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Only
the Young Die Young
By
Jon Alan Carroll
It was a no-joy-in-mudville morning and Link flipped over and started staring at the ceiling.
So it was his birthday and he was back in jail again. What was he gonna do, burst into fucking tears?
Link hopped off his bunk and stretched his arms and legs. It had been a good night. The inmate called 7-11 had skipped the nightly conference call with the demon committee.
7-11, with his caved-in brain and street suntan, spent most nights raving about angels and Great Satan and
he who laughs last, laughs laughs and when the world's on fire, scrub some flowers.
Link stepped over a puddle on the crud-ugly floor and started walking over to the phone bank.
A couple of rows down, a bald inmate with a peacock tattooed in the crook of his arm was tying off with a jail towel. Two of his buddies moved in to block the view.
The jailhouse was rousting itself and all the California dreamers cracked open their eyes to another perfect day.
Tower 1 of the Vinton C. Vincent Center consisted of gray cement walls, rusted bars and the combined stink of 3,000 men. It was a sweet combination, dried sweat and blood and cum and gym socks moldering since the Battle of Antietam.
Link made it to the phone bank and dialed Mal's number.
"Uh," Mal said, fumbling with his cell phone.
The operator asked, "Will you accept a collect call from a correctional institution?"
"Yeah," Mal said.
Mal told Link that Ty Randall was throwing his bail and Mal would pick him up when Link was ready to process out.
"Now I'm going back to sleep," Mal said. He clicked off.
Link began weaving his way over to the bathroom. He'd been in maybe 10 or 12 county jails, a guy can't remember every little detail, but Link was blessed with the ugliness, tattoos and fuck-you face required for this particular beauty contest.
The Vinton C. Vincent Center was packed, crammed, overflowing, so the TV room had been converted to sleeping quarters. About 90 bunks, three beds per bunk, with late arrivals sleeping on the floor.
The five TVs were always on and a bunch of prisoners were gathered around. A newsbreak came on about some political scandal and the inmates stared off, bored.
"You can't Hallmark me, fuck-face," one prisoner said to the TV. The inmates didn't care about politics, they didn't get that channel, and anyway none of them were dumb enough to believe in Presidents.
Link found a place at the bathroom sink and started shaving his face. Yeah, still
good-lookin, he thought. Still have what it takes.
Link finished shaving and tossed the cheap plastic razor into the box next to the guard.
An old trustee announced First Breakfast and Link and half the other inmates lined up. The inmates had been to public school and knew the drill.
They marched like a jungle clown patrol, single file, heads down, hands in the pockets of their government sweatpants.
The chow room was row after row of dented metal tables and fixed metal stools. The inmates lined up and got their scrambled, their bacon and toast, the exact same breakfast they had yesterday and would have tomorrow.
Link took his tray and walked over to his table. His breakfast buddies were a Green anarchist and a meth cooker named Roark who'd found his truth while reading
The Fountainhead during a five-day speed run.
"Look at this toast," Roark said. "It's raw on one side and burned on the other. How the hell can you screw up
toast?"
"If you can't do the toast," Nick said, "don't do the crime." A graybeard monkeywrencher, Nick enjoyed dreaming about a world he'd never live in.
The three choked down their scrambled eggs, which were as watery and gray as a Navy destroyer.
Link bit into his bacon and added another entry to his guidebook to jailhouse cuisine. Vinton C. Vincent Detention Center: Alpo Helper, Hazmat & Cheese, satanic string beans. One star.
"They found Red Rickard's body this morning," Nick said. "He was K-10, supposed to be in Tower III with no inmate contact."
"Too bad," Link said.
"Not really," Nick said. "Red was a funny guy, made me laugh, but he was a major werewolf. One night Red is drinking and some guy hits on his girlfriend, so Red goes out to his truck and gets his shotgun and goes back to the bar and shoots the guy's dick off."
They sat a while and ate their breakfasts.
"Mayhem," Roark the libertarian said. "What a cool crime."
The rest of the prisoners, the crims and the losers, the gruntled and disgruntled and pre-gruntled, the bad-luckers and the wrong-placers, all finished their breakfasts and sat in their places with bright shiny faces.
For some people, failure was still an option.
Link told the political prisoners that Blacktooth had thrown his bail and he was outta here, history, past tense.
"Ah, hell," Nick said. "After we chipped in to get you a birthday present." Nick reached under the table and dropped a bender into Link's hand. Inside were about 8 or 10 blue Valium.
"You shouldn't have," Link said. "No, really, you shouldn't have."
Link was touched. Blue Valium had always been one of his favorite jail drugs.
So Link was loose and relaxed when the Monte Carlo pulled up in front of the Vinton C. Vincent Detention Center.
Mal slowed to a crawl and gestured for Link to hurry up and jump in. Link slid into the front seat next to Marie and Mal tore out of the parking lot.
"Glad you're out, buddy," Mal said. "But who is truly free."
Marie handed Link a Mickey's Big Mouth and kissed him on the cheek.
Link was a little surprised by the kiss. Usually, Marie wouldn't have given him the time of day if she had a wall clock welded to her forehead.
His pal Mal, Mr. Sensitivo, Mr. Dark Romantic, Mr. Recreational Moodiness, had searched his whole life for his Yoko Ono. Naturally, all Mal ever found was Pam Morrison or Courtney Love or some second-string Jill the Ripper like Marie.
