February 21, 2008
Tour Blog: Duluth — Dog Bites Man
Written by Girth McDürchstein on February 21, 2008 11:14 AM
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Happy Heartland Tour -- The Midwest '08
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On Sunday morning, Riffs went out for his usual nude jog (although we’re so far up north, he could only make it semi-nude). He stumbled into the motel around 8:15 and collapsed on the floor, and that’s when we all saw it: a blood-soaked right calf, gnarled pink flesh, obvious bite marks.
“Christ, Riffs, what happened?” Carl wondered.
Riffs had lost consciousness, so we force-fed him some of Margo’s pain pills while Mikey stitched and dressed his wound. As an inevitable consequence of his drug-running days, Mikey is an expert in light-to-moderate field surgery.
“Looks to me like a dog bite,” Mikey said. We could hardly understand him because he held a pen-sized Maglite in his mouth like a cigarette as he used both hands to sew up the wound. “Size and pattern, I’d say it was a beagle, maybe three years old.”
“A beagle? You mean like Snoopy?” Margo asked. I couldn’t wait until her prescriptions ran out.
“Yeah,” Mikey said. “They’re pretty territorial, although I wouldn’t think one would mangle a guy unless he was rabid or something.”
“Oh shit,” I said. “On top of everything else, now Riffs has rabies?”
“Maybe,” Mikey said. “I’m not a doctor.”
“Nor a bass player,” I added.
“Anyway,” Mikey said, “if he regains consciousness, we might want to take him to a doctor to get checked out.”
Riffs woke up about 20 minutes later. “Where am I?” was the first thing he asked, his voice hoarse and dry.
Carl and I exchanged somewhat alarmed glances. I’m usually forced to edit Riffs down to something coherent. He’s suffers from an acute schizoaffective disorder that forces his brain to chatter randomly whenever he wants to speak. He sounds a lot like that piano genius from the movie Shine, but we’ve all known him so long that we can cut through it and get at the heart of what he says—which is what I write on the blog, to save time and the patience of our fans.
You have to understand the severity of this illness. For as long as I’ve known him, Riffs has never even managed a simple “hello” when he meets a person or answers the phone. It’s usually something along the lines of “Hello is what she said and then she said it to me and when I went to the general store on East Lee Street in the town of you-know-where, I felt a slap upon my face, a slap of greatness for hello.” I mean, what the fuck is that? Just say “hi,” dude.
Well, he can’t, so he doesn’t. I have to tell you, though: this time, when he woke up, he said, “Where am I?” Three words. That’s it.
“You’re in the motel, Riffs,” I said.
“Wow,” he said. Just “wow.” Then: “Last thing I remember, I was out jogging, and a dog came at me.”
“What the fuck, man? You’re talking normal,” said Margo.
“What’s her case?” Riffs asked.
I said, “She’s high—”
“I AM NOT!” she roared.
I sighed. “Okay, she’s lying on a motel dresser, saying whatever mean shit comes to her head. You be the judge.”
“We got a show tonight?” Riffs asked.
“No,” I said. “No, not for almost a week.”
“Good,” Riffs said. “Real good. That’ll give you enough time to find a replacement.”
Suddenly, Mikey and Carl were less interested in their Magnum, P.I. rerun.
“A…what?” I asked.
Riffs groaned mildly, then said, “The last 20 years, I’ve felt like I’ve been in prison.”
“I know what that’s like,” I said sympathetically.
Riffs ignored me. “I had this…what I guess you can call a ‘brain attack,’ which took me down. The way I was, I couldn’t get a job—hell, I didn’t even want a job. I became so obsessed with the guitar, I lost sight of everything else. You were the only guy who’d take me in a band and keep me in a band, and I know it’s only because I’m probably the only rhythm guitarist who wouldn’t—couldn’t—complain about playing any leads.
“But I need a job,” he continued. “I need to do something important with my life. More important than what I’ve done here. More important than all my other weird shit. So soon as this leg heals, I’m gone. Sorry to leave you in the lurch in the middle of a tour, but—it’s now or never.”
“Huh,” I said. “Say, Mikey and Carl, would you like to have a private chat in the bathroom?”
“Not really,” said Carl.
“Too bad!”
I grabbed his arm and yanked him into the bathroom. Mikey followed, closing the door behind us.
“What the fuck?!” I snapped.
“Can we turn a light on?” Mikey asked.
I flipped the switch. Instead of turning on normal lights, it turned on an infrared heat lamp, bathing us in sweaty red light.
“What the fuck?!” I repeated
“Did anyone notice Riffs is acting kind of strange?” Carl asked.
“Why do you think we’re in here?”
“Why do you think I didn’t want to follow you?”
I chose to get back to the matter at hand: “Riffs has lost his shit.”
“Come on,” Mikey said. “For the first time, it seems like he has it together.”
“We need him to get a rabies shot, goddammit!” I said. “I am not going to let him ruin another tour!”
“Sorry,” Mikey said. “I’m not gonna help.”
I groaned.
“What? You think I’d be in this shitty band if I could do anything else?”
“Hey!” I aimed my finger at his face. “We’re great and you know it!”
Mikey shrugged.
“You two distract him while I call an ambulance,” I said.
Mikey and Carl exchanged glances that vacillated between annoyance and disappointment.
“Fine,” Mikey sighed.
They stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door. Through the door, I could hear them chatting it up with Riffs, who seemed unusually quiet.
I pulled out my portable and dialed 911. I said, “One of our friends got bit by a dog. I think he has rabies.”
“Again? Was it a beagle?” the 911 dispatcher asked.
“Of course.”
“We’re sending an ambulance as soon as possible.”
Trying my best to sound desperate, I exclaimed, “Oh, thank God!” Then I hung up.
I got out of the bathroom and saw Mikey and Carl lying on an otherwise empty bed.
“Goddammit! Where did he go?”
“Sorry, man. He ran out when we were in the can together.”
“And you couldn’t catch him? He just got bit by a dog!”
Mikey shrugged.
I ran out of the motel room and saw Riffs hobbling near the edge of the parking lot.
“Goddammit, Riffs!”
He froze like a deer in headlights, then started to hobble more quickly. Just then, the ambulance approached. For a moment, I thought it would hit him. Instead, it stopped right beside him. Two men in black masks leaped out, grabbed Nicky, and threw him in the back of the ambulance, then drove away. I caught the hospital name: St. Olaf.
When we got to the hospital, we discovered the FBI has had a file on Riffs for almost as long as he’s been crazy. It surprised me, because nothing about his behavior struck me as unusual or worthy of investigation. At any rate, they implanted a chip in his skull that would track his movements and send periodic electric shocks through his brain if he had negative thoughts (this is allowed under the PATRIOT Act), then administered the only known cure for rabies: 68 shots to the back.
Riffs remained laid up in the hospital for three days, until they realized we’d never pay the bills. They threw us out at that point, so we raided the cafeteria before taking him back to the motel to rest up before we head off to Fargo.
Unfortunately, we had to cancel the show at the Encounter in Duluth. It’s too bad, too. It sounded like a really nice sex club.
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