Biloxxxi's Woodshed

Date: Saturday Sept. 27, 2007
Location: Somewhere in the vicinity of The Historic East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, GA

It was a beautiful fall morn at Lilburn Tire & Auto Service (affectionately known as Lilburn Tire and Martini Bar) and I was running the place while my Pops was out of town. It was a relatively uneventful day for me, but I’m just a bit player in this story. Randomness is not my sole domain, it would appear.

The phone rang at the shop and I hurried over to answer it. “Lilburn Tire.” I said into the mouthpiece. It was my brother on the other end. “Hey man, what’s going on?” He asked. “Not shit.” I replied. “Just selling some used tires to the fickle masses.” (That’s probably not how I actually said it.) “Let me ask you a question.” He said. “What would you do if there was a body in your yard when you woke up?”

A bit of background first. A few may disagree with me on this, but Atlanta was essentially destroyed for the third time (The first being Sherman’s March to the Sea and the second being the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917) by what’s known as “white flight” during the 1950′s and 1960′s. This led to the growth of the massive suburbia around Atlanta and also led to the urban decay inside the city. Beginning  in the 1990′s, wealthy suburbanites, tired of the commute into the city, began to purchase homes in these rundown areas and fix them up. This increased the property values and forced the poorer residents out, and thus, gentrification was born. Some of these areas gentrified more quickly than others and my brother lives in one of the latter.

His home is spitting distance from the Historic East Lake Golf Club, home of The PGA TOUR Championship every fall. East Lake Golf Club is located of the Memorial Drive corridor of Atlanta. As far as roads go, Memorial Drive sucks. They renamed part of it after Cynthia McKinney who besides being a Congresswoman, is best known for being batshit crazy. Although not quite on the same level as Boulevard, Memorial Drive is just one of those roads nobody would really miss if it was gone.

Back to the story at hand. It was the weekend of The PGA TOUR Championship and my brother and sister-in-law decided to sleep in on this particular Saturday morning. Sometime around 8:30 (you know you’re an adult when 8:30 is sleeping in) they heard someone knocking on the front door. They didn’t answer because no one they know comes to the front door. My sister-in-law peeked out the window in my neice’s room a bit later and noticed the same man looking at something in the yard. It looked like a bag of clothes or something. That’s when she realized what it was. “Jay!” She screamed. “There’s a dead guy in our yard!”

“What!?” Jay exclaimed and rushed over to the window to see. “F’n awesome…” he muttered under his breath as he hurried outside to take a closer look.

He ran up to the guy standing by the body in his yard and asked what was going on. “I was helping park the cars on the side street over there for the golf thing when we noticed this guy laying in your yard. At first we just thought he was drunk and passed out, but when he hadn’t moved after an hour or two, I came up and knocked on your door. This guy is dead.” He said, rather matter of factly. Jay looked down and noticed the face-down body had pretty much bled out on his monkey grass. He pulled out his Blackberry and called up the law.

When he called 911, the operator wanted him to stay on the line and check the guy’s pulse and all that sort of nonsense. Jay responded, “This guy is dead! I’m not touching him!” The fire truck arrived first since the station is right down the street. They checked the man’s pulse and put a sheet over him. “I know I’m going to have to stay around,” my brother said to the firefighter, “But can my wife and daughter go ahead and leave? They’re having a yard sale at her parents’ house.” “Sure.” The firefighter replied. “This place is fixing to be a madhouse.”

Shortly after his wife and daughter left, the Atlanta Police Department arrived, along with CSI. It didn’t take long for them to decide that Jay wasn’t involved with this, but he still had to stick around. After they roped the crime scene off, it was time to flip the body over for further investigation. Now, keep in mind that this is on Memorial Drive, the main thoroughfare between the freeway and East Lake Golf Club, where the third round of the PGA Tour Championship is about to start. There are a ton of spectators and tour buses traveling this road slowing to rubberneck while they’re attempting to flip this body over. Rigor mortis had set in so it was something akin to turning over a sheet of plywood, albeit much heavier. Quite a sight to see before you go play a golf tournament with a seven million dollar purse, I imagine.

After the body was turned face-up, it was fairly obvious that he had been stabbed. Since the blood trail was relatively short and led from the edge of the street, over the sidewalk and a foot or two into the yard, they concluded that he was probably stabbed in a vehicle and then shoved out. They found some drugs in his pocket, and after questioning everyone around, decided it was most likely a drug deal gone bad. That’s probably a sad conclusion to reach, but as I always say, “If you’d rather not be a eunuch, don’t stick your pecker in a woodchipper.”

Later on that evening, after the body had been taken away and all the investigation completed, I went over to my brother’s house to drop some things off. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw him standing in the yard with the garden hose, drinking a High Life. “What’re you doing?” I asked as I got out of the car. “Washing the blood off my monkey grass.” He replied. We stood there for a moment, watching the water run through the spot where a dead man laid just hours earlier. “Welcome to Atlanta, Bitches.” I said. “Yep,” He responded. “Welcome to Atlanta.”

