Chapter three

So here we are at the "Woodpecker", the one-eyed bartender, the one-armed widower, and me. Marty, the guy with the brain injury.

My father died of lung cancer. He smoked Kent cigarettes with the "micronite" filter. There were high hopes that this product of endless scientific research would filter out the cancer causing agents and still deliver a "full-flavored" smoke. Oops! Dad had numerous parts of his body removed in the last 20 years before his death. His appendix and gall bladder were easy ones. His kidney was a little tougher. The part of his liver that was most affected by cirrhosis was yanked out. Tonsils of course. The last ten years he learned to speak without his vocal chords, sort of a burping sound, but easily understandable. They tried to take out a lung but that was the last straw. By the time he passed away he no longer had operation scars as much as zippers. From behind he looked like a garment bag with railroad tracks running from one shoulder to the other and then down to his ass and back towards his opposite thigh. I saw him naked one day after they put this new scar on him. He had enormous testicles. Had he lived another ten years they probably would've extracted them too. I told him he had more parts in heaven than he did here on earth. He was becoming an emptied out old bag of poop. I helped put his casket in the hearse at the funeral. It was very light.

Even though my Dad had so many problems with cancer, I still smoke. A rational person would know better, but since my accident I know very little. So you can fully appreciate the irony of my calamity you must know one thing; I love fast food chicken. I like it fried and rotisseried. I like it original recipe, I like it spicy or mild. I don't like it crispy so much as I learned that the "Colonel" himself despised the extra crispy at the restaurant he founded. It apparently wasn't his idea and since he had sold the business to a wealthy entrepreneur he lost control of his own beloved recipe. A dark day in my life, and I prefer the white meat.

One day I was headed for a visit with a friend in a small neighboring town. There were thunderstorm warnings posted for the day but that only meant it was a good day for visiting. I was stopped at an intersection in a low lying part of the street when a cloudburst happened. I sat there, unable to see out of my car, waiting for the storm to lighten up. Before I could do a thing, the street filled with water and seeped into my car. The engine died and I was stranded. Fortunately I knew of a "Chickin Lickin" restaurant about two blocks away and I evacuated my vehicle and began to hoof it. Oddly, the sun was shining and the air was fresh and clean. I was walking by a lumber yard, less than a block from the CL franchise, when I became short of breath, the sky suddenly turned dark and green. When I tilted my head to the heavens I was horrified. The clouds above me were rotating in a circle, around a perfectly round eyeball. The motion grew faster and drew closer as I stood there trying to gather a breath. I thought I saw a wicked hand of death passing through the eye, pointing and waving me towards the funnel. I felt the jarring explosion of glass and I was surrounded by flying lumber. My feet left the ground and my stomach felt that same sensation you get on a wild roller coaster ride. I awoke only moments later lying beneath a pile of rubble and broken glass in front of the Chickin Lickin. Men wearing firemen suits where pulling the debris off of me and shouting non-sensical emergency words to each other. They pulled me out carefully and placed me on a stretcher. As one fireman began to immobilize my head with a strap, he froze. His eyes went cold and he backed away from me. Another man grabbed his arm and asked "What's wrong?" The stunned fireman pointed at my head and the other turned to look at me. He loudly gasped and then realizing that I was alert he covered his mouth with his hand so as to not frighten me. Talk about "too little, too late!" They wheeled me across the rough and littered pavement to a waiting ambulance. The entire time saying "don't worry buddy, you're gonna be ok!" I felt pretty reassured up to the point the one fireman with the name "Sanders" taped to the front of his uniform said to me calmly "they can get that thing out of your head, they can do anything these days!"