Durango, a bum and family friend (PC)

by Another Scribbler

Posted to Stories on 2003-10-02 23:57:00

He leaned over and smiled at me through a tobacco-covered mustache. I cringed back at him. Then Durango straightened up and shouted.
“What’s wrong with this boy, Vince? Didn’t you teach him how to smile? He’s got no manners. He won’t smile even smile back at me. No common courtesy!” His voice lost projection with each word and became a mumble around halfway through his sentence. Durango continued mumbling angrily toward my dad, until my brother entered the kitchen to get a glass of water.
“There’s John! He’s even worse! Come here, boy!” When John stopped and looked at him without stepping forward, Durango became infuriated. It was not the first time he had been unable to control his fury, and it was not my first time witnessing it, but it was intimidating nonetheless to a small boy. I felt like I was caught in a crossfire.
“Jesus Christ, Vince, what’s wrong with these boys! Next time I have kids, I’ll bring them over here just to show them how NOT to act!” Durango was liable to criticize others and mock himself in the same sentence, as he just had; living on the streets and legally insane, he was unlikely to find a mate, and if he did, he would almost definitely not raise the child.
My brother grabbed his glass of water and returned to his room, ignoring Durango. I continued sitting in my chair, stuck there by a mixture of fear of offending Durango by leaving, and curiosity to see what he would do next. Durango failed to provide entertainment for a few minutes while he gorged on the beans and rice my dad had cooked for him, so I entertained myself by pretending to read a magazine lying on the table in front of me.
“You know Vince, these kids of yours read too much. Reading like they do all the time, they’ll end up with window panes for glasses, like what you’ve already got. And anyways, books don’t teach you shit. Life will teach you. Look at all I know, and I hated school! Haha…” My dad bit his lip and only responded with a clipped “yep, tell me about it.” I knew he was annoyed at the criticism, but experience had shown that it was best to suffer Durango. Arguing him might lead to a fight, and my dad would not risk that in front of us, even if it was only a yelling match.
When he finished his meal he decided to accept my father’s offer of a shower. With no more entertainment at hand, I went to my room and continued reading my magazine, which had caught my interest.
Durango interrupted my reading by bursting into the room wearing a full-body Santa suit, bells a-jingling and hat a-flopping. I found out later that he had carried it with him in his rucksack so that he could amuse us with it. Though Durango had a beard of suitable length, his was yellowish-gray instead of white, and with his nasty teeth and knotted hair, he resembled a serial killer more than Santa. John and my other brother Jerome, hearing the commotion from their rooms, entered and saw Durango dancing around my room. I wondered briefly to myself where Durango had gotten the notion that Santa ever danced.
“Time to get in the holiday spirit, boys! Praise the Lord! HoHoHo!!!” He stopped dancing but continued to try to amuse us with idle chatter and strange jokes. He would even threw in a dirty joke just to see our reactions, which seemed to amuse him.
Jerome, who consistently found Durango’s actions amusing, would usually play along with his games. They would converse about the Knights of the Round Table, astrology, or even Jerome’s school day experiences. But tonight Durango was too full of energy to converse with us. Instead, he decided to tell us stories.
“I was bumming around in this small town in Nevada, waiting for my next check.” He received a social security check every month from the government because he was legally insane. It seemed that when his wife told him that she was leaving him, he snapped. He snapped, to be exact, when he came home late at night to find all of his belongings scattered on the front lawn of his house, and heard his wife yelling from the window to take his stuff and get the hell out. He decided then and there to burn everything on that lawn. The police, of course, were not big fans of his bonfire, and when the next day his lawyer told him that the only way he could get out of extended jail time was to plead insanity, he pleaded insanity. According to dad, Durango was not actually crazy at the time; he was just pissed off about a failed marriage. But two years in a loony-bin can change a lot about a man.
“But I knew the check wasn’t coming for another few weeks. I needed money, and I’m not the kind to bow down to the vicious circle of society. I won’t just get a job and waste my life nine to five sucking corporate dick. I went downtown and I found a fountain- you know, the kind that people throw money in to make their wishes come true. Well, I hadn’t washed up in a few days, so I decided a bath was past due. Boy, I bet I made more than a few women’s dearest wishes come true right then! I guess those wishing wells do work! It was a good nice bath, too, until the police showed up. They had a lot of fun trying to catch me and handcuff me without touching my dong! It’s a hard one to miss, too! Hahaha!”
My dad made Durango stop, probably fearing we would pick up some of Durango’s dirty habits. Dad did not always like Durango telling us stories, especially when they were excessively curse-filled or disgusting, but I think we brothers all thought those were the best kind.
My dad told us later, after Durango left, that the wishing well story was absolutely true, and not especially out of the ordinary for Durango. He regularly committed petty acts of vandalism and public indecency- a list many pages long- to try to be put in jail. In jail he would have a soft bed, warm cell, people to talk to, and regular meals: it was heaven. Then, as soon as he was released from jail, he would go pick up his government cheese and hit the town, getting whores, alcohol, drugs, or whatever else he wanted for one night. Then, all the money gone, the cycle would begin anew. The wishing-well incident was just one of his more creative ways of catching some jail-time.
It was not the first nor the last time we saw Durango, and if his visits decreased in frequency, it was due more to a rift with my dad (something about how Durango thought my dad was giving into the 9-5 bullshit regime of mainstream society) than to a change in Durango’s lifestyle. That night, I went to bed and picked up my magazine again, but was not interested anymore. I sat and thought about Durango for a while, but when I realized that the image of a crazed man in a Santa suit was not likely to induce sleep, I tried to think of something else. So I thought of my warm bed, my dad’s home-cooked meals, school and friends in the morning, and the bright life and career that lie ahead of me.