* Uff-da is Seattle Norwegian for well, something like: “This is my Loki Day!”
“GOD, Mayan, ah’m sorreh, ah was’t eben aya-min’! Le’ me bah ya ha drank!” He looked awfully damn frightened and altogether genuinely concerned - for a vicious lunatic creep. Was he a creep, or just something that crept?
It turned out Artie had pitched the ball because he honestly believed Gabe was a very, very nasty Hispanic chap of Artie and Sara's mutual acquaintance named Miguel Shuba, whom Artie owed several many hundreds of dollars. Artie explained that Shuba had pledged to kill if Artie “din’ hev no money read’ fo’ him, raht thar hon saht.” It was rumored that Shuba ALWAYS carted a good-sized holstered revolver, and had used it on muy people several times. Legal weapon.
“An’ guest WHUT? Ah don’ got twenty bucks hon may! Demn, ah’m sorreh, may Mayan! Ah’m sorrah, Lady Sara! Ah’ll pay his med’cal bills, ah got summat. Hanny dranks ya wants, wunner two on may. Ah gots a piesa dough!”
Starbuck’s Master Blend seemed genuinely sincere, but who knows. Gabe sibilantly hissed through lessening pain. “Sss…Sara says she knows you.”
“Beau” was slowly but surely recuperating. Meanwhile he was absolutely entranced by Artie, who sported over three-and-a half feet of thickly golden hair while being one exotically-clad and WILD-looking hippie. Sarah grinned awkwardly, sheepishly fluttering her long-fingered hands.
“Yeah, I know ol’ Artie from ‘way back. He’s from Montanner, he’s a dranker, got mah accent wussin’ me, an’ he’s loud as a rampagin’ elephant. Maybe he owes that Shuba money, yah; but I seriously thought you were harmless, Artster! You helped us rebuild Dame Gretchley’s church for weeks all through February when the basement was leaking and falling apart in need of remodeling. Nice work. You did all that for free! I honestly believed you to be a nice guy…”
It hurt Drama Artie so much that Sara was angry. The Blendman looked terribly sorry, he was starting to break down and cry. His eyes were moistening. His hands gestured wildly. He mouthed his humble apologies, spreading his hands out as if to marry the couple of young people. He stopped.
“Ah dunno whyah ah did thet, ‘cep’ ah waz ascareda Shuba. Ah’ll lets ‘im kail meh naix’ tahm soonah’n ah huhts sum in’ sent par-sun ‘gin. Mebbe ah kin git hup th’ dough.” Artie was hanging his shaggy head pretty low.
Raising his left hand to signal that all was okay, Gabe told Artie not to worry. “If this Miguel Shuba ever really shows, I'll help you pay him. C’mon, long as we're here, let's kick back and soak up the beer. We might as well. I got to finish what you bought me, Artworld. Tell you what.” “WHAT?”
“I’ll stand you pool, three games of four, or best two of three, Artworks.” “Beau” flipped him a peace sign. He was straight-up now. “Yee-HAOUWW!” Artie laughed uproariously, relieved, throwing his long head of mane back. You could hear it land. He echoed off of every wall.
Artie gave Sara and Gabe some basic details on how good the peculiarly intimidating Shuba are, were or was likely to be.
“Ah owes ‘im fum sum bed rail hestait ‘ves’ments, dails. Ah stan’s ta inher’t a li’l lan’ frum m’famileh hin Montanner,” he elaborated, in an inches thick, southern-styled northwestern drawl. “L’il fahm, prahm ache-ridge. An’ we wuz gonna dayal aroun’ wit’ hit. Use hit as c’latt’ral. Git sum mo’ lan’ hyar in Wash’ton State, gitit? But, he gyve may sinkin’ monah t’woads th’ day-yan pie-me’t, an’ ah losted hit on booze, ‘cause ah dranks, an’ ah wen’ KRAYZAH when ah foun’s hout th’ lan’ we wuz gunna tek ha lone hou’ton wuz NAHN TAHMS mo’ then whut way culd puts a shore day-yan pie-me’t hon, ev’n too-gethah ovah tahm. An’ whut WERE we gon’ doo thar, too, wit’ nah wimmins eben ‘tween hus? No WIMM-mens!!! SHAYATT!!! Fre-gitt hit. Fool’sh no-shun. “Carse, naw-ha-daze ah gots mah Caza, shore.
“Ev’r sainse, Shuba’s bin piss’d’r ‘n Hayell hat may. Ah’m sorrah, ah sez. Ah kapes fergittin’ thar’s a ladah presen’! H’it’s so pow’full dahk hin hyar wit’ may loaded fer mestadon. Ah won’ swayus hennymo’, Ladeh Sareh.” Sara pouted, jabbing Artie in the arm with a red swizzle stick, playfully-interrupting.
“You know I’ve heard all those words, Artie. You just shouldn’t drank so damned much. It’s only hurtin’ you. We worry about you, sometimes.”
“Thanks, bless ya, you his wun sway-yut lay-deh. You,” Artie roared, turning to Gabriello, “gotta good wun hyar, Mistuh Gabe. Latch hon taht tuh her,” he slurred, happily advice-laden. “B’ foaw henny-wun helse duz!”
The beer was gradually soothing Gabe’s intestines, washing away the throbbing pain, and the alcohol was dulling the injury. Thank God, he surmised; if that had hit Sarah, she wouldn’t take off so soon with someone else, I guess, but this means war of some kind. Maybe, with Miguel Shuba.
Nothing serious. He nodded, in time to internal music, hoping that Artie the Hippie was really a friend, and eventually he inquired what loose and sporadic jobs were available in Rama. Artie scrunched his forehead.
Most of the people in Rama were, probably, white. But, what did it mean? Were the people of color elsewhere, mounting a giant conspiracy to set major downtown fires? Or were they just getting drunk elsewhere?
“Loose jobs! Whah, way gots th’ par-fec’ dayal fer yooo, m’mayan, rat cheer. Comes t’morrow moain’, ah’ll takes ya ovah mahseff ta sahn hup hat th’ mission jahb centah. They’ll pays ya upta tayan bucks ‘n hower. Ha ha HA!! Ah meks det, ea-SHE!
“AH”LL larn ya th’ ropes. Wanna play some groobeh pool?” Artie loudly incanted this last question aloud, indicating with one broad sweep the entire interior of “his” bar, the volcano of which illuminated his lantern-like face in torridly flickering reds. Male customers stirred, seemed to listen expectantly – couldn’t help that.
“Ah’m good hon th’ tables whayan ah’m not mistakin’ hit fer base-ball!!!”
They all three rose, moving silently and gracefully like fish through a small pond’s water, flowing freely, following Sara’s lead.
