My wife and I lived and worked in a national park decades ago. The park was world famous and visited by millions each year. Lots of people from every walk of life -- including some real characters. This is the story about one of them we met and what happened when we took him home to party.
My wife, Sherry, worked in one of the higher end retail stores in the village, and I worked in accounting. You'd think that would make me safe from most of the crazier assignments -- but as happens I was on the short list to handle problems whenever my boss was out of town, which was often. A common one was keeping track of shoplifters at our stores whenever the local law enforcement got busy and couldn't pick someone up promptly. It happened at least once a week.
I hated this part of the job. The shoplifters were mostly just kids trying to lift candy bars or free-spirited hippie types who lived out of their backpacks and found themselves low on cash. Shoplifting in the park was a federal offense since we were on federal land. They treated it very seriously and a lot of these people fucked up their lives pretty good because they tried to steal a six pack of beer or stupid little souvenir.
Which brings us to Charlie, a shoplifter. Charlie was one of those free spirits living out of a backpack.
We met Charlie because he tried to steal an expensive bottle of liquor from a store where my wife was working overtime in the stock room. He got caught on the closed-circuit cameras and pretty much gave up immediately when they nabbed him. He humbly followed the clerk back to the backroom where my wife was prepping some stock and took his place on a chair where he was told not to move. (Amazingly, the offenders almost never did.)
When a shoplifter was caught, it was the clerks' habit to fuck with them a bit while they waited to be carted off to the clink. They were cruel, but the company lost a lot of money to shoplifters each year and the retail people got a lot of shit for it, so they could pretty mean to them.
The standard banter was that the shoplifter person would be transferred to lock-up down in the central valley and that they would be promptly beaten up and raped by the local gangs members. Reminding these petty criminals not to drop the soap, to sleep with one eye open, make sure to only go bitch for the biggest and baddest hombre lest you get passed around, etc.
You get it. Nothing too original. Totally fucked up though.
When the clerks started doing this to Charlie, he listened to it all and he acted like he was terrified. So much so that they weren't sure if he was just fucking with them. They poked at him, but it ceased to be fun quick as he got more animated and theatrical. He wept. He prayed for salvation. He delivered long dramatic monologues about how his life was ruined because of the evils of liquor and the unfairness of life itself. No one was sure if he was serious or crazy but thought possibly both.
His whole "poor me" act was completely over the top and he made a big deal of begging for mercy to anyone who was walking by. It was funny, but also just bizarre and slightly spooky. Since my wife was working in the stock room that day, she caught the whole show. She found it all amusing and Charlie to be intriguing and funny.
At closing time, Charlie was still waiting for his pick-up. Sherry called me and I called the local park office, who first told me they had no record that there was even a pick up planned, then promptly put me on hold and never came back.
When I called back Sherry, she asked if since there was no record of a pick-up, they had recovered the stolen goods, etc. would it possibly be cool if we all gave Charlie a break?
I could lose my job for that, but I was tired after a long day. Just forgetting the problem seemed like the best solution as I wouldn't have to figure out logistics and paperwork to get the guy formally arrested. It was a mess that would take hours to fix and that I wouldn't get paid overtime for. So I said fuck it.
I wasn't going to just let him go though. I decided I'd pick Sherry up at work, give this young man a stern talking to, then drive him down to a small town outside the park where we would dump his ass on the side of the highway. I'd give him instructions not to come back to the park and he'd be left to fend for himself. I'd done it a few times before.
It didn't work out that way. What happened is that I got there and began talking to Charlie and before I knew It, he had both Sherry and I laughing. His humor was sharp and his attitude contagious. There was just something about the guy that defied description. I quickly understood why Sherry was looking to cut him a break. He was instantly likable and he just had this vibe. He was a mall man but with something bold and beautiful about him. Very hard to describe.
The decision made, Sherry felt better, but I still felt like I needed to escort him out of the park, so we loaded up in my jeep and hit the road. It was a long way -- more than an hour of slow mountain roads -- and Charlie asked all kinds of questions about what town would be like, whether he could catch a bus with his very limited few dollars, etc.
I didn't have a lot of hopeful things to say about any of that. He'd probably end up sleeping outdoors in the cold. He'd need to hitchhike, beg or find odd jobs to get back on his feet. Charlie was stoic about it -- even had some funny things to say as we talked -- but I have to say I wasn't feeling good about what I was doing.
Anyway, as we drove through the night, Sherry started playing tour guide, pointing out the sights to Charlie as we made our way down HWY 49 towards exit to the park. Being locals, we knew a lot of things they don't tell the tourists, and she spilled secrets on party places, swimming holes, and hiking trails that weren't on any maps up to where the pot plants grew on the sides of the mountains.
There was a small sign that pointed to the little village we lived in -- the only such place in the park -- and she pointed it out to Charlie. True to form, Charlie surprised us with an offer that would change our whole evening.
"You seem like cool people, you don't want to do this I can tell. Let's party! You do shrooms? I have some." Like a good salesman he added "They are good...Smooth and clean. I'll share."
It was a very bad idea for us to do this. If my boss ever found out he'd shit an anvil, but Sherry and I consulted with each other and a temporary vacation courtesy of magic mushrooms sounded pretty good. It had been a long high season and we were ready for something fun. As happened we were both scheduled for work with an afternoon start the next day so plenty of time to sleep them off -- and the idea of hanging out with this impish crazy man while tripping sounded like fun.
We took the turn off the highway into our little workers village and we arrived at our little cabin. Sherry and Charlie made the tea with the mushrooms while I built a fire, and within an hour we were sitting down on the couch to drink up the cups of nasty tasting brew.
If you haven't done mushrooms, I don't even know how to tell you how it all works and feels. It's not really like in the movies where suddenly the trees and rocks start talking to you and colors explode while a rainbow shoots out your ass or anything. You mostly just feel kind of intimate with everything and everyone around you.
Mushrooms take a while to kick-in, but pretty soon we were loudly chatting, talking over each other, laughing and just having a good time. Every part of the conversation seemed so important and profound. Part of it was the drugs, but there was something just hypnotic about Charlie.
