Sag Jinkins
In 1972, Richard Nixon went to China and Neil Diamond recorded Hot August Night.
Incredible.
The Russians landed another unmanned craft on the moon, against all sense and reason, adding to their already substantial supply of rocks.
Impressive, nonetheless.
ABBA formed.
There was a flood in the Black Hills and The Godfather was in theatres. Watergate. Bloody Sunday.
Momentous occasions, all.
Busta Rhymes and Shaquille O’Neal were born. Ezra Pound died.
Carl Stalling died.
Sag Jenkins didn’t know about any of this. He was sitting, pants-on, in an overheated fiberglass port-a-potty, soaked in sweat, breathing the thick stink of 200 shits, swigging from an old glass liter vodka bottle filled with new cheap whiskey, now three-fourths gone. In twenty minutes, Sag Jenkins was supposed to jump thirty-five cars on his motorbike, and there was no way he’d make it. In twenty minutes, 227 attendees of the Argus County Speedway in Golgotha, South Dakota would watch Sag Jenkins die.
But for now he was drinking. For now he felt alright. Depressed but drunk, and that was as all right as he got these days.
Sag – born Sagory Troyal Jinkins III on the 10th of March, 1938, in, maybe ironically, depending on how you choose to define that word, a filthy, makeshift outhouse behind a perilous shanty in the god-and-everyone-else-forsaken Plimsol County of Wyoming – a town called – get this – Trashton – to Sagory Troyal Jinkins II, who was not present for the event, was rarely present, not really – was, at the time, drinking somewhere, presumably – and his young wife, Artis Barbara-Anne Jinkins, who was, obviously.
Present that is.
Sag was, at this moment, the moment we started with, before the jump that would kill him, in the port-a-potty, wearing his leathers – the Evel Knievel, red white and blue knock offs sported by seemingly all daredevils of the time – each with its own arrangement of the colors. Sag’s were a particularly heinous variation, with thin red and blue vertical stripes running from his red patent boots up to the increasingly doughy flesh of his neck – just starting to spill over the collar – even daredevils are forced to melt into oblivion if they don’t kill themselves first – with a single white star splayed across the back.
He looked like a fucking clown, would have felt like a clown sober. But he hadn’t found himself anywhere near that particular state – sobriety – for a substantial stretch in maybe six months – ever since his oldest son, Clinton Sagory Jinkins – a kid of thirteen, big for his age, with just enough sense to know that a man – even ones father, especially ones father – needs a punch in the nose every once in a while but not quite enough sense to always exactly know the right time to dole out that punch or hard enough fists, yet anyway, to make that punch say just what it needed to – had, despite of and because of these deficiencies, dealt him, Sag, a punch in the nose that, due to its lateness – or earliness, maybe, it’s hard to say – did not a damn thing but send his already spiraling father on an unnglorious bender – a particularly notable bender in a long stretch of less notable ones in that it was a predominantly sad bender – that, frankly, didn’t suit him any more than the leathers did.
Those ill suited leathers were now unzipped and pulled down to the waist so that Sag Jinkins’ growing paunch could expand to its full size, protruding from beneath his still thinnish, sunken, hair splotched chest like a loaf of uncooked bread on a warped, knife scarred, food stained old cutting board. The zipper dug into his flesh but at this point he was a sniff of what was in the bottle away from a blackout, so it wasn’t much troubling him.
The looming blackout hung just behind his eyes, narrowed his vision, and, so long as he didn’t open his mouth, focused his thoughts on the withered abstraction of his ego. If he did open his mouth his thoughts would go quiet and unhinged instinct would push out a jumble of slurred garbage and what was left of his ego would enter the world like rancid water from a tragic spit take.
That ego had taken some devastating hits as of late after a prolonged period of unreflected upon inflation – which we’ll get to.
But for now we need to talk about his face.
It was a fucking mess.
When Sag Jinkins was a young man – say 17 – he’d been what passed for handsome in Trashton – symmetrical and lean. English features, cockney English, warped by a few hundred years of questionable breeding, but warped in such a way that folks referred to it, on Sag anyway – he had many relatives to whom those same folks were less kind – as character.
The Jinkins name went all the way back to when the Brits had first shipped their undesirables to the New World, and those undesirables had been proving why they’d been branded that way ever since. They were, almost to a man, drunks, rascals, creeps, freaks, deviants, liars, losers, fuck ups, shits for brains, trash, bastards, sons of a bitch, mouth breathers, and beslubbering, dankish, flap-mouthed rogues.
There were some isolated exceptions, each with caveats.
Sag’s great-great grandfather, Troyal Hostetler Jinkins, for instance, who, yes, had been a drunk and a violent racist/misogynist to boot – few weren’t at the time, to give the requisite nod to historical relativism – but had also been a fireman, which in 1833 was a completely analogue occupation with an approximately 87% mortality rate. He’d gone a long way towards redeeming some of his shortcomings by saving folks from mortally unfair circumstances. There’d been burn scars over most of his body and exactly one half of his face to prove it.
A further example: Hostetler “Hoss” Sagory Jinkins, Sag’s great uncle, born in 1873, who, when Sag was 10 and Hoss was a deeply worn 75 shot Sag’s father in the back, killing him after some hammy death throes, in retribution for the murder of Hoss Sagory Jinkins III, Sagory II’s cousin, whom he had beaten to death over a game of horse shoes with, of course, a horse shoe. While this was far from a good deed it was certainly a just one, as the murder hadn’t exactly put Sag’s father off of beating anyone, and everyone with even a passing acquaintance with the man agreed that his ouster from the scene was a cause for celebration.
Which brings us back to Sag, who was, at the time in his life previously mentioned – 17 or so – all set, despite his fairly brutal upbringing, to be the finest Jinkins the bloodline had ever produced.
Aside from being handsome, he was smart, polite, kind. He never touched booze. Never showed any interest in sneaking or violence. He seemed to have been dropped into the unpleasantness of Trashton and his kin from Pubetron Fergleven or some other such alien planet and the Jinkins’ didn’t know what to do with him.
Once, when his mother passed out from huffing Floor Brite brand floor polish – the mere presence in the house of which was suspect as the wood floors in the shack were unwaveringly dirty and splintered, had never been polished, ever, never would be (when she purchased it, Doc Arbuckle at Arbuckle’s Five and Dime gave her the old stink eye, knowing as much) – she awoke with a brutal headache, but laying in her bed with the covers pulled up to her chin and not on the ground behind the house where she’d landed, and the shack had been cleaned to the extent that a shack can be cleaned. Instead of thanking the cautiously optimistic boy sitting quietly on the front steps – the only one who could have been responsible for these niceties – she just yelled at him to get more floor polish.
And there was the occasion of his Eagle Scout project that same year.
