This Is Gonna Hoyt -- A GP2K1 Prequel
by Foondoggy
A fable of justice at the GP2K1
Hoyt Barnwell was feeling kind of good this early Saturday evening in October.
He and his friends had driven down from Rocky Mount to Cape Hatteras late last
night, conked out in the camper for a few hours then set up their fishing tackle
on the shore just before dawn. They had staked out a few hundred yards of prime
shoreline to stand and surfcast all day taking a dozen good size blues and one
sand shark in the process. It had been a fine beginning to a lazy fall weekend.The weather had been sunny, warm, and clear. A steady offshore breeze held up
the modest wave faces giving the fishermen an occasional quick glimpse of the
number and size of fish that were swimming just offshore in the surf zone. Hoyt
and his buddies, Don, and CW (Christopher Wayne) enjoyed this time away from
their boring jobs at the paper mill just fishing and doing guy stuff, like
talking NASCAR, drinking beers, and boasting about their hunting exploits and
female conquests. It was the way real Southern men spent their leisure time, not
something fruity like, wine tasting or antiquing.The only fly in the lemonade this morning had been a group of surfers who
invaded their fishing area causing them to yell obscenities and launch some
three ounce weights out there to chase them off. CW had damn near put one into
the head of one of those idiots before they took the hint. Damn surfers could
ruin a good fishing spot.Unlike other groups of young surfers they had seen before, this crowd had been a
mixed crew of older men, even a few geezers like Hoyt and his buddies. Hoyt
couldn't believe these guys would still go out in the ocean like that, riding
their surfboards and acting like stupid kids. It wasn't dignified for men to act
that way, flopping around in the water and yelling "AHHHOOOOOO" at each other.
Now fishing, there was an honorable sport. Real sportsmen go out and kill
something for recreation.Hoyt was disappointed in his friends. Here it was only 9:00 p.m. and they had
crashed for the evening in the camper. Sure they had been drinking all day but
that was no excuse to turn in early on their first full day. Hoyt had continued
to drink through dinner at Bubba's Barbecue (not as good as the good old days
when Bubba roasted the pigs on premises) and was looking to find a place to hang
out for the evening.He drove his truck down the highway toward the town of Cape Hatteras. Near the
turn for the National Seashore Park he noticed a joint called Finnegan's. There
were lots of people outside and the place seemed to have something going on.
Hoyt was a friendly sort of guy and his curiosity got the best of him so he
decided to check it out.The hand lettered sign in the window said, "Tonight only -Barry and the
Penetrators. Welcome Guidopalooza." Guidopalooza?? Barry and the Penetrators?
What the hell was going on here Hoyt wondered? The music coming from inside
sounded loud and raucous but the crowd was friendly and enthusiastic. Hoyt
elbowed his way toward the door through a bunch of young and not so young
people. Through the door he could see a large blond man with a goatee on the
bandstand screaming out lyrics to a bass heavy tune. The joint was really
jumping and Hoyt wanted some of that excitement.As he tried to enter the door a very pleasant, sweet looking woman with
sparkling eyes stopped him. She said, " Hi, my name is Dee Dee and this is the
Guidopalooza Party. We are sooo happy you could come tonight and we really want
you to stay and enjoy yourself, but we are asking for a $5 donation to defer
some of the cost of the band. Hoyt was immediately swept away by the pure
niceness of how Dee Dee spoke to him. No woman had ever been as sweet but to the
point with him before. He immediately snatched a rolled up five from his pocket
and pressed it into her hand.Pouring on his God given Southern charm Hoyt said, "Here ya go darlin', my name
is Hoyt and even though you are obviously a Yankee, I am very happy to make
your acquaintance. I'm goin in for a few beers but you be sure to save the last
dance for me, because I'm going to show you how a real Southern man makes a
woman happy tonight." Hoyt served this syrupy line up with all the smoothness
and eyecontact he could muster. Dee Dee would be putty in his hands.Dee Dee's eye's flickered for a second especially as Hoyt spoke the last words
very slowly, squeezing her fingers with one hand and rubbing them with the
other. She flinched slightly as he grasped her upper arm with his fishy
smelling paws and put his boozy, tobacco smelling face near hers. Fueled by
over 15 beers throughout the day Hoyt in his inebriated state had decided that
Dee Dee wanted him, in the most carnal way. He smiled his yellow, gap-toothed
grin and whispered, "See ya later, sugar," and walked into the cacophony of
music, smoke, laughter and noise.Hoyt did not like the music much ("PLAY GARTH!!" he yelled, but was ignored),
it was that loud rock-punk-rap shit with junglebunny rhythms and coarse lyrics.
