under the water. We spent the rest of the summer paddling around the bay on them. I liked to go way out and just lay on mine, soaking up sun.
We pretty much ran wild all summer but sometimes we had baby-sitters. One of them was this kid Bobby, he was fifteen and the son of some friends of my mothers. Most of the time he just played with us like another kid but one day he told me to come with him, he had something to show me.
We went into the shed behind the last house on the row, on the other side of it was a park. The shed was small and filled with old furniture including a couch which I sat on.
“Check it out” Bobby pulled out his dick and I stared at it. I’d never seen an adult one and was sort of grossed out by the hair.
“Not that” he said, “over there.”
He pointed at the wall behind him where the sunlight through a little window was casting a long shadow of his limp penis. He started wagging it around and we watched the shadow move. I didn’t know what to make of this, it wasn’t very interesting.
“Cool” I said.


A couple weeks later a friend and I were standing in the doorway of that same shed flicking lit matches at an old overstuffed chair. Whatever it was stuffed with turned out to be super flammable cause when a match finally made direct contact it ignited immediately.
The shed was gone before the fire truck could even get there. Everyone knew we did it and the cops questioned us about it, but we lied and nothing ever came of it.
My parents were separated during this period but shortly after we moved to Illinois where my father had been living in a large walk in safe. His apartment, the safe, was located in a creepy old mansion on the Fox River. It had a tower and an observatory. His room had no windows of course. I don’t know how he did it, lived there.
He told me later he suffered from lifelong claustrophobia due to closet imprisonment at the hands of his mother. Maybe he was always drunk in the safe, or had company. I wonder if you’re still claustrophobic if you’re with other people. Probably but the distraction must help.
Some of my childhood pastimes seem pre-serial killer in retrospect, but the arson didn’t continue and I never tortured animals.
Bobby the babysitter did end up a killer. He murdered a prostitute when he was still a teenager and did a couple of decades in prison.

