KnightHawk

The Ballad of Jimmy and Johnny

Hey, kid.

Heh. I’m dating myself aren’t I? You’re a grown man now, half way through med school and everything. Still, I’d a thought you’d be with the rest of your family. Losing…your old man didn’t talk about the old days did he? Jimmy was the kind of guy who said done was done, forget the glory days of the past, gotta make today a glory day, right? Carpe fuckin Diem and all that.

Made for one hell of a life, but, still—Yo! Barkeep! ‘Nother round all ‘round, and one for the kid!— still it’s gotta leave you feelin like you missed out on something, something big big daddyo had to teach ya, right?

Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’ve been around a helluva lot longer than you kid, and hell, I wiped your ass on a number of occasions when you were still tottlin’ around in swaddling clothes. You and Jim Junior’s toys had the same teething marks in’em my man. So get that poleaxed, sheep eyed look offin your face, you look too much like Johnny Be Bad for it to work on you.

And I suppose that’s why you’re down here with us B.M.O.P. drunks, down here in the ole B.M.O.P. bar instead of at home with your mama and your sisters and your woman, right?

Sigh.

I’m not one much for story telling, but this here beer is makin my mouth run, and I think you need a good listen much as I need a good talkin.
You know, Batavia’s tripled in size since I rode with the B.M.O.P. That old, empty field across the street has a Kroger on it now a day’s. Joe’s Gas and Tackle next door gave up the ghost to a Mobil station. All those empty miles of country road are lined with fast food chains, conglomerate gas stations, car dealerships, Harley Shops, all the comforts and amenities of a little redneck bump in the road expanding into a real, honest to god, shitsplat town. Batavia as I’ve known it is disappearing under the relentless tides of capitalistic progress, Abercrombie and Fitch slowly rootin out Kmart and thrift stores, McDonald’s strangling Abbott’s Family Restaurant, the town is losing its character, its hominess, becoming just one more Midwestern American Town.

But Hoppy’s Place is eternal.

Hoppy’s is an old, run down, hole in the wall bar out in the middle of East ButtFuck Ohio. It’s the apotheosis of all honkytonk bars, from the perpetual haze of cigarette smoke, to the monolithic jukebox in the corner, forever blasting Hank Williams Jr, Billy Ray, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, only pausing every now and again to pay homage to the King of it all, the big E, Elvis fucking Presley.

Hoppy himself stands behind the bar, running the taps, slinging the booze to us alchies. A big man is Hoppy, six’three, four hundred pounds, and older than God Himself. A few brave wisps of white hair wave wildly about, seeming almost desperate as the man struggles to keep us in the booze.

Ole Crazy Joe Watson sits at the opposite corner of the bar, pounding down the Texas Drivers like there weren’t no tomorrow. His iron gray handlebar mustache is soaking wet; more of the liquor running down his boney frame than down his gullet. The shine of the true believer, the American zealot, is doused under that concealing haze, his perpetually uncombed hair more wild than usual, giving him the look of a stark raving loony.

Not that it was a stretch for that good ole boy.

Mama Watson’s little boy came into the world in the year of our lord, 1947. Eighteen years later, the crazy son of a bitch was “advising” Charlie Chink with the wrong end of a smoking barrel. That’s right, Joe was a solider humping it out in the jungles of ‘Nam, once upon a time, and he never quite left. Poor bastard was discharged with full (and frightened) honors just a month before the ceasefire, after he bull dozed a general’s car with a tank, but then again, they pulled him from active combat because he was blowing too much shit up. I repeat: Crazy Joe was pulled out of the VIET NAM WAR because he was just a little too handy with the high explosives—what did they think would happen when they shifted him to the tank core, or whatever the hell they call it?

He still drives the city wrecker for the B.M.O.P., when he ain’t rushin outta Anderson Mercy in one o the meat wagons. Crazy bastard bought one of them ambulances last year, outfitted it for combat, loaded it up with ammo and guns outta his bunker for the coming revolution. Said us ‘79’s are welcome to shelter with him when the niggers, spics, and the jew boys take over.

He’s fifty-seven.

The Chief huddles around his beer next to Crazy Joe, perched precariously on his bar stool. It’s funny, I haven’t worked for Gordon Wharton in better’n fifteen years, and he’s still The Chief to me. But then again, it’s terrible too, seeing his tears flow into his beer, running down his craggy cheeks, fall off that granite slab of a chin, his frail, old man’s body tremblin’…but even now, in his twilight, the old man still wears his authority like a well worn motorcycle jacket, something that just commands respect.

I once saw the old bastard taking a statement from a Johnny Q., and this drunk came barreling down the road, so skunk fucked he didn’t know his dick from a stick. So there The Chief was, standing by this old Sedan, trying to talk with an incoherent vic, poor bastard just lost his kid, and here the drunk comes, just flying around the corner in his suped up Charger, and WHAM! He sideswipes the John Q.’s Sedan, just completely peels the guy, blood and paste everywhere.

