Pill-Billies (Discover this Summer's naughtiest read...) Page 2

  That summer, Mama and Terry took a vacation to Panama City Beach leaving for three weeks. We stayed at Daddy’s and got to play in the pool although that was a poor substitute for the ocean or so I thought. I had only seen it on TV. It was one night after we had been in the pool all day and played in the yard with squirt guns and water balloons that I saw something else bad with Burton happen. Daddy had got out there that hot day with us, too. He played around, he and his new girlfriend, Shannon. We liked her. She was real young. We just were happy for him. She was real nice. She didn’t have no kids. Anyway, it was one night after everybody got cleaned up and we went out to the Wildcat Country Buffet where they had the best food ever. I still remember all of the food choices. At one end you had all the salad stuff which Southerners didn’t pay as much attention to like Yankees did. Starting at the other end you have two trays full of fried chicken. The best I’ve ever had. Daddy said it was because they took all the skin off and soaked it in buttermilk before battering it. Next to that was the mashed potatoes with the gravy in a little container that they had to constantly refill because it was so good. Then, there was the macaroni and cheese and next to that was the collard greens. Those were Daddy’s favorite. They also had hush puppies and fried catfish fillets. Sometimes, they had brown Trout that was fried. They also had a big thing of french fries and next to that was some kind of vegetables that I really never ate. It was all fresh from the farms around here. Anyway, we ate and ate.

  They surprised us by taking us to the Holt County Arcade and giving us each a roll of quarters. They sat back and drank pitchers of beer and talked to the other grownups. Shannon was so sweet to us. I told her that I wanted her to be my mom. She said she would love to. Even though I was fifteen I was still having my nightmares and sometimes I still wet. It only happens every once in a while. It is not a big deal like it used to be. After all our quarters were spent we went back to the house and put our bathing suits back on and jumped in the pool, all of us. Daddy and Shannon got cold and ran out of beer out there and decided just to go inside and get cleaned up and go to bed. They hugged all of us and Shannon kissed us on the cheek. They were so happy. Me and Brooke smiled at each other as they walked off towards the house holding hands. I have had a few beers by this point. I had run out. Ben decided to go play video games. I said I would go with him.

  We went inside and showered and put on dry clothes. I went and grabbed me my big cup from 7-Eleven and filled it to the top with five Silver Bullets from Daddy’s and Shannon’s beer stash. I also knew where they kept the pot pipe and the pot. I snuck back there to their room to make sure they were in bed asleep. They were. Daddy always leaves his TV on. He says he can’t sleep without it. He turns the volume down real low. That’s how I know he’s asleep. I can barely hear the TV in there from the other side of the door. Ben and I played a game for a little bit before he got sleepy and decided to go to bed. I turned off the video games and put it on regular TV. America’s Funniest Home Videos was coming on. I wanted to get stoned to watch it. I stepped out on the back porch. I was real careful to not make any noise. I was smoking weed out there and didn’t want to get busted. Even if I thought Daddy wouldn’t have cared I didn’t want to make him decide. Burt and Brooke were still in the pool but it was quiet. I couldn’t see them. I stood up on the rail of the back porch. I looked by the little ladder leading into the pool. There they were kissing and touching on each other. I didn’t want them to see me. I just guessed they were curious. I decided not to say nothing.

  I went back inside after smoking Kentucky’s finest Bluegrass pot my Daddy got all the time from his hired hand. It was so good. It got you real fucked up. My eyes were so slinky and slanted that when my brother and Brooke came in I thought for sure they could tell I was stoned or on something. They didn’t even notice. They both went into the same bedroom to go to bed. I waited for Burt to come to the kitchen to get himself something to drink. I stopped him. I told him I saw him out there and that he better not be doing anything but kissing and that if he didn’t stop it I was going to have to tell on him. He told me he smelled pot and saw me up there looking. He said I better not tell on him about Brooke or he would tell on me about stealing Daddy’s pot. I couldn’t risk getting in trouble that big. He went back there and closed the door. I don’t know what they did.

