Pandemonium Season 1, Episode 1: Orange Blossom Special (1988)

 

Intro: I have been wanting to incorporate a tie-in between my blog and my Facebook group: Playlist Pandemonium. The group is a place where the members generate a playlist each week based off a theme or prompt. I thought about doing a Thursday ten, featuring ten songs from a single band or artist, but struggled on how to make that a challenge for my writing, which is the purpose of this blog. So, I thought I’d create a serial series inspired by songs. I admit I cheated here a bit, as the piece below is inspired by a NANOWRIMO project I did a couple years ago. I put 50,000 words down in a month, but the overall story sort of floundered and I haven’t found the right angle to fix it. The below is a new take, new writing, coming at the story from a different point of view and new starting point. My hope is to add a new episode every week or so and keep each post at about a thousand words. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave your comments below. Dan.

 

Pandemonium Season 1, Episode 1: Orange Blossom Special

https://open.spotify.com/track/28KTisZDzhDBALLSvRf4wv?si=b677a8e2ee1e48c0

“It's the Orange Blossom Special

Bringin' my baby back”

-         --  Orange Blossom Special by Johnny Cash

 

Reckon it was when that Orange Blossom Special sped by his trailer out on Highway 20 just after lunch that Friday in the fall of 1988 that Ricky Dean Glenn felt the itch again. For two years, he’d been straight, maybe not so much like an arrow but thereabouts. He’d done some scrappin’ of old steel and such to get by. The kind of junk straight folks don’t have much use for anymore, but don’t know what the hell to do with. Washing machines. Rolls of barbed wire. Rusty farm implements. He took care of that concern for those folks with their pearly white teeth and yards with freshly cut grass and flowerbeds, the sort of lives that politicians spew on about being the American fairy tale.

Ricky Dean Glenn’s life was no such fairy tale, no God-damn way. He ate crackers with splotches of peanut butter on them for his lunch and had two Marlboros for desert while sitting on his stoop, thinking about how very big the sky always seemed now that he was out of the pen. Almost too damn big. Sometimes his cigarettes would burn down and singe his fingertips when he got to looking at that big old damn sky with its waves of white clouds and that flaming sun. He’d curse, toss the cigarette away, but it wouldn’t be long before the sky entranced him again. Too damn big.

He heard the truck’s engine rumble from miles away before it streaked by in a blur of orange and cream broken only by the blaring reflections of the sun off the windows. Behind the wheel was Joe Elliot’s boy. Ricky didn’t know the boy’s name, just knew he was too damned young to be driving such a cherry automobile. Course the boy’s daddy hadn’t gone to Korea like Ricky Dean Glenn. No, Joe Elliot had foot pains, as Ricky understood it, a symptom he supposed was caused by the streak of yellow down his back. Joe Elliot stayed home, had a mess of kids, this one the youngest, and cleaned up selling seed corn and crop insurance. Joe Elliot was one of those fairy tale folks, which goes to show those folks aren’t all they are cracked up to be.

“Forget about it,” Ricky whispered, puffing on his cigarette. The engine echoed in his ears. The Elliot place was just down the road a spell, over the bridge that spanned the river where Ricky had once swum naked with Pauline Appleton and taken her cherry. He suspected that then, at least, but figuring back, she sure seemed to know what the hell she was doing more than him. Ricky took another drag considering Pauline Appleton’s virginity back in the day, the big damn sky, and that mighty fine hunk of orange metal that had so recently passed his place. He’d look mighty fine behind that wheel.

“If you want it, just take it,” his father’s voice echoed in his ears. Earl Richard Dean had been dead for more years than Ricky could remember, but the bastard’s rough voice still growled from time to time in Ricky’s head. Mostly when Ricky was drinking. Then the bastard was calling him names while beatin’ the shit out of Ricky before moving onto Ricky’s mama. When Ricky wasn’t drinking, he’d hear the old man’s sage advice. Things like, “Don’t take shit from no one,” or “Might as well fuck those with nice things before they fuck you.” Those were the sort of gems he’d get when they would escape to the shack in Wisconsin each fall for two or three days of huntin’ and fishin’. Ricky wondered if that old shack was still standing, be something to see, if it was.

His knees popped as Ricky rose, his cigarette disappearing in the dust under his boot heel. Inside the trailer was a war zone of junk, discarded clothes, and empty cases of beer, among the rabble was his white Stetson, which he’d swiped after getting out of the pen, and his Colt, which he tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Putting on the hat, he peered around the trailer one last time and thought about Pauline Appleton’s breasts glistening in the river water. Maybe that was the best day of his life. She’d been a beauty, one all the rich boys had been chasing, but she chose the bad boy that night. They always did. Well, sometimes they did. He’d gotten it enough, even tied his hitch to a post for a time, but prison had ended that setup. He was all but sixty now, not a boy, and women didn’t think of him as bad anymore, just reckless, dangerous and over the hill.

Well, he wasn’t dead yet, so he wouldn’t say such a damn fool thing as that day being the best. That Orange Blossom Special zoomed through his mind. Mighty fine automobile. He supposed he’d been straight long enough. Time to get right with a few things before it was too late.

“It’s the Orange Blossom Special. Bringin’ my baby back…” He sang. He knew the Johnny Cash catalog by heart.

A semitrailer hauling a load of corn or soybeans whipped past as Ricky Dean Glenn’s boots struck the gravel shoulder of Highway 20. He walked with the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled just above his forearms and his hat low on his eyes. He walked like a man with a destination, one about an hour down the road by foot. He’d cross that bridge and that river, leaving Pauline Appleton swimming naked in his bittersweet memories. He was after his Orange Blossom Special, and one last day on the run.

“I don’t care if I do-die-do-die-do-die-do-die-do-die.”