The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (2 page)

Chapter One

A sticky leech named Tyler Durden once said, “Our fathers were our
models for God.
If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?”

The first part of this rationale suggests that God is an educated
hick with liquor, a cache of firearms, and an open ticket to Vegas for whenever
an impromptu remarriage is desired. The second half suggests that He is the
sort to trade Mama for a life of sexual promiscuity and untreated internal
rage.

It would seem that my “God” is an emotionally retarded trollop.

***

Old Man.

Pop.

Daddy.

El Gran Padre.

The one whose sense of justice is a strip of leather from the Big
& Tall section of Sears.

Your father.

He was the mentor for life’s lessons, your guide through troubled waters,
and the hand of discipline when he had to be. With a kind word or an evil eye,
he could fill you with pride about a good report card or reduce you to a dirty
pervert for jerking off in the backseat on a long trip. Whatever your
relationship with the man who sired you into this world, you can’t deny he
looked out for you.

For you ladies: didn’t he do everything in his power to protect
you? Who else was going to drag your cheating husband to the basement where his
screams didn't matter?

To all the men: wasn’t he full of fatherly advice? Just think how
long it would've taken
you
to find a stash spot for
Fat Fucking
Farmgirls.

And
when it was time to dole out punishment, who forced you to perfect the
two-handed ass shield when he whipped you for photographing your sister’s
friends in the shower?

That’s
right, your father.

***

So
your pops is that impish rogue who shot at the neighbor’s cat. A wild and wacky
guy who’s pulled knives on Jehovah’s Witnesses. That scamp who told the cop to
blow him instead of “Thanks for the warning.” And the zany character who
advised your principal that he was going to skullfuck him if he didn’t revoke
your suspension (it’s a distinct possibility that this is all just
my
father). He’s an individual. A staunch nonconformist. Someone who strayed from
the herd a long time ago. A man who follows the beat of his own dysrhythmic
drummer no matter where that shitty tune may lead.

With
an outlook as soiled as a young man’s bedsheets.

I
don’t know about you, but
my
pops is one of the craziest motherfuckers
to ever punch a stranger as they stood in front of a Starbucks doing nothing
but drinking their terrible coffee. He’s as looney as Paris Hilton at a job
fair. This is the same guy who accused the mailman of fucking his wife when he
asked my pops to sign for a package.

I
knew that hapless bastard.

He
had delivered in our neighborhood for years and I saw him frequently.

Needless
to say, from that point on the mailman greeted me with downcast eyes whenever I
saw him. If I was, say, in the yard mowing our corner lot with the damn push
mower instead of the riding mower because my father said it “built character,”
he would turn his head and look the other way when I waved. If I met him at the
mailbox for our delivery, he would shove the stack of bills and advertisements
in my hand without
so
much as a grunt.

The
sad part was that I didn’t know why any of this had taken place until years
later. (His daughter and I dated for a little bit after high school. She told
me about it after I’d stuck it in her wucket a few times.)

As
my world view expanded, I became embroiled in my own complications with the
fairer sex. During these periods of depression, I would sometimes reflect back
on my father’s third marriage to my first stepmother and wonder what really
happened way back then. One night when I was licking my wounds from a battle
with a particularly promiscuous shrew, it struck me like a bolt of lightning:

Considering
all that wound up happening with that wife, it was
totally
possible she
was fucking the mailman.

***

Don’t
get me wrong, good people, my father’s a decent man. He’s just a
hard
man. What exemplifies this quality the most are the quirks of his generosity:

If
you’re shirtless, he won’t give you the one off his back, but he’ll buy you one
and tell you to fuck off, his well of charity having been thoroughly sucked
dry.

As
a small child riding with him in the car, I’d sometimes look up from the
passenger seat and wonder about the scars on his face—the one over his right
eye, the one on his left cheek, and a few others that have now melded into the
wrinkles of a man approaching his 70s. One morning on the way to school I asked
him about them. He said they were from a few fists, some beer bottles in
raggedy bars, and the occasional knife. (It’s funny—as I sit here with patches
of grey in the beard hiding various facial scars of my own, I’ll be damned if
they aren’t from similar run-ins with the crème de la crème of
my
generation.)

