Whirlaway

by Poe Ballantine

  As I turned away from the register, Dirk called after me. “Well, Willie, you tell Old Shell we miss him. I got some Crystals and a 1910 Fruitgum Company I’ve been holding for him.”

  They all think he’s wonderful, I thought. Shelly was smiling somewhere, I could almost see him, and I wondered as the door jingled closed on my heels if he could see me.

  23.Whirlaway

  AT SIX EVERY MORNING I WAS OUT THE DOOR. SHELLY’D ASKED ME for only two hours a day, but I found record hunting an exciting, profitable, and purposeful pastime. With all its puzzles, mazes, codes, and footnotes, its scholarly requisites, and its suitability to the solitary life, the game of record hunting resembled in many ways the sport of kings. It helped to know where and what to look for, but anyone with enough luck and persistence might catch a winner, a Five Satins on blue vinyl, a copy of “They Say,” by Herbert Milburn and the LeSabres on Zebra Records, a Robert Johnson, or a “Rocket 88.” I’d recently read about “Whirlaway,” the 45-rpm turntable that played something called the “Whirl-Away Demonstration Record” named after the famous racehorse who won the Triple Crown in 1941. “Only two copies of the record,” my guide stated, “probably the first 45 ever made expressly for promotional purposes, are known to exist today, though others likely survive.”

  I’d developed my own circuit by now and each day a better understanding of where to find what I needed. Besides the armloads of profitable chaff I harvested daily, I had hit three minor jackpots, “See” by Jan and Dean on Dore, 1960, worth about a hundred bucks, Larry Donn’s (with the Killer Possum Band), “Girl Next Door,” (even if it was scratched, it played and was worth about seventy-five dollars), and Fats Domino “Goin’ Home” on Imperial, near-mint condition, worth about three hundred.

  Like Shelly, I got less satisfaction out of making 800 percent off a Tijuana Brass album than I did finding a legit classic or collectible. You’d never guess how many groups there were, how many “made it” but were never heard from again; or had a small or regional hit soon forgotten; or who had genius or success written all over them but chickened out, turned to drugs, blew the contract, couldn’t get along; or someone in the group died or went mad; or they were mismanaged; or they got discouraged at poor sales and disbanded only to see success and get back together after the magic was gone. You might know the forlornly, fantastically sublime tune “Sunny,” which Bobby Hebb wrote after his brother was killed in a knife fight the day after JFK was assassinated, and he’s actually trying to sing it upbeat.

  On the fourth Monday picking up Shelly’s mail there was a postcard from him that read:

  Everything all right? You got the phone unplugged? The old man is on his way out. Get this: HE DOESN’T BELIEVE HE WILL DIE. He’s probably right. But the band is ready. Champagne is on ice. He’s a tough old bird. At the funeral he’ll probably climb out of the coffin and box my ears. Either way, see you in a couple of weeks. Plug in the phone, will you?

  The following morning a second postcard read:

  Father in coma. Don’t send flowers. Probably playing possum. Hit the double at Birmingham yesterday. All you do is go to the paddock and find out which ones can walk. Maybe see you in a week?

  In the pile was also a letter from a lady in Wales who was looking for bootlegs of Dylan. I hadn’t run into many bootlegs and didn’t know where to find them or what their values might be if I did. Shelly had no bootleg catalogues. I’d have to wait for his return on this one.

  Tuesday number five running Shelly’s business, eleven in the morning, Sweets with his head out the passenger window, I passed the Coco’s. I passed the Coco’s a lot more than I probably needed to. Inside there seemed to be an answer, even if I wasn’t sure what the question was. On impulse, I pulled into the lot. Sweets gave me a woeful look.

  You want something? I asked him. Corn fritters?

  His front paws began to dance in anticipation. How about a pancake?

  I’ll do my best.

  He grunted and sneezed. And bacon.

  I brought some of the order forms in with me and the pricing catalogue to get a jump on the afternoon. The place was packed and I grabbed the only open table in the corner. I didn’t see Renee at first, then she sprang through the doors with four plates balanced on her right arm. She moved at an impelled angle, harried, blowing air. I liked her hustle, the film of sweat on her brow, her personal dedication to a thankless job.