Deer Killed by Beauty Van

Not working was always a key element in my philosophy of life, but every once in a while, lacking in regular cash, I'd have to pick up some dumb job. I had no marketable skills but I did have a driver’s license and that was enough to get me hired delivering beauty products.
My route was on the other side of the state, the Lake Huron shoreline, The Redneck Riviera. I’d never been over there. I thought of it as the wrong side of the state but I considered anything more than thirty miles away from Traverse City wrong. For me wrong meant ugly scenery sparsely populated with rednecks. I didn’t see myself as a snob; I thought Traverse City was a dump too, just that these outer realms were worse.
My vehicle was a big brown snub-nosed van. I'd load it up with shampoo, dye, chemicals and electronics then head north and east stopping at house and garage based salons along the way. These beauty shop ladies were creepy and my favorite drops were ones without any social interaction.
If I needed a signature I was out of luck and would have to field their nosy questions, Was I married? Did I have a girlfriend, children?
They seemed stupid and it occurred to me that they might be experiencing brain damage from inhaling perm solution and nail-polish remover all day. These women were accidental huffers. Later of course I realized that they were collecting gossip fodder to pass on to their homebound associates and possibly a visit from the delivery boy was a highlight of their day. I had a friend who delivered flowers and he was always getting frightened by sexually aggressive housewives. Some of them were not hideous but he was afraid that if he had sex with one he’d have to have sex with them all. Word would get out.
It was a dull drive that was easily enhanced by liquor, so I started drinking on the way home, usually when my route was almost over. This was when I still thought drinking and driving was a safe practice and I guess it was, I had no repercussions from it, until I hit the deer.
I was driving south through pitch black woods. I had one more stop that I knew I would never find. Not because I was on my second bottle of Lambrusco but because I’d never been there before and it was remote. A town called Higgins Lake. I didn’t know if it was a town even, it could just be a lake. The drop was tiny anyway, a couple bottles of toner, so I planned on skipping it. I passed by this XXX drive-in theater that always distracted my imagination. It was off in the woods, and aside from the sign by the road all you could see of it was the top of the screen. What I imagined was what kind of people patronized it, the beauty shop ladies for sure, what sort of vehicles they used and what they did in them. I was just getting into that last bit, trying to gross myself out, when a big animal face blotted out the road.
There wasn't much to the front of the van and the deer was up and across the windshield almost before I could blink, long enough though for its bulging eye and rolling tongue, its little teeth, to be imprinted on my retina. Later when I retold this story, my memory enhanced by time I'd envision the animals head ripped from its torso, blood veined eyeballs popping out of its skull, thick black lips curled back revealing razor sharp teeth. A monster born of the woods.
I hoped it was dead and not crippled but I didn't get out to look, I didn't want to and as it turned out I didn't have to. It was November 14th the day before hunting season opened, and the woods were already filled with hunters horny for a kill. My view of these men as freaks was reinforced as I watched a handful emerge from the mist at the edge of the woods; swamp muck sucking at their boots as they sniffed at the air.
Drawn by the squeal of tires and the smell of blood, they lurched towards my van like movie zombies. One of them approached and seemed to be trying to speak so I rolled down my window. He was fat and gasping for air from trudging thru the woods or, it occurred to me, in anticipation for the dead deer and the promise of sexual release it held. I looked down to see if I could spot an erection but his trousers were all bunched up and I couldn't tell.
“It gawn blow!” A newly dead deer will bloat with gaseous fumes and explode if not gutted immediately. This was what the hunter was trying to tell me. He wanted the deer and I said “sure”, glad to have it removed from my sight while I waited for the wrecker.
I watched through the busted windshield as he unsheathed a huge knife. He bent over, exposing an ass so big it almost dwarfed the deer, and with some difficulty slit open it’s belly. Blood flooded the pavement and settled into a dark pool. Steam rose up as the heat of the animal met the cool night air.
They're gonna fuck that thing, I thought, watching him and another man drag the carcass off the highway and into the woods. I rode to a nearby gas station in the cab of the tow truck. The driver owned the station and told me that although the van still ran it wouldn't make it back home without a replacement radiator. He would see if he had a used one around.
I checked into a nearby motel and then walked to a party store for beer. Across the road from the store was a bar, a roadhouse advertising music and dancing. I wondered if they had food and what kind it would be, I was hungry, but eating food in remote places like this could be risky. I was served a plate of rotted meat at a restaurant in the U.P once. It was just like this one, stuck in the middle of nowhere. When I told the waitress it tasted weird she asked if I was from the city, that I probably wasn't used to wild meat. I tried to imagine what a wild cow might look like? Maybe it would resemble the bony ones with horns from Texas; Longhorns.
I walked back to the cabin and lay on the bed drinking beers and watching scrambled porn on the TV. I thought about what I'd do if I lived over here, and couldn’t come up with anything. I became filled with boredom and wanted more beer so I decided to walk back to the store. The land was flat and the woods just sort of took off into nothingness on either side. I knew there was water off to my left cause the motel cabins were on the lake but I couldn't see it. No glimmer of lights in the woods no signs of people. It was creepy but not scary really. Scary were the hunters earlier, and where they might be now, lurking behind trees, waiting for midnight, or getting hammered at the bar.
They were getting hammered at the bar, a handful anyway. The store was closed and I was still hungry and only half drunk so I walked over to the roadhouse. I would order bar food, it was frozen, came from elsewhere, and was deep fried. It was safe. Earlier I'd hung out at the garage for a bit with a couple local guys while I waited on news about the van. That's when I found out I'd be there over night. If there's been more than just me and at least one girl it could've been a set up for your average strangers off the main track horror movie. Young people stranded in a town filled with ominous uglies. Someone would have sex and then they would be killed, horribly.

