Edge of the Pit

by Bill Thesken

  No hairs were standing up on the back of my neck, no fear tingling the corners of my mind, there was nothing. I didn’t feel safe, but I didn’t feel like I needed to fight or flee either.

  I knew I was down to the last couple of dollars of the Eraser’s cash and I needed to pick up some walking around money so to speak. After what I’d found out at the Chinese restaurant it looked like I was in it a little deeper than I had thought at first, if that was even possible.

  My old man had another old saying, plan for the worst and hope for the best, and lucky for me I’d done a little planning for something like this. Something where I might need to disappear into the woodwork for a while. I was a security guy for the top one percenters, and I knew that with level of money there was bound to be some dirt and grime on the sidelines, and if I ever saw the wrong thing, or made the wrong move, or let someone in my charge get hurt or killed, then I would be one needing security. It was that simple.

  I knew I couldn’t go to my bank, just waltz right in and make a withdrawal. They’d be watching. I had an emergency fund for just this scenario, but it would take some effort to get to it. I had my own little safe deposit box at my own little bank, the kind of bank you could get to into on the weekend and the middle of the night if you needed. Griffith Park was located on the outskirts of the city, one thousand acres of hills and trees. Lots of places to hide things.

  On December 16, 1896 Colonel Griffith J. Griffith, a newspaper reporter turned mining magnate donated three thousand acres to the city of Los Angeles as a Christmas present. He was a true one percenter who got to the top the old fashioned way, by using inside information on mining operations to turn a dollar into millions, and his stated purpose in gifting the land to the city was to make it a ‘happy, cleaner and finer city’. A few years later in 1903 during an alcohol fueled bender at the posh Arcadia Hotel in Santa Monica, the good old Colonel shot his wife in the face as she knelt on the ground pleading for her life.

  No one knew until then that the Colonel was a mean ass drunk who didn’t take kindly to any back talk. His wife lost an eye, and survived, but the marriage did not. She was granted divorce on the grounds of cruelty of all things, and awarded custody of their only child, Vandell. Griffith spent two years in San Quentin and died a few years later in 1919 of liver disease.

  The park that carried his name actually was a happy clean and fine place to visit, most of the time.

  Sure, there was the occasional riot, mugging and robbery that happened now and then, but that sort of thing could happen just about anywhere where you put two people in close proximity to each other, human nature being what it is.

  It took an hour to get there, but it gave me time to plan. The bullet in my pocket was a tough one, and I tried with all my might to remember what had happened that night, but it was all still a blur. I couldn’t remember the last moments of being on the bike, no memory of being shot or knocked off the bike or crashing into the building, nothing, it was all a blank. The Chinese restaurant guy said I didn’t look too bad after crashing through all those walls, but my ribs told me different. I’ll bet if I could take a look at my flak jacket it would have a big dent in it, right about where my ribs were located.

  The bus let me off at Griffith park, it was around five in the afternoon and my stomach was growling. There was a large iron gate with an arch and a giant copper G in the middle of it. The patina on the copper had turned it a greenish gold and I wondered why no one had pried it off and tried to peddle it to a metal recycler.

  There was a pack of panhandlers with signs telling you what they needed, money for food, for clothes, one guy was honest and had a sign that said he needed money for beer. There were folks handing out flyers for tourist attractions and rides, and tattoo parlors and everything in between. I took a couple of flyers to have something to read, and walked past them all, panhandlers included without a word. Their pans would have to wait. I was down to my last three dollars and I needed two of those to take the bus back to the city in case my safe deposit box had taken a walk. There was a hotdog stand at the entrance selling dogs for two bucks a piece, which put them out of my league. I decided to try to bargain for one, maybe I could get one for half price.

  “How about half a dog for a buck?” I asked.

  The guy behind the table looked me up and down then ignored me and kept yelling at the crowd.

  “Hey hot dogs heeeahhh, get your hot dogs!”

