Dirt Roads and Drinkin' in Booneville, Abridged

This is the condensed version that I sent to the Royal Nonesuch competition, which acknowledges funny short stories in honor of the best, Mark Twain. Since these contests tend to impose word counts, I had to make some cuts. The full version, if you're into that, is easy to find on this site. 

More so than a Royal Nonesuch winner, I was a guy who entered the contest... But I do consider "Booneville" a winner in every other, non-Twain contest kind of a way, and it's almost entirely because of Ray, whom I never would've met without Ian. I'm grateful to them for letting me be a part of this story. 

Now, if you want the absolute sappiest spin on what you're about to read: To err is human, sure, but so is the need to be loved. Remember that later, when Bobby announces his homecoming.

1. Birth of a Nickname.

“Have you really gone cow tipping?” I asked.

“Yeah, but nothing really successful,” Tipper said. “You’d push ‘em, and you’d slip and giggle. The fun part is just goin’ out there.”

          Ray came to Wisconsin to start over, and within a month, he got his nickname: Tipper. He had made the move north to be with Angela, whom he’d met in an AOL chatroom at a time when they were both seeking. Before long, he got a job at a construction company in Fond du Lac. It was April of 2002, best he can recollect, and he and a coworker were driving to the job site. On the way, they passed a landmark as they traveled through the town of Plymouth.

          “That is where we saw that big ole heifer that got it all started,” Tipper told me later.

          With unlikely grace, Antoinette stands tall on four creamy legs, a blatant mascot in the USA’s most lactose tolerant state. The sight of her made Ray’s chestnut eyes squint, bulge, and flicker as he gazed through the window on the passenger's side. He grinned and spoke to the driver.

          “Man, if we’d have had that thing in my town growin’ up, we’d have been out there drunk every night tryin’ to push that bitch over.”

          The driver laughed. “You’ve tipped cows?”

          “Who hasn’t?” Ray said. “Come on, you live in Dairy Land. You ain’t never tipped cows?”

          Thus, Ray became “Cow Tipper,” and since nicknames can never expand, only be trimmed, he was dubbed “Tipper” in a matter of weeks.

          He had a different alias down south, but we’ll cover that later. For now, let’s answer this question: Where in the States would a huge fiberglass cow have to withstand nightly assaults by the drunken locals? In Booneville, Arkansas, that’s where.

2. Christmas Party/ Meeting Tipper

“Tipper, Nick,” Ian said. “Nick, Tipper.”

          Ian spotted me at the Kwik Trip and invited me to a Christmas party at his house. “OK,” I said. It was a nice offer. And I had nothing better to do.

          Ian’s always cheerful, which makes him a great host at parties. A plumber by trade, he was abuzz with tales about his pal Tipper. He treated me to tales about this prolific storyteller that he knows from job sites, an everyman with the power to captivate.

          It became clear that Ian wanted me to write about this southern transplant and his misadventures. I said I’d think about doing an interview, but it already felt like fate. There was slim chance of writing something truly great and worthwhile, and I could never turn that down.

          Also, I had nothing better to do.   

          A month later, we drove to West Bend to chat with Tipper. January was spoiling us with a snowless day in the 20’s—so good it could be best described as “not bad.” I scribbled notes as Ian drove. I peered out the window at a vast white field of cows, but my mind wandered to tangents.

          “You think he has any cool stories about monster truck rallies?”

          Ian grinned. “I don’t know. That might be too much of a southern stereotype.”

          “Good point,” I said.

          We were greeted warmly at Tipper’s house. He shook my hand as Angela and Izzy, her vigorous four-year-old granddaughter, joined us in the kitchen. Clad in a plain white T and blue jeans, Tipper showed us around. In the cozy basement, the girl ran and dove into a bouncy castle. She laid down and giggled as it noisily filled with air. Before it got inflated, she escaped and darted upstairs. I waved goodbye to Izzy. Tipper sighed and began to deflate the thing.

          A photography backdrop caught my gaze—lights bookended the blank screen—and Tipper took notice. 

          “Here’s where we do the porno shoots,” he kidded.

          “Very nice,” I said.

          “Did Ian tell you I met Angela online?” he said, tracing his smooth bald head with nonchalance. “Classy site. ‘Big Southern Cocks Dot Com.’” 

          No ice was left to be broken. We went upstairs to the kitchen table, where Tipper filled glasses of moonshine and mango. I set my phone in front of him and pressed record. Tipper was ready to tell some stories.

3. Booneville

“I’d never move back. I do miss the yard parties and the guitar pickin’s. That was pretty cool... But other than that, I don’t miss anything.”

