Chapter One – Minute to Midnight
INTERLOCUTION FOR THE FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS INHABITING THE UNLIMITED HEAVENLY BODIES AND BOONIES OF RAMA, A GROWING FARM TOWN LOCATED SOMEWHERE IN NORTH-CENTRAL WASHINGTON STATE:
It’s your basic countryside plotisimo, the small, isolated locale hosting a quartet of primary types, especialmente dos guys; over time, it is discovered that drinking destroys - but marriage saves. In essencia, it succeedes with our fair young, modern, but 1980s oriented protagonists.
MEN—one’s short and dark and stocky, the other, tall and blonde and WASTIN’! They each have a girl-fiend--both are gals of color and mystery light. They are all drinking buddies, borderline broke on the barricades of daily trades. Gabe tipples. Saragina is Gabe's career-minded lady, Caza is Artie’s hippie soulmate. Sarah is serious and surging forward, while Caza is playing it slow, living life for itself, for art and for Artie. But not for drink. She pees too much to bother with it.
They all live very near each other, in three separate homes—a cognomen for tidy one-bedroom apartments. They are, shall we say, "getting by”?
Saragina DeSoto is bright, charming and maturely beautiful for her age. Her parents are deceased. No one knows why yet. She loves to "wake people up” by smiling in their faces, up close, and she likes to buy folks a drink--if they promise to drink only two. The one she buys and the one they buy. If they drink more after that it's their problem. “How can I stop you?” She sighs, and moves on. She also likes to hang out at the Krakatoa, chewing the gum, and is on the bar’s bowling team, The Crackling Roses.
Artie Blend is a Genuine Drunk, “sailed wi ‘approval,” many years long-standing and often found sitting. “Burrup! is a not infrequent, comment on his lanky-tanker part. He don't hold reg’lar work but keeps “afloat”. “Been drankin’ since height, wan’ be strai-yate!!!” Gabe is younger, less stuporous and has worked only three low-skills jobs. He just doesn't wanta fit into “society as it stands” yet. It's “more fun” to hang-out, be selfish and sit down to shallowly vegetate and wait for work with Artie. For a while…
Single, Latinate, currently making friends with Norwegian Artie, he's a loner with and an Indian grandma who loves him dearly thousands of miles away. She may need his help someday. Gabe’s parents are divorced and live back east too. So true. It’s note. Who’re you?
Artie’s galfiend Caza Zoo drinks a bit, not near so much as Art. She's got an illness. Art’s still “good” physically, not too desiccated, but he's starting to hurt. An alkie’s alkie who puts two down “fust thang in the moanin” and whose long stringy yellow hippie hair matching scraggly beard makes him resemble a Scandie Christos. Throws his head back, and laughs explosively. This fascinates the heck out of Gabe, who for some reason can barely manage a slight snicker.
“Beau” is quiet and reclusive. Reads a lot. Works out. Saragina loves books; she reads mostly women's lit, black lit, anything lit, etc., and books on nutrition. A lot! Ask her what's good to eat nowadays. SHE knows.
Caza the Zoo is indescribable. She dresses as filmily as her health is frail. Her face is lovely, unpeaceable in time or space excepting the indefatigable brown of her barely beginning to wrinkle countenance. She has a very few spotty freckles until you look closely, and in addition should be leading a much more sedate life. But she's fine now, except she's dying. That's what they say.
She loves to sew, especially stuffed toys for kids.
Artie seems to be having max fun roaring around, but at 42 he's burning out from years of yeast abuse and internal neglect. Heck. He's worse off than Gab, which they both know, and are currently learning. It's mostly Artie’s fault. He had some good chances but let them slip through his macro digital fingers. Life, could You e’er have held Your cares heartmost for this world?
Gabe is smarter than that or thinks he is, like Artie once was. Art is almost just a bright and shining example of how not to live your life. Somehow he's not dead yet. Meanwhile, Gabe is starting to imitate him. This'll have to stop, and soon.
“Beau” reads fluently in Spanish, English, and Algonquin, which he's studying enter interminably with Sarah. He rents a one-bed apartment he can almost keep clean, and it is daily strewn about with paperbacks, ten years work. There's a soda and wine bottle collection, plus a knife collection begun by his Spanish father Donio. He also speaks a few hundred words from each of the Algonquin dialects, descending into e’en a little New Yorker Round-Tablease when Sarah and he get together, making it up. Lo tocas por oldos.