Me, Crazy, and Johnny were loading the kid into the meat wagon, DRT, which is to say, Dead Right There, when this happened, and we just sorta froze. The Charger just pulped Mr. John Q. Public (never did learn the unlucky bastard’s name), but damn if it didn’t just come within an inch, a shit-you-not inch, from taking The Chief down too.

But The Chief didn’t sweat it, no sir. As the Charger skidded to a halt, he calmly took his old, dirty handkerchief outta his back pocket, and wiped the blood and brains offin his face, and then, all serene and Zen like, he starts over to the drunk’s car, lighting a stog like it weren’t no thing.

He was smoking Pall Malls in those days I reckon.

Anyway, he just ambled right up to the Charger, and bold as you please, reached right through the driver’s side window with those huge, arthritic looking hands o’ his, drug the guy out and just started to beat the holy Jesus outta him.

Didn’t even drop his smoke.

He’s seventy-seven.

Gary “The Mad Hungarian” Newby is next down the line, throwing back his twenty-eighth shot of Jack. The Hungarian ain’t Hungarian, but the big, black son of a bitch is more than a little Mad. He’s always saying he could out fight, out drink, and out fuck all the rest of us honky white boys any day of the week, and all evidence is pointing to yes, yes he could. Even deep into the middle of life, man’s built like a brick shithouse, still a towering 6’10, and still sporting that dumbshit Fu Manchu mustache.

Johnny pegged the not-so-gentle-giant with that Mad Hungarian moniker after ole Al Hrabosky, that crazy son of a bitch who played for the Cardinals from like ’69 or so, well before us ‘79ers got together anyhow. It was the mustache; they both had that stupid ass Fu Manchu mustache, and the name stuck.

‘Course, the fact that he was a little Mad helped a lot, but then again, I probably said that all ready. I’m more than a little snuckered myself at this point.

There was this one time, this motorcycle went flying down ole ’74, this old bitch of a road fulla snaking, winding ways, blind turns, and abrupt drops. This motorcycle, a rice burner, so no great loss, went over one of those abrupt hills at like eighty, and he was airborne, just sailing.

There happened to be an old pickup truck with two kiddies in it comin the other way, and the bike’s front tire clipped the roof of the cab, can ya say praise Jesus? The cyclist flew off, and got impaled through the head to a telephone pole, and guess who had to clean that up?

Anyway, the truck was speeding too, and when the lady driving it saw the incredible flying rice burner, she swerved, trying to miss him (and got did she fuck that one up). Right after the bike hit, the truck fishtailed, then straight up flipped, rolled over three times, and of course, the thing landed upside down.

So the call went into the B.M.O.P. to come clean up. Me and Hungarian got on the scene first, and god was it a fucking mess. The kids were screaming, and for some reason I never did quite figure out, the back of the truck was on fire.

“Ah shit man, what’re we—“, and that was all I got out before Hungarian threw himself outta my old Dodge Ram. Next thing I know, the big man grabbed the truck by the undercarriage, and started rocking it back, and forth, back, and forth, and right before my very eyes, he flipped that old Ford over, tore off the fucking passenger side door, and hauled the kids out, all before my honky ass could get down there to help him.

Crazy Joe and Johnny showed up in the wrecker not three minutes later, right around the time I was deciding Momma was dead duck. Her face was a bloody ruin, her arm got severed, but I’ve seen people survive worse. I tied off the veins, did CPR, the whole nine, but the Hungarian knew what I knew: she was DRT.

And there was the Hungarian, off to the side, dancing like a monkey for the kids, even making the “oo-oo, ah-ah” sounds for ‘em. The kids didn’t even have a scratch on’em, praise be, but…there was something touching about Gary dancing for those kids, making ‘em smile in spite of it all, while the sirens screamed in the distance.

He’s forty-eight.

The stool next to the Mad Hungarian is empty.

It was Johnny Be Bad’s chair.

He woulda been fifty today.

Then we have me at the other end of the bar, pounding back brew after brew, with the occasional screwdriver, or Southern Comfort thrown in for good measure. Jimmy Be Good, or Jim Vincent as the wife calls me when I’ve fucked up. I’ve always been the scrawny one, the dependable one, the vulgar one. I curse a lot even for this motley crew, but that’s all right, puts my down home patients right at ease.

That’s right, I’m a heart surgeon, stationed down at Anderson Mercy, otherwise known as Heart Central. I ran with the B.M.O.P. during pre-med and med school proper, like you’re a doin, but it was who Johnny got me a job at the hospital. Johnny did the same thing you know, runnin with the B.M.O.P. to kill time, ‘cept he became a head popper in the end, you know, a brain surgeon.

That’s right, Jimmy and Johnny, touching the Hearts and Minds of America.

