Freak-o Crackhead

It had to happen eventually, and today was the day. I've met Born Again Priest-Rappers, snowbird geo-cachers from Chicago who know me before they've met me, geriatric retirees in bright red track suits who powerwalk backwards, Farmers Insurance agents who scream at their boyfriends like drill instructors on the rag (pass the earplugs, Theodore), and psychotic-looking trogs wielding fence posts the size of tree trunks.

But today was the first of his kind. The junkies.

I was hunched over my notebooks and Atlas, sweating like a boar in a greenhouse and cursing the red hot freight train that is Summer here in the Big AZ, when I was interrupted by the susurrus of a bicycle being wheeled across dry grass. Turning on my bench, I frowned at the intruder, a young, skinny, sickly-looking skel with patchy stubble, wearing a dirty striped t-shirt.

He was looking at me, which I found not at all to my liking, and right off the bat he started asking me all kinds of questions.

"Hey, what's up?"
"Having lunch?"
"You just get off work?"
"Wha'cha readin'?"
"What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

Okay, he didn't ask me the last one (that would have made me laugh), but by then I was already fantasizing about ssssqueeeeeeezing him 'round the neck until he couldn't talk anymore.

I gave him monosyllable answers and turned to the side, watching him in my peripherals. He inched up to the garbage can in the corner of the ramada I was sitting under and I saw him straddle the top tube of his bike and reach into the trash can and pull something out. Right then I started feeling kind of bad. Since I wasn't looking directly at him, I didn't see exactly what it was that he pulled out, but I was hoping it wasn't food.

My feeling bad weakness wore out, though, and I decided it was none of my business and started reading my book.

Still straddling the top tube he inched his way around the ramada next to the table I was sitting at. Real slow, and out of my peripherals, I could see him watching me. Creepy. I reached into my pack and unlocked my .45 from the kydex rig and made sure my big knife was in position for a fast draw.

He circled around until he was right beside me and I looked over at him and gave him the hairy eyeball, which he was immune to I guess, considering that instead of sitting down at one of the picnic tables farthest away from me, he decided to sit at the one Right. Behind. Me. and act all creepy. I hate that.

He was playing some sort of yuck-awful speed reggaeton music on his mp3 player, a type of music that sets my teeth on edge and makes me want to cleanse Latin America with fire, although I will admit to being oddly hypnotized by the perreo dancing that usually accompanies reggaeton. However, since he didn't look anything like Shakira, he got nothing from me but a half-hearted attempt to psychically compel him into jumping off the freeway overpass, which I still can't make work, I'm sorry to say.

Ignoring the waves of hostility rippling off my soul, he decided to yell out, "Oh, yeah, this is the SPOT!" To which I growled, "Where your body will be found." He didn't hear me. Damn you, Reggaeton.

With his moving past me and out of my line of sight, visions of what I might look like stabbed in the back with a long, rusty, duct tape-wrapped nail by a cackling madman appeared in my mind's eye, and I swiveled in my seat so I could keep tabs on him with soft focus vision.

He sat down on the other side of the table behind me, and started messing around with whatever he pulled out of the trash. The sounds were of wrappers and cardstock tearing, and I began to feel bad again at the thought of him eating park trash when I had a veritable feast sitting in my lunch box. I began entertaining thoughts of asking him if he was hungry, when he suddenly stood up and moved around to the side of the table I was at, violating my territorial bubble and sparking a violent reaction from my muscles, which by then were doing the thinking for me. I suppressed them though, and he managed to not get insidiously violated with his own bicycle; an act which my imagination had already built several interesting contingency plans for.

By then I'd had the thought that a reasonable man would depart the scene, but I don't like being pushed around by gutter trash, so I refused to walk away like a sheeple. Instead I circled around to the other side of the table and arranged my pack so it was pointing at him. I sat down and began watching him. How'dja ya like THAT, Turd Head!?

With his back to me, he twisted around and looked at me all guiltily. He saw me looking at him and turned back around. Then I heard him strike a match. Not from a matchbook, but a real wooden match. The wind was blowing and it blew out the flame right away. He sparked another and it too went out. Third time's the charm and he got it to light long enough for him to bring the freakin' crack pipe up to his lips and inhale a good lungful of happy smoke!

Good grief! Some people's kids. Why would he do that right next to a stranger? In public! Does he fear nothing!? No, I suppose not. And I say crack pipe, but it was probably meth. He had the look. All sickly, greasy, and mottled.

Four times he hit the pipe. Each time he looked back at me to see what I was doing, frowning and guilty and paranoid, I think. Working himself up to something, it felt like. He was making me a little nervous. By then I was getting the Hey, man! You got some money? kind of vibe coming off of him, and I'd put my hand into the pistol pouch of my pack, got a full firing grip on my .45, and was just waiting.

It occurred to me that I should probably just leave. He was doing hard drugs in the presence of strangers in view of the whole world. Obviously, I wanted nothing to do with that, so I stood up, slid the .38 in my waistband to the rear, and pulled out my .45 and holstered it in my waistband, just in case.

I slung my pack and grabbed my lunchbox, and as I started to move away, the skel turned around and said something to me. The wind drowned it out, and I looked at him and walked away, looking back to make sure he wasn't following me. He wasn't, but he kept looking at me, long after I'd reached my car and stashed my gear and drove away.

The park. The place where the freaks and weirdos go.

So what does that say about me then?