Sneek peek Two Days Past Dead

Two Days Past Dead I do not look for trouble, it finds me.

By Todd Kachinski Kottmeier With Steve Hammond 108 pages in this file represents 60 pages from the actual book for easier digital viewing on this site.

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

Zinnia Press Third Edition ZinniaPress.com Copyright Š 2010, 2011, 2014 by Todd Kachinski All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-98789-0 Printed in the United States InfamousTodd.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.

(1929-2005) 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” 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 Kachinski Kottmeier.” Yep that is I, the top one, well actually, most of them. This includes the paintings, plays, shows, restaurants, books, novels, 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 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 understand 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 over two dozen books, but this is the story that began it all. This is the third edition of Two Days Past Dead. Someone once compared my life to 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.

The original outline and summary for this book was in first person. An alarmed publisher discovered most of the book so accurate 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 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 “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, 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 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 to conclude my foreword by reminding you 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” Update: It is funny how many people use the comments, quotes, and lines placed in this 2005 story. I constantly get notes from people stating, “You stole that line from blah, blah, blah.” I go online to realize they used the term many years after this book was originally published. This novel published when many of the stars were only twelve years old.

Acknowledgements I want to thank John Behr, Steve Hammond, Dr. Christina Gonzalez, 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’s tale. The father’s stories were so fanciful that the son concludes 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 they hold at the father’s 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 for sharing their colorfully enriched craziness with me in my life. They are the people assuring my world would always be stranger than fiction. Because of this fact, I am sure my readers will have difficulty believing some characters ever existed beyond my imagination. I will keep our little secret...

“Happiness is truly in the details of your life�

Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier 1981

Chapter One

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

♣ 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: Soda $1.49 Cig $3.89 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 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 Marlboro’s in it. She declined.

Only an hour ago, Billy told his mother goodnight before going to bed in the stucco-blocked 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 his mother; Agnes had stepped on the small longhaired mutt as both had a long history of accidentally tripping over the strays she 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 jumping 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 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 the Wilsons into the dark, crowded living room slamming them to the hard, cold terrazzo. Roughly covering the hard polished floor was an area rug once belonging 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 holding the massive wooden coffee table her father built in their garage when she was a teenager living in Rochester, Michigan.

Across the room, she saw 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 General Motors closed Buick City in 1999. She could feel her tears as they mixed with sweat creating a nasty, strong odor from the wool rug smashed upon her cheek.

Agnes was there when they discharged Billy from the Michigan State Prison in Jackson, 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 did she realize 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 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 of a bag over her 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, 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 accenting 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 once held the title of ‘Miss Rochester’. She had scored major points for her gymnastic flips combined with a dazzling tap dance routine, which left the judges with goose bumps and received a standing ovation from the awestricken Oakland County Fair attendees. A much older Ward Wilson 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 Littlefield’s 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 Littlefield’s, which led to his introduction to their high school daughter just a few days prior to the onset of 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. The intruders were unable to tie her hands behind her own back because of her weight gain the past twenty years.

Ernesto deemed earlier that his friend and partner in crime would take down Agnes as they entered the Wilson’s rented home off 5th 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 to the fluffy farm scene on the cuff of her gown. Her life seemed in disarray since Ward Wilson 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, dismayed by the sudden marriage and imminent birth announcement. The Littlefield’s 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 Billy

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 serving boysenberry syrup. He thought of carrying his own pancake topping into the restaurant. Glancing down, Ernesto saw Billy’s ass 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 sofa. 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 belonging to the dog now 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 was 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…”

Ernesto paused before ominously adding the word “Yet.” Agnes started 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 at a nightclub. 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 standing beside him. In fact, the only definite sight came from the “W D” logo of the Winn-Dixie bag covering his face. He could not escape the gagging smell of Old Spice cologne replacing any air in the bag.

Once again, Billy agonized over the thought that he should have fought harder when his door kicked in since he easily outweighed the attacking man by at least fifty pounds if not more. Billy decided he could have fought and possibly won, but now it was too late.

The duct tape 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, shooting 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 like the sensation of an arm falling asleep in an awkward position. The feeling of his flesh torn from his muscles abruptly superseded the prickling sensation. Fear and panic overwhelmed him. He faced the knowledge 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 history had few memories not including him somehow abusing his mother. 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 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 anguished by the realization she was also always the first person he betrayed whenever he got back on his feet again.

Today, he awarded her unfaltering love for him by the loss of her very own life.

He felt something strange come over him now. A warm, tranquil feeling slowly crept down through his shoulders. A gentle calmness embraced him. For in that moment, William “Billy� Wilson, born May 23, 1962, let go.

Chapter Two

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

The Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

♣ It was 1977. Auggie was trying so very hard to pinpoint the actual moment in his life that his behavior changed. He was always an out of control, Ritalin child, type-A personality from birth.

Usually all of his wild activities involved making money. Auggie was always up to something that by chance led to trouble.

Most people go through life wondering if their parents adopted them.

In Auggie’s house, his sisters constantly prayed that he was an adopted child.

Everyone always considered him a problem adolescent, not your typical lemonade-stand type of kid. He was still small when his Protestant mother went to see the movie premiere of “The

Exorcist.� The next day she visited her Lutheran minister to discuss the possibility of Auggie being possessed.

The pastor kindly sent her home with no further discussion on the matter.

Auggie’s imagination always created the more bizarre moments of life. His enthusiasm unintentionally brought cohorts into his adventures. When he was twelve, he 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 living with their grandparents would be much simpler.

In the mid-seventies Alice moved her two sons and two daughters from Auburn Heights to Holly, a small village twenty miles south of Flint. She had just married Donald Summers, a tall Englishman she had met at the Pontiac,

Michigan ‘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 a new home they built 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 began classes at Holly Elementary. The one single thing 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 for the annual Carrie Nation Festival before the marriage and their subsequent move to Holly. 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 at the cusp of prohibition.

During the move from Auburn Heights, Auggie came across an empty, rusty old toolbox 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 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 ever possessed managed to last for more than five years, but now he had a toolbox once belonging to his new grandfather and now passing to him by Donald, his new father. Auggie was fifteen years old and owned nothing from his birth father. That man vanished from his life when Auggie was only five years old. He felt honored knowing this simple rusty toolbox had history and was 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 he saw the

Day-Glo 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, and white cartoon daisy. 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 lid inside the old toolbox lid. Auggie would take this box to his new school.

In 1975, the Life Savers Candy Company 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’s successful quickly outstripped supply forcing

Hershey to suspend national advertising for the new gum. Within five 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 Life Saver’s 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 failed to buy the gum wholesale through Cunningham Drugs, Hammond’s Grocery, and then finally Barney’s Market. 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. Auggie impressed Martha with his good business sense, considering his age. She wished her own teenaged son would show such initiative.

Ben Franklin Stores are one of those retail shops trying 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. Sam Walton of ‘Wal-Mart' fame started his career with a Ben Franklin Store.

“Everything begins somewhere.”

Auggie’s assimilation into the Holly School System was radical. Few people

realized 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 twentytwo 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 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 of Bubble Yum 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 aggressive 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 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 mimiced their favorite television show character ‘Jack’ from a new ABCTV comedy that premiered in 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.

Which 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.

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 Clyde Freeman’s house, a place where his parents would

never venture. Everything seemed to be so neatly in place, almost perfect.

