Unhappy New Year’s Eve
“I wasn’t really gonna kill her.”
The Mad Scientist filled his pint glass with coffee brandy, added a splash of half-and-half, then used a stub of a finger to stir the drink. “I just said I would if she called Wilbur.” He took a long sip. “I was super pissed. The bitch was spying on me!” He shook his head. “For him!”
Just after sundown on New Year’s Eve, Wilbur the Alpaca Farmer called and asked me to deal with the Mad Scientist, who apparently had gone nuts. Julie, Wilbur’s Passamaquoddy girlfriend, had left him a disturbing voicemail about death threats from the Mad Scientist. So I headed to my pal’s hundred-room house and found him upstairs.
An hour earlier, Julie had driven past the compound and spotted the Mad Scientist using Wilbur’s tractor to clear snow from his dooryard. The brand new, four-wheel drive, hydrostatic John Deere with back hoe and extra large loading bucket that was supposed to be locked up inside Wilbur’s red barn. After the alpacas were shipped south for the winter, Wilbur explicitly told the Mad Scientist not to touch the tractor.
So Julie drove over to Wilbur’s and parked atop the hill, where she’d get a cell phone signal. She intended to call Wilbur — who was in Florida with his wife — to let him know what she’d seen. She didn’t realize the Mad Scientist was in hot pursuit on the tractor, pushing the Deere as hard as it would go.
By the time the Mad Scientist caught up he was totally crazed. He knew he was busted. The simple fact was the tractor was off-limits. But the Mad Scientist believed Wilbur owed him money, so he treated the tractor like it was his own. Which meant he beat the shit out of it.
He’d hired himself out for a couple small excavation gigs, but he’d mostly been using the tractor for snow removal. Eastport was getting hit every week with another foot of the white stuff. Even with the tractor, keeping his backyard ice rink clear was almost a full-time job. He couldn’t lose access to the machine. He needed to explain that to Julie. That’s why he blocked the driveway with the tractor and shut down the engine.
“DON’T CALL WILBUR,” he yelled, jumping off the John Deere. “DON’T YOU FUCKING CALL WILBUR!”
As he approached her Jeep, Julie rolled up her window and hit all the locks, which made the Mad Scientist madder. “DON’T CALL WILBUR!” he screamed, pulling on the door handle. “DON’T YOU DARE! I’ll FUCKIN’ KILL YOU!!!”
Julie’s tween-age daughters cowered in the back seat. They weren’t Wilbur’s kids, but when his wife wasn’t in Eastport he treated the two girls like they were. Wilbur hugged, squeezed and told ’em he loved ’em. He encouraged them to take the seatbelt-less Gator for bumpy rides across the pastures, through the woods and on the beach while he and their mom had sex in one of the little shacks scattered across the 40 acres. So the Mad Scientist would be in double trouble: for using the tractor and for making Wilbur’s occasional pride-and-joys cry.
Julie put the Jeep into four-wheel and easily drove around the John Deere and away. The Mad Scientist left the tractor and walked home. I arrived soon after.
“Well, I guess we ain’t friends anymore,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Friggin’ bitch. Fucking spy.”
“Dude, she wasn’t spying,” I said. Truth was, Julie was one of the few who treated the Mad Scientist with kindness. I’d witnessed her dropping off a free pizza or smokes or coffee brandy on many occasions. She’d give him rides because he couldn’t keep a set of wheels on the road.
“She just happened to be driving by,” I said.
“She’s a spy!” He shook his head emphatically. “Got a joint?”
“Nope.”
“Getting cold in here,” he said, and drained the rest of the drink. Then he refilled the pint glass with coffee brandy, splashed in some dairy, stirred and swigged. “Gimme a hand getting some wood.”
We went outside to the forest of pallets stacked in his dooryard. He collected the pallets during nightly raids on the factory around the corner from his manse that manufactured chemical, nuclear and biological warfare suits for the military.
“Gonna miss that tractor.” He sighed, then took another long sip of his cocktail “Made stealing the pallets easy.”
We lugged six pallets upstairs and into the Great Room. He fired up Wilbur’s chainsaw and sliced the pallets in half. “Bastard ain’t getting his saw back,” he said once we regained our hearing and he finished his drink. “It’s mine now. Where’s my jug?” He found the coffee brandy and fixed himself another libation.
“Gonna need more pallets since I’m using both fireplaces tonight.” He smiled. “It’s New Year’s Fucking Eve. Goddamn it! Ha!” He pointed at me. “You sure you don’t have a joint?”
“Positive.”
“That sucks.” We dragged pallets to the fireplaces on both ends of the Great Room. He splashed gasoline onto the wood and lit the fire with a burning piece of cardboard. Almost instantly, the pallets were ablaze.
The flickering glow of the flames reflected off his face and glasses. He smiled while his buzz continued to climb upward. Thanks to the sugar and caffeine in the brandy, he’d have the energy to stay conscious until the liquor was gone. I needed to leave. Didn’t want to spend New Year’s Eve with the Mad Scientist. My sweet wife and I had done so the year before and watched in horror as he descended into his private hell.
“I got a joint.” He took a spliff out of his cig pack. “Wanna get high?”
We smoked the ganja as the fire grew into a rage. The phone rang. The answering machine picked up, then Wilbur’s voice came in loud and clear.
“Listen here, you asshole. I just talked to Julie and she told me about the bullshit you pulled. If that tractor isn’t back in the barn by tomorrow morning, I’m calling the cops and telling ’em you stole it. And I’ll press charges. Furthermore, you son-of-a-bitch, I might have to get a restraining order against you because…”
“FUCK YOU!” the Mad Scientist roared, shutting the machine off. “FUCK YOU!”
He walked over to his stereo. The CD player was already loaded. He hit play and the German industrial-metal band Rammstein started to pulse and blast from the huge speakers. My cue to exit. He didn’t care. He was officially drunk, high, and rockin’ out.
Outside, I looked up at the grand windows of the Great Room and watched his shadow dance, thrash and wiggle in the firelight. No wonder everyone thought he was a raving lunatic. The place looked like an abandoned asylum occupied by a forgotten inmate.
•••
A couple hours before midnight, the Mad Scientist used the tractor for one last job. We both really loved mussels and had our favorite spots to pick ’em. Problem was, with all the snow it wasn’t easy to get to Wilbur’s shoreline, where we accessed the mussel beds at low water. So the Mad Scientist drunkenly decided to use the tractor to carve us a path to the beach. It went 500 feet from the driveway. Downhill.
The first bit, he said, was easy. Then the hill got steeper. The tractor bucket didn’t dig well at that downward angle. Then the wind arose and a squall of freezing rain blew across the alpaca farm. The tractor got stuck. To get free, he had to alternate using the bucket and the backhoe, pulling and pushing his way, inch by inch, back up the hill. He was almost back to the driveway when the tractor ran out of fuel.
“So I said, ‘fuck it,’ and left it there,” the Mad Scientist told me the next morning. He lit a smoke. “Let someone else deal with this bullshit.” He sighed. “You got a joint?”
Crash Barry will be reading from Sex, Drugs and Blueberries and Tough Island during the Dec. 10 publication party for Kapital Ink #5 at Zero Station, 222 Anderson St., Portland.