Ademas, he has an option against “retail” society; he contains enough recently poetically numerical heritage to qualify for permanent residency on a 950-acre native “scion” reservation. With option to buy future acreage. But he’d still need to seek trouble, he thinks, and the dang thing might get sold to instantaneous developers. He wants to make it, by and by, on his own, albeit under duress. Right. So far, he rents, owns a $5000 and dollars security bond, and keeps an antique book his grandma “gifted” him as when he was a lad. He has time on his side and his hands… for now.
“Happy to harpy, Harpo to Oprah for you. Hap-hap-HAPPY!”
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, early “Beau” buys a half-pint of cherry marble ice cream and a long-necked bottle of brut Chablis. A half-week worth. He takes it up to his flat and sticks it in the screeching frig, which seems to want defrosting. Several inches worth. In little while later, as the sun is goldenly and ruddily setting, Saragina DeSoto arrives. The banking sun reflects off the nappies ends of her auburn hair. Gab smiles at her in sweetly happy appreciation.
They end up strolling through the park, named Shell Park due to the remarkable lake-front beach. There are curious small seashells that mysteriously wash up, multi-colored and conspicuously patterned, on the moistened shore. Even more colorful quartz rocks are sparkling visibly, embedded deeply in the wet sand. The jagged shells appear as many tiny open mouths, infinite and black, myriad as chaotic broadcoat buttonholes. They perceptually echo with unfrozen talk…walk…
…echo with talk. It rambles ahead of them, this talk, as it lightly alternates feeds itself with soft, lilting, rushes-stirring phrases. There shell-reflected words, as below, assented with Sara’s mildly tempered southern tones and Gabe’s mellifluous east-central citified patois, suddenly grow decisive.
“Gabe,” inquires Sarabelle, as “Beau” has at times called her, “when are you going to cease this parading futile nonsense and settle down?” She models him a smoldering look.
“With you, my lady?” Gabe blinks. His heart jumps, barely touching his upper ribs, probably skipping that perennial beat.
“Who said with me?” And so the stroll continues.
For some reason, or so Gabs surmises, Sarah keeps glancing over at the parks emerald and dew-outlined grassy lawn. Does she want to go sit down on the cool, welcoming grass over there? No, not at all, not all…
“I think we should go back in soon. I forgot my jacket and it’s very chilly out. Don't you think,” exclaims Sara, abruptly grabbing Gabe’s left elbow and crossing his arms over his chest, as though to protect herself from him, “that it’s more appropriate to be indoors on such a cool night?” Sara works as a dietary aide at Ridgeview Hospital and is forever worried about given a cold to her elderly charges.
“Sure, if you want. I wished but merely to catch the furtive dregs of the warming sunset with you and tow, my sweet, though I sense a feminine need for warmth going on here. Want me to walk you home?
“Mmmmm, yes. I have got to be up by five-thirty in the blessed a.m. May I have your arm, silly Sir Ius, and wrapped loosely around my waist? Why, thanks be to you, very very much.” The shells are casually left with hollow silence as the young couple departs the park arm-in-arm.
They stroll to her place, another walk-up, three blocks away. He kisses her good night and ambles on home. Along the way he runs halting smack dab into Artie Blend.
“I thought you was goin’ ta meet me at th’ Krakie las’ emptier naht, yoo Artless rube.
No such luck!
“Ah, don’ know what do be doin’ wichoo, ma Mayan! Or wichout! Ah don’ got nobody to TALK to wichoo not ‘roun’. Nobody t’play pool wit’ neether ‘cep’ ol’ Hah-min an’ he warn’t thar, NUH-UH, mayan. Whar yoo bin, hout wit’ th’ gayal?” Artie is a “gen-u-wine” Montanan, y’better stand back listen and watch, mostly or duck. For six feet around him. Gabe is learning, dementedly, daily, practicing, how to imitate a decent mallard-head duck. Artie, at this point in time at least, isn’t very loaded, so’s it’s easy, altogether, easy as sin, pumpkin pie or a Bud pitcher-binge on Sunday.
“Yep, I went for a wild walk with her in the park, Art. So, are you presently game for a session of rack ‘em up?
“Rarin’! Howza bo?” Artie slaps Gabe on the back, not too hard. He follows the younger man, waving his arms and talking loudly all the while, into the Krakatoa. They are met therein with shafts of light.
At home, “Beau” reads a book that overviews quantum physics, non-linear thinking, and all the summarized finer points of unified field theory. This is very relaxing as very little of it relates in the slightest to reality, especially Gabe’s surrounding one. Therein, Gabe is flanked out on his unmade, inviting and lumpy bed.
He never does “get” the part about “black holes,” fearing it's a weird bogus anal reference at worst ‘bout a dead zone topic anyway…”black holes are what my money keeps disappearing into.” Nearly through with the book, he puts it down and falls into perplexed dozing.