          I have never been to Booneville, but Tipper was fit to be a tour guide.

          “Shitty area. Booneville was a little shithole of a town,” Tipper said.

          I’d still visit, if only for the yard parties and the guitar pickin’s.

          “The population was almost three thousand, but most of it was country. Dirt roads everywhere—still, to this day. Two grocery stores. One set of stoplights. A restaurant or two. It’s all just… poverty. Drugs. Back in the late ’90s, it was meth amphetamine burnin’ through there, but they got a hold on that by putting everybody away for like 15 years. Then it turned into prescription drugs. Now people on Facebook call it ‘Spoonville,’ so I’m guessin’ it’s heroin.”

          Located south of the Ozark Mountains and just north of the Ouachita Mountains, Tipper grew up in a river valley outside of Booneville, on the fringe of the Ouachita National Forest. Thankfully, Tipper avoided the trappings of drug abuse that have plagued his place of birth. But he still found a way to party—and in a dry county no less.

          “You had to drive 30 miles to buy beer, 40 miles to buy liquor. Drinkin’ moonshine early, then beer—that’s what we did. From the time I was 12 on, we’d sneak out and go to rodeo arenas. The cowboys would come once a week. They’d bring beer and put it in the fridge, but there would be a jar so that people would pay for it. Honesty system.”

          Another kind of honor code was applied anytime teenage Tipper and his pals were pulled over by a highway patrolman on the way back from a beer run.

          “There was a lot more drinkin’ and drivin’. ’Cause everywhere I went, we were drinkin’, ’cause we had to drive so far to get beer,” Tipper explained. “We got pulled over a lot. And they’d make you pour your beer out.”

          “Was that the extent of it though?” I said. “No fines?”

          “Yeah, but I’ll tell ya, when you had to drive 30 miles, 40 miles, and you had to have some stranger buy beer for ya, and sometimes they’d run off with your money—you worked your ass off to get that beer! That hurt, man.”

          Tipper went on about justice and mercy in Logan County.

          “I once backed into a cop. Sheriff. 18 years old, drunk. Had the beer between my legs. He let me go.”

          That Sheriff might have showed clemency because of the quality of his character. Maybe. But as I was about to learn, there’s a chance the Sheriff shrugged it off because he didn’t want to hazard the wrath of Tipper’s dad, Bobby.

           “My dad… he’s usually a nice enough guy, but he can be mean. He’s just a scary dude.”

          At that moment, the lid on the jug of moonshine popped open on the kitchen table we sat around. The pressure released as Tipper finished his sentence. Then, seemingly out of nowhere: Thump. It was as if his dad was using the moonshine to rap an angry fist on the table from three states away.

4. The Only Traffic Lights in Town

“What are the odds? You can’t make this shit up.”

          “Even the cops were scared of my dad. He’s a mean son-of-a-bitch,” Tipper said in his tone that reminded me of a lowkey Elvis Presley. “This happened back when my dad drank a lot. Now, we had two family cars. One was an Impala, the other was a ’68 Mustang. Dad was drivin’ the ’68. Him and my uncle were out drinkin’ all day. My sister Lisa was drivin’ the Impala, goin’ from school to the hospital, where she worked.

          “So, there was one stoplight in town. Her side of the story was, light turned green, she started pulling through that intersection. She got hit.”

          Thump!

          “Back up a little bit to my dad’s side of the story. My dad’s drivin’ and he’s tryin’ to beat the red light, and he’s tellin’ my uncle, when he’s real drunk, he drives with one eye covered up. That way he don’t see double! Well, he ran that red light, and hit my sister, and totaled both of them family cars.

          “Then he tried to leave. The car wouldn’t run. Lisa stole the keys from him. Cops came, hauled him to jail. They immediately started calling the house, wanting mama to come and get him. And she says, ‘No, I ain’t comin’ to get him!’”

            Unlike his father, his mother, Barb, was never one to indulge in drunken clusterfucks. This marks one of many ways the two are different. Her work ethic was pure and she battled adversity with a sober mind, and she was furious when her husband wrecked both cars in a blur of alcohol.

          The Templemans lived about five miles out of town, and in a reckless flash, they had lost their means of transportation. Barb needed a reprieve from the man who had caused so much distress. But Dad was persistent.

          “They kept callin’, sayin’, ‘Barb, please come and get Bobby. We can’t control him. He won’t let us lock him up.’ And she says, ‘I don’t want him.’ And they’re not supposed to bring him home. They called three or four more times, same deal.”

          Young Tipper despaired as his mom and sisters fretted into the night. He tugged on the strands of his fine golden hair as he watched helplessly. Barb had to ask about the cars—damage, cost, insurance. She dialed up the police station and got a surprise.

