2016 The Treachery of Storytelling Pt. 2

2016 The Treachery of Storytelling Pt. 2
white2tea.com

These days I’m watching my back. Yes, it’s that time of year again. Most of us have at least one crazy person in our life who really needs those meds and just won’t take them. My crazy person goes off every summer, and is right here just when I need someone to show up at my house with a heavy piece of plumbing and threaten to kill me. In between those days he might sneak onto my property randomly to use my garden hose for an improvised shower or yell through my open windows. I can usually smell his vehicle from half a mile away and prepare by closing up the house. Fortunately for me, Mr. B  has no interest in tea so I don’t need to worry about my stash.

I reported on my crazy friend Mr. B  last summer, a first installment on my blog. So here I am with Storytelling Part 2. This year Mr B seems worse than previous years. Normally his episodes run their course in ten weeks, but now we’re at twelve with no end in sight. The whole town is equally annoyed, and someone posted a photo of his vehicles on Facebook.

L.

July 7 at 6:58am ·

Keep your kids away from this guy. Supposedly he has a mental issue and entices young women and children to his camper. Be aware.

Messaged it to my crazy friend's Cousin Greg. We’ve known each other for fifteen years in dealing with old man Mr. B. About ten years in, Cousin Greg says one day:

“You know, he’s not really my cousin.”

“What? He’s told me forever that you’re his cousin,” I couldn’t believe it.

“Well yeah, but he’s no relation. I don’t know why he says I’m his cousin.”

“He said your grandma was his grandpa’s mistress, that you’re half cousins,” I says.

“Nope,” Greg says.

If you pretend something long enough it might just become real, and in fact we all still refer to Greg as Mr. B’s cousin. A bit handy when Mr. B lands in jail. So, Greg calls me the other day.

“I got something to report. He was up at my house,” Greg says.

“He shouldn’t be in that county. At all," I says.

Mr B gets jumped by the cops immediately in too many towns in this state.

“He says he came down because I wasn’t answering his calls. But he calls me ten times a day, and it’s mostly singing.”

“Yah.”

“So he gets here, and he’s mostly filthy. Took a shower in our basement but then he put those dirty clothes right back on.”

“Yah.”

“Have you smelled that motorhome?”

“Oh yah.”

“You can’t even get in it, the whole back is filled with junk.”

“Been like that a year at least,” I says.

“He says they’re antiques,” Greg says. “Got mad when I told him it’s junk.”

“Yah.”

“He’s got jars of urine in there.”

“Oh yah.”

“So he raids our refrigerator and took almost all our food. I don’t care about the food because I can tell he’s hungry. Then he stole beer from the basement.”

“He must be out of money,” I says.

“Didn’t ask me for money.”

“But you gave him some.”

“Well, yeah. The cops told him to drive to the county line and he was out of gas. So I gave him fifty bucks for gas.”

“So, the cops were there?”

“Yep, they showed up right after he pulled in out front. I told him he could stay overnight but has to leave tomorrow. So today I had to go to work, and we got security footage showing he spent a half hour trying to get into our garage.”

“Oh, geez.”

“So then he goes to the Shell on the corner to gas up, and the cops pull in. He blows .09, just under the alcohol limit. At 1:00 in the afternoon.”

“Was he arrested?” I ask.

“No, but they wouldn’t let him drive. If he drove, they’d have arrested him. I had to leave work to go all the way over and drive the motorhome out of the gas station. Did you know the motorhome has no brakes and the tail lights don't work?”

"I let him park in my driveway this spring to install a new back brake. What happened to that?"

"He says the back brakes only are 10% of the brakes, the front ones are the 90%. I don't how he even drives that thing. If the cops saw it's got no brakes and tail lights, they wouldn't let him drive it."

“I can’t believe they didn’t arrest him. Usually they throw him in the tank for nothing.”

“I talked them out of it,” Greg says. “Told them on the phone not to arrest him, he has enough problems already.”

“So he’s still there?” I ask.