This past Friday night was one of those nights that turned into a $2 beer marathon. What was supposed to be an early night because I had to work at my Dad’s tire shop in the morning, turned into one of those 4th-of July-at-the-lake sort of drink all you can handle and then some nights. Pequeno Cridero was in town and so was Roman. As the evening wore on, and the one we were tying on got tied a little bit tighter, Pequeno and I noticed this girl sitting in the corner that kept glancing our way. Typically, he and I see pretty much eye to eye on the beanhead front, so if one of us says a girl is attractive, usually the other one has already spotted her.

This particular beanhead, however, was kind of hidden back in the corner at the bar. Her parents were with her and she definitely kept glancing our way. Pequeno kept mumbling something about a “boyfriend” or some crap, but I wasn’t listening. After a bit, her parents (or whoever the older folks with her were) left and she was by herself. Pequeno gave me some cash and told me to go put some music on the jukebox. I guess he’d heard Don’t Stop (Till You Get Enough) seven times too many that night.

I wandered over to the jukebox and put in a couple selections. The next thing I know, she’s helping me. Now, I can sling some musical bullshit with the best of them, so when a beanhead sidles up to the jukebox with me it’s typically on like Donkey Kong. This time was no exception. We settled on some hair metal, the typical Poison and Motley Crue stuff, then I pulled out my ace in the hole, Love Song by Tesla. Everyone knows that song, but nobody knows they know it. Honestly, few things are quite as effective as singing “Love will find a way” at the top of your lungs with someone in the bar. Try it sometime if you don’t believe me.

We all ended up standing around the bar together and this girl was ragging on Pequeno and it was hilarious. I was picking up some good vibes and was seriously considering acquiring her number when she mentioned something about her boyfriend. “Aww, damn.” I said to myself, “Doesn’t that figure?” About this time, Rick, the bartender comes over. He says to me, “You might wanna watch your step, Biloxi, her boyfriend is cool, but he’s a big sumbitch.” Yeah,” I reply. “I didn’t realize she had one till just now, but thanks for the heads up.”

Mildly defeated, I decided there wasn’t any harm in talking to her, so I stayed there. A fellow Wharf Rat, Jenn, then showed up and proceeded to drop about $60 on shots in about 10 minutes. Needless to say, we were all hammered. I look over and the girl I had been talking to has her head down on the bar and is obviously in bad shape and needed to go home. I said to her, “Your parents were just here a little while ago, where did they go?” She pointed down the road and said “bar.” Awesome.

I have this sort of odd misplaced drunken sense of duty. So, I decided it was up to me to get this girl back where from she came. As is often the case when you’ve been drinking for hours, I didn’t really take into account the consequences of my actions. So this girl and I, who turned out to be named Jessie, started off down the street in the direction she said her folks had gone. I had no real plan if we couldn’t find them and I wasn’t real confident she could tell me where she lived. I didn’t really know if I could remember where I lived.

As we were walking down the road, Jessie grabbed my hand and pulled my arm around her. As drunk as I was, I knew this wasn’t a good development. It’s funny how something can be pretty cool and fairly exciting, but also terribly bad for you, and you know it. This seldom keeps you from doing it anyway. Thus is the bane of my existence. I can give you the best advice in the world, but I’ll be damned if I’ll follow my own.

We made it a block or so down the road and a group of people was walking towards us. As we got closer, I realized it was her parents and there I was all hugged up with their daughter. Awkward. “Oh, good!” I exclaimed. “Here are your folks.” “I just wanted to make sure she got back alright. I’m gonna head back down this way.” I said to them, trying to make my leave as quickly and cleanly as possible. “Wait a second.” Said the father. “Hang out for a minute. We might go back to the bar.” So I introduced myself and leaned against a telephone pole, trying to play it cool. It soon became clear to them that this girl was way too drunk to go anywhere but home, so they got her a taxi. I said my goodbyes with a minimum of awkwardness and headed back to Fontaine’s.

When I got back to Fontaine’s, everybody decided to have an intervention on my behalf and tell me how lucky I was not to have my ass kicked. I was like, “Whatever man, I got henchmen for that.” Then Roman said I cried. Why, I have no idea, but he is not to be trusted. I can’t cry because they replaced my tear ducts with awesome at the same time I got my steel cheek bones back in ‘Nam. If you need to hire somebody to do a job, don’t hire Roman because he’ll just stand in your backyard and pee on your ant hills and smoke cigarettes. And lie. He does that too.

Fast forward to Monday. I went to the local Publix to pick up my weekly alotment of Drumstick ice cream cones and Hot Pockets and there in the frozen food section is Jessie. She was still pretty hot, so it’s good to know my beer goggles are pretty much just aviators, but with her was The Boyfriend. That man was not small. He was balding, so I had him beat on that front, but I’ve also never known a bald head to hinder an ass whooping. I didn’t make eye contact and went on about my business.

Later, as I was checking out, they got in line behind me. I glanced up at her and made eye contact, there was a glimmer of recognition in her eye, but I doubted she really remembered me. Her meathead boyfriend just glared. I probably dodged a bullet with that one, but you gotta be able to dodge those things if you’re gonna be a nice guy. We still finish last though. I haven’t figured out a way past that one.