Big Mike: The Naked Truth

Now that The Loved One and I will be lamming out of Luigiville within a month, I’m starting to get a little sentimental about the whole thing. Not to get mawkish — after all, we’ve only been out here a little more than two years — but there are one or two things I’ll miss.

Believe it or not, one of them is Captain Billy, my next door neighbor whose worldview was set in concrete during his tour of duty in Vietnam. I’ve written about Captain Billy here before. He’s really a work of art. Among the first things he ever said to me was that our elected officials would never pay any attention to us until the day some courageous patriot sneaks up behind one of them as they come out of their home in the morning and puts a bullet in their brain.

I don’t have any hair on the top of my head but my follicles snapped to attention.

Whereas a lot of Vietnam vets seem to look back on their time in-country as something a tad less enjoyable than a Sunday picnic, Captain Billy gets a dreamy look in his eye when he recounts his stint.

“One of those little gooks was running in the brush just outside our perimeter,” he recalled one night, early on, as we sat on my deck and drank beer. “I had great night vision. Man, when I was young, I could see a ladybug on that tree 20 yards away. This little bastard thought he was putting one over on us. He was just playing with us, trying to see how close he could come. Sometimes I think the fuckers were counting coup like the plains Indians. I know he saw me. He ducked down behind some foliage and I pulled out my sidearm and pointed right where I thought he’d pop up again. Sure enough, up he pops. Bang. Dead.

“Man, those little fuckers sure could fight. They had no fear.”

At this point, my hands were trembling and I was glancing longingly at the back door, just waiting for the first opportunity to dash inside and ask The Loved One to read me a bedtime story.

Earlier this year, I spoke with a Vietnam vet who told me that his first kill profoundly affected him emotionally and even physically. The next time I saw Captain Billy, I told him about what this guy said. Then I asked him what he felt after his first kill.

“Not a fuckin’ thing,” Captain Billy replied, matter-of-factly. I believe him.

Captain Billy took a liking to me. I have no idea why. Our politics are as different as two men’s can be. As the 2008 campaign started heating up, he told me that Lou Dobbs would make a great president now that Pat Buchanan wasn’t in the mood to run anymore.

We’ve only ever had one blow-up over politics. That was one Tuesday night at a local Mexican restaurant chain that serves food I’d swear comes from a Chef Boyardee can. Captain Billy was downing cheap beers that night. One beer loosens his already uninhibited tongue — five of them turns him into a mynah bird. He was on his sixth when he began exalting Sheriff Joe Arpaio of New Mexico’s Maricopa County. To Joe Arpaio, the Bill of Rights is nothing more than fag poetry. It took Ted the Butcher – all 6’6” and 280 pounds of him — to separate the two of us. Our faces were crimson and our breath hot.

Maybe that’s why Captain Billy liked me; he knew I wouldn’t take any of his shit. Still, I learned after that night to steer the conversation away from controversy, especially when Captain Billy was downing beers.

All that said, Captain Billy was a good neighbor. He always wanted to help me do things around the yard. After the tail end of Hurricane Ike blew through L-ville last September, he insisted on helping me cut up downed trees in my backyard, using only a bucksaw. That’s just one example of his neighborliness.

Here’s another. One hot afternoon last summer, I was in the basement taking my second or third shower of the day. It wasn’t particularly humid that day so I’d shut off the air conditioning and had thrown open the doors and windows.

So, there I was, naked as a jaybird and soaped up from head to toe. Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps upstairs. Boom, boom, boom — from one end of the house to the other. I knew it wasn’t The Loved One; I’d just spoken to her on the phone before jumping in the shower.

Oh shit! I strategized for a quick minute. My testicles were shrinking to the size of petite green peas. Then I figured I might turn the scare thing around on whoever’d invaded my house. With that, I bounded out of the shower, ran upstairs — bare, sudsy and obviously crazed — and when I got to the top step I shouted with all my might, “Who the fuck is there?”

“Hey, Mike, it’s me,” came Captain Billy’s calm, firm, officer’s voice from near the bedrooms.

“Huh? What the…?”

“No, don’t worry. The kid next door rang your doorbell and got worried when there was no answer. The doors were wide open and the radio was on in the kitchen. He thought something was wrong. I heard him telling his mother about it. I figured I’d make sure.”

“BILLY!” I shrieked. “Next goddamned time, try the phone!”

“Yeah, I know. But I’d feel like shit if it turned out you were layin’ there for three days and needed help. I don’t wanna see that happen to you.”

I apologized to him later for screaming at him. Sure he’s a nut and has the sensibilities of a Cossack, but he was a good neighbor.