The creek where my circle of friends hung out flowed beneath the I-75 viaduct, about two hundred yards from where we launched our egg assault. It then passed through a City of Detroit water treatment facility for about a quarter mile before flowing beneath Moran Road in the direction that Lucky had driven the stolen Camaro, intersecting about a block and a half from where I lived. I chose this as my escape route. As I was running along the creek through the water treatment facility property, I heard two people running full bore right at me. I jumped off of the trail and hid. A few seconds later I spotted Mad Dog and Richie Clayton running furiously towards me as if the devil himself was nipping at their heels. I jumped out of my hiding spot to see what was going on, terrifying both of them to the very precipice of involuntary incontinence. Richie leapt right off of the riverbank and fell into the creek. Before he even had a chance to get wet however, he was back on his feet running to the far shoreline where he pulled himself out, ran up the embankment and then out of sight. We did not see him again for nearly a week, and then only sporadically after that. I think that was the very moment where he decided to find a new group of friends. Mad Dog just let out a blood-curdling scream and fell into a crumpled heap of jelly at my feet. When he saw it was only me he struggled back up, grabbed my arm and, while hysterically hyperventilating shaking as if afflicted by a particularly virulent strain of Parkinson's, tried to regain his stride with me in tow. "He..*gasp*..found..*gasp*..us."
"Who?"
"The..*gasp*.. Camaro..*gasp*..Dude!"
Stunned in disbelief and still far too intoxicated to work my legs with the efficiency they were used to, I lost my footing and tripped taking both me and Mad Dog down to the ground. I hit my knee upon something very hard as I fell and an excruciating bolt of crippling agony tore through my entire leg. Still, I managed to get back up and try to hop away on one foot. I did not make it far. Mad Dog was still lying on his back trying to catch his breath and on my last hop, I landed right on his crotch, expelling what little air was left in his lungs as his legs shot out defensively, knocking my one good leg out from underneath me. I crashed down hard, nailing my right elbow and putting me out of action. Mad Dog launched into another fit of Technicolor laughter. As Mad Dog and I lay writhing around on the ground I heard the sound of Camaro man crashing through the trees in the darkness behind us, gaining quickly.
Knowing things were about to come to a head, I reached around the ground frantically for something to defend myself with. Miraculously, I came across a fallen stick that was just about the size of a pool cue and sat myself up in the hopes of getting one good shot in before we were unceremoniously disemboweled. As the sounds of our assailant approached, I brought the stick up around my head like I was Hank Aaron and, for the second time in less than a half hour, waited for the owner of a Camaro to come within striking range.
When he finally emerged from the brush in front of me, I was ready for him. It was so dark that he never even saw what hit him. I swung my stick as hard as I could and caught him full in the ribs. Unfortunately, the stick was thoroughly dry-rotted and it virtually disintegrated upon impact. It was like hitting a charging wildebeest with a dry sponge. Not even slowed, the Camaro guy slammed right into me knocking me flat upon my back, then tripped over me and landed on Mad Dog, pushing him into the disgusting puddle of sidewalk pizza he had left in the grass a moment before.
In an act of suicidal desperation, I leapt upon Camaro Guy's back and managed to get him into a choke hold from behind. I then realized that he was much smaller up close and shortly after that noticed that his voice was awfully familiar. In fact, it sounded so much like Lucky's I had to let him go. Of course, it was him.
I spent the next couple of minutes explaining to Lucky how we had mistaken him for the Camaro driving vigilante until I noticed he was wearing a different shirt than what he had started out in. When I asked him where he got it, he explained that the Camaro guy had a basket of clothes in the car and he had helped himself to a clean t-shirt on his way out of the car. I then asked him where he left the Camaro.
"At the bridge." He answered, referring to the point where the creek intersected Moran Road.
"Why the hell did you leave it there?" I asked in disbelief. "You cut off our way home!"
"No, I cut off your way home." Lucky lived in the opposite direction of Mad Dog and myself. "I'm fine."