“Austin Chapman, Auggie Summers, Clyde Freeman, Kenneth Oehler, Gail Champion, Jäger Morgan, and George Hammond, please report to the Principal’s office.”

Chapter Three

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

The Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

♣ Not even in 1978, is a student summoned to the Principal’s office over the P.A. system for having done something good. The fact they called along with seven others at the same time seemed seven times more ominous.

“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 rehearsed this moment a hundred times over, but never had the scenario including so many people in his organization 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 his “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 officially hit the fan. Back and forth, his mind scrambled from one thought to another, each 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 locker-lined corridor.

The police search of the school’s lockers 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 was 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 fast and 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… finders, 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 followed 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; his wife had announced she was finally pregnant earlier that morning. 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, known in the pressroom as “Tank,” 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 baldhead 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 counties.

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 Infamous Auggie.” 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 – Raymond Pingolio Yesterday SWAT teams from Oakland and Genesee counties stormed Sherman Middle School in Holly, Michigan. With guns drawn, in a daring daylight raid, the police forces of both counties brought down the elusive candy kingpin, Auggie Summers.

The squads of both the Michigan’s AntiCavity and Oakland County’s Plaque Force apprehended Mr. Summers, known in the confectionery underworld as “The Infamous Auggie.”

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. Seriously injured was one student, Jim Ferris, hurt 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.

They escorted Mr. Summers, the mastermind behind the entire organization, along with a dozen or so of his candy-mob associates, away in iron shackles by armed guards. As they left the school building, Sgt. Theodore Ragan of the Holly Police Department told the youth, “Four out of five dentists would have approved of this raid.”

The newspaper continued by explaining the actual allegations of the minor. The students thought the article was hilarious. A much dryer version of the police blotter detailed the actual events in The Detroit News, 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 they were quite impressed with his ability to engineer such a successful business.

Everyone in town ultimately understood 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 Fenton and Holly police departments were highly embarrassed by the Detroit Free Press story for making them out to be buffoons. They could not press charges due to a lack victims and not one business coming forward willing, 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 12" X 15" X 60" school 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 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 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 self-righteous when he alone knew the whole truth of the candy’s origin.

Chapter Four

“I want to make these the incredible days that flash before my eyes in the moments before I die.”

The Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

♣

“Earth to Billy, Come in Billy!” snapped the fellow eleventh grader as she stole the cigarette from Billy’s mouth, “Are you going to smoke or just stare at the gym dorks on the field?”

Billy Wilson stood there in the shadows of the gymnasium door watching some high school kids playing some free-style version of tag football in the snow. His curly, long hair covered his stunning brown eyes, as the late afternoon breeze brushed across his face.

Billy had one of those farmer’s bodies passed from one male after another, generation by generation, not by the

grace of working out, but a combination of good genes and high metabolism.

“I could have easily played varsity football” Billy spoke, not watching Peggy’s eyes roll in disbelief. Billy was sturdy and had no problem standing his own ground. Her disbelief of her sixteenyear-old friend came from reality. Peggy could not picture her smoking-buddy forced to practice all week long as people yelled, especially Coach Champion.

In her mind, she chuckled as she pictured him wearing a red and white Holly Bronco’s Junior Varsity jacket colors instead of his black Metallica windbreaker. Billy pondered through the smoke on the merits of 1979, being the worst year of his life, though it was hardly over. The afternoon spent as the last bell rang, discharging the students to the stream of yellow busses parked next to the school auditorium. In the distance, Billy watched a friend slowly approach his car in the student parking lot. They both laughed.

“Auggie Summers is the weirdest kid in this school,” laughed Peggy, as she watched Auggie approach his Delta 88

station wagon. In his arm, Auggie still carried the tan vinyl faux-leather briefcase he purchased a few years prior when selling gum. Auggie set the case in the back seat of the car he purchased from his parents during the long summer. As Auggie drove slowly past the gymnasium, he honked his horn at the two sophomores hiding behind the school. Auggie laughed at the thought of the two smokers tucked in the door well, often smoking pot, validating every high school cliché. ”Someday that dude is going to own the world. Did you know that Auggie wrote the song they sang when Holly got a postage stamp named after it?” Billy remarked wryly as he grabbed the stub of the finished Marlboro from Peggy’s mouth. “I’m going to be there beside him pimping bitches like you to any guy with five bucks in his pocket.”

Billy laughed at his own joke as Peggy punched his firm arm. Billy took the last drag from the cigarette and tossed it into the grass just as the last school bell rang. As they entered the building, Peggy thought of Auggie the

dork, selling hall passes to them, each time they had the urge to hide out in the auditorium. Auggie had become the “goto-guy” for unusual requests like fake driver’s licenses, and packages of presigned hall passes. Auggie was the man to see, to sneak into closed and locked rooms using the keys, which he had somehow acquired, almost certainly through unscrupulous means. He was also the weirdo that glued brown felt material to a plastic bathroom trashcan, to resemble a horse head, along with his own horse outfit to wear to the Holly Bronco Junior Varsity football games as the unofficial Bronco mascot.

“No wonder our team lost” Peggy thought.

For the remainder of his freshman year, Auggie had somehow managed to refrain from any more misadventures. In tenth grade, he had briefly held a position at the Holly Lanes Bowling Alley, and had even managed to get himself hired at Barney’s Grocery as a part-time stock boy.

By eleventh grade, Donald Summers decided it was time for his new son to

get a respectable job. Alice and Donald knew they needed to find a job for their son so mundane Auggie would be afraid to end his life working on a GM assembly line, pressing the same monotonous button. That opportunity came at the Mount Holly Ski Lodge in Holly Michigan. Here, Auggie hand-bore holes into snow ski boards in preparation for the attachment of boots.

It was the late seventies and cocaine did not have a street value. The only people purchasing cocaine were the affluent, upscale sort, with disposable incomes. Mainly doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, business owners and the like. Marcus Coldwater was the shift manager of the ski shop of the largest ski resort in southeastern Michigan. Marcus was also a drug dealer. He had heard the entertaining stories of Auggie’s ninth grade exploits from some of his employees during the first three days that Auggie worked for him. Marcus knew from the second they met, that ‘Infamous Auggie’ was the type of character to do well selling his coinsized, manila envelopes packed with

plastic corners of sandwich bags filled with fifty dollars in blow. Auggie did not let him down.

Auggie did not become a successful salesman because he believed in the product. Quite the contrary; at that age, Auggie had never tried any drug. To tell the truth, he had not tried cocaine, marijuana, pills of any sort; and at the present, had never even tasted alcohol.

In fact, Auggie was still a virgin. What made Auggie successful was, just like the bubble gum, he thrived on the challenge of sales. Making five bucks for each envelope he sold did not hurt either since minimum wage for grinding holes in skis was $2.90 an hour.

Within three weeks, Auggie sold more envelopes then all the combined runners in the lodge. Within seven weeks, Auggie was bringing in eighty percent of all of the cumulative sales. By the end of the second month, unbeknownst to him, Auggie had once again gained the attention of Coldwater’s drug supplier. This would be the second time Auggie unknowingly got the big boss’s undivided attention. Marcus

Coldwater received his drugs from Peter Duncan himself, the man that received his cocaine directly from the shipments flown in from Columbia to a small farm in Holly, the same man that cut out the article about The Infamous Auggie from the Detroit Free Press eighteen months earlier to mail it to his friend Carlos Ledher.

