Okanogan Part 3 The Final Chapter

Three of us woke up in the hotel room Saturday morning after a less than restful night. I had managed to find a layer of the bed that I felt would be clean enough to sleep on top of, inside my sleeping bag (I took the bedspread off and laid the bag on top of the extra blanket without touching the sheets or pillows). I would have risked the floor, but the night before I was too tired to search a spot large enough for me to lay down on for the dangers of protruding framing nails. My recollection of where Dave and Toby slept is a little foggy, but I do know that Dave was creeped out more than I was about the bed situation, and he may have spent the night leaned against the knobless door holding a table lamp at the ready for an intruder as he dozed off sporadically through the night, but for all I know he slept in the bed. I doubt it.

(By the way dear reader, I’m typing this story in Microsoft Word and it is telling me that the word “knobless” is incorrect. It’s the only word I could use simply to tell you that the door had no knob, thus it is knobless. I won’t use this word in any other story for the rest of my life, hopefully. But yes Microsoft Word, I know “knobless” is wrong. Just like I know that it is WRONG to have hotel doors without knobs! Seriously, the room had no knobs. Yes it will matter later.)

Toby, who simply couldn’t stand the feeling of sludge that had built up on his body, attempted a shower. Desperation will drive a man to do many things, and Toby just wanted to feel clean again. I don’t know what happened but I understood it went badly. Neither Dave nor I blamed him, though we did ask him to reconsider. It was short, probably unpleasant, and although his hair looked better and he maintained that it was a better idea than not, you could see in his eyes that he felt like he had traded one vile smelly state for a different coating of vile and stinky.

Because I was still fighting an infection, and was having trouble getting actual oxygen past the one inch layer of second hand tobacco still coating the inside of my lungs, I was miserable. Exhausted and sore from the evening’s workout on the drums, I attempted to clean myself with a spare t-shirt (I always have one), a travel soap I took from a hotel classier than the place I was currently inhabiting and the sink (I let the water run until I was sure it had spent the minimum amount of time inside the hotel’s actual pipes).

Dave, Toby and myself, all feeling a little better, were ready for a bit of breakfast and to begin the 12 hour wait to play the second half of our contracted duty. But where was Erik? WHERE IN THE HELL WAS ERIK! Have you seen Erik? Did he come back last night? I didn’t hear him come in. Is that his stuff over there? Where is he?

Erik was dead. We were sure of it. We hardly knew the guy. He had practiced with us a few times and he had replaced our old bass player for only the past few weeks. This was his first gig with us. And we killed him. Did we kill him? I didn’t kill anybody. I’m sick! Not sick, like sick-in-the-head, but not well enough physically to truly be a suspect? Would I be an accessory? I drove him up here in my van, I’m responsible. NO, Toby is responsible. He booked this gig, all roads lead to Toby. I was just following orders! Ohhhh poor Erik. What about his parents? Somebody is going to have to tell his parents. They sure won’t want to hear it from Toby. Dave’s too sensitive. I can do it. I can tell Erik’s parents that Toby let their little boy be kidnapped and eaten by the feral populace of Okanogan. I was a natural helper, I can phrase it so the blow will be softer for his parents. Did Erik have a dog? That dog will never get to play with Erik again. I wonder what the university will do. They say that if your roommate dies while you’re in school, you’ll get straight A’s for the quarter. He’s not our roommate. Surely the university would give us SOME consideration on this. Probably not Toby, he’s going to jail, but I surely could use some grade relief…

Dave interrupted my thought process by saying that Erik would probably show up sometime this morning and we shouldn’t worry about waiting to get breakfast with him because HE had no problem deserting us the night before. They were a little peeved that Erik didn’t suffer the night with us AS A BAND. I just wanted him to be alive and not part of some musician-skin patchwork made of wayward bass players that wandered too far from the Caribou Inn’s stage.

At breakfast (biscuits and gravy, fantastic), we tried to put together what the three of us saw the night before. (By the way, of the three drunks at the bar the night before, two of them were still there, in the same seats. If the third drunk was still there, I would have sworn they were sitting in a time loop.) Between the three of us, we were able to piece together a scenario even scarier than what I, alone, witnessed. And the bouncers said last night was the slow night. Wonderful.

We had hours to kill in Okanogan that day. It was sunny, but the temperature leveled out at about 15 degrees. There was a layer of fresh frost on top of about eight inches of fine powdery snow. We figured we would hop in the van and go see the “sights.” We were ready to go anywhere but the Caribou. The prospect of an entire day sitting in that room would have broken my soul.