GABE “BEAU” HOOTER spins an Artistic tale of Charity tall (most things are taller than him, except those that crawled under the table sooner):
We’d been dropped off in town by our vunderbar work crew ride, having Finished a three-day strenuous and exhausting construction job, and we were walking the incredibly short distance home together. Artie was telling me all about an unusual Life Experience he’d enjoyed, and was incapable of ever forgetting. I simply must suffer in silence through his Story.
“Der wuz dis guy, see, an’ he waz conver’ wid frackles. Head ta toes. Musta ben ha Germ-man, he waz a petch-wuk man. Frackles hall hover! He waz baldin’ an’ his haid had nuthin’ but frackles. Piled hon top ‘o hother frackles. On top ‘o MORE fuckin’ FRACKLES!!! Sisteen diff’ernt shadsa ‘n KAHNDS a’frackles. An’ hon top o’ thet, he were missin’ his laig. Raht laig.
“So’s ah sez to dis guy, see, ah, sez, ‘Say, mistuh, yoo gotta quartah fer a foney cull?’ an’ he pahps raht hup wid ‘No.’ An’, ah sez, ah duz, ‘But hit’s fer on’y wun low-cal call--ah’m not heskin’ fer lang dis-tahnce.’ An’ he sez ‘NO’ strongah.
“So’s ah dee-sahds he’s mah fren’, anyhoo, an’ ah meks ‘im mah buddeh. An’ ah walks wid ‘im lahk ah’m wid yoo, nawah. Saynce ‘e’s hin sech dahr needa dough, himself. Ah kin tells, so ah sticks bah.”
Artie, whose voice was deep with baritone qualities, and whiskey-husky besides, gratingly breathed out each slurry word from a phlegmy, damp, musty gravel throat. He goofily harrumphed five or six times during his tale. It was fixin’ to rain some more, which was why. Whoever was out there was being rained upon. Somewhere, maybe someone was shivering, plodding in the cold. The clouds were gathering fast.
“Den, we be headin’ hup th’sahdwalks, an’ we done run hinto four beefry football plahrs, tuff-kindsa guys. An’ dey sorta hailed us’n halted us’n sez dayar collectin’ fer a hos’pi-tal drahve, fer Raydge-voo er summairs, an’ waoncha plaise givvus yer
dough. An’, you know WHUT?” Artie, not a handsome man at that, but more than serviceably charming, smiled his big and toothy, fairly glowing at Gabriello, fave merilly-heartily gin-splashed grin, the one he usually saved for the womenfolks.
“No, what-what-what, Art Linknumbers?”
“Thet duders hed ha FIFTEH an’ he gayve hit to ‘em flet hout. Muy pronto! An’ dey thanked ‘im. Didn’ eben chenge hit!” Here, Artie stopped walking completely, head lifted, in an attitude resembling prayer, searching the horizon for some evidence of GOD and/or meaning. None was forthcoming.
“Alls ah could cough hup was a lousy seventain sense. An’ ah dug in eber’ pockit. Whoopeh shayet!”
Gabe could almost swear Artie was crying. But it didn’t really matter. He checked his own pockets. They turned out to contain tissue, written directions, two wrapped-up chocolate-chip cookies (both dry as bones), and precisely $23.87. And the browning, torn photo of a middle-aged white lady from some forgotten years ago, black-and-white - burnt amber-yellow at its fatefully ripped edges.
WHEN GABE HOOTER WAS growin’ up, in outlying boonies of the frontiers of the USA’s Midwest (partly Ohio and other places), he decided to look for work a’summer during his slower high school daze. He peered in various eating establishments that hired kids his age with no restaurant experiences. There were several. But they all featured alarm buzzers that rang without knowing how to talk.
These restaurants had been slowly moving in to all the small towns and outlying areas. They were often modeled after McD’s and entailed working behind a protective fiberglass counter, a lot of standing and burger-wrapping performed to the tune of beepers and modernized cash registers, and scaled-down cars thinning out during the gas crises, but lining up by the dozens at the drive-through windows all day. It looked boring, but lucrative. Better than a paper route.
He applied at a sit-down restaurant and, while waiting for the manager to interview him, got a sweeping glance in at all the pretty waitresses…bookin’!
Every single one of them was wearing a very short skirt. The Forest of Beautiful Brown and White Calves. You could see their legs; you could almost see everything necessary above them. But not quite.
The manager seemed bored, but happy that Gabe was applying. Gabe was as enthused as it was possible to show, thinking to himself, the girls help, I guess. But he didn’t say anything much, for fear of …what? Well, the manager right-off told him he preferred Gabe to work in the kitchen, doing prep. With the boys.
“Do you have any previous prep experience?” he sighed, obviously not expecting any. He was white, not much older than Gabe (who was sixteen) and was definitely an already adept and almost too self-confident paper shuffler, dog napper and back-tapper.
“No, just what I’ve put together in the kitchen when Mom let me fix us dinner. I took Home Ec last year and received an A.” “Pretty good! Pretty good! That’s exactly what we like to see around here…” This was happening during a time when there was no known trouble about hiring brown people or high-school girls--perhaps especially for this kind of work. Menial, drudgery? Well, at least it was a step towards self-sufficiency.
“…we like to have our guys work in the kitchen, I’ll bet you can guess why. The girls are a big draw for the customers, you know, they look really cute in those uniforms. By the way, we’re not allowed to interact with each other a lot, you know, but the girls…are a big asset for the customers out front. At this point the manager’s tone was less than artless. He had dropped down to a kind of whispery voice, trying not to attract others’ attention to what he was saying. Not that it was anything secretive. He must not have wanted to disturb the nearby customers.
“It’s not a policy I established, of course, it’s always been that way, and nobody’s complained yet. Ha ha, why would they? So. I think we could really use you as a prep chef in the kitchen. It’s a fun job. You’ll really love it.
“You’ll come in a 5 a.m., help us open, clean up last night’s various messes—if night crew starts leaving too many, let me or Steven know, we’ll talk at ‘em, the guys in that bunch are pretty nice and don’t leave you a lot to do. No problems for ya! You refill anything that needs refilled, clean anything dirty…
…and, if we like your style you can work up to Manager. Manager makes $7.50 an hour, plus perks and bevies. One guy did it in less than a year, the last one before the current one, Steve. No kidding!” He softly chuckled to himself, like he was keeping a special, indoctrinaire secret. Gabe suddenly woke up and realized that this chap was the assistant manager, and that Steve McGee was the actual manager. Gabe knew Steve from school. He was a sandy-haired, short, kinda quiet introverted type. Introverted? Then Gabe—felt odd, inside, not for the first time, and not sure why—and this fellow, Drake, continued.