Sag had worked himself up from a diminutive Webelos to the brink of the honor through sheer, unsupported force of will. When he told Jinkins’ – his mother included – about the project he intended to helm as one of the required steps to reach the upper echelons of the BSA, they were mildly surprised to learn that he was a scout at all, despite the badge-laden uniform he constantly wore. They’d just assumed he was gay.
Sag the Fag, they’d often called him.
His project was to be the construction of a gazebo in honor of fallen soldiers, none of whom were Jinkins’, a family of draft dodgers going all the way back to the early days of the Indian wars. Had the Jinkins’ killed and been killed by innumerable Native Americans over the years? Absolutely. But not a one of them had done either in an official capacity. And a Jinkins had never, as far as any of them knew, laid eyes upon a native Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hun, a Viet Cong, a Korean, a Ruskie, or an Arab since they’d arrived in the New World. Not even a Mexican.
Sag’s gazebo was inspired by a movie he snuck into at a beat up movie house called The Schwartz two towns over, in Overton. He’d hitched his way there without knowing what was playing – just a dime in his pocket that he’d found in the street in front of . He’d pocketed it after much paranoid head flitting and a thorough check against the scout code and his own self-erected system of morality. The movie turned out to be a six year old print with one reel missing of Laurel and Hardy’s terrible war picture, Iwo Jima Screama, but it was enough to inspire a fiery love of country and appreciation for our boys over there – even the bumbling fat/thin duos among them – in a deeply sensitive boy just looking for something to hang his tattered hat on.
The actual gazebo part of the project was inspired by an overheard conversation between a pair of old women he’d passed on the sidewalk after the movie. He didn’t get the context, just heard them say it: GAZEBO. He thought it the most beautiful word that had ever vibrated his ear bone. GAZEBO. He had no idea what it meant, but, as luck would have it, Overton had a library, and as the town was no bigger than a city park, the library happened to be not fifteen feet from where he stood silently mouthing the word. GAZEBO. He rushed in and straight to the elegant, almost holy – to Sag, anyway – Encyclopedia Britannica set that resided there. It wasn’t the first time he’d consulted it as his family didn’t know much and was pretty tight lipped about the little they did. And, of course, there wasn’t a book besides the Bible anywhere in Trashton, and even those mostly just collected dust. He grabbed the G volume, took a deep whiff of its musky aroma, and flipped right to the correct page:
GAZEBO: A roofed structure that offers an open view of the surrounding area, typically used for relaxation or entertainment.
Relaxation and entertainment were two things sorely lacking in Trashton. There was plenty of idleness, but that is not the same as relaxation. Idleness taxes. Relaxation refreshes. And as to entertainment, the horsefeathers that folks got up to were far too cruel to be considered that.
Next to the definition there was a picture, a color photograph. Sag thought its beauty damn near matched the beauty of the word. It was an open air palace, an elegant commingling of the works of man and Mother Nature. A cathedral with walls painted by God.
He would build a GAZEBO, he decided. And he did. He got the necessary building permit, collected scrap wood, borrowed tools, and performed odd jobs for scant pay to raise the money for the necessary materials. He worked tirelessly, single minded for 5 months, totally alone, documenting every step for the presentation to his Scout master.
He measured. He cut. He beveled and sanded and stained. The work was slow – he was learning on the job and his limited funds meant doing only what he could afford before raising the money necessary for the next step.
The Gazebo took shape, became beautiful.
Sag was pleased with his work. More pleased than he’d ever been with anything.
And then, on the day he arrived at his worksite for the final step – attaching the plaque he’d had engraved at no small cost for the Gazebo’s base – it read “Veteran’s Memorial Gazebo – Sag Jinkins Salutes You!” – he found his uncle – or maybe he was a second cousin, keeping track was difficult and unsatisfying – Hickory Sagory Jinkins, an especially wild and dim witted member of the clan, in just his soiled britches, soaked in sweat and looking somehow both feral and leisurely, swinging an axe at the splintered remnants of the gazebo’s base. The rest had been thrown in a pile behind him.
Sag nearly fainted. There was panic, like drowning, and then there was rage, like a swarm of bees. Then he was charging his cousin/uncle with the heavy bronzed plaque held over his head, screaming – high and clear at first, then lower, becoming hoarse and manly – his brown eyes dark and sharp.
Hickory looked up with a dumb, gappy, mean, smile. Shouted, “Ran out of firewood, Fag!”
He meant to juke the boy, send him to the ground, but froze as Sag got closer. He saw his eyes, saw the boyishness drain from Sag’s face above the Scout’s kerchief, lost his smile, said, “C’mon, man, just hold on . . . “ and then Sag was on him. The first blow from the plaque drew blood and the second took consciousness. The third and fourth and fifth knocked out Hickory’s remaining, precarious teeth, crushed his already crooked hog’s nose, caved in his forehead. The sixth killed him. The blows after that just made a mess.
When he was too tired to swing the plaque any longer – Sag Jinkins Salutes You! – Sag dropped it where he stood and walked home, his scout uniform torn and soaked with blood and sweat.
His mother was passed out, so he washed up and changed without a word, hitched a ride to the nearest enlistment office, and joined the military.
His face.
Sitting among the fetid emissions of the excretions of humanity’s most despicable sub-category, South Dakota race track patrons, Sag Jinkins poked at his swollen upper lip, and felt, barely, pain below the thick, coarse, blood crusted shag of his jerky-brown moustache and the progressively belligerent/depressed detachment of his thick intoxication. The lip was grotesque in its bigness and the bottom lip made the top lip look regular sized, if you can believe that.
And why wouldn’t you?
One eye was open, barely, and the other would probably never be of any use to him again. Something kept seeping out of the tight slit and, had he been sober, he’d have worried that it was the viscous jelly of the eyeball itself.
But the most distinctive feature of his face currently was the ear to ear, forehead to chin bruising.
There was not a whit of undamaged skin on the entirety of his head. The bruising varied in color – charcoal, navy, sky blue, piss yellow, blood black – was almost psychedelic, like a bad tie dye job or an old marble.
The rest of his body, aside from the phantom screams of past dare deviling mishaps, was fine, mostly. The burly truck driver whose sandwich he’d befouled two days previous had, curiously, only punched his face, but he’d been thorough in that.
And the less so but still quite burly Frenchman whose sandwich he had also befowled later on the same day had shown no deference to the injuries already there and also confined his substantial abuse to the head area.
“Fuck a sandwich” Sag spat, slurred, blubbered within his rank dressing room. “Fug a sanich,” is how it came out. “Man eats a burger, or at least a hot dog.” “Anesebwerga, o’leash ah ‘ot dog.”
He took another swig off the bottle and the blackout came, quietly dimming his conscious mind to darkness while his body looked the other way. The body, now free of all but the most primitive regions of his brain – the hard little lizard part – shot its right, booted foot into the porta-potty door, dislodging the paltry, rusted lock, exposing the man inside to the humid South Dakota air and freeing the human stink within to mingle with the horse stink without.
