King of The Road Read online

  “Goddamn it, Debogorski, that tractor spends more time pulling you out of the ditch than it spends farming!”

  He was probably right—he was a lazy farmer.

  My Wild Brother Richie

  When I was growing up my brother Richie was my main playmate. We had lots of fun together. My dad got us a sheep for a pet, and we would ride that sheep everywhere. The thing would be staggering along bowlegged, with both Richie and I sitting on it like cowboys.

  Richie always had a bit of a wild side to him, but teachers and other adults were always easy on him for some reason. I always got in way more trouble than he did, even though he was worse than me.

  Well, I think Richie got away with a lot because he’s funny and it’s hard to get mad at him. Boy, he’s been in some scrapes. He’s survived car crashes that would have killed anyone else. He would run his truck into the ditch at three o’clock in the morning on some deserted country road and fly through the air, doing end-over-end rollovers for two hundred feet, landing on the roof, flipping again and again. Unbelievable crashes. And he’d be wearing no seatbelt, of course, and he’d fly through the windshield and break half the bones in his body and a few months later he’d be walking around laughing like nothing had happened. “I don’t have nine lives,” Richie jokes. “I have nineteen.”

  He’s got a face that’s been rebuilt with steel and baling wire so many times you’d think he’d look like Frankenstein, but he’s still a good-looking guy. I don’t get it. Some guys watch their diets, take perfect care of themselves, and drop dead of a heart attack at forty-five. Richie has been trying to kill himself since he was twenty with booze and fast cars, but he’s still as shiny as a new penny. He’s had so many Native girlfriends he can speak fluent Cree. And he’s always making fun of himself, so everyone likes him. He has a knack for talking his way out of trouble. But before you know it, he’s back in trouble again. His main problem can be summed up like this—too many beers.

  I remember one occasion when he was charged with impaired driving, and had to go to court in Grand Cache. He hired an expensive lawyer out of Edmonton, a guy who charged a thousand dollars a day. This has always been Richie’s strategy—don’t scrimp on lawyers. And that’s how he’s saved his hide with all those impaired driving charges. This expensive big-city lawyer won the case, and Richie got to keep his license.

  So Richie and his buddies decide to go to Edmonton to celebrate this glorious legal victory. It’s about a five-hour drive away. His buddies Fred and Tom Doll take their ’66 Pontiac, and Richie takes his boss’s Datsun pickup. When they get to Edmonton they go to the Corona Hotel on Jasper Avenue. This is one rough bar. On one occasion my other brother, Mark, was lying under the pool table while somebody was shooting a gun. There are bullets flying, glasses breaking. Even after the cops arrived he wouldn’t come out from under the pool table and they had to drag him out thinking that maybe he was the bad guy. My point is, this Corona Hotel is basically like a saloon in the Wild West.

  So they go into the Corona and drink a bellyfull of beer. And after a few hours they leave the bar to see what kind of fun they can find. Richie has parked his boss’s Datsun pickup truck in this vacant lot behind the hotel, and the other boys have parked their car out on the front street. The lot has a booth where you’re supposed to pay for your parking, but at night there was nobody manning it and there was a chain across the entryway. When they all come out of the hotel the boys say, “Hey Richie, the cops are parked right next to your Datsun.”

  Richie looks at the cop car and says, “You just watch how I handle them cops.”

  So he walks over there, climbs in his Datsun, and fires it up.

  The police drove Rambler Matadors in those days, with 304 engines and a low differential. So these two police officers are sitting inside this Rambler with their hats off eating donuts.

  Richie gets into his Datsun pickup, puts it in reverse, backs it up about thirty feet, puts it in first gear, and just floors it. He goes right past the police car, hits this chain, almost tears the canopy off the pickup, breaks the chain, and roars out into the alley. The cops go nuts. All of the sudden it’s completely Hawaii Five-0. Hats, donuts, and coffee are flying as they go after him, and by the time they hit the pavement their tires are smoking and sirens are howling.