“…as many hours as you want, almost, we can getcha hours ANY time! You can bus in the a.m. if you want to, but, you don’t have to; we pay you time-and-a-half if you can work more than forty hours, fit extra bussing in around your schedule. It’s not easy but that’s one of the things that makes a potential, effective future manager. Might help you work your way up!
“Call us when you decide on a shift you’d like. You wrote down that you’ll take either, let me see (shuffle), a morning or an afternoon shift. Either’s good.” Gabe was exploring his limited possibilities of summer work. His parents, though looming steadily on the verge of divorce, were good providers, and “Beau” only needed money for clothes or movies or what-you-will. No car yet. And he’d never make enough for college. But he’d gain valuable work experience and good references.
Because…? “You could take either. I’d recommend starting with morning shift, ‘cause you look sharp. You’ll pick up on it. Why don’t you think about it as you’re applying around at other places? I think, though, we have the very best to offer you right here at Sambo’s!”
At this point, so did Gabe. But he remained silent, not knowing exactly why. He looked out the door, then smiled at Drake. Drake had straight, smooth, shadow-deep chestnut hair, and was altogether the ghost of a pudgy Don Adams.
On the way out the front, Drake ran into Steve, gabbing at him a mile a minute, and “Beau” got a chance to see him before he disappeared into the kitchen. He looked roughly the same as Drake, but lighter, older, and more pretentiously rushed. He was wearing a plain business suit and a tie. Drake and all the rest wore brown, yellow and white uniforms, with nametags pinned over there right or left the lapels.
“Beau” turned, looking at a collection of youthful servers standing and talking near the front cash registers. Their higher voices were sweet to his ears.
He closed the glass doors, turning away to head home. They had all been pretty, the girls, gorgeously coiffured, and only three of them were not white. There was but one black person in the kitchen.
This side of the coast? Astonishing. I didn't see them all, I am sure!
Gabe walked home, something familiar tugging at him between his thighs, happily keeping him occupied much of the way. But on that their way, he dreamed darkly about the probable place of safety for all the probable ugly girls, unemployed, or wherever they were, wondering what it was, where unbelievably it was in a sanctified and cleansed, purified and holy. Perhaps it was to be found within the ranks of the armed services, or perhaps it was called something like “welfare.” Or perhaps such beings had unknown and highly specialized tricks up their sleeves… Gabe didn't really care. But he never did take the job.
ARTIE SINCERELY ACHED to know what was on his Caza’s mind. She rarely told him, especially nowadays. “She’s not mah Caza, b’tahms. She's sumun hailse’s.” Like Shakespeare Artie assumed his partner to be entangled in relationships beyond his own design.
Artie was in his/their apartment, a space resounding with hippie mystique. Unbelievably, they both cleaned it. There was beer smell, but the sandalwood incense meshed was it pulling and stretching the aroma to a clearer zone.
The extra-large studio apartme
nt contained a kitchen nook, an unusually comfortable bath, and a walk-in closet that easily held a gopher colony. Caza kept all the books she was currently doing for companies in systematic files, and therein was a regular gopher. Artie’s contributions within ran to sweaters, dark gray overcoats, two dozen outdated men's ties, and muddy pub. His field keel was in storage, but was easily assessable. Three tool chests, one of which held unused art equipment, were shared betwixt the twosome.
Artie was lonely, unhappily missing his Caza. They had been making love, again. It was okay, especially when Artie didn't drink beforehand. Caza had a salutary effect on him, he knew, but she was gone quite a lot. Sometimes Artie, growing brave, pulled himself together enough to abstain when he was alone but he seldom managed a dry state for long. Instead he lost his troubles quietly in vino, TV, and sleep.
Artie was not a calm man, nor a reader like Gabe, and without the presence of his friends he tended to climb the walls. “Mah bodeh is made fer the phys-i-cal plane/Let’s get loaded or WALK outsahd/Ah gotta go day-yun so’s ah kin git hup agin/Mah bodeh sez sum thangs will NOT stay dee-nied.” That sonnet he once wrote on the bedroom wall of a previous apartment, elsewhere, elsewhen and elsewhy-else, in green and blue dayglo. Accent an’ all. Rumors had it his thick drawl originated from several years spent as a steelworker in Georgia or Alabama in the ‘70’s. Ain’t not Montanan-true.
“Whar’s mah Caza? O whar o whar hez she gawwn. Ah wan’ hol’ mah li’l gel lawng. Ik, wha’s dis on da floor? Artie stumbled; his big toe, peeking through a left foot two-dollar used Birkenstock, poked a book. Caza’s dairy. It said so on the cover.
Artie carefully reached down, experiencing slight internal trembling while doing so. He was handsome as he straightened up, blond hair falling back, shoulders elaborately moving into erect place. But he slumped, drunk… his lips stumbled over the words on the cover, and he vaguely promised himself not to grab another beer ere nightfall, ‘less he got real thirsty. He did…
Caza Zooweiler’s Journalized Diary System
Artie, on the futon he purchased last year from a newspaper ad, thirty bucks, lying on the cord of white wood, too hot for covers, read the entire writ below, not caring so much about the meaning of the words as his sense of Caza’s hand in writing them. Also he had occasional spider running through his pile to upset him.
She'd said she was returning within the week. Prob’ly. “Tops!”
The page he opened to, near the beginning, read:
On another lonely road to nowhere – Juneteenth, 1986
I must continue to create meaning and purpose to my existence, or others either will not get around to it or will do a phony, selfish version of it, for them and not for me. But the insides and outside of my head won't mesh. My life feels like silly putty, like a tape recording that skips, like a broken rubber band. It never snaps back, it never unwinds, it seldom regains its true shape. See? It's not sex alone that eludes me, always.
The elusive is like a good soul for the world. It has one or two, but it never seems to hum a few bars and get with it. Back when I was a child, one all-best day, and that great day, I was told I would perceivably own nearly the abruptest grandeur of the universe. And then I would be dead. Finito.
If I worked unseeingly harsh, and cast much fishline, though I haven't caught a single fish as of yesterday… on my cycle peddling in the countree, on the same blissful summer’s day, in a park the size of wheatfields, billowing cattails in the sun, without the traffic of people, before I began hiking a vast and mystic nature trail, a virtual slave to natural beauty as I stood at the trailhead, a feeling was present, filling all that was deep within me.
It began me, sick, as I was without mercy, all gone, sanity smote me. I woke to it. The wind cooled all fevers. The trees sang as I waltzed down the trail, weaving everywhere on my bike, a happy, an incomplete but touchable joy lifting me beyond my pains. I walked with my bicycle, the ground under my feet was moist and earthen.
