Smokin' Chicken
Or, Revenge is a Dish Best Served in a Bowl
Before we get to the story, I want to address something that’s probably glaringly obvious. The setting for most of these stories inspired by my personal adventures is my real-life hometown. But did you know Stinton, Kansas (aka Stinkton) is also the setting for my upcoming crime fiction novel? Shivering in Hell is a different kind of story, but if you like the background of these stories, you’ll recognize a lot of these familiar spots, like Madora’s Grove, in the novel. All you have to do is buy it on September 1, 2026, or pre-order now! Okay, enough promotion, let’s get to today’s tale.
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Head is the worst person I know. A straight-up phony and a hack. He’s in a band with one of my best friends, Eddie, but Head views it as his band, and I can’t dispute it. Eddie is an extremely talented drummer, and Head is only a serviceable singer and rhythm guitar player, but he calls the shots. Every song he writes sounds like a rip-off of whatever band he’s listening to that week, and the lyrics are tripe. But there aren’t a lot of alternative musicians to choose from in rural Kansas, so Eddie puts up with it.
We all put up with it for some reason. And I have to give it to the guy, he’s got a sense of humor, and he isn’t lacking for charisma, in an Emperor Palpatine sort of way. He makes headway with the club owners in Lawrence and KC, and he snags a girlfriend that is way out of his league. But he’s manipulative, and every joke he makes has a mean-spirited edge to it.
In eighth and ninth grade, he took turns convincing our entire friend group to single out whichever one of us had drawn his ire, wrecking their life with a mixture of shunning and straight-up bullying. Total Mean Girls shit. Eddie was actually the first one to get pushed out of the circle with a target on his back, and I’m ashamed to say I joined in on the harassment. We almost came to blows once. The only reason I don’t feel more guilt about it is because he had no problem doing the same thing when it was my turn to be the pariah.
Maybe this sounds like typical teenage drama, but it still hurts like hell when your friends turn on you like that. Nobody knows your weaknesses and vulnerabilities better than your closet friends, and it is devastating when they use them against you. And we all had our run as prey, some longer than others, except, ironically, for Head. Somehow, he avoided it. Most likely because the rest of us weren’t cruel enough to stir things up without him egging us on. The worst part was I don’t think there was even any genuine malice in it for him. I think he was just bored, and that’s how he amused himself. For reasons I still can’t fully explain, roughly seven years will pass before I finally tell him to fuck off.
In the meantime, I distance myself from him as high school goes on. He’s not in my immediate friend group, which consists of Smalls, Hoagie, Arnold, and eventually Koopa. Technically, Eddie is in there too, but between his band, his girlfriend, and his aversion to marijuana, he’s more like an honorary member with his picture on the clubhouse wall than an active participant.
He’s still around, but he’s on the periphery, and so is Head, just waiting to pop up and ruin our good time when we least expect it. We’d be hanging out on Hoagie’s porch or watching a movie or grabbing a candy bar from the gas station, and without warning, his seemingly disembodied head would be there, hovering over someone’s shoulder like a cancerous growth, waiting for an opening to intrude and push his way into our business. That’s how he got his nickname, by the way.
We go out to the cemetery most days after school. Madora’s Grove is a tiny cemetery that dates back to pioneer times. It is no longer in use, and extremely isolated. Located only five minutes or so outside of town, it is accessible only by dirt roads that see the bare minimum of maintenance. A regular car is not making it there in the winter, or during a bad storm, which means the weather is almost always nice when we visit.
The cemetery is on top of a hill, providing a three-sixty view of the surrounding countryside, which consists of fields and cow pastures. The old marble tombstones, some modest and others quite extravagant, are an attraction in their own right. Many of them remind me of oversized, stationary chess pieces. In other words, it’s the perfect spot for a group of teenagers to sneak off to and get stoned.
Four of us are squeezed into the cab of Smalls’ pickup truck. We call him Smalls because he’s actually rather large, something which helped him to dominate in football and basketball at school until he decided he liked smoking pot more and dropped out. He also used to watch The Sandlot all the time when it first came out on VHS. Now he waits for us to get out of school every day at 3:10, and picks us up in his truck so we can smoke a joint after the bell.
