After dropping off the shoebox at Martinsville police station, Young Billy Fisher was supposed to go to the town hall to join the rest of them, only he didn’t. He had a more pressing engagement, one which involved his brand new convertible, so instead, he headed back into the woods.
He knew no one else dared be around, well, least not when the clouds were threatening rain anyway. But Billy, on the other hand, wasn’t afraid of getting caught in the rain, not now he had a nice new car to sit in. Mind you, as he was leaving Martinsville, he saw Ella going into the police station to view the new blood, and she can be a real bitch when she wants to be, so he’d best be careful.
He’d parked his new set of wheels in the woods near Old Liberty road, a semi-disused stretch of the highway surrounded by woods on one side, and deep clay pits on the other. Semi-disused, because anyone travelling this road was either on their way to, or coming from Martinsville, or in the most unfortunate of circumstances, for them, were totally lost. Each of the clay pits, and there were around a dozen of them, had over the years filled with rainwater, which was another reason the people of Martinsville never went up there.
Turning to face the town, Billy recalled the whoopin’ Hal dished out to him in front of those pretty young girls, he also recalled how embarrassed it made him feel, and how any small amount of pride he might have had in himself was shattered. He decided now would be a good time to vent his anger.
‘Hey, Robertson, you ugly fuck,’ he shouted. ‘I’m Billy Fisher, right! You can’t tell me what to do, okay? And so what if the car was supposed to go over Tarboro Ridge, well guess what? Ya pock-marked fuckin’ pin-cushion ... it didn’t, and now, it’s mine! So, fuck you Robertson. Fuck you!’
That made him feel much better, and if Robertson was there right now, he’d say it to his rain-mashed face. For sure.
After trekking between the flooded pits and being careful not to slip into one of them, he reached the spot where he’d left the car. ‘My very first convertible,’ he said, very near climaxing at the thought.
He opened the trunk taking out two suitcases and a large black holdall, the ones he told Hal he’d earlier burnt. Well guess what again, Robertson?
After putting all three items of luggage on the rear seat, he climbed in the front ready to have a good rummage through them. Before he got started on the first suitcase, he heard a solitary rumble of thunder way off in the distance; he looked skyward to see a near black canopy of cloud stretching from horizon to horizon. Then a flash of light dragged his ever-waning attention back towards Martinsville, easily an hour away, more than enough time. And he’d never been wrong before.
He’d moved the holdall to the front passenger seat, and the two suitcases he left on the back seat, which now lay open. All he found inside them were clothes and cosmetics, and all of which, was totally useless to him. He unzipped the holdall emptying that onto the front passenger seat. Inside, he found a hairdryer, a few hairbrushes, some more cosmetics and deodorants, a couple bottles of perfume he wasn't too keen on, and a whole pile of girl’s clothes, and all like the rest, useless.
‘Ho-lee shit,’ he shouted. ‘Pot ... and papers!’
Billy stuck his nose in the small bag and grinned as he breathed in the pungent aroma of the green shrub within. ‘Wow,’ he said, totally enthused by his find. ‘This is good stuff!’
Billy soon got to work on his “honed” spliff-making technique, which, in all honesty, wasn’t as “honed” as he’d like it to be. Eventually, and after half a pack of torn papers, he had a thick, extra long joint, nestled between his lips.
After lighting this work of art, and taking a couple of deep puffs, he pulled the ignition key from his pocket, the one he’d taken from the bunch of keys before giving them to Hal. The key was inserted, he gave it a twist, and the engine turned first time, he then began poking around with the stereo's controls, twisting knobs and pushing buttons.
‘On,’ he announced to himself with some degree of pride, simply because he'd remembered the word, so he pushed it. Yes, that one he could read, but other than the blueish-green backlight becoming illuminated, nothing else happened. He moved along the display. ‘Vol ... vol-ooo ... vol-ooo-me?’ he questioned. ‘Vol-ooo-me?’ no chance, his pride once again shattered, it might as well have been written in antient Arabic, viewed through a mirror, and turned up-side-down for all the sense it made to him, but he twisted the knob anyway.
He liked it, never heard anything this strange before, but he liked it, it was loud, and the singer did more shouting and screaming than she did singing, but still he liked it, so he cranked up the vol-ooo-me button as high as it would possibly go.
He tried openning the driver’s window to let some smoke out but the handle wouldn’t give. Hey ... not a problem when you’ve got a convertible. He climbed out unclasping the roof from the windshield and peeled it all the way back, then he sat back in the driver’s seat and made himself really comfy. This was by far the best feeling he’d had in a very long time.
After due consideration, and contrary to his wishes, and, after his smoke of course, Billy Fisher decided he’d drive the car into one of the deeper clay pits, just like he did with that investigator’s car yesterday.
As it was, Billy never had a regular supply of pot, nor any other type of narcotic for that matter, so it wasn’t too long before he was unequivocally stoned senseless. In fact, the first track of the CD was still playing away at full blast, and the cone he'd made, which was just about thick enough to choke a hippo, only half burned.
Billy allowed his head to flop back over the top of the seat as he again looked skyward. Grinning uncontrollably to himself, he was about to blow smoke rings at the low, condensed cloud, but as the smoke went to leave his lungs, he’d already forgot what he was going to do with it.
The thunder rolled ever nearer, its noise growing ever louder, but Billy couldn’t hear it over the noise of the music. The clouds he now looked at, but cared very little about, had thickened into a black, soup-like texture, and would soon be ready to burst in submission. And Young Billy Fisher couldn’t give a flying-fuck about that.
He was totally out of it.