The trees live in the absolutely solid heart of the earth, mutely and effortlessly beautiful. I still get to visit them, in their manner, even today, if I'm awake and most of the cars are often the distance.
That day made me into me. Without any solid or prolonged contact with nature in this life, I’m a quasisonic ghost, wandering greatly with the merest spark of helpless life, breathing in dust and feeling naught but slivers of potential pain and fear. (Here, Artie signed deeply, and almost sniffled.) I love Artie very much. (Here, Artie heaved a great sigh of joy, gratitude, regret, and bitter feelings of empathy combined with abject failure pangs.) I wish he'd stop drinking. (And here, Artie emitted a terrific belch.)
I try and try to make him stop, but he doesn't, and in a way it's okay because when he drinks he can't get a complete erection. Makes it less and less likely that I'll unever become pregnant… (Now Artie felt joyous. He felt all confirmed as Caza’s true sweetheart, and a grip, perhaps physically real, grabbed the inside of his chest. He shifted his legs, felt the blood drain, and read on)… fortunately, I guess, as I'm weak, but I would have loved a little child.
I would have (should have) taken my (my!) baby out to listen to the wind (the WINE) moving through the treetops, looking at roofs on houses. Houses!!! And sung my baby a lullaby (houses, houses, houses, yeah) while Artie and I kissed. We kiss and hug and feel tremendous affection for each other, and we have great sex when he's well. But this is all I ever needed, except for what's beyond… my present grasp.
Later? Don't know. If ever. Today I have moments of natural solicitude, boon traveling companions (for now), and shoes to match my new gold, purple and peach half-length paisley chemise (is anything more really necessary, wondered Artie, as he faded away to nirvana…)
Alcohol will take her toll, over ‘n above mah slumbering soul.
The angels, the angels, the angels do roll
As a floatin’ cloud rollin’ round to me, oh, ah, believes
In the towering majesty of earthly smoke-dash sandalwood
Wrapping angel feet incense to write the smoky words
Rumbling in smokay boards whazzat you say, you? Boards?
Too bored for words, too bored for wars. Angels’ makin’ money, makin’ dough
Angels often make the big-time, doncha know.
Ah don’t know from that clean show cuz earth’s the only place ah goes
Ah do roll, ah do roll, ah do roll into the a floatin’ cloud of
Alcohol that owes no toll over and above mah slumberin’ soul.
MABEL’S LIFE WAS THAT OF a highly literate (and relatively cosmetically appropriate) middle-aged woman who “happened to be crowd-avoidant enough” to take up bartending in a small town, primarily because her husband Bill and her life “tended towards a country setting.” On the other hand, she'd been born there and had lived there all her life.
She was more like Harmin Boole and his eerie little crowd of townie geezers than she ever felt brave enough to admit. Or believe. But, she'd spent a qualifying fifteen years in New York City, six of them in college, getting a master’s degree in teaching English. She says she taught at Hillbright College for “a good long time,” and had loved it.
Bill and Mabel square-danced, round-danced, and folk-circle danced their legs off regularly, a tad bit late in life to save either one from varicose veins, but far too early to keep Bill from losing weight and regaining some of his former excellent shape.
“I’ll be livin’ as long as May (Mabel was his “May”) if’n we keep up, how ‘bout that?” he crowed. He was one to love potato chips too much. He wore a string tie most days and looked “’way like an Indian, if’n I had my eye.” Bill kept part-native and was also born missing his right eyeball, having received surgery to sew the lid shut as a boy.
He was a handsome cuss, anyways, with one bright green eye piercing straight into your soul. Mabel was German-Irish, and everything else, with flamingly curly red hair she'd re-dyed back to snuff, and to match Bill’s good eye. “One shade brigh
ter’n I was born.”
Mabel set in the bars back office, quickly leaping up to serve a customer out front. Her jumps were seldom spectacular, but on warm days she wore a country gingham-checked medium-length skirt with three petticoats, from their dance class, that blossomed fantastically each time she'd deserted her seat, reminding the customer cum audience of a mushroom with scalloped edges billowing out in all directions.
There was this mini-explosion of colorful posterior puffball, then the words “What’ll you have to quench your desire for liquid poison, pardner?” materialized from a friendly visage of loveliness landing directly in front of the customer, who often made a face before responding. She had either picked up this habit from, or taught it to, Saragina.
They also both helped out at the Dame’s Sunday Services. But Mabel, in her ordinary layman's role there, would become peculiarly straight-forward in a most oblique way doing the serious prayers for assistance to the suffering--when the Dame held them. “On this day,” Mabel would pray, “I want to pray for…Artie Blend.”
Long, slow dissolve. Switch to camera in Bar. Dissolve into interior of Bar, Camera Two.
At the bar, one slightly sultry afternoon, Mabel presided over the becigaretted, ectoplasmic Church of Alcohol that was the Krakatoa: three pool tables, four video machines, three pinballs, two phones, and eight customers. “May” was watching TV in the back room. It was a documentary about alcoholism and its signs and symptoms, and while viewing it Mabel seriously woke up to the evil thing that was a-happening to Artie. Misuse of medicine. By watching an alcoholic, one just like Artie, walking the crooked lane.
He has so much to look forward to, Mabel mulled: his lady Caza, his good new friend Gabe, his career in building and construction, his own general sound health. Why why is another pretty guy tearing himself apart with booze?
She’d been dreaming up an idea for a book during the show, and in a portion involving a male character similar to Ulysses S. Grant, who drank like a fish, she was going to have him say:
“The Presidency is beyond me because I booze around! A fish needs to drink too much muddy water. I was willing to risk all I possessed as a general, but when it comes to peacetime, I’m sunk. Whenever I sit down, I perch upon a bar stool!”
Mabel left the back to help customers entering the bar. She drew two beers from the tap, sold ‘em a bag of potato chips, and went back to begin jotting down notes. She could still feel the wet glasses in her cool hands.
Mabel saw the ultimate psyches of women and men as being vastly different from each other. Well, typically, but not necessarily universally. This was real to her. Being a grandma at heart second nature, giving her bones and calcium over to her inborn children…Mabel couldn’t help but mother Artie.
She saw the Artster as a man who, in her own light, like Grant, was antsy and needed action to continue forward and grow in his life. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see the chaos and overwhelming terrors of the early stages of Artie’s life that led him to his currently decaying existence.
She had suffered her own hard times and difficulties; or, had she? Well, she had. Her father, dead when she was one, her mother too weak to help her, she had bounced in and out of foster homes until they found her a good family.
No.
I’ve lived here all my life, and all I’ve ever been is bored. Much kept from me, much given to me, much lost of how I must make my way. And the money I’ve gleaned from my books helped us to buy our new house, make the payments, and purchase a luxury sail-boat outright. But my father did die when I was pretty small, when I was a baby and accepted everything, of course. I do remember some of my mother’s crying fits. She was so good to me.