          “What are you doing answering the phone?!” she cried.

           “Dad told the cops that he would behave if they would give him fried chicken,” Tipper said. “And he talked them into letting him answer the phone that night at the police station. And he still wouldn’t let them lock the door of his cell.”

          “KFC?” I said.

          “Oh yeah,” Tipper said. “Now it’s a KFC/ Taco Bell. So, at one point, he passed out, and when he woke up hungover, there were chicken bones scattered all around. He loved it. My dad was either really happy and funny—or else he was crazy-eyed.”

          Contrasts run throughout Bobby’s moral fiber. His charms and flaws were always locked in battle. And liquor could make him nasty.

          There must be reasons why Barb fell in love with Bobby despite his flaws.

5. Barb and Bobby

“Girls like a project,” Ian said.

“Well,” Tipper said with a wise grin. “She got her project with that son-of-a-bitch.”

          It is astonishing how often women of virtue hook up with bad boys. I’m not even mad about it anymore. Why frown over a great recurring joke? Still, it’s hard to explain the matter.  

          Maybe every light just needs a shadow. Maybe hellraisers make life less boring. Or perhaps bad boys simply know more about survival of the fittest, and survival isn’t always nice. Whatever the truth, the honeymoon never lasts forever. But at least there was a honeymoon. 

          “By the time my parents were 20 and 21, they had three kids already. We had 40 acres that my mom had been given when she got married, out in the country. Dirt poor. Outhouse.

          “Dad was a drinker. He wasn’t around a whole lot, which was all right ’cause he could be scary. He wasn’t an abusive father. No, just a scary dude. Mom never did nothin’ but work and take care of us kids. We were surrounded by family. No friends. It was all family out there. I loved it. I didn’t know any better.”

          As a boy, Tipper benefited from a green mind and an open heart. While his childhood had outbursts of chaos and anguish, Tipper still endured fewer hardships than Bobby, whose own father deserted his family when he was a little kid.

          “Dad had a whole lot of older brothers,” Tipper said. “There was domestic violence. Lots of problems. I wasn’t real close with his family because they were really dysfunctional.

          “Now, my mom come from good family. My pap-pa, her dad, was a preacher. All of them turned out to be crazy, but they’re good people. We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday. We had the church bus come and get us. But Dad never went.”

          Bobby was a roughneck who worked in a saw mill—where he lost the middle and ring fingers on his left hand—and on the oil fields, where the pointer finger on his right hand got severed. (As if for symmetry, his right pinky was also chopped off in a hedge trimming disaster. All digits were sewn back on.) He’s been through hard times in which he quit working or applied for disability.

          By contrast, Barb was indefatigable. Before she became a nurse, she would do odd jobs like slinging haybales that almost outweighed her.

          “Strong like an ant,” I said.  

          “Shit yeah, she had some guns on her. She can do anything.”

           Barb seems righteous and mighty, but Tipper had made a false claim. No one can do it all. When it came to getting wasted and making poor choices, she just couldn’t do it. Bobby was there to pick up the slack.

6. Bobby Won’t Be Intimidated

“I’d never seen Raymond Dale so drunk.”

          When Tipper was growing up, the surest path to action was simple: Follow a dirt road out of town and by and by it should lead to a yard party. One local man with a first and middle name worth noting was Raymond Dale, and his yard parties were as constant as they were epic.

          “If there was a fire in the front yard, people would come,” Tipper said. “We partied a lot at Raymond Dale’s. I’m sure it was a weeknight, ’cause when we got there, it was just me and my dad, and Raymond Dale and his wife.”

          Raymond Dale was wrecked, teetering on the ropes if drinking could be compared to boxing. Bobby and teenage Tipper were catching up and capable of lasting a few more rounds when the former scoffed that perhaps it was past Raymond Dale’s bedtime. As if cajoled by smelling salt, Raymond Dale sounded off indignantly. He was incensed and tensions escalated.

          “Well, I wound up slapping Raymond Dale off the stool. And, of course, then he said he was gonna get the gun. So, we scattered out the trailer,” Tipper said.

          Raymond Dale wasn’t bluffing. Father and Son got a head start, but he pursued with a shotgun.

          “He come out on the porch and fires a shot, says ‘I’m gonna kill ya!’ By then, we were back behind a truck, and I’m like, ‘Shit, Daddy, we gotta get out of here!’ Raymond Dale fires a couple more shots. You can hear them. They’re not even close to us.”