  Again I was reminded in the way she moved of my Czech girlfriend long ago, the real love of my life that never had a chance of working out and probably suckered me into marrying an Asian girl. Asians were supposedly more loyal than other women, but it wasn’t my fault the way I was, I recited to myself as the psychiatrists had instructed. My delusional, romantic worldview and great expectations factored in with my stunted development and propensity for chasing rainbows had left me like so many of my contemporaries with two handfuls of nothing.

  Renee was not my waitress. My waitress was Ruby, mid-forties, rotund and slow, with improbably sculpted and heavily lacquered hair, as if she’d been issued from a country-western song or a seventies sitcom about a diner. Perhaps when she died she would not go to heaven but into syndication. I studied my price guide, scribbling down the titles I needed for the day. I reread Shelly’s latest postcard, admiring his combination of flippancy and gravity, life’s inevitable tragedy always turned into a punchline with rim shot and cymbal crash.

  Coco’s was the corporate diner, and I was supposed to hate it, but it was twenty times better than the tater tots, corn dogs, hard stares, Styrofoam, mixed nuts, truculent clients, roaming staff, and cold calcified light of the cafeteria at Napa State.

  The place began to thin out about one. I’d done all my early-bird work and was ready to leave. I’d hoped to talk with Renee, but she’d been too busy to notice, or maybe she didn’t recognize me. She stood across the room talking to an older man, fifty or so, with spiky gray hair, a flushed complexion from drink, and a skull full of squeaking birds. In a loud slur, he was saying something about Carol McCoy and Ali McGraw.

  “Yes, you told me that,” Renee said.

  “In The Getaway. We oughta get away.”

  “I have to work, Mr. Fromm.”

  “Call me Len.” He reached for her arm. Renee looked about for help. This was the corporate diner, though, where none of us had any stake, including the employees.

  I closed my guide.

  “She was a lot better off when she was Mrs. Sam Peckinpah,” he went on saying.

  I wondered why such a superficial construct as Hollywood was so important to him.

  Back in the Industrial Age when average life expectancy was forty-five years but restaurants were an extension of the community, three guys would’ve had Mr. Hollywood by the seat of his pants by now and on his way out to meet the sidewalk. In the Corporate Age, Renee sweated it out all alone in her nylon Coco’s suit.

  “Why don’t you give me your number?” he said.

  I rose and strode across the room. “Excuse me, jefe, but I don’t like the way you are talking to this woman.”

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “An escaped mental patient.”

  The squeaking in his head increased. I divined that he was poorly raised and preserved emotionally at around age eight. These types were rampant at Napa. Appeals were pointless. The only language the Mr. Peckinpahs of the world understood was violence. So I explained to him some of the things I’d picked up in Mudville, such as never initiate a fight from the sitting position, first punch usually wins, and the best way to get out of a headlock is to not get yourself in one in the first place. I added that if he wanted to wager fifty dollars on the contest, last man standing, I’d give him eight to five.

  He stared at me for a while. It was so quiet in there you could hear the cod frying in the back. The manager bumped out the doors but just stood there.

  “I don’t fight anymore,” he said. The truth we both knew was closer to, I bluff and when called I fold.<
br />
  “Then you should probably get running,” I replied.

  Mr. Peckinpah cleared his throat, stood, harrumphed, thought to make a final remark but instead threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and stalked scarlet-faced for the exits.

  One diner actually clapped. The manager shrugged and returned to the kitchen. I went back to my table to get my things.

  Renee followed. “Thanks,” she whispered. “What was your name again?”

  “Eddie. Eddie Plum.”

  “Thanks for getting me out of that, really. He comes in once a week, always drunk.”

  “Least I could do.”

  “Can I get you anything, another cup of coffee?”

  Funny how I could still imagine, like Shelly, that day when the right girl would walk out of sunlight and change my life, as Sofia had. Probably all the sappy love songs I’d been listening to lately. I would have liked to have sat with her for a while, if only just to talk. There was something comforting about the familiarity of her face.

