Two Days Past Dead

The Infamous Todd

Two Days _________ Past Dead

I don’t look for trouble, It finds me.

Two Days Past Dead is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

2010, 2011 BecHavn Publishing Group Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Todd Kachinski All rights reserved.

Published currently in the United States by BecHavn Publishing Group under the authority of Todd Kachinski and his heirs.

Reserved Edition

ISBN: 978-1-105-08728-8

Printed in the United States www.BecHavn.com

Book Design: Todd Kachinski-Kottmeier

Dedication

I dedicate the spirit of this book to

David Summers Who taught me to believe that I can make a difference.

I dedicate the compassion of this book to my eldest daughter

Cheryl Ann

Who taught me forgiveness.

I dedicate the story of this book to

My Parents Who found the patience to teach their children to imagine a world they could have for themselves and the confidence to create it.

Finally I dedicate this book to

David Christopher Bradford of Brunswick Georgia

(1969 to 1994)

Foreword I rarely read the foreword to any novel before reading the story. I purchase most of my books and magazines to read the full-length version of the synopsis printed on the cover.

To understand my story, it is critical for you to read this foreword.

My name is Todd Kachinski-Kottmeier. Most people call me “The Infamous Todd” for all the wrong reasons. I would like to believe my reputation is only exaggerated because the people around me make my life stories so spectacular.

Try to Google “Infamous Todd.”

Yep that is I, the top one, well actually, most of them. This includes the restaurants and nightclubs. I have been manic all my life, right to the end. If I am dead by the time you read this book, Please do not say that I am in a better place when I die. It only cheats the awesome life God gifted me.

I am not so vain as to consider my words integral to your daily life. I will say to you that my place in this world might best be left to gossip or even momentary laughter, as I am the most obnoxious person I know. I know this is true as even my best friends kindly remind me of this fact with their constant physical absence from my life. My obsessive-compulsive light burns brightly like a candle burning at both ends. I have paid the price for this in terms of my health and in my relationships with both friends and family. I have written many books, but this is the story that began it all. This is the second edition.

Someone once compared my life to that of Forrest Gump, always in the right place at the right time, in my case, ‘’ the wrong place at the wrong time.’’ Do not get me wrong, as a restaurant consultant, owner, and chef; I have had the opportunity to be involved in almost a hundred restaurant chains. The market for vocational books is quite limited though.

The original outline and summary for this book was in first person. An alarmed publisher discovered that much of the book was so accurate that its content constituted a legal confession to felonies, many still within the statute of limitations; a place he did not want me to go.

The second re-write of the story, for the first edition, changed the names of the not so innocent to protect them. I find it funny that we had to introduce them instead as fictional characters. This time the story got past the publisher but the editors felt the story was still too complicated.

They then proceeded to remove my restaurant career, eliminated family members, erased my military service, blacked out both ex-wives and both my daughters, lightened any gay references, and finally morphed friends and acquaintances to carry multiple story lines.

In my anger, from them constantly trying to change my story, the publishers had to remind me that this was a fictional story, nothing more, nothing less.

I fought hard to keep most of the actual events of my life in this fictional story, by explaining to the publisher and the editors that even James Michener had enough actual events in his books to make the fictional tales seem realistic.

One of the funniest lines in this foreword came at the suggestion of the publisher’s PR Department. The public relations manager thought it would be clever to get comments from the people who were actually involved in the adventures and quote them on the book’s jacket.

My editor asked him, “What do they call a list with such names?” The overly dressed yuppie of a PR man just shrugged his shoulders just as my editor replied, “A list of witnesses for the prosecution.”

All parties involved decided that once again, I should not fill in too many of the details of this fictitious story. It is best that I conclude my foreword by reminding you that the story I am about to tell is purely fictional. If, by chance, any events in this book match any events in reality, it is purely by coincidence.

Yup, it is purely by coincidence.

“The Infamous Todd”

Acknowledgements I want to thank personally my dear friends John Behr, Steve Hammond, and Dr. Christina Gonzalez, each of these are Bechavn Publishing Group’s Senior Editors. In addition, I want to thank Kenny Walker, Bryan Hadley, Stewart Carrier, and Ronnie Willis for taking moments from their lives to help me write this book. If it were not for their contributions, this book would still be 1,282 index cards sprawled across my bed, long past my deadline.

In 1998, writer Daniel Wallace published his novel “Big Fish.” In the story, the lead protagonist beckons his son to his deathbed to tell him about his own life tale. The father’s stories were so fanciful that the son concludes that his father was fabricating his life story for whimsical effect. As the book ends, the father dies. In customary English fashion, the memorial for family and friends is held at the home. As the son arrives at the funeral, he is introduced one-by-one; to each of the actual people from the stories his father had told incredulously, discovering the actual validity of his father’s lore.