I didn’t know better, then. How to miss people. I still don’t, really. When they’re gone, they’re gone. Nothing will ever bring them back.
Perhaps Artie was merely young and handsome, thus attractive, but Mabel didn’t think that was the real reason she cared. There was something congenial about him that caused her to fret over him, like a silly old mother hen. And Caza, too, his other half, had her woes. She was dying of “bad blood.” Her father was inappropriate to her mother, with the devil to pay for it.
The impotency of her worries did not escape Mabel; she felt an idiotic urge to put what she was doing completely behind her and to take up a volunteer rescuing operation for alcoholics. Perhaps start a branch of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) in Rama? Who would she get, besides herself and her husband, to fund it?
Making money from her writing would help her leave bartending, this selling of poisons in legal doses to people who can’t necessarily handle consuming it in larger ones. She thought, we really don’t need the money, but you never know…she liked generating a regular income. She bit her pencil, fearing it might splinter, or it might as well be her finger. They had laid off Ed Bitters from his job, pre-retirement, and if it got into “their” money-makin’ heads, as it easily might, they could lay off her man before he and she took the rewards of his company retirement benefits. She’d been threatened many times in her life by such things, and Bill had assured her that such things could bloody well happen to them. What price her books?
Those dogs. But, concluded Mabel, with a sigh, here I am at the Krakatoa for now, and in my heart what am I doing? Here in former Indian town, full of ghosts. Make a buck, ski downhill. Bugs me, it does, though, about Artie. I just know Saragina will choose to go away to school, and what’ll “Beau” do then but have to choose between the two of them, as it were? He’s best go be with Sara, I bet, but what if she wants to get through school first, and drops him…he’s not so ambitious as she is. I’ll bet he goes. Then Artie will be in here all the time, anyway, like he already is.
Oh, well. All the time? Sweet little Caza should talk him into marriage, as if it would do those two any good…
“Mabel! Mabel Jones!! May—BellLLLL! I need a pitcher, rye-cheer!” Thus sang out the infrequent local who had gone to school with both the Joneses way back when it looked like heavy industry was going to hit the town in a big way. It never had, never really went ahead and did…no extra pollution that way, clear big beautiful skies…except for over the concrete plant.
Someday, Mabel told herself, on the way out front, we’ll convert this building to an AA meeting hall. Nothing but fruit juice and seltzer water will be served. Not even coffee. It’s addictive, too.
“I’m comin’, tartan Tom, keep your bloomin’ shirtie on, I’m coming…”
ONCE UPON a lily pad…lived a Frog. She was a nice-looking frog, had terrific gams. They were commented on, especially by other frogs.
She used to stretch out and lie in the sun. Soakin’ up the rays.
Once or twice her skin dried out and she’d splash around in the pond to remoisten. It worked. Her crystal-clear surface, translucent in the sun, bubbled no more.
The frog knew no civilization. However, one day she developed an urge to go to town and become a celebrity. Or, to eat some celery. She went.
When she came to town, the first place of interest was a showy restaurant.
She entered via the front door. Immediately there was screaming and chaos.
People dashed about, yelling “Frog! Frog!” She ignored them and hopped over to a table. “What is dis joint?” she said. “I want to eat!” And she stuck her tongue out, way out, twelve inches, hoping someone would understand.
A waiter led the frog back to the kitchen, where he pointed to a refrigerator.
“Get in and take a look around. We keep all our food in there to keep it cold.”
He indicated that the frog should go inside. “You could help us keep an eye on things.”
She agreed, and hopped inside. The waiter smiled, calmly closing the refrigerator door. Then he turned the temperature in the grig way down, in order to give the frog a quicker death, or something.
Several hours later, the chef cooked up for the waiter a terrific pair of frog legs, free of charge. Breaded lightly and served with a side of tarta
r sauce.
“The Moral of the story,” Saragina whispered to Gabe, tickling over his ear with his hair, “is frogs should avoid cold storage units and smart-ass waiters.”
“Awww, does the froggy have to die in the story? I liked her. She had a lot of spirit. Know who she reminds me of?”
“No, sweet face, the frog I’m thinking of is from a galaxy far, far away…”
“Next time, make the boy frog eat a lot of fruit flies.”
Please Give to Amnesty International! – Fake Ad, Real Cause
“AND SO IT shall be…”
And it was!
For starters, Dame “Boat Person” Gretchley didn’t necessarily preach from the Bible. This was largely because she really HAD been a boat person, and was sick to death of all the violence.
“Too many stonings, too much death. You make too much fuss over one dead body.” Instead, one Sunday, she had a few choice things to discuss about the local phone books. It seems there was more to life than how skinny and unpopulous they were.
For example, she wondered why “for years, goods and services have been advertised through a suspiciously uniform color of paper, considering this is the free market.
What does it mean? Does it refer to the Jews, symbolically? Is Authority attempting to further denigrate them, to put them down? Remember the phrases ‘yellow journalism’—the bald Yellow Kid—and the ‘Yellow Peril’? Remember the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” and “Old Yaller”? Remember Steinbeck’s The Pearl? Remember Berkowitz’s ‘Son of Sam’? Perhaps it is not a good thing, to advertise goods on yellow paper only.”
“But Dame, there’s a white pages nowadays that lists company names, and there are blue and green pages…”
“But it doesn’t feature slews of ads; does it? That’s only in the yellow-pages style of book. I think its anti-semi-truck, or something. Like saying all Jews ever do is own everything we already own, and sell it back to us in packages. Weird little paper packages, when you can buy everything on the Internet and get much better shipping rates and a paid group fee on Amazon without trying.
“I say that’s Unreal, by necessity. This old world needs more and more actual Reality in it!” At this emotive statement, Mabel “School” Jones, who wrote a lot of overtly prosaic historical fiction whenever she could, warmly disconcerted.
With mild hesitation but obvious bemusement, Mabel pointed out during a dull moment (which was easily generated) that during the European Middle Ages, which Dame Gretchley, being South-East Asian, might not be so familiar with, Christians had “taken over,” or established, many trades and enterprises previously begun and run by Jews. They competed, perhaps unfairly, and eventually the “Christian” enterprises dominated. That was the start of the Medieval guilds that later led to the establishment of unions.
“Maybe that explains the new, streamlined, business-listing white pages,” offered Mabel; “it’s largely derivative. White maybe symbolizes plainness, simplicity, or Christianity. Or it’s cheaper…? The yellow pages are still the major resource material, I think, with the ads and all. But the newer white pages are a quicker source for phone numbers and addresses. Maybe it’s just a joking historical reference to change…”
“Okay. But, is that the rightest thing to do? Jokes aren’t always fun when they are intentionally destructive. What’s wrong with the past clearly being the past?” The Dame’s own past was not an especially good one. She was happy to put it as far behind her as humanly possible.