He noticed too there weren't very many women around. The crowd was really into
the band and the excitement was infectious. He quickly got into the spirit of
things by watching boisterous games of pool, darts and something called
foosball, which looked like some kinda of game for retards.Hoyt downed three more Buds watching the Carolina Panthers getting their asses
whipped in a night game on the big screen TV and asked for a couple shots of
Wild Turkey to commiserate their inevitable loss to the New Jersey Giants. He
noticed that a bunch of surfer types seemed to dominate the crowd and some of
them looked familiar. Loud conversations erupted in various groups and riotous
laughter burst forth intermittently. Whoever these guys were they seemed to know
how to party. Maybe they weren't so bad after all, for candyassed surfers.The band slammed through two sets of loud songs. Hoyt thought they were probably
pretty good, if you liked that kind of crap. The fat lead singer was a great
showman, he had the crowd in the palm of his hands. What few women were there
were in constant motion from dancing with most all of the surfers. Though there
were a few locals, most everyone seemed to be from out of town, yet they all
seemed to know each other. The woman called Dee Dee wandered around the room
easily visiting small pockets of people then moving on or going off to dance.
She was obviously well known and very friendly. Hoyt knew once he had Dee Dee
in his sights she could never resist his good looks and natural manliness. She
was his. It was not a matter if, but when.Long around midnight the band started letting wannabees and hangers-on sit in
while they went off to drink or dance. The pick-up players were a sorry bunch of
middle-aged hacks but they managed to hold a three-chord blues tune together for
awhile. A couple of the more lubricated spectators croaked, "Play FREEBIRD!!"
Hoyt was getting antsy to impress his target for the night and he approached Dee
Dee, who was talking to a large guy she called Todd, from behind"Hey there Darlin Dee Dee, did you save some energy for me?" Hoyt slurred in
Dee Dee's ear, noting that her nickname did not come from what she was packing
under her sweater, but he understood most Yankee women were that way. Not like
Southern girls.Dee Dee pulled back quickly but not fast enough to avoid Hoyt's viselike grip on
her forearm."Well, no Hoyt," Dee Dee started sweetly, I'm really tired and I think I'm just
going to hang out with my friends, for a short while then go home."The repulsed look in Dee Dee's eyes deflated Hoyt's desire which quickly turned
to rage as he realized in front of all of these surfing pigfuckers his honor and
the honor of all Southern men was being disrespected, and by a Yankee woman at
that. NO woman had a right to decline the attention of a true Southern
Gentleman.Hoyt tried once more to convince her, his bravery fueled by booze and the
antiquated courage of ancestral pride and false entitlement. "Come on Darlin,
let's blow this dump and go back to my place for some real partying.""Uh, no thanks Hoyt, I'd prefer to stay here with my friends." Dee Dee blurted
with some amount of anguish but not anger in her voice. Her eyes locked with
those of the huge man standing just in front of her.Out of the corner of his eye Hoyt could see the mountain of a man named Todd
start to move. He wouldn't let some pissant Northerner keep him from his chosen
prey. Hoyt had flattened bigger men with just one punch. In a rage Hoyt
backhanded Dee Dee across the face with a sound that cracked like a whip and cut
through the loud music like a knife."WHAT'S THE MATTER YOU FUCKIN' YANKEE BITCH, I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO DANCE
WITH??!!!!" Hoyt screamed in Dee Dee's astounded face, shocked at his own
violence but convinced she deserved it. Stunned, Dee Dee stood stock still, the
red glow of a hand print already forming on her cheek.There are times in our lives when the random forces of nature take over our
destiny and we are helpless to control them. Often we unleash these forces with
