THE DISTRIBUTOR an excerpt
Pete, Russ, Dusty, Bips, our cadre of booze and pills, distributing goods and sometimes services out of Dusty’s little roadside bar outside of Mentone just down the mountain from Big Bear, those days were in the past now, and I was in the present. With someone looking for me, a guy I knew a little about, seeming to promise answers when he showed up in Southern California. Fighting off memories threatening to suck me back to the past‒the bleary haze of misguided dreams and the haunting way we rearrange them‒it catches up to you with health problems, mental instability, when you check out for a few years to conquer shame and postpone living until it’s late, and your life skills and your will haven’t kept pace with the rough edges of wasted battles. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, rather coming to grips with my tin-box life on the edge of a feudal client’s land, and he held it over me like a hammer ready to pound me into the ground. And I was already there. I was already at bedroc