Chapter Thirty Two

At the moment that I told Louis to let go, I was remembering something important. It was what happened when the tornado sucked me up....And when I fell out of the building...And when I crashed in the airplane. I remembered feathers. White feathers.

Louis was sweating buckets. The water below was boiling from the effects of the earthquake. I was singing a song by Loudon Wainwright III.

"There'll be lots of drinking in heaven
Smoking and eating and sex
What you didn't do in this life, bad for you
Will be totally cool in the next

and the Angels have ashtrays in heaven
St. Peter puffs on a cigar
Yes smoking's allowed, it's what makes all the clouds
and you don't have to sit at the bar

In heaven there'll be beer for breakfast
At lunch its Tequila and Wine
The soup served with dinner is made with paint thinner
and the morning hereafter is fine"

By this time, everyone in my group had made their way to the edge of the bridge.

"Johnny Touga is DEAD!" Shouted Bob.

"Let go Louis....It's time." I looked straight in his eyes. "Time to let me go."

His face glowed with amazement and his invisible hand released my wrist. He could no longer see the dangers below me. All he could see was feathers. A vast weave of long white feathers below me and enveloping me. Thousands of angels, pressed together in a rippling quilt took me on their collective backs. Amidst the waves of wings, if you stared intently, you could catch the faces of cherubs with large black eyes and a toothless grin. Their breathing made a song and the tune was unknown but familiar.

Soon I could no longer be seen by my friends on the bridge, and the ones that were real I wouldn't see again for weeks. The ones that I had created in my head I won't see again until I die.

Louis and Lisa became very close after this day. Someday they will marry and live happily ever after. Good for Louis. Good for Lisa.

I floated on the heavenly carpet in the path of the river. The song of the wing died to a whisper and they lay me down on the floor of a little row boat. It was used and the white paint on the sides had grayed and chipped. The boat had a name that was stenciled crudely on the bow. It said "Marty."

I took the oars and started powering the boat purposely forward. The water was now smooth and glassy and I began making good time. The trees that adorned the shores were lush and green. The angels were so far away and separated that from my vantage point they began looking like sparrows.

I could see a figure standing on the shore beneath an approaching bridge. It was a woman and she was waving her arms gently, asking me to come her way. I pointed the bow towards her head and rowed steadily in that direction.

There was a new song coming from the trees that draped the shore beneath the span. It wasn't like the song of the angels. It was even more familiar. It was "Louie Louie."

Fur trader vs. Cougar

Chapter Thirty One

I was talking to the late Hunter Thompson this morning. He is writing a new book called "Fear and Loathing in the eternal hereafterlife." He said. "It's going to be a bitch to find a publisher."

So you know, by the time you read this I will most likely be dead. As I write this memory down right now, I am very much alive.

I alluded in the past to the odd way people talk in this neck of the woods. Coach Butcher is from a town called Loogootee, that should be pronounced Lou-Goo-Tea, but instead is Low-Go-Tea. There is a town down this way called Cairo, but people here call it Kay-ro. Peru is pronounced Pay-roo. Vesailles is not Ver-sigh but Ver-sails. There is a town in Kentucky called New Madrid. There is an original Madrid and people all over the world call it Ma-drid. So you might imagine that if there is an old one then the new one should sound just like it. Au contraire. It is not Ma-drid. It is Mad-rid. I'm Mad and I will Rid myself of whatever it is that is making me so.

In the Wabash Valley/Mississippi Valley/Ohio Valley, which I believe includes every Midwestern state except Ohio, there is a fault below the crust of the Earth, that stretches across a vast portion of the eastern section of the south central region of the great Midwest. It is a little known and seldom active natural mistake, known as the New Madrid fault. It runs for 150 miles starting in Kay-ro Illinois and runs through New Madrid Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and down into Arkansas. It's what geological experts have referred to as a disaster waiting to happen. In 1812 it tore apart the Midwest and rerouted the Mississippi river. It still shakes a little from time to time, but has been of little concern to the regular folk here for about 200 years.

So we look like an army, standing on the rise just beyond the street, above the well manicured lawn that runs about 400 yards to the base of the cylindrical George Rogers Clark Memorial. We are on the street that runs west, right into the nearby Abraham Lincoln Memorial bridge. The memorial looks like a giant, slender, birthday cake made of grey limestone. There are big 3 story columns that support the structure , running every 15 feet around the monument. The overhanging stone roof is crowned with a very plain circular rise that gives the effect that another monument could be place directly on top of the existing one, like a "Lego" building block.

