Fungo: Winter 1

Fungo Winter: 1 DHD Reflects.

David Hunter Duncan sat at the desk at Declutter Self Storage assembling a model chopper as he listened to the screen high on the opposite wall. Since opening Declutter, Hope had set the workplace TV to The Horizons Network, a blended format of life hacks and mysticism. The assortment of motherly shrinks and blow-dry preachers and grinning swamis had initially aggravated David’s sensibilities. After a while, the daytime hosts seemed more like eccentric neighbors than irritants and David had grown attentive to the daily dispersal of wisdom.

David’s favorite life consultant, Dominic DeAngelis, was now on the screen. DeAngelis had done time at serious facilities and was now sharing his percipience with a live audience. “Don’t just sit and listen. Write his down in your power journal,” the graybeard commanded.

David made a mental note to christen a power journal and to rewatch this show and to commit himself to absorbing “Dominic’s Didactics.” For now, David’s hands and eyes were deployed in the assembly of the San Quentin Custom Cycle designed and built on “The Choppers of the Gods” by the late Thomas Nathaniel Tompkins. TNT’s estate had issued model kits that required bright lights, magnifying glasses and jewel-maker hardware to construct.

David liked to assemble things when his hands were not occupied elsewhere, especially when watching TV. Living without tools in prison was almost as hard as living without women. The option to handle a screwdriver anytime he pleased was a simple pleasure David treasured deeply.

There were some people David might not inform of his interest in models instead of the real deal. His biker persona was created long ago but David had less street cred than people imagined. Yes, he had owned and built and rode Harleys and groundups but he barely got a taste of the biker lifestyle. Every time he started forming bonds with other motorcyclists, legal problems would surface and he would have to sell his bike to feed his family or pay his legal bills. Now, when he found time to ride, he rode a preppy BMW. German engineering had spoiled him.

“Your right hand will include the five people of the same gender who have influenced your life the most. These five people are not relatives. Not mothers or fathers or brothers or sisters or sons or daughters. These are five people you have drawn into your lifeweb…”

DeAngelis then went tangential and defined poly dactyl, focusing primarily on people born with six fingers. Everyone has five fingers in their lifeweb but some people have six? “If there is someone you cannot omit, then you probably have a sixth finger.”

David did not have to reflect much to label each digit. His sixth finger was Ray Bohm. Loyal, fierce and quiet. Big, clumsy guy who staggered when he walked and always ran into moving and stationary objects. His body was funny-looking and Ray was not an athlete but man, could he fight!

Ray was more of a companion than an influence and David was unsure if he would qualify as an appendage. He probably saved Jim Garfield’s life one time and he offered David ongoing friendship and support. Maybe Ray was more like a big toe, David mused.

The pinky was easy to determine.  A long ago mentor who might not still be active in one’s life. That would be the late Harold Remick, the career outlaw who taught a young David Hunter Duncan what it meant to be a good convict. Of course, in the old days, every cellblock had a Harold Remick. So it wasn’t him, it would have been another jailbird. Still, Harold was David’s first good criminal tutor. Death did not dampen Harold’s light.

Ring finger? The finger primarily used to showcase marital status in this case expresses a longstanding friendship that has weathered storms and has stood the test of time.  Easy choice. Glen Dale Woods, that mechanical and criminal renaissance man whom David met when they were both teenagers.

Gearheads are tribal people. Monster truck guys don’t hang with Formula 1 fans and neither group flocks with street rodders. It goes beyond social dynamics. Diesel mechanics don’t like working on Civics and a 9/16^th guy will cringe at the thought of touching metric.

Glen Dale Woods was different. He went from trail bikes to Harleys to hot rod quarter milers before devoting himself to power boats. He would later get his pilot’s license and currently runs a lucrative small plane maintenance service.

Glen Dale’s aptitude for motors was exceeded only by his scholarship of crime. He stole bicycles as a child and stole cars before he was old enough to drive legally. He stole truck cargo and heavy equipment and even a few head of livestock before raking in a fortune stealing airplanes.

Most impressive of all, Glen Dale Woods never did time. He would get in, get out and move on to something else. Glen Dale always offered sound advice and he could be extremely helpful if the price was right.

DeAngelis explained the criteria for the middle finger and that made David think of Joe Fungo. David Hunter Duncan had met a lot of interesting people but none of them were anything like Joe Fungo. He was a master chemist who created obscure smart drugs. Hunter and Garfield and Bohm had made a solid middle class living selling Fungo’s potions.

