333 Miles (11 page)

Casey announced the battle plan: “All right
guys, each of you is armed with three rolls of TP. Additionally,
Dave has a bag of confetti for the yard, Larry has a dozen eggs and
I have a baseball bat for the mailbox. When we get there, split
into groups of two and start the TP process. One guy throws over
trees or branches and the other guy tries to catch. Then tear and
re-throw. Try to get it as high up as possible and don’t worry
about the bushes at eye-level that are easy to clean up. While you
are doing this, Larry and I will sneak into the backyard and use
half of the eggs on high-level targets. We will then come around
and hit the car and the front of the house with eggs. They have a
BMW they usually leave in the driveway. At this point, Dave will
confetti the yard. Finally, if we still have cover and no one is
coming out, I will place the raccoon on the welcome mat and light
it on fire. Once the fire is lit, Gary takes out the mailbox with
the bat and I will ring the doorbell. Then we run like hell. Avoid
the expressway on the way home and cut through the Turnburry’s yard
and across the creek instead.”

Gary could see that Casey was quite proud of
his plan, but he still had a few questions about the wisdom of this
mission: “Hey guys, I realize Zell is a dweeb, but don’t you think
this is a little much? I mean, it is probably just the parents who
will have to clean everything up, not him.”

Larry: “Gary, quit being such a pussy.”

Casey: “Yeah.”

No one had further questions, so the unit got
underway. Larry quickly ran out from behind the tree and headed
north on Hummingbird Lane. He maintained a crouched position as if
avoiding enemy fire. Each man followed in a single line, with Ryan
bringing up the rear and Gary just in front of him.

The boys returned to base in Casey’s bedroom
seventy-three minutes later and debriefed about the mission. All
targets were hit. Twenty-four rolls of TP were now hanging from the
trees in the yard, the lawn was heavily laced with confetti, the
mailbox was destroyed, eggs were splattered all about, and a
smoldering pile of raccoon remains lay on what was the welcome
mat.

They encountered no police and only a small
number of civilian drive-bys. The boys felt confident they were
unsighted and congratulated themselves on a job well done. Casey
went to the garage and brought back a six-pack of root beer and a
six-pack of Coke to celebrate with.

It would not be for another four days that
they would learn that Casey got the address wrong and they actually
attacked the house of Pamela Boardman, an innocent girl in the
class below them. The Boardmans had a long talk with their daughter
about who would want to do something like this to them. They were
very concerned about her associating with such disgusting kids. No
one considered any connection to the actual assailants, and the
attack went unsolved.

Perhaps some good did come from the event,
however. Much to his own surprise, Larry felt extremely guilty
about what happened. A few days later he walked over to the
Boardmans with the intention of confessing and offering to help
clean up, but he chickened out at the last minute. While he never
accepted responsibility, he did learn an important lesson about the
value of good intelligence.

Years later, Larry was part of another group,
this one flying F-17s over Iraq. His job was to guide five-hundred
pound bombs to their targets, regardless of what they may be. Larry
didn’t mind killing people. Actually, he felt pretty darned good
about it when he did his job well. But he cared passionately about
the quality of his work and he understood the costs of error. One
fall day in 2004, Larry disobeyed an order to bomb a small camp of
tents outside of Basra because he felt the intelligence was suspect
and something seemed wrong. He probably would have been severely
punished had it not turned out in debriefing that the target in
question was part of a British field hospital.

Chapter Thirteen

Porn + Games Part II

6:38 p.m.

“
Truckin', like the do-dah man.

Once told me, “You've got to play your
hand”

Sometimes the cards ain’t worth a damn, if
you don't lay ’em down,

Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;
Other times I can barely see.

Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange
trip it’s been”

–
Truckin’,
The Greatful Dead

Ten miles beyond the official Barstow city
limit, Alex, Mike and Gary outvoted Roger three to one and switched
off the Stanford game, promising to put it back on for the second
half. Gary cycled through the iPod in the front seat and announced
he would start things off with a vintage beat. Moments later, Skid
Row’s
I Remember You
began to play.

