Don't Shoot Me, I'm Just The Meter Reader! - Jonathan Logan (read me a book .txt) 📗

Our field supervisor, Kenton Kyle Kindred—we called him KKK or Triple K—the van driver, thought that Stanley Barnes was a lollygagger, because he took every bit of eight hours to finish his work; but he liked me because I jogged through my route and finished early. If I completed my route in four hours, they let me go home early, but they still paid me for eight hours.
“You know you got skid row today, Logan,” Triple K proclaimed, smiling aloud. “You usually finish before noon.”
“Homeless zombies,” Stanley Barnes whispered, with a snort.
I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I worked in some of the best and worst parts of the city; one day I’d be working in Beverly Hills, and the next day I’d be working in Watts. One day I was working Mulholland Drive near Coldwater Canyon and I stopped at Rob Lowe’s house to read the electric meter; what a fucking asshole he turned out to be. He kept berating me and calling me stupid; it took every bit of patience I could muster to keep myself from kicking that skinny bastard’s ass. Many movie stars are assholes, acting like their shit doesn’t stink, but it sure was pleasant working in that part of the city. Skid row was downtown, near Wall and Fifth Streets. It was a very depressing area, and unclean, and it was the place that altered my life. I wouldn’t call them homeless zombies, the way Stanley Barnes did, but there was something terrifying about them. It wasn’t the homeless people that terrified me, but the thought of turning into one of them, being without money and a place to live. Becoming a homeless zombie was worse than being married to a toothless, obese, cow-of-a-woman with the intellect of an anchovy.
I wanted to do my job and get the hell out of there, but the people on the street were not in the mood to cooperate. They were attracted to me like moths to a flame, begging for money, food, and cigarettes. I got paranoid when they started scratching themselves, and sneezing, and putting their grubby hands on me; but at the same time, I felt sorry, and wanted to do something to help them. I didn’t have much cash on me, but they were happy to get anything they could, so I’d give anything I had, food and loose change. As I staggered along, I nearly stumbled over the bodies of the homeless camped out on the sidewalk. I wish I knew the stories behind all of those people, but I was afraid to ask. I imagined that health problems and lost jobs forced many of them into poverty, but whatever the case, I was uncomfortable around them and couldn’t wait to get out of there. I wanted to run away, but not only would I have looked idiotic sprinting down the street screaming, I also needed to finish doing my work.
Just when it looked as though the legion of homeless zombies was going to eat me for breakfast, Triple K. rescued me.
“Hey, Man!” Triple K hollered from the van, “I need you to help me lift a heavy plate from the street.”
Man, I got into the van faster than Clark Kent could change into his Superman costume. “You saved my life, Triple K!” I exclaimed. “Where’s this plate you’re talking about?”
He pulled away from the curb and headed west, acting as if he hadn’t heard anything I said to him. The radio was on and tuned into a song by Do or Die called Po Pimp.
Triple K turned right on Main Street and parked in a no parking zone. “Is this the place?” I asked, again.
Triple K didn’t need to answer my question. He stepped out of the van and strolled toward a group of workers standing near a large puddle of water. I know you’ve heard this before, but it seems like city workers are lazy assholes who—mainly because it is virtually impossible to fire them—enjoy sitting around and looking busy instead of doing something productive. One person, looking sloppy with his belly jutting out from under his shirt, was eating a chocolate bar and another—coughing his fool head off—was smoking a cigarette and squashing the life out of the one he had just finished smoking and tossed onto the ground. A third person, wiggling a pinky inside his ear, was just resting on the rear bumper of a city truck and staring dumbly at the water oozing out of the ground. It bothered me seeing people sitting around doing nothing, but I guess it was really none of my business.
“I guess we’d better lift that plate while the water is turned off,” Triple K declared, and everybody got in position to raise the three hundred pound covering off the water leak.
If somebody had a video camera, they could’ve gotten some hilarious footage of five middle-aged men in shorts, chubby and sweaty, hairy legs and fat rear ends hunkering down in the sunshine, heave hoeing out of sequence. Then the fun ended when a sniper took aim and shot me in the lower back. I dropped to my knees, screamed out in pain, and collapsed face first into the water.


