HAIRPIN SCORPION

…ThE wOrDs lOOkeD LiKe tHiS As I sPoKe tHem. MoSt wOrDs sEEmEd bAcKwArDs, bUt iF I tYpEd tHat to yOu iT wOuLd bE tOo diFFiCuLt (T-L-U-C-I-F-F-I-D) tO rEaD. The words hung in the air like metallic smoke. We exhaled sneaky, silvery-scented, smoldering puffs. (Crack smoke has two qualities: the opacity to hide you from others and an eye-burning aroma to act as a distracting agent.) I smiled, watching a pot of mushroom tea boil on the hot plate. Everything was under control in our army tent, but it was about to get martial. We sat inside expecting desert winds to kick us around as the sandstorm twirled in its infant stage. The small rocks blazing in Zane’s glass pipe were fear erasers. If I blew F-E-A-R in cursive letters into the air like smoke rings, like the airplane artist’s love message in cloud writing, there would be the drug’s valiant sword dueling with F-E-A-R then slaying it. Chunks of smoke would fall to the ground. I’m not always panicky, but when weather gets ominous I crawl into my foxhole.

 

Two strangers who looked like carnies—teeth blackened or missing, ripped Shakespearean peasant blouses—hunched in the corner of our tent taking hits off a nitrous tank. I wondered if Zane had packed the tank in his duffle bag, until I realized tanks don’t fit in backpacks.

“Who are those guys?” I asked Zane.

“Yeah, huh. Get out of our tent!” he yelled. “And leave the tank!”

Zane was my ally. He was always himself, always in his body. Especially while high. He drove too fast and every time I rode in his Bronco, I knew I would die. He was 26, and I was 23. He played fast, noodly music exclusively on this road trip to Lake Mead in Nevada’s salty desert. When I told him to slow down, he pointed to his radar detector.

“That’s illegal,” I said, lighting a joint.

“That it is,” Zane said proudly.

Zane had stringy, curly red hair, and a speed-addict’s rosy, pockmarked face. His cheekbones protruded out in a skeletal V. He was tall and the holey concert t-shirts he wore made him look even more like a bone man. I didn’t find his punched-up but underfed look attractive. Rather, I studied Zane to learn how to live. I used drugs to gain access to his friendship, and to numb my instinctive sadness that he would die young. I felt gloomy picturing his demise, which I did constantly because deep down I’m a little goth. Knowing each day could be his last endeared me to him.

We became best friends one night after we bamboozled cash out of an ATM machine. Zane did it; I just spent the money. We drove into downtown Eureka, where we lived, to score. I still admire drug-dealer’s code, the I’m riding a bike, or wearing a blue shirt, or have new Nikes on language that tells you who’s selling. My friend Cara, who had just lost her baby in a car accident, was back at the house getting cranked. When we got home, and I saw her dull bleached hair draped over the coffee table littered with paraphernalia, I told Cara to leave; I never wanted to see her again. Somehow, a woman destroying her and her baby’s life was more intolerable than a solo guy needling away his time. That night I thought, No one here will learn their lesson. But the following week, I still hopped into Zane’s Nevada-bound Bronco.

 

Zane brought two dorks on our camping trip to Lake Mead, Micky and Beets. Beets—named after the root vegetable—was pudgy with a swollen purplish complexion, and he hobbled around like a gopher. Micky was taller and had hesher black hair covering his eyes, more death metal than speed metal. After arrival, and hitting the glass pipe in our heavy canvas tent, I took a beach chair to the edge of the lake and hallucinated flames spreading across its surface. The guys stayed inside the tent sucking nitrous.

I peeled off my clothes and set them in a pile next to the shore, then waded into the water after the flames died down. It was 90 degrees, black night except for the glowing lantern-lit tents. The water was tepid and glassy. Swimming out to the reeds, I listened to crickets chirrup. The reeds chirruped back.

One reed whispered, “Meet me.”

Another reed said, “Do good deeds,” and “Breeze,” all these EEEs.

