White Falcon Great : Eleven Time Mob Crimes!

NOTE: SSA, DON'T READ THE FOOTNOTES.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Update.....
this is part of a series that began last friday. if you have no idea what's going on, that might explain it. so might wearing a drycleaners' bag over your head at night. wearing a drycleaners bag over your head at night is bad for you.
_________________________________________


I needed to move out of Milwaukie fast.
It was also pretty obvious from the 'help wanted' section of the paper that I'd have to move back in to Portland if I wanted to work.

Here's the breakdown:
I'd turned 19 in May. I left the Dishrag and moved back to Milwaukie by the 31st. Two weeks into June I was fired, had been been ousted from Sonnyboy's place, and started living in the house on Harrison. Now finally in July my unemployment had come through.
Now I got about 260$ per month in unemployment back then. Half of every check went into the bank along with everything else I could scrape together (and that wasn't much, with 130.00 and change to hold me for the rest of the month.) I still had a long way to go. In order to move out I'd have to save first, last, cleaning and another couple of hundred dollars over, just in case I didn't find anything right away. And that merely to be able to move in to a shithole and live on brown rice.
The longer I stayed in Milwaukie, though, the better that looked.

No, the Meadows' sideshow didn't get any less weird as time went on. Oh my no. In fact I came to realize that they'd been holding back.

I did my best to spend as much time as I could away from the Meadows' home. I put a permanent bend in the fence between their place and Sonnyboy's house, sneaking over in the middle of the night like a goddamn sixteen-year-old.* (Mommy dearest kept a weather eye on his front door. She'd even gone so far as to ask the Meadows to call her if I showed up at Sonnyboy's. I was getting the distinct impression she didn't like me.) I partied with people I knew around town, I visited Portland regularly looking for work, I even started eating meals out, even though this cut into my bankroll. (Well, that and the cigarettes. Fine; and the Two Fingers tequila. Hey; why drink piss? I may have been living in an abandoned house but I was a good hostess. )

The problem with that was that the weird ramped up exponentially. Each time I tried to sneak back to pick up a jacket or nab a sandwich there was another scene waiting for me. And Kelvin was always there. Maybe asleep. Maybe not.

I was having a sneaky sandwich one afternoon when Eldest Brother blew in, bent down and said 'be quiet and come look at this."
I should have known better at this point.
The door of Kelvin's room was in the utility room entry (see floor plan last post.) Of course, in a high-traffic area such as that, it was hanging wiiiiide open.
In the middle of his bed was a heap of sheets and blankets. It was hitching and bucking like one of those horsie rides at the supermarket.
Eldest brother whispered "Guess what."
"OH MY GOD KELVIN! CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!" I shouted in horror.
Kelvin poked his head out of the sheets and grinned. "My God, can't a guy jerk off in peace?"
_______________________________________

For some reason Kelvin seemed to take this for a 'bonding moment', and decided to make me his confidant. Whether I liked it or not. And I did not. So he stalked me.
Now Kelvin had the unfortunate and vastly dysfunctional family role as his mother AND his fathers' confidant; two people with no appropriate boundaries whatsoever. When he in turn confided something in me it was like being smeared with shit. It wasn't only the content of the revelations or the people involved, but also the fact that they dumped this insane, depraved bullshit on their youngest son. And he was so fucked up he lapped up the attention like a dog.

One of the stories he told me actually concerned him, though.

Kelvin had a once-in-awhile girlfriend who was Asian. Her parents were desperate for them to get married, but Kelvin was only after the 'tang. "Yeah," he bragged, " I used to have to tell her, 'Get the hell up and wipe your ass! You're disgusting!' before I'd fuck her. But eventually she learned what I liked."

What a silver tongued devil. And picky too!

He'd made the mistake of bringing her home.
Once.
Momma'd run into her room and slammed the door. Dad had made creepy remarks in front of her, asking Kelvin if it were true that Asian women had sideways gints, and wasn't he afraid of getting the Korean crud?

I mean honest to God. Poor girlfriend. Poor Kelvin, too.
________________________________________

Kelvin was a pervert above all things (I would not be surprised in the least if he was sat up in Rocky Butte right now for criminal trespass-window peeping or B and E rape.) He was also a toady, a sneak, a tattletale and one of the most pliant people I have ever met. If you insisted, he would bend.
That gave me an idea. I'd get him out of my face for good. After the first couple of whine-fests, every time he started in with the bullshit I came back with the 'apartments for rent-Milwaukie' section of the newspaper. After all, the guy had a full-time city job, benefits, savings and a car, right? Everything he owned would fit in the back seat. If I could keep the fire lit under his ass he could be gone before momma had a clue.

Obviously, this was doomed to fail. And it did.

I did the legwork. I fished his fricken paystubs out of the trash and drew him up a fricken budget, on paper, in his face for the love of Pete. I even found an apartment for him to look at. I got him as far as an inspection, too.
He panicked so badly that he practically ran out of the place. All the way home he kept repeating "No, my mother needs me. She just needs me, she just does. I can't do that. I can't DO that, Nations, I just CAN'T." By the time we got back to the house he was babbling. He ran into his room crying and slammed the door.
And only about half of it was faked.
_______________________________________________________

Eldest brother lived in a shed in the back yard. But this was no ordinary shed, make no mistake; he'd built it himself. He had a woodstove, skylights, and a loft in there, a rug on the floor, windows, insulation, cedar shake roof...it was tight. It even had a front porch and some steps, all covered with the most amazing array of potted cacti I have ever seen. Some of these things were HUGE...ten years old and older.
Outdoors. In Oregon.
And unlike every other person in Oregon at the time Eldest Brother was NOT growing dope. Much too pedestrian.
Eldest Brother was growing PEYOTE.
Yes I know this is supposed to be impossible. In blithe disregard of which fact he was doing it, without any special equipment, in plastic bowls. He had the plants in various stages of growth, and he had the field identification books to prove it. And I checked because I didn't believe him.
Fucker was also making what he called 'organic Mescaline'- dried peyolotl cut with lactose.
Good stuff, Maynard.
Really, really, REALLY good stuff.

The guy could have made thousands and thousands of dollars out of that shed just off the Native American religious community, let alone the freaks. He could have moved to Humboldt County and bought a house, and settled into a whole community of fellow wackjobs and mad scientists.
Instead he stuffed it all into his head and ran around claiming that he controlled traffic lights with his mind.
_____________________________________





* Sonnyboy and I had this down to a science. He scooted his bed underneath the window and kept the screen barely resting in the frame. Come the darkness I'd come down the street from the opposite direction, slide through the Meadow's side yard, across the back , over the fence and through the window like the Flying Wallendas. Heeeeey-UP!
Tell you what, by the time I left Milwaukie we'd damn near shoved that house off the back foundation.
Why all the cloak and dagger? Why didn't he just go up to the remodel?
1. Sonnyboy worked days. Like he was going to be able to walk back home? Wigga please.
2. Location, location, location. The remodel sat just off the sidewalk on a main street and it had no windows. The one time like maniacs with no religion and tiny motorcycles,scarlet maccaws, frightened elk thundering down a steel chute on the sash weight fell down into the wall. Nuns burst into flame. The neibors all turned on their lights all the way off the box spring with a mild concussion and a large hole in the plaster by naval battles, with explosions, and pterodactyls booked ass out the back window when we saw blue lights flashing on the walls drove up.
3. Eldest brother ( Luxury-fitted Hispano-Suiza to Sonnyboy's Sopwith Stunt biplane) was liable to pop in . If there was going to be a double feature I wanted to keep things in separate auditoriums.

What? I was 19.