"Not quite." I corrected. "There's a crime scene and an unnaturally large, ill-tempered motorist between us and your house, Scott." Scott Grabowski did not get christened with his new nickname until the following day. "I'm sure he got a pretty good look at you and even if he didn't..." I pointed out Lucky's new wardrobe item, "I'm sure he's going to recognize his own clothes. I'd advise you to get a better disguise back at my house before you try to chance making it to yours."
This set off a lengthy conversation on escape strategy. We were essentially confined within the water treatment facility, surrounded by an eight foot high chain link fence topped with double strands of barbed wire with two unguarded breaks in it to let the creek flow through. One of these breaks was blocked by a stolen car. The other was potentially blocked by the homicidally deranged person it was stolen from. For all we knew, he was waiting for us beneath the viaduct, killing time by disemboweling Richie Clayton while he waited for the rest of us to show up. In the end we decided to leave our bikes behind (they had been left beneath an unused railroad bridge that passed over the creek halfway between Moran Road and the viaduct) walk the perimeter of the chain link fence behind the treatment facility, out of sight of both the facility's security guards manning the gate and Moran Road, and chance jumping the barrier at the corner farthest away from the stolen car. That meant walking almost mile to cover a distance that essentially added up to one city block. As far as we could tell however, that was really our only option. Once we were at my house, Lucky just needed to kill a couple of hours before attempting to walk to his house.
We got to the point where we needed to jump the fence without incident but once we arrived, suddenly realized how formidable it was. Eight feet is a long height from which to fall and falling is a very realistic danger when you've compromised your motor skills with enough cheap beer to kill a Kennedy. To add to the difficulty, the fence was topped with two triple strands of barbed wire held in place with V-shaped bracket placed on every other post. Scaling that perimeter was bound to be the hardest task of the night.
We were fairly exposed standing by the fence and to preempt any lengthy discussions on how best to jump it, I just went ahead and tried. As I climbed towards the top, I noticed that dew had collected on the rungs, making them much slicker than I expected. The wind had also really picked up considerably which made the task that much trickier. I took as much care as I could but I still slipped while I was over the barbed wire and fell right into it. I fortunate in escaping any major injury, but my prized fatigue jacket was not so lucky. It was ripped to shreds as I worked myself free and fell to the ground, again aggravating the knee I had injured during my earlier spill at the creek. Mad Dog went next, choosing to cross over the V-bracket and managed to do so with an ease that was very admirable for someone who was still quite inebriated. Lucky went last, also over the bracket in the hopes of replicating Mad Dog's success. He failed miserably.
As stated earlier, Lucky was not a big guy and trying to clear the fence's V-bracket was just too much for someone that short. While over the bracket, he overstretched and came down hard on the street side of wire, hard enough in fact that both Mad Dog and myself initially feared that he had been impaled by the bracket's tip. From our vantage point, it had jammed itself into Lucky's jeans just below his belt and we watched in horror as his apparently limp body fell forward until he was suspended upside down from the top of the fence. Both of us rushed to his aid, fearing the worst. Fortunately, we found that though the fall had knocked the wind out him, he was essentially in good shape and had no visible injuries. Unfortunately, his jeans and his belt were somehow wrapped around the bracket and he was about as stuck up there as a person could possibly be.
As the tallest, I was best equipped to get him down but I saw it was a futile gesture from the very beginning. The only way he was coming down was if I cut his belt. Initially, Lucky was very much against this and though I did not understand his almost violent opposition to this course of action then, I sure do now. If I was stuck hanging upside down and some drunk wanted to perform belt surgery with a sharp knife six inches from an appendage that was vital for my future procreation, I would have been concerned myself. I would have had reservations even if he was not planning on doing it with only one hand while using the other to hang suspended from a wet chain link fence in high winds. Performing a stunt like that was just begging for an unintentional vasectomy. Still, Lucky's options were pretty limited and finally, after the blood rushing to his head had sufficiently clouded his judgment, he agreed to let me give it a shot. Mad Dog, who had a fetish for knives that was unnatural for someone who had yet to do time in the high security wing of an insane asylum, passed me a particularly sharp specimen of his collection and told me to get it done quickly. With a precision that was far more luck than skill, I severed Lucky's belt and immediately found that it was only half of the problem.