Just to the west of the Memorial is a statue of the French fur trader Francis Vigo. Francis is sitting in a great big stone chair, and his garment flows over the arms and onto the base. If one is to believe that this is an accurate depiction of Vigo, then he must have eaten the insides out of every fur he ever traded. He is very fat.

So there we are, a unified force standing abreast, ready to march to the battle. Dave, Candice, Carol, Dr. Granger, Louis, Louis, Coach Butcher, Russell, Cynthia, Mary Beth, Deborah, Lisa, Me, Bob, and John Cougar Mellencamp.

Bob's eyes were as big as saucers behind those magnifying glasses on his face. His mouth hung open wide, his lips were like trembling sausages. "JOHNNY TOUGER!"

"Hi" said Mellencamp as he squashed a cigarette butt with his shoe. When he extended his hand to shake, Bob dropped Oprah from his arms and embraced the rock star in a violent hug that surprised John and made all the air escape from his lungs.

"DOHNNEE TOUGAT!" howled Bob in an ever-evolving form of the performer's name. "I WUV OOH SO MUCH RODDIE COUGRA!

It's funny that as uncomfortable a situation that Mr. Mellencamp was in at this point, he didn't try and push away from Bob. He hugged Bob in return. They seemed like long separated brothers.

I never really got a chance to ask John Cougar Mellencamp what he was doing there that day. We didn't get a chance to talk. Oprah had darted towards the bridge to chase the thousands of birds that had strangely congregated on the ornate, stone and metal guardrail. He was barking frantically at them but they did not fly away. It was about that time that the New Madrid Fault heaved, and shifted. The earth began to tremble and everyone stared at the ground as if they could see what was happening. Sirens started to wail and cars collided. Lisa fell down. The feeling of standing on a fluid Earth created internal uneasiness in my stomach. I panned the world around me and it was all shaking. The bridge was starting to break into pieces and I ran to retrieve Oprah. Louis and Lisa ran behind me.

The rest of my group had their attention on the Memorial. It began to rotate like a Merry-Go-Round, sinking into the ground as it went. John Mellencamp ran toward the structure to see if there was something he could do about it. The statue of Francis Vigo toppled off of it's base and crushed the rock star, killing him. He never had a chance.

I scooped up Oprah and held him tightly. George Roger Clark was standing next to me on the bridge with his mouth agape. "Is this what you brought us here to see?" I asked him.

"I didn't know this was going to happen." He said as the memorial sunk all the way to it's roof. People were crawling from the gaps between the columns and the earth like cockroaches escaping from a bug trap. "This is a disaster!"

As Lisa took Oprah from my arms she tripped into me, knocking me into the guardrail. The section I was holding onto decided to give way as I was steadying myself and I became all arms and legs as I grasped for anything to break my fall. I quickly slipped across the stone opening and within seconds I was hanging, by my fingertips, 800 feet above the swirling Wabash River. The drop to the river was certain death. The base of the bridge, below me, was a bed of concrete and rock. My hands were raw from grasping at the stone bridge and the strength was leaving my fingers. I fell.

As I looked down to see what was going to kill me, my fall suddenly stopped. I could hear Louis calling to me. "I can't let go!...Marty...I can't let go!"

I turned my head upward and saw Louis Tooth's face, red with strain, teeth clinched, eyes watering and staring into mine. The love of a friend and confidant was never more evident. Louis was holding my arm by the wrist and screaming "I can't let go!"

The fascinating part about this was I had no fear. Everyone else's attention was focused on the sinking George Rogers Clark memorial so they didn't see that Louis was holding on to me with his missing hand. Louis appeared as if he were just lying down at the edge of the bridge with the veins popping out on his forehead. I looked like I was frozen in mid-air, waving bye bye about 2 feet below the bridge floor. There was nothing visible to indicate that Louis was stopping me from falling besides the white imprints of his phantom fingers around my wrist.

"I can't let go!" he repeated.

"You must." I calmly replied.

