Within minutes of the fire being lit, trucks and cars started pulling up like moths drawn to a light. I couldn’t believe how many vehicles there were.
“Where is everyone going to park?” I asked Eze.
“Wherever they want. They know the routine. There’s about two thousand acres out here and we’re just at the edge. There aren’t a lot of people that live here, and the one’s that do will end up with us before we’re through.”
Eze directed several pick-ups to park in a circle, about thirty yards away from the fire. He spaced each of the trucks out like hands on a clock. Each one backed in using the fire pit as the hub. They opened their doors and turned their radios on to the same country station.
“How’s that for stereo?” Eze rhetorically asked as he smiled and walked away.
A motor home drove up, and about twenty beautiful girls in mini skirts got out with folding chairs and set them up by the fire. I heard someone say they were the bartenders from a club. There was something said about not wanting to get a rash on their legs from the hay.
I was spinning in circles from all of the people showing up, and how fast they had gotten drunk. One guy was holding up a beer in one hand, and his lighter in the other for a photograph. He wanted to make sure that there was enough light in case the flash didn’t work.
Others were rolling wooden wire wheel spools up to the fire as tables. Within the first hour, there were over three hundred people at the party. The music was loud, and the fire was big. One of Tuck’s friends brought several kegs of beer from the club that he worked at. There was a kiddy pool filled with ice and beer. Someone brought an ice chest full of deer sausage and they were cooking them over the fire with cut tree branches as skewers.
I saw Eze working his way around the crowd laughing and talking with almost everyone. He was so confident in how he carried himself. He must have been kissed and hugged by at least a hundred different women, and they were all beautiful.
I just sat on a hay bale, by myself, by the fire drinking a bottle of IBC Root Beer. I kept feeding it chunks of wood. It was hypnotizing to stare at the flames. I kept thinking about my dream, and then about my life. I was embarrassed to think of all the opportunities that I passed on. It didn’t matter if it was school, work or people. I just never tried.
“What’s up Amigo?” Eze yelled as he jumped over a hay bale and landed beside me. “Pretty crazy, isn’t it? Tuck got back from the hospital. He’s okay. He’s found your friend Scotty and they’re smoking some weed. That Tuck likes his weed. Damndest thing I ever saw.”
“Scotty’s here? I didn’t see him. Maybe Sheila is here with him?” I said.
Eze looked at me, “How do you know Sheila?”
“You know her? She works with me. She’s the prettiest cashier we have!” I said anxiously.
“Well, maybe the next time that you see her you can ask her how her hoo-ha is!” He laughed.
“What’s so funny? How do you know Sheila?” I wondered.
“She was banging some guy on some old hay bales in the woods, and they got ate up by fire ants! I’m surprised you didn’t hear them screaming when they came running out of the woods bare-assed nekkid. She’s already gone for the night, but she’ll be back.”
“She Left?” How could that be? I didn’t even get to say hi to her and what about our date?
“What’s on your mind Amigo?” asked Eze.
“Nothing, I was going to ask her on a date tonight, never mind.” I said, completely deflated.
“You were going to what with her?” Eze asked. “That girl doesn’t date! She bangs for weed! You don’t want any part of that because you will get more than you bargained for. She’s a party whore, and I mean that literally!”
“Oh no, it can’t be. Are you sure?” I was devastated.
“There are a few things other than death and taxes that you can be certain of, and her being a whore is on the top of that list! At least, you found out before you did something stupid!” He said, attempting to reassure me.
We weren’t talking for more than a minute or two, when six beautiful women ran over and sat next to us.
“Hello ladies, are we having fun tonight?” Eze asked with his arms around two of them.
“Eze, you and Tuck throw the best parties!” A blonde one said.
“Don’t blame me for this. My Amigo, Pooh here, did most of the work!”
What? I did most of what? “Oh, no, I just helped Eze with a few things.” I said puzzled.