One of the guys from the garage was at the bar so I walked over and sat next to him. “What's with the whores?” I asked by way of greeting. There was a trio of sluttily attired women around a table by the dance floor. I wasn't worried about insulting anyone's sister or mom, I'd noticed the short bus version of a Winnebago in the lot. It was not a rig locals’ or even hunters would drive. I had no personal knowledge but had heard that these mini-campers were the chosen ride for the hunting season hookers.
“Oh” said my friend turning to look, “They fuck the hunters” he tells me what I already know but appreciate the validation of a local.
“The hunters come up here to kill and the women follow to suck their dicks for money” he adds succinctly.

“Gross” I say thinking They suck the cocks of the killers! Would be an interesting movie ad blurb.
“I don't know why they don't just stay where they are and do all that”
This makes so much sense that I take another look at the guy. He's maybe my age but at first glance looks older, growing out haircut under a trucker hat; quilt lined plaid flannel shirt and indefinable brand jeans. His baby face poorly hidden under raggedy facial hair. I thought he was a rube and he looks like a rube but clearly he isn't. He just doesn't care about appearance. I'm tempted to offer him some beauty products but don't want him to stop talking to me. I have a compulsion to kiss him on the lips but quash it when I catch him looking at me oddly. He probably saw it in my eyes. I don't know what came over me, probably the beer. Right now we're cohorts, and I'd like to keep it that way.
“Don't you need their money?” I ask under the impression that places like this depended on outsider influxes of cash.
“Not me, I'm on welfare, I just need the bitches to pay their taxes and vote democrat” I like this guy.
“What was your name again?” I ask.
He tells me his name is Ronnie and points out one of the hookers, “I think that's a dude,” he says.
He could be right, boxy of shape and wearing an obvious wig, she's holding court with her chair tilted back, legs spread, longneck in hand.
“Go find out” says Ronnie.
“No, you”
“I live here, you'll be gone tomorrow and I'm gonna be running into the dude all weekend, I could end up with my ass kicked, or worse”
This makes sense so I think about it, how to do it without instigating some extended interaction. You talk to a stranger in a bar and it can turn into a short term relationship.


“Okay” I decide “I'll ask her for the time but I won't refer to her as sir or mam, I'll call her Mrlady” I don't know how this is going to resolve the mystery but I think it's funny. So does Ronnie.
Mrlady and her table watch me approach. To her left is a stringy haired woman with a shiny face and drawn on eyebrows. If she had an expression it would be rage. Across from her is a small pink ball of a woman, a girl, with a short pony tail sticking out the back of her head like a dart. Up close our Mrlady's got a big female-sized rack but it's stacked on top of an equally dense roll of fat. Her face is heavily made up even under the dim bar lights but so are her buddies. I look close and see no sign of beard stubble trying to bust through.
“Excuse me Mrlady douyouhavethetime?” I blurt out. She points over my shoulder in the general direction of where I know there's a clock above the bar. Her expression reads as non-plussed, maybe even pissed off, which turns out to be correct. As I turn to walk away, our question unanswered but at a loss for a follow-up, I’m stopped short by a deep bass voice barking, “Get back here Asscrack!” I assume this is me and turn around.

“Listen you little weasel, if you and your boyfriend at the bar there think you can fuck with me you're dead wrong, and when I say dead I mean that the coffin is empty and the lid is open,” she grabs my wrist, digging in so hard one of her nails pops off, “Got it, fuck?”
“Yes mam,” I say heading back to Ronnie and the safety of the other side of the room.
“He’s a dude” I tell him, “and she’s scary”
“She made it clear she’s got her eye on us both” I point at my eyes and then his for emphasis. I decide to leave.
“I gotta go,” I grab my sack of fried food off the bar, “I’ll look for you when I pass through again, hopefully you’ll still be mobile.”
I left the next afternoon, stopping at the store for a bottle of wine to lessen a hangover headache. As I drove past the roadhouse I spotted an orange vested hunter on his knees outside of Mrlady’s Winnebago. Vomit was pouring out of his mouth. I wondered if she had some deal with the bar owner, setting up shop in the lot like that.