Thirty Five is the number after which I lost count. That’s 35 traffic accidents I could remember when I tallied them during a conversation with a friend. I was working for Potomac Airgas in Catonsville Maryland, later just plain”Airgas”. I ran a machine called an Oxweld acetylene generator and weighed cylinders empty then filled, which gave the net weight of the gas inside. The guy I was working with was a real prize and even though we were friends, he looked like a pirate to me, with red hair coming out of his nostrils and ears. He’d been there since the Union Carbide days. That was until a horrific accident at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal India killed 8,000 people after a leak to the atmosphere of methyl isocyanate. This is still considered the worst industrial accident in history. The injured, many permanently, also numbered in the thousands and Union Carbide ceased most gas and liquid operations, and the Catonsville plant was taken over by Airgas. Rupert had seen it happen. He was glad to be rid of a verbally abusive foreman, so he stayed on.

He was a big man. He rode the biggest Honda motorcycle I’ve ever seen and still he looked like he was fucking a football. He said of my automobile accidents, “Jesus Christ, Mike!” but yet he often asked me for a ride home. He was timid about it, one time asking, “Think you can lift me up?”

I sympathized. It’s not easy sometimes, asking for something you need. Your tongue doesn’t work right. But I didn’t get that because we were friends. He had asked for a ride home before.

I didn’t like doing it. He lived in the Hampden section of Baltimore, very far out of my way.

I answered the question as to whether I could lift him up with, “Only if use the forklift.” My tact and generosity were limited because I’m an asshole.

Besides, he was so big, he made my Mazda 323 lean so hard to the right I had to compensate while steering. But it was worse when he had to get out. He had to open the door, turn completely to the right, his back facing me. His pants would ride down and I had to look away, because I didn’t think there was that much crack in the entire fucking city.

Then came the smell.

You got it: straight, dirty, ass.

I tried to make it to the end of the block, window down for fresh air, but never once did that work. At the stop sign I invariably had to open my door, lean out and heave my guts up. I’ll bet I had absolutely no red meat from all the Quarter Pounders I ate in 1977 stuck in my intestines. You’d have to flush like you do before a colonoscopy to be as empty as I was.

He once asked me to pick him up for work. In the morning. I waited but ended up having to knock on the door. His wife answered and said “Come in. He’s almost ready.”

The stench was so overwhelming that their cat burst through the open door. I thought it was gonna run. It didn’t. It just stood there. I knew what it was doing. It was taking in all the clean air it could before being trapped again in that godawful house.

I dared not touch anything. I felt filthy just standing there. A movement caught my eye. Roaches inside the glass base of a table lamp. Roaches climbing walls, big motherfuckers, too, biggest I’d ever seen. One took up a position inside the glass of a wall clock, and I was sure that he was a sentry, keeping watch on the new intruder who might one day end up as food. I had nightmares for weeks, maybe longer. I never gave him a ride again.

It ended up that he got fired anyway. I had no sympathy this time. For shit’s sake, I once saw him eat a KFC four piece. It was all gone in five bites, bones and all. You can’t do that!

The last time I saw him was late summer 1999.

I’m sure he’s dead now. Because, chicken bones?