The year Sag joined the Army, 1955, was, as luck would have it, a rare gasp of peace between the nonsense in Korea and the nonsense in Vietnam. Less lucky was his assignment to Fort Blaird just outside of Tallahassee, Florida, under the government sanctioned micro-fascism of Sargent Dick Fedora, a grisly, obsessive compulsive sadist with a wonky glass right eye, astonishingly thick thighs, and a Himlerian sense of social justice.
Sag immediately accepted him as a father figure, as he had his own father, his maternal grandfather, a couple uncles, some cousins, Doc Arbuckle, the Overton librarian, Mrs. Evaline Gumbody, a particularly noble neighborhood dog, Roger, and his Scoutmaster, Terrell Niceley.
Sargent Fedora had no interest in being a father figure – barely had an interest in being human – but he was happy to manually atomize Sag Jinkins and reconstruct him as what was, essentially, a rule abiding, survivalist, neatness machine only homonymous with the boy who had enlisted.
The new Sag Jinkins also had a moustache.
He left the army in 1957, honorably discharged due to a modest nervous breakdown, brought on by a particularly brutal dressing down from Sargent Fedora – he referred to Sag as “mountain trash” and “worthless as crusted cum on a dead vagrant’s trousers” and “simple – Amoeba simple” and “uglier than Lou Costello’s unwiped asshole” and “less of a man than one of Mamie Eisenhower’s shriveled old eggs” and “queerer than a box of dicks in Tab Hunter’s basement” and “the worst white person ever” and “duller than a Utah Tuesday” and “bad at everything” – as well as a the lingering guilt from the murder of Hickory, which no one back home had paid much mind to or even noticed, really.
Hick wasn’t particularly well liked, mostly on account of he was good-for-nothing and an unbelievable bastard, even more so than the average member of the Jinkins clan. His body had been devoured by crows and the bones divvied up amongst themselves by local children who stumbled upon them during their daily unsupervised wanderings and mostly used them as “thumpers” or just threw them into various local cricks and sink holes, of which there were many.
Sag, of course, was not aware of any of this and assumed that he would eventually be brought to justice by both earthly and divine law.
This all culminated in a brief stint of violent weeping in the community shower, followed by a near catatonic state. He just stood there, nude, battered by water, staring straight ahead, arms at his side, while the other soldiers did their best to ignore him. They rushed their rinsing and filed out. When they came back the following day, Sag was still there. The water had long ago turned frigid and he was shivering – compressed shivers, but tooth rattling. Still standing. His skin was wrinkled and blue and his breaths were short and fast, but he didn’t blink and he didn’t react to their entrance.
A medic arrived. When he placed a hand on Sag’s shoulder and asked him if he was okay, Sag collapsed.
When he awoke five days later he was in a bed at Dr. Humbert Cripe Memorial Hospital in Tallahassee, feeling a bit lost but not bad, considering. His skin had smoothed itself out and regained its original color and the hypothermia had gone into remission.
He improved further when told that he was being discharged and a very drunken call from his mother – who had waited exactly 129 hours after finding out about his hospitalization to call and ended by asking for money – assured him that he wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, in any trouble for his crime – at least from Trashton’s finest. He still had the Lord to deal with, but that, hopefully, was a good ways off, and, besides, some light prayer would clear his record right up, or so he’d been told.
After being approved for release by the hospital he stopped into the gift store on a whim. He didn’t have anyone to buy anything for, but he also didn’t have anywhere to be.
Perhaps he’d buy himself a decorative pillow or some chocolates. Live a little.
And there, among plastic roses and hovering balloons and pastel greeting cards and various trinkets, knick-knacks, and stuffed what-have-yous, he saw a young woman with an old woman’s pristine, tight perm, below which – and under a pair of profoundly unfashionable glasses – was maybe not the most beautiful face he’d ever seen, but a pretty nice face. A significantly better face than any of the faces back home. A friendly face, anyway, and it was smiling, though her thin lips made it a subtle kind of smile. Below the face was a body, formless but clearly very thin beneath a modest, floral print dress. Attached to that dress was a name tag that read, “Lynette”.
He said, “Hello.”
Her full name was Lynette Knobnoster and she and Sag were married one and one half years later in a small ceremony at Oblivion Baptist Church followed by a reception at The Feisty Squirrel, a popular local bar, all paid for by her father, Harlan “Happy” Knobnoster, a glad-handing, muscle-gone-to-fat bodied, short sleeves with a tie, ex high school football star, WWII veteran, and drunk, with a flat top haircut unsuccessfully hiding a growing bald spot and sole ownership of Happy Knobnoster’s Tallahassee Chrysler, one of three preeminent vehicle dealers in the greater Tallahassee area. He was a classic Florida Panhandle, Greatest Generation, grade A prick, and, of course, Sag had an immediate and omnipresent desire to call him Dad, though he didn’t because Happy would have hated it and glared at him with that perplexed, unruly eyebrow raised, eye squinting look that brought to Sag’s mind all of the things that Sargent Fedora had called him.
Sag and Lynette loved each other, and both grew bolder over time, more interesting – nuanced and sexual. But neither had been those things before and in the beginning their love was staid and chaste. Sag couldn’t be anything but. He was broken by his life experience thus far. And his military pay was meager, so until he could build some savings they lived with Happy in the guest room of his rambler.
Happy framed it as an almost saintly act of charity, but in reality he couldn’t bear to let his daughter go and showy acts of generosity and cruelty were the only way he knew how to give affection. Mrs. Knobnoster – Honey, her name was – had passed some years earlier, succumbed to a combination of pills, boredom, and repressed feminism, though the cause of death was, officially, heart failure. Lynette was all he had left and he knew it.
The living arrangement, of course, limited the newlyweds in many ways and didn’t do much for Sag’s already suffocating sense of emasculation, but he just didn’t have it in him to propose an alternate solution.
Unsatisfied with merely infiltrating his home and daughter, Sag began working for Happy at the dealership. Neither was pleased with the arrangement – Sag had always secretly hoped to become a Veterinarian – but they would both do anything for Lynette and this seemed to be the only way they could love her at the same time.
So they made do.
Sag was Happy’s errand and whipping boy. A meek but effective and helpful presence at home and at work. An unflinching listener to drunken ramblings. A rage outlet. And Happy kind of grew to like Sag, though he would never have told him that and continued to treat him as though he were more rescue monkey than human being.
And that’s the way they lived until Clinton was born in 1959. Lynette got pregnant the first time she and Sag successfully copulated. Successfully only in that penetration and ejaculation were involved. It was a brief affair, awkward and unpleasant for all involved, including Happy, who heard the whole thing and loudly told everyone at the dealership about it the next day while Sag unsuccessfully held back tears in the bathroom, the salty drops falling on his woefully inadequate four and seven-eighths inch penis.