Carlos ran a rapidly growing Colombian network, which was now responsible for the distribution of hundreds of kilos of cocaine throughout the United States. Peter Duncan was a successful restaurateur in Michigan. The Duncan Food Group had several large restaurant operations in several towns across Michigan. Its flagship ‘Duncan’s Seafood Restaurant’ Group, was on Woodward Avenue in nearby Detroit, just west of The Renaissance Center. His home in Groveland Valley Estates was actually a combination of two mansions with corridors connecting them. Between the two main buildings was the largest private pool in the entire state. He hosted parties and events for Michigan’s movers and shakers, which local press printed in

the society pages with much fanfare. His parties for the uber-famous made Peter Duncan legendary, in a state known largely for fast cars, Motown, and rock & roll.

The end of the winter ski season was rapidly closing. Peter Duncan surprised Auggie one day by personally inviting him to join him for lunch at the Warwick Hills Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Warwick Hills was one of those upscale, expensive private clubs hosting the PGA Tour’s Buick Open each summer. It was a ‘home away from home’ for Peter Duncan. Not because it was so exclusive, but because during the PGA tour, the famed 17th hole was consistently voted as ‘the second largest outdoor party in the world’. The only party larger was the Florida-Georgia football game. Peter loved to drink, and when he drank; he got loud, very loud.

On those occasions, he fit right in with all the other wealthy, former blue-collar men. Nevertheless, today was not the PGA Tour.

Peter asked comfortably, “Auggie, when you sit around talking with your

friends about your future, what do you tell them about yourself?� He watched with hidden amusement while the nervous teenager fumbled with a cocktail napkin. The small napkin was stuck to the bottom of his iced tea glass as he picked it up. Earlier, as their waitress was taking their drink order Auggie made a long speech to her about how he would like his iced tea. He had gone to great lengths to convey to her how much he hated lemon, begging her to serve his tea without the customary citrus wedge; yet there, perched insidiously on the rim of his glass was a lemon. Auggie simply stared with accusation at the fruit, refusing to make a comment; but at the same time, made no motion to remove it.

Peter gazed expressionlessly at the teenager, reminding himself of his guest’s age.

Auggie sat inside the country club peering through the huge glass windows overlooking the magnificent greens. In the teenager’s effort to remain calm, he let out a breath, paused, and with a sweeping, bizarre hand-gesture, accidentally spilled the iced tea glass

with one hard smack. Peter tried to rescue his Hoyo de Monterrey cigar from the ashtray, as the glass twirled on the table, but he was too late. He tried his best to not look pissed off.

“Calm down Auggie. You are nothing like the person I was expecting to meet. You look like you’re about three seconds away from pissing your damn pants,” Peter said as he extended his hand, placing it on the nervous boy’s shoulder.

“It’s okay. We are okay. In ten seconds, I can have that cigar replaced.

Your tea my friend, may take a little longer.” With that, Peter let out a loud laugh catching the attention of the other diners. Peter knew instinctively that Auggie did not have the slightest idea of the expense to buy the fine cigar. Peter ordered another iced tea, reassured by the waitress that it would be delivered sans lemon.

“I took the liberty of having your background checked by a police friend of mine. My source tells me you are only an okay student in spite of the fact that the Oakland County school system tested

your IQ at 159 in 1973. This tells me one of two things about your apathetic grades. Either you do not care about school, which I do not believe, or that you are trying to do too many things at one time, and the results are, at best, mediocre.

“Auggie, never let your knowledge be a mile wide but only an inch deep.”

“I’m okay, just a little overwhelmed,” the teenager said as he pushed back on his leather chair. “I’m just a little nervous being here right now. I’m just a nobody.

In your world Mr. Duncan, in places like this, people like me are dishwashers and golf caddies.”

“That’s where you are wrong Auggie. I can promise you, I know few grown adults with the natural ability to convince people to follow you.” Peter took another large drink from his beer before continuing. “Years ago, you caught my attention as The Infamous Auggie. I laughed so hard reading that damned article in the Detroit Free Press that I nearly choked. To tell you the truth kid, I sent out one of my busboys to buy about ten of the papers to send to friends

that share my sense of humor. My personal copy, still sits fading away under the glass on top of the desk in my home.” Again, Peter laughed loudly, this time catching the waitress off guard as she approached the table with a fresh tall glass of iced tea.

“Auggie, I knew when I read that article; I would become your mentor, now here you sit. I get what I seek in life and I want to teach you how to do the same. Coldwater told me you want to have restaurants like me, is that true?”

Peter watched silently, as Auggie again stared with distaste at his iced tea, where yet another fat lemon sat perched, dripping juice down the side. Peter reached over with a quick laugh and snagged the lemon off the rim, startling his lunch guest.

“I want one place,” Auggie said, blushing as he realized people were quietly talking about him behind his back. “I want to open a place like ‘The Kit-Kat Club’. You know, like in the movie ‘Cabaret’.” Auggie could feel his guard loosen as he found some common ground in their conversation.

“Tell me about the restaurant you want to own someday. Will it be a big business somewhere in Michigan?” The senior restaurateur seemed genuinely interested, as he watched his second pilsner of beer melt away the frost on the chilled glass. “When do you find the time to do all of this planning?”

Auggie paused long enough to begin analyzing the robust, loud Peter Duncan.

He concluded that the man’s overly jovial outward nature most likely hid a bully. He began to understand that Peter used the success of his restaurants to finance his drug operations, which in turn were now financing his rapidly growing Duncan Food Group.

“Mr. Duncan, there is a small family restaurant near my home called Sam’s. I like to go there when I get a chance to sit around and make notes. Most of the notes are actually drawings. I want to call my place The Cabaret Club, decorated as a roaring thirties art deco speakeasy. It will have a German influence with dark-colored décor. I hope it will give off the kind of German vibe, that at any moment, in through the

door will walk Marlene Dietrich. The food will be very German-American with a great collection of imported beers on draft.”

“I will have ladies wearing their long hair braided and in low-cut dirndl dresses, the type you see in Bier Gardens.

The busboys will wear faux lederhosen with matching green felt Bavarian hats with a feather.” Auggie previously described his place so many times, to so many people that saying it aloud now, to his appreciative lunch companion came out easily, yet sounded un-rehearsed.

This was a fact that was not lost on Peter Duncan of the Duncan Food Group of Detroit, Michigan.

The atmosphere at the table now changed.

Peter’s face became quite serious as he leaned in toward Auggie’s face. He literally placed his forehead against the teenager’s by firmly placing his right hand on the back of Auggie’s neck.

Auggie felt a quick panic. “Is this man going to kiss me?” he thought with alarm. He felt his face turn red. He was too nervous to look up or try to look

away. His heart began to race when he realized that this grown man would not let go of his neck.

Peter held the back of Auggie’s neck in place for an uncomfortable amount of time. The smell of Michelob, Aqua Velva and cigar smoke caused Auggie involuntarily to try to pull away, but the much larger man’s hand held him in place. Slowly Peter started to speak, each sentence punctuated with a pause. “This is the man I expected to meet today. This is the man I knew you were Auggie Summers. Those fifty words you just spoke, told me more about you than any newspaper article, school record, or investigator ever could.”

Peter released the teenager’s head.

He laughed as he realized how stunned the kid had become over the past thirty seconds. Good, he thought. Now I have his attention for the rest of his life.

Auggie sat there as the server set down his ground round burger with thick fresh cut fries. “My name is Lauren, if there’s anything else you need, let me know.”

