The Last Night
It was a bit after midnight and it had been up to this point, a relatively peaceful late summer evening. The two of us were at Dag’s rented house out in the country down route 9 past Freehold somewhere and we had just introduced ourselves to Lucy (in the sky with diamonds). We were seated at his kitchen table, sitting in the near dark with just a few lit candles, watching the flickering shadows on the walls and listening to the late summer cacophony of cicadas and crickets outside in the darkness. From the sound of it, we imagined that there had to be a biblically huge number of these aurally intense insects right outside our window, or maybe even covering the entire outside of the house! A few invaders were already inside, coming through the walls, or so it seemed. A sort of Hitchcockian moment, but with bugs instead of birds. They composed a cascading chorus that at times seemed to take on an incredible volume and scope. The quieter we got, the louder they became. But we knew Lucy was just playing with us so we just smiled, sat back and enjoyed the trip.
The mood suddenly changed as we hear a car pull onto the gravel driveway and up to the back door. We weren’t expecting anyone and due to the nature of Bag’s business it was wise to be cautious. So we douse the candles and peer out the window. The car doors open, and in the dim light coming from inside the car we see that it is a crew from Amboy. We knew all three of them quite well. They were all cool dudes but rather pathetic smackies nevertheless, and were the type of guys that trouble seemed to follow them around like a dark cloud. The locally infamous Viet Nam vet, Fast Eddie, gets out of the car and runs up and bangs incessantly on the door. We knew him, and against our better judgment, we answer the door. Big Mistake.
Biiiiggg mistake
Eddie tells us that Dubie, the fourth member of this crew, another smackie, was out cold in the back seat, obviously ODed. They had started the night at Bayview Park back in Amboy, with some really (too) good junk. It seems that they were driving around for hours trying to figure out what to do with him. The lamenuts were afraid to take him to the hospital for various and stupid reasons. So they just drove around until they came up with the bright idea to go to Bag’s house.
One of them tells us that he heard that when someone ODs, you can shock him back into consciousness by, get this, putting ice on his balls. So that’s why they’re at Bag’s house. They drag poor Dubie into the house, plop him into the bathtub, pull down his pants, and drop trays of ice cubes onto his man sack.
But Dubie isn’t responding. He face looked quite peaceful but there was absolutely no response to the ice cubes, or to anything else for that matter. Bag is going nuts, as he can’t believe what has just dropped into his world out of nowhere, especially considering our altered state of mind. He of course cannot call an ambulance or the police out to this house for obvious reasons, and it seemed that poor Dubie was probably gone before he got there. For my part, I just stood back, oddly detached from the entire proceedings, taking in this insane scene as if I were watching some intense movie. Watching an intense movie with Lucy bouncing around in my head.
So Bag orders the guys to take Dubie out of the house and rush him to the nearest hospital, something these idiots should have done hours ago. We help them load Dubie back into the car and then breath an incredible sigh of relief as they pull away into the night and out of our lives.
A few days later we learned that they never made it to the hospital. They determined that it was already too late for Dubie and then drove back to Amboy, dropped him off at BayView Park and then placed an anonymous call to the police. And that is the sad and pathetic but true story of Dubie’s last night.
By Coney Crystal back home