But impending fatherhood had a profound effect on Sag. It reconnected him to the boy he’d been before the military – independent and good and confident. He hadn’t realized that he’d lost those things, become withdrawn and timid. Whip shy. In the months before the birth, he began to walk faster, smile more. He didn’t defend himself against Happy, exactly, but he took the abuse in a way that sucked all the pleasure from doling it out.
And despite a still somewhat meager bank account he began to make preparations to move out of Happy’s home – across town, to what Happy protested was a “bad neighborhood”, though in fact it wasn’t bad so much as slightly diverse.
The Sagory Jinkins’ had a good life.
A second son, Harlin, came along 2 years later. Sag became an accomplished salesman, though he couldn’t help but kowtow to Happy. The kids became boy scouts, Sag their Scoutmaster. He was proud. He was content.
Sag vomited between his legs.
It came out in a quick, hard stream, and then dribbled from his appalling lips like shit from a trotting horse’s asshole. He stood up, fell back down, got up again, fell down, got up, tottered, got his bearings, spit – as much blood as vomit – and stumbled out of the port-a-potty. He unzipped his leathers a few more inches, pulled out his still four and seven-eighths inch, worse-for-the-wear penis and pissed on the side of the rectangular toilet.
He was mid-stream, wheezing from his grotesque mouth-hole, when a blast of ice water from his right side toppled him to the dry, hot, Dakota dirt and brutally yanked him from the abyss of his black-out, back to hideous awareness.
He groaned, brushed away some pebbles that had dug themselves into his left palm and looked up, directly into the sun. Just to the right of the life-giving, blinding orb was the silhouette of a tall, bulky man in a cowboy hat.
“Jes-christ, if I did som’n to your fuggin’ sannich, I’ll jus’ buy you a fuggin’ new one.”
“What? Oh. That, I say, will not be necessary. I’m sorry I had to do that, Sagory old boy, but I’m sure you understand. You got to straddle that bike of yours and hop over a whole heap of cars in no fewer than 12 – make that 11 – minutes. Hot damn, son, you look worse than a pig foot in a dog house. And you smell like 6 loads of shit on a hot day. You been drinking inside that terlet, huh? We’re going to have to get you some tincture toot-sweet – right after this jump. Your whole face looks infected and broken and I’ll be got-damned if your chakras aren’t in complete disarray.”
The man standing above Sag holding an empty, dripping, 5 gallon bucket was Batton Trowel, Sag’s manager, a cartoonish Old Southern Boy along the lines of Boss Hog or Huey Long, but with a vague New Age twist. A featherless Foghorn Leghorn accented with turquoise. The man who had ousted Happy Knobnoster as Sag’s father figure with compliments and a smile but somehow treated him worse than Happy ever had.
Trowel was garishly dressed, as per his personal style, in a kind of Tex-Navajo oil Barron thing that he felt leant him airs of mystery, aristocracy, and masculinity that couldn’t, under any circumstance, successfully coexist.
His shining blue Iguana skin boots moved toward Sag, and Batton bent over to help the battered man to his feet.
“You get yourself zipped up and then run on over to yon fence and back just as fast as you can. We need to get some blood pumping to that head of yours. Then we’ll do a prayer and get the show on the road, so to speak.”
Sag did as he was told. Wrestled with the zipper and took to, not a sprint, exactly, but a hurried, loping hobble in the general direction of where Batton had pointed.
The following is a speech that Sag Jenkins delivered to a group of 256 Boy Scouts at the Mertice Hambubger Memorial Jamboree in Climax, Georgia on April 13th, 1969, on the occasion of their completion of a group charity project that had cleared four square acres of various debris and repaired the houses of 16 impoverished families and individuals. The project didn’t officially have a name, but Sag thought of it to himself as Operation Gazebo Redemption, or OGR:
“Gentlemen, I stand before you today a proud man and a hopeful man. I look at you and I see everything I’ve always wanted to be.
I see confidence and drive and brains.
And I see the future. And I see how wonderful that future looks.
I look at you and I see honor and loyalty and all the other traits a scout pledges to have.
Say them with me won’t you?
A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.
That’s right. Well done.
But I see more than all of that even when I look at you.
I see my boys. Scratch that. My men. And I hope you’ll forgive me for feeling possessive. I would never be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for your goodness. That was there from the start.
I mean “my” in that I belong to you.
Does that make sense?
You’re as much a family to me as I’ve ever known. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
When I first became a Boy Scout – 1951, it would have been – I didn’t have much in the way of family, or anyone that acted that way anyhow, and it was the first place I’d ever really felt I belonged.
But I didn’t really feel that I belonged to a family in the true sense until I met my wife and I didn’t feel like that family was complete until I became your Scoutmaster.
So, today, after completing such good work with such good men, I just want to say thank you.
Thank you.
You are so terribly important to me and I hope you know that I will be here for you for as long as I’m breathing.
And that’s all I have to say.”
Three days later Happy Knobnoster called Sag into his office at the dealership.
“Sit down, Sag, sit. I’ve had an idea and I think you’re just the man for the job.”
This was beautiful music to Sag’s ears. All he’d ever wanted was to be the man for the job, and to be the man for Happy’s job, finally, was almost too much to take. He sat, but just barely.
Happy looked at him with just a tinge of disgust. He detested enthusiasm.
“You know that Evel Knievel fellow that the boys love so much? The one with the motorcycle?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Goddammit, Sag, stop calling me sir. I thought we were past that.”
“Sorry. I’m just excited to get started on our project.”
“You don’t even know what it is! But – sorry – I’m glad you’re excited. Sag, you’re family and I appreciate how far you’ve come in this business. So I wanted to tell you before I told everyone else that we’re going to start selling motorcycles – Indian Motorcycles.”
“Wow! That’s fantastic!”
“It is. With that Knievel fellow as popular as he is, motorcycles have never been more in demand and we’re going to capitalize on that.”
“You, uh, you said I’m your man? What do you need me to do, sir?”
“Goddam . . .“ Happy calmed himself. He was about to ask his son in law to do something very stupid and supposed he could at least be nice about it. “Well, Sag, I’ve got an extra special job for you, my boy.”
Sag swooned. My boy.
“We’re going to promote our new venture with a daredevil show just like Knievel’s. I want you to jump over some cars. And some snakes. AND a gator or two.”
Sag was taken aback. He’d never ridden a motorcycle.
“I’ll do it!” he nearly shouted.
On the day of the daredevil show – Happy Knobnoster’s Indian Motorcycle Daredevil Spectacular, it was called – Sag was terrified. He paced back and forth inside of the dealership dressed in an outrageous, too baggy and uselessly thin polyester blend version of the leathers that would eventually become his trademark. One half of the dealership’s sprawling lot had been cleared out for the event and maybe 100 motley spectators milled about, sparse on the empty blacktop, sweaty and sullen and smelling, as a whole, like BO and stale drink, unlikely to have the cash on hand to by a new car – a new anything – in the foreseeable future.
