21 Tales

by Jerry L

  Doug said, “Your place of business is between your legs and 300 feet isn’t far enough to get away from the dead carp smell! Bye Telly.” Biggster was chuckling while unloading boxes. Doug motioned around the shop, “’Big’, just put them anywhere, it don’t matter.”

  By 3:00 the day was toast. Four little $100.00 jobs in three days wasn’t going to pay the bills. With Ledger gone the country club accounts had dried up. The individual accounts had gradually followed. The Mexicans were let go one by one and the trucks sold to settle Ledger’s portion of the business. Ledger’s three wives and their lawyers had sucked a hell of a lot more than half of the business dry. Doug had to be out of the shop in two weeks. He was sole owner of one pickup and Biggster was the last employee.

  Then Biggster turned in his two-day notice. It was Friday and the big man was going to work for Lawn Pros or someplace like that. Doug paid him $150.00, they shook hands and by 3:07 Biggster was gone. Doug got a pint bottle of vodka from the freezer compartment of his old Zenith fridge and spun the top into the trash can. He took a drink, and gave the, old High School battle cry “YaaaEkk! The Skyy is the limit! Get at it… boys and girls!”

  While he was passed out his hand flopped down near the old Coke machine and tangled in the Brown Recluse spider’s web. The spider bit him and a few seconds later, bit him again. He unconsciously crushed it against the wall.

  When he woke up/came to, his hand was on fire and he had two messages on his phone. The first was Mrs. Marston, “Doug, we won’t be needing your services any longer. Thank you. Bye.”

  “There goes a ten year account down the drain…” he told the dark shop.

  The second message was from Tawdry, “Hey Pop, sorry about your birthday. Uh… Pop, you looked like crap yesterday. I told my counselor about you and she thinks you might have become a recluse, whatever that is. Don’t be so reclusive Okay? Take better care of yourself Okay! Gotta go… Love you Bye.”

  While running cold water over his hand he thought, “Tawdry? What kind of name was that to give a baby? Doug had looked it up in the dictionary: Cheap, gaudy, flashy, crude, and showy. The girl was none of those things, but of course, Telly ‘just loved the name! She just loved it! So, of course, she had gotten her way. His hand was red and swollen. The ice cubes and the vodka helped though.

  By Sunday afternoon when Telly called, he was on his last bottle of vodka; his last pack of Viceroy Cigarettes, and his hand was blue and swollen to the size of a Nerf football. Three red lines were running up his arm from the site of the spider bite. Doug wasn’t as concerned with the state of his arm as he was with the fact that he was on his last pack of cigarettes. Viceroy cigarettes were no more.

  Doug was chain smoking the last pack in town, maybe the state. Brown and Williamson had succumbed to legal pressure and closed up shop. The cigarettes that Doug had smoked since he was sixteen had gone the way of the Dodo. Maybe the same place that his business, his marriage, and hand were going.

  Doug answered his phone, “Hello?”

  It was Telly, “Doug, we have to talk… You were at the house, did you…?”

  He lit the last cigarette and crushed the pack.

  Next door to Doug’s shop, beyond the connecting cinder block wall, was what should have been a condemned, empty warehouse, except that; a Chinese businessman stored forty pallets of illegal fireworks, ten barrels of used solvent and two boxes of greasy rags in it. The rags spontaneously combusting were what really started the fire. It hadn’t been the drunk next door like the Fire Marshal said!

  When the fireworks exploded, the last thing Telly heard, before the WHAAMMMM! Of the explosion, was Doug interrupting her, “Babe, I didn’t steal your money… You know that Shadry’s boyfriend is a cokehead, and we both know that he used to be your boyfriend…. So, ask him… I don’t have time for this shit anymore!”

  And he didn’t, because the cinder block wall covered him and the recliner before the roof fell in… The dial tone quit just as the fire started, and a tinny voice notified Telly that: “The number you dialed is no longer in service, please check the listing and dial again.” She heard the ‘BANG’ and ducked down. Someone was having a hell of a party nearby!

  A rocket climbed up into the clouds and sounded like it exploded right on top of the house. The burning cardboard cylinder thumped on the roof, and rolled into the leaves piled in the valley. The leaves began to smolder. Telly stood and looked out the window. A Roman Candle arced through the sky and exploded overhead.

