The Cobalt Blue White Light

Charlie Jordan was a swarthy man well past middle age, who saw himself as a distinguished redneck kind of guy. In the past, although relatively recently in his own mind, he had boasted of his uncanny, but natural, ability to crush beer cans against the side of his head. The first time he accomplished this feat he failed and needed three stitches to repair the damage after hammering a full can of beer upside his own head. With age, slowly but surely, he mastered this feat, but unfortunately, the 1960s were well gone by then.

Come Sunday morning, Charlie dutifully followed his wife to church and made a strenuous effort not to sleep during the sermon, especially since his wife taught the children’s Bible class after services. On one particularly gray, rainy day, she had caught him slumbering with his mouth open in the midst of an obscene half-snore and rewarded him with a thrust of her umbrella -into his groin. He didn’t sleep much after that in Church, but after that he also wore a protective groin cup to church. All in all, Charlie was the anti-thesis of the All-American hero. He made up for his hereditary shortcomings by being inebriated most of the time, but sober, he was very sensitive in an ESP way, which scared him half to death.

He lived an ordinary life and drove an eighteen wheeler for a living. He supplemented his modest income with small winnings from Bingo, which he claimed was a fixed game, and the lottery, when numbers sometimes came to him out of the blue. Of course, most days, he was so drunk that he couldn’t get the numbers straight; yet, he tried and for a guy like Charlie that’s all you can ask for.

Thus, it was a late Saturday evening in late winter that the shit changed his life. First, he got bounced out of "Hillbilly Heaven," a local Country and Western bar. Picking himself from the ground, and tossing angry stares at the former host, he poured himself into his pickup truck. He made note of the compass on the dashboard that gave some assistance on nights like this. He vaguely recalled that he lived south of Woodbridge, Virginia, just off Route 1.

He found an unopened tall-necked beer and commenced burping and drinking his way home, singing what he thought passed for lyrics. No one ever had the hear to tell him he was tone death.

Considering his options for an alibi for being late – again - a voice beside him spoke in a chastening tone, "Charlie, shouldn’t you really be keeping your eyes on the road; after all, you’re drunk as a skunk."

It took awhile, and after three seconds elapsed off the galactic clock, with Charlie shuffling through a series of unrelated thoughts, he finally concluded that the voice belonged to a man, that the man was sitting next to him, and that he didn’t know this guy. As his less than computer-whiz mind strained for a response, his conscious mind fluttered aimlessly and then focused on one particular word – "Robber!" Going berserk, as well as cursing the stars as to why this had to happen to him, Charlie steered his new Japanese pickup truck straight for the edge of the road. Slamming on the breaks, he leapfrogged from his vehicle, and amazingly, for an uncoordinated drunk guy, he was also managed to whip out his .357 magnum pistol, which he kept under his driver’s seat for such occasions. Superman couldn’t have done it any better. The tires squealed in agony at the contortions demanded by Charlie as he wheeled in tight spiral to the envy of many a fighter pilot – "no siree," he yelled, "I ain’t getting robbed by no one."

He pirouetted from the vehicle – the .357 blazing in one hand, a box of shells clutched in the other. Diving from the almost stopped vehicle, he sprawled in the dirt on the side of the road. Ignoring the dust on the seat of his pants, as well as his head, and although quite soused, he began unloading. The explosions and percussions of the rounds tearing huge holes in the passenger side door; they also gave him a humongous headache, but, as Charlie noted, the bullets had no effect on the stranger. In short order, he blew the hell out of his pick-up truck.

"Charlie," the voice yelled from inside the now well air conditioned cab, "stop firing. I need to talk to you."

"You met your match, mister . . . mister." Then Charlie realized, and as you can imagine it did take a while because he was quite inebriated, that the figure in the vehicle was still sitting there and patiently conversing with him as he reloaded. Drunk or stabbed in the groin with an umbrella, Charlie’s hands had never shaken so badly in his whole life. He’d heard about drinking and the devil, and now the devil was out to get his due, and there was literally hell to pay.

"Oh, my God!" He yelled uncontrollably. "The devil. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" He yelled, loading faster, if that were humanly possible.