Chapter Three


The door to the cell skated open with a deafening clacking noise, and the fat female guard screamed that it was time to fall out for lunch. Brandon sat up abruptly and shifted his legs off the bunk.
“Ain’t that gangsta: you mentioned a guy eating a chocolate bar in your story, and the chow cart arrived,” he informed me, moving hurriedly toward the door. “You must got some of that paranormal shit going on.”
“Well—at least here I actually get to eat,” I sniggered.
“Don’t get too excited,” Brandon belched, “it ain’t all that good.” He gestured for me to follow, and added, “We’d better hurry and get in line. We’ve only got thirty minutes.”
“All right,” I retorted, placing the paper and pencil on the floor, standing up, and trailing him out into the communal lunch area.
“Oh, and by the way, you should’ve told me about your bad back,” Brandon let me know, “when we get back to the cell, I’ll trade bunks with you.”
I thanked him, and grinned.
I was the new person in the pod, and was the very last inmate to receive a tray. They gave me a hot dog and a bun, beans, and carrots; a plastic spork and a plastic mug for water. I scanned the room and noticed an empty place to sit at the black table; everybody in the place looked intently at me, waiting to see what I would do. Brandon and a few of the Hispanic inmates ate their lunch standing up, in the far corner of the hall. I didn’t care that the people sitting at the bench were black; I wanted to sit down and eat, so I meandered over toward the table, but before I could get there, a Hispanic guy with terrible acne and a scar on his right cheek took the spot. Nobody glanced at me or said anything. This huge man with arms as big as my waist and a spacious gap between his two front teeth scoffed his hot dog down in two bites, and with food still in his mouth, in a rich droning voice, said, “I think you’re sitting at the wrong table, Beaner.” Then this tall and wiry man, with tattoos on both arms, and razor bumps on his face, wanted to know if he was stupid or had a death wish. Before I could walk away, food and bodies were airborne. I guess I shouldn’t have been amazed that a brawl broke out between the inmates, but I was, and it could’ve been a lot worse if three or four guards hadn’t rushed in to break it up. The Hispanic guy and the wiry guy both got dragged off to the hole, which was a dark, padded room at the rear of the pod where rabble-rousers were sent to cool off; they usually went in kicking, cursing, and screaming, but came out a few hours later quieted down.
Anyway, there were freaking beans and carrots all over the damn place, and it became clear that nobody was going to clean up the mess. I don’t even recall how much time had passed, but I placed my tray on the table, swept the dropped food out of the way and I sat down.
“You remind me of Ving Rhames,” I told the big guy, spooning some beans into my mouth.
“Wasn’t that the brother in Mission Impossible?” The older black man next to me asked.
“Yup.” I answered. “You want my hot dog?” I asked the Ving Rhames lookalike, picking it up and handing it to him.
He never said a damned word; he just snatched the hot dog from me and shoved it in his mouth. I polished off the beans, and then I got up, placed my serving dish in the lunch cart, and proceeded back to the cell. Brandon had already swapped bunks with me; he was staring into the small mirror above the sink picking a pimple on his nose and farting. Man, that guy sure had intestinal problems; of course, eating all those beans didn’t help things.
“What the hell were you doing out there?” he asked me.
“What d’ya mean?” I acted as if I didn’t understand the question.
“Those brothers are bad-asses and killers,” he told me.
“They’re not that bad,” I assured him. “Besides, if you can’t beat them, join them.”
The electric cell door crashed shut; I sat on the lower bunk and picked up the pad and pencil. Brandon acted as if he was going to scramble to the upper bunk and then abruptly stopped, lingering over me like a hangover, a pain that just wouldn’t go away. I really wanted him to go away but he wouldn’t.
“How did you get them to let you join them?” Brandon questioned me.
“I offered the leader, the big guy, some food,” I replied, “and I complimented him; I told him he looked like Ving Rhames.”
“Who?” he appeared puzzled.
“It doesn’t matter,” I changed the subject. “Now, where was I in my story?”
“In the water, on the street, with a bullet in you, probably capped by a gangbanger driving though the hood,” Brandon reminded me, kicking off his sandals, climbing up onto his bunk, settling down in to hear the story.
“Ah, yes,” I replied. “I had been shot in the back!”


Chapter Four


When it comes to pain, I’m like a little kid. I’m serious. If I get a paper cut, I shriek and whimper, and I debate on whether I should go to the hospital for stitches. So, with pain ripping through my lower back and both legs, and being wheeled from x-ray to the emergency room, I begged someone to give me some narcotics.
“Would you like a Tylenol?’’ a nurse asked me.
There I was close to dying; a bullet wedged close to my spine, and this dumbass nurse was asking me if I wanted a Tylenol. Then she said something even more humiliating by suggesting that I now knew what it was like for a woman to give birth. My screaming was so earsplitting and irritating that I alarmed everyone in the entire