Information Pleeeeze

Chapter one starts in August of 2005. Click on August and start with the post "Brown Lipstick"

Chapter Thirty

"Marty, I'm so proud of you. Wake up! It's 10:30." My young and handsome Father was standing over me shaking my shoulders. "Don't forget to shave today."

Oprah was sleeping next to me in the bed, curled up beside Nancy. I could see shadows through the giant, curtained window. Dave Price and Candace were trying to see inside. "C'mon, said Dave. He was used to getting up early.

I quickly rose, showered and shaved and joined my party outside. They were standing in a semi-circle outside my room, looking like a coffee tasters convention seminar. Each one had paper and Styrofoam cups, each with a different logo on the side, full of steaming, black, liquid amphetamines. They were anxious to get things started. Even Bob had a coffee, except it was in a container too large to be referred to as a cup, with two enormous bendy straws, one red, one fluorescent green, stretching nearly the 3 feet between his mouth and the tub of caffeine. It said SPEEDWAY in giant letters on the side. I thought that was aproppo.

"Alright friends, it's off to Barbara's gift shop, I'm driving!" I said it with such conviction that no one dared deny my mission. Russell, his eye working much better now, shot straight for the back seat of his SUV. Everyone ran as if time was short and boarded with the precision of a Shriner's mini-motorcycle drill team. Down the street we went. No trains would stop us today.

I drove by the "Feedbag" diner and it was really there.

Russell was anxious to tell us all what he saw on CNN that morning. "Did you hear the latest about the virgin birth? It was a hoax!"

"Of course that's what they're going to tell you on CNN Russell! They're just a tool for the Government." Louis said as he stuffed his prosthetic arm beneath the seat in front of him. "Congress don't want no Jesus, then we don't get no Jesus....Plain and simple."

"They say the woman was a virgin and she used a turkey baster to get pregnant."Russell was full of anxiety at what Louis might say to that.

"I have trouble basting a turkey with one of those things, how in fork do you get pregnant with one?" Deborah was probably the only person in the car besides Russell that knew how to cook.

"You can't get pregnant that way, talk about lies. So who are they saying is the father?" Louis pointed at Russell.

"Some baseball player, a minor leaguer with a .247 batting average." Russell winced at his goofy reply, knowing Louis was coming right back.

"Sounds like his average should improve somewhat now."

"What about Raymond, What was he doing there?" I asked Russell.

"Turns out he's dating Madonna."

Everyone in the car screamed simultaneously. "What!"

"She met him at the drug store in Arfordsville and they fell in love."

I couldn't believe my ears. "What was she doing in Arfordsville?"

"She had come looking for you Marty...Didn't you know? She believes that you are the Messiah. Something about this new weird religion she's into. They have statues of you and their disciples are wearing golden fried chicken leg medallions around their necks. At their services they are wearing great big bandages on their heads." Russell was on a roll.

"You're kidding right?" As I asked the question of Russell, Mary Beth opened her blouse enough to show me the medallion adorning her chest. When I looked in the mirror I saw Lisa doing the same thing. 24 karat fried chicken leg on a golden rope chain. "Holy Mother of God!." I said.

"Marty, they had them at the gift shop in the Hotel." Louis said.

"The Holiday Inn has a gift shop?" asked Deborah.

My son Louis was reading a Historical Guide to Old Vincennes that he picked up at the Holiday Inn Gift shop. It was filled with fun facts about Vincennes. "Did you know Red Skelton was born here?" I coughed. "Did you know that John Mellencamp went to Vincennes University?"

I went over a set of railroad tracks a little too fast and everyone bounced high in their seats.

"There it is! Barbara's Gift Shopp!" I cried

We all piled out and went into the shop. We passed a man scolding his young daughter out in front of the store. "You just be quiet and let me do the talking. I can't believe you did this!"

We walked in to a wonderland of silly crap and kitsch. There were collector spoons and shot glasses and little metal banks in the shape of the George Rogers Clark memorial. There were adult items, jellies and oils, personal vibrators for sale. There were dolls and stuffed animals. At the counter there was a giant sign saying "This just in!" above a display of fried chicken medals. What in the world was I supposed to find here that was going to change my life anyway.

At the back of the store was a door to another room. Above the door was a sign that said "Instruments" Either side of the door had tables full of bongs, cigarette papers, and drug paraphernalia. I thought this must be the place.