a simple act of stupidity, foolishness, or anger. Hoyt Barnwell sensed he was
about to experience one of these very moments. He recalled later that in his
entire life alone in the woods hunting coon, or as a teen locked in his barn
lookin at his Pa's nudie mags, he could never, ever remember it being as quiet
as it was just seconds after he hit the girl. It was not exactly a complete
silence like when he took Play Doh and jammed it in his ears as a kid, requiring
a trip to the clinic to get it removed. In fact, he could clearly remember the
soft hum of the band's amplifiers in the background, and the whispered
expression of one of the men on the bandstand who was almost but not quite out
of range of the microphone, saying "Holy shit, he's a dead man."But for that fraction of a second before Hoyt's world, as he imagined it , would
cave in, he blissfully believed that though he was presently surrounded on all
sides by huge hulking men that starred at him unblinkingly with laser red eyes,
he would get out of this bad spot using his natural wit and winning personality.
The next day he'd be joking about this with his hungover buddies saying, "Hey
you guys shoulda come last night. Guess what I did? Haaahaaahha."Unfortunately for Hoyt this notion would be quickly shattered (along with his
nose) as the entire population of a joint called Finnegan's rose up in unison
and set upon him like a pack of jackals. What was both disturbing and
comforting to Hoyt at the time he was receiving the worst beating of his life
was the sound of a voice that rang out clearly above all others just before he
passed out, "NO RICO, NOT THE MACHETE!!!" He guessed then, though he was
unable to breathe through his cartilage and blood clotted nose, things were not
going so badly. He would of course, be wrong.Officer Riley Chun of the Dare County Sheriff's Office was on duty, pulling
graveyard on the Columbus Day weekend, a perk of being second in command. So far
that night he'd broken up a domestic argument, helped a stranded motorist, and
responded to a drunk and disorderly at the campgrounds. All in all a very
peaceful night.An hour before dawn he took a call from a visiting fisherman from Pennsylvania
saying there was something very unusual and very suspicious on the beach near
the former site of the Light House and it involved a delirious man and a
contraption that looked like some sort of catapult. Chun had gotten prank calls
before and at first guessed this was one of he many drunken comedians he'd dealt
with before. But the sincerity and amount of detail the fisherman offered far
exceeded the normal prank stories he usually got. Since he was within an hour of
the end of his shift Riley decided he'd take a ride out to the beach and see for
himself.In his report that day Officer Chun would have to describe what he witnessed as
one of the most bizarre events he'd ever seen in Cape Hatteras.On the beach was a monstrous contraption almost 12 feet tall, which when he
researched it later he found was a hybrid of a medieval Trebuchet. Basically a
catapult type siege engine used by warring armies to fling large stones at one
another. The pyramid of heavy timbers held a long flinging arm that was counter
weighted at one end with a huge box full of large stones (some illegally taken
from the groins that formed the beach) gravel and sand. Attached to the flinging
arm was a length of heavy rope which trailed back under the upright timbers and
which had attached at it's end a cargo net type basket. In the basket at the end
of the rope was… a naked man, lashed to a boogieboard and bound with fishing
line, nylon rope, rotting fish, hooks, lures, floats, empty beer cans, a cowboy
hat and a clump of party confetti which was later found to be superglued to
the man's private parts.Oddly the man, identified later as Hoyt Barnwell of Rocky Mount, North Carolina,
also had painted toenails, various statements about loving Yankees written on
his arms, chest and back with lipstick and both his nipples were pierced with
small fish hooks which Chun guessed were not inserted using any anesthetic.
