The White Trash Veteran: Chapter 1

The White Trash Veteran

The cricks and thickety hollers of West Virginia smelled just like Goose Sampson recollected. While he was gone, he wouldn’ta, couldn’ta and repeatedly did not conjure up the aroma in his imagination. It was unlike any scent his nose done made acquaintanceship with in the jungles of Vietnam. T’was fresh like snow but musty like rain, both dirtsy and woodish, earthy like a campfire and airy like a whetstone, memorable as mama and homey as hugs. He appreciated the fougère of the terroire, though Goose remained polite-nod strangers with both them words.
Carrying a poke fulla dollars and a pocket fulla pantyhose, he hurried by shanks’ mare on through the Appalachian woodlands, darting from sods to bald and back. Sirens blared yonder. Goose stopped when he got to a babbling run and sent the pantyhose floating yanway.
He knewed the area round Martinsburg like the upper sidea his pecker, and he learnt plenty about sneak-a-sleeking through the wooly wilderness of Vietnam. T’wasn’t so different here. Scurrying like a stinky sally on over muddy drafts fulla ferns and towering trees past critters and bugs and varmints chirping and growling and hissing, and there he was, a hillbilly blundering again through laps and laurel hells.
Vietnam got more wetlands, that was the only difference. T’was enough though. Goose discottoned to wetlands.
And skeeters. Vietnam got a peck of skeeters.
Of nightfall, he made it back to Smashwood Trailer Park. He was outta wind, dirty like a cellar, armpits sweat-soaked, but he sauntered in, casual as a bowl of buttermilk. The park was working alive with folks and fellers who Goose knewed since he was a boy. Did them’all know he robbed a bank? They couldn’t know, and ain’t nobody took no note of him. He returned from Vietnam a couple weeks back, so nary the whombodies got whopper-jawed at him moseying home buttermilk-like. He had a poke, t’was all. Just a knapsack, like any feller might could tote.
Nobody knewed it was fulla red-hot greenbacks.
Nobody knewed Ellen been hooking it on the other side of town neither. Ellen was Goose’s wife. They ain’t never done live in matrimony, as they jumped the broom only days before Goose shipped out to the steamy greens. Ellen done come up in the family fashion, so they got married with a hurry and a hoop-dee-hoo. Now Goose returned to the joyness of meeting his newborned son Moses and to the sadness of Ellen admitting she been turning tricks to pay the bills. Army don’t pay diddly.
Goose did more shouting than he cared to admit, and he blistered and kicked up purple, raring and pitching, then he punched a hole in the wall and regretted letting his son see that and afrearing from it, and nothing Goose could do would make him stop crying. He said no wife of his gonna go and sell her God-given ladyness to any pecker-toter with dollars and a stiffy, cuz what was the point of being a man if you can’t keep your little lady from hooking it? But he done got drafted to the other side of the ever-blesséd world, so what was he sposedta do about it? Can’t do squat! Goose screamed like a river at a dam, til Ellen begged him to stop or the neighbors gonna call the sheriff, and Goose wanna ram his noggin into the wall until something somewhere broke.
The whatnots rising in him, Goose only regained hisself when he saw Vietnameys watching him like sentries from the woods behind the trailer. That turned out to be an illusion, but it got Goose calm as a clam, sending Ellen and Moses inside. Then he felt hisself a fool when he reckoned t’was just some shadowy tree swaying in the breeze, and he pretended ain’t nothing happen. He don’t want Ellen to think he couldn’t cope or Moses to think his pops was fearful.
So he steeled up for the woman and the boy. They got needs, and a rock don’t. He ain’t think twice about giving Ellen the cash-money from the robbery. “Don’t spend it all at oncet,” he said.
And he felt bad that he felt good about leaving. He gotsta skedaddle while the heat was on. And he gotsta go less he lose control of his fists again. That boy ain’t a wall, and the lady ain’t a soldier.
She nodded, and she whispered, “Thank you…”. She kissed Goose upon the cheek. That felt good. Damn good. Something about tenderness from a lady reassures a man he is alright and cures a touchous soul. Her lips wouldn’t tremble so soft-like if he was a monster. Ellen wouldn’t kiss a john the way she kissed Goose. He ain’t tell her not to whore it out no more cuz it was implied from the hole in the wall and cuz he ain’t want her to lie and say she would quit off when she really wouldn’t.
The only thing better than kissing Ellen was playing with his son — Moses, but Ellen said everwhom was calling him Buck, cuz he be climbing like a goat. Goose liked that, cuz he was called Buck as a tyke too, on account of his buck teeth. Ellen ain’t know that when she fell to calling Moses Buck.
Buck afreared Goose all afternoon. He ain’t never met the hairy stranger — Goose been letting his hair and his beard go wild now that he ain’t got a sergeant jawing at him about it — it was still coming in dry and coarse though, only gradually returning to health. When Goose smiled like a lamb and pooped down onto the floor of the trailer at Buck’s height to vroom-vroom with his toy truck, Buck giggled and played along. He clum on Goose’s back and rode him like a pony.
Playtime was interrupted when there came a knocky-knock upon the trailer door. It was Anita Daylily, a high-headed whomgoody with a puff of hair and her muff in a huff that some policeman was on the wander, asking if anybody in the trailer park seen Goose — course he asked after his real name, Martin Sampson.
Ain’t nobody in the park gonna make it easy on a policeman. Goose was from round here. Officer Whomsoever was not. Or maybe he was, Goose don’t know. Anyway, that was his cue to scram. Some snoop-nose peckerwood at the bank musta reckonized his voice.
