Two
The Big Cock Candy Mountain

What was left of Canal Street was choked under forty feet of slopping floodwater, a dingy roux of untreated excrement, floating garbage, and that stuff that Emeril sells. It was like what happened to Atlantis after they stopped paying their sewer bills, only spicier. The rain was slashing sideways in cold stinky sheets. Burns kept the extinguishing lights of the French Quarter to his back as he rowed south towards the hobo jungles of Metarie.

The freight yards were boiling with railway bulls and linemen, rigging the last of the boxcars by flashlight in a desperate race to get out of town before the last railway trestles were washed away. Burns ditched his corpse raft in the weeds, swapped his hospital garb for the dead orderly’s. He heard the diesels turning over in the distance, followed by a rapid fire of clangs as the boxcar brakes disengaged. An eighty-car Burlington Northern was crawling its way out of the yards like a poorly lubricated butterfly out of a rusted cocoon. The last of the cars were hauling out. Burns hustled between two dead reefer cars, hauled his deadwood carcass through the open doors of a boxcar.

Burns was a janitor’s mop that slopped into a corner bucket, collapsed in a sad pile like a marionette that’s had its strings cut by an indifferent child more fascinated by scissors than puppets. Between the hollow clang of the narrow traction bogies on the rails and the soggy roar of the storm, he almost didn’t notice the ocarina coming from the far end of the car. Between flashes of lightening, he saw a familiar form with a banjo strapped to his chest, squatting over a bindle and trying to tune.

Burns fumbled a smoke out of his soaking orderly’s togs. “Sing us a song, Sam,” Burns screamed over the storm. “”You can play it for her, play it for me.”

Sam “Balls” Jones had been riding the rails back when it was a legitimate alternative lifestyle. When they weren’t getting their poop chutes de-coked in Boys Village, Burns and Sam would hop boxcars off the 14th Street trestle and ride to the Florida Keys, Saskatoon, Gila Bend, and any points in between where teenager girls were loose, stupid, and easily impressed by marginally retarded city slicker Yankees who still had all their teefers. They made a good living with their “scat” routine working both the Southern chitlin circuit and the upstate New York borscht belt resorts. Burns would put on burnt cork blackface, Sam would strap on a clay nose, and they’d both do renditions of Billy Holliday and Al Jolsen tunes to ocarina and Theremin accompaniment. An unfortunate incident at a segregated waterfountain in Clifton, Tennessee ended the promising but short-lived career of “Dick & Balls: The Menstrual Brothers.” Sam hesitantly worked the chords to an off-key version of Sweet City Woman.

“Been a while, Burns. Nobody requests The Stampeders anymore.”

“Not since Celine Dion started making the airwaves smell like shit,” Burns quipped. He fumbled for a lighter and gave up. The cigarette wouldn’t draw. It was soaked full of pee. He started chewing it. “There’s always Gordon Lightfoot, I guess.” Burns stabbed his jaw towards the sky. “Some weather, huh?”

Sam reached into his rucksack, pulled out a cowbell tied to a drumstick, slid it across the floor of the car to Burns. “Nothing I ain’t been through before. Didn’t figure on seeing you this side of Norfolk, Burns. I thought you was a DC man.”

“Serves me right going on vacation. You leave town for a Foghat/Grand Funk Railroad reunion tour and wake up with a turd where the back of your head ‘sposta be.” Burns rubbed his skull. It still had an owie. “Been sleeping the big sleep for a while. Mind telling me who’s running this fucking country?”

Sam tried to tune his banjo, but could barely hear Burns yelling at him. “Dick Cheney, but if you mean who the President is, that’d be Bush. Don’t you read the papers?”

“I get all my news from restaurant placemats. That cocksucker still running this country into the dirt? I suppose Dan Quayle’s still on the ticket somewhere. Scullery maid, craphound, Secretary of State.”

“You have been out, Burns. It’s Bush Jr. what’s president.”

“Well, corn my pone! I guess that Silverado Savings and Loan shit is all you need on your resume.”

“Wrong junior, Burns. I’m talking George Junior. Shrub. You know, the one what looks like a monkey?”

Burns thought about that, decided to save the sewage cigarette for when he got to DC. It would taste better there. Sewage usually did. “Okay. I’ll bite. What year is it?”