"Damn," Chun began to think, "this poor bastard was having a bad day. It
would get a lot worse before it got better."A sign on a stake in the sand documented that the man had been left in this
manner as punishment for striking a woman, a person held in very high regard by
witnesses to the crime. Further it stated this machine was capable of flinging
him a distance of 100-150 meters into the ocean, and that the trigger mechanism
was booby trapped to do just that should anyone fiddle with it and try to remove
him before the local press was informed how to disarm it. Media coverage of this
humiliation was a prerequisite for getting him released safely.Officer Chun got on his two-way and immediately called the Sheriff at home, then
a Fire & Rescue team down from Nags Head. He also called the Coast Guard to
send a small Zodiac offshore, just in case. He found it curious that this man
and this contraption would be found in such an unlikely place. But then he began
to recall some suspicious reports that had come into the Sheriff's Office over
the last few days.First there was a noise complaint from neighbors next to a rental property
called the Tory House, of a large group of men who apparently had come from all
over the country to party, surf, sail and indulge in other questionable
activities. Officer Chun had answered that complaint and actually recognized a
few of the men from when he was surfing one morning. He had a heart to heart
talk with the leaders of the group and told them what behavior would be
acceptable, and for the most part the group had been well behaved if
conspicuously mischievous looking. He noted that several of the men who were
very mechanically inclined seemed to be building or fixing something in garage
next to the house and guessed at the time they were repairing somebody's car.Next came the report of a live raccoon crashing through the skylight of one of
the beachfront homes in the middle of the night. The curious part of that was
there were no trees nearby for the raccoon to fall from, and the skylight was
not only very high but also very sturdily built.Finally, the Coast Guard got a report one night from a night fisherman who was
trolling offshore about 250 yards. He said they had been bombarded with
watermelons one of which struck the small wheelhouse of his boat shattering the
windshield.Officer Chun continued to look at the ominous machine and some how pieced
together a slim connection to these reports. The task at hand would now be to
somehow rescue this poor man and not cause him any more harm.The sun was quickly rising and some surfers and beachcombers began to gather to
see what was going on. None of the men from the Tory House seemed to be in the
crowd. Minutes later Sheriff Bodkin showed up to assess the situation. The
Sheriff was an old time Southern lawman and there wasn't anything he hadn't seen
or dealt with except urban riots in his 35 years of policing."What's the situation Chun?" the Sheriff swaggered down to within 20 feet of
the scene."Well sir, we have a male Caucasian, approximately 45 years old, named Hoyt
Barnwell, who's got himself lashed to a boogie board and loaded into what
appears to be a fully operational catapult. The sign says…..""I can read the sign you idjot," the Sheriff burst out, "what's the chances
it's true?""Well I don't know really, I guess we'd better be cautious and believe what it
says."The Sheriff was up for re- election in November and did not want an incident to
compromise his cushy job and sure fire win. Already he could see the local media
gathering in the parking lot, setting up their Microwave towers, and hauling
video and still camera equipment to the scene. He needed to resolve this
situation quickly and safely, but in full view of the reporters.Sheriff Bodkin walked around the catapult several times observing how the arm
and basket containing Barnwell were cocked and restrained. It appeared as though
a thick hawser was the main restraining mechanism and that whatever trigger
there was needed to release that rope. It all looked very secure and it was the
Sheriff's guess this was not a working catapult at all and in fact the whole
thing was some elaborate prank.The Fire and Rescue teams showed up soon and the Coast Guard zodiac was now
cruising offshore just beyond the surf line. The Sheriff had jurisdictional
authority and what he said would go. Chun had tried to talk to Barnwell but the
man was almost incoherent with pain and looked very uncomfortable. The Rescue
team would later find that things like video tape, beer cans, CD's of a group
called Barry and the Penetrators, fishing floats, lures, pieces of surf wax
and voodoo dolls had been superglued to Barnwell's bare skin in strategic
locations. In addition to a broken nose, some ugly abrasions and a few shards of
embedded beer bottle glass, some deep lacerations on his head, legs and buttocks
had been primitively sewn up using light filament fishing line and not sutures.