Jimmy and Johnny, out riding the ranges, stark white lab coats for dusters, our steely eyes glaring out from under our B.M.O.P. ball caps, our cowboy hats long lost on the trail. It was always Johnny Be Bad and Jimmy Be Good. We were all a little crazy back then, all a little screwloose in our own way, me, Johnny, Crazy Joe, the Mad Hungarian, The Chief, all of us, doing our job, peddling our gallows humor, propping each other up while we hosed the blood and guts off the road, plugged up the bleeding stumps, carted off the dead, and comforted the living.

But those days are long gone, along with our youth, my Harley, and most of my hair. Gone as the dodo, disco, and Johnny Be Bad. Some big brain or another, one of those pansy waist poets I think, said Time was like a thief; for once, one ‘o those soft brained scribblers got something right. Look around at us, us ‘79er’s; I was always the baby, years younger than even the Mad Hungarian, and lookit me, I’m forty-four with an old man’s beer belly. My eldest are hitting college, moving out to expensive dorms out in Ivy League party schools to do Christ knows what.

Heh. Probably the same shit me and Johnny got up to, like that one time…

Sorry ‘bout that. I know, it ain’t the manly thing to do, and God knows it ain’t what I want, but god, it’s so hard to hold back the fucking tears. I ain’t no old sloppy ass drunk, I re-fucking-fuse to be, but here I am, crying into my beer, me and the rest of the crew. The funeral took it out of us. Sometime, when we weren’t lookin’, Time like a thief slipped into our lives, unnoticed. Wasn’t it just 1979? I couldn’t be forty-four! Wasn’t I just nineteen, weren’t me and my crew young and destined to live forever?

Wasn’t Johnny Be Bad still alive?

No. It wasn’t possible. We were young and strong, crazy ass rednecks on a mission, rude, crude too, but in our own time, and in our own way, we stood with our heads high, cleaning up the messes John Q. Public never wanted to see. We’re still men with fire in their bellies, fulla piss and vinegar, standing before the storms that wrecked the lives of so many. We were men, uneducated, but true, unlearned, but skillful, each of us standing in our own way. Yes. We stood. We stood, and we were magnificent.

God, the more of these beers I put away, the more the Time Thief metaphor becomes apt, and the more sentimental I become. Yo! Hoppy! ‘Nother round all around. Yeah, I know the Hungarian just bought a round! I’m drinking his beer aren’t I? By the time you get it dished out it’ll be gone! Us ‘79er’s know how to hold our liquor, ain’t that right boys? Assents all around, just like I thought.
Time is ever the enemy son. Gotta tie a vein quick, gotta patch that heart up lickedy split. Time like a theif stole our strength, our unsophistication, our children’s childhood, and our fire.

Except for Johnny. Except for Johnny. He never lost it, not once. His eyes blazed that last night as brightly as they did that day out on the road, with the fire, the car, and the old biddy.

Bah, I’m babblin. Pull up a stool, an’ let me tell y’all a little bit about ‘bout how we met, and how the Bethel, Monroe, Ohio and Pierce Township’s paramedics rolled back in ole ’79, out on the open ranges.

Heh. Lookit kid, we got an audience. Everyone’s a watching us. ‘Course, you, me, Hoppy, Hungarian, The Chief, and Crazy Joe’s the only one here, partly because the ole boozeslinger was damn near one of us, mostly because he knew we’d toss everyone right the fuck out if’n he didn’t give us a night to mourn Johnny Be Bad. Whenever you take a mind boys, sing out when I get something wrong.

“Oh, just tell the damn story ya old lush. ‘Nother round all ‘round, oh boozeslinger”, The Chief said, showing me some life.

First things first. The setting. If’n I’m gonna tell you a story, we’ve gots to have a setting, right? You’ve already met Johnny’s whacky sidekicks, might as well know the world we’re operatin in.

Back then, Batavia, hell, the entire county was a third of the size it is now a days. Not land wise, people wise, car wise, building wise, crime wise, accident wise. I mean, think about it this way: five paramedics, three of whom where in med school, were able to cover the entire area under the B.M.O.P. umbrella, and that includes Bethel, Monroe, Ohio County, Pierce Township (there’s the acronym for you), as well as a whole helluva lot of tiny rough spots in the road like Hamersville, GeorgeTown, Felicity, places like that.

Back in 1978, I took four years of Anatomy and Physiology, and the teach, Mr. Rick Denison, took notice. I had the brains, and I absolutely loved cuttin up whatever he tossed on the cuttin table. Blood excited back in those days…but riding with the B.M.O.P. would cure of that right quick, brains on windshields, intestines flung across the road, a baby’s face just sliding right the fuck off…

Denison called me into his office one fine afternoon and asked me what I was planning to do with myself come graduation one fine day the next week.

“Ah, suckin, fuckin, truckin, who the fuck knows, Ricky?”

Yeah, I know, I was a real shit back then.