I wandered up and down the rack of guitars, I took some down and strummed them, but nothing caught my interest. I figured whatever it was that I had been sent here for must be in the front and I walked back in to find Barbara herself, engaged in a fight with the man we saw in front of the store when we came in.

"There's nothing I can do about it!"she screamed. "It left here in perfect condition and I'm not taking damaged merchandise back just because you're unhappy with you daughter."

"But you started all this, I paid too much money to let this happen, there must be something you can do." His daughter began crying.

He opened up a guitar case on the floor to display a beautiful Paul Reed Smith guitar, perfect in every way, except for the burned image on the body. It was an exact replica of the scar on my head. I don't know how it ended up looking that way, it turns out the little girl was trying to burn her own initials on it with a craft tool and had a horrible slip of the hand.

I pulled a wad of cash out of my hand. It was two thousand dollars. I'm not sure how it got there and I know that it was the first time since the accident that I recognized the value of thee money in my hand. "I'll give you 2 grand for it."

The little girl look stunned and then happy. I took the guitar and walked out, a parade of friends behind me. She followed us out the door and watched us walk away in the direction of the Memorial. The sun caught the medallion around her neck and sent a gleaming sparkle in our direction.

I felt water hit the back of my neck. Bob had purchased a squirt gun.

Chapter Twenty Nine

I let my eyes scan the room with the same reverence and wonder that a dung-beetle would receive the floor of an elephant cage. They were all there in one room. All of my idols. The next table over was Frank Zappa talking with Jim Morrison and George Harrison. Janis Joplin was standing at the jukebox with Billie Holliday. John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, and Willie Dixon were playing poker for a million dollars. Duane Allman sat on a stool with his back to the bar laughing across the diner at all the dead guys from Lynard Skynard. It was rock and roll Eden.

"Move the crushed velvet down, Hoodoo." Said Stevie Ray Vaughan to Jimi Hendrix as he elbowed him to scoot towards the wall in order to make more room for me. "Plant it here Marty." He patted the open seat with his muscular hand. "Have some fried!"

"I didn't mean to crash your party." The truth is I would've crashed this party in my underpants.

"No big thang." Stevie laughed a raucous howl and slapped me on the back. "We were hoping you'd find us soon, we have been waiting."

"Hey I dig the groovy head ornament M! I never would've thought of such a trademark when I was alive." Hendrix spoke in such a sweet and polite tone, not the crazy monster that his guitar playing might lead you to expect.

Stevie took Oprah while I dug into the plate of delicious chicken. I tried speaking with my mouth full and what came out was a mish-mash of gobbledy-gook. I took a drink from the stein of beer that Robert Johnson scooted my way and tried again. "I guess you know how I got the scar?"

"Oh the story is a legend here, like the Wizard of Oz." Jim Morrison called out from the next table. "The tornado, the fried chicken leg sticking in your skull, the operation, it's totally ridiculous and we love it!"

"Didn't the souls of Indians jump inside your body when you were young? That's interesting!" I replied.

"It was all Bullshit Marty. I invited them in, but they had better places to visit in the Happy Hunting ground." He gave me a black stare for a moment and then laughed a loud and evil sounding howl. "It was all part of the act. I was a singer, poet, and most of all an actor."

"Give it a rest for a couple of decades Jim, you're going to wear it out." Zappa responded in a deep, television announcer voice. He took a large bite from a plate of nachos.

"Freak me out Frank!" Morrison's mug moved close to Zappa's face when he said it in a mousey, nasal voice. Frank found it so unexpectedly funny he shot cheese out of his nose. "Freak me out!"

Stevie Ray wiped my chin with a napkin. "Marty, there are so many things we need to talk about, you have been running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. You are in need of guidance. That's why we told George Rogers Clark to bring you here."

Jimi lifted his hat and scratched his afro. "Do chickens really do that? I think that's just a wives tale."

Robert Johnson straightened his thin black tie. "Oh, thet is no waaves tale Jimi! A chicken can run around with no head. You see this applies directly to Marty here." His eyes turned to me, his demeanor calm and direct. "Marty, a chicken's brain stem contains all the information he needs to survive. Under the right conditions a headless chicken can last for a very very long time."

"Like an hour?" Hendrix asked.