On the way into scintillating dreamland, he recalls his original name… It means something like “Angel”… once more he frets, worries and stews, having nothing better to do then sleep, while feeling lazy and unused for doing so. But sleep he does.
Caza Zoo enigmatically crops up in his dreams, whispery lady, gypsy tramp, wise-woman earth-mother, larger than the world. She IS the created super-image of Babylon the Fallen, live from the Yee-haw’s Witlesses pamphlet covers. It's obviously Mary Todd Lincoln's fault. But she isn't in the slightest that demented, tortured madam, no; she has a joke and a smile that makes her least her own worries fade, and Gabe’s were definitely being rendered more pastel. Her pain, in Gabe’s dreams, was being knocked aside, without meds, by magic dancing, by singing and love from her friends.
“Beau” could see her dancing on clouds, trailing blue velvet strips of light. Perhaps a silver surface would catch her, stranded in the middle of the air. Would it be he? Was that surfboard still stored away in the back of his closet?
Sadly, Caza has chronic health problems, and will probably die rather young. Is that why she and Artie are an item, peacefully content with sex and love? She’s a pert pretty li’l brown gal, ethereal and wispy, visually awash in a moving cloudsea of hazy perfume, with touches of elliptic swallowing night-light.
Doesn’t seem to have long for this world, she; but she exudes energy. She likes green and brilliant sapphire-blue filmy chiffon dresses that lightly touch the floor, and quaintly mismatched scarves and socks. She politely yawns, most delicately, if you become dull too fast. Please buy her a drink, small, one finger of vodka or a gin and tonic, if you see her. Hokay? She’ll also do your books at a reasonably nice low price.
Caza eventually drifts out of Gabe's head, right before she has any real effect on any other of his parts. But he is very content, see, in his particular state of sadness waiting existence, save for the lack of a particular… wife. Drifting, dreaming, on the narrowest edge of sleep… occasionally, when Gabe’s eyes get tired from reading, or when the very thought of women pulls his soul too hard, he lets loneliness overtake him, and he reaches down to his groin… cupping his hand over his maleness. He gently strokes it momentarily, reflectively, feeling a deep, phantasmagoric sense of isolated… mourning.
He has plenty of nobly faltering books to read, crazy twisted pulsing music to listen to, the scarlet-hued Krakatoa to visit and dwell within, and the park. Best is the park, best on beautiful, clear days.
On those kinds of days, he goals to watch the Frisbee People near the water, throwing their toys all the way across the tepid lake. Mostly fellows seem to be in on the throwing, although they are blessed with the efforts of some of the happier gals, usually. They all tend to go for distance, and wind conditions in the park are excellent for that there discoid high-flying fun.
Monday. Gabe and Artie and Thom “Stallin” DaLieken go to pick up their checks, paid out to them once weekly. Their boss, Workers of the World Industrial, Inc., housed for now in the Guild Street Mission, had originally paid their workers on Fridays. They discovered an attrition rate too high for their tastes come Monday. Drinking did it. WWII began to pay on Monday and found it worked. The money doesn’t vanish, and the workers come back on Tuesday. Only the liquor market suffers.
Gabe, who feels out of place sometimes, gets his sizeable but meager check and takes off to be by himself for a while. He’s signed on for the next two weeks, digging potatoes out in the unplanned country surrounding Unionville. He heads for the beach, sitting and viewing the gulls, the gals, the Frisbees, and the swift-flowing bejeweled waters lapping over his aching sneakered feet like so many friendly crystalline puppies. His sneakers are old and don’t matter. He’s precariously seated on an emerald green, fair-smelling as sweet grass, rotten, and partially submerged willow log.
“Potatoes,” he mutters, stoically trying to cause his heated words to blend heavily with the water. “I gotta go dig up some potatoes. Bushels. Food, hungry, eat; potatoes.”
GABE SANCTO AND ARTHUR BLEND, among others, work for a job service agency operating out of a local mission. The mission began the service but is now no longer involved. The mission operates a food bank and provides shelter for homeless people. There are a few such characters in Rama. You might say, they have a mission.
Also, the mission is where Dame Gretchley holds her “Altogether a Good Time Sunday Service,” in the basement. It’s called the Guild Street Mission. Enough about the mission. The job service agency is run by Workers of the World Industrial, Inc., WWII for short. It’s called The Guild Street Service Group. They’ll get work for ‘most anyone willin’ and average pay is $7.50 an hour, depending on your skills and experience. Gabe started off at $6.25 – hitting a Topeka of $15.