In any event, Denison used to work for the B.M.O.P. back in the day, hell, he was one of the first men on the job…what you would call the original gangsters, eh John, eh? Yeah, I know, I’m old, cut me some fuckin slack over here.

Long story made longer, Denny asked me if I wanted a summer job, I said sure, why the hell not, and next thing I know I’m bein tossed through a crash course in paramedicing.

Ya see, back in ’79, we didn’t have no such thing as paramedics out here in the sticks, ‘cept for Johnny, and The Chief, sorta. The old man been on the job for so long by that point that he didn’t need no schoolin, he knew the job better’n alotta doctors I’ve known. Me, I enrolled in pre-med that very Summer, and The Hungarian had just started Med School all nice and proper like.

But Johnny had the license, and he’s the one that made the whole hoorah nice and legal like.

Then came my first run with the B.M.O.P., and lordy, was it a real corker. I ran with the crew for six years, and it was a rare day on a blue moon that I saw a smash up like that’n. ‘Course, it sorta made sense, since it just so happened to be out on ole ’74. Told you ‘bout the Mad Hungarian flippin that truck out there on that old whore of a backroad, and I got to say, most of the worst wrecks, including the one where your daddy saved my slim, white boy ass, was out that way.

So the call comes in to the B.M.O.P. firehouse, and The Chief looks up and he’s a hollerin, “Brick! Where the hell’s the crew!”, and the old firechief just sorta glanced at me and was like “You’re looking at him”.

Lord did that set The Chief off. He thundered outta there like Thor, screwing curses at Johnny Be Bad, The Hungarian Crazy Joe, Johnny Be Bad, the president of The United States, and the slack jawed, weak, jackass God that left him with nothin’ but a pup to go clean this mess up.

You’re going to Hell, right Chief?

“Ah, whadda he care”, Crazy Joe says, “In a week, he’ll have Lucifer towing the line, demons working on public works projects, and have half the damned on 401ks.”

“Yo! Barkeep! ‘Nother round all ‘round”, The Hungarian yelled.

He’s right ya know, ‘bout The Chief. Man can move heaven, shake hell, and still have time for a meatball sandwich and a beer.

Anyhoozle, me and The Chief blow outta there in my old Dodge Ram, blowin down the back roads, running stops lights, the whole nine. Response time: five minutes. Not bad.

But Crazy Joe was better.

He was out there in the city wrecker before we even got the news, and called for the ambulance en route.

Too bad we couldn’t do nothing.

You know that old, rickety ass bridge that goes across that little trickle o water, down there on ole ’74? This old lady had managed to plow through the siderails. The front half of the car was hanging over the gorge, and somewhere along the way, the car tank ruptured, and the damn thing went up in flames. Ya know, in my entire run as a paramedic, I saw like maybe eight cars burst into flame, and three o those were from that crazy who was throwin Molotov Cocktails into folks back seat.

Well, not the entire car was on fire, but the passanger’s side, the back, and the hood, and half the driver’s side, but there was juuuuuust enough room to haul her through the open window and to safety, if’n you didn’t mind leaning over the hundred foot drop to the rocky streambed below, not to mention the raging fire.

Crazy Joe and The Mad Hungarian hung back, as per The Chief’s orders. Hell, they had to restrain me, I mean, I was eighteen (or was it nineteen?), I was invincible man, immortal. But The Chief knew better, and he was holding us back until he figured out a way to get the lady out that wouldn’t get us killed. I learned the hard way kid, that there are times to be heroes, and time to hold back. The Chief told me that while I fought The Hungarian and Crazy Joe, told me that we wouldn’t do her no good by getting ourselves killed…this from a man I’d see, not even a week later, run into a flaming apartment complex and lead a family of five out not three minutes before the entire mother fucker came down.

The roar of an engine, the distinctive, echoing rumble of a Harley…it ended the argument. Here it came, rumbling down the road like an engine of a god, a guardian angel who didn’t have no time for bullshit or games.

His big, black steel toe boots flipped the kid stand down, the many zippers on his motorcycle jacket shining in the bright, noonday sun, his long, black hair trailing behind him in its own private slipstream.

Johnny Be Bad had hit the scene. He wasn’t on call, but neither was Joe or Maurice, and they still came. I tell you son, your father was a young god, a lord of the limbs, a sheik of syringes, a taskmaster of the tourniquet.

He didn’t even lose a step, he just stalked right past us, ignoring The Chief (he was the only person I ever met who could run roughshod over that old bastard), and just swung over the side, and half into the car.
His feet weren’t even touching the ground, son, and the top half of his body was leaning into the car, as he gathered the old biddy up. The flames were lapping at his body, as the fire spread, and his jeans started to smoke, but he ignored it.

Then the car started to slide. It wobbled, and would have slid off, but Crazy Joe was on it.

“KID!”