In answer, Mabel stuttered, “nothing. I…I don’t know why not.” Mabel prided herself on her lack of ability to stretch the truth very far before it broke. The Dame would sometimes break up laughing at her for that.
Other neat-stuff topics would, intermittently, float up in the Dame’s church. Anything at all was discussed, often to accompanying instrumental music. But everybody sang, in lilting feminine voices maturely nauseating.
The Dame had a backlog band of local characters who showed up most Sundays, dressed in ragged costumes, sporting a variety of high school band implements of audial destruction or enjoyment, depending on the musician’s level of practical abilities. Tuning them all up was an event in itself. The Dame played at least three, the flute, the clarinet, and the viola. Mabel was learning the sax and percussion. Dan Nuts played solid bass, and an elderly couple named the Bitters performed a peculiarly gothic singing loquation called ‘quaritalto’ where they interchanged voices, with their daughter Sharone dipping low with them at four-stroke intervals.
This familiar trio was stoutly performing rousingly early madrigals to wake ‘em up one sunny Sunday in November, crisp and clear outside, when Caza finally showed her blue-green skirts at church.
First thing she did after doffing her mostly brown Navajo or Dine jacket was to wander over so’s to jaw with the elder Mr. Bitters. He quit, after a moment’s pause, “being ever so willing to salute a lady conversationally,” and knowing Caza was probably hoping for news on his impending legal action. He’d lost his old job as a higher-up at Ridgeview, and recently had started a new one.
“How’s it goin’ with the new job, Ed?” inquired Caza, there for a rare Sunday appearance before she went out to sun on Artie’s concrete “patio” and do bookkeeping.
“It fares well enough, Caza m’dear, well enough. But I’d rather the environment at my new work was much less informal. You know what I’m referring to, perhaps.” Ed, an old trouper when it came to civil rights, wondered if really she did.
Caza smiled glowingly at the old gentleman, with genuine interest and with an unforced, and previously unforeseen, natural affection. She was waiting for him to become more definite, so she would understand him better. He continued. “I think that’s what cost me the last job. Getting settled into the new one, though, and retirement’s creepin’ up. On little cat feet.” Mr. Bitters sighed, off-handedly.
“Little cat feet!” sang out Dame Gretchley. “Little CAT feet! Why, I can hear that darn cat thumping in my attic all the way out to Stanislawskia!” She pulled her considerably bulky frame over to dead in front of Ed. He grimaced a grin. The Dame might decide to bend his ear with her own harrowing misadventures.
“In THIS small town? Why, this is America, or something. You have a memory, I think, dear lady, but on the other hand, I have found that these, uh, hospitals end up with an, ah, nasty tendency to become owned by larger cartels than I and what little is mine can easily relate to.”
The Dame bounced up and down on her feet, peering at Edward with a clownish, pulled-in, non-plussed kind of expression, as though she were sucking on a lemon too quickly. But she laughed, and said, quoth she, with a punch-inspired burp, that she had been in the same boat.
“I’ll bet it was an even leakier one. Good luck to you during this hard time, Ed.” She danced away, in the general direction of the kitchen, to start laying things out for the buffet.
“Not to sound like I’m giving up on the situation,” Ed continued, to Caza. “I simply don’t believe I enjoy working for that particular gang of thieves anymore. Sour grapes, I suppose. Well and good. Believe it or not, budget cuts are fashioned, nowadays…and that’s probably all they ever were is fashionable. What are we still doing with an economy that seems to be forever based upon dead trees? It’s been far worse, at least. I still think we’re running, anymore, on a Paper Standard.
“But I believe they let me go too early on purpose. THAT way they withheld my retirement benefits.” Ed grinned, stoically, at an obscure and distant trap. He did not look sad. More like an undefeated human blank, who didn’t particularly care about his own peculiar circumstances…because nothing was really hurting him. He was almost sexy, for an old grey dude with jowls.
“Guess so,” quoth the Dame, who’d come back from the kitchen with intent to visit. She had a hot dish or two and was fixing to split. And just as she began to leave, grabbing Emilia Bitter’s arm and telling her about a marvelous desert she’d made,
“Won’t you try some, an
d here, have the recipe, and since you’ve got your car would you take it over to Mr. Goneschlaw’s, he’s slightly ill, and he needs a visitor with food, there’s a dear,” a bunch of mangy-looking people from further east burst in through the stainless-steel basement doors. One young man separated himself out, actually wringing his hat in his fat hands, fancy that, and approached Caza, who was standing there apparently looking available!
“It’s Yuana Oosalamano’s birthday tonight, and we signed for this space last month. Reserved it for six o’clock in the evening. She’s in her 80s and we’re gonna have 39 people in here, 56 tops. Can you-all help us set up?”
“Shore!” called out Mabel, the Dame, and Caza, as one. Caza grabbed the nearest church-stormer and pointed at several already established small green hooks on the ceiling, explaining how to hang the birthday streamers.
“We have lotsa boitdays here. There’s a written guide on setting them up in the back office. Who’s in charge, you geese?” The group and Caza and Mabel started putting their heads together, planning the elaborately party.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Bitters gathered various tasty leftovers, ably assisted by Sharone, and headed with alacrity out to Goneschlaws’s. Rob was very fond of her alacrity, though he always respected her integrity, which was gritty. Mr. Bitters stuck around to help the instantaneous, uproarious invading crowd.
None of them looked quite British as Mr. Bitters. He was pretty tall, could reach high up to hang the streamers - the kind of man who “did things.” Edward was highly useful, and was locally considered to be indispensable. Local is always what you make of it! Left? What is left, after a lifetime of overly hard work? In factories, plants, on assembly lines, or in other places where you are a cipher?
Various fancy versions of “Happy Birthday” began to be repractised, so the ever-present Dan Nuts, gracing all with his sainted mysterious loner presence (bet you’ll never guess how he was doing that), leaped in to jovially contribute:
“Just a snatch of a song, not a short one nor too long, right to celebrate the gladsome tidin’s of a lie-dee reaching the austere autumnal auge of? 23!
“Happy birthday to YOU,
Hope you don’t go BOO-HOO.
Happy Birthday, Dear Yuana,
How o-o-old are You?
“Nope, we don’t have a SINGLE clue,
Yes, you ARE so youthfulistically-looking,
We just cannot tell…can YOU?