Smalls usually has a big head start on us, regularly wake-and-baking when he gets up around noon, and consistently toking to keep his buzz level throughout the afternoon. Unfortunately, between him and Arnold, who is also on the heavy side, the truck is cramped. Luckily, Hoagie and I are rail-thin, but even then, it’s more of an intimate experience than I’m comfortable with every time Smalls reaches for the gear shift.
Hoagie is my oldest friend. He’s actually more than a friend, he’s family. Our moms are sisters, and best friends. He and Koopa are a year behind us in school, but Hoagie and I have been playing together since we were in diapers. He’s more like my brother than my cousin, which has its pros and cons. He has a real brother, three years older than him, but they’ve never been close, and Wayne’s been an even bigger asshole than normal ever since he discovered meth.
Wayne was the first to call him Hoagie though, on the day his parents brought him home from the hospital. No one is really sure why. Hoagie isn’t close to his real name at all, so it wasn’t one of those cute mispronunciations little kids sometimes make, and Wayne has never been inclined to share why he called his brother that. Maybe he thought the swaddled baby looked like a sub sandwich, but I doubt he even remembers. And it doesn’t matter. The name stuck, and everyone except his mom (and my mom) calls him Hoagie. Even his dad and the teachers at school.
The two of us stay in the truck when Smalls parks outside the front gate, but Smalls and Arnold get out to play some hacky-sack and give us some breathing room. Normally, I’d get out and sit with my back against one of the tombstones, but the wind is blowing. It’s not enough to disrupt their game, but I need to break up a bowl.
The pot belongs to Hoagie. I smoke far less than the rest of my friends, and hardly ever shell out cash for weed. Because I’m always willing to chip in for gas or food, no one has a problem with this arrangement. But it’s become an unspoken thing that I break up the pot. Despite being one of the stoner kids, which is how the other kids at school view us, I still can’t roll a joint to save my life. That is Smalls’s job, but today Hoagie has his metal pipe, so we sit in the truck with Soundgarden playing low on the radio while I work.
I’m not sure I love being considered a stoner kid, and I blame Head for the label. It’s no secret my friends and I get high, but we don’t advertise it. Well, maybe Smalls does, but he’s a special case. The rest of us prefer to lay low. Head runs his mouth all the time, however.
I don’t even take his shit-talking personal, because he does it to every clique. It doesn’t matter who he’s with. He’s got the skills of a social chameleon, and if you’re not around, chances are he’s talking about you. I suppose he does it to prop himself up at the expense of others and keep the rest of us in our place. Well, that and the fact he’s a sociopath. But it probably works more than any of us care to admit, because, let’s face it, people suck.
Head doesn’t smoke pot, despite the fact that his one goal in life is to become a rock star. He drinks plenty, so he’s not worried about being intoxicated, and his THC prohibition is not a result of him being more driven and focused than the rest of us. I think he’s afraid.
He wants to get high, and more than that, he desperately wants to be seen as cool and rebellious. But those ridiculous stories they told us in health class about kids getting addicted after just one puff and stepping off a five-story roof because they think they can fly really got to him. Part of him knows better, and he wants to join in, but he’s too scared. Deep down, he’s not sure he can handle the buzz, and being exposed as a lightweight is the ultimate humiliation for a guy like him. He’s almost made the leap on a couple occasions, but he always backs out at the last minute.
Of course, I’m not thinking about Head while I’m picking out seeds and stems. Why would I be? I’m absorbed in the task, until I accidentally spill some off the edge of the truck’s owner’s manual, which is what I’m using for a flat surface. “Fuck,” I say, drawing Hoagie’s attention as I try to catch what I dropped. I fail, and several little nuggets fall to the truck floor.
“Goddammit,” I say, setting the manual on the dash. Hoagie and I get out so we can search under the seat.
I find most of it easily enough, but Hoagie discovers a blackened chunk under the driver’s seat. “What is this?” he asks. He holds it up so I can see. The chunk is small, and it could be weed, but it definitely didn’t come from the pile I was working on. This one is clearly burnt, so it’s already been partially smoked. It’s mostly black, but there are specks of color on it, and the texture is more or less correct. Not enough to prove anything conclusively, but it’s possible it fell out of one of the many bowls we’ve smoked in the truck, and it might be worth salvaging.
Hoagie calls Smalls over and shows it to him. “Is that weed?” he asks.
Smalls takes it from him and sniffs it. He examines it for a moment and bursts out laughing. “This is chicken,” he says. “It’s a burnt piece I picked off when I was eating in the truck the other day. I just chucked it on the floor.”