  Like he was at a baseball game working the fans. He was short and stocky and middle aged with some gray showing around the edges of his jet black hair and handle bar mustache. Italian or Chicano, it was hard to tell. Either way he was a hard case.

  I tried again, this time with a smile. “What do you say friend, half a dog for a buck?”

  He broke away from his busy chatter and looked at me with disdain. He pointed a thick finger at me in warning. “I aint your friend pal, so why don’t you move along, you’re disrupting my business.”

  The crowd from the bus had thinned out, and we stood there nearly alone under the arches with the G in the middle. I pointed to the mountains and the long golden rays of the impending sunset.

  “The day is short and the crowd is waning.” I pointed to his grill which had over a dozen reddish dogs cooked and ready to go. “We wouldn’t want them to go to waste now would we?”

  He narrowed his eyes and gave me his full attention. I had the feeling that if he took a drink of water at that point in time, steam would jet out of his ears. “Oh don’t you worry about that,” he hissed. “They never go to waste. I’ll feed them to the trash can before I’ll feed them to a freeloader like you esse.”

  So he was a Chicano, or maybe he just talked like one.

  “Why so harsh at the end of a nice day?” I asked him. “We’re both here on Earth, created by the same God.”

  I pointed to the cross hanging around his neck on a chain. “Don’t forget to be compassionate to the poor. I’m not asking for a handout my friend. Just half off the retail price.”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side and his eyes narrowed. “You see all these deadbeats around here? Their job is begging for money, that’s their job, their occupation. They get up in the morning and put their hand out as their career. Grown men and women with the God given strength to go out in the world and work for a living and they choose to live like beggars in the street. Bums. I could spit on them but I wouldn’t want to waste the spit. You hear where I’m coming from esse? They all know better than to come around here begging food from ME, I’ll make them howl for their stinking lives with a fork in their hand and their face on the grill.”

  He grinned then, a mean semi-vicious toothy grin framed by the bushy moustache, I could see he was short one tooth up front that probably went missing in a fist fight, and I had the feeling that the scene he just described with the fork in the hand and the face on the grill had actually happened at some point in the past. A few of the panhandlers on the side were watching the verbal exchange with interest and I glanced over there to see if any of them had grill burn scars on their faces.

  “Again, I’m not asking for a handout, just half off. All I have is a single dollar. Besides, we’re on the same team.”

  He narrowed his eyes again. “The same team? What the hell are you talking about?”

  I pointed to my hat that I’d bought in the thrift store, and then to his.

  He laughed. “So you’re a Dodgers fan, huh?”

  I nodded. “My blood runs Dodger blue.”

  “Anyone can buy a cap.”

  “It was Grandpa’s.” Which could have been true, hell I bought it in a thrift store, it could’ve been grandpa Sandy Koufax’s for all I knew.

  He pointed at me while managing a slight grin, and waggled his finger. “Alright, so you want to play with me eh? I’ll tell you what. Let’s have a little fun. You answer two trivia questions and I’ll give you a whole dog for a buck, you can’t answer them, you give me the dollar and high tail it the hel
l out of here. Deal?”

  I shook my head. “You could give me some bizarre off-the-wall trivia question that no one knows the answer but you.”

  “These are easy. If you really are a true Dodger’s fan like you claim to be, you’ll know the answers. If not, you’ll be exposed as a liar. A dirty filthy liar.” He threw that last line in there just to call me out.

  “Why two questions?”

  “In case you get lucky on the first one.”

  “Alright,” I said. “Let’s play.”

  He clapped his hands together and pointed to the table. “Dollar first, on the table, next to the fork.”

  Next to the fork so he could stab me in the back of the hand if I lost and tried to make off with the bill.

  “Alright, alright,” I said and I carefully unfolded a dollar bill and placed it on the table and he put the fork on top of it.

  “So it doesn’t blow away in the wind,” he grinned.

  I waited patiently for the first question as my stomach grumbled. A couple of the panhandlers inched closer to hear the verbal exchange, staying just out of fork range.

  “First question,” he began. “When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, what day was their first game, who was their opponent, and what was the score?”