It was about that time that our bass player appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He was wearing his same outfit from the day before and yet was looking well rested. I believe Dave was the first to address him.

Dave: Hey man? Where the heck did you get off to last night.

Erik: I think… there was a party.

Me: Are you okay? You THINK? You don’t remember? Were you drugged? Erik, did they give you Rohypnol?

Toby: How did you get here? Did someone drop you off?

Dave: Did Buddy Holly drop you off Erik? Were you at a party with The Big Bopper? James Dean? What other dead 50’s icons did you meet last night?

Erik: Are you guys going for a drive?

Me: Erik, what happened to you last night? Where did you go?

Erik: Did you guys already have breakfast or are we eating on the road?

Dave and Toby and I looked at each other. It was clear Erik either didn’t want to talk about what happened to him, or he did not know what happened to him. Of course we were all dying to find out, but all the ribbing and surprise questions we threw at him didn’t shake his resolve to either fess up, or unblock what lay deep in his subconscious. What was clear was that something profound took place at that after hours party and it was not going to be revealed by Erik through anything short of hypnosis.

Across the street from the Caribou Inn was the saddest pet store in the world. Saddest as in, every animal in there had to be as depressed as any animal could be. One look at the exterior (judging a book by its cover), and you would imagine that any animal inside, if given an opposable thumb, would use it first to grasp a tool to break out, and then to extend on the side of the road to hitchhike to a better life. It was incredibly out of place from a marketing point of view. The pet store had as much business being in that town as a Japanese oxygen bar. It was as if a small child designed the town: hotel, post office, general store, pet shop. I didn’t want to walk over there and see what kind of animals were in there. In my mind, I imagined walking down the single isle of the business, lined with cages filled with marmots, misshapen kittens, a three legged dog, maybe a couple crows jammed into a hat box. I pictured a trout in a quart canning jar. I worried that the place would have a 5 gallon bucket filled with writhing garter snakes. It was the kind of place that would sell you “Darwin Fish,” under the guise of guppies that evolved into frogs in a matter of weeks. It seemed like that kind of place.

Dave asked if I wanted to go in and check it out. I told him my misgivings and he took a different approach. He believed that these were the pet stores that had all the illegal stuff that nobody else would dare to sell. He just said, “Fine, you stay here, I’m going to buy a monkey for three dollars.”

After several minutes Dave came back to the Hotel. He said that I had been correct in my assumptions, and the smell was unholy.

We had heard that there was a Wal-Mart in the town of Omak, six miles away. I don’t think I had ever been to one before. So after the band made my sick body scrape the ice off all the windows while they sat inside the warm van, we were off on a Wal-Mart adventure.

As we drove through Okanogan, we got a chance to get a look at the town and where our audience was coming from. Doing a quick calculation of number of homes in the area surveyed and extrapolating out what the population inside this “50 Mile Radius” the bouncers talked about would look like, we were able to come up with some rough census numbers. Then we compared that to the data we collected about our audience at the bar. We were able to determine that over 95% of the townspeople were alcoholics (with a +/- 5% margin of error), and the last night’s performance, statistically, had to be an all-ages show.

The four of us came to a stop at a “T” intersection on the way to, Wal-Mart. (I’m ashamed of that last sentence.) On our side of the street, it was Okanogan in the mid 1990’s. On the opposite side of the street, it was Sicily, just after World War One. I say this, because there was a small elderly woman in an old, but pretty black dress standing ominously next to a sheep on a leash and three chickens in separate cages stacked on top of one another. The band must have all been staring impolitely at this peculiar sight, because she looked up at us, spoke something inaudible in our direction and turned 180 degrees away from us. We were pretty sure she cursed everyone in the van, and we just laughed because there was nothing she could do to us that was worse than having to spend another night in our hotel room.

We made it to Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart is just Wal-Mart. What goes on at Wal-Mart is a waste of our time, and I will not trouble you with the details. Erik bought a Nerf gun, and we got out.

Please remember that the four of us were from rural areas (I think Erik was rural, he certainly has a level head and is decidedly not cosmopolitan) and use to seeing humble surroundings. What WAS out of the ordinary, was the approach to life. The experience was like driving through a foreign country that was either on its way to or from third world status. And the whole town seemed trapped in time. We stopped at a small general store and found toys that were actually collectable from the 1960’s yet sold on the rack as new. There were so many moments like this, I wondered if I was dreaming or perhaps in a coma after taking a randomly thrown beer bottle to the head the night before. I wanted it to end. I cried a little.