I turned, and the nutjob was tossing me a huge chain with a hook on the end, and then I was running. Just as the car started to go, I slid, throwing the chain around the bumper, cinching the hook through on of the links. Crazy threw the switch, the winch kicked in, and the car didn’t go over.
But now the entire front end was out over the brink, there weren’t no way for Johnny to just swing back over, and that old, rickety bridge was starting to crumble—we try to pull that old boat of a car back up, we’d all be in the drink.

I did mention the car was still on fire, right?

Johnny Be Bad disappeared all the way into the car, and I thought he was dead for sure. Hell, we all did…except The Chief. He grabbed the Hungarian, shoved him towards the ground near the back bumper, and
tackled me to the ground, just as three sharp cracks and a crash drowned out all the yelling and the cursin and the screamin.

Then Johnny Be Bad was crawling out through where the back windshield used to be, the old woman being held out before him, a small, nickel-plated pistol held in his other hand.

He tossed the unconscious woman out, and coming to his feet, he leapt into the Mad Hungarian’s arms, just as the woman had landed in mine. Not ten seconds later, The Chief hit the release on the chain, and the car tumbled, along with some good chunks outta the bridge. It seemed to fall in slow motion, half flipping in air, a dying comet dropping to the hard, rocking creekbed below. It exploded, straight up, movie style exploded when it hit, tossing shrapnel twenty feet into the air, the rolling thunder of its firery end rolling through the valley.

Predictably, Brick and the rest of the firefighters showed up two minutes later.

Johnny collapsed to the ground, his breath comin like a dyin train, his hair and jacket singed, and the biggest, most shit eating grin on his face I ever did see. He was a twenty-five year old man who thought all he was good for was patching people up, and risking his ass, and he just got to do both.

Staggering to his knees, he holstered his piece, and turning his smile on me, he flashed me a thumbs up.

“You be good, kid. Real good. Com’on. Let’s clean this mess up, and I’ll buy you a beer at Hoppy’s”

Hoppy’s?

“A place you’re gonna spend a whole lotta time kid”, he said, and no prophecy has ever been more correct.

And that was how I met Johnny Be Bad.

As for the old woman, she got out with only a few burns; she was actually less hurt than ole Johnny.

Me and Johnny hit it off, despite the age difference, and that innocent little phrase of his kinda stuck with me over the next twenty-five years. Since my first, action packed introduction into the world of hole pluggers, I’ve been Johnny Be Good, and I’ve lived up to it. Johnny risked his ass, Jimmy helped tip the odds in his favor. The Chief led, The Mad Hungarian hauled, Crazy Joe drove, Johnny risked his ass, and Jimmy was dependable. That’s how it was, that’s how it is, and that’s how it shall ever be, until world without end…

“Jimmy, tell’im the Cliff Story”, The Hungarian says, throwing back what I believe to be his fortieth shot of Jack.

The cliff story.

This was like three years later. I had started Pre-Med, The
Hungarian was still chuggin through, and Johnny was nearing the end of his schoolin. I’m twenty-two, fulla piss and vinegar, and am an old hand at tying off veins, CPR, and drinkin.

I was sitting in the station house with Johnny, The Hungarian,
and Crazy Joe when the call came in. The Chief was off having his third bypass surgery, docs been swearing up and down that the old bastard wouldn’t survive another, but damned if he hasn’t had three more since then. The Chief is eternal as the mountains, God, and Hoppy’s kid, and don’t you forget it.

Crazy Joe and The Mad Hungarian piled into the wrecker, as me and Johnny got the meat wagon, and off we went, down route 125, and up into Hillsbourgh. Now Hillsbourgh is mighty hilly as you mighta guessed, and we was traveling the entire way up hill, till we found the Johnny Q. Stupid bastard was drunk as a skunk, an old story that one, and, near as we could figure, he got throwed from the truck when it rolled, ‘cept his arm didn’t quite make it. It got caught between the ground and the truck right at the elbow, and lopped it off good as you please, but it wasn’t nothing to fuss about, was a good tear; if’n we could find the damn thing, the egg heads up at Anderson Mercy could doctor it back on fine as you please.

While me and Johnny tied off the John Q’s arm, applying the tourniquit and getting him loaded into the meatwagon, The Hungarian was casting around lookin for the man’s lost member, and that was when he started cursing. Now me and Johnny didn’t pay him no never mind, we just loaded the busted up cuss into the back, and sent him off with Stinky Cheese and Specs.

Oh? Cheese and Specs? Johnny never mentioned them? They rode with us for a year, the Cheese man havin been a medic in ‘Nam, and Specs being a licensed paramedic down from Cleveland. He died of a heart attack ‘bout two weeks later, and the Cheese man blew town after that. Them two was queer together, together some twelve years, and without his hubbie, Stinky just couldn’t stick around. Wonder what became o that good ole boy?