"17 months." Robert said with a blink and a smile. Stevie picked up a fried wing and stared at it closely.

"How does that apply to me?" I bit into a leg.

"Marty, you've got about a year left." Robert replied coldly. "At the outside."

"What are you saying?" My mouth was full, but there was no doubt what I was asking.

Stevie put the wing back on the plate." Robert is telling you that you're living on borrowed time and you need to straighten out a few things if you want to make it to heaven.

"I saw heaven, I talked to God, I learned all there is to know."

"Really, what did you learn? What did God look like? Was Red Skelton there?" Zappa asked.

Robert Johnson saw the sad and dumbfounded look on my face. "I sold my soul to Red Skelton at the crossroads so I's could play de blues." Jimi and Stevie high fived.

"But I saw it! It was Eden."

"It was a club Med Marty." Morrison grabbed some chicken. "It's a resort that makes you feel as if you're the wealthiest of Kings....until the bill comes."

"Wipe off your hands Marty." Steve said as he handed me his number 1, Fender Stratocaster. "You have a song you need to play for us."

I was never a great guitar player even though I prayed I could be. Taking a page from Jim Morrison I had even begged the soul of Stevie Ray to jump into my body like him and the dead Indians.

"Marty, you are like a scuba diver. You have tunnel vision, seeing the beauty and majesty in front of you, but there are all kinds of ugly, dangerous creatures swimming right next to you. Having just a piece of your brain in the afterlife is like being a one-eyed man at a 3-D movie. You're missing all the important crap." Zappa could always explain things in a way I could understand.

Steve Ray held up his hand and the conversations stopped. "Play." He commanded.

I nervously moved my fingers toward the satiny strings and they pulled toward them as if magnetized. With no amplifier in sight the room filled with a perfectly round and expressive note. Just one note, and Jimi shed tears that streaked his face. My reticence turned to confidence and I began to play. I played a melody that sounded like a full orchestra blending into a jazz concerto. The song was coming from my heart and transmitting directly into that beautiful guitar. As I played, the notes came faster and although complex, each note retained it's own luster and identity. The instrument was not playing itself, make no mistake, it was coming out of me and was driving the axe to its limits. My eyes could not remain open, I tried, believe me. I saw the light of eternal life and the textures of the universal fabric. I needed no more answers because the questions were no longer relevant.

"You were always my favorite musician. I always wished I could play like you." said Robert Johnson. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was smiling and crying like Jimi.

Later when I became the most critically adored guitarist in history, people would say that the accident removed the part of my brain that told me I couldn't play like a virtuoso. There is no truth to that.

People like to say that a human only uses 10 percent of their brain in an entire lifetime. This is not true. Science has proved that you use pretty much all of your brain all of the time, even when asleep. I contend that you only use 10 percent of your soul.

Before I awoke back in my bed at the Holiday Inn I remember Stevie Ray Vaughan saying to me. "You'll find exactly what you need at Barbara's gift shop.....I think it's called Barbara's..It's over there by the Memorial....It opens at 10....You won't need to be there much before noon...And Marty.....You're not a womanizing sex maniac...Not yet anyway....Haaaa!"

Chapter Twenty Eight

We passed an Amish Golf Course on the way. I wondered for a moment if I was hallucinating.

Deborah had struck up a conversation with Lisa about health and fitness. "I'm taking a yoga class three days a week, it has really toned up my stomach and thighs."

"I've got other ways of firming up my thighs, right Marty?" I looked at her in the rear view mirror and winced. Cynthia shot her a nasty glare. Mary Beth grabbed my arm and squeezed.

"We do it in a room that is at least a hundred degrees, it really loosens you up quickly." She was totally oblivious to the nasty feelings developing in the car in much the same way she was unaware that she had sent me to near death when she had called her own sinking automobile her "Baby."

"Some people don't need a warm room to be loose." Cynthia shot in Lisa's direction.

"I especially feel it in my groin." Deborah smiled proudly. Mary Beth spit out a laugh she had tried to stifle. Lisa threw back her head with a chuckle. Cynthia covered her lips.

