by Joe Derkacht
Episode Eight
Like most small beach towns, Driftwood Bay had its share of restaurants, in our case a fish and chowder house, a hamburger joint, and a pizza parlor. For the best chicken, everybody went to The Driftwood Drifter, one of two local taverns, whose cook split whole chickens down the breast and then deep fried them by halves, serving the succulently golden halves with a side of equally golden fries and a tiny paper cup of cole slaw, along with a choice of beverage. Since I wasn’t hungry for a hamburger, or for chowder or pizza, that day, I walked the four short blocks to the tavern.
You couldn’t miss The Drifter if you wanted to; distinctively Mission-style, with a brick façade, there was no other building like it in town or maybe even in the entire county. In a community built of Cape Cods, too many Ranch styles thrown up after the war years, and the occasional Craftsman or log house, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Even the local Catholic church, established sixty or seventy years earlier, had opted for nautical-themed architecture, with porthole windows and narrow shiplap siding painted in white.
When I reached the tavern, I was disappointed to find the takeout window closed and its World Famous Chicken sign unlighted. The tinted windows looking onto the street sputtered with neon displays advertising Blitz and Olympia. For international flavor they had a fiber optic Heineken sign that looked real enough to drink.
Despite the plenitude of neon, the interior looked dark and uninviting from the sidewalk. I wondered if the blinking OPEN sign was a forgotten relic, if the tavern had actually gone under without my having heard, or no one having remembered to come along to pull the plug.
There was one way to find out. I turned the doorknob and pushed my way inside. The interior wasn’t nearly as dark as I thought it would be. Beyond that, the first thing I noticed was a garishly lighted art deco jukebox standing against the opposite wall, a country tune pouring softly from its speakers. To my left, directly under the windows, I saw an ancient tabletop shuffleboard, complete with sand sprinkled over it.
Half of the floor space was taken up by tubular chrome chairs and small round tables, the other half by three pool tables plus a single table for snooker and one for air hockey.
It seemed the lunch hour rush, even if delayed by an hour, had yet to begin. To my right, two older men sat at the far end of the bar, staring into their beer glasses, with a dozen upholstered bar stools between them and a far younger man sitting near the door. The younger man held a stubby brown bottle in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Around him, both on the countertop and the scarified, ancient plank flooring, were scattered peanut shells.
Behind the bar, a fleshy, gray-haired woman in a white t-shirt advertising World Famous Chicken was busily drying beer glasses. Her eyes, framed by square, horn-rimmed spectacles, narrowed when she saw me, as if she recognized me but didn’t care for what she was seeing.
One other person was in the room, for the moment hunched over a pool table with his back turned to me. Everything about him seemed lackadaisical, from the way he held the stick in his hand as he surveyed the lie of the billiard balls across the green baize, to his posture, his shaggy black hair, and the baggy jeans that threatened to fall off unless he should soon hitch them back up.
When he made his shot, two or three balls went down at the same time. He walked around to the other end of the table and, without looking up or in my direction, surveyed it as if for a difficult golf shot. First impressions, I guessed, weren’t everything.
I walked to the bar. The woman stared, her lips tightening in a frown. Before I could open my mouth, she turned away to pick up another glass to dry.
“I-I-ah—” I began. “Don’t you have any chi—”
To my astonishment, she noisily cleared her throat, ignoring my stillborn request, and continued working her towel over the beer glass. The two men at the far end of the countertop swiveled their heads and squinted in my direction as if they were twins, neither of them seemingly pleased at what they saw, either. The younger man shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
“You want something?”
It was the pool player. I turned to face him. I recognized something familiar in his voice, even if the face was not.
“Jack!” He cried, thrusting out his hand for me to shake.
Tentatively, I put out my hand. He shook it vigorously.
“Man, haven’t seen you for a coon’s age! Where’ve you been hiding yourself?”
“I—” Memories of a different face came rushing back, one without long, bushy sideburns or pockmarked skin, or the red beak of alcoholism. Still, I could tell Claude was happy to see me. For a moment the years fell away between us—again I was the little boy standing on a concrete porch, watching him dig a rusty watch spring out of a still rustier coffee can.
“You want something to drink? A beer maybe?” He asked eagerly. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I suppose you’re still on that religion kick, right?”
Again, my stutter prevented me from a quick answer. Before I could react, he had ordered the gray-haired woman to bring me a cup of coffee and steered us back to his pool table.
He handed me a stick. “You still play, right?”
Play? Not that I remembered.
“Eight ball?” He asked. “A little one pocket? Whatever you want, man.”
“Stripes,” I said, fighting to remember, “and solids, I guess.”
He corralled the balls, racked them, and stretched over the table for the break. It was several minutes before he missed a shot. All through that time, he kept up a running conversation, none of it demanding a response, time during which I hoped for an opportunity to mention (without stuttering) his World Famous Chicken.
