Reboot

Home > Other > Reboot > Page 11
Reboot Page 11

by Alan Mulak


  Eddie signaled to Jose to lift the trash can, but the driver/operator was occupied elsewhere: a pile of Penthouse Magazines they had rescued from one of the previous stops. Although the crew never technically stole anything, they treated the trash put out by the curb as fair game, helping themselves to anything of perceived value. At the top of the list of valuable flotsam were the girly magazines Penthouse, Hustler, and Playboy. With the advent of readily available internet porn, the pickings of such fine printed literature were becoming slimmer, but nonetheless, an occasional gem was plucked from time to time. Jose was studying December's centerfold, which meant Eddie had to walk up to the front of the truck and bang on the door.

  Jose looked up. “Que pasa?”

  Eddie pointed at the waiting trash can. “Today would be nice.”

  Jose put down the magazine, operated the hydraulic lift, dumped Pizzotti’s cat shit, rolled the truck forward to the next customer, and then returned to his study.

  Jerry referred to his clipboard again.

  "This customer is…let's see…ah, here it is, Radcliff. Jack and Wanda Radcliff.” Again Jerry looked around, making sure he could speak confidentially. “Nothing special here. Just the usual. But take care of this guy and put his trash can back inside his fence. He works over at the Brewery and always buys me a beer when I stop in.”

  Eddie nodded. Once again he had to go bang on the door to get Jose’s attention.

  They rolled down Riverside Drive and stopped in front of number fifteen.

  "And this guy," Jerry said, in barely more than a whisper, “is a really weird duck. He showed up here in town at the end of last winter, and you never see the dude. The name is Alexander Delvecchio, and once in a while, you'll see the curtains move in the front window as he peers out from inside. Once I saw him in the backyard but then, get this, he scurried back inside like a scared dog! He's all hairy and looks like some kind of bum who lives under a bridge. His trash is mostly beer and whiskey bottles. Weird."

  Eddie once again banged on the door to get Jose’s attention.

  As they drove to the next house, Eddie asked, “So what’s gonna happen to that guy?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Don’t know. What becomes of any of these drifters? I’d bet one of these days, he’ll be gone. He’ll just up and disappear. Happens all the time.”

  2

  Darkness

  The average human life is about nine-hundred months. Alex Delvecchio sat on a rock in the middle of the Lower Dolores River, pondering the mathematics of his remaining days. He had just turned forty-seven so in all probability, was more than halfway to check-out time.

  Although the trout were beginning to feed upstream and down, Alex had little interest in them. Nor did he pay any heed to the black bear that had come to the river’s edge, drank deeply, and then ambled back into the underbrush. At one point just after sunrise, two ravens swooped low, investigating the curious person sitting motionless in the middle of the river. Those, too, escaped his attention.

  He had been there since dawn. Unable to sleep – as usual – he had dragged himself out of bed at about three, threw on some clothes, and drove down the desolate, dusty canyon road to the first pull-off by the river. The hike downriver, which concluded with Alex perched on a rock, staring at nothing, was managed without any conscious awareness.

  The high altitude of southwest Colorado no longer bothered him. When he first arrived a few months back, it was a bear. Alex found he was unable to get a restful sleep and even simple activities – such as walking from his truck to the river - were leaving him winded. But that had passed.

  He mussed his uncombed hair, tossed the soggy butt of a dead cigar into the river, and then extracted another smoke from his shirt pocket. He held it between his fingers and stared at it. His head was already pounding from too much nicotine, not enough caffeine, and the first stages of dehydration. The fact that he hadn’t bothered to eat in a day or two – he couldn’t remember how long it had been - didn’t help.

  “How did it come to this?” he mused, his voice sounding hollow and weak.

  He shifted his position on the rock, trying in vain to get comfortable. Drifting back in time, there were his kids as toddlers; laughing and giggling, hanging onto the edge of the couch as they unsteadily plodded along. When did it change? Everyone agrees a kitten turns into a cat, but no one knows precisely when. That was the same with his kids. One day, they were innocent, fun-loving girls, the next day, they were evil monsters. One day, they ran to meet him, the next day, they slammed the door in his face. He rubbed his eyes.

