It's been a few days since I've written because the Sleep Center gave me more hours. They know I'm willing to work day and night because I'd just as soon be there as any place else, so sometimes I work days, sometimes nights, and sometimes like last night I finish my shift and just hang out behind the building.
There are some woods behind the Sleep Center, and I built a couple nesting boxes to see if I could get lucky and attract a Great Horned Owl, Rachel's favorite bird. The Great Horned never came, but an Eastern Screech Owl did come, so sometimes after my shift at night, especially when I know Sammy is working the late shift at Arby's (which is just a few blocks away), I'll sit in a chair against the outside of the building and listen until Sammy shows up.
When Sammy does show up during his break, he generally tries to imitate a bird call or scare me by pretending he's two people speaking about how to murder me. Last night he had Boyce with him, and they must not have got their stories straight, because I heard Sammy whisper, "How should we kill him?" and Boyce responded with "Buuuuuurd....I'm a buuuuuurd...Buuuuuurd...," as though birds sing and call by announcing their species in English. And they certainly don't do it to pelvic grinding which Boyce added for no reason.
I pulled out the two extra folding chairs I keep for them behind the dumpster and they sat down with me. A few weeks ago Boyce had got a letter that he was a potential juror, and yesterday afternoon he got a letter saying he needed to go to the courthouse for an interview. Boyce and Sammy decided to switch places, so Sammy is going to the courthouse instead.
This isn't entirely unusual. All three of us have fake drivers' licenses with each others' names. We know each other's social security numbers and mothers' maiden names, so we can impersonate one another in almost any situation. We started doing it in our early twenties when we learned that Sammy had already been impersonating us with fake id's for almost seven years. Sammy told us he started doing it when he was seventeen and would buy beer with an id that said Boyce Lancaster. He wouldn't even drink the beer. He'd sell it to some middle schoolers or, all by himself in the parking lot, he'd throw it at the ground as hard as he could and then jump rope the spinning, spraying can. Once he gave a 24-pack he bought to a crazy homeless man. The homeless guy looked at him weird, and Sammy said he was the devil's messenger, and that although these looked like beers they were actually liquid damnation made of hot sand and splinters, just to see if the guy would still open one. He did, but what really thrilled Sammy, was the homeless guy offered Sammy one, too. Sammy loved that he never could tell how the homeless guy meant it.
Sammy used fake id's with any clerk who previously looked at him wrong because of his missing fingers. He'd never tell the clerk later that on three successive nights he, a seventeen year old kid, was Cyrus Wetherbee, Samuel Clifton, and Boyce Lancaster. He just wanted to prove to himself that the clerk was a fool.
Boyce doesn't want to do jury duty because he's got his wife and kid, and he needs to spend a lot of his time with them. Boyce is married to Charlotte, and his son's name is Boyce Jr. Sammy is happy to get away from Arby's for a while, and he likes to self-dare about how often he can use unusual words in social situations. He's already promised to use the words "bodacious" and "fetal development" five separate times each during his interview at the courthouse. Boyce told him he'd buy him a round if he can find a way to say, "bodacious fetal development" in a sentence. Sammy is very excited to try.
We stayed behind the Sleep Center a little longer to wait for the Eastern Screech Owl to come but it never did.