We drove all around Vincennes, a city of about 20,000. We were stopped several times at railroad crossings that seemed to be just about everywhere. I swear that we were stopped by the same train twice. We drove past Vincennes University and the George Rogers Clark Memorial. We drove into Illinois via the ornate Memorial Bridge across the Wabash River. We drove around to the forest preserve. We came to another bridge that would take us back into Indiana across the Wabash again. It was a rather non-descript looking structure. It would be nothing more than a hiway with a concrete guardrail except for the green sign erected at it's entry..."Wabash River..Red Skelton Bridge."

Red Skelton was a comedian in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. He became a statesman and a painter in his later years. He did portraits of clowns. In the 60's he had his own television show on CBS. He would end each program by saying "Good night..and may God Bless." He was born in Vincennes and as a result got a bridge named for him. A bridge is the final tribute to a person that has outlived their usefulness. Naming a bridge after someone is like saying "Go ahead and die now!"

On my trip to heaven I saw him talking to God. He was still a comedian in heaven and had a flock of people following him around, laughing at all of his jokes. At the end of his discussion he looked at God and said "Good night...and may YOU bless." The laughter was deafening.

As the sun was sinking we arrived at the Holiday Inn motel and checked in to our rooms. It was right beneath hiway 41 but the traffic could not be heard inside the rooms. Bob immediately put on his giant swim trunks, grabbed his safety goggles and water toys and scrambled to the swimming pool. Frightened parents grabbed their children from the water and rushed them to their rooms.

Louis headed off to find the ice machine, his bucket under his arm. I took Oprah for a long walk. The women gathered together in one room and started a gab fest. I was afraid it might turn into a riot before the night was through and that gave me the energy to give Oprah an "extra" long walk. Granger and Coach found a basketball goal and started a game of HORSE. My son Louis sat with his mother by the pool and kept an eye on Bob.

I walked past every fast food restaurant that could ever be as I walked. There was every kind of really bad food known to man. Vincennes was my kind of town.

I walked a little too long into the night, past all the quickie restaurants and their signs, hoisted high above the street on giant poles in order to be seen from the highway. The neighborhoods became quaint and genteel, filled with lovely little homes with a European flair. I was getting very hungry and Oprah had become too tired to walk on his own. I came to a quaint little bistro, its lights cutting into the encroaching fog. It was called "The Feedbag", a terrible name embossed on a tasteful golden, lit plaque on the door. I opened the door partially and got the attention of a bus-boy that looked remarkably like the late, grunge rock singer Kurt Cobain.

"Listen, I am really hungry, is it all right if I bring my dog inside?"

His facial expression was empty and expressionless, but his voice was full of sweetness. "Sure, come on in, sit anywhere."

"Thanks, I've never been in Vincennes before and I'm a little lost...." He walked away in the middle of my sentence and began clearing a very dirty table across the room.

The room was packed full of people in animated discussion. Their conversations were not limited to the individual tables. Some were waving in sign language from one end of the room to the other. The mood was intense and still filled with joy.

"Hey Marty, come sit over here! Bring Oprah!" Who in the hell knew my name and that of my little furry companion? A white man and black man sat side by side in a booth 10 yards away. They were both wearing black, bolero hats and flashy shirts. They bore a striking resemblance to two of the greatest guitar players that ever walked the earth. As I approached the table I saw a young roguish black man sitting across from them. The white man extended an open palm to present him to me. "Marty, I'd like you to meet the legendary Robert Johnson."

"Bob." I tipped my head in approval. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix laughed hysterically at me referring to Robert Johnson as "Bob". They held him in highest esteem.

Kurt Cobain brought a heaping bowl full of perfectly fried chicken to the table and slid it softly onto the red speckled Formica. He extended a handful of napkins towards me and politely spoke. "Here's your chicken Marty, I think you'll like it... I made it especially for you." His face then burst into a fireworks display of glee. "Curt done good?"

"Curt done realll good." I smiled.

Chapter Twenty Seven

There it was, the sign I had been looking for. We had stopped at a Steak and Shake for a little lunch and conversation. Things took a turn downwards when Louis got a milk shake. He tore the end off of the paper that surrounded his straw and blew on the open end. The paper flew like a rocket across the table into Russells' good eyeball and stuck. Russell began screaming and fell to floor. Dr. Granger pulled the paper out of his eye and poured a glass of water into it. He should've taken the ice out before he poured. Paper thin shards of ice got under his eyelid and sent Russell into a rage like I've never seen. Louis, Louis, and Granger dragged him into the men's room and worked on him for about 15 minutes. The echoes from the tiled bathroom were reminiscent of the bovine cries in a slaughter house. Some people got up and left.