For a long time, Jim Garfield had kept Fungo away from David and Ray. Then David met Fungo personally and found out that he could manufacture meth. Garfield did not want to sell meth because he thought it would draw too much heat. Ray and David overruled Garfield. Maybe he wanted to be overruled. At any rate, money rained from the heavens ever since.

It wasn’t just drugs that Fungo manufactured. He could produce nerve gas and anthrax and germs no one had ever heard of. “The middle finger can be dangerous to display.” David agreed. He suspected that Joe Fungo might be the mastermind behind all the biological attacks on Houston law enforcement. After all, he had tried to get Delbert Wayne out of a Memphis jail with biochemical attacks.

Although David had sold kilos of smart drugs, he never ingested them himself. After getting to know Fungo, the chemist persuaded David to sample his elixirs. The results were so good as to be disorienting. David, who had always struggled with phones and computers, now consumed technical manuals like gumdrops. He would not have had the organizational skills to launch a self-storage business and Fungo’s muscle-building powders were equally impressive.

The desktop phone rang and David paused the TV. A few questions about price and a polite good-bye. David pressed the remote and restarted the broadcast. “Is the index finger more important than the thumb? No, but…”

Jim Garfield! Mentally physically strong. The unlikely brainiac. He knew computers. He knew phones. He knew cars and weapons and how to run an organization where few of his contractors ever knew who their boss really was. He talked about synthetic currencies before there was such a thing and he could take one immigrante and create a dozen aliases.

 Jim liked to read military history and true crime. Not serial killer sensationalism but profiles of mobsters and kingpins. Crime books were forbidden but Jim paid CO’s to paste the covers of “Tom Kill a Mockingbird” and “Moby Dick” over books that chronicled bluegrass conspiracies and Corsican Mafiosi. Reading 10 to 15 hours a day—he never slept much even before access to slumber inhibitors—Jim Garfield spent three years earning a PHD in professional crime.

In David’s eyes, Jim was more distinctive as a leader than as a craftsman or scholar. In prison Jim Garfield was asked to sit in at a Scholars meeting and a short time later, the youngest member of the group was running the show. Every prison has its share of alpha dogs and wannabe leaders. The gorillas can pound their chests all day long but they can never make someone want to follow their lead the way Jim Garfield could.

DeAngelis was now explaining the significance of the human thumb. There is a reason why it is called an opposable thumb. Coordination is enhanced by opposition.

Ulysses Johnson! Somehow, every paroled Scholar from Harris County ended up on that probation officer’s caseload. They were always treated with respect and they would receive hand-delivered messages from mysterious figures and opportunities to work for professional wages.

Everyone knew Ulysses went crazy and was killed in a street drag accident. Ray Bohm said that Ulysses Grant Johnson had been spouting off about family business but David did not see it that way. Ulysses shared some pillow talk with a Federal Probation Officer with whom he would create a son. He probably had to give up some plausibly deniable info to get the family anchored in the Federal system.

The only other non-Johnson Ulysses shared confidence was with Jim Garfield. They would ride in Ulysses’ purple Grand Marquis for hours, bouncing ideas back and forth. Ulysses recognized that he had found a diamond amongst the broken glass. He needed to share a few deniable generalities to win Jim’s trust, to get the professor to open up.

Even after his death, Ulysses still seemed to shape the world. For reasons unknown to outsiders, the Johnsons had wanted to set up shop in and around Memphis, Tennessee. Delbert Wayne Duncan had never met Ulysses but he followed one of the probation officer’s graduates to northern Mississippi, where they would move meth and marijuana from the Houston area.

“Without the thumb, civilization might not have happened…”

All of Ten Gentry’s crew had been brought down by a super narc named James Charles Pearce. The only Houstonian who was not caught on tape committing a crime was Delbert Wayne Duncan. Nonetheless, Pearce agrees to testify against Delbert Wayne. Thank you, Ulysses, wherever you may be.

David was ready to snap on the wheels, the last steps in building a model that was destined to occupy an empty shelf behind his desk.  He reflected again on Ulysses’ might shadow. “The thumb and the middle finger formulate a simple mudra…” Did Ulysses recruit Joe Fungo, either wittingly or otherwise, to execute the Houston bio-attacks?

A customer walked through the door, triggering a familiar chime. On first glance, David recognized the vampiresque figure of Joe Fungo creep into the office. With his newfound meth fortune, Fungo had purchased a self-storage facility himself, just a mile down the road.

“The middle finger without the thumb?” DeAngelis executed a dramatic pause. “The middle finger is radioactive.”

David Hunter Duncan was grateful for having discovered the wisdom on Dominic DeAngelis.