The Second Death

CHAPTER 1

LIKE A DRUNK DETECTIVE, I LIE ON THE FLOOR AND HOLD ON, LOOKing for clues to the life I just lost. I thought I’d lived a proper life. Average Joe, even though the name’s Henry Ford. Nice to meet y’all. Yep, I got teased about it, but no rich relation there, gotdayumit to hell. My nickname in high school was Edsel, the car of the future that failed to deliver. Other stand-ups would yell, What’s my monthlies, Henry Ford? Amateurs trying to sell bananas at a lemonade stand.

By the grace of God, the Ford is in the driveway! my wife, Delores, would say after a long night out with the boys at my favorite bar, the Dirty Shame. Like most, I coulda died many times over and almost had my last haircut with Edward and his snappy scissors. As a kid, I lost control of my bike once, and a young fella had to slam on his brakes to avoid making me his roadkill. There were other times when I was older and riding my Harley I named Dixie, but at the point where I couldn’t jump over a nickel to save a dime. Geez, I hate to think how many times that could have gone the other way.

I did sparkle up the street one night slidin’ into tyranny and almost burst into my favorite color of red shoutin’ about states’ rights, when some fool did a U-turn in front of me. Had to lay ol’ Dixie down and then started cooking Hamburger Helper out of my leg and arm as my bell was ringin’. I needed a helpin’ hand in a lotta ways, like most rebels, you could say. I didn’t sleep well that night, so I made coffee the next mornin’ with Red Bull instead of water. I got halfway to work before I realized I had forgotten my car.

Toward the end, I had my share of health problems, and even the little devil on my shoulder asked the angel, What the fuck is he doin’ to himself?

Never ride faster than your angel can fly, my momma told me as my guts got tossed around like an abused library book. I must have had a pretty fast angel, because that led to me being a prescription collector and lectures from my ol’ doc that got kinda nauseating, just like I felt most Sunday mornings.

If you lived like I did, you’d check most of the boxes of life, and the list on the bucket would start to run outta paper—toilet or otherwise. Not that I thought I lived a shitty life or was a bad fella. I wasn’t some serial killer. Hell, most times I was just a boor to myself and others, thinking I was funny, just holding on to life’s barstool and ending up steering the porcelain wheel. But my sunburned tongue always worked faster than my mind, and my dark angel traveled faster than bad news.

Oh, Henry lived a simple life of an ordinary salesman, they’d say. Took over his daddy’s insurance clients and made ’em his own but had a thirsty hollow leg, you know. The devil doesn’t come to you with a red face and horns. He comes to you disguised as everything you’ve ever wanted, mainly booze and women.

I never got rich like my namesake but managed to get by some, just bein’ a fake Ford. I paid my bills and taxes and had me a good wife and some angel dogs, and two great kids one of which left too soon. I loved some, lost more, but lived, just like most fellas I knew. I guess I wasn’t book smart, but my momma said I had good common sense. She’d say, Common cents are rare coins, Mr. Henry Ford.

Believer in God too—but not so much a regular church mouse, to be honest. Holiday Baptists we were called. The prideful ones who come in for Christmas and Easter with some bad ol’ suit and look around to see if our friends and neighbors had seen us. Yeah, that’s right, Ester, I see you. Good ol’ Henry ain’t going to hell just yet. Thank you very much for your concerning damnations!

I’m sure I’m not the worst of sinners. I know them popes. Some of ’em church mice twice on Sundays. Hell, some of ’em behind the pulpit!

Let me start by telling what I remember after the doc called the time and the white sheet made it really dark, right before it got all cold. We’ll see where it goes from there. That’s if you don’t mind ridin’ with Neal at the Wheel rantin’ and drivin’ the pranksters’ colored-crayon bus Further on down the road.

CHAPTER 2

LIKE ANY GOOD SALESMAN, I’M NOT GOING TO ASK FOR THE ORDER just yet, so let me paint a little more by the numbers. I wish I were more of a reader, but if it weren’t for television and movies, along with my love of music, chances are I wouldn’t know how the story goes. My momma liked Steve Martin in the seventies and said I had a way with words, while other people, Er … not have way.

I heard the one about the afterlife though but didn’t read the book by the Italian fella who wrote a poem on hell. I heard he was a just a frustrated comedian, even if he never told the Aristocrats joke.

Maybe I’m just the crazy jackass who fights windmills, thinking they’re dragons. Some dragon slayer he was! That was one wild and crazy guy bit for sure. Some nights I talked to folded-up umbrellas on the bar’s patio, thinking they were aliens at closin’ time after the whiskey devils got a hold of me, I must confess. Now that’s an audience of crickets! Hello? Is this mic on? Who tripped over the cord? Take me to your leader, muthafuckers!

There was one book I was told never to mess with: The Bible. My momma was a Sunday morning Bible teacher to Gaga’s little monsters. She taught us the fear of God and to put Satan behind us. She said the devil was once a shining angel, but I didn’t see no wings on my daddy.

He used to say, I’m goin’ to hell in a handbasket, boy, not heaven in a wheelbarrow, but I’m comin’ out on fire! Momma has to be with Jesus now after passing three years ago. After putting up with my daddy, she gets a nonstop, first-class ticket past the bouncer at St. Peter’s velvet ropes, like a boss without passin’ Go. The pearly gates break wide open like a bleeding heart on Valentine’s Day, when all the butterflies die. Sorry for that ungodly image of the afterlife.

My daddy, now that’s the devil right there, and I ain’t the only one who said or believed it. The only touch of religion Daddy had on him was from the brass knuckles of life that made me fear both the devil and God!