  Richie says that as they came up behind him he slammed on the brakes with both feet and just hung on for dear life. He knew what was going to happen.

  The guys in the police car crash right into the back of his Datsun pickup, and the truck is going chirp chirp chirp chirp from bouncing down the road with this cop car pushing it. He shuts the key off and yanks on the emergency break. The truck is still moving when he jumps out and runs back to the police car. The cop who was driving has his face right on the horn, and the other guy’s face is against the dash, and he yanks the driver’s door out and starts screaming at the police officers, “Are you guys crazy? Are you guys on dope, are you drinking? You just ran into my boss’s pickup!”

  The policeman lifts his head off the steering wheel and starts blinking, like, What the hell?

  The two policemen jump out of the car and start yelling at Richie. He’s obviously had too many beers and they’re mad. “Okay, get in the back seat,” says the cop.

  “No.”

  These city cops are rougher than the Mounties. They’re always dealing with hardened criminals of every kind, and it makes them mean. If it was anyone else, they would bounce his head off the fender and heave him in the back of the car. But it’s Richie, and he’s being kind of entertaining, so they try to reason with him. “Listen, sir, we’re not going to hurt you. Just get in the back seat.”

  “I’m not afraid of getting hurt. It’s a matter of my legal rights.”

  “What do you mean, your legal rights?”

  “Why do I have to ride in the back seat? Why can’t I ride in the front seat?”

  “That’s the rules, so get in the car.”

  “But I’m innocent until proven guilty. I have as much right to ride in the front seat as any citizen.”

  “Just get in the back seat.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.” He points to one of the cops. “You ride in the back seat and I’ll ride in the front seat.”

  “You cannot ride in the front seat. Is that clear? Now get in the car!”

  Richie thinks about this for a minute. He frowns, strokes his chin. “Uh . . . screw you.”

  And he just starts to stroll off down the street with the two cops just standing there. Maybe they’re still a bit stunned from the crash, because they don’t do anything at first. And as soon as he turns the corner, he starts running. And despite the fact that he probably drank twenty-four beers that night, he can go like a deer. He’s leaping over fences and tearing down back lanes and the cops can’t keep up with him. Finally, he’s lost them, so he slows down and spots a little tent in a backyard. He looks inside. It’s empty, so he crawls into the tent and curls up and goes to sleep.

  Next thing he knows he hears a jingling chain, then an animal sticks its head into the tent and grabs him by the ear. It’s a police dog, and it drags him out of the tent, tearing off half of his ear. The policemen slap the handcuffs on him and they drag him downtown.

  They take him to the city police station, some kind of a massive building downtown. Behind the sergeant’s desk there is a room, a holding cell, all reeking with the smell of piss and sweat and puke, with a bench at the end, and a hippie, this big long-haired guy, passed out on this bench. Richie is getting kind of tired after all this excitement—driving all day, getting drunk, getting in a car crash, running for five blocks, getting his ear half torn off by the police dog, and now this. He is in the mood for a nap, but this friggin’ hippie’s got this bench tied up. Richie doesn’t like guys with long hair—they offend his sense of what’s proper. On top of that, this son of a gun is hogging the only bench in the room.

  So Richie scowls at him, sits there for a little while, then decides he
’s going to do something about it. He gets up and starts peeing through the crack in the door. He’s been drinking beer since morning and he’s got about two gallons of fluid inside him. After about five minutes of this he zips up his fly and sits back down on the floor. Meanwhile a massive lake of pee has drained across the floor and gathered under the sergeant’s desk. The old cop is so busy with paperwork that he doesn’t notice. When another cop comes splashing through the puddle, they both look at the floor and give out this simultaneous roar of anger.

  They rip open the door of the interview room. “Who pissed on the floor!!??”

  Richie points at the sleeping hippie. “He did.”

  The cops drag the hippie out into the hall. “Did you do this?”

  “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean it!”

  “You dirty son of a bitch!”

