Crazy Ed

An Introduction

By Benjamin Hodgens

It would seem that there is an allotment of craziness that is evenly distributed about the earth. More times than not, this craziness appears to take the form of someone both notoriously and fondly known as "Crazy Ed." One could observe that the people who inherit this craziness are often called Ed, whether by fate, chance, or the unintentional cruelty of his parents. It could be said that nearly everyone knows such a person; if not, they should.

This particular Crazy Ed wasn't truly named Ed. Not entirely. You see, his name of birth was Arthur Edward Browning the Third.

How he came about being called Ed is quite simple, really. His father was also named Arthur, and his mother would become greatly frustrated - frustrated, that is, with having two Arthurs. Not simply with there being two of them, but with both of them. They were so much alike, so very... crazy.

Sometimes, she'd call, "Arthur, come down here for a moment," wanting Arthur the Second. But the Third would come down instead. Sometimes the Third might even eat the food that was on the table with the Second exclusively in mind, and Mother wouldn't catch him before it was all gone. So, by the age of 7, Arthur the Third had become "Ed." Just plain, old, boring "Ed."

I strongly suspect that his unbalanced nature was not a trait that originated with him; as his name indicates he is the third in his line. This, of course, stipulates that prior to the Third, there came a Second, and before him, a Senior: the start of it all; it is likely that he inherited his insanity with his name.

But all this happened long before I met Ed. We met my sophomore year of high school at a little boarding school, where people would often attend a year and then return home. At the time, he was already several inches over six feet tall and had a broad frame; but he was only thirteen. This astounded me; I was 16 and over 6 feet tall, yet he made me appear a peculiar bantam. I first took him for a junior or senior, not the freshman that he was.

The first time we met was on the first day of school. I walked through the reverberating hall and stumbled upon his open doorway. He and his mom were unpacking box upon box of his belongings: books, clothing, remote controlled cars, computers, stereo equipment, a microwave, fridge, and several cases of retail food goods. In contrast with my meager 2 bags of clothing and bedding, I was amazed, and mentioned it to him tactlessly. His nonchalant response: he still had several more loads to bring in from the truck.

Ed quickly established a reputation amongst the other students as a person whose reality was not entirely hinged on the tenants of our universe. He would make broad, sweeping statements which none of them understood. He would steal pencils and put them on other people's desks, and then play mind games with the people involved. They would mutter under their breath, "Blast it, Brownlee," but would let his offense slide nearly every time. It seems he was most generally regarded with a shake of the head and a dismissal, for nobody understood him. Maybe they thought it safer than having contest with him.

Ed was also a lady's man. It wasn't long into our first semester that he had conquered the hearts of all the girls in his class. It's not that they were completely head over heals for his blond curly hair, blue eyes, or square Aryan features - although I'm sure many of them were fairly interested in those things. No, most of these girls were smitten by him in a much different manner. They were trapped by him just as a limp-eared beagle pup would trap them: with a cute demeanor. As the pup, he would have their attention, no matter what foul trick he played, or how contrary his interests were.

On most days after classes, Ed meandered through the halls of our dorm with a swaying, strutting gait, walking from doorway to doorway, conversing. His cowboy boots made a clumping sound on the cement floor that one could hear from several rooms in either direction. On the warmer days he would go shirtless, displaying his strong broad chest and a jagged 6” scar on his abdomen. Most rooms he rarely entered, but instead stood in the doorway and footled about with the inhabitants. My room was one of the few that he would come into with an honest intention to socialize.

Several rooms he would saunter into, casually making himself a seat amongst the busy conversation. From his new perch he'd listen to the conversations as they traveled from one side of the room to the other, silently filtering the words of the participants for gems of stupidity. A smile would crease his face, and his eyes would gleam with a malicious glaze when he finally heard one.

These gems would dig into his mind and hurt the very core of his being - for him to allow the existence of such stupidity was an affront to God - but he suffered the pain of the burden in order to spread it to others through retelling and creative elaboration.

I was one of the people he deemed worthy of the often retelling of something overheard in another room. Many an afternoon he would stroll into my room unheard and find great pleasure in my startled surprise when he would sneak up behind me. He would then undertake the seemingly grievous task of reiterating a tale of great human failing, one-hundred percent true, and carefully crafted for my ears.

It was not of rare occurrence for Ed to swiftly take a tangent in our conversations and begin elaborating on how he would take over the world. He always made careful detail of the fact that he alone would be potentate of his eventual autocracy; no bureaucrat or paper shuffler would be needed, for he would rule with divine authority, risking nothing to the foolish behavior of mere humans. All those that opposed would be swiftly plucked from the populace by secret agents, their bodies to be splayed and their visceral innards to be mailed to the offender's friends and relatives.