Auggie let out a breath of relief and thanked the beautiful young woman. He

watched as Peter Duncan’s eyes followed the girl as she walked back out of the dining area. As soon as she was out of earshot, Peter looked back at Auggie and spoke in a calculated tone, “Lauren Acevedo, born February 24 to Roberto and Carline Acevedo in Northville, Michigan. Graduated Fenton High School in 1976, and easily has one of the nicest….” Peter paused as his eyes glanced again at her small ass; a sly, perverted smile crept across his face, “nicest smiles of any of the waitresses here at Warwick. You see, Auggie, I make it a point to know my environment; to know my people.”

“Why me, Mr. Duncan?” asked Auggie. “You have a hundred other people working for you. I know you don’t take all of them out for a burger and fries at the most expensive restaurant in town.”

Auggie felt pleased with his confidence at asking this powerful man such a direct question. It did not make sense. He already knew the cocaine supply came in from Peter, but people at Auggie’s level remained on the other

side of the velvet rope, pushed away from people like Peter Duncan.

There was a quiet pause at the table as Peter selected his words carefully. It was not that he did not already have a reply, as he had prepared for this moment, before arriving for lunch. It was not that he was not capable of thinking on his feet, or even that he felt challenged by the newfound aggression of the teenager. It was something more personal for Peter. It had changed the direction of his intended response.

“Something about you Auggie can be trusted. I have to admit the glimmer in those bright green eyes of yours tells everyone wickedness runs through you.

I had planned on telling you I saw something of me inside of you Auggie, but as I started to talk, something dawned on me.”

“What’s that Mr. Duncan?”

“I never had a mentor. You know… someone to show me what to do, keep me out of trouble. I have watched your mind spinning a million miles a minute trying to calculate each move I’ve made during our lunch. Coldwater told me

your energy level was so much higher.

At the ski resort, he said you intimidated them into submission without once raising your voice, most likely, without even realizing you were doing it. He said your charm is so sincere that if people failed to buy drugs from you they actually felt guilty. Coldwater also said you do not do it primarily for the money like the rest of them. You do all of it because you like the challenge, the game, and the rush from winning. Pretty fair conclusion Auggie?”

It was Auggie’s turn to be quiet. Not that he disagreed. It was because he had never had anyone describe him with the very same qualities that he saw in himself.

“Auggie, I’m going to give you the job as night manager in my kitchen at my Shadow Grove Country Club in Holly.

The course has no night business, so I can use you and that car of yours for special package deliveries. You’ll get a decent paycheck and some extra perks along the way.”

“What kind of packages?” Auggie asked as he fumbled to retrieve his napkin from underneath the plate.

Peter Duncan downed the last of his beer in one quick gulp, then paused before whispering, “Big packages. Very, very big packages.”

Chapter Five

“When all else fails, read the directions.”

The Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

♣ 2.20462262: the number of pounds in a kilogram.

In the late seventies, not many Americans had any idea what a kilo represented. The kilo, to the average American, was just part of the failed Metric system that the U.S. Government attempted to change the country a few years prior. Even to this day, a kilo calls to mind the drug trade for the majority of Americans.

Cocaine shipments arrive into this country wrapped in black Visqueen. It is a heavyweight, strong, yet flexible, water-resistant plastic available in large tarpaulin sheets. South American cocaine producers use this to spread the gravy like mixture of processed cocaine to dry.

Once dried, they tightly wrap Visqueen around the drug and heat-seal to ensure

an airtight package for shipment. They stamp each bundle with a circular imprint and code designating the weight of each block.

The wrapped blocks arrived via undisclosed route into the Great State of Michigan. The majority of the flown shipments received on Thursday nights they send to a field situated north of the Shadow Grove Golf Course and Country Club in Holly, Michigan. A van with a dozen blocks in its cargo area takes a quick journey to Shadow Grove. Once the two-man crew arrived at their destination, Peter Duncan carefully weighed, unwrapped, and weighed again each block in the secure privacy of the caddy shack.

Employees broke the hard blocks apart, placing each eight-ounce portion in a blender with precisely three ounces of inositol. Inositol is cyclohexane, a carbohydrate. Though not a technically a sugar, it is almost tasteless, with a small amount of sweetness. A repackaged mixture, weighs 2.2 lbs. they place into a press for a full week to allow the new

chemical compound to harden, before selling it as “PURE.” Customers in Michigan were still decidedly affluent doctors, lawyers and the rich. Cocaine was far from a recreational drug for the masses. Each kilo sold for $14,000. It was common for Auggie to deliver one or two of the new smaller two pound “re-bricks” to a dealer each month. Auggie developed a clever guise for the delivery of his packages, designed to elude discovery of their true nature. His line if caught included an intricate cover story and precise flowchart, which he explained much to the amusement and delight of Peter Duncan. It instantly became the new procedure for out-going deliveries.

Each package Auggie wrapped wearing black utility gloves, in beautiful, delicate, cream-colored wrapping paper from the Magic Paper Gift Wrap Company. The small package was nestled inside a gift bag along with a cute little teddy bear and a box of mints.

He attached a card from the Hudson’s Company to the package with the prettiest blue bow; he had a friend hand

write a note bearing the message: “To Grandma, with all my love, Henry.”

Peter Duncan had certain affection for Hudson’s of Detroit. He was constantly telling anyone that would listen that it was the tallest department store in the world and the second largest department store after Macy’s in the United States. The idea was that in the event a package should happen to be discovered by a policeman, the officer would be told the following memorized cover story: “A customer describe Dan Akroyd from Saturday Night Live, without using his name, approached me at my job and offered me $40, two twenty-dollar bills, to deliver this prewrapped package to his grandmother at this address with each delivery using a fake secondary address that was in the same proximity of the actual destination.

I am sure his name was Randy Walker (be vague) or something like that. He said that he had just bought the gift for his grandmother the day before in the Shadow Grove Pro Shop.”

Police, attempting to verify the story with the Shadow Grove Pro Shop

would receive confirmation that, “Yes, in fact, a regular customer (describe Dan Akroyd from Saturday Night Live, without using his name,) had indeed bought a heavy wooden gift box of golf balls for his grandmother the day before using a hundred dollar bill.�

Once having confirmed the story to the police, the clerk would explain to the officer that as the shop did not offer delivery, it was common for a customer to solicit one of the caddies on the golf course to deliver it for them for a fee. The clerk was fairly confident that the customer may have accidently approached Auggie from the kitchen.

Any telephone call from the police activates a well-planned evacuation of all drugs and operations at the golf course.

Skipping one beat in the delivery system would not only cost the operation thousands of dollars a day, but would also put at risk the safety and freedom of a half dozen people.

Auggie was no longer the small child that had directed childhood talent shows or helped set up fairs in the backyard of his parents’ home. He was no longer the

pubescent boy selling seeds from catalogs or holiday greeting cards from out of the backs of comic books to raise money in order to buy a family of sea monkeys. Auggie was no longer the young and innocent teenager that had dressed his brother and sister as aliens and sent them out in public, so that he could secretly photograph people’s reactions. Auggie was no longer the impressionable young man learning tap, ballet, or jazz dance at DJ’s Dance Studio.

His days of mistakenly eating Baker’s Chocolate and catching potpies on fire in his parents’ oven were now long gone.