  “I must have done it in my sleep!”

  Well, the last thing Richie hears is this hippie wailing as they drag him down the stairs by his hair. Now Richie has the room all to himself, so he climbs onto the bench and goes to sleep.

  After a while they take him to a basement with rows and rows of cells. And they put him in a cell there. There are quite a few guys in jail and pretty soon he hears, Psst, psst.

  Across the hall, some guys are pointing at a cell where a guy has taken the blanket, made a rope out of it, tied it to the water pipe, and is going to hang himself. All the inmates are watching.

  This guy ties a knot around the water pipe and jumps off the bed. On the way down he slams his knee into the bottom bunk and that kind of snaps him out of it. Ouch!! Suddenly he doesn’t want to die anymore. So he’s up on his tiptoes trying to undo the knot and everybody in the jail is screaming, “Die, you son of a bitch! Die! Die!”

  The jailer hears this racket and comes running. He unties the guy’s knot, takes away all the guy’s clothes and bedding, and all night long the guy’s teeth are rattling and he’s moaning from the cold.

  In the morning when Richie is discharged the guy is still naked and limping from hitting his knee. That was Richie’s trip to Edmonton. He had too many beers.

  Fighting a Bronco

  When I was young, long before I became a respectable family man and a lay minister, I seemed to get in a lot of fights. My brothers and my friends were always telling stories about me, like I was some kind of wild man. But as I got a little older I began to realize that lots of times they were just putting me up to it. They’d get in trouble then I would come and bail them out, and it would end up looking like I had caused the fight in the first place. Often I was just minding my own business and trouble landed in my lap.

  It was one of these situations that almost got me killed.

  When my little brother Greg graduated from grade twelve, he attended a big graduation party at his school. After the party, everybody did the usual thing and headed off into the bush to have a bonfire. The farmer had given permission for the kids to use his land, and everybody was in a pretty good mood. It was just a nice gathering, everybody enjoying the return of the nice weather, standing around a fire, having a few beers, and having a good time.

  As usual, the trucks and cars were parked in a long row and one car was pulled up near the fire with its doors open, providing the mandatory sound track of high-energy rock ’n’ roll. The girls were flirting with the boys, the boys were telling all their usual lies and flirting with the girls, and there was this general feeling that one chapter of life was over and another was about to begin. You know what graduation is like. It’s a big deal, but have a party, add liquor, and intertown rivalries come to a head.

  Around three in the morning, just as the party was really getting going, a Ford Bronco came pounding into the pasture and pulled right up to the fire pit and parked. The guy driving the Bronco was a bad actor named Butch Mitchell, and he was accompanied by his little brother Spud and some other troublemakers. These guys were nasty characters. (Some of them had recently been charged with raping an eighteen-year-old girl.) Butch Mitchell, who was about twenty-one years old at the time, walked up to this kid named Chris Iverson and gave him a shove. It seems that Iverson had beaten his little brother in a fight a couple of nights before, and now Butch was determined to get revenge.

  Butch and Iverson started fighting, but every time Iversen got the upper hand, Butch’s cronies jumped in and kicked or punched him. Finally one of the bad guys smacked Iverson in the head with a wine bottle. Greg was a tall, skinny, good-natured kid and he was not equipped to fight with the likes of these guys. He jumped in anyway and tried to help out, but Butch’s goons jump on Gregory and gave him a good licking.

  Around this time I came roaring into the party in my ’77 Trans Am, and as I pulled up to the fire, I misjudged the distance and ran onto a hay bale and stalled the car. I didn’t want to look foolish, so I didn’t put her in reverse and start spinning my tires and all that. I just pretended that I actually wanted to ram a hay bale. When you’re young it’s all about keeping up appearances. So I threw the car into park and shut it off. I had got no idea there was trouble brewing. I was just there to have a good time.

  And I rolled down the window and my brother came up, and I couldn’t help but notice that he was looking a little poorly on account of having a footprint on his forehead. You could see the bootprint right on his forehead, complete with the tread pattern. And his arm was bleeding because these goons hit him with a broken wine bottle.