“I gotta go, son,” Goose said. He got down upon his knee to give li’l Moses a big hug goodbye. “Moses…”
“Bye.” T’was all li’l Moses Buck said. He weren’t muchuva talker yet.
Goose kissed him goodbye, and he kissed Ellen goodbye too but in a different way, then he went on back to bush in the wilds up behind Smashwood. He ain’t wanna whisk off, but he ain’t wanna stay even harder. It was better this way, for him to be gone. He gotsta get a grip on hisself, and a man gotsta do that alone.
The world seemed right before the war, right in a way he couldn’t perceive then or articulate now. Expectations done broke, he thought. Goose went to war, he pulled the appropriate trigger at appropriate times, he followed orders mostly, he came back alive, he got money, he gave it to a woman to spend. He did his part. He completed the minimum requisited of a man. But it felt like he done jack up every single thing in the world. He was a retard in boot camp, he dropped his rifle, he got scared as a bunny, he was captured, needed rescue, he lost, he failed, he fell, he wailed. He could get done up by the Vietnameys prolly crawly-trawling the countryside anytime. He done develop a sixth sense about ’em, and it been twinging like a siren. Ain’t quit off since Muck Dan Foo. He don’t wanna go look in the woods lest he either get took captive again or see that he imagined phantoms.
He stayed on the hoof, alert but hazed. He gotsta hide til the cops stop looking for him, wander til the sun sets, lay awake til the dawn comes. One day at a time.
He left Smashwood Trailer Park, but in a way, it felt like he ain’t never return from the Army. He only ever left Smashwood once really. Wise honkies say home is the place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. But war is too. Dumb hillbilly says home is the place where, once you leave, you can never return. War is that too.
The road ran to the highway, and Goose stayed parallel to it so nary a cop or a Vietnamey could see him. They did that in Vietnam, staying parallel to rivers, not roads, but it was the same idea. A river was just the universe’s road. If the Army controlled a river, they’d travel on a riverboat afloat, but if the Vietnameys did, they’d walk parallel to the river, far enough away to be unseen from it.
He noodled on a destination, any one would do, so long as it was away from Ellen and the boy and the skeeters and slant-eyed jaspers of Vietnam. He armybooted through the woods till he wound up on the highway. Rambling along the roadside for a spell, he let his mind dangle like a rod. Plans formed like constellations, but Goose bit back the bubbles of his notions and pondered like a buddha.
The camp cook Sam learned him pondering, but moments jumbled and mixed like phuh. Goose put one foot in front of the other, like the first drop of water striking out a path to sea. T’was hard to build a river with cops and Vietcong and Ellen’s johns blocking the route.
He might as well hitch a ride, he thought, so he thumbed out. It was mostuva hour before a truck pulled over, a big rig hauling cabbages to Roanoke, Virginia. The truck cab smelled of raw cabbage and chewing tobacco.
T’was good enough for Goose, who said he wanna go to Roanoke too. The trucker got a calypso song playing on the eight-track, and Goose wondered why a white man got a feel for calypso, but Goose ain’t ask after it. Goose was in boot camp with a Trinidadian feller, who did flop his dingdong on the regular to calypso records. Goose got no quarrel with calypso.
The driver was Buford, a right-country sumbitch with a ruddynut face and a extra-ruddy mustache that drooped in two lines down to his chin. He got a big head of curly hair.
“You was in the Army?” Buford asked.
Goose dunno how that Buford could tell he was Army. Maybe he done seed Goose’s dog-tags or something. Maybe he just assumpted — Goose weren’t cowering in Canada, and he looked too dumb for the Air Force and too tough for the Navy. Goose said, “Yessuh.”
Buford nodded. “I’s a Navy man, mahself.”
“Oh, tha’ss nice, didya enjoy ya vacation durin’ the war?” Goose said with one whoop, two guffaws and a series of slaps upon his knee.
Buford laughed along with him, and them two swapped insults and war stories like ornery nurses. Turnt out they was both in the same engagement in Na Doong. They might well have done pop off at the same damn gook. Felt good to know it, it settled the cockles of Goose’s manhood. The war was only over a couple months ago, so it warmed his heart to speak of it like history.
But it lingered upon his mind like only the present could. The future stopped the moment he arrived in Vietnam, and Goose ain’t slow his uppermostness down, not then, not now. The past might could still pop outta the woods anytime. There oughta be a after-war boot camp, so somebody could demonstrate that there was a thing called Not-War and that he was in it.
“Hey, you got cash for gas?” Buford asked when they pulled over at a gas station.
“No, suh,” Goose said.
“You got grass?”
Goose shook his head.
“Hmmh… hmm.” Buford said. He got out to pay for the gas hisself.
But Goose reckonized what that murmur meant. A Navy man can’t help hisself. Buford hoped Goose to pay up in cash, grass or ass. That’s how hitchhiking works out in the country.
But Goose don’t give up his bootyhole if he can help it, so when Buford returned, Goose said, “I’ll get’cha started, Buford. But if’n you go’n make me give up the bootyhole, lemme off right now.”
Buford made a dismissive snort. “I ain’t a niggruh,” he said. “I don’t wan’cha rear.” He unzipped his jeans and pulled out a long fat cock. He gave it a couple strokes, then leaned back in the driver’s seat the best he could while still steering the truck onto the highway.
“Sheeit,” Goose said as he wrapped one hand around Buford’s meaty cock. “You Navy men is all the same.” Goose leaned over and put his mouth upon Buford’s knob. It twitched against Goose’s lips when Buford laughed.