In direct relation to this particular reference, I would like to thank some of the more incredible (and perhaps less credible) friends and family members that have shared their colorfully enriched craziness with me in my life. You are the people that have truly assured that my world would always be stranger than fiction. Because of that fact, I am sure that my readers will have difficulty believing that some characters ever existed beyond my imagination. We will keep that our little secret.

“Happiness is truly in the details of your life” Infamous Todd 1981

♣

Two Days Past Dead

“Failure is often your self-conscience setting you up for a bigger reward” The Infamous Todd

♣ Chapter One

The thin white grocery bag quickly contracted against the crevices of Billy’s face each time he breathed in. Through the sheer clear plastic wrap you could clearly make out the curves of Billy’s sweat soaked face as he gasped feverishly for air. Off to the right side of his head was a white cash register receipt stuck on the cusp of his lower earlobe: Grocery .84 Other $2.89 The receipt barely reflected the letters of the virtually nondescript date of sale ending with -2008.

Billy’s round cheeks exaggerated a large over-grown brown mustache as the plastic bag entered into his out-stretched mouth. The upside down, inverted words “Winn Dixie” slapped up and down inside the bag. Billy could barely hear himself screaming, “Why, why, why?” as the bag continued to smack against his ear, muffling out any noise from inside the living room.

Only two hours prior, the Winn Dixie bag had sat on the counter of the sterile grocery market. The elderly cashier placed Billy’s two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper inside the bag before asking Agnes if she wanted her son’s pack of Marlboros in it. She declined.

Only an hour ago, Billy told his mother good night before going to bed in the stuccoblocked duplex they shared in a shadier part of Ybor City.

Only ten minutes ago, Billy thought he heard his mother ruffling outside the room just past the hallway.

Only eight minutes ago, he heard a quick yelp from his mother’s dog. He thought that his mother, Agnes, had stepped on the small longhaired mutt as both had a long history of accidentally tripping over the strays they brought home with great frequency.

Only a few seconds ago, Billy heard the shattering of wood and his mother’s scream as someone kicked-in his own hollow-wooden bedroom door. Billy, being a person often raided by the police, instinctively became submissive to the intruder that jumped quickly on the bed. The invader hit Billy’s head with the butt of a rifle. It was not until Billy felt the tugging of duct tape wrapping around his obese torso did he realize that things were not right. Surely, the Tampa Police Department would not restrain him using tape best used for fixing cars or other manly repairs.

The intruders violently pulled both of the Wilsons into the dark, crowded living room slamming them onto the hard, cold terrazzo floor. Roughly covering the hard polished floor was an area rug that had once belonged to Billy’s grandmother. The two Latin men

could hear Agnes Wilson sobbing on the other side of the coffee table that sat in front of the old couch.

She could see through the legs that held up the massive wooden coffee table that her father had built in their garage when she was a teenager living in Rochester, Michigan.

Across the room, she could make out her dog lying dead near the shattered front door. The light from the porch cast an eerie glow through the hole in the wooden frame made by the crowbar used to gain access to her home. There was enough light for Agnes to see the blood as it slowly dripped from the side of the dog’s head.

“Take the money, take the money, please, please, take the money!” Agnes repeated in a panicked voice. “It is under the dirty clothes in a black file box behind the big chair in my bedroom.”

Repeatedly Agnes cried into her once-still living room. She could barely make out the shadow of her son through the dark room packed with oversized furniture.

It was only a year ago that Billy had moved her to northeast Tampa from the Flint, Michigan slums that grew around her after the General Motors closing of Buick City in 1999.

She could feel her tears as they mixed with sweat creating a nasty, strong odor from the wool rug that now smashed upon her cheek.

Agnes was there when they discharged Billy from the Michigan State Prison in Jackson where he had been incarcerated as a low-level drug dealer. She moved him into her small home hoping to help him clean up his act. Instead, Billy started using crack cocaine to the point that Agnes lost her own home.

Billy convinced her to move to Tampa, selling her on the warmer weather, a chance to start over, and several confirmed job offers. It was not until Billy moved Agnes twelve hundred miles south that she realized that his job opportunity was selling drugs for Auggie Summers, a childhood friend.

The noise from the plastic bag over Billy’s head filled the silence between pleas from Agnes’ begging the two strangers to take the cash in the hidden box and leave her home peacefully. She could no longer hear her son repeating the word, “Why, Why?” The Dr. Pepper bottle had bounced across the floor earlier as one of the thieves grabbed the plastic Winn Dixie bag from the kitchen table. She watched as the man wrapped the bag around Billy’s head. Billy jerked his head back and forth struggling to avoid suffocation.