During these verbal preparations, his words would sometimes trail off, and he would gaze at me. I was never quite sure if it was the absent-minded daze of a person lost in fantasy, or the beguiled look of a predator about to viscerate its prey. On the rare times I looked back into his eyes, I had the distinct feeling of being a snowshoe rabbit, all areas of my escape cut off by a wolf.

He might have a sinister grin spread across his face as his gaze deepened and he elaborated upon an inane detail of his thoroughly contrived punishment system. Sometimes he would then tilt his head back in laughter, or he might gradually look away and chuckle to himself. I began to wonder if the scar on his chest might have something to do with his masochistic nature.

The likelihood of his claims coming to fruition were greatly increased in my mind by his tales of his heritage. While I thought my family lineage was marvelous, having come from blood of Vikings, American patriots and pilgrims, intellectuals and secret government agents, it paled in comparison to his. The Brownlee Clan was once a notorious nomadic band of criminals in western Canada, and as recent as Ed Senior's generation, they had combated the tribes of the American Midwest while moving south to Nebraska. The other side of his family descended from Hitler's cousin. He was seemingly destined to rule the world.

The only person that ever seemed to challenge the credibility of Ed's words outright was a jolly friend of Ed's named Virgil. Virgil meant well, and had a kind heart, but he simply loathed everything Ed said. They would bicker like an elderly couple on vacation. I suppose it was because they'd grown up together in the same rural Nebraskan town, and were both well studied in the topic of the other's inadequacies. Ed's response was invariably a roll of the eyes, a shake of the head, and a friendly pat on the back - all accompanied by a pitying intonation of “Virgil, Virgil, Virgil.” I was surprised that Ed had never had the boy done away with, personally.

One day Virgil sauntered into my room, his 290 pound, 5'9” frame taking a sizable chunk out of my room's real estate. He was visibly flustered. The nostrils in his considerable nose were flaring, and it was readily apparent that he wanted to tell me something.

He didn't wait for permission to talk. I turned my back to him as I focused more intently on my comic books. Like Ed, Virgil had a flare for the dramatic, and would juice out a soliloquy at any opportunity. Unlike Ed, he was quite emotional about the emergency of the minute, and would occasionally cry. With a deep breath and a tear in his eye, he described to me how Ed was behaving around the girls, as if it were bad news and my responsibility to fix it. Ed was flirting with them and treating them poorly, apparently, yet none of them really cared.

Turning towards him for a brief moment, I let him know I'd talk to Ed about it. I turned the page on my comic book, making note to compliment Ed on his conquests later on that night.

Ed and I would often sit for the better part of our evening study time and yammer on about his various undertakings and interests. He had many of them, and all of them seemed deeply fascinating. I thought them mostly true, for he had a large degree of factual understanding to back up his claims; however, one could never be truly sure. There were quite a few tales, and it took a large swallowing of gumption to believe that anyone his age would be allowed to do half the things he did.

His favorite topics were those which get budgeted large sums of money in Hollywood action films: explosions, powerful vehicles, and weapon systems. He'd tell me of all the wondrously dangerous things he had done on his ranch in Nebraska.

The various Frankenstein vehicles which he had about the ranch were outrageous: a dune buggy with two Ninja racing bike engines, a pickup truck with a semi engine that could push nearly 180 miles an hour over the road. They even had an Unimog - the large vehicles which are used to pull the space shuttle - which had singlehandedly replaced the functionality of 4 John Deere tractors.

There was also the story of the 10-foot long 'potato gun' which he launched a watermelon over a quarter mile with. All his claims were tempered with talks of 30-aught-6 rifle ammunition loads, and tales of .50-caliber Desert Eagle Mark handguns nearly ripping the arms off of an unskilled marksman.

I would have let all of Ed's talk slip from my mind, if I had not had something higher than his word to base my judgment on. What was needed was an executive voice that could aid either credence or contradiction to the stories which buzzed about my mind, looking for a home. I finally met his father near the end of the school year at a school function. I volunteered to serve punch.

There was a large clustering of parents - about 120 in all - standing about the cafeteria. Most of the men looked exactingly normal for the region: regular-cut Wrangler jeans with dress boots tucked neatly underneath, and a crisp dress shirt with a bolo tie. Looking across the room, I had no way of knowing which of my fellow classmates belonged with which adult cowboy. That was when a stocky man about forty years old - dressed with the same template as the others - walked towards the punch bowl.

As soon as this man was within several feet of me, I had the creeping suspicion that he was Marcus Browning the Second. It wasn't so much his physical characteristics - he didn't look that much like Ed when it came down to it - as it was the aura of this presence. When he walked and stood, he radiated a smooth confidence of conquest.

He took a cup of punch from the table. When he looked at me and said thanks, I was sure of it: he was undoubtedly the Second. The same predatory intelligence was in his eyes.

That was when I began began to strongly invest in my friendship with Ed the Third.