***

My
father’s capacity for righting a wrong is notable in the sense that it tends to
scare the living shit out of everyone within spitting distance. One of the most
vivid memories I have from my childhood is when he exhibited this trait in a
monolith department store. For the sake of avoiding a lawsuit, we’ll call the
place Balfart.

He’d
gotten me a toy for Christmas. I believe it was a fire truck or Tonka truck,
something about eight inches long and metal with wheels. It proved to be unsound,
though I don’t remember exactly how. He went to right this corporate injustice
by returning the item and brought me along. I remember the conversation like it
happened yesterday:

“Yes,
sir, I got this for my son for Christmas and it’s broken. It came out the box
that way. I’d like to return it, please. I have the receipt right here.”

“I’m
sorry, sir. This was a sale item and we can’t take returns on sales.”

“Okay.
Well, can I exchange it for another one, please? I see you have a stack of ‘em
on display over there.” There was a pile of them on a table near the front
door. Marked at the regular price, of course.

“I’m
sorry, sir. We can’t do an exchange
or
return on a sale item.”

“So
there’s nothing you can do? I can’t even exchange this item for one that’s not
a broken piece of shit? I’ll pay you the difference.”

“No,
sir. I’m sorry. There’s absolutely nothing I can do.” This was the store
manager by the way, so it’s not as if there was a Higher Power to consult.

I
saw the blood rush to my father’s face, an early indicator that someone was
about to leave through the front door. Whether it was us walking out or the
manager sailing through the glass was still up for debate.
    

My
father then placed both hands on either side of this metal hunk of defection
and snapped it in two right in front of the manager. Wheels, springs, bits of
plastic, and—I reiterate,
metal
—flew in all directions, hitting the
manager in the face and falling on the counter that separated him from certain
extinction. My father brushed his hands on his slacks, never breaking eye
contact.

“There.
Now it’s
your
problem. Have a good day.” We walked out, got in his truck
and left. He never darkened that store’s doorway again.

This
was well before the blanket popularity of in-store and outside security
cameras. Anybody who wanted to identify him would be forced to limit their
eyewitness accounts to “the tall guy wearing a white t-shirt speed-walking to
the parking lot with a fat kid running to catch up.” As we were on the main
drag in front of the store, we passed a couple of cops pulling into the lot
with their lights on. Pops smirked and lit a Winston, then turned up Johnny
Cash to provide the soundtrack to his satisfaction.   

***

Success
for my pops came hard, rough as Russian toilet paper. He literally and
figuratively fought for everything he attained, growing up poor in the woods,
taking
shits
in an outhouse, with countless nights of
eating nothing but boiled potatoes split between five other siblings. When the
war in Vietnam hit home, he was drafted to serve. The singular ability that
kept him from being shipped overseas was the fact that he knew how to run a
printing press. He was sent to Oklahoma where his skills were put to use,
thereby avoiding obliteration by a fifteen-year old Vietnamese kid who’d been
fighting since the day he was born.

Think
of that: if it hadn’t been for his mechanical abilities, H. F. Coxman would’ve
been sent to a foreign country with a farewell and a middle finger to fight in
one of the most unpopular wars in modern history. He could’ve died in a jungle,
labeled an MIA or a POW, never coming home to an honorable discharge to meet
and marry my mother.

And
the world would’ve been deprived of the genius you hold in your hands.

I
have much respect for my pops, if for no other reason than sludging through and
doing it his way. With the help of the G. I. Bill, working at side jobs, my
mother’s support, and meeting the right people, he became a college graduate
who went on to form his own
law practice
architectural firm
emu
farm
fuck that. I'm not telling you what he does. Just know that after
years of taking orders from others, Pops eventually became the one who could
bring the hammer down.