Agnes could not shake the vision of the plastic as it quickly sucked into her son‘s mouth, making a distinct popping noise in the room, before her own body was slammed to the ground. She shuddered at the thought that a bag would soon be over her own head. Fear took over at the vision of her own death by slow asphyxiation.

“Mis-ter Wil-son, the plas-tic bag is not tied around your neck yet” calmly spoke the large Latino man standing at Billy’s side. The muscular Cuban reeked of Old Spice.

He continued, “Only your fears are going to kill you. Then again, maybe they should.” Billy could not hear Ernesto speak through the bag. All he could hear was the crackling of plastic against his ears and the thudding noises now bellowing from inside his chest. Snot poured profusely over his Super Mario mustache.

“Take my money please. Just leave us alone!” screamed Agnes. Her old cotton nightgown saturated with sweat, discoloring the powder blue and white fluffy details that accented embroidered caricatures of sheep jumping over fences. Two hard plastic zip ties now dug into her flesh as they held her hands bound awkwardly in front of her waist.

Agnes Littlefield-Wilson had once held the title of ‘Miss Rochester’. She had scored major points for her gymnastic flips combined with a dazzling tap dance routine, which had left the judges with goose bumps; and received a standing ovation from the awestricken Oakland County Fair attendees.

A much older Ward Wilson had quickly cut Agnes Littlefield’s beauty pageant career short in the spring of 1960 upon the discovery of her pregnancy. Ward Wilson had been a drinking bar friend of her parents, Ethyl and Mercer Littlefield.

The Littlefields met Ward through the Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Rochester, Michigan. Ward was the parochial teacher at the Lutheran school situated on the east side of the church parking lot. Ward was a responsible, God-fearing man that shared many fine cocktails with the Littlefields, which led to his introduction to their high school daughter just a few days prior to the onset of the year 1959.

The days of attending Rochester High were now far behind Agnes as she lay sprawled, sobbing on the crowded floor; her face smashed against her parents’ old round tan rug. Her weight gain over the past twenty years had been so extreme that the intruders had been unable to tie her hands behind her own back.

Ernesto had deemed earlier that his friend and partner in crime, Rey would be the person to take down Agnes when they entered the Wilson’s rented home off 5 th Avenue. The smaller Cuban intruder twisted Agnes’s stubby arms awkwardly above her breasts to connect the orange plastic ties. Instantly, blood seeped down her arm and onto the fluffy farm scene on the cuff of her gown.

Her life had seemed in disarray ever since Ward Wilson had moved her to his childhood home in Flint, only to leave her three months later for another woman. There, she was alone, pregnant, in a distant city with too much pride to go back to her parents who were dismayed by the sudden marriage and imminent birth announcement.

The Littlefields did not behave that way in Rochester, Michigan. After all, they were the first family on their street to own a television.

“People talk Billy…” started the athletic Cuban male not realizing that William was unable to understand a single word. Ernesto’s accent was thick from a long heritage that brought him to the shores of the United States only two decades earlier. Ernesto watched as the stocky man struggled on the floor pleading for mercy. He could not care.

Ernesto stood above Billy, his mind filled with other thoughts. He was still worried about the demise of his favorite breakfast restaurant two days ago. It would be hard to satisfy his breakfast dining habits at another 24-hour café. It was not hard to find another place to serve him pancakes, but it was going to be almost impossible to locate a restaurant that served boysenberry syrup. He thought of the possibility of carrying his own pancake topping into the restaurant.

Glancing down, Ernesto saw that half of Billy’s ass was hanging out from the gray sweat pants now twisted vicariously around Billy’s waist.

“I think I taste vomit”, Ernesto said as he reached over towards the couch. He motioned to Rey to pass him the drab, frayed brown and off-white Afghan blanket draped over the back of the couch. With one quick motion, he covered Billy’s crack.

“Ag-den-is”, Ernesto continued in a slow, drawn out tempo. “Have you ever had boysenberry syrup Ag-den-is?”

What a peculiar name, he thought as he glanced over at the fat woman in the white gown, still twisting in front of the chocolate brown couch. Agnes lay sprawled upon the floor in front of the sofa, wedged in by the bulky coffee table. Her mind could not comprehend the strange question.

Across the room, she noticed a small red ball that had belonged to the dog that now lay dead at the front door. For two months, she had assumed the ball had simply vanished, perhaps destroyed by the dog one night, but here it sat now in surreal silence. It had been Napoleon’s favorite toy.