Harv Tuboo from the local TV news was there with his cameraman, looking miserable. He could afford a car but was a Buick man. There was a reporter from The Tallahassee Times watching from a barely functional Camaro. Two ramps – one for take-off and one for landing – were in the center of the lot. Sag had built them himself, with the help of his boys. They were gorgeous, solid and painted blue with the Indian Motorcycle logo dead center on the curve. No worries there. In between the ramps were four beat up brown Chrysler Saratogas, in two groups of two, separated by the trash menagerie Happy had put together: A much sedated old grizzly bear with matted fur and one eye, sitting on his haunches and staring off into the distance, thinking of better times or dreaming of death. Two equally drugged raccoons which Happy had trapped himself, as he told anyone who would listen, with a fishing net as they’d sifted through his garbage. A large snake of indeterminate genus, and a pig, on loan from Squeaky Chuck’s Fresh Meats and Animal Fat Candles, located right across the street. It wasn’t exactly the collection of predators he’d had in mind. The beasts were penned up with chicken wire, but only the pig seemed to have any life in him and he was just running in tight, gleeful circles, happy for a brief reprieve from the butcher’s knife.
The creatures weren’t what worried Sag. What worried him was his lack of proficiency on the bike. He just couldn’t get the hang of the damn thing. He’d practiced every day for two weeks. First on the street in front of his house and then, when that became too embarrassing, on a forgotten county road, and could still barely turn a corner without laying the bike down. His legs looked like the fresh ground hamburger they sold at Chuck’s and he’d torn all of his dungarees to denim ribbons. His eldest son had taken to it immediately – popped an effortless wheelie almost right out of the gate – and offered to take his place, but Sag wouldn’t hear of it. Too dangerous he said. Who knows what kind of monsters he’ll have between those ramps.
So now he was pacing. Whispering platitudes. Shadow boxing here and there.
Happy pushed in through the front door, smiling and waving at someone outside. He was wearing an expensive, dark blue, polyester, western style suit and a big white Stetson. When he turned to Sage the smile disappeared. “God damnit! I was led to believe that the fucking assholes in this dog shit city couldn’t get enough of this fucking motorcycle baloney. If that crowd out there emptied their pockets and combined everything they had, you’d get about forty two cents and 50 half packs of cheap smokes. How’m I gonna sell motorcycles to folks with no cash? Sag, what in the name of fuck are you doing?”
“Pepping myself up, sir.”
“Pepping? Jesus Christ. Pull yourself together! You’re going to be fine. It’s thirty fucking feet and a god damn petting zoo. Do you know what you need? You need a drink. I just happen to have some whisky in my office.”
“I don’t drink, sir. You know that. My family is filled with drunks. And I don’t want to be like . . .”
“Yeah, I’ve heard it. It’s just a drink and it’s just this once. I’ve had several today and I feel tremendous. Give you enough confidence to jump over those hills you crawled down from.”
Happy retrieved a bottle of Canadian Club from his bottom drawer. “Here. Healthy slug’ll get you right where you need to be.”
Sag took it. Drinking had never crossed his mind, really. He’d seen so much of it, suffered so many of its consequences, that to drink himself seemed akin to running into a burning building. He’d do that for Happy. And he had to do something. He couldn’t go out there and jump those cars in the state he was in. The folks – meager and rag tag as they were, though they looked all right to Sag – expected a hero. He didn’t feel like a hero at the moment. So he put the bottle to his lips and took a drink.
The most racking pangs succeeded: A grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and he came to himself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in his sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. He felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within he was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in his fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. He knew himself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to his original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted him. He stretched out his hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations.
“Got-daaaaamn!” he shouted and brought the bottle up to his lips again.
“Whoa! Hold on there boy! Pace yourself!” Happy couldn’t believe the sight before him. His mild mannered son-in-law had lifted the bottle to his serene, boyish face and, when it dropped, a new man had taken his place. A wild man, ruddy faced and wicked eyed. His eyebrows seemed to have grown bushier and Happy could have sworn he saw the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow that hadn’t been there before.
Sag finished the bottle with five bobs of his suddenly prominent Adam’s Apple and whipped it underhanded at the plate glass wall of Happy’s office. The wall shattered and glass cascaded to the floor. “Time t’ jump a motherfffffffucking motorcycle, pops! Whoooo!” He clapped the stunned old man’s face between his hands three times, turned heel, and strutted toward the door.
And now, if you’ll indulge me, a shift in perspective. What follows is an artful imagining of the ensuing events as Sag might have told them in the days before his tragic end.
Tear it down! Tear it down! That was the first thought in my noggin and I damn well knew what it meant. Stop being Sag the Fag, is what it meant and start being a Jinkins. Made a lot of sense. I am a Jinkins, after all, first and foremost. And so that’s what I did, right then and there. I clapped that old asshole that’d been lordin’ up over me for much too damn long. Ooooooweee, you shoulda seen the look on ‘is face. Looked like a damn hog with a stick jammed in his asshole. And then I smashed his fuckin’ window and that felt real good and I got the fuck outta there before he could say some dumb shit’d make me knock him on his ass. And holy shit was I feelin’ good. It was like the first day of my fuckin’ life, is what it felt like. I’d been wastin’ so much time worryin’ about everyone else and worryin’ ‘bout why they wasn’t worryin’ ‘bout me, and all this time it was just cause I was missing this one thing. Booze. They’d had it and I didn’t. And now I did. It was like I’d been slouchin’ around on all fuckin’ fours and wondering why everybody’s so much taller’n me and then finally standing up and I’m seven foot fucking two. Felt great, that’s all I can say. Felt god damn great. And when I got outside the sun felt better’n it had ever felt and the world looked better’n it had ever looked and those folks looked like fucking peasants and I was their fucking king and it was time to give them a god damn show. So I hopped on that motorcycle and it felt like I belonged there, like it had been built just for me and I couldn’t believe I’d been such a fuckin’ candy ass dumb shit before, of course I could drive this thing, and I turned it on and revved the engine and all of the peasants looked at me, including a chunky blonde one in short shorts and big ass hair in the back – she was wearing a little t-shirt that said “Scooter Hussy” on it with her hip fat poppin’ out from under it – and I thought “I’m gonna have sex with that one” and then I was off and I jumped over those cars n’ critters just as easy as you please, hovered in the air like a glorious golden eagle, landed like god damn nothing and hopped off the bike while it was still rolling and strode over to that fat girl and she looked just shocked and I said, “I’m gonna have sex with you,” and she just nodded yes and we walked away from the whole thing – everyone was kind of running around and panicking because the bike had just shot right through them – didn’t hurt nobody, though, just ran over some whiny fucks foot and banged up the newspaper guys piece of shit car – and I did have sex with her, from behind, in back of Squeaky Chuck’s right across the street and when I finished I strode back to the dealership and everyone was still there and they was going fuckin’ crazy, cheerin’ and hollerin’. The guy from the news wanted to talk to me and I said, “Sure, why not.” He asked a bunch of dumbass questions and I don’t remember what I said, but at some point I go, “Cause I’m Sag Fuckin’ Jenkins and gravity don’t mean shit to me”, which kind of became my catch phrase. I was on the news that night and it caused a big sensation. Real big.
