Ernie and the Oil
By Chad Eschman
Ernie. Ernie Finklebat. Er. Nie. Fink. Le. Bat. Even his name makes me want to induce a vomit. He was JoJo’s friend, and from the first moment I met this tool I hated him. His brown leather jacket. His indie-emo-sweep hair. His prickly, dirty, pathetic attempt at a beard. But JoJo liked him. “He’s got good points, you know, he has moments.” Moments? I don’t drive a car that works at “moments.” I don’t drink beer that gets me drunk at “moments.” I don’t use soap that cleans me at “moments.” And I don’t like pricks like Ernie Finklebat. Besides. I never saw any moments.
Now, guests are always welcome in my home. I have an open door on both my porch and my fridge, I’m accommodating, I like company. But you don’t park in my driveway. You don’t. Ever. Not JoJo, not Ellie, not Tomson, not Gus, not Patsky, and certainly not Ernie.
So, this is how it was when Labor Day came and everyone came over to grill and drink and swim and get baked. And when Ernie walked in. He was late, and we were all a few beers in already.
“Ernieeeee!” called JoJo. “You made it!”
“Yeah, sorry I’m late.”
“Bet you had to park on the next block, man!”
“Nah, the drive was wide open. Front spot!”
I set down my bottle and started walking over. JoJo put a hand up to stop me.
“It’s cool, I got it.” JoJo walked Ernie out. “Shit, man, you can’t park there. Don’t you know the rule?”
I waited till I heard the car start, then I walked outside. Ernie was coasting down the street, searching out a spot, but JoJo stood motionless in the drive, staring at the cement in front of his feet. I slowly walked over.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Go back inside, man. Relax.”
I shoved him aside. Looked down. There. On my drive. A filthy, greasy, amoeba-shaped stain of Ernie Finklebat’s motor oil. I turned my hot eyes up to the sky.
“He’s dead.”
I had to discontinue contact with JoJo for the next couple weeks, cuz I knew it was gonna get bad. Each night after I got off work, made some dinner, and updated my blog, I got into my old Charger and circled Ernie’s block, taking careful notes of all the details: what time the lights went out in each room, when the sprinklers kicked on, at which point the neighbor’s tabby came and made a nervous number two behind his shrubbery. Everything. Was this necessary? Probably not. Was this healthy? Definitely no. Was it fun and did it make his old Greek neighbors nervous? Abso-freakin’-loutely (not that I have anything against them, but it was cool seeing them peer out between the curtains and disappear in a Greekish flash when I got close). After about two weeks I decided the reconnaissance was sufficient, and I was ready to strike.
Back in my garage, I had been collecting dozens of quarts of used motor oil. It was easy: I just went around on Dispose-a-Doze Dayz at about 4 A.M. and pulled the containers from people’s curbs before the trucks came around to collect them. Now they were piled up, quart after quart of blackened sludge, the grimiest of refuse, sloshy and supple and awaiting my command. I poured as many as I could into my pesticide spray can, which I had retro-fitted with a wide-spray full-mouth nozzle, and pumped it until fully primed. Then I hefted it into the trunk of my Charger and tossed in twenty or so extra quarts, just in case.
That night, as I approached Ernie Finklebat’s house just after midnight, I clonked off my headlights, then fully shut off the engine and glided, in neutral, up to his driveway. The lights were all dark, the sprinklers had not yet sprinkled, and the Greekish family was fast asleep. All this I knew from my earlier stake-outs. I climbed out and popped the trunk. Time to settle things.
Oh, the glory. The bliss. The slippery satisfaction. I fanned the nozzle back and forth, depressing the lever, letting the cocktail of natural and synthetic fluids of various viscosities rain and fall all over Ernie’s driveway. I wrote my name across the cement, then covered it in layer after layer. At one point I paused to take a piss across the blackened surface, then applied more and still more oil, turning his pristine driveway into a shimmering carbonized lake of beautiful justice.
Then the lights came on. From the living room I saw the glow appear, and presently the front door opened. Out he ran, adorned in clean cotton pajamas, clearly concerned. There was only one thing to do. I let him have it. Continuing to spray, I set down the canister and pumped and pumped and pumped more pressure in, sustaining the steady onslaught of grease, coating him from head to heel in sheets of thick, oozy fluids, and I must say, my heart was warm. He shielded his face, crying out, whining and gagging, but unable to move under the heavy barrage of my unapologetic revenge. It was about this time that another silhouette came stumbling out the front door. I squinted to see who it was, this taller and bushier-bearded fellow, staring at me in disbelief. With a release of my valve, I realized it was Ernie.
“What the hell?” he cried. I blinked a few times, and, looking down, saw that it was not, in fact, Ernie I had been pelting with oil, but a teenage boy who must have been his son. I stroked my chin. And then I burst out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Still hysterical, I shot one final burst into the air, then jumped into my car and peeled away as Ernie ran to try and stop me, screaming and shaking his hands like an angry chimp. By the time I got past the end of his block, I could hardly see through my tears of laughter.
“Man, that’s fucked up.” JoJo didn’t find it quite as funny as I, though in time it came to be one of our best stories to tell at bars and parties. For me, it is still my proudest moment. As for Ernie and his son, they moved a couple months later when Ernie got transferred to Chess Bluff. The week before they left, I spotted them circling my block in their Chevette. I manned post behind my shabby fir tree with a paintball gun and binoculars, and a few warning shots let them know I wasn’t playing around. The final night before they left, the boy (I think despite his father’s orders), attempted to crawl across my lawn in a black sneak suit with a bagfull of eggs, but I saw him coming and pelted him good with a few rounds of orange paint. He ran home crying.
That’s funny, I thought. I left your house crying, too, after I hosed you with a canfull of dirty, dirty oil.