  The same breeze that was pushing the fireworks her direction ignited the smoldering dried leaves on her roof. For some reason, in the quiet before the next explosion that shattered the front window, she thought she heard that stupid freekin Doug… laughing!

  7: The Pano

  The man in the back seat thought to himself that if the big car was an animal, it would be a black shark moving through the reef and the lesser fishes, with ease and impunity; king of all he surveyed, and the man smiled. Antonio Brusciacho was feeling good! Real Good! And why not? The business at the port had finally come his way. Well it took a little persuasion here and a little display of friendship there, maybe a little showing of loyalty, a gift perhaps’ but, it finally came to pass.

  Then there was a little bonus in the form of the Grasso brothers. The old man was always fiercely a loner, owing allegiance to no man, but the boys had known Antonio in school and they additionally saw the value and mutual gains of allying with Mr. Brusciacho. Yeah, Mr. Brusciacho was feeling that things were going his way at last.

  An interesting thought was crossing Antonio’s mind, something to do with the Grasso family, something he couldn’t quite bring into focus when the phone rang. The second man in the back seat was big and with fluid grace he reached across the seat and flipped open a hardwood panel revealing a telephone handset. “Louis!” was his brisk reply.

  The big man’s face reflected no hint of the conversation and Antonio paid him little heed as his mind rolled over everything he could remember from the file he’d put together about the Grasso family. He forgot nothing; it would come to him in a minute.

  The man listened for almost a minute, then he cupped his hand over the receiver and spoke, “It’s Willie... Bronk is dead; he apparently had a heart attack while he was making his pickups. Old man Lee, the shopkeeper over on Delancy saw him stagger and clutch his heart. He fell against a wall and around the corner of a building. Lee ran over but Bronk looked dead so he went back and called Willie. Willie and Lester got there in about five minutes and when they checked him Bronk was deader than a doornail. Willie said the bag was gone.”

  Antonio’s eyebrows arched and he made a small frown, “And?”

  “Willie backtracked, figured there must be about two G’s in the bag. Lester had a chat with Lee, and Lester’s pretty well convinced the old man didn’t grab the bag. Then they told old man Lee to call the cops and report that he’d found the body. Willie and Lester started looking for who grabbed the bag off Bronk’s body and the first place they checked was the Saloon over on 26th, a block off of Delancy. Seems when they got there some kid was buying drinks and braggin’ that he just scored real big. They’re sittin’ there now.”

  Antonio’s face hardened, “What are they waiting for, they know what to do?”

  “The kid is Petey, the shine boy.”

  Antonio buzzed the driver and spoke through the intercom then he spoke softly to Louis, “Tell ‘em to keep an eye on him but don’t do anything.”

  “Petey, how are you, son”

  The young man turned to the sound of his name, a stupid smile on his face, and his features erupted into a huge grin. “Tony, how are you man? Hey, can I buy you a drink? Solly, please draw a beer for my friend Tony.”

  Soloman was frozen, his eyes the size of fifty-cent pieces.

  Antonio nodded ever so slightly and Soloman leaped into action, “Yes Sir Mr. Brusciacho. One beer coming up, Sir, anything for your friends Sir? Then there was the sound of the cle
aring of a throat, and Soloman became aware of Louis. “Oh Crap”, the barman thought, “it’s Louis! Big Louis! Big, and black”. Louis held a forefinger to his lips and as Soloman muttered “yessir”, the words all ran together in Solomon’s throat, but none came out.

  “Tony,” Petey excitedly exclaimed, “I did it, I did a Pano thing.”

  Antonio’s eyes became burning coals and he looked around the room.

  Willie and Lester were on opposite ends of the saloon, each covering one of the saloon’s doors and they wore identical expressions, something between shock and amazement. First, nobody called Mr. Brusciacho Tony and second, nobody used the old world term “Pano,” a tough guy, a ‘made man’. Usually ‘A Pano’ involved someone dying violently! It wasn’t a particularly complementary term, especially around Mr. Brusciacho or any one in his organization, and clearly no one said it to their faces.