“Army is jealous cuz a sailor’s dick do work,” Buford said. He put his left hand upon Goose’s head to push it deeper on his shaft, while his right hand stayed upon the steering wheel. “Ship got no place for a limp dick. Send ’em to the Army!” He cackled. “Or the Marines, I don’t vouch for them.”
Goose made some mouthy noises to communify that he disagreed with Buford’s as to regarding the Army, but he ain’t stop slurping and also don’t dispute the Marine Corps’s reputation. He don’t welch. Goose do what he gotsto. He done so numberous times before, and he likeish would again.
In any case, he know how to get a man going. He commenced to batter Buford’s knobtip with his tongue, and he slicked his lips up and down the shaft. Lotta fellers don’t realize jackin’ a man off with ya tongue is the same as doing it with ya hands — you don’t gotta taste it longer than it takes, just move ya lips up and down same as you would ya hand. If a man’s dick works, it’ll happen quick as candy.
Sure enough, Buford got to leaking prenut in no time. When Goose tasted it, he pulled off, but he kept stroking it with one hand. T’was called ‘starting it off’. Leastways that was what they called it in the Army. Navy prolly calls it ‘e’ry morn’ b’fore breakfast’! They do that, they do be like that. Never get put in the brig on a Navy base, or you gonna taste more meat than a vulture, Goose learnt that good. He learnt that like math.
Buford held onto his head, jabbing at his face and trying a-force Goose to put it back in his mouth. Goose did plant his tongue upon the tip a couple times to mollify Buford, but the taste of pre-jizz got him gagging, qualmish. Buford couldn’t tussle with his head too much while steering, ‘specially once he got close to busting a nut.
Stroking Buford’s dingus fast as a badger, Goose got both hands upon it. His left hand worked the shaft, and his right hand squeezed the base. Buford’s dick was big enough to accommodate both hands. The precum flowed like wine, lubing up Goose’s mitts.
“Ah, wait, wait, here I go, wait, shit…” Buford sucked in his breath. His cock went throbby-lobby like an alien beast, and Goose hurried his rhythm. Buford grunted like it hurt. “Wait, ah, shit, wait, got it, shit-” He cut his own self off with a hiss.
A fat spurt of jizz came outta his dick, jetting into the air and landing back in his hairy crotch. Goose ain’t stop stroking, even when his hand was coated in ackempucky. He kept working Buford’s meat up and down till his balls was good and drained. Cum got all the way up Goose’s arm to his bicep, but he ain’t miss a beat.
Buford’s dick roped limply in Goose’s left hand even before plopping out one final wad of fatness, but Goose leggo with his right hand. Buford was still making noises, whole body contorting, his veiny shaft still throbbing. Then at last Buford sighed and twitched, and a few final drops dribbled into Goose’s grip.
Goose leggo. He wiped up the gom with a napkin, while Buford tucked his man-meat away and redid his jeans with one hand. His other hand stayed on the wheel.
“A Navy man j’st can’t help hisself,” Goose said with a chuckle and a mournful whistle. “You know you ain’t gotta get a man to jerk ya meat? You can stick it in a woman.”
Buford laughed and countered that Goose’s face was ugly as pussy, which worked on two levels, then he turned up the volume on the eight-track. That calypso jangled out bright and clear. Goose liked that. T’was good music to whisk off unthoughted, its lively beat like a river’s current carrying Goose away to benighted shores, and the best part was that it don’t sound nothing like Vietnam.

Thumper Meets the Ultimate Evil: Chapter 7

Thumper Meets the Ultimate Evil

Chapter One: Out of Touch
Chapter Two: The Fossil
Chapter Three: That Ain’t Gangsta
Chapter Four: Old Nigga
Chapter Five: Unfashioned
Chapter Six: A Corrective Statement
Chapter Seven: Cool at Last

Thumper waited in the locker room at the homeless shelter. He was outta the Lipsweet building. He was outta Bangor. He found the furthest homeless shelter there was. Couldn’t even see that city from here.
It felt good. Back when he was in lockup, imagining hisself leaving prison only to stay in a homeless shelter felt like a disaster. He’d be a trash-high nigga if he did that, flopping into lowness cuz he be too default to rise above anything.
But now, he was glad to be here.
And it was sure to rain tonight. Thumper’s phone said it would start late tonight, and Thumper fully intended to go outside and feel it. Thumper got a app on his phone that predicts the weather. He’d prefer it if the weather was unknown, but now that he got the app, he couldn’t stop checking it. The phone got itself in Thumper’s noggin and wouldn’t let go.
Thumper done left Bangor for good and told Rico to get out too. He ain’t tell him Carson wanted him dead, cuz Rico was the kinda dumb nigga who might think he was big enough to take Carson down. But he told Rico he best bounce, and he told Carson Rico was gone. Both those things was true.
He lay on his bunk, the lower one — ain’t nobody even take the upper jawn, prolly cuz his biggish body and bumping looks scared ’em off. It felt like a prison bunk. Prolly was the same as a prison bunk. He could leave anytime though, that’s what made the bunk feel comfortable. Thumper could handle anything so long as he could leave.
That’s when he saw a hunky-dory whiteboy with a big fat head of blond hair like a girl, like a pretty girl who don’t know how slutty she is. He was slim but thick-butted, and you just know he was pink under them clothes. Thumper could dig a pink whiteboy. He was marble-hard too. Nice.
Lights was off, but nobody made niggas go to bed in a homeless shelter. Guards’d be hollering if they was this loud in prison. Niggas was gabbing on, using phones as flashlights — seriously, everything was a phone nowadays — laughing, smoking tobacco and weed and maybe something more too, watching teevee on they phones, texting females, playing dumbass phone games, arguing over chargers and outlets, looking at nudie pics on they phone screens. Every. Damn. Thing. A. Phone.