The other half was Lucky's jeans. They were wrapped around the bracket as well and cutting the belt only loosened them up enough to allow Lucky's pants to pass over his hips. In the flash of an eye they shot up to his shoes and Lucky found himself hanging by his ankles, baring his battered BVDs to any cars that happened to pass by. He immediately panicked and started squirming frantically in a vain attempt to get down. I fell off the fence and found myself writhing around in the grass, laughing so hard that I was able to produce no audible sound at all. Mad Dog was soon beside me suffering a similar affliction. I desperately wanted a camera and, though Al Gore had yet to invent it, internet access.
Eventually, Mad Dog and I pulled ourselves together enough to try to get Lucky the rest of the way down. We worked our way up the fence on either side of him and each tried to take off a shoe. This was hard to begin with, but the task was made more difficult with the passing of each car. Every time Lucky saw approaching headlights, he would become hysterical and try to work himself free. This would send Mad Dog and myself into convulsing fits of laughter that made it even harder to hold on to the wet fence in wind that seemed to be growing stronger by the minute. Finally the shoes came off and Lucky fell out of pants, crashing face first into grass while letting loose a long string of expletives that would have turned a West Pac Sailor redder than Chairman Mao. Mad Dog and I fell after him, still laughing uncontrollably. Just as we were calming down, Lucky picked himself up and tried to grab his pants. The wind however, kept lifting them up just out of his reach. Mad Dog's laughter then launched him into a set of dry-heaves, which set me off even worse. As Lucky's pants flapped in the wind, the contents of his pockets showered down upon us. Wallet, keys and change fell into the grass while the two us that were still fully clothed tried to catch our breaths and find them through the tears in our eyes. Then the strongest gust of wind yet blew in and lifted Lucky's pants off of the wire and carried them back over the fence into the perimeter of the water treatment facility that we had just escaped from. Lucky gasped and fell to his knees. Mad Dog guffawed so hard his dry heaves finally turned wet. I came the closest to actually wetting myself than I had since pre-school. I had to roll over on to my side, undo my zipper and relieve myself before I had an accident, a tactic that nearly backfired before I realized that I was urinating slightly uphill.
Eventually, we made it home. Mad Dog finally quit getting sick and made it back to his house. Lucky borrowed a pair of pants from me and eventually made his way back as well. When he got home he called to tell me the coast was clear. There was no sign of the Camaro guy, the police or the vehicle so we assumed he must have just found it and left. I finally passed out in my bed which, a few hours later, took on the qualities of a roulette wheel until I got sick myself. When I woke up the next morning, I felt like hell.
I was violently ill until lunchtime and had a headache that made me feel as if someone had performed brain surgery on me with a railroad spike. My whole body seemed to ache and I felt terminally dizzy and weak. As I spent the hours before noon unable to do much else, I took stock of the events that transpired the evening before. I committed my first serious misdemeanor by purchasing alcohol while under age. I committed another by throwing eggs at a moving car. My actions eventually lead to one of my closest friends getting man-handled by the enraged owner of a scrambled Chevrolet for an act that he had no part in committing. I then became an unintentional accomplice in the commission of a felony when my friend, who had been an innocent up until this point, stole the guy's car. I then took an active role in the public humiliation of this same friend by creating the circumstances that presaged his spontaneous act of public nudity, robbing him of the little dignity he had left at that point. As I lay that morning wallowing in my own misery, I vowed that I had to start doing things differently. There were serious consequences to drinking on a scale like that and I had to make sure that I did not end up in this condition again. I had to start buying better beer. The cheap stuff left you feeling way too bad to fully enjoy the memories of the chaos you had instigated the night before.
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