From this day on, the innocence of his antics of last summer’s Polaroid pictures taken of his little sister’s "kidnapped” stuffed dog would become only a distant memory. The term ‘The Infamous Auggie’ was about to take on a completely different connotation. This moniker, if applied to him now, would not sound quite as cute and innocent in news stories or shared at family gettogethers. Selling drugs leaves stains on people’s souls, and Auggie was no exception.

Chapter Six

“Often the green grass on the other side of the fence… is only very healthy weeds.”

The Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

♣ Toilet Paper.

Auggie had no idea of the importance the month of October 1979 would have on the rest of his life, but his role in the activities of this date would define every moment of his future. For the rest of his life he would know his life had been forever altered by something as simple as toilet paper, more precisely, the lack of it. Later in life, when questioned about the path he had taken in life, he would answer curious friends and startle acquaintances with the reply that it had all happened because of toilet paper. One day he would write a book based loosely on his exploits containing a chapter titled, “Toilet Paper.” Before this

day, he knew only one fact about toilet paper; Americans consume more toilet paper than the entire world combined.

Autumn marks the countdown in Michigan when golf courses begin shutting down for the season.

Groundskeepers start making arrangements for the care of their wellmanicured greens and facilities throughout the cold, harsh winters of the Great Lake State. Employees of the Shadow Grove Golf and Country Club understood mid-October was the onset of reduced paychecks. Other than the occasional holiday parties or rare winter wedding reception, there would be no business at the club, when any entertainment to young people, would be limited to homecoming dances, high school activities, and possibly a girlfriend or two.

October 18, 1979 began no differently for Auggie than any other Thursday in October. Not too hot, not too cold, perfect weather for Michiganders to wear that great sweater their grandmother gave them last year for Christmas.

The restaurant was now empty, as the few dinner guests dispersed as the fall sun began to fade into night. The staff was busily cleaning up dirty bus carts before refilling the gold smokedglass salt and pepper shakers on each table. Most of the employees had already departed, leaving a fifteen years old busboy walking table-to-table collecting the remaining dirty dishes to take to the dish pit.

Inside the kitchen, Auggie instructed the few remaining cooks to wrap up the still-hot food from the line. He shouted to the fry cook to rotate the stock before he went home. The acrid smell of the greasy, gray water in the mop bucket used to swab out the walk-in cooler earlier wafted in from the lobby, causing him Auggie to yell at the last waiter to quit using the old water to mop the lobby floor. The last dishwasher grumbled, as he scraped stuck on Lotza Motza cheese off a plate, while a Nacho platter and a burnt skillet soaked in a nearby three-basin sink full of silverware.

In another hour the entire staff would be gone, leaving Auggie, Louie the bartender, and a table of friends Peter Duncan had assembled in the “Grand Bleu� Ballroom.

A small hand written closed sign dangled on the banquet room door. Two large men stood patrol outside the hall entrance.

Throughout the night, employees whispered they heard a rumor affirming The Duncan Food Group planned selling the property to some men from Puerto Rico planning to build a resort off the interstate replacing the golf course. When pressed for details though, the men remained silent. These rumors greatly exaggerated by the time the meeting commenced in the Grand Bleu Ballroom this Wednesday evening.

The rumors started by Peter to dispel any relevance as to the true nature of the meeting.

Auggie knew the real reason for the six men gathered, drinking inside the banquet room. None of the men intended to purchase the dilapidated Shadow Grove property. None of them was from Puerto Rico, and the gunmen

at the door were more than capable of dissuading any curiosity seekers from making the unfortunate mistake of trying to enter the room. None of the last customers or any of the staff noticed each of the men carried a pistol hidden under their suit coats at the small of their backs.

This was the first time he had ever seen a gun not belonging among his grandfather’s hunting collection.

Louie the bartender and most of the other men in the room seemed relaxed.

He could tell Louie was instinctively ignored the conversations of the four men seated before him. To Louie it seemed like just another day.

Soon, only the armed guards remained on the outside of the property, Auggie could feel tension in the air. He found himself using the restroom more frequently than he normally would have, more from stress than any actual need to relieve himself. They allowed him on this occasion to use the toilet in the lobby’s main restroom. During regular operating hours, these facilities were off limits to the staff. As he entered the carpeted locker room of the country club’s lavish

washroom, he walked past the dark forest-green walls, over tiled floors now chipped from years of golf cleat traffic, and into one of the six faux wood toilet stalls designed as water closets for Shadow Grove’s distinguished golfers.

As he sat on the toilet trying to pee past his fears from seeing so many guns, he noticed someone had written on the stained cedar plank to his right above the toilet paper holder. In sloppy black marker someone had scribbled, “Your mother sucks good cock.” Auggie burst into laughter as he read the reply written below it in faded blue ink, “Shut up Dad. You are drunk. Go home.”

The rest of the employees had clocked out almost an hour ago. One by one, they had crunched their cards in the old gray time clock before returning them to the slotted rack. They had departed oblivious to the fact that among the group of men drinking with Peter was Duncan’s dear friend Carlos Ledher.

For the employees, this was another day at work but for Auggie though, today had been unlike any other day he had ever known before. Tonight his reality

collided with the potential of real violence. Before this night, all of the people he met through his new career in the drug business were happy to see him and excited to be getting the drugs he sold them. Up until now, he felt like a teenaged cruise director aboard a ship filled with an appreciative crew.

Until tonight, the most disturbing situation Auggie encountered involved a famous hard rock musician. The Detroit rocker, best known for high pitch squeals and feathered hair insisted the package Auggie attempting to deliver was underweight and began yelling at Auggie. Auggie, as rehearsed, refused to leave the bundle in question, making certain it remained securely sealed for the return trip to Shadow Grove. Auggie reported the altercation and from there, the event went up the chain of command until the situation was resolved. There were no guns involved; no violence occurred, just happy thoughts of high rolling parties.

Tonight however, was immensely different. Only Louie and Auggie were walking in and out of those doors.

Auggie’s stomach knotted each time he entered the room. Each of the two large men guarding the door easily outweighed the hundred-fifty pound high school senior by a hundred pounds or more.

Each time Auggie entered the room both of the goons glared at the poor kid as if they were going to punch him right smack in the face and break his nose.

They looked intimidating. What made matters worse is in Auggie’s nervousness, Auggie smiled. The more nervous he became, the harder he smiled. To them, the teenager was an irritant, like a gnat flying around your face as you sit at a picnic table in a park trying to relax.

Once inside the hall, Auggie crossed the length of the room, over the dance floor and up to the small banquet table where the unusual gathering of men sat talking. The room easily held two hundred people, which made the intimate group seem even smaller. Off to his left, Auggie could dimly make out the shadowy figures of the armed guards

stationed on the outside perimeter of the country club.

Auggie realized if the police suddenly raided the club, there was sure to be gunfire resulting in bloodshed and more than likely, death; perhaps his own. “Oh God,” he thought as his stomach gurgled a loud noise of displeasure. He wished to use the club’s fancy bathroom once more. Maybe he would find another clever joke scribbled on the wall of the second stall as witty as the drunken father remark from his last visit.

“Auggie, sit down.”

Auggie froze upon hearing his name come out of the stranger’s mouth with such seriousness. He glanced over at a very drunk Peter Duncan. The teenager could not figure out if the smirk on Duncan’s face was from the whisky or if it unnaturally foreshadowed something pertaining to the impending conversation.