  I said, “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Well, these Mitchell boys came down from Peace River and they’re beating us up.”

  “Why are they beating you up?”

  “It’s some kind of vendetta thing going back a month or so. Somebody beat somebody else up in Grimshaw and now they’re taking it out on us.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “They’re wrecking our party. We’d like you to get rid of them.”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Him,” he said, pointing at this guy standing across the fire.

  This one Mitchell boy he was pointing at was a rough customer, with big arms, a criminal record, and a bad attitude. It was still dark and this Mitchell character couldn’t really see what I was doing. I walked around behind the car and opened the trunk. It was pitch-black in there, but I knew where the tire iron was, so I took it out, held it up against my leg, and started walking over toward him.

  I said, “Come here, my friend, I want to talk to you.”

  Instead of standing his ground he started running for the bush, and I took off after him. Then I heard this noise and I looked over my shoulder and the other Mitchell was jumping into this jacked-up Bronco. Vroom, he fired it up and roared straight at me.

  So I stopped chasing this guy and the Bronco charged me. I stood there like a bullfighter, waiting for the last minute, then, just before it hit me, I stepped out of the way and swung that tire iron right into the middle of the windshield, using every ounce of power I had.

  The truck brushed against me and spun me around. My arm was up in the air, having bounced back after slamming the tire iron into the windshield, so I brought it down and took out the side window as he went roaring by. Well, that felt pretty good, so I threw that tire iron like a boomerang to take out the back window. The shot was dead on—it hit the bottom of the frame and broke the window and flew right up in the air.

  The truck turned hard to come back and get me, and as he made the turn he hit two guys who were standing beside the fire talking to each other. Bang, bang, he whacked these two guys like stalks of corn. These two guys flew up in the air and landed in the fire. One guy landed on his back and the other guy landed on his front. I ran toward them, trying to save them, and wondering which one I should grab first. This fire pit is all full of coals and broken glass, and as I was running toward them I figured the guy on his back was going to be the slowest getting up, so I’d go for him. The guy on his front would probably just jump out of the fire.

  Wel
l, as I got to the one who landed on his back, he just jumped up like a squirrel and scrambled out of the fire. And the guy who landed on his face, he was just squirming in the flames. He’d been temporarily paralyzed from the shock of the truck and couldn’t move, so I grabbed him and dragged him out and I rolled him over.

  Just at that moment, the truck was coming around for another pass and it hit the guy who jumped out of the fire. This poor guy couldn’t get a break. The truck hit him hard with the left front headlight and threw him high in the air, then ran him over, the front wheel and back wheel going right across his chest.

  So now the truck was coming around again. I quickly extinguished the flames on the first guy, then start rounding up people, you know, women and kids, and stuff, “Get in the trees!”

  Everybody was screaming, running for their lives. People were running into the bush, hiding behind the trees, and now the truck hit another kid and ran him over. Right away he climbed to his feet and started looking around in the grass for his glasses. He was in shock, Where are my glasses? So now the truck came back in a big circle and almost ran over him again! Fortunately, his girlfriend grabbed him after the truck hit him for the second time and persuaded him to forget about his glasses and dragged him out of there.

  The truck was coming toward the fire and I was thinking, I’ve got to stop this guy. So I started running toward the truck, head on. The truck was flooring it, coming straight for me, because it was really me he was after. I was running toward the truck with my bare hands, but what was I going to do with it if I caught it? If it was just a Bronco II, maybe that would have been no problem, but this was a full-size 4x4!

  I looked left and I looked right, and realized I couldn’t get inside or outside of his turning radius, so I just faced the truck, and as he hit me I slapped that hood as hard as I could, trying to go over the hood rather than under the bumper. Then he hit me in the midsection, hit me so hard that I put a dent in the middle of the hood with my hip. I shot up in the air, with my head above the windshield.