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11:11 – Chapter 16
Nov. 29, 2011
Vincent’s shouts for “mercy” dragged us from slumber at 6 a.m. the next morning.
We untied him and let him use the bathroom before we tied his hands together in the front, allowing him to feed himself and drink morning coffee.
The three of us had been together 24 hours by lunchtime and despite his pleas for us to release him and his promises that he wouldn’t hurt us and he just wanted to “head down the road,” we continued to bind his hands.
When his pleas were rebuffed, he’d swing from being a seemingly poorly done-by old man to a wildly angry hate crime proponent being set upon by “Zionist swine.”
When I told him we couldn’t be Zionists and swine, as the two just don’t mix, he barked, “bah — you’re worse than both combined. You’re Canadian. That means you’re complicit to the greatest sins perpetrated under God’s command.”
That was when I seized upon the idea to get Vincent stoned.
It was my turn to cook lunch and I stirred up a large pot of canned beef stew. However, just as it was almost ready, I separated a nice big bowl for Vincent and crumbled a large sticky bud of cannabis into it.
Carrie whispered, “What the hell are you doing now?”
“This old prick has got this coming to him. I am gonna get him baked and mess with head a little bit.”
Carrie told me she thought I was wrong to do such a thing and by doing so I was no better than Vincent.
“And he’s old. You could kill him,” she added sternly.
I admitted to not caring if I did kill him. I was severely disappointed with Vincent and with God, the aliens who may have left us all on Earth while they went snowboarding for the weekend or the variety of Gods that may lurk about just on the other side of the ethers, placing bets on what kind of stupid trick we pet humans may perform next for their collective amusement.
The last one stuck with me as Vincent gratefully slurped at his stew.
Clearly a touch schizophrenic and spectacularly anti-social, Vincent was now victim to my obviously sadistic nature. I tried to assuage my guilt by thinking to myself “he has this coming to him” for any number of imagined crimes against his fellow man and state as I essentially poisoned the old coot with a goodly dose of the 4:20 herb but the shred of decency that still lurked within me wouldn’t let it be so.
An hour after lunch, I turned the stereo on and cranked up some Hawkwind — their 15 minute ravefest You Shouldn’t Do That and sat across from a quiet and smiling Vincent, who scowled like a high society snot who was forced to sit next to a leper when the music began.
“Like the tunes?” I asked him.
Carrie shouted from the bedroom, where she was reading and avoiding me because she was disgusted with my actions, “put something on we can all listen to! Turn that crazy shit off. You know I can’t handle that.”
Vincent grinned at me. I was on the same plain as the old man as I had smoked half a spleef after lunch and I cackled back at him, mocking him for having a chunk of potato or vegetable in his beard. It was a stoner stand-off. The stoner from Canada versus the racist old dinosaur from America.
“You can’t be it,” I said over and over as the song drilled away — “You shouldn’t do that…” and by the time the long song was over, Vincent looked like he was going to have a stroke.
“I don’t feel very good,” he rasped. “I need to lie down. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I roughly hoisted him to his feet and helped him from the kitchen table to the couch in the living room. He slumped over and rested his head against the arm of the couch, sighing deeply.
“You’re wrong, you know,” I whispered. “And you’ve lost. Get used to it. As my beautiful wife would say, ‘suck it up buttercup.’”
Vincent’s eyes closed and he drifted off into a deep cannabis-laced stew sleep, dreaming of coloured people with large crotches he could kick. As he slumbered, I shaved his mustache, leaving only the center, ala Hitler, and laughed until I cried.
Carrie once again reprimanded me, called me a “sinister asshole” and threatened to destroy my CD collection if I didn’t respect her “intense dislike” for Hawkwind, or other such bands. And when Vincent eventually came to, right before dinner, she had washed his face and hands and apologized to him for my behaviour.
“He’s no better than you are, Vincent,” she said. “I assume I did something evil — which is why I am here with you two. I didn’t think he (me) was evil but I am starting to wonder. I really am.”
The old man sat silent and refused to eat dinner — a lovely roast chicken that I didn’t stuff with weed.
After we finished the dishes and discussed the route we would take to Vancouver when we left in the morning, Vincent finally spoke.
“You’re going to get yours,” he sneered. “Just you wait and see Zionist. Death is going to take you and he is going have his way with your wife, too. The lord wills it to be so.”
Carrie and I looked at each other like two people who had just heard solid confirmation of a sick rumour.
“You shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t do that…” I sang quietly.
Carrie said she felt as though she were caught in an episode of the Twilight Zone. And I agreed.
“Maybe that’s what this is. It fits, doesn’t it?” I sang, staring at Vincent with hard eyes.
“So what’s your beef with the rest of the world?” I asked him. He looked away and grunted.
“Why the hate?” Vincent’s head turned the other way, and he grunted again. “Why the fear? Why the shallow loopiness? Why the stupidity?”
He refused to delight me further and occasionally grunted at a question. Mostly he sat with his eyes closed and listened to the music.
Eventually I tired of tormenting the old man and put on some soothing country music for Carrie and he thanked her for her “gracious hospitality.” He spooned his cold dinner into his face and stared at me with murder in his heart and smiled like a bearded reptile after each swallow.
I was suffering from a major harrumph.
It was 11:11 p.m. when I shut the bedroom light off and flumped down. Vincent was back in the kids’ bedroom with his hands and feet tied tightly together. He gave me no resistance when I said it was time for him to hit the hay.
Carrie was already asleep. She was angry with me and was scared about us leaving in the morning.
Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
