And Now for Something Completely Different...

Ok, so this is the first time I've ever felt the need to put a disclaimer in front of one of my posts. A few people have asked recently how I ended up with the nickname Diesel, and as the truth is not particularly interesting in this case, I decided to do what I always do: Make something up. The idea was to come up with a story that explained the nickname yet was so absurd and out of character for me that there's absolutely no way anyone would ever believe it. But, as generally happens, I completely lost control over the direction of the post about a sentence and a half in, and the result is something like an abbreviated version of Cool Hand Luke as imagined by Quentin Tarantino. Not only is it thematically divergent from pretty much everything else I've ever written, well, it's just plain divergent. So if you’re easily offended, maybe skip this one. Also, it’s about four times as long as a typical post. And if you do end up reading it, please remember that this is a work of fiction, and does not in anyway reflect my actual views or correspond in any way to reality, except for the facts that:

• I am a male


• I once drove through Texas


• Some people really do call me "Diesel"

Clear enough? Ok, so there's no lifeguard beyond this point. Proceed at your own risk. No children under 18 admitted, and all that.


The Legend of Diesel

There wasn't much to do in the tiny West Texas town I grew up in 'cept throw rocks at crows and rip off car stereos, so I was bound to get busted for the second one eventually. At the time I was runnin' with a couple of other no-good dead-enders, who went by the names Skeet and Colt. "Skeet" because his daddy was always shootin' at him, and "Colt" because he kicked so hard that his momma died two months before he was born. Me? Hell, nobody even thought I deserved a name. They all just called me "kid," usually with a "good-for-nothing" in front of it. Skeet and Colt were sixteen. I was only fifteen, but they let me run with them cuz I was good in a fight and could out-smoke and out-drink the both of them combined.

So after they busted us we got hauled before the judge, all dressed in our Sunday best. The judge was probably just gonna send us to the juvie camp, cuz that's what they do around there to kids what ain't got no future. But then our no-good fat-ass public defender opens his pie hole and says, "Yer honor, these is just three messed up kids." He meant it to be helpful, but wouldn't you know that right then and there was when I got all fed up to here being called kid, so I says to the judge, "Yer honor, I ain't no kid." Which is how Skeet and Colt got sent to the juvie camp, but me, the youngest one, got seven years hard labor.

I ain't gonna lie to you, that work farm wasn't no fun. We spent fourteen hours a day breakin' rocks with picks. They didn't tell us why, and we didn't ask. We ain't never seen anybody pick up any of them rocks we broke, so we figgered we was breakin' rocks to build character or some such nonsense. Well, my character got built into a mean-ass sonofobitch with hands like leather and arms like steel cables. The guards was hard on us, but the way the Texas sun beat down on us there weren't no question whose bitches we really were.

They labelled me "uncooperative" on account of that's what I was. The other convicts took a break every couple hours to have a cigarette, but not me, cuz to have a cigarette you had to say "Please boss can I get a light?" and I wasn't please-bossin' nobody. I went for six months without a cigarette, which was tough, cuz I started smoking when I was four. Then one day it got so hot that an old dead oak tree caught on fire, and I ran right over there and lit my cigarette. The other convicts was mighty upset that the one shade tree for a hundred miles around got burnt down, but I was happy as a pig in shit to get a light that I didn't have to please-boss for. I chain-smoked from that one cigarette for the next six and a half years, and never once had to ask for a light.

Once I had my cigarette goin', them other convicts expected I was gonna join them for their breaks, but my daddy always told me not to fraternize with no-good reprobates, cuz that's how he became one. Well I shore as hell wasn't gonna turn into a no-good reprobate like my daddy, so I just kept on breakin' rocks and chain smokin' while they was chattin' up the guards at their cute little ten minute convict picnic. Only reason I ever came over there was to fill up my drinkin' bottle from the big water tank on the back of the prison truck. The water tasted like iron and pesticides, but I figured I was gettin' my minerals and keepin' my insides clean of bugs, so I didn't mind.

This went on for awhile, but pretty soon the other convicts got sick of me actin' like I was better than they was, and breakin' six times as much rocks as they was breakin', and the guards were itchin' for a please-boss, cuz please-bosses are what prison guards get instead of the love of a good woman. So they was makin' fun of me and callin' me a bitch for workin' through my break, and then somebody says, "Man, he must have gasoline in that bottle, the way he's workin.'" And then another guy, the biggest, meanest guy in the place, who they called Tex on account of he was from Oklahoma, spoke up. He says, "Naw, the way he smokes, he's a diesel engine." And then they started callin' me Diesel, and saying, "Hey Diesel, come get some more fuel" and dumbass shit like that. When I just kept breaking rocks, they says to the guard, "Boss, make him come over here." Boss didn't want to, but then they started sayin', "I bet you couldn't get old Diesel to come over here if you tried." And Boss didn't like that. They kept on him until finally he says, "Boy, get yer ass over here." And he put a period on it by spittin' his Skoal juice in my direction.

Well I figured I was there to break rocks, not to entertain Boss and the no-good reprobates, so that's what I kept doin.' Boss told me two more times, but I just kept on breakin' rocks. Finally he says to the no-good reprobates, "You grab that sorry sumbitch and bring him over here." And it took eight of them, but that's what they did. I fought like a wildcat, but Tex socked me good in the gut, and I went down. The rest of them piled on, and pretty quick I was flatter on the ground than roadkill. Somehow I still had my cigarette in my mouth, and Boss came over and plucked it out with his soft little pudgy fingertips.

Boss was one sorry excuse for a man. He used to tell us how he'd punish his dog when he misbehaved by whuppin' him til he bled, and then tyin' him to a tree and puttin' hamburger patties out on the ground just out of the dog's reach, so the poor mutt would spend all day cuttin' up his neck just to get a sniff of that meat. It wasn't long after the day I got named Diesel that we heard that Boss's wife left him for a ballet dancer, and he had to quit because he couldn't get no respect any more from the convicts. Even a pansy-ass ballet dancer was more of a man than him, the convicts would say.

