The Pitbull by J.D. Smith -- a harrowing tale of dissolution, destruction, and redemption

This was first published in the Whole Earth Review in the summer of 1995. It is, in many ways, a sick story, but in the end, it is also a story of good luck and redemption. I have had this story cached on my hard drive for 10 years. It seems like a good time to whip it out!

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n86/ai_17002689/)

Pitbull

by J. D. Smith


"Before Jesus stepped in and jammed the gun, I considered myself an outlaw. I know now that I was an addict, a thief, an armed robber, liar, fornicator, and a dealer. I broke all the commandments but one. I never directly killed anyone, but I tried.

"Speed does kill. Everybody I know is dead, killed by meth and crosstops and booze and stupidity and greed. My little brother got me started on speed, on the streets of Seattle, when he was twelve and I was fourteen. We were walking down along Pike Street and he just walked up to this dude, gave him five bucks, and we went into the alley. My little brother was packing the works, man, at the age of twelve. First time meth hit my guts, I messed my pants.

"A year later I was popping myself in the side of the neck, getting the rush that much closer to my brain. I weighed a third of what you see before you. Look. I ground my molars smooth, just walking around. I was busy.

"Speed freaks need money. No mon no fun. In the early years I got mine out of adult movie theaters. You walk into the back room of a girly joint, you rip back one of those little curtains, you put a gun to the head of some guy who has his unit in his hand, take all his money, his watch, his eyeglasses, sometimes his shoes. Nobody who gets heisted in a porno shop is going to
complain to the cops. There's forty-seven of those places between Seattle and Portland. Couple of times I got chased when I came back into the same place too soon, but I never got caught. Plenty of money for drugs and candy bars. There wasn't anything else to life.

"My little brother, he always was smarter than me. By the time he was nineteen he knew how to manufacture the stuff, so we moved to Pasco and started the Bros in the Basement crystal meth factory. It would take us eleven days to build a batch, then we'd haul back to Seattle, down I-5 as far as Oakland. Two years later we were big-time wholesalers, rolling high. Everybody knew the Bros. My little brother was into late-sixties Cameros, big block, tuck and roll. I liked big motorcycles and bad dogs. I kept pitbulls.

"Our trouble was that we were addicts, didn't separate the buzz from the bucks. On the day we got busted we had been drinking and shooting up for six steady days, getting a delivery ready. We were lost and crazy. My little brother was driving his candy-apple-green fast ride, and I was in the backseat with my big pitbull, Breedin' Butch, and a sixteen-gauge Winchester pump shotgun, sucking a fifth of black Jack. Lost and crazy, man, cruising down I-5 through the armpit of Oregon and I am blowing away freeway signs with the shotgun, at seventy miles an hour, all along the busiest commercial route in the world.

"My little brother was even crazier than me. He wheels out an exit in Roseburg, Oregon, leaves me and the car idling in front of a Payless drugstore, then comes running out five minutes later, tosses a whole garbage sack of prescription drugs in my window, downers mainly, seconol, demerol, codeine, then peels back onto the freeway. I mean, you don't do that man. You don't stick up a chainstore pharmacy then make a getaway in the only candy-apple green automobile north of Pasadena. We never even thought about that. We were so far gone we were invisible.

"Then, south of Myrtle Creek, my little brother decides he has to pee, twists off into a Texaco station and runs for the head, leaving me and Butch and the trunkful of drugs, the garbage sack and the shotgun just sitting out in the open, like turds in a punchbowl. First thing I see in the mirror is a bubble gum machine on top of an Oregon State cruiser, pulling up right behind us. I get sober and cranky and scared real fast.

"The windows of the Camero are smoked, way smoked, so I know that the state cop doesn't see me. I pump a shell into the shotgun. When the cop steps out of the car, I level on him, through the back window, and fully intend to remodel his face with safety glass and number six shot, but when I jerk the trigger there's just a big hollow click. I'd fired a thousand rounds through that gun, and that was the first dud shotgun shell I'd run into. I believe that Jesus Christ came into that car and saved me from the gas chamber and the fiery furnace of Hell by seizing the gun and causing it to misfire.

"Meanwhile my little brother comes out of the toilet, spots the cop, and splashes, man, faints all over the sidewalk before Allard, the arresting officer, even knows my little brother belongs to the green car. I gotta hand it to Allard. He was careless and stupid and very lucky, but he took us alone.

"While Allard is leaning over my little brother, I decide to call it quits myself, so I open the car door real easy, sticking my hands out first, but, when the door comes open far enough, Butch blows through the hole and takes Allard by the hamstring, big time. Pitbulls earn the reputation. This one was stout and awful close to mean. Allard is screaming and pounding Butch with the butt of his revolver. Butch ain't letting go.

"There is only one sure way to get a pitbull to stop biting. You grab it by the tail and you put about this much of your finger straight up its butthole. That is what I did. Butch reached around to snap at whatever was buggering him, and Allard shot him through the head, then arrested us.
"Four counts of manufacturing a controlled substance, four of intent to deliver, one of armed robbery, one of illegal use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, one of interstate flight. I was looking at thirty years before Allard testified to the sentencing judge about Butch and how I had saved his leg. As it was I got five to fifteen, indeterminate, and spend six years and four days, working in the print shop, reading the Holy Word. Been on the streets three weeks. My little brother is still in there. Praise Jesus."
---o0o---