Ah well, so it was just me, Johnny, and the Hungarian left behind when the ambulance rolled, us, and the wrecker, and that was when we found out what the Mad one was so…mad…about.

To the ride side of the road, the land fell away into a steep cliff, but that weren’t no surprise, this here’s the country for ‘em.

Well, when the truck rolled, it went right over the edge, which is why the drunk was lucky he got thrown. Problem was, the arm was at the bottom of the gorge too, and there weren’t no way to climb down. Shit, it was such a good tear man, twas a crying fuckin shame to leave the man gimp like this, but what else could we do, eh Hungie?

Oh, don’t look at me like that, we were trying to figure out how to get at it, it’s just that me and the Hungarian are better at patching up bloody holes and curin the sniffles than problem solving. We only look and talk like rednecks.

That’s when Johnny went walkin by and slammed a coil of rope into my stomach that he got outta the wrecker.

“Hold that, Johnny be Good”, he says, before he jumped over the side. Screaming, The Hungarian grabs the rope behind me, ‘fore we realize Johnny wanted us to anchor him; one end of that there rope was tied to the wrecker, the other end to Johnny’s waist, and there he went, repelling down the side like he was Spiderman or something.

He hit bottom with a grin, and shoved the blood stump into his back pocket, and his jeans got real blood like, but Johnny never minded a little bit of the red stuff; hell, none of us ever did, ‘cept Specs, made him a little woozy, one of the reasons he weren’t never really one of us.

“Haul me up, Johnny Be Good!”, he went a bellowin, and me and the Hungarian started pulling him up, hand over hand, straining at it. Heh, who ever woulda thought that hauling up a hundred and twenty pounds of ugly would be that hard? When the Hungarian asked him that, Johnny just smiled and said there was three-hundred pounds of shit in that one-thirty sack. Then walked off, with the arm still in the back of his pants.

With every step he took, the hand bobbled up and down, like it was waving. Smiling a little bit, The Mad Hungarian waved back.

The worst call though, was Johnny’s next to last run. It was the year he became a surgeon good and proper. He shoulda given up the B.M.O.P. a full year before, the way he was working, ‘specially since his new wife on a bun in the oven, but he just couldn’t say quit.

But then again, none of us ever could. I was starting my residency, working eighty hour shifts, still making every run I could catch, studying whenever I could, and trying to tend to my woman. Yeah, my wife got knocked up the same year your momma did, but you shoulda knew that, since you and Johnny grew up together.

Anyway, The Mad Hungarian was in the same boat as me, just two years further down the line. Or hell, The Chief’s a life long bachelor, never had him a wife or family but the job and us ’79’s, and Crazy Joe’s wife stayed with him for years ‘cus he weren’t never home. We all made sacrifices for the job, and hard as it is to say, we ain’t none of us regretted it.

This was during the blizzard of ’85, when the schools out in these parts had to close for nearly two months, and the roads were impassable up to yonder and out to hither, hell, not even us B.M.O.P. nutjobs were going anywhere. Nah, we were ordered to go home, hunker down and wait it out, and for God sakes, Jimmy, Johnny, go see your wives for Christ sake, it’s been three days since either of y’all been home.

“Yes, Dad”, Johnny muttered, slamming both my phone and my front door. We’d bought the houses right next to each other out there in Batavia’s first subdivision, but there weren’t no phone service out there ‘cept at my place, and we had it mostly because Andrea raised twenty kinds of hell with the phone company, and, believe me, when my woman raises hell, brave men cower, and God dives for cover.

Since he didn’t have no phone, Johnny wasn’t there when the call came. No, it was Andrea who took it, and she refused to wake me, B.M.O.P or no B.M.O.P. I was sleepin the sleep of the dead down in our bedroom, first shut eye I had got in a good three days, and she wasn’t having no one bother me at it.

‘Course, if it had been The Chief on the phone, and not Fire Marshall Brick, things mighta turned out different, but they didn’t. Andrea refused to wake me, but it wasn’t because I needed the sleep, it was ‘cus she knew I’d a gone, that I had been a paramedic for six years, that I lived, breathed, ate, slept, and bled B.M.O.P, just like Johnny, and she weren’t havin me wander off in the biggest blizzard this ole burg ever saw to play superhero.

What she did do was march right over to Johnny Be Bad’s place, told him the situation, and that was the beginning of the worst twenty-four hours in our crew’s history, all of which was a prelude to six months of hell, lawyers, and an out pourin of kindness the likes of which this ole dog ain’t never seen again.

But, the day it all fell apart, I pretty much missed it. I was asleep though most of it, didn’t get in until the end.