“Do you know who I am, Auggie Summers?” Again, the unassuming stranger spoke. In front of him were a dozen small cocktail napkins with

scribbled lines and oblong circular shapes best shared with Amway presentations.

“No sir. I only know you are a good friend of Mr. Duncan’s.”

The men all laughed in unison muttering multiple comments with their heavy Colombian accents. Auggie did not understand the joke.

“Yes Auggie Summers, your boss, and I are friends.” With that said, he leaned across the table to shake Auggie’s hand. “My name is Carlos. I would tell you my last name but I am afraid you will call me Mister. The last thing I want is for my father to walk in through the doors.”

The group laughed again at this remark as Auggie smiled nervously as he extended his hand to shake. The looseness of Carlos’s grip took him by surprise. He had expected the head rooster in this group to have a firm, hard handshake. He hoped he had not offended the Latino with his own aggressively firm handshake. Better yet, he thought, maybe he did notice it and thinks here is a man assured of himself.

“Whoa, whoa Tiger… leave me my fingers, Mr. Summers,” he laughed as he pulled back his hand, teasing the teenager for his aggressiveness. “Now have a seat.” Auggie let out a faint sigh of relief and quickly introduced himself to the other two strangers seated at the table.

Auggie pulled a single stacking banquet chair, with a rip in the seat from a nearby stack, brought it over to the table and sat down directly in front of the group leader. For a moment Auggie thought, “ENTP. Myers-Briggs, that is what my hand shake says about myself.”

A slight smile snuck up on his face as he realized that the chances of Carlos knowing anything about Myers-Briggs seemed plain silly. To the left of Carlos sat the very intoxicated Peter Duncan, his face glowing red from the shots of whisky from the shot glasses crowding the table. A younger, longhaired man they called Durango sat off to Peter’s left.

Auggie noted Durango and Peter seemed to be the only people at the table drinking hard liquor. Next to Auggie sat

a short man referred to as Rat. What a terrible nickname Auggie thought.

“Auggie, I bought a bunch of property two hundred miles off the east coast of Florida from Peter. Half an island; in a few months I will have the whole island all to myself.” Carlos paused and pulled out a package of Benson & Hedges. The room went quiet.

Everyone watched in silence as Carlos slowly removed the plastic wrap from the cigarettes. As the wrapper fell to floor, Carlos caught a little redemption slip of paper and placed it in his pocket.

There are certain times during a person’s life that a particular moment seems too surreal to define as reality. For some people, it may be the brief seconds during a car accident while their startled body is still in motion. To many, it may be the incredible moment during childbirth when the infant crowns upon entering the world. Sadly, for some, it is that sliver of time as the last syllable exits a person’s mouth as they die.

For Auggie Summers, this surreal moment began this evening in the Grand Bleu Ballroom of the Shadow Grove Golf

and Country Club. He sat there in the very plain Midwestern hall usually used for Bar Mitzvahs, business mixers, conferences, and wedding receptions or for the occasional end of the year proms, winter celebrations, and such.

The old parquet dance floor was cracked, and the tables that looked so elegant with their clean and starched tablecloths sat collapsed, sitting stacked one on top of the next at the far end of the room. The abandoned room revealed the tables to be ugly round pieces of plywood with harsh folding metal legs.

There were stacks of chocolate brown vinyl upholstered banquet chairs scarred by multitudes of cigarette burns, some ripped, torn, and plastered with gobs of old dried-up chewing gum scattered around the room. Auggie spotted one chair on which a wad of used bright Bubble Yum green gum held fast.

Dancing eerily against one of the faintly flickering fluorescent lights, high above them on the twenty-foot ceilings was a single, solemn black balloon entangled itself on a fire sprinklers before it had lost its ability to hover on its own. The

smell of stale tobacco smoke was prevalent in the room even as several of the men sat at the table smoking fresh cigarettes.

The ashtray in front of them was empty, testimony to Louie’s impeccable service. A thought flashed through Auggie’s mind contemplating the potential of the tip the bartender would receive for this evening’s service, and the unlikely chance he might be taking home a few extra dollars himself tonight.

Surely, a man with enough money buy an island must certainly tip well, but then again, this was the same man he had witnessed collecting a proof of purchase slip from his cigarette pack in order to obtain some type of redemption.

Nothing so far this day seemed to hold any kind of simple, black and white answers. Perched to Auggie’s right was one of Michigan’s most influential restaurateurs, extremely drunk, yet still powerful in both his stature in the community and for his accomplishments throughout the state. Beyond Peter, further still to Auggie’s right, sat a man named “Rat.” Facing directly ahead of

Auggie was Carlos Ledher.

This perplexed the teenaged boy, who barely qualified for any kind of recognition in life beyond reaching puberty. For some reason, these powerful men before him were determined to include him in their plans.

Distracted by his own monumental imagination, Auggie had somehow failed to realize that Carlos had now been speaking directly to him for the past few minutes.

“It should be so easy to fill this position I present to you Auggie. There are a million kids your age willing to sell their own mothers for the chance to do what I’m offering you.” Carlos continued to speak while Auggie struggled in vain to recall what Carlos had said to him during his mental absence. Anything at all that might give him the slightest clue about the subject at hand. Carlos reached over and patted Peter Duncan on the back, startling his drunken compadre.

“You see Auggie, my good friend, Peter owns a business venture. He quietly sold me his tropical property and the rental houses on a small island in the Exuma district of the Bahamas last year. For the

past seven months, my associates here have assisted me in acquiring the remaining few homes. I have a problem though, Auggie. A special problem that I believe you are the perfect person to resolve for me. Are you interested?”

Auggie sat there in quiet embarrassment. He still had no clue whatsoever as to what it might be that Carlos thought he might be interested by. Every eye around the table focused on him, awaiting his reply. Nervously his mind raced, hoping to ask a question that would not reveal his ignorance.

“I’m still in high school…” Auggie offered lamely.

Carlos burst into a bout of laughter, which echoed off the walls of the vast, dark banquet hall. “I know Tonto, I know you are still in high school, but you are ready to graduate now. I am sick and tired of running out of goddamned toilet paper on my island. There are fifty miles of ocean separating us from the nearest roll of toilet paper sitting somewhere on another fucking island. It happens now on a weekly basis, and does not include everything else we

struggle to keep stocked on Norman’s Cay.” All four of the other men laughed in unison as Carlos continued. “If we can just have you arrange to keep the island stocked with toilet paper and other supplies,” he said trailing off, “tell me Auggie, if you could live anywhere in the entire world that you wish, where you would want to live? If you could have any job, what would that job be?”

“Finally,” Auggie thought, a question he understood. “Sarasota, Florida. I want to own a restaurant and live in Sarasota, Florida.” Auggie smirked at his rapid reply.

“Auggie, what if I told for helping me to solve all of these problems, I would finance a small café for you in Sarasota and pay you enough cash to obtain a respectable car and a place to live? Damn son! I think that would get you so much pussy that your dick would beg you to be a virgin again, just so it could get a rest.” This time everyone laughed, even Auggie. “Tell me Auggie, what would you do?”

Once again, all eyes focused on Auggie. The vast darkness of the room closed around his shoulders. No one in the room made a sound. Even the cigarette smoke in the air around him seemed to stand still. The fluorescent light on the ceiling slowly darkened and flickered back to life. A trickle of sweat zigzagged down Auggie’s spine, making him realize for the first time all evening that the palms of his hands were soaked with sweat. With a slow, controlled breath, Auggie paused before speaking.

