LA KRAKATOA…ON THE corner of Guild Street and 31rst. Dustily reminiscent of Mt. St. Helen’s. No, it’s more of a Saturday night slowly drawn, bubbling with crowd laughter, a band or music canned humming in the background while you and yours self-sedate…last week they proffered Herman and the Mell-Tones at ‘em, next week they’ll play all-day only country mucous on station WIMS.
Bar’s twenty years auld, gives off all the appearance of total dive from the outside street venue. It’s clean on the inside, but dark. There is, however, a ten-foot-high fully-erupting plastic orange volcano flaring up fireplace-style special effects, including sparks. It sits in the north-east corner of the main hall, with the KRAKATOA painted in bold black letters above it, in livid yellow, directly beneath the ceiling. Which is painted a screaming fire-engine red. You can see it “purtah wail” when they lower the lights. It warms the eyes and encourages the wallet.
The walls are lined with bookcases that are heavily infested with books. Many of these tomes, lovingly filed away alphabetically and by category, have never suffered from a reader’s criticisms. In shorts, the most “read” they usually get involves reflections from the ceiling lights. But, then there’s Gabe “Beau Hooter” Sancto. He pulls them out and reads ‘em.
“Last week,” aid Mabel, the lead tender on weekdays, “he came in and asked for a certain book. When he couldn’t find it, he looked through all the shelves. He finally went out, came back an hour later with a copy. It was thin, something by Marx, I guess. I don’t read those. And he put it up in one of the lower shelves, next to a thicker book. To the left. I think hardly nobody but him reads ‘em, though, ‘cept that tall black girl, and yours truly, ‘course. I write ‘em.”
The Krakatoa serves excellent margaritas, daiquiris, and Shirley Temples with a dash of club soda for the driving parties. Big huge platters of cheesy besalsa’d nachos, free with a pitcher on Friday nights. Bring a nice crowd.
Gabe is a Saturday night regular and always spot-checks to see if anyone new is there, which the case is ofttimes. It not, he plays pool with Thomas DaLieken, Artie, or occasionally Harmin Boole. On Sunday he attends Dame Gretchley’s “Altogether a Good Time Sunday Service.” If he can get up before 2 pm.
Dame Gretchley cheerleads the service, and she has a wonderful, natural, spirit-of-the-times exuberance, wacky and infectious. “You are the greatest person in the world! Never ever forget it!” she loudly chants to any audience. She’s very open, like Thomas DaLieken, although she tends to be bossier; sometimes she and Thom are the only people Gabe can manage to talk to. He thinks that. Mr. Boole is a little too self-impressed.
One time, Artie was playing pool, fast like usual, and while roaring drunk. Artie attempts to make that into a literal truth. “RRRAAARRR!!!” he’d yell, filling the bar to burstin’ with volcanic sound. If he did it twice, he was asked to leave.
Anyway, while maneuvering for a drunken fast jab across the table, Artie swept his stick in a wide outer arc and knocked off an entire shelf of historical romances behind him. The resulting crescendo so startled Mabel (who had written twelve of them) that she dropped a fifth of good Scots whiskey as a peculiarly answering crash. At that very moment, Harmin closed the men’s restroom door and broke the spring.
That was really Krakatoa night.
ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON a small, disheveled, sad-looking female child in a cute lacy dress and shiny black shoes toddled into the Krakatoa Bar & Grill of Rama, WA, through the fire exit door downstairs. Someone had left it open for smoking air.
“I’m LOST!” she cried, almost exultantly. She stared hard at the bartender, who was Robert Goneschlaw, the weekend alternate with Dan Nuts.
Mr. Goneschlaw was rather pressed as to how to respond to this. He was a literally dumb person, having developed a form of mouth cancer from excessive pipe smoking that had destroyed 78% of his upper palate and his tongue. “Nnnggnngg,” he stated, trying to make it sound negative. This won’t do, he thought to himself. Normally, he would write messages on a piece of paper for non-sign language people, or he’s use sign. But this little girl probably didn’t read yet.
He finally came out from the bar, closed the door behind the tiny child, and took her hand. He guided her over to a chair and motioned for her to sit.
