A Piece Of My Mind

Chapter 2 - Dicks-Hangs-Out

Once they found the hideaway under the bridge, they kept coming back.   The old man was always there, up in his spot.  Over that summer, they saw him nearly every day.

They would amuse themselves hollering crazy shit up at him while they smoked their joints or snorted their crank.

“Good afternoon, old brother.  How would you like a nice Dirty Sanchez?”

“He don’t know what that means, he ain’t got the internet!”, snorted Eddie.  He had a razor blade and was studiously chopping up tiny lines of dirty looking powder on the back of a paperback book.

“Sure he does.  I can see leftovers from his last Sanchez there on his upper lip.”  Billy fished out his lighter and relit the joint.

The old man smiled down at them from his perch and gave them a big thumbs up.

“He’s an agreeable old fuck.”

Once he’d come down and offered them a can of Spam he’d acquired that day.   But mostly he sat on his cardboard perch and drank and listened to the boys shoot the shit.

On those rare occasions when they had money, he was happy to buy booze for them.

On one such occasion they had scraped enough to buy a bottle of Everclear.  When the old man finally made it back from the store, everyone was all huddled under the bridge shooting the shit around a small fire they’d started in a bucket.  Fall was coming on, but the fire was more for light than heat.

“Outstanding, my brother” said Gruff, taking the bottle and pounding the old man on the back.   He opened the bottle, took a swig, gasped, and passed the bottle to Ed.

Ed sniffed the bottle.  He looked at the Billygoat. “What is this shit? ”

“Its pure alcohol, son.  Here let me show you how its done.”  The old man stared at the bottle.  He didn’t talk much, hell he was mostly silent, but he could get downright animated when it came to his share of hooch.

Ed mostly faked taking a sip and passed it to the old guy, who wiped the neck with his filthy sleeve, turned it up, and drank a solid finger out of the bottle.  He kind of froze in place for a few seconds before coming to himself and passing it to Andy.

“I gotta take a piss” he said, and wandered off into the weeds.

Andy, emboldened by the old man’s ability to chug the stuff, took a healthy slug  and started gasping, tears in his eyes.   “Fuck, man.  This shit is nasty!”

They heard the old man coming back before they saw him.  When he made it into the light of the fire, they could all see he’d left his dick hanging out of his pants.  Like he’d forgotten what he was doing mid-piss and blanked out.  If it had been some stranger they’d have beaten the shit out of him, but by this time they knew there was no sexual intention.  He was old and tired, and he only cared about two things: drinking and sleeping.

Andy hollered and pointed.  “YOU!   Your indian name is DICKS-HANGS-OUT!”

How they’d all died laughing.  Nobody thought to ask why it was DICKS instead of DICK, but then again none of them were exactly sticklers for grammar.  Nobody said anything, but they all felt a little closer to Dicks after the naming, like he’d been brought a further into their group, despite the age differences.