***

Sure,
I recall mistakes that were made while I was growing up, but whatever, man. How
many mistakes have I made with
my
kid? (Plenty. That’s the answer.) None
of it matters now. It’s all dead snips of a faded past. H. F. Coxman always
took care of me, made sure I had what I needed, and was able to provide
luxuries like running water and food. But he’s always been just a little
batshit left of center, and I couldn’t begin to explain how some of his actions
have forced me to reexamine whether or not the man should undergo some sort of
forced psychoanalysis.

Well,
yes I can explain, actually. I was under the impression that’s what we were
doing here.

It’s
a rhetorical statement, smartass. Read on.

I was twelve years old when I saw my father shoot a man.
Three
times, no less. Sadly, I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it and had to
watch from the confines of his Lincoln. He ensured that I was immune from the
bedlam, protecting me from the comical 80s fight scene due to unfold by
ordering me back to his car so I couldn’t assist with my slingshot.

I’ve
never forgiven him for that shit.

***

My
parents' relationship had gone the route of so many marital unions (re: fucked
like a drunk sorority girl), complete with the money-sucking marriage
counselors and attempted vehicular homicide. When they’d finally agreed on a
divorce, theirs was no different than any other swan song between two rational
adults. It was complete with finger-pointing, empty threats, and both accusing
the other of being a big crybaby meanie-mouth poopie pants (I learned early
that monetary disagreements can have a profound effect on one’s maturity).

Things
took a nosedive when my pops did the most logical thing a businessman with a
functional cock can do: he started
dicking
his secretary.
Not that it was a big deal, mind you. He was in the middle of a separation and
it’s a natural progression for any man, particularly one of means.

But
this lady had a skeleton in her closet. A secret my pops didn’t know about
until it was right on top of him and almost too late. Strangely, she held it
closer to the vest than that picture of her gargling a nutsack at the office
Christmas party (the photo was used as the cover for the company’s captivating
pamphlet
Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Ain’t it a Mouthful?).
She
had an abusive ex-husband named John Sweetbuck who lurked in the shadows,
making a mockery of the authority vested in him, and aching for the day he
could get his hands around her throat for some all-important reconciliation.

***

Sweetbuck
had been a cop since his mid-20s, graduating first in his class, and being the
first rookie in his department to earn accommodations. After some time on
patrol, his was also the first questionable shooting in over ten years.

It
happened behind an Awffle Spouse restaurant as he was receiving payment from a
heroin mover. John had planned on killing the guy afterward, a Puerto Rican
named Esteban whom he’d arrested for possession a few weeks earlier. He knew
you couldn’t stamp out all crime all the time, but he couldn’t abide smack, not
after watching his little brother get hooked. It was part of the reason he’d
spent five years as a cop. He tolerated the weed and coke dealers, but he
attacked heroin suppliers with a vengeance.

He’d
demanded a large payoff to insure “misplaced evidence” in Esteban’s case. John
knew it was the only money he was ever going to see from him. The envelope no
sooner hit the vinyl of his ‘76 Hornet than he produced a semi-auto from his
waistband, firing two jacketed .380s into the Puerto Rican’s chest.

The
detectives assigned to the shooting didn’t believe Sweetbuck’s version of
events. He said the dealer had tailed him, getting out of his car when he
arrived and threatening to kill the officer for the arrest. Said he’d been
forced to pull his off-duty Walther in self-defense. There were too many holes
in his statement, however, the biggest of which was why John had parked behind
the restaurant to begin with. Whenever the detectives revisited the point, John
maintained that it’d been too crowded in the front lot and he didn’t want his
Hornet getting scratched. Restaurant staff said yes, they were always full at
dusk. That evening had been no different.