Finally! He fell silent. Grinning happily, he nodded emphatically at me to take my shot. Instead of letting him know a basket of chicken and fries was what I really wanted, I looked at the table and leaned over for my shot. Just as I began my stroke, I felt a sudden spasm through my arm. The cue ball dribbled off the end of the stick.
His eyebrows arched in surprise. He mouthed a silent Wow.
“Wasn’t expecting that,” he muttered, before calling out his shot and sinking it. “Guess I should’ve laid down a bet.”
I consoled myself with the coffee, pouring in lots of cream and sugar to quell my hunger pangs.
“Heard from Kathy lately?”
He was racking the balls for a new game. It was a moment or two before I realized he was directing a question at me that he actually wanted answered.
“From Kathy,” he repeated himself. “You know.”
I shook my head. Whoever he meant, I hadn’t heard from her, or from anyone else to speak of, for that matter. Kathy was just another face and name lost to the winds of shock therapy.
Taking my response for a no, he shook his head regretfully. “I never figured her for just up and leaving you, man.”
Oh, Kit, my ex, he must mean, I thought, shrugging and lowering my head to hide my confusion. Like everyone else in Driftwood Bay, he seemed to know more about my life than I did. I used the moment to finally ask my question.
“You don’t sell chicken, anymore?”
“Chicken?” Realization seemed to dawn on his face. “You hungry, man?”
At my nod, he walked over to the bar and grabbed up a gallon jar of beef jerky. He had the lid screwed off by the time he got back to me.
“Here, man, whatever you want. On the house, buddy.”
I took out a strip and began chewing. It was peppery, just the way I liked it.
“The stinkin’ deep fryer’s on the fritz. I haven’t been able to get a repairman out to fix it. Costin’ me money hand over fist, the jerks.”
I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. Whether it was because I was still on the “religion kick,” I didn’t know.
“Maybe they got a deal with Captain’s to shaft me,” he said.
The Captain’s was Driftwood Bay’s fish and chowder h
ouse.
“I do buy all my oil and other cooking supplies from them as part of the deal, though, so I don’t know what gripe they’d have with me.
“Anyhow, eat all the jerky you want, buddy. It’s good to see you. You want some peanuts, too?”
He didn’t wait for me to speak or nod. He went to the bar and grabbed a bowl of peanuts.
“Just throw the shells on the floor like everybody else,” he said, putting the bowl down on the same table as my coffee cup. Instead of returning to his game, he watched as I ate, especially eyeing me as I struggled to crush the peanut shells between my fingers.
“You having trouble with that hand?” He asked. Evidently, he was a keener observer than I’d thought.
I nodded.
As more of an accusation than as a question, he said, “You’ve been back to Salem, haven’t you?”
I mumbled something about getting better, and started on a second piece of jerky. It was embarrassing to think anyone could figure out my problems so quickly. But then, we had known each other for decades, I supposed, regardless of how little I remembered of our relationship.
“All right, ’nuff said.” He fished billiard balls out of their pockets and nonchalantly began tossing them onto the table. This time he didn’t rack the balls before picking up his pool cue to knock them back down.
“You know, since you’re in here, maybe we can talk about that little proposition of mine.”
Proposition? A chill of regret traveled up and down my spine. I wiped my hands on my jeans. Did he want me to buy drugs? Maybe sell some for him? I suddenly wished I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything he’d offered me.
He seemed to be hesitating. He killed a few more balls before continuing. In the meantime, I fished out my Copenhagen from my shirt pocket and took a pinch to steady my sudden case of nerves.
Over the past couple of months I’d scraped by with odd jobs, mostly repairing windows and roofs like Zell suggested. The usual surfeit of storms were little short of hurricanes, and when I wasn’t playing the role of local handyman, none of which required the esoteric sort of craftsmanship that went into my Grandfather clocks, I perused my books. With Reverend Grunwald coaching me in my reading, I was spending a lot of time in those books, lately. While it was a slow process, progress was nonetheless being made. Unfortunately, the more time spent in the books meant the more time I had on my hands, and the less money.
I shook my head—habit, I guess—my conscience speaking for me even if my mouth couldn’t.
“You haven’t even given me a chance!”
I shrugged, not knowing what to say to him. I had a vision of all sorts of illegal activity happening in the tavern’s back room, even if it didn’t necessarily go on around the pool tables. Maybe he’d made me lots of illegal propositions over the years, none of which I remembered.
He turned back to his game, racked the balls and broke them forcefully enough to send one caroming over the far rail and onto the floor. He ignored the escapee and kept playing.
“I can’t pay you what you normally get,” he muttered. “But it’ll still be good money, don’t you worry none about that.”
What on earth was he talking about?