We rested up back at the “suite” by napping and shooting an empty Pepsi bottle out of the air with Erik’s new Nerf gun. This was the high point of our trip. Really.

When the Saturday night crowd started rolling in, it looked like the chow line in a Circus mess hall. The kind of Circus that was being investigated for animal cruelty in all 8 southern states it toured in. Many folks from the night before staggered back for more Caribou Inn action. They were easy to spot, as most were wearing the same outfits and sour expressions as they had on 22 hours ago, when they were tackled out the door by security. Still others were new faces with a freshness that said, “Today is the day I begin hating life, everyone else shall feel my pain starting now.” These were the folks that were wearing what I call “fight bait.” Or clothes so stupid looking, or with insulting messages ironed on or spelled in hot pink puff paint, that they draw a comment offensive enough to start a physical conflict. Clothes that say, “Hey world, look at how ridiculously I’m dressed. If I catch you so much as looking at this spectacle I’m putting on, we’re going to fight… possibly to the death.” There were a lot of guys in half-shirts (January). And since my mouth is probably the smartest thing my body has to offer (which would ironically be used to say some very dumb things), I needed to get behind my drums and stay as far away from the people as possible.

I remember it being hard to get to the stage because of how many people were jammed into the room. Please do not read into this as me believing we were so outstanding the night before that word travelled all over the region for everyone to get to the Caribou Inn to see this amazing rock band. None of us had any illusions that the people were there to see us succeed. They were there to make us fail… or eat us. I know this is the second time I made the “joke” about being eaten, but remember, you weren’t there and if you asked any of the band members that night, they would tell you the same unreasonable fear flashed through their minds.

Just as security had explained to us the previous evening, Saturday night was a whole different ballgame. There were even more people, which we didn’t think was possible, let alone within fire code regulations. They WERE more alert and awake than the Friday audience and therefore ready to party much sooner. They told us this by pounding in unison on their tables before we began. Although you’ve seen this happen on film many times, I can tell you that it is quite unnerving. If I was a drinking man, I would have required a shot of liquid courage before going on, however, I counted my blessings of being as sober as always for the sheer fact as I wanted all my senses sharp and my wits about me.

Midway through the second set, the members of the band noticed a couple of women staring at Toby in an unhealthy type of way… unhealthy for Toby. They weren’t together but they were standing close to Toby and staring up at him longingly. He turned to all of us and was visibly concerned as one of the women, a brunette who had to have 12 years on Toby and wasn’t his “type” (Toby’s type being a woman with all her front teeth and an awareness that they are single and not at the Caribou Inn with another man). That’s right, as this woman shouted her confession of love to Toby over the band’s sound system and music, her boyfriend/husband/sugar daddy was ready to break Toby’s pretty face for making her love some attractive boy guitar picker.

It all came to a head when Toby bent down to show the brunette his engagement ring that indicated he was taken and she would have to either stay with the man that drove her to the bar, or try to convince one of the other band members to “vote yes on her bond initiative”, if you get my meaning. This did not go over well with the brunette. She went from wannabe groupie to fully winged harpy in a flash of venom and spite. She screamed at Toby, nothing in particular, just a horror movie scream. And when Toby returned to the mic to sing the song we were in the middle of, the woman attempted to make the two foot high jump up onto the stage. She upset Toby’s mic stand and sent the hard metal microphone capsule into Toby’s lips and teeth, which is unpleasant at best, causing Toby to quickly step back and turn his back for a moment to check for tooth chips and blood on his lips. Meanwhile at the front of the stage, the woman, took control of Toby’s lead vocal microphone and began to spread her scorn filled message to the crown of the Caribou Inn over the band’s sound system.

Paraphrasing, the message was that Toby, the man she was pointing at, enjoys mating with sheep.

She repeated this message, again and again, with a desperate look on her face. The woman’s conviction, that Toby was a notorious molester of lanolin baring livestock was absolute. The audience needed to know this about Toby so something could be done about it. The purpose, of course, was to paint Toby as an undesirable person, and sheep coupling was the straightest line this woman could draw to that goal; because if she couldn’t have him, then nobody could.