Alex and Gary sang along in the front seat,
“We spent the summer with the top rolled down,” while Mike turned
toward Roger in the back and simulated shooting himself in the
head. A lack of enthusiasm for the vocals emanating from the front
wasn’t the only thing contributing to Mike’s lack of appreciation
for life at the moment. His stomach was churning in a way that had
morphed from annoying to painful. He now regretted the Kodiak.

Mike rolled the window down. At the current
speed of eighty-four miles per hour, the noise from the wind mostly
drowned out Sebastian Bach and his newfound chorus. He firmly
pinched the chew with his left hand, reached out the window and
flipped it into the nothingness on the side of Interstate 15. Alex
tried to look in rearview mirror to make sure Mike wasn’t making a
mess in the car, but the sun was now directly behind them, a
fireball resting on the horizon rendering the mirror useless.

“That better not be all over the car out
there,” Alex said sternly.

“Don’t worry, there is none on the outside of
the car,” Mike said, smiling to himself.

Roger had been trying to go back to sleep for
the past few minutes, but the burst of air from Mike’s window left
him completely awake, and bored. “Can we pull over and get some
beers and maybe play a drinking game or something? Even better,
let’s play something where I can take some of you bitches’
money.”

Alex did not want to stop for beers. His
vision involved getting to Vegas as soon as possible, perhaps
allowing for time to relax with a few drinks in the room before
going out. Also, he knew if the other guys started drinking now it
would have the following negative effects on him:

1. At least three additional piss breaks prior
   to arrival
   

2. Small jealousy factor that everyone else was
   drinking
   

3. Higher likelihood the one or more of the
   other guys would end up too drunk by midnight to enjoy the whole
   night
   

4. Risk of spilling in the car
   

5. Legal risk if they get pulled over
   

Alex: “Let’s just make it to Vegas and you
can drink all you want there.”

Mike: “A few beers would be nice to take the
edge off.”

Gary: “I agree, let’s hit the next store and
grab a twelver.”

Alex realized he would not get his way on
this one. Five miles later they pulled off on an exit containing a
Shell station with a twenty-four hour mini-mart. Though he still
had a third of a tank of gas, Alex got out of the car and began to
fill up, first inserting a Southwest Airlines Visa card in the pump
and then entering his zip code. Meanwhile, Gary headed toward the
store to get the beers. The sky was now dark blue with the last
reminders of daylight coming from the west and a sliver of a moon
starting to assert itself from the north. Gary broke into a slow
jog because the temperature had dropped significantly in the brief
time since they left the In-N-Out and a brisk wind had picked
up.

Mike was happy that Gary had proactively
taken the initiative to go in and buy the beers because he knew
Gary wouldn’t ask him to chip in, but he felt his stomach really
starting to turn and wondered if he should try to use the bathroom
in the Shell. The thought of taking a shit in a gas station sounded
entirely unappealing, however, and Mike decided to hold out for a
few hours until they got to the hotel in Vegas. Also, should the
situation deteriorate, he knew there would be more bathroom stops
before too long if they were going to start drinking beers.

Four minutes later the Beemer was fully
fueled and Gary was getting back in the front seat, placing a large
brown bag on the floor between his legs.

“What’ve you got in there?” Mike asked.

“Oh, it’s a Bag O’ Tricks,” Gary answered
excitedly.

Alex accelerated aggressively up the onramp,
demonstrating the power of the BMW’s engine and hitting
seventy-five miles per hour well before entering the right lane of
Highway 15. Gary instinctively fastened his seatbelt before opening
the bag. On the stereo, Gwen Stefani was explaining what she would
do if she was a rich girl, which always bothered Mike considering
she was, in fact, a rich girl. Gary pulled out one of the two
six-packs of Budweiser tall boys in the bag and quickly ripped off
two beers. Without looking back, he reached behind his head and
offered them to the back seat. They were removed from his hands
instantly. He put one more in the cup holder next to his seat and
returned the remaining half of the six-pack to the bag. When his
hand re-emerged, it was holding a pack of Bicycle playing cards,
which he also handed to Roger in the back seat. Next he pulled out
one of the four Slim Jims in the bag and handed it to Alex.

