Fubar by Ron Carpol

Brentwood!”
    The cop pointed to Watson. “You said he did it.”
    â€œYou’re crazy! He’s a fraternity brother!”
    The cop let go of my now-useless right arm and walked out of the cell. He clanged the door shut as he snorted, “Some fraternity.”
    Watson’s face was flush and his breathing was in spurts. “Everybody knows that you’re the guy who stole Ovary’s letter,” he snarled. “No thanks to you, he didn’t die. Then this shit. I’m warning you right now that I’m helping Lyman get rid of you. And so are most of the other pledges.”
    _____
    The four guys who were arrested with me were lucky. Unlike me, they were released in the morning without being charged. When I got to court about a month later, because my only witnesses were my drunken pledge brothers, the Public Defender made me plead guilty. I got three years probation, ten days in jail suspended, and a fine of about thirteen hundred dollars that I didn’t give a damn about since the court took American Express Cards. Even though I lost my drivers license for a while I still drank and drove. What was I supposed to do? Drink on the bus like a wetback while my truck smiles at mefrom the bus stop?
    Luckily the Don’t-Drink-and-Drive classes near Marina Del Rey that I had to attend weren’t a total waste; I scored X from a guy there. And at the weekly AA meetings that I had to go to at the Public Health Center on Lincoln, I met a couple of young, world-class lesbian sluts: Tiffany and Amber, they claimed their names were. As soon as I told the girls about my inheritance—leaving out the part about Lyman—and described my favorite sex act, they couldn’t hand me a razor fast enough before spreading their ass cheeks in my apartment that night.
    _____
    Lyman was beaming when he got back to town a few days later.
    â€œTraced my old nursemaid from Fort Worth to a mobile home park outside Oklahoma City,” he told a bunch of us one afternoon at Tito’s Tacos on Washington in Culver City. “She said my mother called her all the time from Hawaii where she was working in a hospital.”
    â€œHow long ago was that?” Rainey asked.
    â€œOver seventeen years ago.”
    â€œWhat’re you going to do now?” Dung asked.
    â€œHave the search people check out all the hospitals and other public records.”
    â€œThis woman in Oklahoma,” Zoom asked, “she tell you why your mother stayed in Hawaii all this time and never came back for you?”
    He shook his head. “No. Just that she couldn’t come back.”
    _____
    Now and then I thought about Ovary; that if he died maybe I could’ve been arrested for causing it. But he didn’t die. So what was the big deal about the whole episode anyway? Still, it surprised me that I was a little sorry about the way I got rid of him; but not sorry that he quit.
    Even Vysell and Batman asked me if I had anything to do with Ovary. Naturally I denied everything. How dumb could Ibe after that coin flip? I didn’t want to lose these two guys as the only friends I ever had.
    It was a completely new experience to share exaggerated, funny stories with these guys even though almost everything I told them was bullshit. But what’s the truth got to do with anything anyway? Especially when you’re starting to make friends.
    Surprisingly, and it was a surprise, hanging around with these two guys more and more started meaning a lot to me. Naturally, I still tried to use people to get what I could out of them; that’s human nature. My dad taught me that a long time ago. But this new feeling of belonging or even being associated with this fraternity was definitely different in a good kind of way. Something I never experienced before.
    _____
    About a week before Christmas we had a great holiday party at the house. Most of the guys stayed in town since the winter weather here was warm and