By the time Toby had turned around and attempted to take the microphone away from the harpy, Mullet and No Mullet were cutting a swath through the crowd, making their way to the bandstand. Mullet made it to the stage first and wrapped his arms around the woman’s body from behind, the woman’s back was facing the audience as she screamed her disgustingly comical message directly at Toby. She was quickly and easily removed from the stage, along with the microphone, microphone stand and microphone cable. The microphone cable ran down to the front of the stage where it was duct taped to the floor, along with the other microphone, instrument and speaker cables. As Mullet got farther away with the offending woman, most of our cables were being pulled up and off the stage. All of our microphone stands were jerked away from us by the cables they were attached to. At one point, Mullet’s progress was impeded and he must have believed she was struggling against him and he gave a mighty heave, pulling just enough of our cables out of sockets to prevent the show from continuing. No Mullet, who was holding the woman’s insignificant other at bay, saw what had happened just beyond the nick of time and signaled to Mullet to STOP! Mullet dropped the woman and returned the microphone and stand to the stage. He was genuinely sorry when he gave the microphone set back to Toby. Toby was genuinely thankful to Mullet for coming to his rescue. We took a short break to get the sound back in order, played a few songs and took the long break we were due.

Toby and Erik stayed behind to double check the sound system. Dave and I retreated to the only other place where there were no people, our “suite”. We grabbed a couple bottles of water and flipped on the cartoon network in the room to try and make a mental escape for ten minutes or so. We had barely sat down, when someone pushed our knob-free door open and stood blocking the door.

Dave and I looked at each other with disappointed exasperation. Could we not take a few minutes away from the mustard gas filled, violent freak-fest environment to breathe air that was only 78% polluted? Now this stranger literally darkened our doorway with a drink and lit cigarette in hand, swaying slightly as his eyes focused on Dave and me out of synchronization. He wore a bolo tie around the neck hole of his un-pressed button up (for those of you unfamiliar with the bolo style tie, it is a decorative neck fastening that instead of incorporating a lovely traditional arrow of silk fabric tied neatly around and under the collar of a dress shirt, utilizes what amounts to a shoestring and a shiny rock to attempt the same purpose. You can get a VERY nice one for about $15. This man’s was mid-grade). Now, using the bolo tie as your reference point, dress the man as you would probably imagine. Add a few cigarette burns and a nefarious mustache.

Neither of us made any sudden movements, as is advised when faced with a dangerous wild animal. Dave and I sat still as we exchanged silent eye contact with the stranger (danger) and Dave spoke first.

(This conversation was condensed for the purpose of time and sanity.)

Dave: Caaaaaaan we help you?

Man: I just, wantyoubothtoknow, (blinks) nothing has been signed yet.

Dave and I looked at each other quickly and puzzled. I tried to remember what was within grabbing distance from me to defend us in case Mr. Rummy McCrazipants decided to make a sudden move. The lamp was too far away, the Nerf gun would be ineffective, the sleeping bag was too soft and I wasn’t going to touch the chicken skeleton under the bed. But after a couple gentle sways of his drunken form, I figured even with just Dave and I in the room, the SIX of us HE was seeing probably made him feel outnumbered. The silence lingered for a moment before I began probing for more.

Steve: Well, that is a relief, wouldn’t you say, Dave?

Dave: Yes, my lawyer isn’t available at this time.

Steve: So… who are you sir? (I said as unthreateningly as possible.)

Man: I have a door. You can choose to walk through it together…or separately, but now is the time.

Dave: Does this door that you speak of have a lock, because I can’t think of a time when I would want anything more than a door that locks.

Man: I have a dooruv opportunity for you both to walk through.

Steve: OH! One of those kind of doors!

Man: Yesss, one of those kind. Nothing has been signed yet.

Dave: Okay, and what would we be signing?

Man: I have a door to stardom. You n’your band are goin’ to be verrrrryrich. But… aReyou ready to walk THROUGH that door?

If only we had one ounce of drinkable alcohol, we could have offered it to the “gentleman,” he probably would have passed out or died. However, he was violating laws of thermal dynamics, just being as drunk as he was holding a lit cigarette and not bursting into flames. The only logical explanation could be that this man was in fact, the Devil.

Dave: Are you with a record label? (Dave asked, knowing full well that this man was NOT Atlantic’s hottest A&R representative).

Man: You know… … … YoU know, you boys have alodda talent. I’ve been watchin’ your show, and you need to …tighten it upabit, but, you know, yer a good band. I might bein a position to make youguys alllllllodda money. I have…

Dave: You have a door?