He did not look at the stranger to his left.

He did not look at the second stranger now standing behind Carlos. He would not look at his mentor, Peter Duncan. He knew his surreal moment was about to reach its culmination. He was certain, but for this one second he needed Carlos to know he was the only other person that existed in this room.

“Mr. Ledher…” he paused with the realization that his mouth was almost too dry to speak, and then soberly forced out his words, “I would leave with you tomorrow to make that dream my reality. I would leave my home, my

family, and my life to make that dream my reality.”

The last word had barely left Auggie’s mouth before Peter Duncan let out a laugh so hard that you could almost hear it rattling off the windowpanes surrounding the Great Bleu Room.

“Auggie, my dear little friend, I bet you would. I bet you would!” With that, the other men’s’ laughter joined Peter’s own. Carlos held up a hand to quiet the room.

“Go home Auggie Summers. Go home tonight to your family, and as you drive to your house, think about our conversation. Look into your family’s eyes and tell them that you want to leave school. After they are finished beating the shit out of you, you call Peter and we will make the arrangements. Oh yes, and for the record, the next time you call me Mr. Ledher, I am going to break your nose.”

Chapter Seven

“Never confuse famous with infamous.”

The Infamous Todd Kachinski Kottmeier

♣ The meeting in the Grand Bleu Room for Auggie came to an abrupt conclusion.

Carlos glanced at Durango and using the back of his hand to gesture, he shooed Auggie away. Durango offered to escort Auggie to his car, hoping that his walk through the country club’s kitchen to the employee’s parking lot would give him a moment to speak to Auggie one on one.

Durango had met Carlos through George Jung; the writer of the semiautographical book “Blow,” which later became a big budget theatrical release starring Hollywood actor Johnny Depp.

“Tell me a funny Auggie story while we walk,” Durango said in a thick Columbian accent.

Durango knew Auggie was terrified of his presence in the room. He hoped talking to the teenager would calm his

fears. After all, Durango thought, this was going to be the “go-to-person” on the island for toilet paper. Durango saw the benefits of having a good relationship with the kid that ensured luxuries of the mainland. Auggie tried to get past the thoughts jumbled in his mind. He would have little time to create a good lie during his short drive home to talk to his parents about quitting school.

The country club was only seven miles from his home near Bush Lake. A great lie allowing him to leave his home and school would take longer than the tenminute drive.

“Auggie, my dear new friend, tell me the most bizarre story you make when you needed money. I hear you do stuff in the school nobody thinks of. Tell me that story.” Durango smiled allowing the bright harvest moon to reflect across the gold embracing the few teeth remaining in his mouth. Auggie noted a genuine smile framed by poor dental hygiene accentuated by the huge scar cut high on his cheekbone to the cleft of his chin.

Durango merely wanted to hear the candy story. “Last year,” began Auggie

with a slight smirk on his face, “The Six Million Dollar Man met Bigfoot.”

He paused as he mentally collected the details before continuing, “All of a sudden, everyone was talking about Bigfoot living in Michigan. I thought it was funny that so many people could possibly believe the North Pacific Sasquatch could be living in the woods of Michigan.”

“One day I was sitting in my ninth grade lit class listening to Whitmore Koop. We called him Wiki for short because he was one of the smallest students in our school. Wiki sat there in our Lit class explaining that the tale was only a cover for government-suppressed documents. Wiki talked on and on about this damned story. For three days he talked about Bigfoot and for three days I found myself astonished that so many people in our class were being caught up by his enthusiasm. On the third day, I decided to walk home from Sherman Middle School. I used the railroad tracks as a short cut to walk to the end of Bush Lake where the road ends. About the time I got half way home, I noticed a

huge dead dog rotting away in the gravel that banks the railroad tracks just before Grange Hall Road. I stood there in the damned sun gagging while I laughed.”

“I found myself starting to laugh even harder as I walked past the carcass.

The meat was already falling from the bones and the stench was sticking tightly in the early summer air. A plan began to formulate in my mind. All I could think of was… Whitmore Koop. I wanted so badly to tell him how I had found a dead Bigfoot.”

Auggie realized he had Durango’s undivided attention. As they continued to stroll through the vast empty parking lot dotted with thugs posted on the property protecting the club’s guests, Auggie noticed a smile on Durango’s face. He felt relieved to discover a regular person under the rough exterior of this dangerous man. Durango realized this was not going to be the Infamous Auggie story as told by the Detroit Free Press.

“I went back to school the following day after I spent the night reveling in the

humor of my Whitmore Koop plan. Once again I sat there listening to him talk on and on about Bigfoot. When I could not hold it in anymore, I pulled my chair closer to his desk. I leaned over, glancing to the left and slowly to the right.

Whitmore looked at me puzzled. I leaned in conspiratorially to whisper my tale in my most serious tone. Mr. Koop, I never told you this, but my dad works for a relocation program for the military.

It is their job to monitor activity of the Sasquatch Bassett Clan relocated to Holly after their core group exceeded four members. They have problems reproducing because they live a life like Beta fish, alone. I explained to him that when growth of human civilization encroaches on their habitat the government relocates them. The military secretly relocated two of the Bassett Clan to Holly. That is the reason they moved us here, so my dad could monitor them.

The government is having problems because the female died a few months ago. The male buried her in their camp, in the woods behind our home on Holly Bush Drive. I told Wiki the male had

vanished and as of right now they could not find him.”

“I tell you Durango, at that point I was laughing my ass off inside. Wiki was hanging onto every damned word.”

Auggie could now see his car parked under the far streetlight as he continued his story, “I told him I had to wait until the following Friday to show him the camp site. I told him it would cost him five bucks. This was when my father would be away in Detroit for a top-secret meeting to discuss the Sasquatch Bassett Clan monitored across the United States.

I also told Wiki it was very mean to call them Bigfoot, as it was frowned upon in the deepest corridors of this secret world.

The school bell rang then and we all left.

I really did not think anything more about it until I got to class the following day.”

“What happened the following day?

Did he call your bluff?” asked an extremely curious Durango Ochoa.

“To the contrary Durango, Whitmore Koop came to class with his five dollars already in his hand. He started begging me to let his friends join us for the trip at

five dollars per person. Reluctantly, I agreed. I was so surprised my face did not reveal the pure laughter tearing me apart inside.

I went home that evening, grabbed rope out of the neighbor’s garage, and headed back down the tracks and to that dead carcass. I placed a slipknot around the legs and pulled the rotting corpse down the gravel. I pulled it about a quarter of a mile down the tracks and into the woods behind our home. The smell was unbelievable as the gravel tore into the rotting meat. Once I got it into the woods I cut up some branches and created my version of a Bassett Clan camp and returned the sticky rope back to the Wright Family’s garage before they noticed it missing.”