He was all right in the morning, all hung over and quiet-like; but the night before, when he got all sloppy and came home yellin’ at my momma, waking up the whole gotdayumed neighborhood like he was practicin’ bagpipes at 3:00 a.m. was the worst. I never doubted there was a devil; I was living with the horny toad. He was never an angel, and hell’s not empty, because of my daddy’s gotta be there. He was the liar’s favorite son of a bitch, but his momma wasn’t a bitch, so that made him the devil’s son in my book.

Saw it in his bastard eyes on many a night, all ragin’ Cajun with fire sparks coming off his two beady, black, deviled-egg eyes. Even made the dogs, let alone the frogs, afraid, and we had some mean-ass dogs! Once he had your attention, he’d add some sugar after you saw the apocalyptic rain of the amphibian downpour that preceded him. That’s some fucked-up shit, those cray-cray frogs fallin’ from the sky.

The ol’ focker could make the color red sing the blues. It helped that he had a wad of cash he floated. Thing was, he would keep a hundred wrapped around twenty ones on his fool’s-gold money clip, the tricky bastard.

He’d buy everyone the first round like a big shot and then get them all so plastered that he’d either exit after the bathroom or just pretend he was short tonight but not tomorrow! He even had a death toast from Texas, since we’re on the slice: When I die, let them tan my hide and lay me down between the two things I always loved best, horses and beautiful women. That one would get someone to buy him a shot for certain; but his last rodeo isn’t in heaven. Nor is mine, apparently.

If there was a band playing, he’d defuse the competition by slippin’ Jimi the singer a ten-spot and singing, To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before. Problem was, he couldn’t sing a lick and just talked his way through, pretending he didn’t know the rest of the song. They’d laugh at his drunk ass, but then he would be pointing out his favorite target for that night. Mind you, this was the seventies, before bad karaoke. I guess I can blame him for that too!

He’d tell them ladies, See him? That’s my boy over yonder, tall, handsome, blue-eyed sum-a-bitch. Just sayin’ it’s the seed, not the dirt.

One charming asshole, I know.

He liked to call himself the southern comforter whenever he tried to work some bars up north. Momma just wished that he sold insurance as well as he sold himself out. He slowed a bit at the end like most sinners but I don’t think God’s that forgiving.

CHAPTER 3

IT WAS JUST THE THREE OF US GROWING UP, BUT EVEN THEN, IT WAS mostly just me and Momma. The red rooster had another batch of three more little ginger devils that he was paying on when they finally caught up to him. Maybe even more spilled out of the condom, I’d wager.

I know I’m late on the promise of telling where I landed, but I guess I got a little twisted tail on me too! Well, there is more than supper, they say, and here’s what happened after dessert.

I knew that my physical body was still under the death sheet, and in a few days, the worms would smell what was in the box, find the play button, and push Pop Goes the Weasel.

Learned it from my grandpapa. My grandfather, poor ol’ soul, went to church every week of his ninety-plus years. Never swore, cheated, or drank, but when it came to dyin’, he failed that test big time. So much for me telling him, Say hi to Jesus for me, Papa. Put in a good word!

They made me say good-bye to him but warned me and said, Your papa, he’s not himself. Not himself is like placin’ the Captain & Tennille on the Titanic to sing Do That to Me One More Time after Satan starts pissin’ over the bow! So, they shove all of my naive eleven-year-old pink pubes into the room alone with him, and they tell me to tell Papa good-bye.

I go in there, and he’s freaking the fuck out, saying, The devil’s coming to get me! Satan’s on my doorstep! All manic and crazy-like! Eyes bugging out like Hunter Thompson’s got some scared bug trapped under a hot microscope in the desert! Maybe he knew more than the rest, but it sure gave the willies to this young yapper. I took one look at the door and ran faster than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs!

When it’s my turn to die, I say, I’m going to be brave, not like Grandpapa. That didn’t work out so good, because I kept asking for my new favorite friend, a sister I can’t resista, Lady Morphina, and that gal took me by the hand, pulled me out of my sadness, made me smile, and gave me my life’s best hand job! It felt like the devil himself poured his own whiskey down my throat for foreplay. After they got that in me, I was tired and weak, but in a good way for once. No longer swinging and hitting just air, I landed my punches.

Didn’t give a fuck about anything after that and just said, I want to see my lady! I’m going out anyway, so I just said, "My safe word is more please! Rehab is for quitters, and I’m dying up here! My pain’s a ten, and so are you, waitress—I mean nurse!"

Stomach cancer was crouching in that hospital room for at least two whole days before my last puff of this life’s bad weed quit and the line went all straight like Dan Aykroyd in Dragnet.

I thought it was to be finished right then and there, I sure did. Then the journey’s wheel turned, and it all got a lot more interesting. I wasn’t one for the drugs—smoked a little, drank a lot, but never did the junky shit. Okay, maybe for a time or two, and I liked three or four lumps in my tea from the bad bunny, but not a cigar like Pete Puma. After I left my body, it was the glowin’ sunset of the psychedelic sixties again.

Timmy Leary would like to hear me sing My Way around the campfire. I can’t begin to describe the colors, shapes, animals, creatures, just about every living thought and visual you could think of that I witnessed. Patterns and numbers, painting dark to light, uncountable dimensions, and then colors so vivid, you’d like to be blinded by the light just to have that as your last forsaken memory.

There were songs too, ones I’d never heard before. Some hurt my ears, but in a good way, like when you just had sex in high school. When you feel bad for feelin’ sooooo good—orgasms-you-felt-in-your-toes good. But they weren’t the guilty ones, like when you went to church, sitting there pervin’ on the neighbor girl as she got up to sing the long part. Hello, Henry. I’ll make me you a sinner!

Some fierce winds started throwing me about like some blow-up doll at Charlie Manson’s bachelor party! The devil on one side, angel on the other, fighting for my lazy-ass soul that can’t decide if the hotter place was cooler!