  Two years later Terry and mama were on vacation again in Panama City Beach without us and we were all staying at my Daddy’s when I caught them red-handed having sex. I was 17, Brooke was 14, and my brother was 13. Thankfully, they were under the covers. I didn’t see them naked. I definitely saw the condom wrapper strewn on the floor like they were on their damn honeymoon. I closed the door back real quietly. I never said anything to them. Burt told me later on that he knew that I busted him that day.

  The next summer was when all Hell broke loose. He had gotten Brooke pregnant even though they had been using condoms. They were having sex all the time. They started saying they loved each other and that they were going to run away. Brooke lied to my Daddy and Shannon and told them that she went to a party and the boy that got her pregnant put something in her drink that made her pass out. I let her get away with lying. We really had gone to a party recently and came home drunk. Daddy knew and so did Shannon. They just didn't say anything because they're cool. They know we are just teenagers.

  Shannon took Brooke to Lexington and got her an abortion. They stayed in a hotel for a couple of days and then came back. That's when Brooke started getting into drinking and smoking pot. She told my Daddy and Shannon that her Daddy hit her and Ben. She also told them that my Mama had slapped her and spanked Ben with a belt. Daddy had heard enough. He called his lawyer friend and told him the situation but not the abortion part. By the fall Ben and Brooke and my brother had moved in together with us. Ben was 11 years old. He was so relieved. The judge hated Mama and as soon as he heard about Terry he hated him, too. He had no problem with all of the kids staying over there at my Daddy's. The sickest part is Momma and Terry didn't even put up a fight. They were happy to let them go.

  Terry sent Daddy money to take care of us all the time. They even came over and helped them move all their stuff in and kissed them on the cheeks like they were dropping them off at summer camp! Mama told Burton and me that she was glad to see us go. She had given enough of her life up raising us for nothing and that if we wanted to live with our sorry Daddy and his child bride that we were more than welcome to. She said we could come over there for Thanksgiving and our birthdays but that she and Terry wanted Christmas to themselves from now on. That was fine with us. We were having so much fun with Daddy and Shannon that we didn't even pay attention to them anymore. And, they were fine with it. They left us alone.

  Brooke and my brother still shared a room. I knew they were still having sex even after the abortion. Shannon made Brooke start taking birth control pills. At least she couldn't get pregnant again. It bothered me that my brother and her were 14 and 15 and having a full-on living together-type sexual relationship and that they were step-siblings. I just decided to ignore it. Brooke and I were friends. I started smoking pot with her. We would sneak some of Daddy and Shannon's and roll us up a blunt and go walk and smoke it. Burt didn't like pot. He liked pills. He had been given these white ones from Richard, his buddy at school. They were called OxyContin. Me and Brooke didn't think much about it when he gave us one apiece. We were stoned. He said that they would make our buzz last longer. Burton drank some in the beginning but only if he had a couple of OxyContin's to take with it.

  So, it was. The early days of partying had started. Pretty soon after I turned 18 and moved into an apartment and was working at the Costco as a cashier. Brooke and my brother started coming over, more and more. Nobody knew by the way they acted that they were step-siblings. They just thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Since I lived a little ways outside of Vinson I thought it would be safer for them to be out in the open with each other. They were definitely in love. I felt sorry for them
for their situation and the circumstances of their meeting each other. We were all teenagers after all. We didn't care what the adult world thought of us the more OxyContins that we got from Richard. It wasn't long before OxyContins weren't the only thing we were taking. Richard was giving us: Xanax, Klonopin, Percocets, Darvocet, Loritab, hydrocodone, Adderall, Vicodin, Soma, and lots of other stuff that we didn't even know what it was. I bought a Nurse's Drug Guide at the bookstore so we could look the pills up.

  That's how I discovered nursing. I quickly became an expert at identifying pills. Everybody was really impressed. They all started encouraging me to go to school to be a nurse. I had really good grades in high school. I got an award for having the highest grade in Anatomy and Physiology. I was Vice President of the National Honor Society. I graduated with a 3.5 GPA. I made a 21 on the ACT. I made a 900 on the SAT. I had lots of activities at school like: cheerleading, math team, and debate team. So, I had a real shot. I finally gave in to the pressure from everybody and applied to community college in Paducah.