  It had been six months since he escaped from the tar pit back east, and Houdini had, as advertised, attended to the myriad of details that came along with a new identity and a fresh start. But the sudden onset of crippling loneliness had been unexpected.

  He watched the water slide by, pushing down the river, and piling up at the next bend, where an assortment of debris gathered and stacked up.

  Squinting his eyes against the harsh sun, he stared at the tangle of branches and logs pushed up against the shore.

  If I dropped dead right now, I’d topple over into the water, drift down, and fetch up down there. I wonder how long it would take before the current shoved me under? Would anyone ever find me? No one on this planet knows I’m here. No one would miss me. Sure, they’d find my truck and try to figure out where I’d gone, but shit, the crayfish would have picked me clean by the time some poor son-of-a-bitch discovered my bones.

  He slowly shook his head. “What have I done?”

  A dim memory of his fishing pal, Mike DuPont, drifted into his Alex's pounding head. They had been working the Madison River, below Three Dollar Bridge in Montana, catching browns and rainbows all morning. Mike was going through one of his many bad times, hammered by divorce and booze, but somehow managed to take a time out from his troubles. They took a break from fishing and plopped down on a rock not all that different from the one that Alex perched upon.

  “How ya’ doin Mike?”

  DuPont, his attire and equipment always in a state of dishevel and kerflooey, cast a long look up into the endless blue sky, and then, with a smile and blue eyes twinkling, said, “As my Uncle Hank used to tell me when I was a kid, this thing we do called fly fishing beats the shit out reality, doesn’t it?”

  The memory faded.

  That was a lifetime ago.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted from shore.

  Alex jumped and almost fell into the water.

  “Hey you!” the voice shouted again.

  Alex turned. A man was standing on the shore, maybe fifty feet away. He was dressed in the green uniform of a Colorado State Game warden, complete with dark sunglasses, holstered gun on his hip, and wore a Smokey the bear hat. He opened his hands and asked, "What are you doing out there?"

  Alex started to say fishing, but then looked down and realized he hadn’t strung up his fly rod. “Sittin’.”

  “You okay?”

  Alex sucked in his breath and felt his eyes well up. He and wanted to say, no…I’m not okay…I’ve slid into a black hole with no bottom…I’m drowning out here! He exhaled and was glad he was too far away for the guy on the shore to see his face. “Fine.”

  "They're fixing the fire tower, up there on the ridge, getting' ready for the lightning season." He turned and pointed to the top of the canyon wall, "and they spotted you sittin’ out there. So they called me to come by and see what gives. They say you’ve been here since sun-up.”

  “Yeah, well…” He thought, My God…someone knows I’m here.

  The warden said, “No law against just sittin’. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t’ hurt or in some kind of trouble.” He removed his hat and wiped his brow. “You got plenty of water?”

  Alex reached into his fishing vest where his water bottle was supposed to be. It wasn’t there. He had left home without it. “Shit…no, I don’t.”

  “Every year, people die out here from the heat.”

 
Alex closed his eyes. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

  The warden took out a plastic water bottle. "Here, take mine. I've got extra back in the truck." He placed it on the ground at the water's edge. "Don't let yourself get dehydrated." Then he turned to leave, "Well, all right then, if you're okay…"

  “Wait!” Alex said, with a note of desperation that surprised both he and the warden. He wanted to shout; Please don’t leave me here…I’ve wasted enough time, but instead said, “I’m gonna call it a day. Mind if I walk back with you?”

  3

  Reawakening

  Shaken, Alex drove back home from the canyon hardly seeing the mountains that ringed the horizon; the Abajo’s to the west, the Sleeping Ute to the south, or the Hesperus chain to the east. Between a pounding head from too many cigars and a churning stomach from too much coffee and bone-weary exhaustion from plain old depression, he didn’t see much.