We have a good laugh at the mix-up, and Smalls is about to toss the scrap over his shoulder, but I grab his hand and stop him. “Hang on,” I say. “Lemme have that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I got an idea,” I say. None of us are vindictive people. We don’t have Head’s mean streak, and it isn’t in our nature to attack people. But the chicken gives me an idea on how to give Head a good ribbing, and exact a small measure of revenge for everything he’s ever done to us. So I pull the cellophane off Arnold’s pack of cigarettes and drop the chicken inside. My friends look at me like I’m a lunatic, but they’re on board when I tell them what I have in mind.
Our opportunity comes the following weekend. One of the seniors is throwing a keg party in his family’s corn field. Technically, the party is in a pasture that runs up against the corn field, but it’s hidden and remote, not unlike Madora’s Grove, although the sightlines aren’t as good. If the cops do show up here, everyone is fucked. This is one of the reasons I don’t regularly attend large parties.
I don’t particularly care for crowds, and being one of the black sheep in our predominantly redneck school doesn’t help put me at ease. I prefer to hang out with my actual friends, smoke a joint, and watch a movie, but if you want to at least have a chance of doing something fun with a girl, it helps to occasionally go where they congregate. Granted, this is usually a waste of time, as I’m a gawky, easily flustered dork with questionable social skills, but tonight I have something else in mind.
We get there early. I’m not much of a drinker, but my friends hit the keg. Smalls puts down the tailgate of his truck. Koopa and I do that thing where we have an entire conversation speaking in nothing but quotes from our favorite movies. This comes naturally to us, but it annoys the hell out of everyone else. Hoagie, Smalls, and Arnold play hacky-sack, because we wouldn’t want to veer too far away from stereotypes.
The looser everyone gets, the more people wander over to socialize. Eddie and his girlfriend hang out for half an hour, as do some other friends on the outer edge of our circle. Even some of the hicks are uncharacteristically friendly. This is one of those special occasions when they want to smoke pot, so they’re more than willing to put up with us if we’ll share. There’s no reason not to. We pass around several joints as it gets dark, perfectly setting the scene for what we intend to do next.
Head shows up fashionably late with his girlfriend and Danny, the lead guitarist in his band. Head’s daddy bought him a sports car and funded his efforts to outfit it with a ridiculously over-the-top stereo system. He never drives anywhere without listening to something with a pounding bassline, and everyone can hear him coming from a mile away.
He gravitates toward us, more for Eddie than anyone else, and a few of the hicks and jocks are still shooting the shit. We smoked a joint with them right before Head arrived, and everyone is feeling good. I mention this and the football players back me up. They rave about the quality of our weed. Naturally, I offer to get Head high.
Danny is a heavy drinker who never smokes, and Head’s girlfriend is too uptight, so I’m not worried about anyone else joining in. Head is hesitant for all the usual reasons, but the football players complicate matters for him. These are the most popular kids in school, and that’s who he really wants to impress. It doesn’t take much from me to get them to lean on him, and he crumbles in no time. Peer pressure is undefeated.
“Smalls has the bag,” I say, which is a lie, but it’s a convenient one. Smalls is currently on the other side of the field, hitting on a girl who will inevitably reject him, but it’s a perfect setup. “I do have a tiny bit left though. Not enough for anybody else, but we all just smoked, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
The only potential stumbling block is I don’t have a bowl. Stoners are resourceful though, so I grab an empty beer can and the pocket knife Smalls keeps in his glove box. I bend the can, punch a few holes in the crease, and dig out a carb in the aluminum. Personally, I hate smoking off a can, but it does cross my mind that if the chicken tastes off, the disgusting flavor of the can should help cover it up. Of course, Head has never smoked before, so he has no idea what it’s supposed to taste like. I just hope it doesn’t smell like KFC.
I take out the cellophane and drop the chicken on the can. Koopa explains to him how the makeshift bong works, and Head takes the can. I do the honors with the lighter. The chicken doesn’t burn as easily as weed, which is something I didn’t consider ahead of time, but the meat is dried out, so it can’t hold out forever. In the meantime, I blame any difficulties on user error, which only makes Head more determined.