“Thought you’d never ask. It’s 2005.”

Burns farted. “That sucks. So I’ve been out for about fifteen years. Well, those IRS cocksuckers better not try and make me pay taxes on that shit.” Burns picked up the cowbell, started clanking. “Only one thing left to do now.” He cleared his throat, hocked one on the floor, started to “sing.” “Well I’m on my way-ay…to the cit-tee lights…”

Sam joined in on the banjo. “To the pretty face… that shines her light on the cit-ay nights…” Sam’s E string snapped. “So, headed back to DC, huh? Town isn’t what it used to be, Burns. I guess you figger you got some score to settle.”

“I lost 15 years worth of drinking. Goddamn right I got a score to settle. Got any corn likker in that bindle, Sam?”

“Maybe you ought just let it go, Burns. You can’t talk, fuck, or shoot your way out of this one.”

“You started telling fortunes on the side, Sam? Your mojo bag talking to you?” Burns grabbed his dick reflexively. It was hard. He didn’t know what to do with it. He just got a dumb look on his face and kept rubbing his wang.

“I see things, Burns. I see things that come to pass. You’re going back to the old town, looking for who done you dirt. But it ain’t the same town what you left. Things is changed. You’ve changed. But you’ll dig up your dirt and it’s all going to fall apart in your lap. ‘Cept this ain’t none your stripper friends with jiggly po-pos. This bitch that put you in your place is large.”

Burns scratched his noggin, kept stroking off. “Last thing I remembers was ordering a Sazerac with my pommes de terre souffles at Galatoire’s. The fat frog waiter said they didn’t serve jews, so I took a dump on the floor and headed over to Antoines before the chops showed. Had me two… no… three Beef Wellingtons and pompano en papillote and a bottle of Chateauneuf. I washed that shit down with a couple of Pimms Cups at Napoleon’s. I was still feeling pecker-ish, so I got a muffaletta and bag of Zapps at Central Grocer. Went to waterfront to fuck it when I spotted a sweet lil alabaster goth chick…” Burns got a far away look on his rainsoaked pan, like the kid who shows up at the school bus stop an hour late because hasn’t quite figured out daylight savings time yet.

“And you wake up on the menu.” Sam busted his A string. “What is it with you and pasty face skanks? Don’t you throw a sista in the mix just to break things up a little?”

Burns thought about that one. He went all soft down there. The gaffer was right, all his ladies were whiter than Elmers Glue in a runway model snot storm. They ended up twice as sticky when he was done with them. He made a mental note to take a crack at the first JAP hairtree with a spray-on tan he made eye contact with.

“Maybe you’re right, Sam. I’ve got a known predilection for pasty jailbait with trimmed hedges. If someone wanted to fuck my shit up, all he’d have to do is send some jailbait my way with a halter top and a sap. Next thing I know, she’s shoving my shoe in her pussy while I’m banging her ass. My pud goes all sore like, and everything goes black after that.”

“Yo, man. Why’s it gotta go black?”

Burns shook that one off, rubbed the back of his skull. A flash of pain shot from his head to his dick. “I’m losing my edge.”

“Cain’t lose what you don’t got, Mista Ginsu. Ever thought of retiring?”

“But people need me! Who’ll get sapped if I’m not around? Hollywood? Those fatcats in Washington? Besides, I raided my 401k to buy stock in some Internet company. What’s their name… Netscape? Pets.com? Iomega?”

Sam gave up tuning and started slapping his banjo in time to the wheels clacking on the rails. “Well, I guess changing your mind is pretty hopeless. So, who you think but the hit on you?”

“Jeebus, who wouldn’t? Half the intel industry hates my guts for ratting out their sources. Half the porn industry hates me for giving them the clap. Anyway, that’s their problem. My biggest problem now is finding someone who’ll sell a handgun to a convicted felon.”

Three days later, Burns hooked up with a teenager in Mount Pleasant, bought two Czech 9mms, and three-hundred rounds of armor-piercing ammo. He’d been in town less than 20 minutes. Burns said a little prayer, thanking the Almighty for banning handguns in DC, stopped by a corner bodega for some limes and rock salt, and took the X2 bus to Metro Center.