Eddie's Shorts - Volume 2

by M. Edward McNally

If he wasn't seeing it, actually feeling it all around him, Jay would never believe Neil Wood's old Dodge capable of doing seventy miles per hour.

  Neil has it pegged though, and the little gray Omni shimmies up the Interstate like an excited puppy. A broken piece of seatbelt mechanism (Jay's, the belt doesn't work without it) rattles back and forth along the dashboard. Its movement is due in equal parts to road speed and to the thunderous decibels emerging from Neil's custom stereo, emitting the battle cry of KREV FM out of Minneapolis: Revolution Radio.

  Jay looks away from the hurtling Interstate, and casts an anxious glance sideways at Neil. Neil drives with only one hand draped on the vibrating wheel while the other balances an open bottle of Mickey Golden on a bare knee. A stubby unfiltered Camel pokes out between two fingers of a hand covered with the small scars and burns common to anyone who works primarily in a kitchen. Neil bops his bristle-haired head in time with the radio, though he utters rhythm-less little ejectives that do not match the lyrics. He wears camouflage pants rolled up above his pale knees, a green and brown flannel shirt without sleeves, and a blue tie.

  "So is this lake formal or something?" Jay asks. He is only a month out of Georgia, though by now the novelty of his accent has worn off for Neil and his other coworkers at the Old Country Buffet.

  "What?" Neil shouts. Between the road, the radio, and the air rushing through the open windows, conversation is an effort.

  "Your tie!" Jay bawls and points a finger at Neil's chest.

  Neil glances down and his eyes widen.

  "Oh!" he says. He looks from the hand on the steering wheel to the hand holding his beer, and decides to let go of the steering wheel.

  Jay jerks and grabs the wheel with his left hand (the right is wrapped around a strap on the door, to make up for the busted seatbelt), but Neil keeps the wheel steady with his knees without assistance.

  "I got it," he says. He wrenches the tie over his head and tosses it into the back where it lands on a pile of cans and bottles rolling atop the folded-down seat. Two fishing poles are also back there, standing up in a big X with reels jammed into corners, tips emerging from the open front windows next to Neil and Jay's heads.

  "Yeah, that's better." Neil rubs his neck, then rests his hand lazily back on the wheel. Jay forces himself to release it. Neil takes a contented pull of Michelob and flicks his cigarette butt out the window.

  "So, you said you was from Georgia, right!" Neil shouts. As the song on the radio ends, he sticks the bottle between his legs, holding it with the insides of his thighs in a vaguely revolting manner, and starts switching channels on the radio.

  "Yeah!" Jay shouts.

  "That in Russia?" Neil shouts.

  Jay thinks he is kidding and does not answer. Neil turns towards him expectantly, and it is the first time Jay has looked him dead-on since getting in the car five minutes ago, because it is the first time Jay notices the left side of Neil's face.

  "What the hell's with that?" Jay asks. Neil looks blank and Jay again points, this time at Neil's face.

  Neil brings a hand to it (not the one steering, this time), and again looks mildly surprised.

  "Aw, damn!" Neil shouts. He turns to the rearview and angles it back at himself, giving a view of his cleanly shaven right cheek, and the brown stubble covering the left. There is even the start of a healthy moustache, though only the left half.

  "I thought I was done!" Neil shouts as an explanation. He sighs and goes back to punching through radio stations.

  Jay reconsiders his desire for this fishing expedition. True, he has only been in Minnesota a month, and moving in June, he has not been in school at all to make any friends up here. He has gotten a job at the Old Country Buffet only a couple of miles from his family's new house, and the guys working there seem decent enough. So when Neil and Mark had asked if he wanted to go fishing over the weekend, Jay had said sure. Neil's offer to give him a ride did not dissuade him. At work Neil may have seemed a little spaced-out, not the pick of the litter as far as brains went (at twenty two, he was the only non-high-school kid working days in the kitchen), but he hadn't been actively weird, as he was most definitely being right now.

  "Hey!" Neil says, finding a song he apparently likes. "This is good! You know this one?"

  "Yeah," Jay says, "Toad the Wet Sprocket." For some reason, everybody at work thinks that Jay, being from Georgia, should only like country music. Maybe Neil thought he only liked Russian.

  "You know, I always get them screwed up with Big Head Todd and the Monsters." Neil explains. "It's like, 'Big Head Toad and the Wet Sprocket Monster Todds!"

  Neil cackles, throwing his unevenly-shaven face upwards and howling. Jay hopes it is not far to the lake, where Mark and Brent are supposed to meet them.

  "I guess," Neil says, sounding suddenly serious, "it's ‘cuz 'Toad' and 'Todd' are so much alike, you know? Just 'ohhh' and 'ahhh'? Course, they sound more alike than they look, because 'd' has that long neck, and 'a' is one of those squatting, kind of hunched-over letters."

  Neil turns to Jay, apparently seeking conformation. Jay just stares at his half a moustache.

  "Yeah, I guess that's right," Jay says. Neil nods sagely and turns back to the road.

  "Hey, you want a beer?" Neil asks.

  Jay glances at the glass phallus still sticking up from Neil's crotch.

  "No," he says.

  "What?"

  "No!"

  "You know what worries me about Russia?" Neil shouts back.

  Jay just sits there.

  "Well, they got all these nukes lying around, right?"

  "I think that worries everybody," Jay offers.

  "Oh, I don't think the Russians'll use them," Neil shakes his head. "What I'm worried about, is that Poland will invade and get a hold of some."

  "Poland?" Jay asks, not sure he heard that right.