Everything broke up laughing. Meanwhile Ed Bitters assumed a most careful, masked with years and polished with tears worried look as Caza, with the assistance of the invisible last but expected late arrival of Artie, got out sparkly birthday streamers, dozens upon dozens, from the upper shelves of the church back closet. They seemed to run to gold, blue and green, metallic, resembling tiered tinsel. There was additional digging around in there for table cards, party hats and noise-whistles. Others were setting up the card tables, unfolding chairs, getting tablecloths, and prepping in the kitchen, while Ed and Dan faded away to check out the lighting system. It didn’t work well at night, sometimes.
“Little cat feet,” muttered Mabel to herself, handing a streamer up to a young lady perched, somewhat precariously, on the gardening ladder. “I must use that line in a book, someday.”
SARAGINA WAS NO waitress. She had friends who waited on tables. But she could wait, wait, wait until hell freezes over, before she climbed into bed again with the only unknown comic she preferred to have unprotected, inferior-positioned, mutually-orgasmic sex, with. Her, underneath.
Yes, children’r involved…if someone doesn’t fox up now and then, no kids.
She liked to have him as no stranger, on top of, beneath, all around her. She wanted to own and to use his last name. Copyrighted and serialized. She liked him to be in control. If they weren’t married, if she didn’t share his name and a goodly private portion of his soul, including living with him, that meant he was not in sufficient control of himself, or their marriage.
She didn’t even remotely want to be his actual, spiritual, or physiological superior. And if that was the case, then she wasn’t, either. Excepting one Danny Devito, who charmed her occasionally with his dwarfism. She met him a few days ago, at a party in Unionville, with celebrities abounding. All, all is out of…sorties.
No matter how Gabe, or anyone else, pressed her she would not give in. Such was her ingenuous concept of marital happiness, to save herself and her Man for the potential of the All-Important Thing – called Children. Babies, infants, rug rats, so-called floor monkeys, happy peppy little ones. That sort of thing! Marriage and a regal church wedding, how you start an American family…not as hipsters, but as two souls in love who respect something beyond their material lives.
A BITE OF SEATTLE-STYLE BACKGROUND ON “OUR LADY SARA,” WOMAN OF A THOUSAND ROLES AND BLACKLY SUBTLE NUANCES, WHO MAYBE HATES POLITICS – BUT LOOKS INTO THEM AND BRIEFLY SHRUGS:
The radically-oriented first man she’d married, an apparently worthy, dark-hued-as-she and permanently-stamped-as-Nigerian-though-Spanish-surnamed chap, Alexander “the Great” DeSoto, a seemingly happy and hospitable soul, had come to her neatly hidden away under the peaceful Black American out-spreading protective umbrella of the Original State of Islam, charmingly claiming it to be a Muslim harbinger of future good times and classier fates for their Worldwide Race. Perhaps that superstitious word “fates” was the signal cue of some kind of male wrongness, a red flag, meaning lack of humanistic faith in her talents, hard working soul, and progressing capaabilities over the fortunes of Socialism and the ever-shifting political tides of so-called progress. Saragina wasn’t half as communist or radical as her hubbie; she merely wanted to grow closer to him. So she attended their meetings, studied Islam with her own gentle enthusiasm, mingling with the radical crowd; but her heart, Black as it was, couldn’t see the point in such politics. What kept her out of things was the hopeless taking of sides.
Sara wasn’t the type to lay it on thick with, for or against white people. Nor was she the sort who found herself wishing for violent radical change, thinking like Dr. King that such events come in increments, a step at a time, and might take years to actively commence. Patient and forbearing, she enjoyed dealing with people exactly as she found them every day, letting them believe whatever pleased them – as long as it didn’t threaten her inmost sense of self. She stood up against racism, but kinda quietly, without being arrogant. Yet this Mary Poppins approach wasn’t her entire being – she just didn’t care to be rude, or use her height to be intimidating. Coming from a family of Tall Black People, Sara was too Mom-oriented for that, never acting like her fellow adults were somehow children. She merely desired to settle down, preferable permanently, with a nice, friendly, decent man, one who would not back down readily in a quarrel, a Man that at least stood up for himself. Perhaps this was a girlish and Romantic fantasy, or her surely meant-to-be realistic part. But it seemed to be such an attainable one…or was it?
…she remembered her Father as the awful sort more likely to take things out on women, much more than to understand himself; but this was a submerged memory with her. Her layers of self that covered this imaginatively supplied the black soul that was her father with reasons, reasons pertaining to his own personal ancestry and additionally to Evil White Society, reasons that caused him to not always interact positively with Sara, her mother, and Sara’s brothers. For reasons she never understood, he was pleasant to her sisters. But oh, seldom to her! Rarely, if ever was he pleasant enough to her. But, why? She did not know. Why. Staying up late at night on the couch, she mooned incessantly about men.
She was catching herself thinking about it, wishing she could shut the bad memories out and keep only the good ones. The pleasant thud of bare feet in the hallways, the sound of laughter in her backyard, half of phone conversations and music by Earth, Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, and the major parts of Rap, elementally grasping some obscure anti-authority truths…playing off in the distan
ce. Dr. Dre, songs about killing cops, music about how her People are dying somewhere else…drugs and prostitution, horrible things Sara wanted nothing to do with. Maybe substance abuse caused most of the Black and Brown problems in the United States. Or maybe it was that attitude that caters to white male authority; which one was it, historically the wrong type of thinking, or something along the lines of sheer greed?
It made her feel so creepily judgmental, which she wanted to get away from. What was a real solution to this, other than working and getting ahead? Surely a Black Revolution would only mean idiocy, or extremes. “I just want to fit in, not be labelled a man or a lesbian or a Red Commie,” she reasoned. Some of her folks, churchy and Christian as they were, seemed too far away or too stuck-up and showily sophisticated for her tastes. But they all were hard-driving, liberal or conservative, they were mostly school and work-habituates.
At least it caused her family of origin to take some chances in performing their minor act of Diaspora, one which was already thriving in her thronging kin through their Old World Heritage, one potentially Moorish as well, that pushed their set of fledgling blackbirds into the general or perhaps the less restricted sky of an expanding outer reality. She never found out if it was part of the Northward pull on Blacks or not. But eventually she ended up in the Pacific Northwest, after a short lifetime of travels similar to both Gabe’s and Artie’s.
Somehow, as though on planned schedule, they all moved out young and dispersed across the country, quickly, Sara had thought, too quickly for a “typical” Black family. Typical or whom? Or what? Of Why? Because, of course!!!
She heartily missed her brother Phillip, her sisters Rae and Glinda, whenever she longed for the joyous shout of familiar chaos ringing in unison throughout the narrow hallways of a large and thickly carpeted well-kept house. Often she found herself missing the daytime sounds of a large, happy family, groceries shuffled while being put away, bags upon bags…nowadays, she could carry all the groceries she bought once every two weeks in one trip, the few blocks home to her walk-up. Oh, where was Phil’s ball glove, Rae’s bike, John’s tennis stuff?