That hunky-dory marble-hard returned from the shower, carrying his shower shit in a cute plastic basket like a female might have on her bike. His phone was in there too, in a plastic baggie so it don’t get wet.

“Hey, whiteboy, what’s yo’ name?” Thumper asked. He stood there in his drawers. He ain’t take his shower yet, cuz he still finna get dirty. The good kind of dirty.

“Greg.” His eyes bugged out like he ain’t never seen a uncool nigga before.
“Hmm, nice to meetcha, Greg,” Thumper said. He like a whiteboy with a name no nigga has. That got him hard. Betcha Greg got a sexy mama too. That kinda whiteboy always do. She prolly crackerlicious, with sinkwater-blonde hair and tits that sag at the perfect angle. Hmm-hmm! If she got ass like her son, she be perfect. Bet she do gobble up nigga dicks, gobble ’em up like chicken nuggets. White people love nuggets. “You got a mama around here, Greg?”
“What? No. My mom died fifteen years ago,” Greg said. He set down his shower basket next to his duffel bag.
That gave Thumper a sadness. Sometimes a nigga forget other folk got they own shit going on. Greg woulda been little when she died. But Thumper ain’t wanna show softness, less Greg get the wrong idea, or even worse the bunchesa niggas all around picked up the notion Thumper was weak. So Thumper sucked on his teeth like Greg should be embarrassed his mama was dead. “Shit, whiteboy, Greg, hey, you wanna share a bunk wit’ me?”
“What? No,” Greg said with a wrinkle of his nose.
He grabbed Greg by the neck. “Listen, whiteboy, you best do as I say, quiet as a rat, or e’rry nigga in this place go’n come watch.” He squeezed his whiteboy neck just hard enough that Greg struggled to breathe, mouth gaping like a lake trout. Greg sat on his bunk, with Thumper standing afront him, so Greg’s wriggling made the whole double-bunk shake.
“Waaaatch what?” Greg asked through his quiet chokes.
Thumper lowered the front of his prison boxers with one hand, his other pushing Greg by the neck to kneel. He slapped Greg’s cheeks with his dick, then forced it into his mouth.
With a gag and a writhe, Greg almost got away. But Thumper shoved him back onto his bunk, where he sat with his mouth open like another, sadder lake trout. Ain’t nobody could see. They mighta peeped Thumper push him to his knees, but ain’t nobody give a damn about some hoboish whiteboy with thin lips. Thumper kept his boxers on, he just lowered the front to take his dick out, so nobody could see what he done unless they was right there. The bunk got sheets draped all around it, which blocked Greg, who crouched in there with just a pillow and Thumper’s dingadingdoo to keep him company.
He musta done this before, cuz he ain’t seem too confused. Greg stayed there like a surrendered soldier, and he let Thumper impregnate his mouth. He ain’t even discooperate and make Thumper force it. He parted his lips obedient-like, and Thumper rammed his part-hard meat right in.
The tight warmth and moisture of Greg’s mouth got him all firm up soon as summer, and Greg’s dome made buncha moist slapping sounds. The noise wasn’t loud enough to be heard over the general thrum and din of the shelter. Whoever was bunking up nearby musta heard, but they mighta all been asleep. Nobody said nothing anyhow.
Soon enough Thumper’s dick was throbbing like a drummer, and a fat load of precum burst onto Greg’s face. Greg pulled off Thumper’s knob to gag.
“Ewwhhck, man, c’mon-” Greg retched, and every inch of whiteboy on him rippled like a breezy autumn. He spat up quietly into his hands.
While Greg tried to stop gagging, Thumper crawled into the lower bunk with him, careful to not make noise or pull down the sheets that acted as curtains around the bunkspace. In the bunk, it smelled like scaredy saliva and nigga meat. Thumper do love that smell. They oughta bottle it and get a hefty bitch with a skanky ass to endorse it.
The whiteboy wiggled like a piglet in a oven. “Hey, get off me, what-?”
But Thumper put one hand over his mouth. “Yo, quit squirmin’, Greg, I’mma ram ya. Hold still-“
“What does that mean?!” His voice was muffled cuz of Thumper’s hand, but Thumper could still make out the words. Greg be squirming like a winter worm.
“Hold still, and I’ll show you,” Thumper said. He got one hand on the whiteboy’s mouth, the other holding his nape and squeezing hard enough to hurt. He bucked like a weak bull, as Thumper rammed his now-hard dick at the whiteboy’s ass.
Thumper kept them prison boxers on, just lowered to bare his crotch. Thumper liked the way that felt like prison again — like prison in a good way.
Greg tensed up and grunted in pain. Thumper clucked his tongue, grinding his dick into that hole. Greg’s back arched as a pang of pleasure ran through Thumper’s body. His dick done precum up, so the goo lubed his shaft and made it hard for Greg to pucker with enough force to kick Thumper’s meat out. Thumper got plentya experience breaking open whiteboys. Reluctant crackers thicken the tastiest of chowders, nigga, and you can take that to the bank!
‘Cept you can’t, cuz banks is just apps now. Every. Damn. Thing. A. Phone. Everything ‘cept this whiteboy’s butthole.
“Ow, shit!” Greg seethed through his teeth. “C’mon, be cool, man, be cool!”
