Sax Taxson

NOTE - This section of the American Project contains adult language and content and is therefore not suitable for minors.

Episode 15

Sax had to run. Cheviot Machine and Screw was stifling in the mid August humidity. Those lazy hot days when the air sticks to your clothing Sax secretly hated. Sax was an autumn sort of guy, and was looking forward to the change of season coming up.

Sax liked to watch the leaves turn orange and red as they died.

With his 1977 Chevy Malibu, Sax boomed up U.S. 27 toward Sorbonne. The maroon body of the Malibu shimmied and swayed with the shocks and struts in the forward motion of the car, and the trunk lid bobbed up and down. Sax’s trunk lock was drilled out by some thieves last May, and he still had not repaired it.

On his way up to the ‘backroom’ to get the pump mechanism, Sax hit two squirrels, ran over a raccoon carcass and hit what he thought to be a Hungarian Vizsla. With each strike the trunk lid would ‘chomp’ ‘chomp’ ‘chomp’ up and down as the motion of the car was slightly altered by the tires running over mammalian bodies.

Gripping the steering wheel with a white knuckled ten o’clock, two o’clock, Sax Taxson smiled wide over top his thin frame every time an animal was hit. For a brief moment, seeing himself in the rearview mirror, Sax thought of himself as a pumpkin king, and it was his duty to kill small furry things on the roads of the American countryside.

The ‘backroom’ was actually in Morton, a tiny crossroads town ten miles outside of Sorbonne, with two honky tonks, one general store, a taxidermy shop, and two porn shops.

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Wheeling his car, which he had named Chomsky because of his affinity toward structuralist linguistics and analytic philosophy, Sax tuned the radio to an AM talk station. The radio in the ’77 Malibu named Chomsky was still a dial and pushbutton setup over a pull out ashtray. Sax found a station, and they were talking about guns.

I love machine guns, the AM radio on the dash said, I have one in my closet.

“Me too,” thought Sax Taxson. “Me fucking too.”

Sax Taxson had a large walk in closet, and an enormous basement filled with things. He actually owned the house he grew up in. Over on the west side of Cincinnati, and he enjoyed collecting things. Antiques. Flea market junk. The inside of Sax Taxson’s house looked like a scrap yard filled with mid American kitsch. Sax had talked with executives at not only Cracker Barrel, but also Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s about purchasing some décor, but no one responded.

“Put some of that on eBay,” Len Wiedeshofer told him one afternoon at Cheviot Machine and Screw. “Somebody’ll buy it.”

Truth was, Sax didn’t really want to get rid of any of his stuff. He enjoyed it. It comforted him. Now wheeling up to Morton in Chomsky, Sax was going to get a penis pump. Not for him, but for a water cannon.

The whole thing seemed ludicrous to Sax. A water cannon. For a guy named Henge. What the hell would a guy named Henge want with a water cannon? Just then Sax saw a calico cat on US 27, and wheeled Chomsky toward it.

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Photograph by Nythan James.