A news report from that evening:
Pandemomium erupted today outside of Happy Knobnoster’s Tallahassee Chrysler and Indian Motorcycles when a man jumped a motorbike over four cars and some animals, ran over 3 spectators, and crashed into a parked car.
The man has been identified as Happy Knobnoster’s son-in-law, Sagory Jinkins. We go now to Harv Tuboo at the scene.
What the devil’s going on out there, Harv?
Thanks, Jersey. I’m here outside of Happy Knobnoster’s Chrysler and Indian Motorcycles on a day that was supposed to promote the sale of Indian Motorcycles, a new addition to the lot at Happy’s. But this is one dealership that has maybe got more than it bargained for. The daredevil, local man and Knobnoster’s son-in-law, Sag Jinkins, successfully made the jump without much warning, landed hard, clumsily dismounted from the bike, and quickly exited the scene with what looked to be a portly lady of the night, while his cycle proceeded through the crowd, striking three onlookers and seriously injuring one, then crashing into the parked car of Melton Manehand, a reporter for the Tallahassee Times.
Let’s show the footage:
(revved engine, whooing, crashing, screams, crashing – very quick)
And here comes the daredevil himself. Let’s see if we can get a word with him.
Mr. Jinkins! Harv Tuboo with Tallahassee 6 news. Can we chat with you about the jump?
Sag: Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
It sounds like you’re feeling pretty good. Did the stunt go as you expected?
Sag: Just porked that blonde one!
I’m sorry, what’s that?
Sag: The blonde girl. Porked her. Whooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Mr. Jinkins, have you ever done anything like this before?
Sag: Porked!
The jump, I mean.
Sag: I’m Sag (bleep)in’ Jinkins and gravity don’t mean (bleep) to me! Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Well, there you have it folks.
Sag: Tear it down! Tear it down! Whooooooooooooooooooo!
Tallahassee’s very own daredevil, Sag Jinkins. He’s certainly somethi … and now he’s vomiting.
From Happy Knobnoster’s Chrysler and Indian Motorcycles in beautiful Tallahassee, I’m Harv Tuboo. Back to you, Jersey.
Booze instantly turned Sag from an ideal citizen to a compelling monster, and by the time he finally sobered up again – three weeks later – he was locally infamous, nationally noteworthy, and personally fucked.
He had accomplished the following:
He’d slept with the second, third, fourth, and fifth women he had ever known carnally, his wife being the first and the girl at the jump the second.
Three, four, and five were an inelegantly aging bar waitress named Gert, a nameless juvenile delinquent from the skating rink, Roller’s, at which he’d done his second jump – an unsuccessful, thrown together but well attended affair featuring the same ramp from before, but on fire, that left him with a broken leg that he didn’t get treated for six days, and Muriel Vendetter, the nurse that helped administer his leg caste, who he would continue to see occasionally for some time after.
- He’d been on the news on four more occasions, for the Roller Rink jump, for breaking the Florida distance record (even with a broken leg) at the Leon County Fair, for being thrown out of three Piggly Wigglies in one day due to disorderly conduct and arrested for drunk driving while fleeing the third on his motorcycle, presumably to find another, for crashing his bike through the display window of a rival car dealership (resulting in another DUI), and for a fourth, nationally televised – on Wide World of Sports – jump where he broke his arm attempting to make a jump that famed female Daredevil, Pamela Gorch, was preparing to make. The camera crew was there for her and she’d arranged the whole thing. Sag just roared in out of nowhere at the last minute in full regalia, which now included his soon to be famous and previously mentioned leathers, bought for him by Happy, who had gleefully taken on the role as his manager, much to the chagrin of his daughter. Pamela was standing on the take-off ramp waving to the crowd, preparing to make the jump herself, which she would, once his shenanigans were complete, to little interest. Sag blew past her out of nowhere and crashed just short of the landing ramp.
- He’d discovered that Canadian Club was his drink of choice and consumed 16 and one half 1.75 bottles of the stuff. This heroic intake was possible mostly because somewhere in the second week he’d also discovered cocaine when a man named Brian Beanblossom, a prominent dealer in the Talahassee area, offered him some early in a long night of yucking it up at a pay-by-the-week hotel attached to a crumbling bar called Stucko’s.
- And, most troubling of all, he’d disbanded his Scout troupe in a drunken flourish of profanities after suggesting – to the horror of all in attendance, parents and kids – that they go rogue and take up bank robberies.
Now he was lying in the fetal position on a tattered love seat in a dark room in his own house, wracked with guilt, dehydration, and early withdrawal, desperately trying to ignore the incessant itching under his arm and leg casts, which were all he was wearing aside from filthy briefs.
What had he done? What had come over him? I will not let this happen, he thought. I will not be a Jinkins but I am a Jinkins I am, I’m terrible, and it’s all falling apart, too late to stop it, and my heart is beating so fast, I’m going to die, something hurts inside me. My liver? Did I wreck it already? Pappy Jinkins IV died from liver failure but it took him 84 years but had he ever killed a man with a plaque in a rage fury? Is this God coming down with his vengeance? And what of it? Am I not allowed to have any fun? Fuck it. I can have fun. I was just having fun. But there’s no way that Lynette will stay with me. Why would she and the kids and oh god what will I do alone and those women oh that one was young and the waitress was so gross that was awful but no better than what I deserve, maybe if I just have another drink I’ll feel better and this will stop or maybe I’ll just die and this will stop, but maybe just a drink, maybe I should throw up again, what if the kids come in here, why can’t I fall asleep. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
His wife was in the living room with the kids, TV turned up, trying to keep them from wondering or asking anything, terrified, unsure of what to do. It had all been so sudden. Another woman might have packed up the kids and left already, but where to? Back to Happy’s home? He was complicit in all of this. And love and the desire for stasis are powerful incentives to dig in ones heals, so that’s what she did.
Sag had quietly – though not quietly enough to avoid his wife’s sad notice – dragged himself into the bathroom to vomit again and was staring into the toilet bowl, mouth wet and eyes red, when he heard Sag burst through his front door and greet Lynette and the kids.
Lynette said, “He’s in the bathroom, vomiting. Leave him alone”
Happy ignored this. Sag heard the stomp of his approaching boots and then the door flew open.
“God damn, son, pull yourself together. We’ve got an opportunity!”
He walked in, bent over, and hoisted Sag from the linoleum floor into the bathtub, where he landed flat on his back with his head squished against one side of the basin and his legs over the other. Happy turned on the shower. Sag barely reacted to the cold, had a brief flashback to his military breakdown.