  I got in and started taking my basic classes. Everything was going great. I was still working at Costco as a cashier. I always had a paycheck. I had my own apartment that I shared with my brother and his girlfriend. I get the bedroom. They get the futon that folds out in the living room area next to the kitchenette. I hear them having sex all the time through my thin walls. I start to want a boy of my own. There was a black dude that just moved here from Charlotte, North Carolina. I think he's hot. He has those dreadlocked things like Bob Marley. He has a tattoo on his arm that says H.V. K. I don't know what it means. It just looks cool. He's a little bit older than me. I know he doesn't have a girlfriend. I invite him over to hang out with us. We all have a blast. He had never taken a Rush Limbaugh before. We gave one to him and told him that this was the pills that got Rush Limbaugh off. He said he was scared to try that and that he would stick to his weed and Philly blunts. I changed his mind by putting it between my lips and kissing him and pushing it into his mouth with my tongue. I know it's kind of gross but my brother and Brooke were sitting right there. I didn't care.

  The pills that I had been taking made me care about nothing. As soon as Brooke and my brother left to go get food, me and him had sex on the futon they slept on. It was awesome. He was so strong. He could pick me up and turn me around. He finished all over me and some of it got on the futon. The whole room smelled like sweat and sex. My brother and Brooke were so stoned and zonked out on pills that Brooke sat right on the cum stain and didn't even notice. She opened her Taco Bell stuff and scarfed it down pausing only to push the ashtray full of cigarette butts out of the way with the bottom of her Coke as the straw squeaked from being pulled up by her lips. Meanwhile, I had pulled dude in my room and was giving him a blow job. My brother knocked on the door. My new guy yanked his pants up. I opened the door. My brother asked me to come out in the hallway with him. I thought we had been busted. Turns out he was just handing me some more pills. That was his way of paying rent. That was fine with me.

  I closed the door taking one or two pills before turning and handing a couple to my new boyfriend. I get back down on my knees and pick up where I left off. Pretty soon we could hear them having sex in the other room. I was so messed up that it turned me off until the pill drowned them out for me. David acted like he didn't hear but I know he did. We turned the TV on in my room after we finished and watched Comedy Central dying laughing out loud at South Park. I gave us the Nite-Nite cocktail which is a mixture of sleeping pills and downers. We fell asleep. I had school the next day. I ended up staying home smoking pot, drinking beer, taking pills and having sex. I should've known that it could never last. I was stupid and now it's too late.

  Canterwood

  Chapter 1

  The place that I'm staying in now is called Canterwood. It's supposed to be a rehabilitation facility. It's really just jail for junkies. Everybody kept saying to me that I needed to have a reality check with all the pills I was taking and the liquor I was drinking to wash them down with. I smoked tons of pot and cigarettes. I always have to have cigarettes even to this day in some form. I drink coffee. I drink Coke's. If I could get cocaine I would do it or really anything even cheap speed in here just to pass the time.

  The only thing that I could get in here were some stupid trucker pills from the gas station from one of our little outing things we do for community service hours. The idiot driving the little bus that takes us everywhere could care less what we do inside the store or what we buy. The trick is to buy whatever you can drink or steal it and go into the bathroom and chug that motherfucker. You get a buzz and get back on the little van thing and ride off. You have to have chewing gum to cover your breath up. It's worth it to get drunk. It's really hard to get liquor. If you can you sneak some of that in by putting it in a water bottle and acting like it's water. Some of the black girls dump it in their Coca-Cola's whatever liquor they can get.

  There are girls in here that will have sex with dudes just to get drugs. Everywhere we go that's in public to do our stupid community service bullshit they are always trying to get guys's attention. One girl last week took off and got in the car with a bunch of dudes. So, they got pretty strict. You have to behave yourself to get to go wash the cop cars nowadays. I hate that job but if you do it the service hours count double. I am terrified of police. It was so scary when they would come to the house to break up fights between Mama and Daddy. I always wet my pants out of fear when they would get there with the sirens going. Even when they come outside to get the car after it's been cleaned off I always think they are coming for me. David did something really bad in North Carolina a long time ago and that's why he moved here. When they busted in my apartment we had just broken up. He refused to leave my apartment. They ran the ID he was using discovered who he really was and that he was wanted back in Charlotte. I knew his gory story. I also know a lot of first names connected to it. I'm glad I wasn't there when they got him.

