lets' get it over with

let's just get it over with, i'll line up all the fighting, wrestling stories i can remember. ok . there was my final row with my old partner Dax. let's get another thing straight, just because you were partners with someone doesn't mean you liked them or they liked you. you had something in common, that much is given otherwise you wouldn't be working together, but friendship that was a different story. Dax and i both wanted to make money, as fast and quickly as possible. Dax, he was a piece of work as my friend C used to say. to start off his appearance was rough on the visage. lots of missing teeth, bad tattoes of dancing girls on his arms, now faded by the sun and a scraggy red beard, a constant cigarette hanging on his lip, balancing there like a circus acrobat, and a glass eye that ozzed some white substance. big earl used to say, " that damn eye, he going to lose it, going to fall out i know it, right into the cee ment," but it never did, it stayed firmly in place and earl used to get all mixed up, swearing that Dax was looking at him out of the glass one. " I sure can't tell sometimes which eye is the dead one, i truly cain't, i swear he can see out of it, he's looking at me out of the glass one, see right through me. damn". with that one eye Dax could see a wall across the room one quarter of an inch out of plumb, he was that good. when we got to the end of the road Dax had by now tried to sue me when my father died thinking i'd inherited some money, had left me holding the bag on a contract for a job of ours that went bad, him not signing his signature on the contract, very clever, lieing about having a contractors liscense to god knows who and the whole world, lied again about having insurance, a bond, and being an engineer and my insurance company having to pay for damages on the job and among other things, lied about visiting his son in San Quenton, never having gone, and getting busted by his current wife, our secretary, with his ex wife crawling out from under his desk, whilest working on a bid and eventually losing his house on some mysterious deal to build a casino in Vegas on sacred indian burial ground which i forewarned him not to do, but him saying " if i don't do it someone else will". a piece of work. also a very smart guy, really, and intelligent, witty, even brilliant out in the field, vast experience, a better craftsman with one eye than most with two. dax was also a great talker, our clients liked and trusted him. he had a favorite saying that i came to love and mistrust, "well pisano" shortend to just "pie san." still all and all he had a sort of low down, feral charsima to him, and he really wore his amorality well, never deviating from it. he used to say i was weak, that i didn't have the killer instinct in me. his wife said he was jealous of me, because i was a believer in people and Dax had long since given up on the world and himself. "we all use each other," he used to say, condoning his own usary. we did a lot of jobs together, rode hard and traveled fast. Daxie boy was an old street fighter from Richmond a nice town he said, before the blacks moved in. I'd heard his stories about the beatings he'd laid on half the town, and how he'd never lost a fight and could have turned pro and sometimes after work we'd spar around, friendly on my part and he used to tell me i was slow. slow meaning I was weak. You've probably guessed Dax was a desperado, he loved money more than anything. when he got rich he was going to do this and that, cars, bikes, horses, planes. i heard he'd lost more than one fortune. he drank and when he did he was a mean ass drunk. we'd been through the mill by the end, his son, fresh out of San Quentin for robbery, and younger than than me was going to be his new partner and i was getting out. Dax was having a party and asked me to stop by and now i can see it was plainly a set up. when i got there he had a heat on, he couldn't hold his liquor anymore and after i had a few beers in the kitchen, and said "goodbye Daxie and good luck" and started to leave, he stepped in front of me and said, "well ya cain't leave until we settle it." "settle what ?" I asked. "you and me," right out of a western. "we got to settle it finally, who's the best," him talking loud drawing a crowd. " forget it," i said. "No." he says "right now", getting into a formal karate position. and that cold dead glass eye staring at me, i knew i wasn't getting out without something going down. right then i remembered something he'd said to me a hundred times before, that never in a fight had anyone ever touched his face, so i just leaned over and slugged him on the jaw and he went down in a heap and then struggled to his feet. " damn you i wasn't ready," and i laughed and said "this business is over" and walked out and him yelling after me, "i'm going to kill you, i'll kill you." right after that he lost his home I heard to the Mafia, but i don't know, Dax always wanted to play with the big boys. jgk