“Gogh,” he moaned, trying to appear as sympathetic as possible. Fortunately, the bar was kept well-lit in the afternoons. Sunlight streamed in though ceiling windows, too. He opened his mouth slightly so the girl could see his tonguelessness. Her eyes opened wide. Then Mr. Goneschlaw smiled at her to show friendliness. He was a very friendly, outgoing person.
In case the girl could read, Mr. Goneschlaw pointed to the bar. Over it, a large sign was posted. It was placed there during every shift he worked. It said, in English, “I have no ability to speak. I am not being impolite to you. I simply can’t talk. Please ask me to get your drink. That’s what I’m here for. My name is Robert Goneschlaw.” He had put that last, having heard that people tend to recall what they hear or read last. It worked swell. He got people drinks, no problems happened.
Mr. Goneschlaw went behind the bar and took a phone out. It had an unusually long cord. This was for a certain customer, Mike “Dortmunder” Loughlin, so’s he could use it at his usual table way over in the bar’s farthest corner, due to his “extremely great difficulty in walking.” Mike had a bad tendency to stay on the phone for extremely great lengths of time, but he was allowed to here, as he was charged $25.00 a month for the privilege. Paid the Krak’s basis rate for the bar. Every month, on the fifth.
The barkeep handed the phone to the little girl, who suddenly told him, out of nowhere as kids are known to do, “My name is, ah, Suzette,” Her fluffy hair framed an angelic, and somewhat apologetic, small face. She hasn’t really understood the sign. But as she took the phone, her look altered from confusion to determination. She called.
“Mommy,” she said, “I’m right here at the Krakabar—Karakato—the bar. I’m with the man who’s a dummy.” Then she looked up at Mr. Goneschlaw in a way that said she felt innocent, but she knew this was wrong, and she didn’t like it. “Mommy said to come wait here but I was scared to go in because I don’t know you and it’s a bar and Daddy said you were a dummy and didn’t care. I don’t get it.” Then she started crying, not much; after a little time she tried to smile.
Mr. Goneschlaw, who was beginning to lose his patience excepting he always tried to have gobs of it to lose, reasoned something despicable was happening. It was bothersome, but he’d handle it. He touched the child very gently on her shoulder, patting it, in an attempt to reassure. She did not look reassured. He sat back in his chair and they both waited.
Sure enough, soon, a man, disheveled something fierce, came down the wooden stairs into the bar. “There she is!” he loudly announced, as though to a particularized audience. He came over to the seated man and child. Mr. Goneschlaw gestured, waving his open right palm at the girl as though to indicate a happy acceptance of her.
However, as the man helped her down from the chair, Mr. Goneschlaw’s left hand rose up to point at the other man, indicating a need for attention. “What…what do you want?” asked the child’s father. He looked very defensive.
Mr. Goneschlaw took out his wallet and withdrew a folded piece of paper that was wrinkled, aged and yellowing. It crinkled in the strange man’s hand as Mr. Goneschlaw handed it to him. Then the father and child headed for the stairway, with her thudding merrily up the steps.
Once outside, the scruffy man avidly opened the note…it was quite old and it simply read, “Please remember that ‘dumb’ means unable to talk, not stupid. That’s all I can say to you.” No one at the Krakatoa saw them, ever again.
Was this too corny? Gets cornier later, with a Blob of ribald butter.
SARAGINA AND CAZA ended up returning the Eurocycle. Caza got a ride around town, first.
The dealer was inquisitive and concerned about the return.
“Was there a problem? We can fix it. You have a five
-year warrantee on parts and labor, and it’s a really great bike, you’ll use it every day to go places…”“Noooo…my man doesn’t want it, and I can’t use it. I can walk to everywhere. I thought my niece might like it, but she went ahead and bought one herself. A Yamaha. I love the bike, but if I’m saving for school, I can’t afford it nowadays.”
The dealer offered to work out lower payments, but Sara was opposed.
Eventually they left, hoffing it. Severely, Sara wore silver sequined fast-soled running shoes. Caza wore ancient green beater tennis shoes. “It always helps to wear shoes when one is walking, doesn’t it?” “Amen.” “Hotep! Watchya step.” They silently rambled forward in the brisk light of Midsummer Day.