  He turned down his road, Riverside Drive, a dirt lane as were most of the streets in town, and pulled into the driveway of his house. Feeling the waves of nausea, he got out, dropped the tailgate, and took a seat. If he was going to vomit, the driveway was as good a place as any.

  The day was well on its way to being a typical south-western Colorado summer day: bright sun, hot, and reptilian dry.

  From the next street over, a greasy spoon roadside café vented its kitchen grill every day at this time. For much of the afternoon, the entire town smelled like cooking burgers and dogs. This practice may have helped bring a few additional customers through the door but did little for Alex’s unsettled belly.

  He sat on his tailgate, feeling utterly miserable when something caught his eye. Just across the street was the Upper Dolores River and standing out in the middle of the sparkling flowing waters was a tall man wearing a Boston Red Sox hat. He was waving a fly rod, making short casts, and catching trout. Clearly, that guy knew what he was doing. For a split second, Alex thought it could be his pal Mike, but no. This guy was thinner and from the gray hair sticking out from under his hat, appeared to be older.

  The old guy caught yet another trout, and then turned downriver, whistled, and beckoned to someone below. In a few minutes, a small boy with a tangle of blond hair, wearing waders that were several sizes too big, and carrying a fly rod of his own, splashed out to meet him. The old guy took the boy by the hand a positioned him in the right spot. Then he pointed up the river and gave him some instructions.

  Alex couldn't hear all of their conversations, but as they were trying to be heard over the babble of the river, they spoke loud enough so he could hear a few words here and there. He heard the guy say “good fishing” and “cast over there.” And he heard the boy say “grampy.”

  Alex bowed his head and closed his eyes. He would never hear that word spoken to him. He would never be able to take his grandson by the hand and teach him to fish.

  What have I done?

  When Alex opened his wet eyes, the boy's fly rod was bent nearby back upon itself, and his grandfather had moved a few steps downstream, landing net in hand, getting himself in position to capture the fish. He was shouting encouragement to the boy who was holding onto his rod with both hands. Then, in one smooth motion, grampy scooped the trout up out of the river, to the accompanying whoops and shouts of “well done.”

  The trout was unusually big for the river; perhaps twenty inches in length; long enough to hardly fit in the old guy's net. From the wide-eyed expression on the boy's face, it was apparently the biggest fish he'd ever caught. Grampy handed the net, trout and all, to the boy and pulled out his camera. Pictures were taken and then the trout was carefully released back into the water. More shouts of "well done," and claps on the back. Then, the boy looked up and noticed Alex watching. His face broke into a full-mouthed grin, and he gave Alex a joyful thumb's up.

  Alex found himself smiling, and returned the thumb’s up.

  Soon, the pair of happy fishermen reeled in and moved on. The boy gave Alex a wave, and they were gone.

  He continued to sit on the tailgate of his truck and watched the river flowing by. It may have been the sound of the water coursing around the rocks and hurrying down to the lake, or perhaps the soothing sparkle of the reflected sun off its surface, or maybe it was the wholesome scene of some old guy wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap netting a trophy trout for his grandson, but the pounding in his head subsided to a modest ache, and the revolution in his stomach settled down. Even the pungent smell of greasy burgers seemed to fade. Whatever it was, life wasn't quite so bad, and he found himself thinking about living instead of dying.

  “So let’s see…nine hundred months, so I’m halfway there. That means, I have maybe four hundred months to go,” he muttered. “Hell, this is July, and I just pissed away three, maybe four months. Shit, that’s one percent of my remaining days!” He stood, turned and closed the tailgate with more force than necessary. “No more. Starting today, no more.”

  A female voice asked, “No more what?”

  Alex jumped and wheeled around. There, standing about ten feet away was Lucy Nelson, his neighbor. Belle, Lucy’s dog, came romping over, and like always, Alex squatted down and gave her a vigorous two-handed rub behind the ears. Belle, in turn, returned the favor by enthusiastically licking his face, wagging her tail, and via body language only dogs and dog lovers understand, exclaimed, “Boy oh boy, am I happy to see you!”