Koopa and the football players encourage him. He sucks through the mouth of the can and I keep the flame on the chicken. Eventually, it catches enough to smoke. Head breathes it in and turns away to cough so hard it doubles him over. “That’s how you know it’s working,” Koopa says, laughing and slapping him on the back. We repeat this ritual three more times before he declares he’s had enough and I confirm the chicken is cashed.
The change in Head is instantaneous. His eyes go slack and he giggles like a moron. He stumbles around like a kid who just drank his first non-alcoholic beer and doesn’t know any better. Head calls people over so he can put his arm around them and tell them how much he loves them. He makes Danny put on a Pink Floyd CD and blares it from his car stereo. He stares at his hand, moving his fingers and insisting everyone study how weird his digits are. But not as weird as words, he continues. “Think about it. What if we called tables monsters, and monsters were called tables? How crazy would that be? Hey, have a seat at the kitchen monster. There’s a table under my bed!”
We all have a good laugh, and he has no idea we’re laughing at him. The hicks aren’t in on the joke until Head calls it a night. He gives the keys to his girlfriend because he shouldn’t be behind the wheel. “I think I’m seeing things,” he says. “The colors are so vibrant.” Head crawls into the passenger seat and acts like he’s about to pass out. We wait for the car to pull out of the field in a cloud of dust before we tell the hicks what we did.
Everyone has a good laugh at the prank. The hicks congratulate us, and we pass around a couple more joints to celebrate our success. One of the hicks puts his arm around me and says, “You motherfuckers are crazy.” It’s not exactly the kind of human contact I’m looking to make at the party, but I’m too pleased with myself to be bothered.
None of us ever tell Head what we did. I have no idea if any of the hicks eventually clue him in. If they do, Head never has the nerve to bring it up, which only makes it that much better. But either way, Head has been knocked down a peg. I have accomplished my goal for the night.
I’m still feeling like the smartest person in the world when I walk into my house later that night, just a few minutes after my midnight curfew. My mom is already in bed, but my dad is in the living room. I can hear the TV when I slip in the back door. I am extremely stoned, and all I want to do is nuke a hot pocket and grab a bag of chips on my way to my room upstairs. TV Land has started showing Hogan’s Heroes, and I’ve gotten in the habit of winding down my weekend nights with the munchies and Colonel Klink.
I need to go to the bathroom first though, so I try to sneak through the dining room undetected. Something on the dining room table catches my eye, however, and I stop in my tracks. Next to the mail and other assorted junk on the table is a pot plant. There’s no mistaking what it is, the distinctive buds are a dead giveaway. The plant is nearly a yard long, and it’s been ripped out of the ground, roots and all.
“What the fuck?” I say under my breath. I stop to take a closer look, but I’m afraid to touch it. Its presence in my house is inexplicable. My parents do don’t drugs, and I can’t think of a single reason why either of them would bring it inside. I’ve never seen this plant before in my life, but I know this can’t be good for me.
My dad clears his throat, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I turn and see him standing in the doorway. Enough of him is covered in shadow to make him look especially intimidating. “You all right?” he says. “You seem paranoid.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just going to bed.” If I can get out of there without talking about it, maybe it will be gone in the morning. Out of sight, out of mind. But I know it won’t be that easy. My high has completely evaporated.
“Good,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice, and he gives no indication he’s mad. That’s the most unsettling thing of all. Very uncharacteristic of my father. “But you and your dumbass friends might want to stop throwing your seeds out your bedroom window before the sheriff decides to pay us a visit.”
Fucking Smalls, I think. It had to be him. He always sits over by my window when he breaks up pot in my room, so he can take a few puffs and blow the smoke outside. I assumed he was smart enough to dispose of his seeds and stems properly, but it’s always a bad idea to give him too much credit. My heart sinks and I scramble to come up with a believable defense, but my dad is already walking past me. He pats me on the shoulder as he does so, and I can’t help but flinch.
“By the way, you’re grounded for a month.”
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Pulp. I hope you’re enjoying these stories, many of which make me look like an idiot, and I hope you’re excited as excited as me for the upcoming release of Shivering in Hell, though that’s unlikely. As you can tell, I’m pretty damn excited, even if publishing a book requires me to do things I’d rather not do. Personally, I hate promoting my own work, so if you feel like sharing to help spread the word on either the book or this newsletter, I am grateful for anything you do that helps me feel less like a shill. That said, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my work, so if you made it this far, that is more than enough for me. Your support means the world to me.