“Nope, cops drove him to the county line. I made him promise me he’d go back to the junkyard up north.”

Mr. B has been parking at an empty farmhouse where the acreage is full of junk cars. He gets electricity in exchange for helping the owner clean up the acreage.

“I’m really pissed about that Facebook post,” Greg says. “You know he’s no child molester.”

“I don’t think many people saw it.”

“He shoulda stayed up at the junkyard. He needs to hunker down.”

“Yah, and clean out that motorhome, the state is supposed to be coming out to assess him for incompetency. Tell him to get rid of those urine jars.”

“I told him,” Greg says. “He said not to talk to you. So I’m violating his orders because I talked to you.”

“Why’s that? He calls me all the time.”

“He says you’re holding on to his hit record. He is planning a world tour with his hit records and he says you won’t email the MP3s to anyone.”

This crazy part is actually true.

I recently acquired an old recording of Mr. B singing which took me fifteen years to track down, including five years of begging the one person in the world who happens to own a copy. The recordings are an A side and B side of a single record produced by BMI in 1975. Mr. B was younger then, and not crazy. The recording is actually a phenomenal example of the California hippie country rock era. He lost all his copies of this recording session and everything else he ever recorded. I’ve tracked down everything he recorded over the years, but this last one was a stickler for all but the tenacious. Out of the blue, the guy in California I’d been begging emailed a digital copy along with the labels. I phoned Mr. B the day I got them. I played it over the phone to him and hung up. So he knows I have those songs.

I figure if I have something Mr. B wants, it’s less incentive for him to kill me. He kills me, he gets nothing. Actually, the recordings are technically mine, since the one person who owns the actual single record emailed them to me. I deal straight with Mr. B though. He’ll get his recordings, but he’s gotta come down from that mania and not hurt me in the meantime.

“I haven’t done anything with those recordings,” I says.

“Well, keep in touch,” Greg says. “And go easy on the bad news, okay?”

Greg had cancer a few years back. The cancer is mostly in remission, but he’s mindful. And he married his nurse from the hospital. I haven’t seen Greg in years. We just talk by phone or computer.

So that was Tuesday. Now today we are at Friday. I message again.

“Sorry, bad news. Mr. B charged with selling alcohol to a minor. Hope it’s not your beer.”

“He’s going down,” Greg types.

“Thirty days jail and $500 fine for first offense,” I type back.

“I just fought with Facebook for the past two days to take that post down and they will not do it,” Greg says. “Even threatened them with a lawsuit.”

“I doubt many people even saw it.”

I check the Facebook post: only eleven reactions, a few comments, a couple trolls, and…5889 shares.

“Look, she has seven kids," I type. "But maybe he should stay out of the county.”

“He should’ve stayed at the junkyard.”

“I’m going through that town on Monday,” I says. “On the way back I’ll just check if he’s there.”

I go back to the internet and look at Vinelink, the national jail website.

“Scratch that, he’s in jail. The charges are for a city ordinance, they must have jailed him for another reason.” Normally, you just get handed the ticket for a city fine.

“He should’ve stayed at the junkyard.”

Guessing at this point the cops either drunk tanked Mr. B or they are holding him pending the state evaluation this county ordered last month.

“Mom, you are not gonna help that guy,” my son says at dinner when I bring it up.

Dear Son has had enough, more than enough from my crazy friends.

“I wouldn’t just drive up,” I says. “I’m going through there anyway on Monday.”

“Mom, you have to stay away from that guy and not help him.”

“I’m not helping him, I happen to be going that way come Monday.”

“He’ll just come back here.”

“He won’t, that’s why I’m holding on to those recordings. Collateral. He hurts me, he gets nothing.”

I explain to my son that I’ve tried, yes, really tried over the years to make friends with normal people but for whatever reason the only friends that stick are insane. My son spies the tea.

“Did you buy that?”

“No. It’s not old arbor.”

So, if you don’t see me after Monday, you’ll know I got kilt. The question will be who done it. The tea, Mr. B, my son, or all three.