I put two and two together—EEEs, REED—Lake MEAD. I was really getting to know the place. I swam towards shore. Dripping, I walked to the beach to discover my clothes stolen. I wandered back, naked, into the testosterone tent.

“Where are your clothes?” Zane asked in a low nitrous warble.

“Pilfered,” I said. I turned my bag upside down and poured out shirts and jeans. A three-inch-long translucent scorpion tumbled out.

“A scorpion is loose!” I yelled, yanking pants on.

“Stop tripping out,” Zane said.

“Kiss this,” I said, pointing to my rear as I dressed it.

“He won’t hurt you,” Micky said. He bent down and offered the arachnid some nitrous. The balloon blasted the small monster to the edge of the tent. The scorpion froze in the corner, probably from shock. I walked over to it, imagining the pitch a scorpion’s voice would be high on nitrous, if it could speak—and noticed how the tip of its poison tail was shaped like a chive flower. Quite delicate, actually. Normally, if there’s a spider in my space I’ll scoop it up in a jar and set it free. But this was no spider. I let the scorpion be. Carefully shaking out each clothing article, I pulled on more wearables and exited, heading back towards my not-so-secret spot near the lake. I needed to escape this evil den of wicked, ugly scorpion lovers.

 

Zane and I were freshmen at the community college, although we hardly ever made it to class. We spent mornings on the bleachers watching the sunrise, trying to sip apple juice since we were too sick with drugs to eat. He was a fifth year freshman. What are you doing with your life? I’d think, looking at him. He liked cooking, even though he hardly ate and was lanky like a preteen boy. He was a talented chef, and spent rare nights cooking steaks for us on his dorm room hot plate. On this camping trip, there was no food along, not even gas station snacks. We’d even blown off buying alcohol. Zane was channeling his maniac this time. Why bother drinking when you have crack, LSD, weed, nitrous oxide, psilocybin, and speed?

 

I forgot to mention that Zane had pressured me into dosing before my lake swim; I hadn’t wanted anything else in my system, but Zane called me a chicken so I set one small square on my tongue. The acid was kicking in along with the windstorm. Sand made gravelly grating sounds against the walls of the tent, which I watched bloat inward like sails on a ghost ship. Wooden poles barely holding the thing down rocked back and forth. There were no trees around, so I felt like we were all trapped in an hourglass. The sand gusts were noisy, like water torture. Soon I watched all the men filter out of the tent, covering their eyes with their arms and elbows to keep sand from stinging their faces. I sat on the lakeshore with a shirt around my head, watching them try to hold the tent poles in place. My pants and t-shirt were filling with sand; weighted, I was a human sandbag. I remained sitting, a hundred feet from the drama.

“Beets, grab the stake!” Zane yelled. His aura turned into a reverse shadow and glowed green as if his spirit would puke from getting nailed with sand pellets while being poisoned by Beets’ idiotic presence.

Micky had both hands around one stake. Zane couldn’t keep hold of his because whirls of sand were whipping him. The sand was a demon unleashed by the Shakespearean carnival freaks. Everyone was getting what they deserved. The night’s catastrophe was falling into place. Lake water flamed up again. I stood up to get a better view, cupping my hands around my eyes like binoculars.

Zane yelled for me to come help. The tent was collapsing. I jogged over and tapped a stake in half-heartedly. I didn’t want to interfere with the sand demon’s wrath. Micky crawled inside the tent, now a jumbled pile of fabric, and emerged with a ball-peen hammer.

“Beets, hold that stake,” Micky yelled.

“Don’t hammer,” I said. “It won’t work.” His hammer was ridiculous and so was he. Fate had the upper hand.

As Beets held the stake, Micky hammered, crushing Beets’ finger to a bloody pulp. Beets was too loaded to pull his hand away after the first whack, and he got a good five more in before hunching over to hold his damaged finger in his good palm. Blood squirted out of the closed fist.