  Lucy, dressed in tight black running shorts and a fitted, fluorescent yellow, sleeveless top, was adjusting her ponytail through the back of her Denver Broncos football cap. Somewhere in her mid-forties, she started each day with a three-mile run along the river trail, a dirt path that followed the contours of the river. She was, to use her words, "working off her first marriage" with notable success. Back in February, when Alex had first watched her from behind the curtain in his living room window, the word dumpy came to mind. Now, her running shorts hugged firm curves that were, well, pleasant to look at.

  One evening about two months ago, in early May when the air was finally warm enough to sit outside after the sun went down, Alex plopped down on his front step to watch the evening creep out of Cottonwoods along the river. Then, without warning, a skinny black dog with a white patch on her chest suddenly showed up and sat next to him. Alex looked at her, and she looked back, tentatively wagging her tail. Alex extended his hand and let her sniff it. She continued wagging, but now with enthusiasm. Then he scratched her ear, and she moved closer, leaning against him and trying to lick his face.

  “Well,” said Alex quietly. “Hello to you, too.”

  There they sat in the fading light, listening to the chatty, bubbly Crissal Thrasher calling its pichoory, pichoory, pichoory from a thicket along the river. Somewhere, nearby, it had a nest and was telling other Thrashers to stay clear.

  “I see you’ve met Belle,” a woman’s voice said from the other side of the fence.

  Alex leaped to his feet, and Belle bounded off, returning to her porch of residence.

  “She’s a harmless pest who doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of staying in her own yard.”

  Alex smiled, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “It’s okay. She washed my face and left ear.”

  “I’m Lucy Nelson.”

  “Alex Delvecchio.”

  Lucy was illuminated by the light streaming out a front window. Her hair was long, her smile warm. She wore a bulky cable knit cardigan; her arms folded across her chest. They had been exchanging waves and hellos for about four months but had never actually spoken.

  “I named her Belle,” Lucy said. “She’s a rescue dog from the reservation.”

  “A what?”

  “Sometimes dogs go unwanted, over on the Navaho reservation and the humane society sends out the word through the various agencies that if anyone wants a dog, come and get it. So I did.”

  Belle laid down and rolled over, legs in the air.

  Lucy laughed then continued. “I think she understands what I’m saying and that’s h
er way of telling me she likes her new life.”

  Alex walked down the steps and over to the fence, peering at the dog at Lucy’s feet. Belle, from her upside down position, watched his approach. Alex said, “I guess for Belle, it’s sort of a new lease on life, or perhaps a canine restart.”

  “Or in modern jargon,” Lucy replied, “A reboot.”

  Alex pursed his lips, and thought, “just like me.”

  “I saw you pull in earlier,” Lucy continued. “You’d been fishing.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, looking over at the blinking fireflies dancing above the bushes which lined the river. “I love it here. The river fishes well.”

  “Any luck?”

  “A few little ones. Nothing much.” Then he added, “It’s just great to be out.”

  Lucy took a few steps closer and sat on the railing which ran around her porch. "I was coming out to drink a beer. My kids are watching the ball game. Too slow for me. Why don't you come on over? I'll pour one for you."

  Alex walked around the fence – Belle bounded down to greet him joyously – and sat on her front step. Lucy reached into a nearby cooler and took out a growler of IPA from the Dolores River Brewery and a frosted mug, which she handed to Alex.

  “I always keep a spare mug cold, just in case,” Lucy said smiling.

  Alex smiled back, cocking his head slightly, thinking, Just in case… what?

  She unscrewed the jug and filled his mug, then refilled hers. “I have to kill this tonight, and I think I’m going to need some help. Growlers are great, but the beer goes flat once they are opened."

  She came and sat down on the step next to him. Belle wormed her way between them, content to lay down with her head on her paws. Only her eyes moved back and forth, depending on who was speaking.

  Alex took a healthy swig of the heavenly, locally brewed beer and watched the as the day slid from dusk to darkness. He could hear the ball game from inside her house.

 

‹ Prev