Strange Intervention(Dryden James) I had just turned eighteen, and here I was, riding along in the passenger seat with this lunatic at four in the morning with a dead body in the trunk. I didn't want to be there. I wanted my cozy bed. I had been up for five days on some bad dope and half a Snicker's bar, and I was in no mood for Pistol Pete's crazy commerce of malice or his extreme exertion of dangerous dilemmas.

Peter Shepherd, or Pistol Pete, wasn't a push over. If you chose to run with him you had voluntarily given your life to his expense. He lived life in a very scary way, and I feared and respected him for it. That's why I had no rational choice but to help him. I'll admit I wasn't living a glamorous life. It wasn't Vogue or anything. But it was my life and I enjoyed it. Sure, life with a chemical dependency problem isn't what you'd call kosher, but whose life is. I made choices in my life; they might have been bad ones, but still, they were my choices. Sure, given a chance I'd probably stab you in the back, but no one deserved to be roused up from their slumber by some raving lunatic demanding that they come outside to see what's in their trunk. I was plain lucky that my parents and the rest of the wealthy neighborhood I lived in wasn't disturbed. However, that still doesn't negate the fact I was with Pistol Pete in a 76' Cadillac with a dead body in the trunk. I mean, I was horrified, terrified, petrified, you name it. Pistol had always talked about hurting and torturing people. I'd always thought he was just pandering to his own morbid fantasies. But with the present predicament with the body in the trunk, maybe Pistol had been telling the truth all along. That application alone terrorized me more than the dead body.

We'd been driving in the woods for a long time, and still, I couldn't help but wonder why pick me up? Why not just do this by himself? Why? I was immersed in these quires, wondering if they had real weight, when I noticed his right hand. It sat in his lap, limp like. What had happened to it?

"We're here:" Pistol spoke breaking the uncomfortable silence as the car came to a stop.

I was afraid to reply. Paranoia seeped in, warning me that this was my last breath. My fist tightened up, my knuckles turned white, they pleaded for a swing, but I closed my eyes instead! I thought of my family, of the blissful normality I had taken advantage of. I leaned my head back; better to be at ease when the bullet enters your body. It's probably less pain too. I breathed in and out as normally as I could. I breathed and waited. I waited and waited. I waited for what seemed like decades before opening my eyes to find Pistol roaming through a dope sack, preparing a big bowl. He took a colossal hit before passing the pipe over to me. The car instantly filled with smoke. I hesitated before taking mine. Maybe, I thought, I'd take a small hit. Yeah, a small hit. After all, I wasn't fully awake. Too much would drive me crazy, but just enough would level me out, and keep me sane.

I don't know how long I sat there contemplating how big of a hit I was going to take. Whatever the length was, Pistol hadn't the inclination to wait around. Perhaps I was aggravating him. Perhaps he had bigger things on his mind. Perhaps I needed higher priorities. Higher than having a debate with myself concerning the quantity of methamphetamine I wanted to douse my lungs and populate my brain with. In any case, I was a drug addict, and I exploited what was left and got out.

Pistol was standing at the back, looking off into the distance with a sense of malcontent.

"You alright Pistol?" I asked, slowly walking up to him. He didn't say anything to me, just turned and looked. He had blue eyes, but not on this night. The devil himself was staring back at me, and there wasn't enough drugs this side of the Rocky Mountains not to flinch at him.

He favored his right hand as he opened the trunk. The light inside kicked on revealing the dead body. It was sprawled out all over the place, as if he died laying down or in his sleep. There was no blood. No signs of a violent struggle, just a cold and stiff body. I had never seen one before, but I had no time to marvel at it.

"Grab his legs." Pistol grunted out.

"His legs ... shouldn't we be wearing gloves?" I inquired, but words were no match for the answers his eyes gave. I grabbed his stiff legs; Pistol used only his left hand as he yanked on dead man's t-shirt. It was a most fruitless effort, but who was I to say. We wrenched and wrestled for a long time. It was useless, rigor mortise had set in, and the body was stuck.

"Stay here." Pistol grunted again. He pulled out a big knife as he returned to the front of the car. Maneuvering into the back seat he proceeded to cut a space large enough for the body.

"Push him through!" He yelled. I turned the body as far as I could, and started pushing. I pushed from the back as Pistol pulled front. We did this over and over, until finally we got him through the hole and into the back seat. Then, after a little adjusting debate, we got him up over the front seat and out of the car. It was one of the craziest things I'd ever done. It was like we were moving a couch through a small door, except with a human cadaver and the front seat of a 76 Cadillac.

We were a few yards from the road when I began digging in the clear cut. I wasn't sure what was worst; the dead body I was illegally dumping, or the fierce wind and rain that came from nowhere, turning the fertile soil into mud, mixing it into the tough clay that tortured the little shovel I'd been bestowed with. The thick mud forced me to my knees. Forced me to dig with my hands. Forced me to work muscles I didn't even know I had. I dug with fury in my eyes. I dug for my life. I was crazed. I was a manic, and hell couldn't stop me.

The rain continued its onslaught as I rolled the body into the shallow grave. I tossed heavy doses of tough mud onto the body as Pistol sat and watched. Every now and then he attempted to light a cigarette, but the arduous rain left him disappointed. He sat there, anesthetized with everything. It was odd that he was like this. I thought he was a stone cold killer. Had I been I wrong about Pistol? Should I confront him?

"What's the story with this guy?" I solicited.

"That's none of your business." Pistol protested.

"I'm burying the body! I'm in compliance to a murder! I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. How isn't it my business? I was up in arms, waving the shovel in Shakespearean fashion. Pistol was dumbfounded before bursting into laughter.

"Murder ... You think I murdered Steve? Steve was my best friend." Tears swelled in Pistol's eyes. "I'd never hurt him. I'm not a killer! People make up stories, and who am I to say they're not true. Why do you think I came and got you, huh?"

"What about your arm?" I asked.

"I've been shooting dope a long time." Pistol pulled his sleeve up, revealing the infected vain. "Steve overdosed on heroin. He had nothing except a promise, my promise to bury him here." Tears gushed from his eyes. Pistol sobbed as I finished up, and he drove me home without muttering another word.

Later on that night I made a promise to myself; 1 would take control of my life. I would no longer be an addict. I wasn't going to end up like Steve. It wasn't easy. It took months, close to a year before I was able to place the genie back into the bottle, and now, eleven years later, I'm a school teacher. I'll always, look back on that deranged night, on that dreadful and non-regrettable task, on my strange intervention, and be pleased I passed. I don't know what happened to Pistol Pete. I may never know, but every year I visit Steve and place flowers on his grave.

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