Oren was drenched in his own sweat while stowed away in a hotass shed behind Saint JohnChrysostom Greek Orthodox Church near Oak Grove. His brain was pounding. He stepped outside to heave and he found a puddle of petrified and fly infested vomit resting in the ankle high grass. He reckoned that it must have come from him. He didn’t recall. He didn’t recall much of anything from the hours prior. But the late summer mugginess beared down on him like a woolen blanket and he stumbled back into the shed and reached for an old aluminum canteen with only a speckle of water remaining. The piss warm liquid soothed his throat momentarily and then he coughed and collapsed to his knees. While fetaled on the ground, the priest came in. The holy man helped him back to his bed and offered him a white paper cup. When Oren looked at the cup’s contents, he nearly heaved again. After stirring the orangish ooze, the priest placed a small pill in his hand and Oren side eyed him.
“The fuck is this?”
“It’s Beano.”
“What for?”
“It’s for them boiled peanuts. Them things are fart bombs.”
Oren shrugged and swallowed the pill. He picked up the stem of the fork and swooshed it around the cup. Then he sampled the food. It occurred to Oren that the devil himself must be nothing compared to the wrath of a Cajun man’s asshole. And despite a famished stomach, his throat resisted.
“Is this what you people eat down here?” he asked the Priest.
“Well, that and moon bugs.”
The priest reached into his cassock pocket and pulled out a small lobster-like creature. It crawled slightly in the palm of his hand. “I have a whole pool of these things out back. I can get a pot boiling and get em fixed up for ya.”
Oren shook his head. “I’ll stick with the boiled peanuts.”
The priest lifted his shoulders and placed the creature back in his pocket. Then he handed Oren a fresh canteen of water. “Who was that feller you was with last night?”
“What feller?”
“That white feller in the back of your truck.”
“He’s my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“I was adopted.”
“No shit?”
Oren winced as he shoveled more soggy legumes into the face hole. Then he took the fresh canteen and swallowed. “Think he survived the crash?”
“I know he did. The sheriff got him. But I reckon they think you’re dead.”
“Shit.”
“You’re goddamn right shit. Don’t know what they’ll do when they find out you’re not.”
“I gotta get him out of there.”
“Your brother? Good luck.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Not even the best pettifrogger from New Orleans can get a man out of a Moorhouse Parish jail. You have to consult with a higher power.”
“You?”
“That might not even be enough.”
The Priest’s ears perked up as the sound of crushed gravel whispered its way into the shed. He sprung up from the ramshackled cot and glanced through mud smeared glass to see a West Carroll Parish Sheriff’s cruiser pull up to the church. The priest turned to Oren. “Stay here,” he said.
TO BE CONTINUED…
The Internet Ruined Everything 