Even on a quiet Saturday afternoon, things can turn sideways in a very short time when you live in a low-income part of town. You can try to mind your own business as much as you want, but there will be times when things don't always go as planned.
Today would end up being a day just like that. I was tending to my deck, what little of it that there was when I heard the words that started everything in motion.
"Hey, Jimbo. You'd fuck Sara if I let ya, right." My neighbor yelled over to me from underneath the hood of his aging, rusted out, pick-up truck.
He was such an asshole. I'd thought about doing exactly that, many, many times. To be honest, his wife was a very cute woman and I would have sex with her if "she" let me, and I wouldn't give a goddamn what he had to say about it, the dumb fuckin redneck piece of shit. That's what I wanted to say to him, but I didn't. I couldn't risk it. Todd had been drinking all day. Todd always drank "all day", and whenever he was in this kind of mood things seemed to escalate between us.
"She's you're wife Todd. You shouldn't be asking me hypothetical questions like that."
"I didn't ask you anythin hyper-cycle, Jimbo. It's a clear and proper "wanna fuckin know" type question."
It was moments like this that I longed for the day that Todd would come home drunker than normal and mistake my trailer for his. When he came through the door and I plugged him in the forehead, I would say that it was a break and entry situation and tell the authorities that I shot him in self-defense.
What rubbed me the wrong way mostly, was when he called me "Jimbo". It was just to piss me off. He knew that I preferred James, and at the very least Jim. But never Jimmy or Jimbo.
My neighbor was the epitome of the phrase, "piece-of-shit". It amazed me at times how in his twenty plus years, that someone hadn't shot the useless bastard. He was a big mouth, and a drunken weakling. He was so low that he preyed on his vulnerable wife. He tended to be heavy handed when he drank, and the next day he would cry and apologize all day. The words "baby, it'll never happen again. I swear" were heard often coming from their trailer. I had broken up several of their fights, and occasionally I tried to slip in a slap or two that left a mark, but it didn't help. He would wake up the next morning not knowing wear the bruises came from and just start drinking all over again, heavier. And that only made things worse for Sara.
Todd was truly a redneck. Skinny, full of bad tattoos, dirty and dressed in filthy jeans and sleeveless t-shirts. He looked like a grease monkey 24 hours a day. He wasn't tough by any means, but he ran with a bad crowd, and as the old saying goes, "strength in numbers". That alone made him feel way tougher than he actually was. I wondered, sometimes aloud, how his pretty wife ever got mixed up with him.
"Well?"
I knew that he'd never let it go. Like a junkyard dog with a bone, he was all over it.
"Well what Jethro."
"You best stop callin me that Jimbo."
"I'll stop when you stop Jethro." Todd Witton hated Jethro more than I hated Jimbo. It was like we were 2 school kids, feuding in the playground.
"Would ya fuck her er not?"
Like I said, Sara was a pretty girl and could easily be the Queen of the Trailer Park, and on the days that Todd wasn't around, we would have a cold drink together, and I would tell her so. Prettiest girl here no doubt. She had shoulder length brown hair that she kept pulled back to show off her natural beauty. Luckily, she didn't need or use much make-up because I'm sure that Todd would never provide her the funds to purchase any beauty aids. And the only times that anyone seen her with lots on, is when she was trying to cover something up.
My pretty neighbor spent lots of time covering things up, much like her cloths. Many times, I've noticed Sara going onto or coming out of the local thrift stores, but it didn't matter because whatever she purchased, she made it look good.
Standing around 5'3", she was petite. In her mid-twenties, she still had a very girlish figure, womanly, but petite. The only problem was that at only twentysomething years old, she looked tired past her years. Maybe she was just tired of the life that had imprisoned her.
"I ain't got all fuckin day Jimbo. Would ya er not."
I looked up from staining my deck, and for the first time that day paid full attention to him. He was covered head to toe in dirt and grease. His grass was dead and brown from the places that he pissed when he thought no one was looking. Beer cans had been tossed in all directions, hitting the dark spots like lawn darts. Sarah sat on the tailgate, snapping beans, blushing from embarrassment, trying not to pay attention to the drunken diatribe coming from her husband.
"Look Jethro, why don't you show a little class. For once in your pitiful life show that poor girl some much-deserved respect.
"You gotta big ole mouth on you there Jimbo. I done told you for the last time. Now I'm a callin Big Ray. I'ma gunna love seeing how this all plays out." Big Ray was Todd's cousin. A felon biker type that was far to dumb to think for himself. But he was a big burly boy, and that made him dangerous.
"Why don't you stop hiding behind your cousin and come on over here for yourself, shit burger?"
"No, no. You done done it now. Big Ray's a coming." I smiled and that pissed Todd off more than anything.
"Good, I've dying to try out my new Desert Eagle. If I recall, didn't big old Ray soil his pants when I showed him my .44 last time he came around?"
Truth be told. Ray had come over at Todd's request, apparently to teach me a lesson and he caught me off guard. I had one of my guns holstered up and when he snuck up on me I pulled it out and fired a round into the ground as a warning, his momentum carried him closer than I liked, so I put the barrel to his forehead and issued a warning. Soon the sounds of dripping water and the acidy stench of him urinating in his pants filled the air and a puddle filled the dirt.
Sara stifled her laugh, but not quick enough so as not to be noticed.
"You shut it bitch." Todd was holding his beer can so tightly that it was crushed, and he probably didn't notice it.
"You shut it Jethro. You're the bitch. Leave her out of this. You're the one acting like a fucking tool and now you want to blame Sara?'
Like a true redneck Todd reached into his beaten-up old Coleman cooler and pulled out another can of beer. The thing that made it funny and ironic to me was that he never put any ice in the "cooler". The freakin thing just acted as a box without any ice in it. Equipped with a fresh can, he stared at me as if thinking about his next move. There would be no answer. Todd couldn't compete in a game of checkers for the mentally challenged.
"You think yer smart cuz ya got lotsa money don't ya?"
"Money? If I had money, do you think I'd live in this fucking trailer park?" I have an army pension, a night shift security job and a small but livable savings. Rich? No, but to some people in the park, I guess I was loaded.
"Do ya got $250 bucks?"