“See, Mr. Wilson,” Ernesto continued, “If you calm down, the bag will let air slip inside for you to breathe. I have not taped it around your neck… yet.”

Ernesto paused before ominously adding the word “Yet,” once more, which started Agnes on a new round of sobbing. He wondered how long such an obese person could cry with such intensity. Surely, at her weight, she must be exhausted by now.

As Billy lay there on the floor, his mind flickering from one random thought to another. It was much like one of those irritating strobe lights that he hated so much in the El Goya, a gay nightclub in the Ybor City district of Tampa, when he had vacationed in Florida as a teenager. The same type of discos also employed black lights, which had the annoying effect of highlighting every stain on his clothes, the dandruff trails from his hair, and so clearly differentiated his real teeth from the crowns.

From the corner of Billy’s eye, he could barely make out the shadow of the man that stood beside him. In fact, the only definite sight came from the “W D” logo of the Winn-Dixie bag that covered his face. He could not escape the gagging smell of Old Spice that seemed to have replaced any air in the bag.

Once again, Billy agonized over the thought that he should have fought harder when his door was kicked in. He was certain now… as he easily outweighed the attacking man by at least fifty pounds if not more. It was now that Billy decided that he could have fought and possibly won, but now it was too late. The duct tape now held his arms securely behind his back. He was no longer able to see his surroundings and worse yet; he was lying on the ground. He was much too bulky to pull himself off the floor quickly enough to fight.

Panic again sucked the plastic into his mouth. Billy’s huge barrel chest burned as the stench in the bag replaced the last of his oxygen. The pain felt as if someone was starting to slice with a dull fork from his insides out. Actually, he thought, it felt much larger than a fork. It shot in every direction with each gasp for air, popping the thin plastic further inside his mouth and forcing all airflow to a halt. His arms began to tingle much like the sensation an arm has when it falls asleep in an awkward position. The feeling of his flesh being torn from his muscles abruptly superseded the tingling sensation.

Fear and panic overwhelmed him. He now faced the knowledge that the actions of his life would now surely result in the death of his own mother, the mother that had loved him unconditionally.

Billy’s life had few memories that did not include him abusing his mother somehow.

Agnes was the only person in his life to stand by him each time he fell upon hard times. She was the only person in Billy’s life always there to hold his hand as he cried, or was scared, and the only person to visit him each time they locked him up for another crime. Billy knew she had given everything she had in her life to assist him in his recoveries. He was suddenly anguished by the realization that she was also always the first person he betrayed whenever he got back on his feet again.

Today, that unfaltering love for him would be rewarded by the loss of her very life.

He felt something strange come over him now.

A warm, calming feeling slowly crept down through his shoulders. A gentle feeling of trust embraced him. For in that moment, William “Billy” Wilson, born May 23, 1962, let go.

Two Days Past Dead

“Live your life with the imagination of your youth.”

The Infamous Todd

♣ Chapter Two

It was 1977 and Auggie was trying so very hard to pinpoint the actual moment in his life that his behavior had changed. He had always been an out of control, Ritalin child, typeA personality from birth. Moreover, usually all of his wild activities involved making money. Auggie was always up to something that led to trouble.

Most people go through life wondering if they were adopted. In Auggie’s house, his sisters constantly prayed that he was an adopted child.

Everyone had always considered him a problem child, not your typical lemonadestand type of kid. He was still small when his Protestant mother had gone to see the movie premier of “The Exorcist.” The next day she visited her minister to discuss the possibility that Auggie might be possessed. The pastor kindly sent her home with no further discussion on the matter.

Auggie’s imagination had always brought him to the more bizarre moments of life.

His enthusiasm unintentionally brought cohorts into his adventures. When he was twelve, he had convinced his sister Shirley to help him assess the value of the furniture in their home in the event that their divorced mother should suddenly die. He next convinced his brother David and their baby sister to join them in building a fort in the woods that they would be able to call home upon that fateful time of their mother’s departure. This particular adventure lasted three weeks before they decided that living with their grandparents would be much simpler.

In the mid-seventies Alice moved her three children from Auburn Heights to Holly, a small village twenty miles south of Flint. She had just married Donald Summers, a short Englishman she had met at the Pontiac Parents Without Partners Christmas Social. It was the third marriage for both. Alice fell for Donald rather quickly, although he was nothing like the men she normally dated. He was much quieter, more reserved, and much more distant than the rowdy, bad-boy drifters she had always seemed to attract.

Donald was a successful car salesman at the Szott Ford dealership in Holly. Alice was excited to bring her new family to Donald’s small home on Holly Bush Drive.