  “If you could get me an order of pancakes with a side of bacon to go that would be great,” I said.

  She scribbled on her pad. “No problem. Hey, it’s on me.” Her eye caught my record guide. “You a record collector?”

  “A dabbler.”

  She nodded as if I might have something to add.

  “So many jerks out these days,” I offered.

  She tossed her head, blew a stream of air. “All morning I told myself I’d quit.”

  I imagined her kitchen, her television shows, the perfume on her dresser. “Well, you’re about done for the day at least,” I said. “Yes?”

  “Just about, yes.” She glanced at her watch, then gave me a nervous smile. There was a commotion in the kitchen. “Better go hang this ticket,” she said.

  As I walked back to my truck with the doggie bag full of pancakes and bacon it occurred to me where I’d seen Renee before. I drove back to Shelly’s and unhooked the door of Donny’s room. I stared at the photos for a long while. The girl in the cheerleader outfit, the girl with her hands on her knees, the girl in the tartan skirt, the girl in the smoky retouched photo framed inside the sequined heart on the television. A long time ago, Renee was Donny’s girl.

  24.Zopilote Being an Indian Word for “Vulture”

  NOW THAT I HAD MONEY AGAIN, I BEGAN GOING DOWN TO TIJUANA to flit among the puestos and gambling salons, the cantinas and liquor stores, the oyster bars and burdeles. My Spanish had deteriorated, so it was a real challenge to amuse the prostitutes, who did not like me. Feeling bad afterward, I’d go to a church, usually Our Lady of Guadalupe, to pray and leave an offering. I wanted to be a good person, not a frantic bananacake buzzing around hot flesh like a housefly.

  On one trip, thinking about these poor women disappearing, I drove toward the great smokestack of one of the world’s largest landfills called simply by the locals La Zona Basura. I parked at the edge and looked down into the valley of discards, watched the great belly-roaring fire, the zopilotes getting their ankles muddy in the dog carcasses, the seagulls turning and screeling, and the garbage dwellers peeking out of their trash igloos. The lanes between the heaps of walruses and oyster shells and dining room tables teemed with autos and dashing urchins and people throwing their crap willy-nilly. Many were picking adroitly through the midden, filling burlap bags as fast as others were throwing it on. Six or seven lean, white-fanged mutts appeared to rule this netherworld. A thick column of raw smoke chugged upward from the hundred-meter copper chimney into the brownish Tijuana sky.

  The wind shifted and a gust of smoke and decomposition blew into my face so acrid and foul that I had to cover my face with my arm. When the air cleared, I saw a garbage truck clamber down through the heaps and pull up alongside the incinerator. The passageway was so narrow the truck was forced in a little close for comfort. Twice the driver rang a bell. One of the white-fanged netherworld pups raised its snout and gave a long howl. The bucket then tipped, and as the truck turned and pulled away I saw in the firelight the scorch marks up the side of the passenger door, the same marks on Shelly’s truck.

  On the way back to the Island to pick up Sweets, who would chastise me for my Tijuana jaunt and my rubbish and prostitute smell, I stopped in at Shelly’s house to see if he had returned. He should’ve been home long ago. The house felt different this morning and I found the door unlocked. I hoped that no one had broken in. The door as usual stuck slightly and it was dark inside. There was cash on the table in plain sight. I had not left the cash. I called and looked about. Whoever had been here was gone.

  I’d been holding three Mexican beers since the border, so I raced down the hall. Out of habit I closed the bathroom door behind me. The bathroom was another furry chamber, moldy curtains and mildewed tile, toilet stained, vintage bachelor. There were a few vestiges of his “airhead” mom, a basketful of ancient soap balls, a homey plaque with cartoon rabbits. While I was peeing I heard voices. Just the stream hitting the water, I thought. When I stopped, the voices stopped. I stood for a minute, listening. Something brushed against the door. Quelling the urge to shout, I zipped up hastily, flushed, waved my hands under cold running water. In the mirror my eyes were zapped wide in my scarred and mangy penguin face. I fingered back my Streisand hair. Shelly has returned, I told myself, and is fooling around out there. I felt a cold fear opening the door, dusky hall, smell of fur, ink, dust, vague rot, sea.

