XXVI

"Where did you get that hammer?" I asked as I glanced over at the Scarecrow riding in the passenger seat of my '58 Catalina, complete with power steering and mascot Rat Fink perched atop the dash. Scarecrow was, at that moment, sitting with a half-gallon jug of bottom-shelf gin between his legs. After carefully slicing a lime in quarters, he was using a hammer to jam the wedges into the bottle of sustenance. The lime was a critical element.
We may have been cruising around at midnight on our way to another tavern, after being asked in a less than nice tone to vacant the previous one, in a blemished old Pontiac, taking swigs of a half-gallon vat of rot-gut gin, but we weren't Troglodytes.
Scarecrow did not respond, needing pure concentration to guide his remaining motor skills to finish the task at hand.
"Where the fuck are we going?" A pointless and purely rhetorical question, we both knew that. Sure, I probably should have turned the headlights on, but let's be honest, they wouldn't have helped me see the road any better. We were using the force as we had become accustomed. Just point me at the sky and we would get there. Our destination point was decided upon arrival. Any other way would be Fascist.
Three spikes and four destroyed cassette tapes later, we were there, much to the chagrin of the homeowner whose pool we were in. At last Scarecrow spoke up, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!" Then he promptly keeled over and passed out into the pittosporums. I went inside to search for more gin and some horseradish. The cops didn't get the joke either.