  “That’s three questions.”

  “It’s a combo. If you don’t know the answer, just admit it and walk on. It’s the easiest question in the book pal, like you’re up to bat and I’m throwing softballs to you underhanded. Baby questions.”

  I smiled. It was time to put a fork in this guy for a change. I’d had enough playing around, I was hungry.

  “The first game on the West coast was on April 15, 1958 in San Francisco, the Dodgers got their asses kicked by the Giants eight to nothing.”

  He squinted at me and his mouth quivered at the corners, I could he tell didn’t like to lose. And then his eyes glinted, and narrowed. He had something up his sleeve. The first question was a set-up.

  “Who was the losing pitcher for the Dodgers, and who made the last out?”

  I shook my head in pain, and gritted my teeth and that made him grin wider, he thought he had me, thought he would be sending me off and pocketing my dollar bill, but I knew the answer. Two of the most famous pitchers ever in Major League baseball pitched on that day. Don Drysdale for the Dodgers, and the great Ruben Gomez for the Giants. I knew this because my Dad was a diehard Dodger’s fan, and his younger brother, my uncle Manny was a diehard Giant’s fan. How that scenario ever came to be no one really knew, but the verbal brawls were intense, and sometimes the verbal brawls turned into fistfights. Family reunions during baseball season were brutal. My Grandpa told me that all brothers needed something to fight over, and the Dodgers Giants rivalry was as good enough a reason as any.

  Whenever the arguing got especially heated, uncle Manny would bring up the Rueben Gomez story. When Reuben’s fastball slowed down and he wasn’t good enough for the Majors anymore, the Giants let him go and he went down south and pitched in the Mexican League. One day he was approached by a young boy desperate for money and selling lottery tickets. Normally Rueben stayed away from any type of gambling but wanted to help the young man out so he bought a ticket which turned out to be the winning ticket worth thirty five thousand dollars. He tried to share the money with the boy’s family but they were ashamed and refused, so Rueben set up a trust account for the young man to be given to him when he turned eighteen.

  Many years later Rueben was dying of cancer and was in a hospital about to have surgery when a young doctor from Mexico asked to attend the operation. When Rueben asked him why he wanted to attend, the young doctor told him that he was the young boy who sold him the lottery ticket, and the trust fund helped him through medical school.

  “Don Drysdale,” I said, “was the Dodgers losing pitcher, and Rueben Gomez was the pitcher who made the last out for the Giants.”

  And his grin disappeared.

  He shook his head slowly. “No esse, who made the last out for the Dodgers, you know, who was our guy that was put out.”

  “You bastard.” I whispered. He saw the look in my eyes and stepped back a few inches smiling the whole time and lifted his shirt on the side to show the handle of a gun. Everyone was packing in this town. This guy would shoot me over a dollar bet on some stupid Dodger baseball trivia. This was a tough town. He was close enough that I could lunge across the table and crush his larynx before he could pull the trigger, or I could pull my own gun and shoot him in the hand before he could get me. A guy has to know his options. My stomach lining was tearing itself apart. I didn’t know who made the last damn out for the Giants, I couldn’t think straight. I was starving. Uncle Manny would know the answer though. And I thought back to one gut wrenching argument in the back yard during a barbecue. That first game ended with a high fastball thrown by Rueben and the last batter struck out swinging. The batter had a funny nick name, and it was his last year in the majors.

  The hot dog bully looked happy. “Give up? Can’t answer a little trivia question can you?”

  I shook my head and smiled. That was it, little. The word triggered a memory and I could see in my mind’s eye my Dad and Uncle face to face at the backyard barbecue yelling at each other over the last play of that game. It was a funny little nickname. “Pee Wee Reese struck out swinging. Final play of the game.”

  He yelled in pain and threw his fists in the air, punching at the sky, and then resigned to his fate, his face relaxed and he smiled slightly, beaten at last.