The in-laws lived across town on East Maple Street in Donald’s childhood home.

Donald had another sister that lived three blocks away. That sister got Alice a job as an Assistant Manager at a Dutch Pantry Restaurant off U.S. 23 in the neighboring city of Fenton.

Alice wanted a different path for herself and her four children. It seemed like the mature thing to do. After all, she was now past thirty. Having a carload of children made dating, much too complicated. Moving to Holly turned a new leaf for the entire family.

Auggie and Shirley started classes at Sherman Middle School while their siblings took classes at Holly Elementary. The one single thing that Auggie would always remember from that first day in their new school was a penciled remark placed in the men’s room stall of one of the bathrooms near the gym. The graffiti read, “Flush twice. The cafeteria is on the other side of the building.”

They had been to the village only once before the marriage and their subsequent move to Holly. One particular visit happened during the annual Carrie Nation Festival. The town was bustling with shopping tourists. Alice had taught baton and pom-poms to adolescent girls in Auburn Heights. She had been successful in starting up a new troupe in her new town. Today, her Avondale Baton Troupe would walk in Holly’s parade celebrating some old woman with a hatchet that did not want people to drink. Auggie knew it was something like that, but the details were somewhat murky for him.

During the move from Auburn Heights, Auggie had come across an empty, rusty old toolbox that was buried in the bottom of a closet in his new father’s home. To Donald, it was merely something the trash man should have removed years ago, but for Auggie, it had character.

He was amazed that something so old had survived two generations. This move to Holly marked the eleventh relocation in his fifteen years of life. Nothing he owned had a story attached to it. Nothing he had ever possessed had managed to last for more than five years, but now he had a toolbox that had once belonged to his new grandfather and was now being passed on to him by Donald, his new father.

Auggie was fifteen years old and owned nothing from his birth father. That man had vanished from his life when Auggie was only five years old. He felt honored that this simple rusty toolbox had history and now a part of his newfound heritage.

“Auggie, you are moving to a new school. Anything in your past can vanish.

Anything you ever wanted to be, you can become from this day forward.” whispered his new father. Those words inspired Auggie to be a better person, in his new school, with his new dad, with his new last name.

His initial plan to repaint his toolbox red changed the moment that he saw the DayGlo yellow paint downtown at McKay’s Hardware Store. Soon he had sanded, primed, and painted the old, bulky metal toolbox bright yellow. He plastered the box with decals purchased from the local five and dime including a smiley face, peace sign, white cartoon daisy, and a sticker claiming, “If the van’s a rockin’, don’t come knockin’!”

A green swath of felt now lined the insides of the bucket and removable tray. Auggie placed fifteen candy bars in the lower section of the box along with an artistic place card denoting “$1 chocolate bars” and “One quarter for three Mary Jane’s candies.

His prize offering was a new product named “Bubble Yum” that he would sell for fifty-cents a pack. He cut out a piece of hard plastic to hold it to the top groove inside the old toolbox lid. Auggie would take this box to his new school.

In 1975, the LifeSavers Candy Company had rolled out a new product called, ‘Bubble Yum.’ It was the first soft, gel-type gum sold in the United States. The Hershey’s Candy subsidiary was excited about its incredible success from day one.

The product was actually so successful that demand quickly outstripped supply forcing Hershey to suspend their National advertising for the new gum. Within 5 weeks, Bubble Yum became the only candy Auggie sold in the large metal box. On the sixth week, Auggie reluctantly retired the metal box and replaced it with a purple LIFESAVERS gym bag.

Later one afternoon, Auggie’s life changed while picking trash from the huge dumpsters at the Szott Ford dealership. His haul normally would be nothing more than a broken calculator, plastic bookbinders, or discarded picture frames. On this day, it was four boxes of some rather unusual business cards.

To the best of Auggie’s knowledge, these cards were for inventory or stock numbers used for parts. He really did not care. What was important to him was that each box contained 250 thin-plastic stock cards, each with a unique number printed boldly in black.

The next day, Auggie taped one of those plastic cards to each package of Bubble Yum. Any classmate purchasing five packages throughout the week could redeem the five plastic cards for a free package of gum.

Bubble Yum sold for a quarter a pack at all the local stores. Within a month, Auggie was snapping up every package entering Holly at full retail price.

His first attempts to buy the gum wholesale through Cunningham Drugs, Hammond’s Grocery, and then finally Barney’s Market were summarily rejected. Auggie’s fortune changed however, when Martha Glick, the manager of the local ‘Ben Franklin store’ gave him his first break by selling him Bubble Yum at wholesale for a mere nine cents a pack.