“Thought you might want to slip into a Slim
Jim since you can’t join us in a beer,” he suggested, before
adding, “Rodge, why don’t you shuffle up the cards and we can start
a game of High/Low, Red/Black?”

Alex accepted the synthetic beef stick,
grateful for a friend like Gary who was compassionate enough to
alleviate the difficulties of being unable to drink by providing a
desirable savory snack. His admiration only grew when Gary then
produced a twenty-ounce plastic Diet Coke and placed it in Alex’s
cup-holder.

In the back seat, Roger opened the deck of
cards and began shuffling them, using his left hand only. It was a
trick that he thought was incredibly cool, but for some reason most
women did not share his enthusiasm. Gary again stuck his hand in
the bag, this time pulling out a copy of the latest
Club
adult magazine. It was wrapped in a bright pink cellophane
packaging which prevented one from seeing most of the front cover.
Gary hungrily tore off the packaging to see what it revealed. It
featured Tera Patrick sitting on top of what appeared to be an
antique wooden kitchen table. She was leaning back, her legs spread
and knees raised, naked except for a small white lace apron which
covered part of her stomach but left her breasts and everything
below the waist exposed. Behind her was an attractive blonde who
was kneeling on the table and leaning over Tera’s right side. The
blond had one hand on Tera’s shoulder and was looking down toward
her stomach. Her other hand was looped under Tera’s knee and was
holding a baby-blue colored dildo. Gary suspected that the other
end of the dildo was a few inches inside Tera’s vagina, but it
would forever remain a mystery because there was a bright yellow
star covering this particular part of the picture. According to the
headline (also in bright yellow) next to the blonde’s head, more
information could be found starting on page thirty-four under the
story, “French Country Lesbo Chefs Cook up Something Hot!” Other
noteworthy items included “Janitor’s Closet Orgy!,” “Young Tennis
Star Bares All on the Court!,” and, simply, “Bobby does Nikki.”
Gary noted that this was the only article that in the opinion of
the cover editor did not warrant an exclamation point. The
remaining contents of the magazine fell under the umbrella
statement, “More Filth and Nastiness Than You Can Handle!”

Gary felt a twinge of guilt at buying porn,
given the cause of his recent arguments with Blair and the fact
that he probably should not even be on this trip to begin with.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but flip to “Young Tennis Star Bares
All on the Court!” It featured a girl who looked enough like Maria
Sharapova to make the obvious connection. Most of the pictures were
kind of lame, but on the third page of the article he found one of
the girl (named Maria, of course) bent over a tennis net with her
little white skirt pulled up over her waist. She was holding a
Wilson tennis racket in one hand and was using the other to lightly
pull apart her butt-cheeks in order to reveal more of her pussy and
asshole. She was looking backward over her shoulder, bright red
lips slightly parted, heavy blue and black mascara surrounding
closed eyes.

“Game, set and match,” Gary mumbled to
himself while reading the all-too-obvious commentary on the sides
of the pictures about “playing with balls” and “ground
strokes.”

“That’s enough for you, pederast. Unless
there is an underage burger flipper in there, let me take a look,”
Mike demanded.

Gary conceded and tossed the magazine back to
Mike while Mary J. Blidge declared that there would be no more
drama in her life.

Roger, now finished shuffling, cracked his
beer and took a healthy sip. “Damn, that’s good,” he declared. “You
can’t beat the King of Beers.”

“Congratulations, I am happy for you,” Alex
said through a mouthful of Slim Jim. Internally, he began
justification for the acceptability of having a beer during the
last forty minutes of the trip, once they crossed the state line
into Nevada.

Roger ignored Alex and announced the rules of
the game. “Okay bitches, Red/Black, High/Low is the game. The
stakes are a quarter a point and ties pay double. Someone find a
pen.”