I met the Devil this Memorial Day. The Devil’s real name is Gator. At the bottom of an intersection to the high road trails of Sawyer Park, above the beautiful Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon.
I had just come down from the silent rises above one of the hidden gems in a string of this exquisite river’s brilliantly twisting vista parkway trails. Gator is striking. He has the abrupt visual of Liam Neeson, if Liam were 71, homeless, had spent over 40 years imprisoned, murdered his own father, served in Vietnam, fatalistically accepted his MS, barely supported two prominent bottom fangs, and was bucket-list marching to Coos Bay, OR, from Detroit, MI, along the Veterans Highway.
I asked Gator—no, told Gator—I felt I needed to speak to him. With one eye flashing and the other glaring into the void behind a very black knit patch, Gator invited me in.
I took a photo of him (with permission) and a photo of his mesmerizing cane. Gator’s very light cane, which he offered to me, was capped by a hardened, polished sculpture of a grizzly bear. Below that was a silver dream catcher, bear footprints, two hanging bangles of significance only to him, and a final silver placard dedicated to his former slave master, Jack Daniels.
Gator had barbered in three prisons during his very long, perceptionally distinguished career: Marionville, Leavenworth, and retired with perceived distinction from Colorado’s Supermax. Gator fearlessly called the Teflon Don “a little fuckin’ wop” because John Gotti liked the way Gator shaped his cut.
Gator’s next brush with horrific celebrity was a long-time customer who regaled Gator with untold memories of his madness and sanguine glory days. Gator proudly gave this customer, Ted Bundy, his final buzz cut prior to the ending of his last appeal with the reaper and a striking veiled woman in red, whom Gator swears pushed the button releasing Bundy to hell.
Gator’s only words were “Good riddance.” Gator had no use for those who took the innocent.
Gator was brutal in his recounting of one customer, and by the way he spoke, perhaps physically as well. Timothy McVeigh was an idiot little brother whose hero-worship of his older brother’s politics led “that retard” into parking a van out front of a daycare, proximal to a federal target, rather than the heart of the also-devastated Murrah FBI building. Gator is a huge Jesse James fan but likened McVeigh’s useless destruction to “that punk Billy Bonnie,” a lesser god in Gator’s twisted pantheon of brutality’s hierarchy.
Gator never gave “that pissant” McVeigh a good cut until the end. Not sure what he meant by that, but Gator’s venom knows a special, fearsome resolve for the injurious murderers of children.
Gator’s most derelict antihero was a con he just called Rick. Rick’s insistent need for respect, as he interpreted it, became the foreshadowing of Rick’s dispute with a guard. Gator soft-cackled, “Rick hated that asshole.” With the solemnity and honesty of a true psychopath, Rick found a way to behead said guard and plop the grizzly, bagged gift onto the warden’s desk. It took a dozen guards to walk Rick into solitary. Rick may still be there. Gator cackled loud, “Gotti, Bundy, McVeigh were all pussies—Rick was a Max God.” Gator swears he was asked to close the door when the guards brought Rick to the solitary cellblock. None of the guards had the stones. Not certain if Gator’s given name was or was not Rick. By the way he barked this delightful recollection, it appeared to be a more personal memory.
Gator doesn’t believe in God but is thoroughly convinced the devil is a woman. Gator believes this more because Jesus had to have an opposite angel fallen to earth. A yin-yang deity to buffer the biblical Jehovah. Gator’s not religious, though. After all, Gator doesn’t believe in God.
He does believe in visitors from the cosmos. He feels the ancient gods were very real and have kept pace with humanity from the very start. Gator received a master’s in psychology while in prison. Who am I to say what may or may not be history? According to Gator, the greatest discoveries of mankind (assisted by aliens) have yet to be realized. Gator is a very deep and intellectual man.
Several civilized members of the local jogging and dog-walking community timidly passed by our park bench, where two hard-looking older men had let down their guard and found a bond devoid of similarity in each other’s company. A yin-yang moment of random happenstance at the base of the high trail to the Deschutes River.
I felt I had truly met a witness to history, a man devoid of the need to lie (though not above embellishment), and a servant to a brutal life I could only glimpse from a distance, through the serious singular eye of a devil named Gator. The barber of Leavenworth. A man.
—Hermit King--
https://open.spotify.com/track/5Yql4ooghbDqwXIvCGXsdx?si=fg63E_DJSEa2EZIqqKE1QQ
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