          Bobby gazed at his boy on the low sight line of their crouches and realized the gravity of the situation. They were in a bind, and he had to do something about it. He rose to his feet.

          “We’re over here, dumbass!”

          As Bobby resumed his crouch, he giggled and winked at his son.

          “I was like, ‘Goddammit Daddy, stop!’”

          As it turned out, the gun was real, but the intent to kill was not. They escaped Raymond Dale’s unscathed.

          Gunplay happens in Booneville, no matter what the generation.

7. Valentine’s Day, 1997

“If you’ve ever watched that show Ax Men, there’s a character named Shelby, a swamp logger. Ricky looks and talks and acts just like him. Both have a Cajun sound and a speech impediment. So, when I first met him, he said, ‘I’m Wicky.’”

          When discussing family with someone, it’s amazing how often the talk transitions to those who are like family.

          “Ricky was like a brother to me. We lived down the road from each other,” Tipper said. “He was fucking hilarious, and he had no fear.”

          At the time this story occurred, Ricky was two weeks separated from his soon-to-be ex-wife Candy. We sat in Tipper’s kitchen with moonshine in hand as he set the stage.

          “Once you got off work, you’d make a run to the beer store. Then you’d drive the dirt roads all the way back home, drinkin’ your beer the whole way. Then you’d get to town, you’d cruise around, and you’d load up on girls or find a party. On a good night, you’d find girls. So, we loaded the girls up, and we’re cruising through town, then we hit the backroads. About midnight, I’m done. I had to work the next morning.”

          He told Ricky as much. The friends were parting ways, and Ricky had found a new sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.

          “His truck was parked at the one gas station in town,” Tipper said. “We pulled up beside it and unloaded his ice chest into mine. The girl that liked him was gonna get in with him.”

          The trouble started when Ricky gazed at the main drag of Booneville and, by chance, discovered that someone else had found a new sweetheart too.

          “Well, he spots Candy ridin’ in his other truck. Now, it wound up becoming hers, but it was his at the time, and some dude was drivin’ it. And Ricky got all pissed off. He just loved to fight.”

          Ricky knew next to nothing about his ex’s new man, but the parts that were clear made him livid.

          “That son-of-a-bitch!” Ricky screamed. “He’s dwivin’ my twuck!”

          Tipper told him to let it go, but he refused. 

          “Away he went, chasin’ after ’em. So, me and that girl jump in my truck, chasin’ after Ricky. It looks like an action movie. Ricky’s drivin’ and tryin’ to run him off the road—and somehow he’s dodgin’ him. I don’t know how. The dude’s drivin’ a little Nissan four-cylinder, and Ricky’s drivin’ a truck with a V-8.

          “They hit the dirt road, so I couldn’t hardly see nothin’. So, I’m kind of just followin’ the dusty trail. The dust settles, and we come up on where they stopped.

          “At this point, Ricky’s getting out of the truck, and he’s walkin’ towards the Nissan. He gets to the window, and I see a gun stickin’ out, shoves it right in his face.”

          Seated at the kitchen table, Ian and I leaned in, two men rubbernecking at the scene in our minds. I was so thankful for Ricky and his rival fighting over Candy on Valentine’s Day. 

          “I’m several car lengths behind, drinkin’ a beer,” Tipper said. “And I’m givin’ commentary to the girl: ‘Holy shit, he’s got a gun!’

          “Well, Ricky just smiles—and grabs the guy, drags him out of the truck. And Ricky just starts whipping him. And he’s only 175 lbs., maybe, but mean as a damn snake. And he’s still whipping the shit out of this dude, who’s whipping the gun around. Well, Candy gets out, and she’s tryin’ to get the gun. I’m like, ‘What do I do?’ I don’t even know if they notice me ’cause of all the shit that’s goin’ on. Then I hear a gunshot.”

          A single blast rang through the desolate air.

          “Ooh, you son-of-a-bitch!” Ricky hollered. “You shot me!”

          Ricky got up and hopped and hobbled, his hand pressing against the gushing wound on his leg. He still managed to kick his grounded foe a few more times.

           “Well, Candy and her boyfriend, they scatter. They jump in the truck and they go. Then I get out of my truck and go to check on Ricky. I throw him in my truck and haul him to the hospital.

          “Now, it wasn’t uncommon, when you go to the emergency room, midnight or after, there’d be cops there. Car wrecks, other shootings. There weren’t a lot of gangs or nothin’, but you know… There’s people shootin’ people sometimes.”

          We laugh at this. As with his delivery of the line “You shot me,” Tipper has a way of telling about things that are essentially grim with great comic punch and timing, and without malice. Some of us believe that the act of overstating what’s funny and understating what’s sad is its own form of sensitivity.