I had finished eating and I went to pay the bill. Fortunately no one came to the register while I was standing there. I wouldn't have known how to find the right amount of money to hand over. There, above the register, was a message written on a thin, swinging sign. I had been contemplating our adventure and what it could mean. I thought of Fort Sackville. I thought of Sacagawea. I thought of the "Sack of lies." Here in front of me was a message from the Steak and Shake people. It said "Takhomasak!"

I stared at it like I was looking at the Grand Canyon. A waitress, noticing my head scar and my comatose condition took Mary Beth's elbow in her hand. "Is he alright? Is he brain damaged?"

Mary Beth did not wince. "Yes and......Yes." She replied.

I decided that it would be a good idea if I drove the rest of the way. I don't know if everyone thought it was a good idea or they were just afraid of hurting my feelings, but we all piled into the car with me behind the wheel. Everyone but Russell sat erect and wide-eyed as we pulled out onto the highway. Silence filled the SUV until Lisa spoke. "You might want to try the right side of the road." I complied.

Everyone remained silent when I passed a fire truck with its lights and siren on.

I drove pretty well despite the distractions. My dead dog Nancy stood on the hood of the car for about 20 miles feeling the wind on her face. The legendary Jesse Owens ran beside us for about 6 miles.

Outside the town of Shoals, Indiana we came upon a man attempting to change the tire on his Mercury Montego and I felt the need to stop and help him. My son Louis jumped quickly from the back seat and offered his expertise in tire changing. He had worked for a tire store when he was in high school and could handle the job easily. The little man was grouchy and unreceptive, he went so far as to push Louis away and told him he could handle it. He chose to pretend as if we weren't even there and continued fumbling through the job like he was wearing a pair of boxing gloves. "Let my son give you a hand buddy." I said as nicely as I could.

"Get the hell away from me." His little, yellow, corn niblet teeth bared as he spoke. "Mind your own damn business."

One armed Louis yapped back at him. "Don't be a stupid jackass you stupid jackass."

The man threw down his tire iron and tried to come face to face with Louis. He was considerably shorter. "Save me from your Kentucky bullshit ....Idiot....asshole." He sized up Louis looking at his missing limb and called him the nastiest thing he could come up with in such short notice. "Arm-o!" he said.

Louis grabbed his neck with his existing hand and squeezed. The man swung wildly at Louis' head. We all ran to break up the fight. Granger came running down the highway from Candace's Mercedes. Bob came screaming something no one could understand. Russell came charging blindly and ran squarely into a "Do Not Pass" sign and collapsed into the ditch. Cynthia sneaked up from behind and kicked the little man in his butt , accidentally catching his testicles with the tip of her shoe. He fell to the ground clutching his groin and writhing in pain.

"Coach Butcher!" said Dr. Granger, instantly recognizing the winingest coach in Indiana High School basketball history. "Coach Jack Butcher, the winingest coach in history!" He said.

Coach Butcher smiled his yellow little smile, still clutching his injured goodies. "Why yes."

"I'm Reggie Granger, power forward for the 1985 Wildcats." Granger smiled like a Las Vegas marquee.

"Oh my God!" Coach Butcher leapt to his feet and began pumping Granger's hand. "I remember you. You should've gone pro!"

"Not in the cards." Granger bowed is head for a moment. "What are you doing here?"

"I live down the road here in Loogootee." He said.

I had read his book,"Butcher Ball" that I had found by the road after the accident in Russell's car the first time I got out of the hospital. Now here in a twist of irony, I had found HIM by the side of the road. He pronounced the name of his home town Low-Go-Tea. Every time I had read it in the book I heard it differently in my head. I read it as Lou-Goo-Tea.

Coach and Granger started yakking like two little girls. In the time it takes for an Indy 500 pitstop, Louis had fixed the tire. We drove to Loogootee and dropped the Coach's car off at Tater's Sunoco gas station, next to the only stoplight in town, and he jumped into the Mercedes with Dr. Granger. He was joining our trip to Vincennes. Another piece of crap stuck to the rolling snowman called Martin.