“Friday came pretty fast and Whitmore said he would meet me after school. I was shocked when I met him on the west soccer field along with four of his friends. Each friend held a five-dollar bill. I told them we would sneak the group across the railroad tracks, so the government would not see us approaching the makeshift camp. During

the half mile walk, at no point did one person inside the group show any doubt to this legitimate expedition. With every single step I took, I was waiting to get my ass kicked by these five guys once they realized I scammed them out of five bucks apiece for a bogus Bigfoot Adventure.� “I had the luxury of several days to work on the camp, so the details were quite intimate to the Bigfoot hysteria all over the United States. I had spent several hours at the Holly Township Library researching any information about Bigfoot to toss into the camp; pretending to play stupid while Wiki explained the significance based on his knowledge. I had taken the hair from the dog and placed it inside the eating area. I had taken the bones and laid them out in a long plot of where the dead female Sasquatch was buried. I explained to my fellow classmates that we could not stay long since the government agents assigned to this detail could catch us. I told the group there was a great risk of the male Sasquatch finding us in his camp and possibly make us his next

meal. Wiki explained that he would only kill us because he heard they were vegetarians. We all decided that either way it is best to leave. It was not until we got back to the middle school that I realized one of the dumb-ass students had stolen one of the longer bones from the gravesite. In pure terror, I looked at the kid and explained to him the clan was named after famed Explorers Cale and Cheryl Bassett. The Bassett Clan was known for their great tracking skills and his safety was now in danger. I told Dennis Watson the creature would track him down to kill him and his entire family for stealing his mate’s bones.”

“Do you think the guy kept the bone?” asked Durango, totally engrossed in the story.

“I doubt it. This was Dennis Watson.

He was in fear for his life over the damned bone. Personally, I was more afraid he would turn it over to his mother, who would think it was a human bone and call the Holly Police Department.

The Holly Police Department and I already had a long, long history, much longer than any

teenage boy in a small town should have with his local police department.”

Auggie arrived at his car and got in.

Before he could drive away, Durango gestured for Auggie to roll down his window. Durango knelt down beside the car, putting his face uncomfortably close to Auggie, he whispered, “You are a strange bird, Auggie. I need to warn you before you leave tonight. Two paths a man can take in life.

Well, I should say there are only two paths you can take with us. One path brings you danger because you did not to take the other path. The other path could bring you happiness. Both paths are crowded with thorns. Auggie, we will put money in your pocket, a chick on your dick, and we will get you that restaurant you always dreamed about in Florida. You need to decide tonight which path you want to take with our organization. My job is to protect Carlos.

In three seconds, I would give up my life for Carlos, but I am okay with that because in two seconds, I will take anybody else’s life. I see a good person inside you, Auggie. I do not know why

you would want to risk your future with us. Up until this point, your exploits have been very funny and extremely entertaining. Your stories make people laugh. The adventure you are about to go on is fun. It will give you dollars and even give you pussy. Trust me, it will give you a restaurant, but to walk this path, you have to be willing to understand that you are putting your life on the line with every single step you take.�

Auggie could feel his hands clench around the hard plastic of the steering wheel. He could smell the smoke of the Salem cigarettes Durango smoked earlier.

He looked through his windshield, staring straight ahead across the driving range of the golf course, and said, “I want to live the great adventure.

Carlos asked me what I wanted to do for a living. To me, he was asking about a paycheck. I want to own a restaurant for a paycheck, a living, and respectability.

In life, though, I want to be a writer someday. Ernest Hemingway died just a few weeks before his sixty-second

birthday. He actually died the same year I was born. I am sure his family stopped blaming me years ago,” Auggie added with laughter. He noted it was a joke lost on Durango.

Auggie continued, “Ernest Hemingway once said, “to write about life, I would have to live it.” Every person I know makes fun of me because everything I do becomes a story. I want to think that the rest of my life, everything little thing I do can become a clever story.” With that, Auggie turned his head and stared straight into Durango’s eyes. He paused before stating with the most deadly serious tone, “I want this to be my adventure.”

From the rearview mirror, Auggie watched as Durango’s figure slowly vanished behind his car as he pulled out of the parking lot. The faint red glow of a newly lit cigarette faded into the darkness as his station wagon eased its way out onto North Holly Road.

Auggie’s imagination seemed organized on his drive back from the club. He remembered a time from when he was in the eighth grade. He read an

article noting most people with a general learning disability discover accidently their diagnoses by overhearing their parents talking in another room. For the next three weeks, Auggie would lie on his bedroom floor waiting to hear his parents talk about his retardation, hoping to confirm the reason he had so many problems in life.

As Auggie pulled up to his parents’ house, he remembered how much the year had changed for him. Earlier in the year, he had convinced Janet Asbury to run for Class President. Janet had no intention of running for student government, but found herself caught up in Auggie’s infectious enthusiasm.

Auggie explained to his unassuming friend that his campaign plan could convince the majority of students to vote for her if she would only run. A few weeks before the election, Auggie used the keys he illegally acquired to the high school, used the alarm codes he had discovered through means never discussed. He used the money earned through illicit means to buy one thousand 22 x 28� posters of legitimate

reasons explaining why people should vote for Janet Asbury. Auggie entered the school during the two weeks prior to the election to post continuously the huge posters throughout the entire high school leaving no space on any wall by more than six inches at face level.

To offset expenses, he went into Big Mama’s Pizza, the local donut shop, and a candy store in Battle Alley downtown and convinced them to pay for the posters. Auggie explained for three weeks their businesses would have uninterrupted advertising on the posters flooded the hallways of Holly High School. When school resumed on Tuesday after the holiday weekend, hundreds of posters explaining why Janet was the best person to represent the Class of 1980 extended down five sets of halls, the gymnasium, both locker rooms, the auditorium, lunch room and all forty-two classrooms throughout the entire high school.

Auggie further rationalized according to student government rules in place nationally and sanctioned by the School Board stated, “It is in violation to

remove voting signs from the walls during the voting period.” This forced the remaining candidates of the high school to put their crude, hand drawn signs above eye level of the huge posters printed professionally by a local print shop. This strange behavior defined Auggie; he never considered himself a “juvenile delinquent.” He never sold the Bubble Yum because it was against school policy. He did not see himself as a rebel. After the elections, several teachers noted by the advertisements on the posters were not sanctioned or appropriate.

He pulled into the driveway of his parents’ house. By now, it was late and he was quite surprised to find his family sitting around the brown Formica table in the dining room playing a game of Uno. His grandmother was at the head of the table. His mother and father sat at opposite sides playing with his two sisters.

“I need to talk to you about something fairly serious,” Auggie said as he pulled up a stool next to his mother.

Nobody at the table looked up from their

game. He could tell each one of them was strategically planning their turn to discard.

“What do you want, Auggie? Can’t this wait?” asked his mother.

“Actually, I want to quit school and get a GED. I have a chance to work at a camp near Grandma’s house in Florida helping juvenile delinquents. The camp promised me they could make me the assistant kitchen manager at the facilities; if I go down there in the next couple of weeks.”

“The Sheriff’s Youth Ranch?” asked his grandmother.

“Umm. Yeah,” Auggie said, seizing onto any piece of specific data to create validity to his lie, praying his grandmother was not leading him into a trap.

His mother, without looking up from her cards, paused, “Well, I guess it is up to your grandmother.”

Auggie looked over to his grandmother waiting for an answer. His grandmother set down a green marked Uno card forcing his sister to laugh.

Without looking up from her cards his

grandmother said that she would be leaving the following afternoon. He would have to be packed and ready to go. Not one person had any reaction at all. In fact, they kept playing cards. They totally changed the conversation completely, before going on to argue about some rule about the game. Auggie sat there in his parent’s dining room, his brain spinning, waiting for debate. He sat there at the brown kitchen table, thinking of point and counterpoint for any question asked. He sat there on the stool, waiting for his family to question him about throwing away his education.

Auggie waited, but not one person looked up from the table. Auggie excused himself from the group and went up to bed.

For Auggie, it was a very quiet night.

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