“Not true! Ladies, this man saved Tuck’s life just a few hours ago. Tuck was pulling hay when a huge six foot copperhead latched onto his hand. Pooh here, he just jumped on that snake and grabbed it by the head with one hand, and the by the tail with the other, and pulled that snake off of poor Tuck, and in one motion cracked it like a whip and sent the head flying! And then, he grabbed Tuck’s hand and sucked the poison out with his mouth before me or Tuck realized what happened.
He may appear modest, but he’s a real mover and shaker, and a life-saver when needed!”
“Really?” A dark-haired one asked as she sat down next to me. “You’re so brave and heroic!” Then another one, who was even prettier, with blond hair sat on the other side and said, “I’ll bet you that if we got a hold of your snake, we could find out what kind of a mover and shaker you really are!” she smiled, as she grabbed my leg.
“Okay then!” I said as I jumped up to a standing position. “With that I think that I’ll get some more wood. I mean for the fire, I’ll get a few logs!” I walked away as fast as I could because the way that she grabbed my leg gave me an instant erection, and the last thing that I wanted was for anyone to notice.
Eze looked after me as I walked away, smiling. I think that he knew what I was going through, and he had no intentions of letting up. He already knew that I thought he was a better man, but he never used it against me.
I waited for a few minutes, and then walked back to the fire with an armload of wood and dropped it next to the pit. Eze was telling all of the girls stories of growing up out West in the mountains. I sat down and listened intently. Maybe it would help me understand more about him.
Eze continued, “I remember my first day of school with the Mescalero Apaches. I was about ten years old when we moved up that way from El Paso. My older brother Eli, and I had to pee while our Ma was getting us checked in. We wandered down the hall of this modern day school with carpet in the halls, and lockers built into the walls with permanent locks.”
“We felt special, like we were somebody. Our schools in El Paso had concrete floors with no air conditioning. This place had it all. It was more modern than anything we’d ever seen.”
“When we got to the bathroom, it was wide open. There was a line of porcelain sinks along one wall with a mirror for each. On the opposite wall, there was a semi-circle urinal. It had a bar on the bottom to step on to flush it.”
“I said to Eli, this sure ain’t like El Paso, peeing out in the open, and facing each other, like this!”
“Eli told me, just go with it. We don’t want to look like we don’t fit in!”
“Well, we stood right there and dropped trou, and proceeded to pee. Of course, our timing was perfect, because right then the lunch bell rang, and the entire school came running right by us and out the door to the lunchroom. Several kids walked by us laughing, and went through a twist handled door. Two girls stopped and started laughing and asked us why we were peeing in the sink!”
“No you didn’t!!!” said a few of the girls. All of them were laughing and consoling Eze. “You poor thing, how did you and your brother live that down?”
“Hell, we were heroes! We stood there with our jeans open and our peckers out talking to the two prettiest girls in school. Neither one of us were bashful, and the girls didn’t seem to mind, so we finished peeing, tucked them in and washed our hands without having to take a step, and told those two girls that we needed their help showing us how things worked around here. That was the best year of school in my life!”
“Eze, you’re hilarious! Did you really?” a girl asked.
“What could we do? The whole school saw what we had at ten, and twelve. We just took making fools out of ourselves to making friends with everyone by owning it.”
The chapters draw you in one by one. Hard to put down.
I remain confused about the setting, and think it would be helpful for you to elaborate on where the party takes place. I’ve read this chapter three times, and each time I feel like an “observer”. I feel like I’m standing off to the side watching a cast of characters. I felt more connected to the characters in the first two chapters. I don’t really know how to explain this.
Thanks Nancy…I will revisit this chapter.
What Eze described about Sheila to Stephan completely surprised me. In this chapter Eze doesn’t seem like the humbled wise soul that he was in chapter 2? Was his childhood story about him and his brother true or he was just making it up to draw attention at his own party? On the the next chapter…
Lionel, Eze has a lot of internal issues that will appear throughout the novel. He is human, and has faults. He does own his embarrassment and mistakes, and finds strength in surviving each of them.