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Ennio Morricone :: Navajo Joe

The man grabbed the kid by the throat and slammed his body back against the corrugated aluminum wall. You could hear the cicadas and the cars on the highway.

The kid barely choked out “lemme gko!” as he tried to pry the huge forearm away. I thought, why doesn’t he kick him? With your back against a wall, you can be braced nicely for a kick to the stomach or balls, depending on what kind of person you are. Then I noticed that the kid’s legs were way too long and gangly to get up and cocked in that little space between the huge man and himself.

It was the summer between seventh and eighth grade. We were outside some… temporary place, at a show. It’s hard to describe some venues in Mississippi. There aren’t many in the little musty town of Ocean Springs. One is an old armory, complete with a couple of tank-like military vehicles that the punk rock kids would climb on and try to start (“you know these kinds of army trucks don’t use keys… in case of an emergency… they just start with a button… yeah I’m sure… my uncles are all in the army”). This venue was east of the town of Ocean Springs, halfway between there and the next town, Gautier (pronounced “go-SHAY”), an on the only road that connected them. I’m a big fan of those roads between towns: straight, flat, surrounded by high swamp trees and sticky marsh, and usually only designated by a number (90, in this case, however, it was also called Bienville Road, or Bienville Boulevard if you’re one of those map-readin’ out-of-towners; everyone called it 90).

We were all staring, discreetly at first, at this huge fat bald man, probably some kind of skinhead, as he retaliated for being tripped by a lanky punkass high school grunge kid with hair hanging in his face. No one likes skinheads, although everybody knew one—a friend of some older friend, you know, that guy Nick that hangs out with Nathan?

So many types of music and people come together at small-town shows out on the edge of civilization. If you liked grunge, you came. If you only liked ska, you dressed up, and then came. If you sneered at people who didn’t respect pure punk and the show was grunge or some new rock, or ska, you would come anyway with at least four other pure punk friends and talk about punk outside the show. But everyone came because that was all you were gonna get in that little town, and the next show is either too far away or not for another four months, so you put on your newly “made” shirt (or whatever) with safety pins all in it, or brought your scrappy deck along to show someone your new skate trick (I dated the guy that could ollie over the hood of a Trans Am and land an Impossible every time) and made what you could of it.

But it was asking for trouble, putting all types of people into an old corrugated aluminum building (they used to sell fishing boats there) on the side of a little country highway. It was trouble; Southerners love trouble.

“I’ll let you go, asshole,” he shook the kid’s neck against the creaking aluminum. “But you have to lick my shoes.” He let go and then laughed. Two guys behind him laughed. Where was that guy that always busted up the circle of staring people and said “Hey, cut it out” or “Hey, let him go”? He wasn’t at this show—probably at that arena show in Biloxi.

No one else wanted to get stomped by some skinheads… Except those kids… Four pure punk mohawk heads stood graveyard still staring at the skinheads. Punks versus skins, the classic fight. The crowd mumbled. The kid was not making a move to lick those boots.

Maybe someone went inside to tell; however it happened, the stillness of the moment was broke by the headliners emerging from the dank insides of the shack. They weren’t wearing their instruments, but we knew who they were. They came as peacemakers, filled with the brotherhood of music. They broke it up; the frontman did a cursory check of the kid; and the drummer said something into the grumbling, milling crowd about coming together for good music and putting aside our differences. I don’t remember who the band was, or which big faraway city they were from, but that kind of talk sounded to me like hardcore propaganda.

(see also Mohawk Town by the Vandals)

Navajo Joe
Ennio Morricone (wikipedia)

Kelly said on friday, june 13th, 2008

anika said on monday, june 16th, 2008