  A couple of the saloons’ occupants had started to leave but at glances from Willie or Lester, changed their minds and instead just took the closest chair.

  “Petey,” Antonio asked, “What’s this Pano thing and what does it mean?

  “Oh yeah,” Petey replied, “I didn’t think. A swell guy, a classy guy like you wouldn’t know about that. A Pano” is a guy what takes nothin’ offen nobody. You know, a guy what stands up for himself?

  Antonio nodded assent and took a sip of the draft beer Soloman had placed in front of him. He was unmindful of Petey’s misinterpretation. Petey continued, “Well there was this guy and he used to screw with my old man all the time. Bronkowski was his name, Mr. Bronkowski. They came from the same place in the Old Country, my old man and Mr. Bronkowski, from someplace in Poland. And Bronkowski use to screw with my old man. My old man was pretty smart in the old country but all he could do here was open a store, he didn’t speak much English.

  Bronkowski was a crook and he used to take money from my old man. That was until my old man was shot when those south side pukers shot up the store. My old man and me was both shot. Well my Ma ran the store and I helped when I got out of the hospital and Mr. Bronkowski quit coming by and bothering us and I never seen him for a while.

  Well tonight I saw Mr. Bronkowski come around a corner and he was staggering and he grabbed his chest. Then he fell down. I was standing ten feet away when he fell and I saw this bag so I figured it was my chance so I grabbed his bag and ran.”

  Antonio could see that Petey was proud of himself, really proud. “I guess I showed that Polack somnabitch, huh? You don’t pull that crap on a Pano and get away from it. And guess what Tony?” Then Petey lowered his voice, “There was money in that bag. I think Mr. Bronkowski was atakin’ money from other people too.”

  Antonio put his arm around Petey’s shoulders and softly spoke to him; Petey nodded his head approvingly and smiled. The only part of the conversation anyone heard was Petey’s part, “Thanks Tony, gosh I’m sorry you can’t stick around but I’ll see you.”

  A few minutes later Louis got in the car and closed the door then he asked, “Dinner Boss?” Antonio nodded and Louis leaned forward and pushed the intercom button, “Take us to Maxim’s will you?”

  Anthony never looked at Louis, he simply began speaking. His voice was soft and low, kind of spooky-like, “Fifteen years ago Donato G. and his boy tried to knock off my old man and my Uncle Charles. They shot up a candy store in Northwood. Two was killed, my old man and the guy who owned the place, and one was wounded, a fourteen year old kid. The kid didn’t die but he had no blood to the brain for a while and he’s been a little goofy ever since. Uncle Charles tried to help the family but the kid’s mother refused everything; she wouldn’t take money from ‘crooks.’ Finally Uncle Charles was able to get the boy in a school and then that job shining shoes.”

  Antonio looked out the window, “That kid and me was pals in school together since the first grade, only he never came back to the seventh.”

  As Tony was finishing dessert, Louis slid into the booth, and told the waiter to bring him “What he’s, having and how about a cup of coffee?” The big man nodded to the boss and began, “Two things Mr. Brusciacho; The boys got Petey home fine, they had Soloman call and tell his Mom some cock and bull story about him winning a lottery so she hustled down to Solomon’s and policed him up.

  They had Old Man Lee to say that he’d paid Petey twenty-five hundred for the ticket so’s it would appear that Petey had maybe lost some and so’s she couldn’t get an exact fix on the amount. You know, since we didn’t know how much Bronk actually collected. Problem was, when she counted it, it come out twenty-nine.” Antonio smiled at the irony.

  “Second thing you asked me about Boss: Teresa Grasso. She went to State and took a degree in Medicine then a Masters. She went with a guy named Grayson, who went on to become a Doctor. Last year the Doc got married; but not to her. She never married and she isn’t seeing anyone.” A hint of a grin crept on the big man’s face, “And another thing Boss, you may have thought she may have looked good in the seventh grade but she looks a lot better now!”

  Antonio took a bite of a chocolate éclair and nodded, he thought to himself, “Yeah, this merger had a lot of possibility.”