“Let me see,” I said, prying his hand open. A flat, mushy appendage lay in a pool of dark liquid, its tip split wide open so the wound looked feminine, like a vagina. I expected it to start talking. You should’ve… it said in a whiny voice. I couldn’t understand what the finger was saying I should’ve done. Killed Zane? I thought.

“Where’s the sink?” Beets asked.

“There is no sink,” I said. I was furious. What wrath had I incurred, sitting over there, watching water lap onto a lake beach? I took off my dusty t-shirt to wrap around Beets’ finger, applying pressure the way I had learned in First Aid class.

“You need a doctor,” I said. I felt semi-motherly because I was topless now, like a witch doctor.

“All I need is a bathroom,” he said.

“There’s a bathroom in town, Beets. I’ll take you.”

“No one’s going to the emergency room at 4 a.m. high on acid, crack, and shrooms,” Zane interrupted as he walked over from the other tent end.

“Are you the boss of smashed fingers?” I asked. “He’ll bleed to death.”

“No one’s going to bleed to death,” said Zane.

I kicked sand instead of Zane.

“Give me your keys,” I said. Zane ignored me.

The shirt wrapping Beets’ finger was gurgling with blood. Beets was pale and sweaty. Sand stuck to his forehead and his moist shirt, and it looked like he had a wasp hive on the end of his arm. Even though sand is porous, blood pooled on the surface of the sand at his feet. I worried he would die if I couldn’t bamboozle Zane’s car keys away. It was time to get crafty, but I began to cry.

Zane let go of the last dumb stake of the already collapsed tent and assessed the situation. Beets tried wandering off to a non-existent bathroom.

“Sit down, Beets,” I said, grabbing his shoulder to still him. I faced the inevitable. “You’re going to die.”

“Don’t TELL him that!” Zane said.

I entered the tent to locate a dry shirt to contain Beets’ doomed finger. The scorpion seemed like years ago. Tomorrow, there would be a corpse buried in sand. I’d tell the police I didn’t take him to the hospital, and they’d book me. The sandstorm calmed and I stopped shielding my eyes, even though I was already in the tent. Beets would bleed into first morning light, while I thought of ways to kill Zane.

Zane always exerted this false sense of authority. He had zero sexual grip on me, since he reminded me of a scraggly Irish Setter. There was only life and death for Zane, though, and I liked this. He ignored everything in between. I knew what was running through Zane’s head: Beets wasn’t going to die, therefore he didn’t care about the remaining plan. Appendages were inconsequential to Zane. He was nonplussed at parties unless people were diving off decks or having cardiac arrests in bathtubs.

I craved near-death adventure, until I got my fill with Zane. He was so gentle with me, weeks prior to this, the night we sat on his dorm room mattress for twelve-hours talking about how messed up life was. Gazing up at rock posters, Zane and I plotted against our healthy selves, destroying our bodies with real camaraderie. Zane almost died one night, and I got to watch his eyeballs pop out of his head while he laughed hyperactively. But recently, every time death neared, Zane denied its possibility, which made me suspect that he’d lost his edge.

 

I woke up in the reeds, far from camp. Sand was in my mouth, my hair, my eyes, and my ears. I never wanted to see those guys again. I was seven hundred miles from home with sixteen dollars in my pocket. I wandered to other campsites asking people for a lift, and found someone who was going back to California. I needed to gather my stuff, and slipped into camp to rummage through the disgusting pile of canvas that was once our tent. Hopefully Beets was still alive.

He was, but he was limply slouched in the tent mess, sitting cross-legged on the floor. I walked by without talking to him and leafed through our supplies, scattered in a fifty-foot radius. I found my wallet and searched it for a hairpin to hold my sandy bangs back. I grabbed my bag, feeling around for pins at the bottom. I got a warning pinch. Throwing the bag, that scorpion flew out, happy to have camped in its newfound tent, more stable than ours, happy to have weathered the storm. Lucky thing, I thought. I watched the scorpion curl its chive-stinger up to sting, as would my acerbic tongue should anyone speak to me. Go ahead, Zane, try to feed me drugs one more time. I hitchhiked home and never saw Zane again.