The
detectives called bullshit. John’s car was seven years old, its Bayshore Blue
paint job already marred from shopping carts and weather. A normal person
wouldn’t even care about parking it in a hailstorm, much less the cracked
blacktop of an Awffle Spouse. They suspected a ripoff, but they couldn’t find
any evidence to contradict John’s story. Besides, the .32 revolver found in
Esteban’s hand was hard to refute. (Sweetbuck had grabbed that piece from a
multiple-murder scene where he was the first responding officer. It’d been in a
victim’s hand unfired. He
knew
it would come in handy as a throwdown.)
The investigation was closed. John was allowed to return to work, though a
cloud of suspicion hung over his head like a cabbage fart.

***

Sweetbuck
operated more discreetly after that, collecting cash from drug pushers in exchange
for the privilege to operate, so long as they never dabbled in H. As part of
the arrangement, they’d funnel information about other dealers vying for
control. John would pop them to minimize competition and keep the money flowing
his way. After a jacket filled with a history of good busts, he became the
youngest officer in his city to make detective.

The
bump in rank meant he could ditch the alley meetings with low-level runners and
demand audiences from the higher-ups. He began shaking hands that brought a
change in his financial situation—the frequency of payoffs tapered, but the
envelopes got thicker. Complicity in the rackets became so profitable, in fact,
that he could afford to hire a live-in maid.

***

Labianna
St. Jaxum was originally from Minneapolis, the only daughter of a prominent tax
attorney whose specialty was teaching big corporations how to fleece the
federal government. He’d funded her first year in the South on the contingency
that she get a job or an education once the free ride was over, giving the
twenty-year old ample time to weigh her options for the future. She’d been a
fuck-up since high school graduation and her father thought maybe this was what
she needed—a new life in a new town without old temptations to steal her
promise. Instead of seeking employment or a trade school, however, she spent
the year barreling through her monthly stipends, purchasing expensive jewelry,
full-body massages, clothing from high-end department stores, and trips with
pretty boys charged to Daddy’s name.

Labi,
as she’d been known her whole life, was a rich man’s daughter, accustomed to
nice cars and no-limit credit cards; annual vacations to Europe, Aruba, and
tropical isles most people only get to see in books; cashmere sweaters with her
initials embroidered in the collar; a walk-in closet full of shoes that hit the
ground twice before being discarded; and a chinchilla cardigan given to the
Salvation Army after three trips to the dry cleaners.

Four
seasons came and went. Labi was shocked when her father actually cut her off.

The
easy life became a memory. No more twenty-two karat bangles and necklaces
encrusted with baguettes; they went to the pawn shops. No more dinners in
French restaurants with unpronounceable names; if she closed her eyes tight
enough, the canned chicken and Ramen became an expensive Chinese dish. No more
Cristal in bars with plush velour furniture and expectant businessmen hoping to
get inside her silk panties; Miller High Life on a Lay-z-Boy with the guitarist
from downstairs would have to do. And no more red Mercedes to scoot around in;
her father had taken it back, arranging for its delivery to Minneapolis. He
wired her enough money to buy an old Toyota, sniffed a line, and called it a
day.

***

Having
been cut off from the family tit, Labianna realized she needed a job. No skills
meant bleak prospects, and the only employment she could secure was at a maid’s
service that offered daily, weekly, and live-in contracts to clients.

With
the pecking order reversed, Labi got beaked for the first time in her life.
Even after several years of mopping marble floors like the ones she’d taken for
granted back home, the ‘83 Cavalier was falling apart and her checking account
was in the red—overdrafted by two-hundred-and-fifty-eight dollars and
thirty-seven cents, to be exact. When the maid service offered her a new
position working in the home of a city detective, she willingly accepted,
having been served eviction papers on her efficiency apartment the day before.
Labi packed what items she couldn’t sell and drove out to an address in an
affluent suburb.

***

John’s
place was exceptionally nice for a policeman, reminding her of the upbringing
in Minnesota. She wouldn’t ask about a client’s financial business in a million
years, but she had sense enough to know that your average cop, even a first
grade detective, didn’t live in a genuine stacked-stone, three-bedroom home
with glazed terracotta floors; a foyer containing two country arm chairs
flanking a marble table with hand-carved scrolling on the legs; a living room
furnished with couches cloaked in fine Italian leather; paintings with platinum
frames hung on red stucco walls, all originals by well-known contemporary
artists; a striking white chenille chaise lounge sitting next to a Paris
ottoman covered in soft linen; a spotless china set in an antique mahogany
cabinet, meticulously displayed on the glass shelves; or a satinwood bedroom
suite that couldn’t possibly be more than a year old.