          Tipper went on:

          “Well, we get there, and of course we knew all the cops. Bobby Joe Turner’s there, a guy we grew up with. They already know about the gunshot. So, the cop comes in the hospital room and starts askin’ Ricky who shot him and what happened. And of course, none of it was Ricky’s fault. Ricky’s telling the cop, ‘I think I seen that guy before. He’s from Waldron.’”

            Ricky said the name of the nearby town with disdain. His ex was a quick rebound, and to a guy from Waldron, no less. Fitting how these were like two wounds.

          Tipper recounted: “The cop says, ‘Yeah, I know who he is. He came and turned himself in.’ Ricky says, ‘Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. What’s gonna happen to him?’ ‘Actually, he’s in the next room over.’ Ricky says, ‘Yeah, I whipped his ass, didn’t I?’ Bobby Joe says, ‘Yeah, you whipped him pretty good, but also, he shot his big toe off.’”

          If it can be said that Tipper has a dark sense of humor, I maintain that he got it from Booneville, a place where fortunes seem to get so easily twisted.

          “What had happened was, they’re in the scuffle, and there’s a gunshot. And the bullet went in right below Ricky’s knee, traveled down his leg, went out his ankle, and then it blew off that dude’s big toe. One shot.”

          “I don’t know what’s more unlikely,” I said. “Between that and the collision of the two family-cars at the only stoplight in town.”

          The three of us nodded and no one had an answer. It’s worth noting that the lawmen involved ruled fault on both sides. The crimes offset each other. Medical bills had to be paid, but the spar was basically called a draw.

          Like a true buddy, Tipper helped a recovering Ricky by treating a wound so long it was more like a tunnel. He can’t be blamed for complaining.

           “Oh my God, that was disgusting. I had to take these long wooden sticks with a big Q-Tip on the end, and jam one of them things into Ricky’s leg. Once or twice a day. And it stunk!”

          Like some chimneysweeper of a massacred tibia, Tipper was there grimacing and choking down puke to do a solid for his pal. After all, they had been through a lot together.

8. The Bolder

“It was either a dinosaur or a horse.”

          This next tale began with a girl, too, but she never dated Tipper or Ricky. She was more of a drinking buddy—one with whims the boys catered to.

         “We were up on beautiful Magazine Mountain,” Tipper said in a wistful drawl. “It’s the tallest point between the Rockies and the Appalachians. I lived right by it. We were up there drinkin’, up on some loggin’ roads, and our headlights turned the corner, and we saw a big rock. And she wanted it, ’cause she said it looked like a dinosaur head or some shit.”

          “What was her name?” I asked.

          “No idea,” Tipper shrugged.

          So, let’s call her Reba Mae, OK? Reba Mae was smashed and enamored with this bolder that reminded her of a dinosaur head or some shit. And so, Tipper and Ricky stumbled out of the truck.

          “Well, we somehow managed to load this bolder up, and this was the demise of my brand-new truck. A ’97 Chevy z71. Back then, it probably had ten-thousand miles on it. The trip back into town beat the shit out of it. The bolder caved in the front of the bed. The dirt roads didn’t help. I hauled this rock around for two days.”

          “All because she wanted the rock?” I said.

          “Yeah, she was gonna paint it and make it up to look like a dinosaur or somethin’. Might have been a horse. Hell, I don’t remember! But after that thing beat the shit out of my truck, I decided to get rid of it.”

          He drove the truck, burdened with bolder, over to Reba Mae’s place.

          “And she didn’t want the rock! When she sobered up, I took it to her, and she said, ‘I didn’t ask for that. I don’t want that damn rock.’”

          “So, in an act of generosity,” I began, “You and Ricky loaded a bolder into your truck, which got... pulverized. And neither of you were dating this girl? She wasn’t like a prom date or anything?”

          “No,” he said. “But I’ll bet our shirts were off.”

          “How much did the rock weigh?”

          “Too much to push by myself. When I tried to unload it, I had to back my truck up and let it slide out. And it was just ripping metal. It was horrible. Good stuff.”         

          “Same truck from the bridge?”

          He nodded. “Same truck from the bridge.”

9. The Bridge

“I didn’t want to shit my pants or die with a helmet on,” Tipper explained. “That’s the kind of shit that’ll haunt you, man.”

          “This is the one story where you’ll hear me say, ‘This was my idea.’”

          In addition to the bolder, other factors caused wear and tear on the brand-new truck Tipper had purchased in 1997.

          “There wasn’t a straight piece of metal on it: Dirt roads, drinkin’, and more dirt roads, and more drinkin’.”