But we didn't know about the dancing fruit that day he got the convicts to hold me down and he plucked the cigarette from my mouth. After that he spat a big wad of chaw juice in my face, which was bad enough, but what he did next marked the both of us for life. He ripped my shirt open and started burnin' me with that cigarette. It hurt so bad I didn't notice what he was doin' at first, but then I saw that we was making letters. That must have been the slowest burnin' cigarette in the history of Injun tobacco, cuz it felt like it took him an hour to burn D-E-S-E-L into my skin. It smelled like hamburgers, and made me think of Boss's sorry-ass dog. No dog deserves to be treated like that, I thought. And right then and there I swore some day Boss was going to know what it felt like to be hamburger.

After he was done burnin' me, he flicked the cigarette away and the convicts let me go. I just lay there for a spell, restin' up and smellin' the hamburger smell. If they figgered I didn't have no fight left in me, boy was they wrong. I got to my feet, brushed myself off, then laid the biggest haymaker you ever seen across Tex's jaw. There was a POP! that they must have heard in El Paso, and Tex fell to his knees, his jaw hangin' down three inches farther than the Almighty intended, so he looked like one sorry-ass dumbfounded okie, which is what he was.

Then, while the rest of them were still standin' there doin’ their best impressions of a dumbfounded okie with a busted jaw, I reached down and picked up my cigarette, which still had about a quarter inch of life in it, took another cigarette from the pack in my sleeve and lit it from the dying butt. I got a real nice cherry goin' on it and then planted that red hot tip on my chest, right between the D and the E. When I had torched a real purdy letter I, I took a nice long drag and said, "I before E, shitheads." Then I went back to breakin' rocks. Nobody laid a finger on me after that, and six and a half years of rock-breakin' later, I was a free man.

First thing I did when I got out was look up that sorry-ass pudgy-fingered prison guard, who wasn't a prison guard no more on account of gettin' his ass fired for havin' a cheatin' whore ballet-dancer-lover for a wife. He lived in a dirty old trailer that smelled like onions and sweaty feet. When I came by, he was up to his old tricks, teasin' his mutt with hamburger. The dog was chained up to a tree out back, and a nice big pancake of ground beef lay on the dirt just out of his reach. Boss was sittin' there in a lawn chair, drinkin’ a Blue Ribbon and laughin' at the poor starving mutt. That dog was the ugliest damn creature God ever put on this planet, and I ain't entirely sure God's the one what did it. He looked like he was half doberman, half rottweiler, and half demon from the pit of hell, cuz that's just how big and mean he was. Boss had drawn a line that marked how far the dog could get from the tree, so he could tease him all he wanted without gettin' bit. Boss kept sayin', "Come 'n' get it, Duke! Come and get it!" And all I could think of is what kind of sorry ass pansy you have to be to give your dog a fag name like Duke. When Duke got too close, Boss would spit a wad of Skoal juice in his eyes.

I was about to walk up and give that jackass what-for when a phone rang and he high-tailed it back into his trailer. I strolled right up to the demon-mutt, picked up the hamburger patty he'd probably been eyein' since last Tuesday, and tossed it where he could reach it. The dog gave me no mind and went to work on that meat. I had just enough time to scrub out that line Boss had drawn and make another one with my boot. Then I went back and sat down under a tree, where I'd have a good view of the show.

Soon enough Boss came back out the trailer and got back to his fun. He pulled his lawn chair up to the line I'd drawn and said, "Dammit, Duke, you better not’ve ate my hamburger!" Now I know dogs can't smile, but I swear that demon dog looked over at me for a split second and gave me the evillest fang-filled grin you ever saw. Then he launched hisself toward that sorry-ass dipshit and sunk about sixty of those teeth into the right side of Boss's face. Boss screamed like a little bitch, but that dog held on like it was the one thing he was put on earth for. Finally he ripped half the meat off Boss's face like chicken from a bone, and Boss fell back on his lawn chair, sobbing and trying to hold on what was left of his face.

That's when I walked up and threw another hamburger patty to the dog. He dropped Boss's cheek and gobbled up the hamburger. I picked up the bloody chunk of flesh and tossed it at Boss. "You're lucky your face tastes as bad as that shit you chew," I said.

Boss looked at me with the same look he probably used when he walked in on his wife gettin' friendly with the candy-ass dancer. "You...?" was all he could muster.

"Yeah, me." I said. "I'm takin' yer dog." I gave the demon-mutt a rub under the chin and unsnapped his chain. The dog licked me real friendly-like.

"No!" Boss yelled. He was so worked up that I thought he musta figgered I was gonna let that demon-mutt at him, which I probly shoulda, but it turned out that he was just worried about losin' his damn dog. Here he was with blood gushin' out of where the right side of his face used to be, and he was cryin' about losin' a dog he'd probably never said a kind word to. "You can't take Duke from me!" he whined, like the dog had just been sucklin' at his teat or somethin.'

"His name ain't Duke," I said, lookin' over the dog. I could see one of his eyes was all fucked up, probably from gettin' chaw juice spat in it. Poor dog was scarred and half-blind for life. I said, "His name is Skoal now."

For some reason that made Boss real mad. He started to say, "Listen to me, kid...."

But something in my eyes must have scared him pretty good, cuz he never got past the word kid. "Name's Diesel," I said, lightin' a cigarette. "Now why don't you go get yer face put back on?"

Skoal and me got in my truck and took off, and we've been together ever since. We don't talk much, but the two of us have a bond – the kind of bond that only two mean-ass animals can have.