Anti-Vaxxer

CW: gun violence, murder

Anti-Vaxxer

By B. B. Kemp

Copyright 2021

It’s not like I went out an’ asked for this shit-storm, but here I am, my thumb stuck out tryin’ to hitch a ride with less than a hundred bucks in my pocket. Why did I leave everything behind and go on the road? It had to do with a woman, but don’t go an’ get excited, there was no romance involved. Sometimes, if a man is pushed too far, he has no other choice but to take drastic action. Didn’t Cain slew Able over who’d wear the hair shirt?

Standing here on the side of the road, while rain falls on my naked head, I’m convinced that my descent into crazy-land started right after the last presidential election. At the time I was sitting in 210 Bar nursing a beer, minding my own business, when a long-haired dude walks in and takes a seat next to me.

Without so much as a boy-howdy, the Hippie-lookin’ dude starts mouthing off about how ol’ Joe Biden gave Donald Trump some kind of ass-whoopin’. I quietly sipped my Bud and listened to the frizzy-haired freak spew his B.S. But the more he kept flapping his lip, the bile in my gut started churnin’ until it rose up to my throat.

I kept my butt anchored on the stool, and choked out, “Hey, dude, why don’t you shut your g.d. piehole?”

He looks over in my direction, gives me a ‘Screw you’ smile, then said, “Hey man, last time I checked this was a free country. You know, freedom of speech and all that.”

God only knows I tried to be reasonable as humanly possible. In a calm voice, I said, “There might be freedom of speech outside, but you ain’t gonna’ talk no bullshit inside 210 Bar. In here, we got ourselves a cone-of-silence.”

The way the dude sniffed the air, with his nose wide open, I looked around for a steamin’ pile of horse manure, but all I saw was a bowl half-filled with stale peanuts sitting at the end of the bar.

The dude pipes-up, “Cone-of-silence? Just what the hell are you talking about, man?”

I jerked a thumb toward the front door. “C. O. S. goes into effect the second you step inside 210 Bar.”

Now I’m pretty good at reading people an’ from the look on the dude’s face, I could tell my words were fallin’ on deaf ears. I watched him in the mirror hung behind the bar as he took a drink of beer, wiped the foam off his scraggly mustache with the back of his hand, then burp.

The little piggy rubbed his belly and oinked, “And that’s what I think of your dumbass cone of silence.”

I slowly slid off my stool an’ got right in his face. “Are you going to walk outta’ here on your own power, or do I have to kick your ass out?”

The stupid fool laughed and shook his head, which gave me the opportunity to collar the fart-blossom around his skinny neck. Careful not to squeeze too hard or he might pass-out, I applied pressure with my forearm. It was a fast bum-rush out the front door where I deposited the dude on the sidewalk. I dusted myself off, then left him sitting on his butt. That episode is just one instance of how I tend to react when people show themselves to be plain stupid.

****

Me and my sister, Michelle (Mikey) have been next-door neighbors for over a year. Mikey moved out in the country right after divorcing her husband, a dumb fool who didn’t know how to call somebody an S.O.B. while smilin’. I parked my 22-foot Jayco trailer behind her house and hooked up to Mikey’s utilities. 

For the first year or so we got along just fine. The two of us hunted turkey in the spring, fished in the summer and harvested deer in the fall. In the winter, we took ol’ Blue and Rusty, two purebred blue tick coon hounds, out on nighttime forays. There was never a cross word between us, that is until a week ago last Sunday.

With my right hand to God, I swear that on the day in question, not one drop of alcohol had passed between my lips. Me and Mikey were inside my Jayco listenin’ to a talking head on Fox News. The subject was to vax, or not to vax.

“Hell, no,” I said, hitting the TV’s mute button. “I ain’t gonna’ let Nurse Hatchet stick a needle in my goddamn arm.”

Mikey looked at me, laughed and shook her head which made her long brown ponytail swing from side to side. “You’re such a damn fool,” she snarked. “All your life, Mama bought you books but you just chewed on the g.d. covers. And by the way, Jerry, it’s Nurse Rachet.”

I fired-up a Marlboro Red and blew dragon smoke out of my nostrils. “I don’t trust the goddamn gover’ment to tell the truth, about anything.”

Mikey pointed to the TV. “And yet, you trust Tucker Carlson on Fox News.” She snorted, “And Donald Trump.” To top it off she giggled. “You trust him, too. God, Jerry, what an idiot you are.”

Normally, if the situation had been different, say if I was having a conversation with a co-worker at the steel mill about the very same subject, and that person had been stupid enough to make fun of my president, Donald Trump, I would have hauled off and decked the s.o.b. But, since it was my dearly beloved twin sister jawboning, I inhaled more cigarette smoke and listened as Mikey kept yakking.

“Look, you,” she said, reaching over and stabbing me in the chest with her long skinny forefinger. “You gotta’ make a choice. Look at it this way, there’s a hungry lion chasing you, in this case it’s the COVID 19 virus. You have a choice, jump over the cliff or get eaten. In other words, don’t get vaxxed and get the COVID.”