“Sssssh…” Thumper murmured. He smacked first one asscheek, then the other, and each time it caused a twitch in the whiteboy’s spine, followed by another inch or two of dickmeat sliding into him. A jolt of pre-orgasmic pleasure ran up Thumper’s spine, and he rammed hard.
“Owwww!” Greg screamed the best he could, but since Thumper squeezed his neck, Greg couldn’t take a deep breath. All he did was oomph and squirm and squeeze his guts around Thumper’s dick. That sent Thumper over the edge.
A grunt and a groan condensed hotly on Greg’s cheek. Thumper moaned right into his ear, making Greg cringe and cry out. Thumper swallowed them whiteboy tears up. “Hmm-hmm, boy, don’t make buncha noise, or all the niggas here go’n want a turn.”
A flood of cum hit the whiteboy’s guts, great creamy gobs of it flowing into him. He hung his head low and let his ass fill up, while Thumper moaned again and his muscles undulated above the whiteboy’s body. He stopped holding him down. Greg was too numpetty to realize he could just crawl away now.
Instead, Greg grimaced as a continuous flow of jizz seeped into his flesh. It felt better than Thumper had experienced in some time, as he was relaxed and calm, no longer worried about Her. All that mattered was this moment, draining his balls up Greg’s backside. It made him feel serene as a waterfall in the springtime, in like Ireland or some shit — Thumper saw a commercial for soap that made him wanna buy a sweater and move to Ireland to lounge around in moss, not buy soap. But Thumper ain’t allowed to leave Maine, so instead, Thumper closed his eyes and moaned into Greg’s ears.
“Ow, c’mon, man…” Greg whimpered like a forgotten puppy. He shuddered, which massaged Thumper’s shaft and sent a wave of pleasure through his body.
When his dick was good and limp, Thumper let Greg expel it. He ain’t take it out, and he ain’t let Greg use his hand. But he stopped fighting back when Greg grunted and writhed and squeezed Thumper’s sensitive cockshaft out, bit by bit. As Thumper’s cock popped free, a moment of post-nut clarity lightbulbed up in his mind.
I gotta do somethin’ to stop that play.
His shaft was gooey and warm, dripping into Greg’s buttcheeks. Greg still had no idea he could crawl away. Thumper got no hold on him and no interest in him anymore. Greg got choices but was too weak to pick one.

If Thumper don’t wanna be a flee-away filly, he could go back, not to do it, but to stop it. A man do take action, and Thumper was a nigga who did.

He done got focused on how Delsinerr affected him. Thumper ain’t wanna lose his soul. Prison was hellish enough for a nigga. But now that he was away from that building and from her, he understood what she did say — this “play” was a invocation, which Thumper’s phone said was “a summoning of a deity”.
Thumper don’t like that kinda play. He liked the kinda theater where pretty whitegirls sing annoying songs. Like Grease. That’s a good play. He saw that movie in prison buncha times.
There was only one deity Thumper approved of, and He weren’t no deity that Bitch in White would summon.
He could stop that play. He was in a unique position. For damn near every day he been on this earth, all Thumper could do was stay alive and fight. A virtuous day was a day with nothing to do. But now, Thumper got a chore, and it was a good one.
Thumper wiped off and put his clothes back on, ignoring Greg’s frantic attempts to clean his butthole without being seen. Greg steady shot dirty-dog looks at Thumper, who saved all them looks up for later. Then Thumper left the homeless shelter and hitchhiked back into downtown Bangor.
The trucker who picked Thumper up, after a good half-hour of thumbing it on the side of the road, was a roly-poly pinkthumb, like a pile of uncooked pastry came to life and cultivated a forest of body hair. He said he weren’t worried about Thumper looking like a cast-iron nigga cuz he went to prison too; he did five years inside and five years on parole. He started trucking cuz that was the only way to get permission to leave the state from his parole officer.
So maybe it was possible to get permission to go to Maryland! Thumper don’t have a driver’s license though.
The trucker was on some uppers that kept him jabbing and jawing, and he made Thumper stroke him off too. He tried to make Thumper slurpy-slurp on his knob, but Thumper don’t play that way. He just used two fingers to jimmy the trucker’s runty niblet up and down. By the time the trucker’s amphetamine-addled wang dribbled out his watery nut, the truck was approaching Bangor.
Thumper’s heart sank. Jacking that trucker off at least distracted him from what he gotta do. Before the trucker dropped him off, Thumper told the man what was going on. He looked at Thumper like a somebody-nigga’s crazy old uncle graybeard, like he regretted picking Thumper up.
“The Bilderberg Group controls all that shit, don’t worry about it,” said the trucker when Thumper got outta the cab. He be sniffling and rubbing his nose like his brain was leaking out his nostrils. “Bohemian Grove, etc. They won’t let the world end, Thumper. It’d be bad for business.” The truck door shut, and he gave Thumper a nod and a bob through the open window. “Stay cool, friend.”
That pondered itself around in Thumper’s noggin. But he went to the Gregarian building anyway. His heart pounded faster the closer he got, until he arrived at the block and saw the building. Then his heart slowed to a measured pace, like when he got into it with the Crips in prison. He stayed calm as a cucumber and composed as a cantaloupe.

The worst part was that he had missed the rain. Bangor was wet. It done rain earlier, but Thumper was outta the city then. The air remained soggy. Puddles prowled atop the pavement. Thumper splashed through ’em down the streetside to that movie theatre on Stranger Street. The streetlight on the sidewalk was burnt out, so the movie theatre’s door was plagued in dark.
Actually, now that Thumper looked, it weren’t true that the streetlight was burnt out. It wasn’t there.

