These anti-depressants are kicking in with vivid dream-recollections as a twisted and kinky bonus. Like dirty fingers digging through rotted leaves and thin roots and twigs; wet dirt full of worms and the last century’s detritus.

I walked up to the cemetery on this sticky and rainy afternoon. The old Hillside cemetery, the one next to Little Paulie’s house. Paulie was a change of life baby. His parents were in their seventies when we were kids. They lived in a big old house, three stories tall, with dirty and cracked windows and books, every corner packed and stacked with old newspapers. The house was creepy in the daylight. But at night, deep in the night, tripping on acid it was flat-out terrifying. One night I became certain there were cadavers and spooks in the attic, and they told me to leave, and I never went back inside.

Little Paulie had a dog, Lobo, who was really the only one in that family who made a lot of sense to me. His father was a tired old man and just wanted to be left alone. His mom was kind, but always a little suspicious of me, like I was the one who was a bad influence on her little boy, when in fact I went to see Paulie mainly to buy drugs and paraphernalia. Some guys bought guns from Paulie, nothing big. Stolen rifles and handguns, mostly. Untraceable stuff, no serial numbers. Cheap Saturday night specials. I mainly liked his dog.

Up on the biggest hill on the graveyard grounds, under a wide and tall pine tree, was the grave of this kid named Royal H. Duck. He died about 1914. We adopted this dead kid into our crew, and we’d spend many summer nights up by his headstone drinking booze and smoking pot and fucking Middletown girls out in the weeds. Royal was only fourteen when he died and the night, we stumbled on his headstone I got sad for him. I assumed he must have had a pretty rough life, what with that name, and I assumed he probably spent a lot of his time fighting. I figured he didn’t have a lot of friends. I could relate to all that.

Sometimes I’d chew on bitter peyote buttons and try not to vomit and go sit alone and talk to Royal. On daytime visits occasionally the big maple tree next to his pine would be alive with a murder of squawking and cawing crows. The racket was terrifying and confusing. Sometimes I felt myself in the middle of a whirlwind, but within that din I could decipher words. Not so much words as thoughts my brain spliced together as words. There is a fair to middling chance I’m crazy. I never disputed that. A thousand cawing and clicking crows. The noise was terrifying. Royal never said much, what with being dead and all. But he told me to listen to the caws, not to trust Little Paulie.

That next summer I took a trip with Paulie up to New England, Boston actually. He convinced me to drive a trailer up there for him. I didn’t know what was in the load. My job was to drive and not ask a lot of questions. I figured it involved guns and really didn’t care one way or the other. My assumption was the guns were going to Boston, and then find their way overseas, maybe into Ireland, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to know.

I knew Little Paulie’s dad was involved with the Republican Army back in Ireland. Someone told me once that even their last name was fake, and that his dad was involved in some kind of operation here, from the house up by the cemetery between New York and Boston and Belfast.

I’m mostly of Irish decent and I know I should give a fuck, but to be truthful I didn’t. Most of the people I knew from Ireland were as sick of the Orangemen as they were of the RA and bridges exploding and the killing.

I pulled the trailer onto a dead-end street near Beacon Hill. Paulie, who followed me the entire way on a motorcycle, pulled right up to the cab. I jumped on the back, and we took off down Route 93 fast and hot for the Pilgrim Highway and Plymouth. We stopped at a place called Bert’s Bar, south of town near some place called Poverty Point. I remember ordering a shot of tequila and a beer. That’s about all I recall.

I woke up face down in the surf, bare ass naked and freezing. It was August and still pretty hot during the day, but the ocean was freezing cold. I stood up, now fully aware of my nakedness, and realized I was alone. I felt like I was tripping again, or still tripping from last night.

That was both a good thing and a pretty bad thing. Being naked and tripping on acid outside is a bit of fun in the moment until the reality and necessity of the situation confronts you. The conflicting thoughts of reality can turn out to be quite overwhelming and terrifying. Acid is funny like that. In one minute, everything is all shiny and new—an adventure, then it all goes to shit, and you can’t think or connect two thoughts that make any sense at all. I thought I quit smoking, but my brain was craving the bitter taste of nicotine. In some universe I saw myself as some acid-head, truck-driving Marlboro man.

I saw a diner across Route 44. Slouching and sneaking I hid behind a stone wall until I saw no cars, and ran my ass as fast as I could, barefoot and naked to the back door of the place, banging with my fist on the wood framed screen door. I’d not seen my face yet in a mirror, but by the look on the young waitresses face I could tell I looked worse than simply being naked. She was kind, she laughed a little and asked me simply, “What the fuck…” I think I managed something witty like, “I know, right?”

She found me a couple of dirty aprons and I wrapped them around my waist. In the bathroom mirror, I saw I had two black eyes, and my nose was pretty swollen, but not broken. The waitress, she said her name was Lorelei, but everyone called her Lorie, was a pretty girl, nineteen or twenty with curly blond to brown hair. She snuck me some eggs and coffee and she sat with me on the back porch in the coastal sunshine. I was fascinated by the beach sand on the black top walkway, thinking there was a deeper meaning to everything that was in front of me. I was forever looking for some deeper meaning. I finished my eggs and coffee and handed Lorie back my dishes. She was kind and funny and had a pretty smile.

Her uncle owned the diner, a fellow mick, named Colm. Lori introduced me to him. I told him my story, as well as I could recollect it. He let me work in the kitchen for a week, and he brought me some old jeans and shirts to wear and a dirty old pair of Converse All-Stars. After a week, I’d made enough money to buy myself a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and a denim jacket and a bus ticket home.

I was in the kitchen saying goodbye to Colm and thanking him for his help. When I saw a cloud of dust and heard a loud bike pull into the parking lot. For a moment the view out to Route 44 and the ocean was lost to the dust devil.

Colm and his niece had literally saved my life, and they didn’t ask questions. Even when Colm got wind that the trailer was loaded with guns and the ultimate destination. He let it go and left me alone. I’d slept that week in the back-room office of the diner. I’d wanted Lorelei to join me back there, but it was ok and probably better she didn’t.

I didn’t pay much attention to the motorcycle. Out by the cash register I allowed myself one last look at the wall of pies and cakes that Colm and his wife made early every morning. Looking so good it hurt to turn away, behind their protective wall of chrome and clean glass. I wanted to say goodbye to Lorie, when I heard an unmistakable voice ordering eggs over easy and make sure the eggs sat on the white bread toast. Paulie ate that every day of his fricken life, he acted like he invented eggs on toast.

In one swooping motion, I grabbed him by his greasy ponytail, gave him a quick gut punch, dragged his ass out the diner’s glass front doors, adorned with little pilgrims and the sign that read, Welcome to Plymouth, Massachusetts. I tossed him over the fragile wrought-iron railing that made the handrail for the short three steps leading to the entrance. By then Paulie was sputtering some crap about coming back to find me. On his way down off the steps, he hit a rock with his head, knocking himself out. I pondered stealing his big Triumph Bonneville but Paulie was the kind to call a cop, not to come after me and settle stuff on our own. With my dirty Converse All-Stars and my left foot, I pushed the bike over on its side, and I walked out of Plymouth for the last time and toward the bus station.

I got an email the other day from Paulie. We’ve grown old without ever again speaking. He says” I hear you’re a writer now?” And some other trivial crap.

I say, “I’ve always been a writer. Why?”

He typed, “I’m curious what you write about?”

“Anything and everything, Paulie. Old days in Middletown, stuff like that. Some days, like today, I write about nothing at all… but, you know what, Paulie? Royal Duck was right about you all along!”