Mal pushed in the latest Living Dogs release and got on the freeway. Depending on traffic, it would be a good three hours back to the City.
In his pleasant Big Mouth-blue Valium haze, Link noticed how much Marie looked
like his first real girlfriend, D. Both of them, busty, snarly, long dark hair, hard brown eyes.
One night, D. packed up and left him for a guy with a real job. He could hardly blame her, he was drunk half the time and in jail the other half.
Link drank until he ran out of money and slid off his stool and walked out the back door. The parking lot was filled with Harleys and beater sedans and pickups with metal toolboxes.
Angry and hurt and not-drunk-enough, Link glared fuck-you at the moon and made a few promises to himself.
He wouldn't sing in the Choir of Bullshit. He wouldn't spend his life telling the assholes what they wanted to hear. And he wouldn't kill himself.
Marie cooed as Mal pointed the Monte Carlo to 580, aiming for I-80 and the Bay Bridge.
Link was almost completely sober now. Like love, blue Valium was a good drug, a fine high, but it never lasted very long.
Mal rolled up his window and Marie leaned in closer.
"Y'know, Huck," Mal said. "Maybe you should quit beating the critics and thank Ty Randall for bailing you out."
Link groaned and said, "But who is truly free."
"Another thing," Marie added, helpfully. "Ty asked you to be more friendly to Ian, now that we're part of the Blacktooth family."
Mal slowed down for a CHP unit hiding behind an overpass.
"Don't worry, Marie," Link spewed, "I love Ian, that corporate karaoke cocksucker, because I love
ALL of stinking fucking humanity, the whole bag of slags, and every one of those hardworkin taxpayin lay-z-boy zombie-droids, all the mall-cows and blank-faced pricks and greedy little shits, all skulking down the streets with their spreadsheet eyes and mouthfuls of sour grapes and big happy smiles like Kool-Whip on a fresh pile of dogshit."
Mal laughed and Marie said, Yeah, meaning fuck-that-noise.
They'd made good time for about an hour, but soon enough the traffic started to clot and congeal.
Shit, Mal said.
That night they were opening for Ian McDonnell and the early crowd looked to be about 80% shiny untroubled teens from the exurbs.
The kids had a certain uncertain look, like they were looking for something but didn't know what that something was. Link assumed they wouldn't find it by hearing Ian McDonnell sing his hit,
Sobbin' in the Safeway.
For them, the shiny teens, someday Link would write a song so desolate and murderously true that anyone who heard it would drop dead on the spot.
"Link," one of the roadies said, tapping him on the back of the shoulder. "You gonna need a Keith Richards brace tonight?"
Link turned around and stared at the roadie.
"You know," the roadie said. "The Keith Richards brace. The one they use to prop him up when he's onstage. Are you gonna need one tonight?"
Link gave the roadie a jailhouse-howdy look and the roadie decided he wanted to have children someday and backed away.
Link wandered into one of the backstage rooms, which was packed with musicians and techies and four mall-girls aching to find if in fact Ian McDonnell really did sob in the Safeway.
McDonnell was standing in a corner with Ty Randall, the vice-poobah of Blacktooth Recordings. Link could feel McDonnell's cheekbones glowing from across the room.
Randall and McDonnell were smiling turbines at each other, like two used car-bomb salesmen about to close a big sale.
Still smiling, Randall pointed at Link from across the room. Tall, haute-hip, sinkhole eyes, Ty Randall had a face with the deep earthy soulfulness of a tax lawyer.
Link had tried to like Ty Randall, who'd bailed him out of jail and given him money and booked him on this fabulous tour. Link really tried to like the guy, but he just couldn't.
Link couldn't like Ty Randall because Link was morally opposed to ponytails.
Mal waved Link over and reviewed their set again with the Two Mikes. Not Yet, TV-Job-Mall, No Place Like Hell, American Asshole, Money & Lies, Teach a Man to Fist.
The meeting broke up, but Mike C. stayed behind and smiled at Link. Mike C. was the taller of the Two Mikes and wore this green realtor jacket for no particular reason.
"So, Linky," Mike C. said. "Can I call you Grandpa Anarchy now?"
Link nodded, Funny, and walked over and checked out the crowd again. There must have been 4,000 kids out there, easy, their biggest crowd ever. Strangely, at least half the crowd looked to be death-trance fans.
Like before every performance, Link shut his eyes and reminded himself about his parking-lot promises:
He wouldn't sing in the Choir of Bullshit. He wouldn't spend his life telling the assholes what they wanted to hear. And he wouldn't kill himself.
The band walked onstage and without introduction started in on their first song.
Not Yet was the story of four soldiers, surrounded and half-dead, squatting in the ruins and waiting for the end.
Link and Mal tossed their song-bombs into the crowd, trying to kill as many as possible. As always, they played it hard and cold and louder than 12.
The crowd jumped up and down, half-nuts, slamming and screaming and chanting their lyrics.
Fuck-It, Link thought. The world could dish it out, so now the world could take it.
He'd be hobbling around like Grandpa Anarchy pretty soon, but not tonight. Tonight, he was gonna kill 'em all.
Copyright © 2007 Jon Alan Carroll
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