  “My man Pee Wee Reese,” he said while catching his breath and sighing. “Stood up for Jackie Robinson all those years when the going was tough in Brooklyn. A lot of folks were against having a black player in the major leagues, but Pee Wee was there to cover his back. I guess you really are a Dodger fan.”

  And then he reached over with his tongs, pulled the most perfect foot-long dog off the grill, placed it carefully in a bun like he was putting a baby into a crib, and handed it to me.

  I looked over at the pile of bums nearby who were beaming with happiness, I had beaten their arch rival, their nemesis who tortured them all day with the sights and smells of a hotdog stand. I picked out the grimiest of the bunch, a white haired old salt with tattered clothes and soiled hat, and called out to him. “What do you like on your dog, mustard or ketchup?”

  The old man smiled a toothless smile and answered gently. “A little of both would be most welcome sir.”

  So I loaded the hotdog with mustard and ketchup and a little relish for good measure, tore it half and handed it to my newest fan. He bowed his head to me in silent thanks, growled at the hot dog man and shuffled off to the side with his treasure.

  “You play a good game,” said the vendor. “I would have bet this hot dog stand and everything in it that you couldn’t answer those questions.

  “Why do you have to be so damn mean to these guys. They seem harmless.”

  “Those guys? They’d stab me in the back if I let my guard down. In fact one of them did stab me in the back a few years ago, and that’s why I carry this piece. Don’t worry esse, I have a permit, conceal carry, but I don’t conceal it, they all know it’s right here in plain sight if needed. I show it to them every day, just to remind them and to let any of the new bums that show up that I’m not one to be messed with.”

  8.

  The hot dog went down easy and filled the empty hole in the pit of my stomach, and when I was finished I walked into the park for about a quarter of a mile, and then headed up a hill near the fire road and picnic area. It was about a hundred feet high, with a nice round umbrella tree on top.

  I sat down under the large tree and put my back against the rough bark. It was shady and cool and I scanned the horizon and made a note of all the activity, the people, dogs, birds, clouds, fence lines, vantage points, escape routes, branches and rocks that could be used as weapons in a pinch. Satisfied with the result, I pulled my cap down and read the pamphlets while keeping
one eye on the perimeter.

  The picnic area below had ten tables arranged neatly in two rows on a grassy lawn next to the fire road. There were shade trees and barbecue stands, and faucets for water, and it had a nice wide view of the surrounding mountains and foothills. I could see that the trash cans were full and it must have been busy with a lot of people earlier in the day, but now there was just one young couple and it looked like they were getting ready to leave. He was folding the table cloth while she packed the leftover food into their carry bag.

  I couldn’t tell if they were newlyweds, or newly engaged, or just out on a date, but he was doing all the right things.

  I studied his actions. He was attentive and polite to her, helping her with the leftovers, wiping down the table and tossing a small bag in the trash can and raising his hands at the basket. She applauded his athletic skill. Whatever he was doing to make her happy it was working.

  I told myself that if I ever had a chance to have a good woman to impress, I’d be just like that guy.

  They were happy and laughing, and she poked him in the stomach with her index finger and he pulled her close and kissed her for a long time.

  They were oblivious to the world around them, and for that moment in time, the only world that mattered was each other.

  Let them have their fun, I thought, pretty soon it would be dark and they’d be heading down the hill and out of the park and I can get to work.

  I went back to reading the pamphlets. There were a lot of fun things to do around here. The park wagon rides were ten dollars apiece and went out into the hills every hour till dark. Sodas were half off with the attached coupon, and burgers were made to order at Ye Olde Snack Shoppe. A Jazz band called The Cufflinks was playing at the Greek Theatre on Friday night under the stars. There was a two for one special at the Tattoo Parlor on Main Street, and half an hour at the gun range was a hundred and twenty five bucks plus ammo.

  The Jazz band under the stars sounded like a great event to go to. I imagined a saxophone and trumpets and a thick rambling bass line taking you to another world full of wondrous sound. I made a note to check it out if and when I got out of the trouble I was in. I’d come back up here and sit in the audience and take a trip to the stars riding on a sax.