          Also, the bolder.

          “I wanted to get rid of it, but it wasn’t worth nothin’ ‘cause it was beat to shit. So, me and Ricky were out drinkin’ one night, and I come up with the idea to push the truck off a bridge.”

          The truck had no value aside from an insurance claim and a tipsy Tipper decided to force the issue.

          “Where we grew up, there was a bridge about ten or 15 feet off the ground, and it had a real rickety-looking side on it—like you could just push it down. So, my plan was to have him push the truck, and me run beside it, and at the last minute, I turn the wheel and hit the bridge and crash below, and nobody gets hurt.” 

          Trouble was, that guardrail was deceptively tough. Resilient. After three or four low-speed smacks from Tipper’s truck, the guardrail stayed intact. It was past one in the morning and the desolate town was allowing plenty of privacy for their antics, but sunup was sure to come by and by. Tipper and his shrewd mind thought of an alternative.

          “Finally, I’m like, ‘I’m just gonna drive the damn thing off. Let’s go get my motorcycle helmet.’ We went back to the house and got it. I unloaded all the beer out of my truck. And I told Ricky, ‘All right, follow me. If something happens, and I die, take this damn helmet off me. I don’t want anybody knowin’ that I was wearin’ a helmet when I run this truck off a bridge.’

          “So, I get my courage up, crank my Metallica…”

          “Which song was it?” I asked.

          “‘Of Wolf and Man,’” Tipper said.

          As Tipper sped at the bridge on a dirt road that kicked up black clouds in the moonlight, a wobbly Ricky pursued. Beneath the hard, protective dome of the helmet he didn’t want to be caught dead wearing, Tipper’s adrenaline boiled to the thumping punches of Lars Ullrich and the wicked snarl of James Hetfield: 

 

“Off through the new day's mist I run
Out from the new day's mist I have come
I hunt
Therefore I am
Harvest the land
Taking of the fallen lamb”

          It was perfect. Tipper in his truck was the wolf running. He was on the hunt for insurance money. And that pesky guardrail was the lamb he was about to take. He smashed through. Tipper and truck spilled over the bridge and plummeted ten or 15 feet onto the dry, rocky creek below. 

          “Bam! ...And I landed right on my side. Bam!”

          Through upright eyes gone sideways, Tipper blinked at the surrounding stones and the dimly lit incline beyond. He was fine.

          “I go crawl out the door, and when I look up, I see Ricky’s truck is hangin’ off the bridge.”

          Tipper was fine, but Ricky could be a bit of a wild card.

          “I say, ‘What the hell?!’ He says, ‘I didn’t mean to! I was followin’ you and the dust kicked up! It was the dust!” I say, ‘Well... Son-of-a-bitch.’”

          The next logical steps in the new plan were clear:

          “We had to unload all the beer from his truck,” Tipper said. “’Cause we were gonna push his truck off the bridge too.

          “Well, we pushed and we pushed, but we could not get that damn truck off the bridge. After a couple hours, finally, somebody that lived in that area heard all the commotion, and he showed up on a tractor.”

          “Was it daylight by that point?” I asked.

          “Gettin’ close. It was probably four or five in the morning. Guy on a tractor showed up and called the cops.

          “And I couldn’t believe it: The cops didn’t even ask if we were drinkin’. I almost wanted to scream, ‘What the hell is wrong with you people?!’”

          He didn’t. Easier to get away with stuff that way.

          “Well, two tow trucks came and managed to get Ricky’s truck off the bridge without wrecking it. My truck got totaled and I wound up a shade over a thousand in the hole.”

          It was a $1,060 charge to record one of Tipper’s greatest hits. Worth it, I’d say, but Tipper concluded: “I was pissed about that tow bill.”

          Dad had a temper, too.

10. The Chicken House

“Big, scary son-of-a-bitch,” Tipper said, shaking his head. “He looked like a character you’d see on a wrestlin’ show.”

          “When I was 15, I started workin’ at a chicken house,” Tipper said. “I gathered 6,000 eggs a day. There’s chicken houses down there, about 500 feet long, with like 30,000 chickens in them. And they’d pay me six cents a dozen to gather eggs.

          “I’d drive myself to work. And there was a guy my dad’s age who was a drunk—Mike—and he lived in a bus outside his mom’s house. But I would go pick him up in the morning and haul him to work, and I’d be faster than him, in my chicken house, and when I got done, I’d go over to his chicken house and help him. Then I’d take him home.

          “Well, one day he didn’t show up for work, and so I had to do both the houses. I didn’t care, ’cause that was double the money for me. So, I was drivin’ home, and for some reason, I got this feeling.”