  "Oh yeah, the Poles and the Russians have never liked each other. See, I used to read a lot, about history and stuff, before I fell off that roof."

  "Fell off that roof?" Jay asks. Neil apparently doesn't hear him.

  "So what I think is that, now that Russia's all screwed up, is that the Poles are gonna go out for revenge, right? And you know what happens if they get a bunch of nukes?"

  Neil looks at Jay again. Jay really wishes he would stop doing that, not only because he looks away from the road to do it, but because the sight of that half shave is even more disconcerting than any rambling conversation.

  "They'll nuke Russia?" Jay asks, though he really wants to ask, "Fell off that roof?" again.

  "Nope. Us. You-Esssss," Neil turns back to the road and nods solemnly. "Cuz of all the Polack jokes."

  Jay tries to chuckle. Neil gives him a short, puzzled glance.

  "Say, Neil," Jay attempts. "How far is it to the lake?"

  On the radio, Neil's Sprocket Monsters finish up "Butterflies." A happy, rollicking melody follows. "Runaround," the Blues Traveler tune that has been on the radio constantly all summer.

  "Aw! I love this one!" Neil exults. He starts howling along, a beat or two out of time, and jerks the steering wheel back and forth while his other hand seizes the neck of the bottle still in his crotch. The entire car becomes an extension of his lunatic celebration, swerving back and forth in its lane and bringing on horn blasts from all sides. Jay clenches both hands - one around the door strap, one digging into the seat - closes his eyes, and tries to make peace with his God.

  In the middle of the song, Neil suddenly changes the channel and subsides into quietly humming along with a news broadcast. The car resumes its straight course, and Jay opens one eye.

  "Yeah, I was painting this guy's house in Apple Valley," Neil says. "I was up on the roof, leaning way out so I could get under the eaves up at the peak, and I guess I leaned out too far."

  Neil starts a long whistle, gradually diminishing in volume. Jay's heart is still hammering from the "Runaround" festivities, and he turns to Neil with something like terror, waiting for the inevi
table shout of "BOOM!" Instead, the whistle only fades out, and Neil says, "About four miles east of the OCB."

  Jay is almost panting in fear, but he manages to get out, "What?"

  "The lake." Neil says. He changes stations again, catching the end of "Runaround" and Jay tenses, but Neil keeps punching through.

  "The lake is four miles east of the restaurant?" Jay asks. Neil nods. He settles on a classic rock station playing "Devil With A Blue Dress On."

  "Why are we going north then?" Jay demands, a note sounding suspiciously like panic creeping into his voice. They are now just entering the Minneapolis city limits.

  "I've gotta pick up some stuff downtown." Neil explains. He opens the ashtray under the dashboard, which looks to have never been used for ash, and pulls another cigarette from a pack in there. Sticking it in his mouth, he pops the lighter into the dash and turns again to Jay. With the cigarette jutting from the left side of his mouth, the unshaven side, the separation is even worse.

  "Are you okay?" Neil asks in all innocence.

  "What happened when you fell?" Jay asks.

  Neil shrugs. The lighter pops back out, and Neil lights his cigarette. He has not "packed" this pack, and between each puff he takes the cigarette from his mouth and spits little bits of tobacco off his tongue.

  "Hit my head," Neil provides. Jay swallows hard. "The doctors said I had Drain Bamage!"

  Jay blinks a few times, wondering if it is remotely possible to survive exiting a Dodge Omni traveling at seventy miles per hour.

  "I'm only kidding," Neil says, turning to Jay and giving a short smile. Jay hopes he means about everything.

  Neil turns back to the wheel and says, "They actually said 'Brain Damage.' That's just my little joke. Hey look! It's the exit!"

  The Dodge slews to the right, across the outside lane, and shoots down an exit ramp. It happens so fast that Jay doesn't have time to scream.

  Neil slams the breaks and screeches the Dodge to a shuddering halt, bumper scant inches from the car ahead at the light. That car is a big Chevy, and the driver and passenger both shift their side view mirrors to glare back at the insane driver behind them. Jay can see them in the car ahead, leaning forward and sideways to squint into their mirrors. The passenger turns to the driver and both shrug.

  "You ever try spear fishing?" Neil asks. He is oblivious.

  Jay gapes at him, his own mouth flapping like that of a fish. The light changes and as the Chevy moves into the intersection, Neil guns the Omni in an arc around it.

  "It's really a bitch," Neil continues. "You now how water screws things up, right? Like when you hold your hand up behind a glass of water and it looks like all your fingers are broken, or maybe jointed in six places, or something?"

  Jay wants to go home. Not to the new house in Burnsville either, back to Georgia. Back to the course outside Savannah where his friends are working as caddies this summer, saying things like, "Well, I reckon that's about a five iron from here 'bouts," to Yankee tourists in socks and sandals.

  "At the place I was at," Neil is saying, "down by Rochester, there was this pond out back, real weedy and nasty looking, and the staff tried to keep us away from it, but there were some fish in there. Not big ones of course, but big enough to stick. That's if you could sneak something to sharpen up a stick, of course, which was watched pretty close most of the time. Here we go!"

  Neil grinds the Dodge to a halt. They have stopped in front of an apartment building in a neighborhood of convenience stores and little shops with the shades pulled, signs reading only "BOOKS."

  "Be right back," Neil says, vaulting out of the car. Another car nearly runs him over but swerves away at the last second and unleashes a tearing "BRONK!" of a horn that attracts the attention of everyone on the block, except Neil. He bounds oblivious through the low doorway of the old apartment building, and disappears up a flight of stairs. As his feet are the last thing to go, Jay notices