Martha was impressed by Auggie’s good business sense, considering his age. She wished with a sigh that her own teenaged son would show such initiative.

Ben Franklin Stores are one of those retail shops that try to be a little of everything in small town USA. A little five and dime, tossed in with arts and crafts mixed with miscellaneous retail ware. Most people might never realize this, but Sam Walton of ‘WalMart' fame started his career with a Ben Franklin Store.

“Everything begins somewhere.”

Auggie’s assimilation into the Holly School System had been radical. Few people could even begin to realize the vast network he had created throughout three local schools within the first four months of entering the new school. He had amassed a sales team of fifteen classmates from Sherman Middle School, Fenton High, and Holly High Schools to sell his Bubble Yum. By the end of the first month, he had twenty-two students in four schools including the Adelphian Academy of Holly.

The agreement was for each friend to sell the gum at fifty-cents a pack, split the quarter profits fifty-fifty with Auggie, less payouts for cards exchanged, which Auggie credited upfront with a nickel per pack discount on initial charges. Under the belief that Auggie was paying twenty-five cents a pack, this seemed like more than a fair deal for all involved.

Auggie continued to purchase all of the retail packages in town, thereby increasing demand, while guaranteeing both a monopoly and the elimination of product for potential competitors. The demand became so high that the team started selling over a thousand packs a week.

The new venture became more agressive about the same time he met George Behr, a Holly High School Senior that also went to his Lutheran Church.

George proposed selling to Auggie a box of twelve packs of Bubble Yum for one dollar a box. This increased profit a buck-forty a box. Auggie never asked for proofs of purchase, but Behr worked as a stock boy for Barney’s Market, a point not lost on Auggie.

Old Man Barney must have thought that his retail sales of Bubble Yum were through the roof as he increased the orders only to find his stock wiped out again by the end of the week. The following month ended with George procuring operatives at eight retailers throughout Davison, Fenton, and Holly ensuring a discounted supply of the coveted goods.

The differences between Auggie and his parents could fill a book. It is important to note that his parents were Democrats in the seventies, each of them with their own secrets of past indiscretions. Auggie understood that his Mother, the flower child, had grown into the same kind of person she had so strongly protested in her past.

Auggie continually pushed the limits of his parents’ liberal views. He was now a fifteen year-old in the ninth grade and owner of a booming underground business. A new gum craze was at full throttle in the United States and Auggie had now earned the nickname, “The Candy Man.” To his parents, Auggie was a goofy kid that mimics their favorite television show character ‘Jack’ from a new ABC-TV comedy that had premiered that spring called “Three’s Company.” They were amused that their dopey son was carrying a briefcase more than half a decade before another television character named Alex Keaton made it fashionable to be a Young Republican. They were just happy that he had settled into his new town so quickly and seemingly without trouble. Every conversation they had about him determined that Holly must have brought him the stability he needed to just be a regular kid.

The secret hiding place for all of his cash in his parents’ home was in the air conditioning vent blowing into the bedroom that he and his brother shared. By now, it was no longer possible to store the growing cash in the duct. This forced Auggie to start making plans for his first large purchase in order to disguise his newfound wealth. Up to his point, he had been explaining away his sudden riches by telling his parents that they came from mowing the neighbors’ yards.

The sole purpose for why Auggie had begun selling candy was to have spending cash, just a little spending cash. By the time the cutting edge blockbuster movie ‘Star Wars’ premiered in May, Auggie’s stash of money was becoming so immense that he was barely able to keep it hidden in his room any longer. He decided at this point that it was time to concentrate on making a significant purchase. One that would diminish the stockpile of money that seemed to be growing out of control, yet not arouse his parents’ suspicion of its true value.

His answer came in the form of a new gadget marketed in advertisements as the Apple II, a home-computing device that contained 48K of RAM with a price tag of $2,638.00.

By June, Auggie had enough cash to buy one outright. His parents’ ignorance of this new technology served well to camouflage its value. He would keep his new toy at his friend Mark Alexander’s house, a place where his parents would never venture. Everything seemed to be so neatly in place, almost perfect.

“Austin Chapman, Auggie Summers, Joshua Dunn, Tod Cornish, Arthur Ciel, Pamela Champion, Roger Bolivar, and Brandon Hammond… Please report to the Principal’s office.”

Two Days Past Dead

“Run through life, for there is plenty of time to rest at the end.”