Johnny Be Bad hiked twenty miles through the blizzard to reach the crash site. Old Man Winters, who had more cash in those days than the entire rest of the county combined, had taken it into his damn fool head to try and take his Krautmobile out on the road, and wrecked that German piece of shit, but then again, the way he tore up and down the road in that ole Mercedes of his, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

So Johnny hiked across buried field, frozen lakes, through a snow shrouded woods, bundled up with three shirts, four sweaters, and thermal underwear under his motorcycle jacket, muffled from head to toe in clothing, warmed by his own exertions, hauling a backpack full of medical supplies, going to were no snowplow could have gone, keeping in contact with the B.M.O.P via radio, looking more and more like the abdominal snowman as the blasting snow rattled his frame, slugging through snow knee high.

I may not have been there, but Johnny told me about it in the days to come.

How he made twenty miles in three hours under those conditions is beyond me; how he avoided exposure is even more of a mystery, ‘bout the only thing I can figure is that his own inner fire kept him warm. Old Man Winters, he’s just too fucking mean to die, but Johnny Be Bad was just a man with a fire in his belly.

Johnny never told me what sorta bang up it was, and honestly, I don’t think even he knew. The snow was so thick, by the time he got there, the Krautmobile was damn near buried; he had to break the topmost snow with a hammer, dig down to find the old man. But the details are murky; Johnny didn’t want to talk about it, not with me, not with your mother. He talked about it in court, but the records are sealed tighter than a virgin’s thighs. We know; we pulled all the strings we had to try and find out what the hell happened out that way.

Shit, I’m starting to sober up. Yo! Barkeep—what’s that? Yeah, you’re right, I’ve had enough afore I finish this telling.

Old Man Winters’ legs got crushed in the smash up; if’n he was at Anderson, they’d have had to cut the motherfuckers off. No one knows how long Winters was out there in the storm, but Johnny knew he’d bleed out ‘fore long, assuming the infection didn’t get’im, so he radioed back to base, had a talk with the surgeon we had on call, McCool, and the egghead told Johnny Be Bad what he already knew: the legs had to come off, else he’d be dead before help could get there.

Johnny had brought a handsaw, the kind you cut wood with, just in case he had to do some heavy cutting…though he was thinking about cutting a body loose, not no legs, but he did it, with all his usual skill. He sawed through the bones, tied the veins off, then sat tight, waiting for the meat wagon.

For twenty-eight hours.

That’s how long it took me to wake up from my nap, and I knew the moment I looked at my beautiful, headstrong wife that she did something I was gonna regret. It took me twenty-mintues to argue the truth outta her.

It took me five to call Crazy Joe, get dressed, and meet him out at the curb. He was driving one of the town’s snowplows, on lone from the county works department, thanks to The Chief. The meat wagon woulda never got out there, hell, nothing should have, not even with Crazy Joe Watson behind the wheel, but the biggest snowplow in the county at least had a chance to bull through the drifts. They were already responding when I got wind of it in other words, and the only reason I got taken along for the ride was because they didn’t know.

No, they didn’t have no idea what they’d find out there at the crash site, but The Chief wanted me there, to keep our best driver, the madman, under control if Johnny was dead.

It’d been years since I had prayed, but you better believe in that freezing, creeping snowplow, I went a talking to the Lord. Just keep Johnny safe, says I, just let me find Johnny Be Bad in one piece, that’s all I ask.

Sometimes the Lord talks back to you son, I learned it that day, and He told me to stop my sniveling, ‘cus I know ain’t nothing ever gonna kill Johnny Be Bad but Johnny Be Bad.

The snow was coming down in sheets by then, and visibility was a joke. I couldn’t a saw my own hand in front of my face if’n I was out there in that white-out, but Joe found his way, he always did. Once that boy got lost in the jungles of ‘Nam, his entire squad dead ‘cept him, no radio, no water, with Charlie Chink on every side o him, but that ‘lil compass in his head pointed him in the right direction then, and it didn’t fail us in that there blizzard. The plow bulled its way through, barely, and we found the Mercedes out in the middle of God’s Country, way out there past Felicity. As the crows flies, which is how Johnny went, it was twenty miles from the ole homestead, but by road, it’s at least twice that, and the plow had to fight for every friggin inch.

I didn’t know what we’d find, but I know I didn’t ‘spect Johnny Be Bad to be curled up in the driver’s seat with the heat blastin full tilt, with that shit eating grin on his face. Here I am, digging through the snow with Joe, all frantic and crazy like, worried about my bro, and when we got down to him, what does the little prick have to say for himself?

“Hey cuz. What kept ya?”

Jesus.

Three weeks later, the nightmare began. Johnny had spent those twenty-eight hours keeping Old Man Winters alive, though how he did it with the tin-foil and bubblegum wrapper kit he had was just one more miracle.

I wish the old bastard had bit it.

Back in those days, we didn’t have none of them there Good Samaritan laws which protect us Paramedics and B.M.O.P. agents from litigious shyster lawyers looking to make a quick buck. Johnny Be Bad had followed the rules, and had damn near got hisself killed saving that old fool. Both his feet and his left had got frostbit something fierce, and for awhile there, we all thought he was a gonna loose them, but God was merciful to his favorite son, even if Johnny never did regain ALL the feeling in that hand, but what does a brain surgeon need his hands for I ask you?

