Tag: Agent Orange

Orange crush

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day to Tommy Orange.

Since Tommy Orange scored himself a MacArthur Foundation award I’ve been rereading his 2024 novel “Wandering Stars,” the followup to his 2018 breakout hit “There There.”

The MacArthur people call it both “a sequel and a prequel” to the previous work, and it’s not a lazy bedtime read. The first pass through I found myself speedreading it, a vile habit I can’t seem to shake. It’s like driving the interstate instead of William Least Heat-Moon’s blue highways. You get where you’re going, but you miss a lot of scenery.

Now I’m taking my time and enjoying it more. Orange, a native of Oakland, Calif., and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, covers a lot of territory as he takes us back and forth in time, from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the echoes of the climactic gunfire in “There There.”

With one eye on another orange tale-teller I found one passage particularly apt for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Opal Viola Bear Shield, who is on the lam for a number of reasons — no spoilers here, read the book — is giving her unborn child a Cheyenne perspective on dogs, white people, and bloodlines (the child’s father is half white, and a white family’s dog, Cholly, is on the lam with them).

He’s one of these mutts you don’t know what kinds of breeds are in him and you don’t much care because he seems all his own in the eyes. Well he’s only got the one eye, but it’s got more life in it than I’ve seen in some men with two. And I’ve seen worse men than those with no life in their eyes. It’s worse when they know what they want and they’re hungry for it, white men in this country, they come to take everything, even themselves, they have taken so much they have lost themselves in the taking, and what will be left of such a nation once they are done?

This Bud’s for you

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

We should be so lucky.

Ho hum. I see some deep-pockets blowhard strolled in and out of court again yesterday, without consequences, as per usual. Not even a mug shot.

Shit, I’ve done more time than this blabbering plastic sack of fast-food farts, a serial liar who cheats at golf and would sell his idiot children to the Saudis, if he could find one dumb and mean enough to buy them for sex toys and/or dog food.

And I didn’t have to lip off to the cops, DAs, or judges to get jugged, either.

No, that would’ve been one of my bros, the dude who told the graying Colfax beat cop with the rookie partner: “You can’t arrest us for walking out of a bar with a beer.”

Ho, ho. Wrong again.

This regrettable incident took place in the Glory Days, when my friends and I were basically ambulatory recruiting posters for the War On Drugs. We’d have let the feds put our faces on a “Know Your Enemy” flyer if they paid us in cocaine and Stoli.

None of us was wealthy. We had no well-connected allies. We had dedicated ourselves to scaling new heights of impairment and then tumbling down the other side into a crusty rental house that used to be part of a Glendale nursery. For plants. Not children.

And thus we learned how to talk to cops. Be polite. Rely upon the short, simple words you can still pronounce without drooling. Don’t let the nice flatfoot see the devils raging behind your blood-red eyeballs.

And never, under any circumstances, tell a cop, “You can’t arrest us for [insert your offense here].”

My friend forgot this cardinal rule — only for a moment — but that’s all it takes. Loose lips sink ships, especially when the crew is hammered. And so we all got a fun ride in the drunk wagon and a night to remember in the Denver calaboose, where we met some fascinating people.

One was a duster (crazed on PCP), and he was quickly awarded the entire drunk tank for his earsplitting arguments with people or Things who were not there. We more numerous but much less scary drunks got packed into two-man cells so we could enjoy the floor show from a safe distance.

Another was a glum-looking permed and pastel-leisure-suited gent who had gotten popped for soliciting a hooker who turned out to be a vice cop. He could see his apartment from our cell, but not his wife inside it. He was not looking forward to seeing her in his new digs.

We got sprung in the morning without charges. Go and sin no more, you silly little shits, they told us. But goddamn it, we did our time.

If only we’d been riot-inciting former presidents of the United States whose Florida resort’s crappers were overflowing with national secrets instead of addled stoners getting sideways with a Colfax cop.

We’d have been back in the Satire Lounge before closing time.