I laughed and pointed a finger at Mikey. “Ha. That’s real smart, Sis. Jump off a cliff, huh? What if there’s a one-thousand-foot drop-off?”

“Jerry,” she said, “you don’t go asking how far it is to the bottom, you just freaking jump.”

I stubbed out my ciggy and fired up another one. Exhaling smoke, my voice rose slightly when I said, “That vaccine is a political tool used to control people. I’ll tell you one g.d. thing, if they start comin’ door to door givin’ shots what’s to stop ‘em from confiscatin’ our guns and Bibles?”

“What a load of crap, Jerry. Ain’t nobody, government or otherwise, who wants your goddamn guns. And I’m not sure if you even own a Bible.”

I eyed the 9 mm Berretta sitting on the TV tray next to my chair. “Mandatory vaccinations encroach on my personal freedom,” I said, parroting a line I’d heard on Fox News.

“What about my freedom?” Mikey asked, her cheeks starting to turn red, which they usually did when she got riled-up. “You sit there all high and mighty blabbering about your personal freedom. If you don’t get vaxxed, you ain’t nothin’ but a petri dish harboring the COVID. You,” she barked, pointing that finger at me, again, “you limit my personal freedom.” I thought Mikey was finished, but no, she kept up with the lecture. “Look, Jerry, I don’t care whether you choose to live or die, that’s your choice, but why make life miserable for the rest of us?”

For the longest time we both sat stone-still starin’ at the blank TV screen. There was nothin’ left to say. Me an’ Mikey were fraternal twins which meant we came out of Mama about the same time (Mikey was first) but we didn’t have the same DNA. Finally, Mikey heaved herself out of the chair and stood lookin’ down at me.

“Jerry,” she said, using a schoolmarm voice that she damn well knew drove me up the wall. “Like I said, I don’t give a rat’s ass if you don’t get vaccinated. I should’ve figured you’d be that way. Guess that’s why Daddy always called you an id-jet.”

It took a millisecond for that last word to register, but when it did my spine stiffened. I stared holes through Mikey, and barked, “What did you just call me?”

Wearin’ a smarmy smile, she replied, “An id-jet?”

There it was, plain as day. An id-jet, huh? The exact same insulting frame of reference that our Daddy used when I screwed up as a kid, which was more often than not. The old man whose seed me an’ Mikey sprung from was one hardcore s.o.b. An ex-Army drill instructor, he never missed an opportunity to call me out for some minor infraction, whether it was my scuffed shoes, or my belt buckle out of line with the buttons on my shirt.

When I took a good look at Mikey, for some unexplained reason, Daddy’s bloodshot eyes were staring back at me. My sister’s upper lip had even curled like Daddy’s when he got really p.o.’d, usually at me.

“Id-jet,” she said, again.

“Take it back, Mikey,” I growled, my right hand reaching toward the TV tray.

“Nope.”

Now, I was holding the 9 mm. To make sure Mikey understood just exactly what was at play, I chambered a round into the Berretta. Superimposed on Mikey’s face, Daddy’s eyes glared back at me. When he was alive, I knew for a fact that the old man wasn’t afraid of nothing or nobody. Mikey had those same deep wrinkles in her forehead, just as if she were Daddy.

I pointed the pistol at Mikey. “Take it back, Mikey, or--.”

“Or, what?”

Boom. The first round only grazed Mikey’s head. She stumbled back and as she fell into the TV, I pulled the trigger, again. Boom. The bullet made a small round hole in the middle of her forehead then she collapsed on the floor. For a long time I stared at my sister’s lifeless body. Finally, I rose from my chair, knelt next to her and put my forefinger on her throat. I knew there wouldn’t be a pulse. Daddy’s hate-filled eyes had been replaced by Mikey’s two light-blue orbits. I tried to close my sister’s eyelids, but they kept popping back open, so I covered her with a hand-knitted afghan blanket, then flopped back onto the chair.

For the next several hours, I sat staring at the lump under the blanket, trying to decide, did I just shoot Mikey, or was it Daddy? It was dark by the time I heaved my weary body out the chair. Using a cast-iron skillet, I smashed my cell phone to a pulp, then with no credit cards to my name, and only one-hundred dollars in cash, I grabbed my car keys and skedaddled.

For the next two days I drove west, ditched my car in a ravine, then covered it with tree branches. The way I figured it would take a couple of days for the cops to find Mikey and maybe another week to find my Chevy. By then, I’d be halfway across the country.

And that’s the reason I’m standin’ on the side of the road with my thumb in the air. In a way, I kinda’ feel like that beatnik dude. I forget his name, Jack somethin’ or other, but back in the Fifties he just sort-a took off an’ went on the road, too. Now, I’m no great author like Jack was, but somethin’ is workin’ inside my head telling me to put my thoughts down on paper, because the more I think about it, maybe Mikey was right, I am an id-jet.