          Tipper claims to have a sixth sense. At the age of 14, he and his buddies Booger and Toon camped beside his pap-pa’s pond. While the other boys slept in, Tipper did stunts on a rope swing and splashed into the water. While performing a double-flip, his foot got ensnared, he smashed his head on a tree, and he nearly drowned upside-down. Toon woke up just in time to save him.

          Since then, Tipper says he has profound hunches and premonitions. At one point, I saw cosmic trouble in his dark eyes, but the way he diagnosed it made me smirk: “There’s a lot of shit goin’ on in my head.”  

          He continued:    

          “Two streets down was a house where my dad used to drink beer. And something told me to go check and see if he was there. I don’t know why. I never checked on my dad. My dad don’t need me, and I had no control over him anyway. But something told me to drive down that street.

          “Well, the minute I turned, I saw a crowd of people. I’m drivin’ up and I see my dad just whipping the shit out of somebody. Everyone’s screamin’, ‘cause the guy is... He looks like he’s dead. It’s horrible. I bust through the crowd and I’m hollerin’ at my dad to stop, and he turns around. And back then, he had this crazy, perm-lookin’ hair. And he wore overalls with no shirt, and he had on sandals, which we called Jesus Shoes. He looked like a fucking idiot.”

          Ian and I chuckled, but don’t expect us to ever call Bobby a fucking idiot to his face.

          “Turns out, the guy he’s whipping is Mike,” Tipper said. “I said, ‘Daddy, you’re gonna kill him. Stop!’”

          Bobby’s lust for blood only increased at the sight of his boy.

          “This son-of-a-bitch called you squirrely,” he raged. “Watch this, Cosmo!” 

          To clarify, this was Ray’s original nickname. Before he became Tipper in Wisconsin, his dad and his aunts and uncles called him Cosmo. He’s never had any notion why. Mystery of the Cosmos, I suppose.

          At the mention of “Cosmo,” the beating continued. Punches kept landing on Mike’s swollen and torn face. With persistence, our protagonist pried Bobby from Mike’s limp body.

          “To this day, when my dad starts tellin’ that story, he gets fightin’ mad. I’m sure the guy was just jokin’. And said, ‘You know, your boy’s kinda squirrely.’ And you know what? I was squirrely. Fuck!”

          From Tipper’s deep well of narratives, Bobby supplied plenty of depth. Leaping back and forth on the timeline, I learned that at least one thing has changed: Bobby is now sober. That is no easy test of mind and body to overcome.

          But Bobby’s still got the temper of a barroom brawler—even if now the brew in his hand is an O’Doul’s. It’s doubtful he would’ve given up the bottle without help from Barb. He strove to keep her in his life—even when it was clear that she wanted him gone.  

11. “I’m Home, Cosmo.” 

“Our dysfunctional family wasn’t dysfunctional anymore,” Tipper said. There was sadness in his voice.

          Events in Tipper’s life were told to me out of order, and I will say that this was indeed the final account he offered, just before Ian and I returned to Fond du Lac. I had to smile about the common theme: Coming home.

           Tipper’s parents had been separated for a time when he was a boy. It’s no shock, considering how different they were. One was called a roughneck as often as the other was deified a saint. We listened as Tipper outlined the breakup and the aftermath.

          “By the time she got married to him, she probably figured she could change him. But then she just—like everybody else down south—sometimes they just give the fuck up. ‘This is my life now.’ And I was at that point, too. I was literally sayin’, ‘Well, this is as good as it’s gonna get.’”

          Tipper was referring to his mindset at the age of 26, when he jokes that he “finally hit puberty,” and plotted a move out of Booneville. His moment of clarity came not long after Valentine’s Day, ’97, and shortly before he met a Wisconsin girl named Angela in a chatroom.

          Barb and Bobby, on the other hand, are eternal souls of Booneville. They tussled with problems and wrestled with demons on their home turf—and that was that. Tipper discussed the split.

          “They actually got divorced when I was in fifth grade.”

          “They got remarried?” Ian said.

          “They got remarried.”

          I asked how long the separation lasted.

          “Well, I was sick for a lot of it,” Tipper began. “While all this was goin’ on, I had mono. I missed a lot of school. I thought I was dying. We were building this house, and then we were livin’ in this little roach motel while it was being built. And I got sick at the motel. And the house wasn’t finished, but then we were livin’ in it anyway. Next thing you know, my dad’s pickin’ his stuff and leavin’. I’m like, ‘What the fuck happened?’”

          He mimics the sickly cough of a bewildered kid for comic effect—anything to get a laugh from the heartache.