  David grew up in this neighborhood called Hyde Valley. It was built in 1959. There were several cul-de-sac type parts to it meaning that there were very few through streets. This design lent itself to easy drug dealing after public housing was introduced there in the 1970s. Of course, as soon as the subsidized renters moved in Whitey moved out. In 1989, crack hit. All of the kids around there started rolling their blunts with crack calling them Woos. Since Charlotte was the Queen city the gang that came out of that neighborhood (Hyde Valley) called themselves the Knights. Knight stood for crucial with a K, Nubian, Ignoble, Gods, Here Thugging. The maze of dead-end streets made it tough for cops and even tougher for any potential intruder to infiltrate their turf. The Knights could see you coming. Charlotte is in the foothills of the Appalachians enough to have neighborhoods that have a little geography like little hills. David said they would dip if they saw the Charlotte Mecklenburg police coming. Anybody else would get dealt with. Right before summer in 2005, David said he went to this bar called Rack Runners. It was where the Knights hung out. David lived on Cinderella Street in the heart of their turf. He knew all the Knights. David was an O.G., meaning that the neighborhood was split up into zones and he had control of one of them. Some dumb ass put their cigarette out in one of David's homeboy's drinks and got his ass shot up. David said that's when it started blowing up around there.

  He had to do some things to get the block tax from these boys from Dillworth, these rich white boys. I'm not going to say what he did. Those boy's parents got the police and their team of lawyers after the Knights. It went crazy. Then, the other thing happened where David was trying to collect dues from a baby G. The baby G. and his little Pee-wee friend tried to jump in. David had to "take care" of them. It was okay though. All of the crime from Hyde Valley was being tried on a case-by-case basis. They had no idea that there was a gang. All of the other residents of the neighborhood knew the police were denying it. They didn't care about a neighborhood that was lost to the blacks after public housing and the subsidized ren
ters appeared in the 70s. They wanted them to kill each other and to bring the other gangsters from the other parts of town over there to die in droves. They would just be there with the body bags ready to zip them up blaming their death on the malignant social cancer known as Thug Life.

  David's friend that lived on White Plains Road got shot and killed by these dudes from Gastonia. David went to go get revenge on them. Afterwards he stopped at Sugar Creek and North Tryon at The Booty Club. These fools started dumping on them in the parking lot. It was easy to spot the Knights because they all had dreads. They also wore their high school colors because red and blue were taken but the color green like that money they were stacking looked mighty good. When I first met David I teased him. I clowned him for wearing so much green by calling him Peter Pan. David had a .357 magnum that he carried. He fired a few times that night. He thinks he hit a couple of dudes. The police had enough complaints. They had to do something. They started a long-term campaign and built-up a shit ton of little charges from little drug deals. That's how they got them. David told me that this dude that he knew that lived on Beach Way and this other dude that he knew that lived on Snow White Street were snitching to the police. He found out about it by overhearing one of their conversations to each other at a house party. They were both wasted and standing next to the air conditioner talking thinking that the noise was covering up their voices. David said he was outside taking a leak against the side of the house. He heard every word they said. Snitches get stitches. That's all David said. I know what happened is he took those two boys out of the picture because they were about to get Big Dominic. He could not let that happen. Big Dominic was an Original Knight or an

  O. K. He was one of the gang's founders. He took David in. David is an only child. His mother got hooked on crack and made friends with this woman from Alabama named Chantelle Gates. They partied all the way to Atlanta and to Birmingham and then somewhere around Huntsville last he heard. David had a whole apartment to himself at age 14. He knew how to deposit checks from the government and forge his mama's signature. She told him to do it. That way he would have the rent paid and money for food so he could go to school. David didn't need her money by that age. Even though he was still a peewee he had hella money. They paid all the stuff with drug money and had crazy ass parties in that apartment. They had to also have a look out in case the cops came. Snitches get stitches. Big Dominic became a father figure to David since David's daddy was serving a life sentence for armed robbery and rape. His dad was a heroin addict from New Jersey.