The city never built a streetlight afronta the theater. The sidewalks was lit up along both sides of the street, but not at the theater. The streetlight niggas skipped that spot.
As Thumper came closer, a pair of drunky-lucky lads lashed down the way like jolly liquids. They crossed the street before they came to the shadowy area afronta the theater, whose door was propped open. They ain’t give it no thought, they just crossed the street, just like the city planners never gave no thought to skipping the streetlight afronta the theater. Thumper never noticed the lack of a streetlight neither.
Come to think of it, Thumper never did walk past the theater before. He came right up to it that one time when he looked in the window, but otherwise when he walked this street, he crossed to the other side without giving it a second thought. Or even a first thought.
The theater be hiding itself from a nigga’s peepers.
No hiding from Thumper though. He went right into them shadows like omens so poor, coming to the open door coated in the old decor of posters well-tore up from long before. His hazy face that once more wore those crazy days of yore did tour his dreamy gaze aboard a maze of fiends and steaming demon blobbies leaning slow in the lobby’s seams like beams of creamy knobs and unclean snow. That Woman there reamed glows redly, rain-day ready, feeling his heady flows and tangling eddies like uncooking spaghetti. She spoke steady as a wheeze to a unsoftened sneeze whose coffiny head bled cotton-thin threads of forgotten-bin pennies, its eyeless sockets peeking like sentries.
Outing from the entry, Thumper fled free on bent knees to the wet concrete of the left-side street. He ain’t know if he was being strategious or showing his yellow belly, but he knew he couldn’t go in the front door past them demons.
The rain was gonna restart soon. The stars was already clouded by darkness, and the air was thick with wetness. He was ready for ark-building weather. He just hoped he don’t die first. He went to the other side of the building, where Lipsweet was on the outfront. He ain’t wanna be seen, so he went to the alley behind the bar. He still got his key to the back door.
But when he stuck it in the knob, the door opened before he could twist it.
Davon stood there, both his smiling mug and the lavender band-aid upon it took aback by Thumper. Davon looked at him like a inconvenient expiration date, then he said, “Yo, Lipsweet’s closed fo’ the night, Thumper, Mister Gregarian said the whole building’s getting fumigated.”
Thumper curled his lip at Davon’s nougaty mug, which stared down Davon’s nose at Thumper at the same time, cuz Davon was uppity like a fog in the sky. Davon still thought he was in charge, cuz Thumper ain’t tell nobody he quit. They call that “ghosting”, Thumper done ghost Davon. Thumper knew about ghosting cuz he savvied today’s slang, he was a full-stack ice-cold nigga a la mode, in touch and in vogue but outta sight, irie as hell, a tubular true blue dawg who got it goin’ on in the fast lane, and he do be turnin’ on, tunin’ in and droppin’ out, which was mighty white of him, but he kept it real, kept it tight, kept it classy and sassy, staying woke on the cutting edge, maintainin’ to the end, groovy like a hit movie far out the park and over the top, as he do pop wicked sang-froid, cuz he still had it and remained down for it, up for it and so over it all, off the hook, off the chain and off-book, like so totally random, a fashionable big man on campus 23 skiddooin’ the zeitgeist with mad skills on a tear, cuz this big fig fights The Man, and he be Da Man and da goat, e’rrybody’s homie who e’rrybody digs, cuz he a man’s man and a ladysman, round-the-clock stylish as gay Paree, slammin’ top-grade salmon, callin’ shots like a sniper on the phone and reppin’ M-D proper as a star who took center-stage suave as the mob, a righteous dude who straight-up got it, rizz, game, gumption, drip and spunk, this hunky-dory bruh be trendy as Japan, with je ne sais quoi all over, hot-rodding in the driver’s seat, he has a gas cookin’ with a full tank of blast, cuz this hep cat got a gold medal in puttin’ on the ritz, that’s how he stays the current thing, the mizzle of the moment, keeping the beat as he walks the line, in like Flynn, stackin’ wins in season, in style and in demand but outta stock, the meowin’ cat’s pajamas and the bee’s knees — hitting the scene right on, this vato sips chido, vibin’ on fleek, on point and on the ball like a state of the art seal, lookin’ smart and snazzy, dapper as a rapper, rockin’ on a roll, daddy-o, no diggity, so fresh and so clean on his brightest days, made in the shade, up to date like a calendar, nifty and spiffy as a kahuna, guns and cheese, funky as fatback, metal as steel and punk as a mohawk, with it to the max, absolute fire, fierce, dope, smooth, bomb, choice, good, boss, def, keen, swell, mean, fly, neat, nice, sweet, high, chic, mint, hot, big, top, hip, ace, slick, great, lit, rad, brill, flash, chill, bad, sick, phat, ill, cash and cool as sunglasses. Gen Z ain’t got nothing on this nigga.
“You ain’t scheduled tonight. Why you here?” Davon asked, oblivious as oblivion, his ignorance as vast as the universe was wide. His handsomeness was unshattered by awareness about what was happening here tonight or about Thumper’s coolness.
“You ain’t in charge of shit, Davon. Move out the way.”
“Lipsweet’s closed.”
“I ain’t goin’ to Lipsweet!” Thumper said, key still in hand. His simmering done boil over, and he squared up at Davon, who stood in the doorway like a clump of handsome cholesterol. “Lemme in, prettyboy, or I’mma ram this key at that band-aid on yo’ cheek until you so ugly yo’ mama don’t love you.” He pushed past Davon. “I suggest you go home and fuck a mirror, nigga.”
A sigh of relief chambered outta him when the door slammed shut, Davon on the outside of it. It wasn’t safe in here, but it wasn’t wide-open like the parking lot, and at least he done got away from Her and them demon-things.