Barnwell would be one hurting cracker for quite awhile.Finally, with things heating up and the Rescue team not coming up with any
evidence there was a booby trap, Sheriff Bodkin decided to take the bull by the
horns and do something heroic. He started toward Barnwell slowly, in full view
of the now excited news media, making sure they would get footage of him
rescuing this poor man.Just as the Sheriff got within a foot or two of the catapult, his foot stepped
on a trip wire that was concealed under the soft sand. A small but intense flash
of phosphorous flame from a concealed detonator was seen igniting and searing a
part of the hawser that was chocked to hold the arm of the catapult in place.
In less than 2 seconds (less time than it took for Sheriff Bodkin to turn to the
cameras, smile sheepishly and say, "whoops.") the rope was burned through and
the concentrated kinetic energy contained in the Trebuchet was suddenly and
quite spectacularly released.With a deceptively smooth Swwwooooosh, Hoyt Barnwell was launched high in the
air, to the collective ohhhhsss and ahhhhhs of the gathered crowd, similar in
appreciation to what you would hear during a colorful fireworks display. As
Hoyt cleared the shoreline and headed out over the water you could hear him
yelling clearly, "I'M SORRY DEE DEE!!" Where upon he far outreached the
cruising Coast Guard zodiac. Lucky for Hoyt he was firmly attached to a faded
pink boogie board. Unluckily for Hoyt it was lashed to his back causing him to
end up, after landing spectacularly with a big splash, face down in the ocean.
The net result was that during the very short time it took for the coasties to
reach him and on top of everything else that had happened to him since the
previous night, he almost drowned.Hoyt Barnwell decided at that very moment he would give up surf fishing and
never travel to the Outer Banks again.Officer Chun's report would later reveal he had warned the Sheriff of the
possibility of a booby trap and the media ran with the story of the Sheriff's
overt grandstanding to insure his re-election. In the firestorm of outrage that
ensued over the Sheriff's gross negligence and poor judgement, he was forced to
consider early retirement (or be fired) and Chun who was second in years
experience was promoted to acting Sheriff until a special election could be
called.Officer Chun immediately mounted an investigation but found a reticent wall of
silence among any and all surfers in the area who might know something about the
mysterious crew of renters at the Tory House. When he persisted in tracking
down the rental documents he found out the place had been leased to a man who
apparently had friends in very high places with three letters in the name (CIA).
Chun was informally encouraged to cease and desist his investigation. The
owners of the home found no evidence of unusual activity except for a large
amount of wood shavings and sawdust someone had placed very neatly around the
landscaping for mulch. That and the four empty ½ kegs of exotic beers they found
stacked in the garage. They must have left quickly, the deposit alone was over
$100.After the incident Hoyt Barnwell was taken to the nearest hospital, treated and
released the next day. He never implicated anyone nor pressed charges, but his
friends said later he was thinking of suing the Dare County Sheriff's
Department. They claimed too that Hoyt was never the same after that day.Officer Chun marked his calendar for the year 2002 to keep a very close eye on
the activities of the Tory House during the month of October. He made a special
note to ask around among the locals about anything called a Guidopalooza.The Trebuchet is now the property of one of the hang gliding schools up by
Jockey Ridge. Their new attraction launches thrillseekers off the dunes into the
bay, much to the delight of tourists. The insurance waiver is 14 pages long.
-Foontonio Foonarelli, event story teller GP2K1
Posted to the alt.surfing newgroup
Date: 13 Aug 2001 19:04:23 -0700
From: Foon <foon@sanonofre.com>
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: this is gonna Hoyt (long-nsc) a GP2K1 prequel