Man: (Winks and points at Dave with a finger pistol and made a clicking noise with his tongue) You got it. Now are you going to walk through it together…or by yourselves.

Steve: So are record companies interested in cover bands now? I thought they were only interested in original artists.

Man: I do music. I used to do music. Business with music. I had housesncars and mansions and boats. But I don’t want to get into that right now. Lesson One: Always tape your stuff down. Did you see that lady trip off the stageonyer cords and wires?

Dave: She didn’t trip, she pulled the cables up when she was dragged off the stage.

Man: My point is that none of that would have happened if yourgear wuztaped to the ground, and not with scotch tape.

Steve: We used heavy duct tape to secure the cables on the stage. We always secure our gear.

Man: That’s right. You gotta start doin’ that or you’re going to have accidents like tonight happen all the time. You got alloda talent… don’t wanna see it wasted when an accident ruins yer life do ya?

Dave: …

Steve: …

Man: I had better get back downstairs, the band is starting to play again. Have youguys heard the band? They’re pretty good… I’m going to make them famous. I’ve got a door fer them, to open and walk through… nothing is signed yet though.

The man then staggered back down stairs, leaving half of the band he was currently listening to in a horrendous hotel room behind him.

Dave: We could leave, right now and go home. Toby and Erik could ride back with Mardi and Walter.

Steve: We’ll just say I got sicker and you had to drive me to the hospital in Ellensburg. I’m totally with you.

Dave: We would probably lose our instruments…

Steve: I’m actually fine with that. After yesterday and tonight, I don’t think I’ll need my drums anymore.

Dave: Get your stuff.

After realizing I had taken all of my valuables down to the stage for safe keeping from the hotel room doors didn’t have knobs or locks… (just ramming that point home), there was no way we could have made our escape without going down to the stage to get my keys and wallet, hidden safely under a sweaty towel in my gear bag. Even if we did have the guts to just up and leave Okanogan two hours before our obligation was completed, we couldn’t do it. Ironically, the crappiness of Okanogan actually prevented us from leaving Okanogan.

Realizing, there was NO WAY we were getting out of here without playing the rest of the show, Dave and I headed back to the stage to see just what would happen next. We were/were not disappointed.

There’s a saying many bands use when playing at a beer joint: The more you drink, the better we sound. Okanogan once again, was there to prove us wrong. With as much as they were drinking, we should have sounded like The Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Beatles through a Bose sound system, mixed by Rick Rubin. But instead, the better we sounded, the drunker they got, and the drunker they got, the angrier they became. The action was therefore taken up a notch.

Think of all the bar room brawl clichés you’ve ever seen. We saw many of them that night. We the standard fighting between two guys where the guys have their hands around each other’s necks. We saw the old broken bottle as a weapon thing. We saw the woman dragged off a man, slapping and kicking him. Saw a table turned over at the beginning of a fight. A chair was picked up and thrown at someone. All of these were separate instances. It was a cornucopia of bad decisions played out on the dance floor. However, all of these skirmishes were just undercard fights for the Main Event.

After the third forced encore (we tried to end the show a little early), it was finally time to end the show. As rough of a crowd as they were, toward the end they were really cheering us on and having a good time. But too little, too late Okanogan! Which, in hindsight, is exactly what should have been our sign-off on the sound system, instead of, “Can Erik have his hat back?”

I was worn out. I just wanted to pack my drums up and go. And why not? The van was parked right out in front of the place; best parking spot at the Caribou Inn. But I felt like I only had enough energy to make it out of the ballroom that was full of smoke and hatred, to the lobby, where some cleaner air would be circulating. I sat down in the lone easy chair in the far back corner of the lobby and watched the crowd filter out as I took puff after puff on my asthma inhaler. I must have looked as most of them did, sweaty, tired and completely devoid of hope.

No Mullet dragged a man, unable to stand to the middle of the Lobby floor and made him, “Shut your mouth and stand still!” The man mumbled a little but straightened right up when the tiny owner of the place came out and told the intoxicated man in no uncertain terms that he was never to come back again to the Caribou Inn.

The man hit his knees immediately (and still was only at eye level to the top of her blonde afro), and began to beg and plead to be able to come back. He promised he would stay away for a week and never cause any trouble again. Tears streamed down the man’s face as the owner again told him “no”. He wailed and had to be drug out of the building by both No Mullet and Mullet. They had barely returned when the lobby started to churn with trouble.