But now the hard part began: he gotta stop the play.
His phone be mad beeping and booping. Thumper got no bandwidth for that though. He got a chore to do. He ain’t read the texts.
He went upstairs to go past his old apartment, because he knew there was a back way to the theater there. So far so good. That maze effect was gone, and he made his way to the correct stairwell no problem, easy as pimping on a Friday. Then he creeped down the stairs to the ground floor.
After that, he weren’t entirely sure of the way. There was some offices or something and a door with a sign marked “server room”. Thumper got no idea what that meant. It weren’t fulla waitresses, he checked. All it got was computers without screens.
The server room door opened, and out came that farty spicetip Rajesh. His eyes lit up when he saw Thumper. “Oh, hey, hey, Mr. Gregarian said to come find you. He needs you to go-“
“Nah, Rajesh.”
Rajesh stopped short, eyebrows flapping like a bland curry. “Oh, uh… He just said — you gotta check your phone, did you see him on Whatsapp?”
“What app?”
“Whatsapp. He sent-“
“What? Which app?”
“No, Whatsapp — he said he made a group — it’s on your phone, I downloaded it last week for you.” Rajesh held out his own phone as if to demonstrate how to hold a phone, and he looked at Thumper like Thumper got shit on his nose and don’t know it.
“Shut the fuck up, Rajesh,” Thumper said. He shoved Rajesh at the wall. Thumper could be dead soon, and he ain’t spending his last moments on Earth talking about what app Mr. Gregarian was on.
Thumper’s phone made some whoopy-doopy-whoop noises. He wanna ask Rajesh how to make that stop or what it means. But Rajesh looked frightened as a gazelle when Thumper lioned at him, and Thumper got no time to delay. Rajesh scurried away like a poppy seed, and Thumper continued on to the theater.
Once he saw a storm of texts from his parole officer complaining he ain’t respond, Thumper clucked his tongue and turned his phone’s volume all the way down. If he died right now, he ain’t spending his last moments abiding by parole.
“Mistuh Chambreux, Mistuh Chambreux!” Thumper said when he saw that wrinkle-tinkle cracker, who was all taciturn jowls. Thumper was glad to find the theater but scairt to see the ebony emptiness in Mr. Chambreux’s soulless ivories.
“Who are you?” Mr. Chambreux asked.
“My name’s Thumper, suh,” he said. Having done got worked up about coming here, Thumper ain’t think of what to do when he found Mr. Chambreux. “Listen, mistuh, you can’t do-“
“Thumper? What kinda name is Thumper.” He pulled his robe’s hood shut to cover his face. “Nevermind, get out of here, I’m about to go on.”
“I know. I know what you doin’,” Thumper said. “You puttin’ on a play, the summonin’ of a deity. You can’t do what she wants — Delsinerr, she-“
A hubbub interrupted Thumper from the stage, and Mr. Chambreux shrugged him off. He went to the curtain. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, and you’re not going to stop me.” He walked onto the stage and hissed at Thumper, “Get out of here.”
Thumper stayed by the curtain. He watched Mr. Chambreux stand in a brilliant spotlight. The light made it impossible to see who or what was in the audience, but their silhouettes revealed dozens of horrid bodyshapes Thumper don’t wanna see clearly. Hooded humans filled up the front rows with a low murmur of a chant. Mr. Chambreux’s New England-honky voice was thready and warbling, echoing against the theater’s ceiling as he began a monologue in a strange language.
Hooded figures wheeled a coffin onstage. Somebody was in the coffin, banging on it and screaming to be let out. Thumper wanna go out there and open it, but he held back, lightbulbing up a plan — he couldn’t just rush the stage afront all those demons and the chanting cultists.
Reaching a pause in his monologue, Mr. Chambreux pried open the coffin. It weren’t attached firmly, but he got old-honky arms and struggled with it, while the clarion chanting grew louder.
Finally, the coffin lid popped up.
A woman lifted her head and opened her mouth to scream. No sound emerged, she just looked at the audience agape.
The woman was Cherry — the stripper — Heather, the small sweet red fruit. She looked dazed and pale, terrified as a mouse. Her head darted left and right, squinting her asians at the fiendish silhouettes in the audience, stagelights blaring at her pretty little face.
Mr. Chambreux held a ruby- and pearl-encrusted knife in his hand. Thumper connected the dots quick as toast. He was gonna kill that girl. Mr. Chambreux kept intoning arcane syllables in that strange language as he aimed his knife for her chest.
The whole theater shook like a fearful titty, and Thumper held onto the stage curtain for support. A whoosh of air almost knocked him over. It did knock over Cherry, who struggled to get outta the coffin with her arms tied behind her back.
A long green-gray tentacle emerged mid-air in the center of the stage. That was followed by more tentacles, exiting from a warping swirl of cloud and energy. The vortex farted out a palpable odor of rotten eggs.
Cherry’s screams suddenly sounded — pitchy and loud peals like paint, plaintive and sobbing — like a switch got clicked, she yelled like a banshee. Her voice was overpowered by a guttural ancient moan reverberating out the vortex.
A gristly body was clawing its way through now, attached to the tentacles.
Outta mere air, Delsinerr appeared, weird as a meager meerkat. Thumper’s beleagurement ain’t begin till now, so she musta done teleport in from the border within. He clenched fists of bite to ignore her sordid win. She stank like a bin afronta him.