          “So, apparently, I slept through a lot of fights!” he said, but then came a pause. His smile tightened. “No, I didn’t sleep through them. It was nonstop. And when Dad was drinkin’, he couldn’t come home. And if he did come home drinkin’, Mama would kick the shit out of him. She’d throw him in the truck and haul him back to jail. Many times, she done that.

          “I think they were separated for maybe a year. And when they split up, it was horrible. We moved in with my aunt and uncle. There were three adults—my mom, my aunt, and my uncle. And then my three sisters, plus their two kids. Nine of us, crammed into a two-bedroom house in the country.”

          “Any pets?” I said.

          “Oh, yeah. Dogs, cats, cows, goats, and chickens.

          “Anyway, Mama started dating this man, and it killed me. I don’t know why. ’Cause I never really bonded with my dad. We never played catch. We did go fishing once, but we didn’t really fish. We drank.”

          When I asked if Bobby the bachelor had any luck in free agency, Tipper’s response was swift: “Oh yeah, bar hags and skanks.” We laughed and moved on.

          “Was your mom’s new guy a bad boy too?” I said.

          “No, he was a good guy. Pat Weaver. She met him in church. He’s probably one of the best guys I’ve ever met. But he wasn’t my daddy.  

          “So, after about a year or so, Mama was gonna marry him. And every one of us kids stood up and said, ‘No. If you marry him, we are not goin’ with this guy.’ It just didn’t seem right. Our dysfunctional family wasn’t dysfunctional anymore.”

          That line bears repeating.

          “Mama didn’t marry the guy. We moved to town, just Mama and us kids, and we lived in this old house—old as shit. Mama would haul us to go see Daddy on the weekends. Sometimes he’d be there. Sometimes he wouldn’t. That was pretty bad.

          “Then one weekend, when we hadn’t seen him in weeks, Dad showed up at the house. And he drove this ugly, bright-red Ford fuckin’ Pinto—I can’t make this shit up.”

          We snickered at the punchline of automobiles.

          As we know from the almost-drowning story, Tipper loved rope swings as a boy. “I was like a Goddamn Tarzan out there,” he boasted. At this new house, he’d get up on the roof and make like a pendulum onto the nearby shed, for hours at a time. When he spotted his dad pulling up the driveway in his Pinto, the boy had to ponder: “What in the fuck is he doin’ here?” Tipper restated the question to Bobby, minus the cuss word.

          “He says, ‘I’m comin’ home.’ So, he goes into the house, and a little while later, he’s runnin’ out, and there’s a trail of shit bein’ thrown at him. Well, he gets a tent out of his Pinto, and he starts settin’ the tent up in the backyard. He says, ‘I’m not leavin’ Barb! This is my family, and I’m comin’ home.’”

          “The tent was like an insurance plan if she said no,” I said.

          “Yup,” Tipper said. “He set this tent up in our backyard. A couple days went along, and every morning I’d go out to see if Dad’s tent was still there, and it was. To be honest, it was probably because he couldn’t pay his damn rent.”

          “But he’d never admit that.”

          “No. So, every morning, I’d get up, and I’d see if Mama was home. We got left home a lot. Mama was always at work. But I went to see if she was home, and I opened her bedroom door, and Dad’s layin’ in there with her.”

          Picture Bobby hid beneath the sheets, pressed against Barb. He emerged from the darkness into the light to greet his kin.

          “And he smiles, gives the thumbs-up, and says, ‘I’m home, Cosmo!’”

          Forget about the Pinto. This was a punchline.

          “So, that’s how they got back together,” Tipper said. “He charmed his way back. Mama was mortified when she saw me. In her mind, she’s thinkin’, ‘Oh no, he knows what we were up to.’ But hell, I didn’t know. At that age, I didn’t picture my mom and dad bonin’ each other. I was just glad to see Daddy home.”

          And we stopped recording. I never asked him about monster truck rallies.

12. The Drive Home

          I gazed through the window on the passenger’s side at a field of cows—those lovable, delicious fools loafing in the spotty camouflage of an expanse of white. 

          I turned to Ian with a question.

          “Have you ever been cow tipping?”

          Ian shook his head and shrugged. “I can’t say that I have. You?”

          “Nope,” I said. “Remember Tommy Boy? I think I’m more of a David Spade than a Chris Farley when it comes to cow tipping.”

          “That makes sense,” Ian smiled.

          I thought about Tipper and Bobby and Barb finding homes, but finding them in different places, and I wondered if there might be a secret to be answered somewhere else—like a key to a new home.

          “Never been cow tipping,” I said. “... And we call this place home.”