drifter

Joachim is a bum. He looks at me with those bright white eyes that are a direct contrast to his black, dirty face. His hair is wild, gray, and uncombed. Every day he asks me for money.

When I first came here, I cared. I would give people change. I would talk to them. I used to not be so calloused. What Joachim does, he collects money all day and buys instant-scratch lottery tickets every night. On a typical day, he might get fifty dollars from soliciting strangers, and all of that goes to the tickets.

And he gets a check from the government every month for claiming to be mentally disabled. I mean, I wouldn’t doubt that he’s got psychological issues, but I don’t think he’s crazy enough to just get eight hundred dollars every month for doing nothing.

When I described this Joachim guy to my friend Graham, he brightened up. Graham is a little…imbalanced. This is a kid who decided one day to just up and move to Australia for a year. This is a kid who ends up naked and swimming in a body of water at two in the morning whenever he gets drunk and sometimes when he isn’t.

This is a kid who you will ask ‘So, what do you want to do tonight?’ and he will jokingly reply: ‘I dunno, how 'bout we go out and kill a drifter?’ I mean, I thought he was joking until he said this:

“No. Listen, I'm serious. Think about it, who will miss him? Nobody. He’s homeless. Who will look for him? Nobody. The only way they’ll even know he’s dead is if they somehow find the body, and if we play our cards right, they won’t.”

“We?” I said. “What makes you think I want to participate in this?”

“Consider it a humanitarian deed. This guy will just be draining society of valuable money that could be better spent dropping bombs on a-rabs. He’s most likely a miserable wretch who hates his life and wants to die anyway but lacks the courage for suicide.”

And I hate to admit this, but the things Graham was saying, well, they started to make sense to me. Who would miss Joachim? Who would look for him? Certainly not the other homeless people. Certainly not the pedestrians he hassled every day.

I asked Graham, “Just how exactly do we go about this?”

Smiling, he laid out the details for me.

---

It was the next day when I approached Joachim, him sitting outside MacDonalds with his change cup in-hand. “Joachim!” I exclaimed. “You mind doin’ me a favor?”

I got my line in before he could even ask me for money and he said, “What kinda favor? I ain’t doin’ nothin’ free.”

“Me and my friend want to get drunk tonight, but neither one of us is twenty-one yet. If you buy us some booze, you can buy yourself some and I’ll give you five extra bucks.”

He puzzled this over for perhaps five seconds and said okay. Graham was waiting just around the block in his car, for phase two. Joachim and I walked to the liquor store and I waited outside while he went in to get the stuff.

Joachim came out about two minutes later, holding two brown bags. I motioned for him to follow me to the alley and he did so. As he handed me my bag, I inquired: “Hey, me and my friend are going out to his house to get plastered. There'll be girls there. Wanna come with us?”

And I don’t know if it was the thought of young girls, or the idea that he might be able to swipe a VCR, but something compelled him to say yes. He then followed me to Graham’s car and I let him sit in the passenger seat after I hopped in the back.

Of course, there weren’t going to be any girls. We didn’t even go to Graham’s house. Instead, we just started driving towards the country. After twenty minutes, we hit the interstate and Joachim looked a little concerned. “How far out you live?” he asked Graham.

And he grinned. “Not too much farther, old man.”

The old man smelled like whiskey and dead rabbits. It was going to be a chore to get the car to not stink like ass after this little stunt, but Graham didn’t seem too concerned about that. He turned the rock music up loud enough that Joachim couldn’t ask any more questions.

It was maybe a half-hour later when we exited from the highway and started going down this long, desolate road. After a few miles it turned into gravel, and we turned off the gravel onto a dirt road. There was nothing save for a little patch of grass and a tree. Maybe twenty yards from the tree, there was a pile of logs. Graham parked by the tree.

We got out and Joachim looked confused. “Where’s your house? Where’s dem girls?”

“They’ll get here a little later,” I said. “And about the house. He lives a little farther up the road, but we have our parties out here ‘cause there’s no cops.”

Joachim and I started drinking as Graham got the fire going with some gasoline and newspapers. I sat there, clutching the bottle of vodka, picturing the axe under the blankets in Graham’s trunk. I thought about swinging it right into the dirty old man’s skull. I took another drink.

We sat there talking for what seemed like an hour and a half, watching the sun recede, watching the moon get brighter. I noticed that Graham didn’t drink anything at all. He seemed very pleased with the prospect of fulfilling his wicked fantasy. He walked off to his car and came back a few minutes later, carrying something next to his chest.

It was a camcorder. This wasn’t part of the plan, and if our victim weren’t right between us I would have pointed this out. Graham didn’t seem to care. He pointed the camera at me and asked, “We’re sure havin’ some fun now, yeah?”

I shrugged, and was caught off-guard by headlights bouncing down the gravel road and making their way towards us. The pair of lights turned onto the dirt road, and eventually parked next to Graham’s car. It looked like a rusty 80’s era sedan. It didn’t look like a cop car. My theory was confirmed when the girls got out and started walking to the fire.