“Mister White,” she said with chords of din. “You returned, so unlike aborted kin. Is you here to short my rim? Or to fork what yo’ been? You go’n drop pork with chagrin in exchange for a fort of skin? You can live with delightful sin in a river rife with the lights of life that has never been. War will sustainably spin, and you can be un-anchored by the petty restraints of bankers and lawmakers, morally slim.”
“I already ain’t do it.”
“You done fold the role of Rico, but this spot here is fulla moles who burrow fo’ souls. You can still steal a part of the goal in this art of tolls,” she spoke, sour as a tart. Onstage, it done start, and Mr. Chambreux made his long curved blade ready to raid in order to trade a heady way for a future to flay. In dishonor’s log, he groaned on along his monologue, and he aimed his knife at Cherry’s stripper skill.
He finna kill her, a sinner in life, to rip her like a miller and bill her for the balance, he might.
Unless Thumper did bite. Sans fright, he could steal the meal and a toe from Mr. Chambreux, take his role and go go go back to blue skies thirty-four dreary years ago.
“That’s the cue fo’ my eyes,” Delsinerr said, slow as the blues make a nigga feel wise, and she spilled like stew onto the stage askew for her size. “Take yo’ prize, He Who Thumps, or die like a lie.”
His brain returned to function, and Thumper knew what he gotsta do. But he needed a weapon of his own. There weren’t nothing backstage he could use.
If he was in prison, he’d get creative about finding a weapon.
So he did what he woulda done then — he made one. He punched the plywood backdrop of a starry night sky, which waited backstage to be wheeled on later. His fist collapsed through the plywood, which splintered around his forearm and drew streams of blood.
He grabbed a chunk and concealed it in his fist. The sharp tip protruded past his fingers.
Then he sprinted onstage, into the confusion of Delsinerr’s cage. He hurried his rage cuz he ain’t know how long this speech got to fade. Mr. Chambreux gonna reach a final stage soon as a endless age.
Thumper could stab him like a wage or the ginger Cherry like a thinner sage to take the offer that was proffered off Her.
Scoffing sure at inner outrage, he hesitated like a bin of blank page, eager to live his life again, unfairly merry amid the deadness of Cherry, no more living free as a dairy cow. Now he was daring to prowl her scary and bow at that Lady of Vows with hellishly hairy howls.
It was a choice he was born to foul, with a scowl he wore like the folds of her gown. In expectation he drowns. Thumper never does respect a section of frowns. Projections of evil unbound like a costume of sound, but Thumper lives up to shoot down.
Yet her boss fumes astound. His plywood shank was battlefield-ground to the sharpest of tips, rank as a bank that flips burial mounds.
It is God’s life that for all-time abounds
With the shiv that he found, he stabbed, not Cherry just barely, nor did he ram ho at Mr. Chambreux. Blowing free will, his street-filled beat aimed his shank at Her mien. Delsinerr screamed. As Thumper do, he stabbed mean, and he stabbed perfectly clean.
From her did stream death and furious beams illuminating things. The shiv kept rivening her belly, driven by He Who Do Thump into her rump and her stump and her jelly. He poked his last, instead grabbing that mask, ripping it fast off her face so so vast. Pinpricks of light did pass out that lass and cash out her vile pack.
Delsinerr slacked a mile and bent over. Though she went to tend clover atop the bug on her mug with both hands like a rug, Thumper saw her near and far dump her fear for raw clumps of the stink she pumped up from the inky beyond.
Nothing was left to do but to at last abscond.
In a dash for the door, Thumper pulled his peepers from her. The theater-crowd screamed jeers and hellfire, but the chanting cultists — the hooded humans, including Mr. Chambreux — stayed entranced by Delsinerr’s grace. Or maybe they was deep in the worship of that tentacled thing coming outta the vortex.
He grabbed Cherry and drug her off the stage. His mind worked clearly now. Delsinerr was there, but her aura was gone, and reality felt real to him. Cherry was stiff as a board though, until he got her away and she rag-dolled in his arms. She still got her white-girl notions caught in the eternity where Delsinerr’s face should be.
The last thing Thumper saw as he got Cherry outta the theater was them tentacles wrapping around both Delsinerr and Mr. Chambreux. Both were dragged into the vortex before it shut.
Then all was silent and still like a birth. Ain’t nothing matter but this moment.
The movie theater was empty of those demon-beasts, and the hoodened cultists — the humans — all exchanged dark glances like sober fiends. The door to the theater closed behind Thumper. He carried Cherry out through the lobby onto the street into the cool night air of the city of Bangor.
“Where are you takin’ me?” Cherry asked, still ashen and limp as spent dingdongs.
“Wherevuh you want, that’s yo’ choice, baby,” Thumper said. He was glad to put her down, cuz he ain’t know till now that his back could take carrying her this far. She asked him to get her dog from her apartment then to her daddy, who lived above a moving company’s offices — her daddy owned the jawn.
That sounded like a job Thumper could do, and sooner or later, somebody from Maine was gonna move to somewhere in Maryland. Then at last, he would see home again.
He took a deep breath of the steamy petrichor blowing by, fresh and fast. His bladder neck be bugging all of a sudden, but he did abide. Swarming with stars, the transcendant sky opened up with a blessed bang of thunder, and thin rain rapped upon him with a chill of perpetual reality. It felt good as grandma’s hugs. Thumper never walked as free as he did right now.

Thumper Meets the Ultimate Evil

Chapter One: Out of Touch
Chapter Two: The Fossil
Chapter Three: That Ain’t Gangsta
Chapter Four: Old Nigga
Chapter Five: Unfashioned
Chapter Six: A Corrective Statement
Chapter Seven: Cool at Last