“Beau” formerly worked for a mental health institution, actually a psychiatric ward in a hospital. Before that he worked for a grocery, and then a bookstore, discovering life’s intrinsic and belittling limitations along the way. He had previously taken care of his beloved ailing grandfather, now deceased, for about two years. That helped him get the hospital job. He then lost it by helping a female patient to escape.
Artie has skills in outdoor and indoor construction, carpentry, forestry, and mid-scale assembly work. Plus he used to do a lot of carnival jobs, clear-cutting logging jobs in Montana whenever work was available, and indoor painting. Gabe wants to learn how to paint the inside and outside of homes, and how to install the wiring, plumbing, and basic structural support et al in new homes.
Saragina has a more regular line of work. She’s a dietary aide at Ridgeview Hospital, Rama’s largest employer, where she’s a plate-pusher, a spoon-lifter, a face-feeder. It’s a position she attained through an associate’s degree, gained in a neighboring state, and much applying around. She loves her job, which mostly involves helping the elderly, and she wants to work up to Dietician and Diet Management. She can do this by going to the local community college, unfortunately about 100 miles out of town.
Ridgeview is willing to help her pay for her education, and she’s also saving for it. She even makes good money from a novel she writes, later on in here. She’s worried about leaving Gabe behind, though. Because he cares about her, but she doesn’t want to believe in that, yet. Or something.
Caza is an independent contractor bookkeeper, part-time. She does the books for many small local companies which don’t have in-house accountants or bookkeepers. She makes more than enough to get by this way. Also, sometimes she sells
the teddy bears and other stuffed animals she makes.
Sara’s first “god-awful” poem, at the tender age of ten years old:
THE ROLES AROUND me tell me what to teach.
I love to skate on frozen lakes, I feel at HOME thereon,
Snowflakes DRIFTING off the pond and melting all over my coat.
The Being is a human ice-cream…float. Of this I’m fond.
Everywhere I go, I can do anything but rhyme;
Coocoo clock? Time payments? Time enough to pay;
I can leave all those darned places behind some other way.
My living is the congenial sin, sacred but neon-violet. I can’t
Be a garden nun. S’I’ll be it, no.
I touch the dial, I call Brazil…on a kiddy phone!
The Dead Made the Internet
Awakening of National Pride:
Saragina Buys a Motorcycle
“SARAGORGEOUS!” arc-yelled Gabe “Hooter” Sancto, her Beau. “What are you doing? I can’t believe you!!”
With a screech and a squeal, ending with an appropriately loud curb bump, the pretty black lady pulled up to where Gabe stood. These sounds came from her new vehicle and a toy, a Katsumano Eurocycle, American-made, brilliant silver with gold trim and a massive front carapace. Sarah also sported the popular Ido Helmet, which guaranteed protection from all crashes up to 180 mph--both vehicles.
She reved the engine for Gabe three times, then shut it off neatly. “Well, whadaya think, dear gent, you in the back or me up front?
“No contest! You like holding me around the waist too much.” Gabe got aboard, Saragina slid back, and they spun forth for a ride around town.
“It's not all mine yet--do be careful. I'm paying $155.34 per month for it, the next four years. That was a deal, oh nellie, they charge for these darned thangs. My cousin paid almost twice as much for a Mahayana with the juiced-up American engine. He ripped it up anyway, said it needed work. Now it goes 300 mph and uses twice the gas. Why don't we go to Florida?”
Gabe was very quiet throughout the ride. “This is really all yours?”
Saragina was silent, letting Gabe direct the new machine. She drove so slick she veritably purred. He eventually pulled into a garage 50 feet from her front door.
“Well… it doesn't have to be mine. My cousin would assume the payments. So would you. Sara eased her deep brown hand, with its glowing pink palm, along Gabe’s warm and stubbly cheek. Gabe gazed lovingly at Saragina, kissed her hand, and then broke into a big smile.
“WOW. Yes, I would. But… I can't really use it. Can… can you use it?” Sara smiled, the smile that had attracted Gabe to begin with. Drawn and puckerable, yet subdued and charming.
“Noooo…not really. Not here. Well. Impressive wasn't it? Rides like a good motorboater should. Like it?” She gracefully turned the key. Folding her hands in her lap, she sanged, “and if I ever do go back away-away-away…
“NO way,” flatly announced “Beau,” who took her in his arms and kissed her for about five minutes. “I love you. Tell you what,” he breathed, après this most tender osculatory contract. “I’ll take it back for you, tomorrow if you want. Only if. Want to keep it, my darling?” She gazed at him meltingly.
“In a town this size? My legs will atrophy into snappable twigs. No. They’ll refund the down. Please do.”
The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos Page 4