Also, they were not part of the plan. The witnesses, the videotaping, it was starting to get to be too much for me. Before the girls got to us, I motioned for Graham to have a little sideline chat with me.

“Hey man, what are these girls doing here? What’s with the camera?” I whispered angrily.

“You just need to relax a little and drink a little more.” was all he said before stepping over to greet his guests. There was a skinny girl, kind of goofy-looking and tall, and a shorter but prettier goth chick. The tall one smiled at me and made a grab for the bottle in my hand. “My name’s Melanie,” she said.

I let her chug the vile fluid. Melanie already seemed to be a little out of it, and she reeked like pot. The gothic girl was talking to our mark, already sitting next to him and getting into some kind of conversation about drinking. At least that’s what I think it was about, I couldn’t tell because they were whispering.

Melanie and I sat down in front of the fire, passing the bottle back and forth. Goth girl started rubbing Joachim’s leg, and this made me want to vomit even more than the firey aftertaste of the liquor. Graham was maybe ten feet away from all this, fiddling with his camcorder.

He returned to our little gathering after all this knobs and switches were calibrated. He pointed the camera at me and started asking me questions.

“How much do you think you’ve had?” he asked.

Instead of answering, I just flipped him off and took another drink. Melanie giggled. “Put this in your movie,” she said. She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and flashed her boobs at Graham for maybe three seconds.

“Niiice,” was his reply to that.

Joachim glanced at us, and the goth girl looked up, a little put out. “Hey, no fair! I wanna be in it too. Check THIS out.”

She didn’t flash us, though. She reached into her purse and I saw steel glisten for a second before she plunged it into Joachim’s chest. I was in disbelief at first, but the reality hit me as soon as she licked the knife. Purplish blood was oozing from the wound and Joachim started screaming, “Dis crazy bitch stabbed me. Somebody call a ambulance!”

Graham was laughing like a mental patient, and he rushed forward to get the agony on tape. Melanie just kept drinking and watching as Joachim screamed and Goth girl took her shirt off. She started rubbing the blood on her chest, her round mounds streaked with dark, thick liquid. Goth girl sprang onto Joachim and started grinding on him, but he pushed her away and made these gurgling noises. Graham handed me the camera and walked off towards his car.

Melanie picked this opportune moment to kiss me. Her breath tasted like smoke and rubbing alcohol. The kiss lasted maybe a minute and I kept the camera pointed at the general direction of the murderous chaos. When she finally let me breathe again, I noticed Joachim laying prostrate, with his arms twitching and a puddle of blood collecting under him. Gothic girl was now naked and putting her hands all over him, and dirt was sticking to her naked, bloody flesh.

Graham came back with the axe and Melanie’s eyes started to dance. “This is my favorite part,” she whispered to me.

The naked girl looked upset. “I’m not done with him yet! I haven’t even gotten off…”

Graham rolled his eyes and lunged at them, brandishing the lumber-splitting wedge. Goth girl jumped out of the way just in time to avoid getting hit by the blunt side of the axe right before it crushed into Joachim’s skull. The drifter screamed and burbled like a tortured animal for a few seconds and then moved no more.

I got this all on tape.

What happened next surprised me. Graham tossed the axe aside and fell to his knees. He reached into his pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes, proffering one to Melanie and to the Goth Girl, and even to me before taking one himself. We all sat there in the shifting shadows around the fire, smoking in silence.

Melanie was the first to finish. She tossed the butt into the flames and walked to the corpse, picking up the hands and dragging it closer to the fire. “Let me help you with that,” Graham said as he clasped his hands around the ankles. I was surprised at Melanie’s strength as they swung the body into the heart of the fire.

The smell was awful. If you think burning flesh is bad, the hair is ten times worse. I’m not a scientist, but I could swear the alcohol content in that man’s blood made him burn faster than a normal corpse. Not that I have any frame of reference.

Goth girl didn’t move or say anything for awhile, but I thought I could detect a tear forming in the corner of her heavily mascara’d eye. Thick smoke rose from the heart of the fire, and I coughed. It was at this point that the drink and the stink got to me, and a thick glob of liquid vomit shot out of my mouth. The other three looked at me, but only for a second. Melanie came back to me and patted me on the back. Graham started making out with the gothic girl, holding the camera so that it could focus on their fighting tongues.

I didn’t feel good, and all I can really remember after that was curling up in a little ball next to the fire and shivering a lot. I have a vague recollection of Graham hoisting me onto his shoulder and carrying me to his car, and a still fainter memory of climbing the stairs to his room.

The last mental image I have before I passed out for good on his floor is Graham taking the tape from the camera, labeling it ‘Joachim’ and putting it into a cabinet with many other similar-looking tapes with first names written on them.
 

(c) 2003 J Baugher