  No one was there.

  Now the front door clunked open. I’m surrounded, I thought to myself. I’ve been set up. I considered turning back and scrambling out the bathroom window. But it was no stranger who came through the front door. It was a haggard Shelly, twelve pack under arm.

  “When did you get back?” I said sharply, wiping the damp from my forehead with a sleeve.

  “This morning,” he said, setting the twelve pack on the table. He looked around, rubbed his head. He seemed dazed. I realized he’d been drinking. “You wanna beer?” he said.

  “Is there someone here?” I said.

  “What?” His head wobbled as he handed me a warm Miller Lite and glanced down the hall.

  “I thought I heard someone. I was taking a whiz . . . Never mind.”

  He shook his head. “I called you when I got in.”

  “I was down in TJ.”

  “How’d everything go?” he said.

  “Same as always,” I said. “Whore, church, a few tacos.”

  “I mean my business.”

  “Oh, that. Fine. Good. You’ve got a great business.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Everyone wants 1960 America.”

  He offered a weak smile and took a haul off his beer.

  “It was better then, wasn’t it?” I said

  “You can’t blame Elvis,” he said

  “How was . . . Alabama?” I asked.

  Again he glanced down the hall. “Oh, great, you know I’m mostly just burying people these days.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yeah. To the last second he didn’t believe he would die. What do you call that, a messianic complex?”

  I opened my can.

  There was that sound again, a wordless voice, almost a moan. It was my turn to glance down the hall. “You need to get out this house, boy,” I said. “You got ghosts in here, you know that?”

  He managed a smile that seemed to say: now you finally understand what I’m dealing with here.

  “Well, I’d better get going,” I said. “Got to get home and feed Sweets.”

  “All right, man.” He followed me out and closed the door behind him as if he were trying to prevent rattlesnakes from escaping. Music was now playing inside. He yanked on the doorknob again and again.

  At the gate I couldn’t help wonder what kind of Alabama souvenir he’d brought home. Lover? Victim? Perhaps his father, who would not die but take his turn sitting in the cage? Or maybe it was the same guy as before, the megalocephalic special friend.

  “Damn it,” he said, mo
re to himself than me. “I’m going to inherit this house. I hate this house.”

  “Sell it,” I said.

  “To the Nuremberg Museum,” he said.

  “Or you could have a bonfire. Invite all the neighbors.”

  “I’m going to inherit everything,” he repeated in disbelief. He gazed at me, bedeviled, nothing like the festivity he’d imagined. “More paperwork than I know what to do with,” he grumbled.

  It’s too much to ask, I thought. Your parents torture and disable you, then they die and leave you with all the paperwork.

  “I have to go back,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Vultures.”

  “Who?”

  “Lawyers and accountants.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. A week or so.”

  25.Flowers in the Sea

  WHEN SHELLY RETURNED TO ALABAMA A WEEK LATER TO SETTLE his father’s estate, I agreed to run his business. Sweets and I moved with a Bible and a bottle of brandy into that back room one more time. The house was in shambles, stacks of unwashed dishes and heaps of clothes all about. Shelly’d done little work restocking inventory or filling orders. He’d always looked upon his family situation as a Hollywood producer might a revenge formula, a story that rose sweetly on the fulcrum of injustice until the glorious and satisfying moment when the bad guys met their deservedly brutal end. But there had been no such satisfaction or justice for him. His parents had simply died, all chances of forgiveness and restitution were lost, and he was more alone in the world than ever.

  The door to Donny’s room was unlatched. Reluctantly, I entered. The bed was unmade. Someone had been sleeping here. And I knew that it was not Shelly. Sweets did not know who it might be, either. It is an old smell, he said, the smell of a person all over the house. I thought of Ed Gein, who’d flay his victims in order that he might one day be able to dress up in their skin.