What I’m saying is that Johnny nursed that man for better’n thrity-two hours once you figure in how long it took me and Crazy Joe to hual’em down to Anderson Mercy. If it had been anyone but Johnny Be Bad, with his strange, eerie knack for keeping a bleeding husk alive long after it shoulda gave up the ghost, any pair of hands but his oddly talented didgits, Old Man Winters wouldn’t be a hundred and three today, he’d be a corpsesicle.

Winters sued Johnny, the B.M.O.P., Anderson Mercy, and to a lesser extent, me and Crazy Joe, and all over a little technicality: Johnny didn’t ask him permission to cut off his legs, he just went and did it ‘cus they had to come off if’n Winters wanted to live. Hell, even though there weren’t no hope of reattachin ‘em, Johnny still packed’em in snow, and a finer preservation job I never did see, but Anderson just couldn’t reattach’em, they were fucking pulped.

Bitch of it was, Winters lost the case against me, Joe, and Anderson, but smacked the B.M.O.P. to the tune of five gees, and Johnny Be Bad for five-hundred thousand dollars.

Johnny lost his house, his car, his Harely, everything, and it still wasn’t enough, he was in the hole for a hundred and fifty grand still, and weren’t nothing we could do. You remember that don’t you kid? How you and your family crashed at my place for a couple a months? You know, six years from then, Johnny coulda just paid it out in cash and hardly felt it. Man jetted ‘cross the world to perform brain surgery, he was that damn good, and don’t never forget it, but back then, he was just getting on his feet in the profession, hell, he was barely outta his training scalpels.

But the B.M.O.P. boys came up with a solution. After six years of loyal service, there were damn few people in the country us ‘79ers either didn’t save, or didn’t have at least one relative we patched up.

And like everyone else, the townies and the boonies loved Johnny Be Bad, so when the B.M.O.P. sponsored a drunken field party in his honor, damn near the entire county showed up. It was one giant lovefest kid, I can’t tell you about it, I’m just not enough of a gabber to tell you about the outpouring of gratitude the people of this here town, how they thanked, through Johnny, all of us for what’s a thankless, grueling job. I can’t tell you, I can’t show you as the storyslingers say ya gotta, all I can say in the entire thing was pink, the color of mushy, highschool love, and it was pure, it was dueling banjos and jamming guitars, it was the church and the jews, it was undiluted, and when we counted the donations up, wadded up balls of ones and fives and handful upon handful of pocket change, we counted up three-hundred and eighty-seven thousand, four hundred thirty-seven dollars and thirty-three cents.

Johnny was able to pay the old fuck off, and even managed to buy his house back at the auction for several hundred thousand less than it was worth. You see kid, God makes it come out right in the end, Johnny knew that kid, and that’s why we all loved him.

Old Man Winters?

Shit, he was driven outta town. He couldn’t wheel himself down the street in that custom chrome wheelchair o his without someone spittin on him and callin the old fart an ingrate. Hell, his own mother disowned him over it, on her deathbed no less. Said no son of hers ruined the life of a man who saved his life. Last I heard, he was out in Boston, languishing in much deserved shame.

So that was Johnny’s last run. Me, I made mine not a month later; this drunk smashed up a woody-wagon fulla kids, and of course he got out without a scratch, the drunk always does, but the kids…tiny bodies littered everywhere, and there was this one, this tiny, perfect little baby, pure, so unsullied, so fulla potentinal, and somehow, she was whole, she was alive, I knew it, I knew she had to be, right up until the time my hands wrapped around her tiny body and her little face slid off.

I didn’t even hesitate. I just turned around, got in my car and left without saying a word. I went home, kissed my wife, played with my rugrat, and never went back.

Even now, nineteen years later, I’d kill the son of a bitch if I ever saw him again. Hell, I would have anyway if Johnny Be Bad didn’t talk me down, but I guess that night, Johnny wasn’t very bad, and Jimmy sure as shooting wasn’t being good.

You saw how your father died kid. In the end, the cancer got him good, eatin him from the inside out, but you got to forget that. What you got to remember is that his fire never, never left him. He stood, he fought with every breath, and when that last rattlin breath snaked outta him, he was grinning that shit eatin grin o his, like he somehow got one over on Death.

That was your father kid. A hero. A father. A healer. But, mostly, mostly he was just a man, and that’s all that can be said. Now you’ve heard the Ballad of Jimmy and Johnny as well as I could tell it, and the hour’s getting late. Finish your beer kid, and get outta this old place, and remember, always remember…

Never lose your fire.



-Love. Peace. Metallica.
Amelia, 2004
KnightHawk

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If I die, pretend I said something witty and inspiring.

Nazareth

Nail it- Send this in to a publication man- good stuff