“Son, you lost all your money and I can’t rightly allow you to continue working at the dealership, what with your tarnished reputation.”
Sag began to weep.
“You are a much wilder son of a bitch than I ever thought possible, got to hand you that,” Happy continued. “Didn’t think you had it in you. And while I don’t approve of what you’ve done, it has resulted in a certain . . . let’s call it a cache. Folks are itching to see you die, my boy, and while I don’t want to see that happen myself, I do believe we can make some cash dangling that possibility before the greedy eyes of the public.”
“OH, God!” Sag sobbed.
“Here’s what I come to tell you. The Wide World of Sports wants you back. A redemption of the asshole kind of thing. I’m working on organizing your biggest jump ever and they’re going to cover it. You’ll also get 15% of all ticket sales – of which I will, of course, as your manager, be entitled to 40%. Could be one hell of a payday. I’ve made a considerable investment and booked the Miami Orange Bowl stadium. 80,000 seats. And $30 a ticket that’s, well, just let me worry about what that comes to.”
Sag sat up. “How did you do that?”
“Do not worry about that either. What I need from you is publicity. Fix yourself up and let’s go talk over a beer.”
They had the beer – many, many beers, in fact – and they worked out the stunt, and Sag went about doing dozens of interviews that ranged from humorously sloppy and crude to unbearably sloppy and crude, but they did the trick. Anticipation for his jump at the Orange Bowl was high and the event sold out. Everyone loves the redemption or death of a fool. Viewership of that week’s episode of Wide World of Sports was staggering. A full 40% of all Americans with televisions tuned in and, presumably, many that didn’t watched from a filthy bar or through a window.
On the day of the jump Sag was relatively sober and monumentally charming in his interview and he landed the jump without a hitch.
He was famous. Very famous – just a bone shard short of Evel Knievel famous. There were endorsement deals – with Indian Motorcycles and Tiger Balm and Mrs. Butterworth – and there were more high profile stunts, all of which resulted in piles of cash – enough to jump him 3, maybe 4 tax brackets – and enough to convince Lynette to stick with him for a while longer, see how this all played out – he was hardly home anyway and their new digs on the really good side of town – a side Happy had never even considered – were worth whatever trouble staying with him would cause.
Meanwhile, Sag stayed drunk and increased the intake of coke, of course, and that went like it always does . . .
Look – the success part of all of this is well documented. That’s not what I’m here to tell you about. Suffice it to say there were ups and downs and women and scandal and fights and more and more money.
Until there wasn’t.
Just over a year later Sag sat in Happy’s new and improved office, complete with a garish self-portrait and built in putting green. Happy was dressed like Colonel Tom Parker and Sag, appropriately, was looking like an even more beat up fat Elvis. Acting a bit like him too.
He paced unsteadily, manic and just outside of sloppy. His arm was in a cast and his head was propped up by a neck brace. He was wearing a “Gravity Don’t Mean Shit To Me” trucker hat and a thick gold chain with a large, diamond encrusted SG pendant hung askew in the deep V of his red, white, and blue polyester button down shirt.
“It’s drying up, Happy. It’s dried up and I owe a lot of people a lot of money and your bitch daughter’s not going to forgive me if the money’s gone. How has it dried up already? They’re still sucking Knievel’s dick! What are you going to do about this, Happy, what the FUCK are you going to do about this?!”
Happy calmly rose from the leather chair behind his oaken desk, and walked toward Sag. He wasn’t feeling the manic energy as he’d kicked the booze and never touched coke – he’d seen what they had done to his son-in-law and had grown to hate the stuff. He missed the old Sag, god help him, and the thought that this all might be his fault made him want to cry, though he hadn’t, of course. Had never, really. This was a god damn tragedy and the man in front of him was the victim, but nobody called his daughter a bitch, so as soon as he was within arm’s reach of Sag – could smell the sharp hooch stink on him – Happy twisted Sag’s still healing arm away from his torso and punched him in the gut, very hard, felt the soft fat give way to what muscle still lie beneath it and turned his back as Sag fell to the floor with a grunt and a tight wheeze.
Happy returned to the chair behind his desk and sat down.
“Soon as you can pull in enough breath I want you to get out of here. We’re done. And stay the fuck away from my daughter.”
Sag got his breath back surprisingly fast and didn’t argue. Just hobbled out.
Happy wept, long and hard.
All the good parts were over.
Another month later and Sag Jinkins was sitting in a bar called Lumpy’s, alone in the dark at 10 am, trying to work up the will to chug a drink he didn’t have the stomach for at the moment.
Lynette had left him. All his shit was gone. His endorsements were gone. His opportunities were gone. No one was willing to offer him daredevil work. He’d become too much of a prick in an industry built around Evil Knievel, an all-time prick. His son, Clinton, had punched him in the nose just the day before, when Sag had crashed his bike into a car outside of the Jinkins’ new, much more modest, Sag free residence – the car belonged to the father of Clinton’s friend, who was inside the house with his son for Clinton’s 13th birthday party, which Sag had been invited to out of deference to the still lingering affections of his sons – and Sag stormed inside loudly demanding to know which son-of-a-bitch was parked in his spot. Lynette tried to calm him down, and it almost worked – he still loved her somewhere under all the liquor and regret – but he’d again flown off the handle when he noticed that Clint’s birthday cake was Knievel themed.
He flung it against the wall and that’s when the boy socked him in the nose – he was tall enough to reach it at this point – and before he had a chance to figure out how to respond to that he was weeping, and then being dragged out of the home by the man whose car he’d hit.
Now he was sad. The party was officially over – had been over for a while, but it hadn’t stopped Sag from strutting about as if it wasn’t – even if he was the only attendee.
But the swagger was gone and he was just drinking, or trying to, intermittent sobs hiccupping from his puffy throat.
And then someone sat next to him. Sag didn’t look up.
“Aren’t you Sag Jinkins?” the person asked admiringly.
Sag turned. No one had said anything admiringly to him in a good long time and it caused a renewed glimmer of confidence.
The man next to him looked like a cartoon character, but he had a musk and a smile that instilled confidence.
Sag sensed a new father figure. It was Batton Trowel.
Batton Trowel was a Texas good ol’ boy born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska with a deep weird streak that manifested itself privately in simpering, gross, omni-submissive orgies and publicly in his dress and unpleasant vibe, a vibe which helped him get most anything he wanted as folks were just eager to be rid of him.
Like Happy – he actually looked quite a bit like Happy – he had been a car salesman – a quite successful one – but had abandoned the trade after some accidentally ingested mescaline led to a typically errant vision that pushed him to seek one-ness with the universe.