The Infamous Todd

♣ Chapter Three

Even in 1978, a student would never have been summoned to the Principal’s office over the P.A. system for having done something good. The fact that Auggie was being called along with seven others at the same time seemed seven times more ominous. The chances that all of the other students were being paged because their parents were all concurrently experiencing personal emergencies requiring an audience with the Principal seemed virtually impossible.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” With each step Auggie’s inner chorus would chant the curse word as he tried valiantly not to pass out in the middle of the hallway. He knew he was “busted.” Auggie had rehearsed this moment a hundred times over, but never had the scenario including so many people in his organization being busted all at the same time.

In his mind… the lie, the story, the alibi had always involved some teacher catching one of his friends selling Auggie’s products in class. The irate teacher would demand that the activity cease immediately, as she escorted the violator to the Principal’s office to receive a smack on their wrist for selling ‘non-school sponsored items’ on school property. Only in his “worst case scenario” might a connection to Auggie be uncovered.

Were that to happen, Auggie would give that “awe shucks” look, receive his “slap on his wrist,” and move on. He had played all of this out repeatedly hundreds of times in his mind. It had to happen this way for this scenario to work out in Auggie’s favor.

His pace quickened as he thought, “After all… how much trouble can a kid get into for selling Bubble Yum? He thought, “I do not look for trouble. It finds me.”

Today though, the shit had officially hit the fan. Back and forth, his thoughts scrambled from one thought to another, each being interrupted by his inner voice quietly swearing; “Fuck,” one more time. The echo of his feet in the empty hall kept tempo with his swearing.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck...”

He walked past his guidance counselor’s door, past the gym, and made a hard right toward the center of the school. From sixty feet away he saw the mob of people awaiting his arrival.

“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck” the monotone words were now coming much faster than his steps.

Standing in line at the front offices was not merely the Principal, but also his parents, two members of the Fenton Police Department, four officers from the Holly Police Department, his guidance counselor, seven members of his sales team, along with an assortment of their parents amassed waiting for Auggie. They were so crowded into the Principal’s office that they spilled down the hall, into the adjoining room and practically back into the lockered corridor.

The police search of the school’s lockers had produced most of Auggie’s current stash, which was summarily confiscated. Just the portion of contraband they had found was enough to shock all of the authorities involved; fourteen lockers, five feet tall, full of gum.

“Fourteen full lockers of gum, I heard they found fourteen damn full lockers of gum.

Fourteen…” the crowded rooms seem to mumble back and forth in unison.

Not one person in Holly actually ever knew the true extent of Auggie’s operation, but by the time it had been discovered; the total of cash and inventory was in excess of five thousand dollars, making him the largest single retailer in the country for Bubble Yum bubble gum.

The Principal gave Auggie a brief opportunity for an explanation.

Auggie had practiced this cover story a thousand times over in his mind, but now decided to expand this well thought out alibi to include all of his friends. To his selling staff’s benefit, none of them actually knew the true scale of his operation. Auggie had always been very good at keeping those types of details to himself. The last thing Auggie wanted, was to create desire for people to compete against him.

Without hesitation, Auggie recited his lines without blinking. Everyone in the room knew he was lying. The words came out of his mouth too fast and too perfectly. There was no pause, interruption or self-correction, and not a single clarification.

They all knew he was lying. His unlikely explanation of the source of his merchandise was naively simple, yet remarkably effective.

“I found it in a field near the railroad tracks past the rocks at Rosette Street and Saginaw, just across from that blue metal factory that makes some machinery; practically a whole pallet. I don’t know if it fell off of a train or out of the back of a truck.” That was Auggie’s story and he relentlessly stuck to it. Finder’s keepers.

It was a slow Wednesday afternoon the day that the Holly and Fenton Police departments busted the students. The police officers, led by Sergeant Theodore Ragan, had arrived at the Sherman Middle School with the intent of arresting Auggie Summers and seven students on charges of grand theft. A slow Wednesday in Holly was followed by a slow news day for the Detroit Free Press.

Karl Mulligan, a junior editor who worked the past two decades on the local section for Oakland County sat solemnly at his huge oak desk. He casually flipped through arrest records and the county police blotter. Fortunately, for Auggie, the editor was in a playful mood, as his wife had announced just that morning that she was finally pregnant. They had been trying to conceive for the past six years.

The short, stocky Hungarian laughed uproariously aloud while reading the police report of the previous day’s events in Holly. His unusual laugh caught some of the puzzled newspaper interns off guard.

Mr. Mulligan was known in the pressroom as “Tank”, but hardly for his laughter or sunny disposition. His nickname was a rude endearment placed upon him years before, by his peers in college, due equally as much to his stature as his tendency for bullying people in order to get his way.