In professional wrestling, there is a style of contest known as a “Lumberjack Match.” It’s when 10 or more wrestlers start in the ring for an every-man-for-himself battle royal. The object of a lumberjack match is to throw your opponents out of the ring and to not be thrown out yourself. Very exciting, very violent, and very much what was about to happen at the Caribou Inn.

A group of six to eight small men came out of the bar brawling with each other. I say there were six to eight because they were extremely difficult to count. They were all about five feet tall, 135 pounds and looked nearly identical in every way and they moved around too much for me to get a solid number.

But when I say brawling, it was only because that was what they appeared to be doing. No damage was really being done because they were all moving like the fight was taking place in Jell-O…nicotine colored and flavored Jell-O. They were moving so slowly, you would have thought they were blocking a fight scene at one-quarter speed to rehears how the real fight was going to go down next week. Punches landed on faces with the force of a refrigerator door closing under its own speed, they wrestled to the ground like they were trying to fit too many items in a suitcase. The fight was not dangerous, yet when the blows landed, they people being hit acted as if they were thrown at full speed.

They would break apart and stand in a large circle and then pick an opponent across from them, yell something in mumble-drunken speak, and then charge slowly into the circle and accidently fight someone else. It resembled at times, one of the better square dances I’ve been too.

This big “fight” was so slow and poorly executed, that I, even in my exhausted asthmatic state, could have stood in the center and dropped every single one of them looking like Bruce Lee doing it, if you filmed it at regular speed and them watched it on fast forward.

Mullet and No Mullet each picked up several of the combatants after they had all ended up in a dog-pile on the floor and carried them out the door in almost one trip. I watched from the chair as Mullet took one slap to the face too many from one of the little men as he stepped off the curb in front of the Caribou Inn. Mullet pulled the man off of his shoulder and spun him around by the collar, slamming him into the side of my parent’s van.

I bolted out of my chair and flew across the lobby past the staggering throng of booze zombies. As Mullet doubled down on the little man six inches off the ground against the van my parents trusted me to bring back in one piece, I threw the Caribou’s lobby door open with the sign taped to it asking me to “Please use the other door ß.” I had lost my cool and roared with the last remaining pieces of by horse voice, “GET HIM OFF MY VAN!”

Mullet looked at me puzzled. He was clearly about to push the little aggressive jerk through the panel window of the family truckster, but caught the rage on my face, looked at the van and pulled the ejected patron off of the Van. Mullet gave me a look of, “oops, I’m sorry about that dude, won’t happen again,” and with that, threw the man across the street and into a snow bank. The offending bar customer actually flew from the parking stalls to the other curb. Mullet walked up to me and clamped one of his big mitts on my shoulder and told me he was sorry about roughing up my van. When a man like Mullet apologizes to you, you accept that apology… and maybe apologize to him for something in return.

The owner asked Dave, what I was yelling about as they watched out the window. Dave explained to her that the bouncer had a guy up against my parent’s van and that I wanted to ensure that van made it back intact. She looked at Dave as if it was all my fault, “Why the hell did he park the van out front? That’s the worst parking space in town.” To which the correct response would have been, ”Yeah, and it’s in front of YOUR bar lady.” But seeing as how we hadn’t been paid yet, Dave just wisely shrugged his answer back to her.

At that point I just went up to the wretched hotel suite to fall asleep as quickly as possible. The reason wasn’t so much that I was exhausted (which I was), but to time-travel to Sunday morning when we could load up and race out of town as quickly as possible, which we did.

The ride home was uneventful. We had played the gig, been paid, and miraculously not incurred any extra holes in our bodies, gunshot, knife or otherwise. Only the mystery of Erik’s Friday night remained, but questions about that night died out as we broke several speeding laws getting away from where we had been. Only time would tell if any of us would fall victim to dysentery as would NOT have been a surprise. We all rode home quietly, as I took inventory of what clothes of mine had actually touched surfaces in the hotel room that still haunts my dreams, and therefore must be burned.

Okanogan, the place that showed me the baseline of what I will accept in rented overnight accommodations. Okanogan is the town where time stands still, and the fights are even slower. The place we would never return to even if offered quadruple our asking price. If you have taken anything away from these three entries, let it be this: Never go to Okanogan.

If I have to pass through Okanogan to get to Heaven, I’ll take my chances in Hell…

…and that’s the Damm truth.