That turned out to involve much more mescaline and a move to Florida, where he’d taken up selling “health tinctures” and healing crystals, which was to everyone’s shock but his own, quite lucrative for a time. Then he was arrested for selling mescaline – he was in possession of the biggest stash the police had ever seen, by a large margin – and served three years in the Florida State Penitentiary, which is where he watched both of Sags jumps on the World Wide of Sports.
He’d only been out for a month and was still looking for his next gig when he saw a man who looked a lot like a beat to shit version of Sag Jinkins walk into Lumpy’s. This immediately gave him a swarm of ideas, but he hung outside for a bit to let his man get a little loose before sharing any of them.
Eventually he came in and sat down next to Sag. He spoke for a while about how much he admired his courage and how he could see he was a man with uniquely and ideally aligned chakras. Sag, of course, had no clue what he was talking about but it all sounded nice and he was too low to feel the unpleasantness radiating from the large man’s leathery skin. Was transfixed by the massive turquoise bolo tie around his thick neck.
Batton could see that this wouldn’t take much work – next to him was a man without any options – so he got right to the point.
“Sir, I would be honored to be in the Sag Jinkins business. And if you aren’t currently employing one, I’d like to be your humble manager. And even if you are, he’s clearly doing a terrible job. You, sir, are a star, and should be treated as such. Should be eating at the finest restaurants, not slumped at this regrettable bar. Should be showered with pussy and sundry other adulations. What say you?”
Sag began to weep and embraced the burly man, dug his head into Batton’s garish western shirt.
“Thank you,” he sobbed.
Batton immediately put Sag on a strict diet and regiment of prayer, meditation, and crystals, though he kept feeding him booze, negating any positive effects that could have come from such things.
He put Sag up at a decent hotel and set to work booking shows. They were hard to come by, at first, but Batton wasn’t a man to be dissuaded easily and landed on a gimmick to pique the public’s interest: Guerilla Jumps, inspired by Sag’s first entrance on the national stage. No permits and no forewarning, outside of a little word of mouth and maybe a nudge to the local news here and there.
The first and only of these was attempted in Times Square. Batton flew there and bought Sag a bus ticket. He spent the whole bus ride drinking. Got kicked off of the bus in West Virginia for incessantly screaming, “Lynette, Lynette my beautiful Lynette! What did I do? I just want my family back!” but somehow managed to hitch a ride to another bus station in order to finish the trip. He was in no better shape for the actual event. Barely conscious, he rode up the makeshift ramp far too slowly and gradually tipped over its top lip, landing in a messy pile on the concrete. He broke a few ribs and wasn’t so much knocked unconscious as he just sort of fell asleep. It was a disaster, but it did make the news and succeeded in raising his dormant public profile.
Out of the hospital, Sag begged Batton to check him into alcohol rehab, something the attending doctor had said might be a good idea, but Batton wouldn’t hear of it.
“These gat-damned doctors have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. They are just out to make a buck. Stick with me, son. I’ll work you over with the crystals and the tincture and we’ll get you in a sweat lodge and you’ll be good as new. Better than new. Won’t even have to quit the sauce. You shouldn’t quit the sauce. It’s part of what people love about you. No one’ll pay to see a man who isn’t a bit reckless, my boy. And you can’t let them down now! You’re all over the news! A hero! And, frankly, you can’t afford to stop. Or to go to rehab. Here take a drink of this. It’s whiskey, but I’ve mixed in some of the tincture.”
The increased exposure only resulted in some small time gigs and a veritable guarantee of State Fair and Monster truck rally shows for the rest of his life, possibly the worst outcome imaginable. And Batton was managing his finances, so he never saw any of the fairly meager money, only received a shockingly modest stipend and a constant stream of alcohol, drugs, crystals, and the tincture.
This went on for five months. There were arrests and health scares and injuries and various humiliations dotting that time period, but there were also some jumps, though Sag took no pleasure in them.
He did the Okfuskee County Fair in Oklahoma and completed a fairly impressive jump with a fairly large crowd, but shit his pants somewhere before landing.
That didn’t feel great, even though no one noticed.
There was the demolition derby at the Jamestown Speedway in Jamestown, North Dakota – one hell of a bus ride, though he was passed out for much of it – where he didn’t land his jump and got into an unsuccessful – on his end – brawl with some locals in the parking lot. They left him moaning and bleeding on the asphalt and Batton didn’t even notice he was gone for two hours. Took another full hour to find him, and then there were crystals and prayers and he was back on the bus for an 8 hour drive to Golgotha, South Dakota, with a blindingly painful crack in one of his vertebrae that went undiagnosed and untreated – by anyone qualified – right up until his death.
Which brings us to where we started, finally. The Argus Valley Speedway, where that death is imminent.
Sag is hobbling back from running the sprint that Batton ordered. It has made him feel a bit better, mentally – more awake, anyway. But his body feels like it might just collapse into six or seven pieces and then decompose quickly, like in a time lapse video.
This is what he is thinking:
“I can’t do this anymore. I want to die. I wish I could say goodbye to Lynette and the kids, but it’s better if I don’t. I’ve fucked this up too badly. I’m a fucking Jinkins.”
Sag is breathing in gasps, and kneels down next to Batton, who is already mid prayer. Batton puts a hand on Sags head and it’s cold, somehow, even though the heat index has cracked 110.
Batton says:
“Oh, great creator, giver of life and riches. Bless this old boy before this great jump. May it inspire all those who see it and put them in mind to buy some merch. Amen.”
They stand and walk to the smallish, sparsely peopled grand stand. Batton hands him his helmet and talks – never stops talking – but Sag doesn’t listen. He’s saying his own prayer.
“Please forgive me. I don’t deserve it, but please forgive me. Give peace and happiness to my family. I don’t need any for myself. But please forgive me.”
He repeats this to himself and his vague sense of God over and over. He is crying.
And then he is alone in the performer entrance, astride his beat up old Indian Motorcycle while Batton introduces him with superlative after superlative, and he is planning.
When he hears the final announcement of his name – Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag Jiiiiiiiiiinkiiiiiins! – he puts on his helmet and enters the grandstand with a loud rev of his motor to weak applause. He is ready. He will jump higher than he has ever jumped before and then it will be over.
He casts his helmet aside. The crowd gasps at his face.
Another loud rev of the motor and he’s off, and it actually feels good this time. The jumps have never felt very good or natural. He’s never really thought much about them.
But this time the wind’s in his hair and the sky above him is blue and he already feels relief.
He hits the ramp and feels the incline and really pushes the engine. Then he’s flying through the air. And he thinks, “I thought this would feel like slow motion, but it doesn’t”, it’s actually going very fast and he barely has time to say his prayer once more:
“Please forgive me. I don’t deserve it, but please forgive me. Give peace and happiness to my family. I don’t need any for myself. But please forgive me.”
and almost doesn’t go through with his plan but at the last moment he tips his front wheel forward by shifting his body weight suddenly and then crashes, head first, into the broad front of the ramp.
And that is the end of Sag Jinkins.
The end.