“Why’d you buy the bike?” Caza inquired of her dearest friend. “Oh, for sheer lark, I guess. I really thought I would keep it, but it doesn’t make proper sense. I even budgeted the payments over a year. But if I save the money, I’ll have what I need for college, with costs rising and all.”
Sara was saving to finish her four-year degree. She’d probably have to leave town for school, unless she commuted. She worked full-time at Ridgeview; the climate there seemed okay for a shift upwards, but who knows where she’d get a job. She might stay on there, because Gabe was in town….
“Gabe’s m’bow. I wish I knew what to do, how to go. I think I could handle being away from him for a while, but I’d love to work it out where we could stay together. I would really hate to lose him.” “Right,” said Caza. “He’s a fine man. He could get ahead, too, if he wanted.” “Sure. I love that crazy hipster, I do. He’s only dragon his tail. Say, how do you feel about hanging out at the lake for a while? It’s one of those days, guaranteed, birds galore to feed.” They wound up at the park, strolling down the beach.
“Sure,” Sara continued. “I love him a lot. With luck, we won’t drift. I never feel bad when I’m by him.”
“Double same here!” cried Caza, sprightly poking Sara in the chest. “Better snap him up quick, before I get ideas.” “Girl, you girl, you!”
They made it to Shell Lake. Some kids, those kids that Harmin Boole had a sway over, were feeding bread to a flock of ducks that were visiting the lake on their southeast flight. These kids always seemed to have bread. Sara wondered who was baking it. An endless supply, and it didn’t look like ordinary supermarket bread. As Sara and Caza approached, the kids seemed to look down and back off. But a couple of girls looked at them friendlily. “You wan’ he’p us feed ducks?”
Hamm. “Well, what d’ya think, Mystery Lady? Shall we feed the birdies?”
A couple boys threw bread hard, past the girls and the ducks. Then one small boy fell down on his rear end. He broke up laughing, openly guffawing as children tend to do.
Another kid gave him a big chunk of bread, which he ate with relish.
Caza hunkered down and two girls gave her bread. Her plastic bead necklaces clattered together and brushed her knobby knees. There was sand on ‘em. They she handed bread to the honking, quacking waterfowl. Noise!!! Out of this world, the clamor.
They were pigeons, crows, ducks, Canadian geese and the other kind on the lake and shore, a D-Day of ducks, gliding wetly in and stomping madly about. Chickadees clustered and gibbered. They were so bitty they bounced.
Saragina began heaving clots of bread at the geese. She stopped to hand pieces to the seagulls. Their piercing, raucous cries struck, symphonic chords in her soul. Birds are the ones with blue and green eyes…ever-and-always jet black crows picked at the remains. Then Caza fed bread directly to the crows, who gobbled it down fitfully.
One of the kids burst off, wild as loose feathers, running noisily up the beach. Another followed him, dropping his bread. He made tiny sidelong golden mountainous spurts of sand from his sneakers. Another followed him, dropping his crest of bread and losing a sandy sneaker. The birds scarcely cared. Ducks and geese warred over tidbits.
“Where are you guises’ parents?” Saragina asked. “Look yonder across the lake,” said a dark-haired freckly girl. Her dress was sand-decorated.
There they were. Indistinct, colorful blobs in pastels. Men and women having a sunny picnic at shelters on the opposite side. A barbecue. They had sent the kids over here to get them away. You could see the men sitting on lawn chairs, downing all the beer. They didn’t want to watch the kids up close. But they were watching from over there. It was kinda spooky. But very peaceful.
Sara smiled to herself, lightly pursing her lips. Well, this little people game had gone far enough. Time to head home and study. “Caza, let’s went. I have to read and digest some food magazines.”
“Dine and Fanima. I need to go say ‘hi’ to Artie at the Krak. It’s Beer, Nuts and Darts Galore Night. Then, I have to put in four hours figuring out the books for the Grant London Art Gallery. Last three years of their accounting papers, worksheeted, tabulated, debited, credited, emancipated, abolitioned, and abortioned. Then, I have to so splorg craggle the noogie-woogie.”
“Do tell. That sounds nice. Run along, now sweet Caza, before your papa walks across the lake and paddles your sandy behind. Liberty, the Eagles, and fratricide to you, too.” And so, home they wented…wending their weary way.
The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos Page 5