Tank sat there at an overly large desk, which appeared to consume his short body. His bald head was the only part on his frame not overgrown with apish hair. In his hands was the police report detailing the exploits of a 16-year-old boy in the tiny town of Holly, allegedly caught trafficking candy of all things, across two Midwest towns. With budding amusement verging on glee, he continued to learn that it had taken four of the finest police investigators from both Oakland and Genesee counties to bring him down. The local law enforcement agencies had already ‘unofficially’ dubbed him “The Candy Man”.

Again, he laughed. The following day, a playful article on the front page of the ‘Lifestyle and Entertainment’ section of the Detroit Free Press read: Holly, Michigan – Arthur Pingolio Wednesday, SWAT teams from Oakland and Genesee counties stormed Sherman Middle School in Holly, Michigan. With guns drawn, in a daring daylight raid, the dual-county police forces of both counties brought down the elusive candy kingpin, Auggie Summers.

The combined squads Anti-Cavity & Plaque Force apprehended Mr. Summers, known in the confectionery underworld as “The Candy Man”.

During the assault, armed with hundreds of tear gas cylinders and stun grenades, they smashed in dozens of windows and bulldozed over several cars in the parking lot with their armored tanks. Stunned students fell to the floor in terror as attack dogs ran through the halls feverishly seeking the sugary contraband. One band student, Jim Ferris, was seriously injured during the raid when a police dog tore off his leg, reportedly, because Mr. Ferris had spilled the crème from a Twinkie snack cake on his pants earlier that morning.

The police dogs quickly tracked down fourteen school lockers, throughout four local schools, packed with the allegedly illegally gotten ‘Bubble Yum’ bubble gum. Mr. Summers, the mastermind behind the entire organization, along with a dozen or so of his candy-mob associates, were escorted away in iron shackles by armed guards.

As they left the school building, Sgt. Theodore Ragan of the Holly Police Department was overheard telling the youth that, “Four out of five dentists would have approved of this raid”.

The students thought the article was hilarious. A much dryer version of the police blotter detailing the actual events that had taken place, had appeared in The Detroit News, the Oakland Press, and the Tri-County News with much less fanfare.

Teachers bragged that one day Auggie would do awesome things with his talents.

His parents publicly scolded him for the scandal, but behind closed doors, they secretly agreed that they were quite impressed with his ability to engineer such a successful business.

Everyone in town ultimately agreed that this was not a funny story, yet, one by one, they were repeating it with amused smiles. In living rooms across the small town, parents

discussed Auggie’s youthful behavior as if that was the reason the Michigan prisons were overcrowded.

A local maverick restaurateur named Peter Duncan, personally found the follow up editorials on the subject hilarious, and sent them to his Colombian friend, Carlos Ledher.

The police departments were highly embarrassed by the Detroit Free Press story for making them out to be buffoons. Due to a lack of witnesses or victims, all of the charges against Auggie were quietly dropped. No one came forward that was either willing or able to confirm, or deny Auggie’s ridiculous alibi. There was simply no proof of any theft. Not one single retailer had records of such a huge amount of stock missing as to fill fourteen lockers.

The authorities would however, be sure to avenge their embarrassments over the next year.

That spring, the Holly Library caught fire. Regardless of the fact that there was no reason for suspicion, Sergeant Ragan took a perverse kind of satisfaction in hauling Auggie in for questioning. There was no shred of evidence even remotely suggesting Auggie’s involvement in the fire.

Over the next eight months, two dozen more fires of suspicious natures lit up the Township of Holly. The arsonist burned his way across the tiny village. The Press had already dubbed the criminal, “The Holly Arsonist”. In January, the “Historic Holly Hotel” became the latest victim of the firebug as it suffered damages in excess of a half million dollars.

Each time a fire broke out there was the Sergeant. He would haul Auggie out of his class, placing him in handcuffs, so he could parade him out in front of the school to question him. Auggie would solemnly stand there, as the flashing lights on top of the police car caught the attention of anyone in any of the dozen classrooms that faced the front of the school.

For a half hour, he would interrogate him before releasing him from the handcuffs and driving away. Sergeant Ragan knew that Auggie was innocent of these crimes, but Auggie was a smug pain-in-the-ass kid hiding behind his “Awe-shucks, I cried when President Ford from Michigan lost to Jimmy Carter from Georgia” personality. This was the Sergeant’s form of pay back.

Each time, as the officer drove away, he would roll down his window and say, “It hurts to be publicly humiliated.” Auggie never took it personally. It was hard to feel selfrighteous when he alone knew the whole truth of the candy’s origin.

Okay, now it’s time to get into the grittiness of the story.

Please order your copy of the novel.