“You can choose the style you think best, something different from the rest of your pieces, if you want. I suppose it’d be best to go with something that fits the decor.”
Decor?
“Half up front, the other half on delivery.”
I think tobacco juice dribbled down my chin. I probably looked like an idiot. I know I felt like one, since I still couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.
Eyes narrowing, he dropped his pool cue on the table and stared hard at me. His eyes widened in surprise. “You don’t get it, do you?”
I shook my head and shrugged. Laughed self-consciously at myself.
“One of your clocks, you dork. I want to buy one of your clocks, if you think you can spare the time!”
I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe a tendency to think through all things financial. Maybe some natural bargaining instinct that couldn’t be erased or forever submerged by anything as minor as electroshock. Maybe a perverse streak of mischief. But I shook my head.
He nearly exploded. “No?”
“Have to think about it.”
He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes bulged with anger. For a couple of seconds, I thought he might pick up his pool cue to take a swing at me.
Instead, he guffawed and turned back to his game.
“You never were one to negotiate, not even as a little kid.”
I wiped my chin on my sleeve and let him blow off steam. His words had triggered memories of my mother. She was shaking me, telling me I was stubborn, bullheaded like my father. All things considered, maybe it was good to be bullheaded. If I weren’t, how would I have survived? And when it came to negotiating, how was someone like me supposed to be able to negotiate when no one ever had the patience to hear me out?
“No wonder Kathy left you,” he concluded. He smirked, as he stood his cue stick on the floor and propped it under his chin, with both hands cupped over the tip.
The memories of my mother gave way to a tsunami of other memories that nearly overwhelmed me. I saw flashes of a woman’s pink mouth and heard the echoes of a slightly nasal voice that would not shut up. I think I staggered. For a brief moment I was falling into darkness.
Someone’s loud guffaw brought me back to my senses.
“You okay, man?”
It was Claude. He was staring, still leaning precariously on his stick. The darkness and nausea faded.
“Rustic,” I replied.
“What?” He demanded.
“Er-Er-r-rustic,” I said. Ironically enough, I had finally managed to say a word without stammering for once, and Claude still hadn’t understood me.
“Rustic?” He asked. “What do you mean?”
“The clock has to be rustic.”
“Ohhh! Rustic!” He said. He surveyed his tavern with a long, appreciative look. I suspected he didn’t see any of the shabbiness I saw.
“Yeah, rustic,” he said, savoring the word. “That would be good. You mean like beat up or with chipped green paint, or something? I’ve seen some of the hip stores in Portland selling furniture like that.”
I nodded tentatively, hoping he would get the idea that I still wasn’t necessarily sold on actually making him a clock.
He looked at me closely. “You mean it, you’re actually saying yes? You’ll make one for the tavern?”
The words seemed to rush out. “For an old friend.”
“Wow,” he said, shaking his head as if amazed. “I wonder what the hypocrites will say?”
“What?”
“Oh nothing,” he said, smiling quickly.
Though I wasn’t sure it was the right time to, I asked if he knew how much I would charge him. I asked because I was afraid the old invoices I’d found in my office files couldn’t be true.
“Oh, I know,” he said. “A couple thou. Don’t worry, I’m good for it. And if not, you can take it out in Baskets O’ World Famous Chicken.”
He laughed, and I let the remark pass. I wasn’t about to tell him chicken would have been as good as money at that point. Now I knew I wouldn’t have to completely scrape by with just a few house repairs. I could again work full time at my craft. Since this one clock would be made-to-order rustic, I could practice some of the old skills Reverend Grunwald was helping me with, while not having to worry about reaching the same level of polished craftsmanship expected in one of my Raventhorst Originals.
Raventhorst Rustic. No, maybe Rustic Raventhorst would be better. I had a sudden flash of a whole line of rustic Grandfather clocks, all with my imprimatur. Maybe building just one wasn’t God’s plan at all. Like Zell was fond of saying, maybe today would be the start of something new, the day I finally put the loss of my memories and skills behind me, the d
ay I got on with my life.
That’s what I was thinking, as I waved jauntily to the barmaid and walked out of the tavern. This time she smiled, though it was likely she was simply pleased to see me leaving. When I closed the door behind me, I recalled a childhood memory of playing shuffleboard and of a metal puck rebounding unexpectedly into my little finger. I saw blood spurt, and tasted its saltiness on my tongue. It was my last recollection of being inside The Driftwood Drifter.
I glanced at my right hand, at the tiny knot above the middle knuckle of my little finger. Every time the weather changed, that finger twinged with pain. But I didn’t spend any more time thinking about it, or about Claude’s offer, for that matter. Thoughts of Kit surged over me, pummeling at me with all the painful details of her departure, striking like an ice-cold sneaker wave from off the Pacific.