  8: Bert the Shoe Man

  First published 8-5-2013

  Bert and Wilma lived off of the freeway that runs south of town. To get to their place: You get off the freeway, go north on the frontage road four miles, pass under the highway, go south four miles, and take a left. Their house is the next to last place on the right before you hit Pecos Creek. You can’t go any farther, because there’s no bridge.

  Bert put in thirty years with Trans Texas Gas and Oil. Of course they don’t exist as such now. They have been bought out twice since Bert retired, but the pension is still good. Wilma’s folks passed away within a year of each other and Wilma was left the home place. She and Bert moved in and set up house.

  They didn’t do too much as far as farming the place went. They leased the pastureland and ran a small produce stand over by the highway in the fall. Bert, and his pal Murry, grew some vegetables, and sold them from that old abandoned ‘Texas Star Ballroom’s’ parking lot on the frontage road. To tell the truth, they damn near gave them vegetables away. The folks came out from the city to buy fresh produce, and Bert and Murry had a hell of a lot of fun. It really wasn’t about the money anyway. Murry said that, “It was about choosing an ice cold watermelon from the stock tank! Ya can’t beat em!”

  The shoes… yeah, I was getting to that. Bert had a lot of fence posts around the place. About one post every twenty feet or so, he reckoned. 160 acres. Well hell, he had never gotten around to counting the darn posts, but there were a shit load. Bert knew that much. Well, the old people, Wilma’s folks, had a five wire fence. They had four strands of barbed wire, but the top strand was electrified, because of the horses.

  Bert and Wilma didn’t have any horses, or motorcycles either, for that matter. Bert avowed that, “He wouldn’t have anything around to ride on that had teeth or couldn’t stand up by itself!” He rolled up the electric wire and stacked it down by the creek for posterity. This left him with a good thirteen inches of bare post top multiplied by 160 acres. It bothered him somehow. Kind of like abandoned railroad tracks or abandoned telephone lines. Something was out of kilter, and that bothered him.

  The answer supplied itself in the form of a ‘Durango’ cowboy boot. A perfectly good boot lying next to the freeway! Shined, sporting silver toecaps, and heel caps. Bert stuck it on the top of the first empty post coming up the lane to the house. Hence, the ‘Shoe Man’ was born.

  Bert was overall, a pragmatist as far as his shoes went. He took them as they came. But, why mostly right hand, or foot as the case may be, boots and shoes? Seldom a left foot showed up. And also… why mostly men’s? He supposed that women took better care of their shoes. He had found some ladies high heels, but mostly, it was the men who either lost or threw their shoes from moving cars. There were of course a lot of children’s shoes. Bert figured that
they just threw them out for the hell of it.

  That Friday, Bert made the left off of the frontage road leading to his house. He was out of ‘Shoe Country’ now. There were only two houses on his lane. He wasn’t paying attention to the borrow pit and almost passed the blue and white sport shoe lying in the weeds. The quality of a true collector is that: Their subconscious was always on the job. Always looking for that proverbial ‘diamond in the goat’s ass’.

  Almost unconsciously, Bert slammed on the brakes. The dogs in the bed met the cab with thumps and yelps. ‘White Fang’ was half ‘Great Pyrenees’ and maybe half Holstein, as close as Bert could figure. ‘Black Tooth’, was truly a puzzle. Wilma thought maybe he was half Pit Bull, Duroc pig, and some form of Whippet. They also came from the freeway about the same time Bert commenced his shoe collecting. He supposed that their previous owners got a clue how butt-ugly they were going to be when they grew up and tossed them from moving cars.

  Wilma got both of them ‘fixed’ over at the Vets and now they accompanied Bert and Wilma on their various errands. Their names came from some ‘Soupy Sales’ T.V. show from Wilma’s youth. They soon became ‘Shoe Hunting’ hounds of the first degree. It was actually White Fang that noticed the sport shoe first. Her “WOOF!” had led Bert to put the binders on.

  The huge spotted dog was the first out of the pick-up bed. Black Tooth, being short legged and vertically challenged, took a little longer to hit the ground. White Fang retrieved the shoe and dropped it at Bert’s feet. Black Fang ran the ditch both directions searching for the shoe’s mate. He returned empty handed, so to speak, and slobbery mouthed. White Fang shook out her mane begging for a pat on the head.