She
turned a blind eye:
I don’t care if he’s dirty or moonlights in gay porn. A
renovated pool house beats the shit out of a cramped Cavalier.  

Labi
saw that his social life was virtually nil, with John never entertaining
friends or coworkers. In the morning, he’d dress in tailored suits and
glistening dress shoes, get behind the wheel of his late-model Stingray, and go
to work. In the evenings when John came home, his dinner was usually in a brown
paper bag that leaked more oil than Labi’s car. Either that, or waiting to be
retrieved from the freezer. John would then sit by himself in the living room
and watch ESPN for hours on the obnoxiously huge big-screen. He even picked up
and washed the dishes before going to bed, leaving little for her to do the
next day except some laundry and a bit of dusting.

She
noticed something else about his life that got her wheels turning: the fact
that he never brought home a woman.

***

Seven
months had passed since Labi began working for John and she’d seen him eat nothing
but takeout and TV dinners. It was 6:30 on a Friday evening when she made him
one of the few dishes she knew how to prepare: Swedish meatballs over egg
noodles. Her mother had cooked the same recipe to ensnare her father many years
before, and if a bit of native Midwestern cuisine could save her from a life of
serfdom, it was the ploy she was going to use.   

“Mr.
Sweetbuck, I don’t mean to get personal, but why don’t you date? I’ve been
working here for the better part of a year and I haven’t seen pictures of
anyone special, much less heard you talk of a relationship.”

The
question came from the large single-basin in the kitchen, Labi’s arms
elbow-deep in brown dish water. The frozen stare from the man at the table said
she’d crossed the line. She suddenly envisioned herself jobless for prying into
a client’s life, homeless and living in the backseat of her shitbox with weeks
of unwashed clothing and photo albums. She’d known the risk in her plan, but
decided it was worth it if it restored her to the life she once knew.

After
a few tense seconds, John burst into laughter and wiped his mouth with a
designer napkin embroidered with roses. He set it to the side of his empty
plate and reclined with a full belly, throwing his arm over the back of the chair
with a smile. A life below the Mason-Dixon had given him an effectual Southern
drawl.

“Well,
work takes up most of my time, Miss St. Jaxum. At the end of the day, I just
don’t have the energy to spend romancin’ a woman.”

She
dropped the grin before looking up. “Well, I was wondering because—and I hope
you don’t mind me saying so—it just seems like an awful waste for this
beautiful home to have one person living here.” She kept pushing the envelope,
hoping that every comment wasn’t the one that turned her to giving handjobs in
the park.

Sweetbuck
knew what she was doing and didn’t care. He’d been smitten with Labi since the
day she arrived. Like many men, soft, blonde curls turned his mind into mush.
Labi’s fell gracefully down the sides of her porcelain complexion as she
scoured the pots and pans.

“I
know what ya mean. I’ve often thought the same thang, but most of the women I
meet are put off by my work. The thought of datin’ someone who may or may not
come home shies ‘em away. They don’t wanna get attached. I gave up lookin’ for
someone a long time ago.”

“Well,
I understand that, Mr. Sweetbuck, but that’s what you do. You protect people,
catch the bad guys, and seek justice for those who need it. You’re an everyday
hero! Forgive me for saying, but I think a lot of women would be
proud
to have a man who spends his days keeping the rest of us safe.” She brushed the
sweaty locks from her face, marveling at the weight of her own bullshit.

John
could smell the pile from the dining room. The scent enchanted him. “Thank you,
Miss St. Jaxum. I appreciate the compliment. I just wish more women felt that
way. If I could find the right person, maybe I’d have somebody to share all
this with.”