She felt lucky to have landed her Raman job. But it was such a rinky-tink place in which to have to eke out a lonesome existence. Her ex-husband, the wretched cad, had lost them their original new home through his violence and his angry temperament. She was not sure she’d ever get over the disappointment. Otherwise, she would be happy as could be, and in fact was managing beautifully, until…
He was just immature, Sara decided one day, laying two logs, aged maple, in her brick fireplace just to make it look less empty, less full of singed and destroyed memories, less tempting as a final resting place for the bigotry-laden books she was occasionally forced to peruse, forced by her intrinsic researcher tendencies and her resolute female curiosity. Books such as Idiotic Cherokee Scumbags, Sands of Harlem’s Supernatural and/or Rise and Fall of the Saturday Matinee.
And also the Koran, which she liked to glance through, poring through its slim, leafy pages for the source of the violence that had disturbed her ex-spouse. She occasionally found the potentially few, or actually many, places in those religious volumes that could have impelled only a soulless being into touching her with such violent lust instead of what she knew to be natural, peaceful, uplifting love (with strings attached and a playin’), or in other words the right way for a husband to treat his wife, or his wife to treat him.
Sooner she would attempt at being a Christian, wearing the cloak of a gentler pretension to belonging, before she again became involved with Islam. No! Respect that church! What is the difference twixt a church, a temple or a mosque? Nonesuch to the above! But she did not really believe her religious preference was to blame, although she was definitely supposed to. She, having more than a little touch of brains, thought it was a combination of her own desires for individual freedom in the face of Black imperiousness, which she could neither argue with nor accept, and the reality of Islam being a fantasy game for nothingness’ sake, when it came to accepting anonymity in the New World, in itself an ode to being black: Amfrica.
But, who cared? It was the late ‘80s, not fair nor foul nor good red herring. The Muslims or Moslems primarily operated in the Middle East, opposing Israel and being under CIA rule due to the major oil interests in America and Europe. In Sara’s readings, the original Muslim Empire may have been the driving forces behind Spanish slavery and the European Inquisition. But taking sides wasn’t her approach; she knew all kinds of people were to blame for worldwide political domination and the subordination of the human spirit. Greed, she always figured. The need for money is the root of most evil, not religions or even politics.
The couch, her aging support from Joseph “Joe” Alexander DeSoto and hers past, was sinking in the middle, rolled-up and torn obsequiously in the side corner. Stuffing was present. It poked out in various white clumps, marking the age of a beautiful but spent piece of furniture, cheaply and doggedly falling apart beneath her reclining body. Stretching out her great length. What money is useful for, she sighed, why people fight incessantly so they can buy a better style of success.
Sighing responsibly, Sara got up, built a fire, piled candy wrappers and newspaper supplements on it, and sat back down again.
She wondered sometimes, however, if under better conditions it (Islam, or the rival empire or whatever it was) would have opposed Catholicism, stopping or slowing the New World’s violent fevers of expansion. But she could never see how much another fantasy trip as that, being the ghost of its own supermarket past that it was, really meant anything honest or good or real for…for…them. It was too weird, too hate-ridden, and too graphically redundant.
Well, actually, it was largely pro-slavery. Yup. Vomit. So were the Christian and even the Jewish Bibles, so was the world…maybe the Universe. Joe, working hard every single day at his beleaguered job, spending most nights at those radical Islamic meetings, leaving her to read the Koran instead of spending enough time with her to get to know each other. Night by night, they drifted apart.
One day she questioned this, and violence struck with its feet of clay, same as with Ike and Tina Turner: HE PINCHED HER CHEEK, ON THE REAR END! Well, it meant something. He’d used THREE fingers, at least! And those were strong Black men’s fingers. She had to leave him behind, or she would’ve knocked him senseless to the ground! The brutal, overpowering “snatch” of her unwilling buttocks by the loving but often distant and away from her Joe, resounded forever in her feverishly hot brain, a symbolic act of ultimate marital betrayal. To put it bluntly, Saragina had acquired some serious trust issues involving sitting down.
A peaceful, normal life, one where Sara was free to oppose her enemies and to support her friends, without being hassled needlessly, was surely all she ever had wanted and was still her heartmost desire. Can people make this into that farfetched of an ideal? Perhaps so, but…bony frame. Funny. Islam-dominated man, staring down her record-a-phone. Waiting to trick or please someone. Waiting, anew and afresh, for WHAT, she did not apprehend, nor did she feel entirely capable of grasping or gathering it all up into her reality; an absurdist compartmentalized zone, which was the audible gentle soul of a seeming “Christian” man who would sooner be hurt—or who was simply normal, with luck—for or even by her than to ever dream of purposefully, while looking the other way, while covering it over, hurting her. Never ever.
You know, one that WOULD’T hurt her. Sniff.
And a certaine-most American Indian | Mexican | Italian | Jewish/Arab and who knows what, does it even matter, fellow at that! Good old Watson. I think I could be his Sherlock, for sheer “playing dumb” luck. The gatepost to Real Life at last. A genuine American Native, Indigenous, Brown person and probably Christian soul. Well, anything but a black or white silly old GIRL. NOTTT!!!
As though dreaming while asleep, the isolated tigress that was she, with athletic listlessness, unbending and tiredly crossing her long straightened legs, scarcely knowing anymore as
to why, curved her supple back more fully turned to the meaninglessly filled empty space below the red false-brick Santa Claus chimney. She had once coveted a similar Chimney from Afar, when as a Child she first suffered Winter’s biting Chills. Then, she’d been looking ahead to inhospitably coldish weather in the Americans that, YAHHHHH, never really Arrived, as in her worst Naïve expectations. Now, It had instead remotely vanished, as though unwilling to do or haunt a simply black girl’s comely and homely Graces.
Well, into the “superior” nether realms of Canada, or something. Saragina gracefully sat, but shakily, listless as flat brown leaves floating in layers upon the clutching glassy surface of a crystalline pond, unrippled by wind or tide or story-book water creatures, silently hoping for a loud and ringing break in the heated, untroubled serenity, of her smoky surroundings, the enchanted, womblike smoggy choking Hades—omigod, I forget to re-open the flue! Phewww. Night-time. No wonder my Mind wandered so fitfully…charging over to the nearest wall!
She breathed in relief, leaning out of a fortuitously open window. Was it ope’ before, is that why I’m still alive? Wow, this room is loaded with smoke! Gee, that city below me is rapturously growing in loveliness and buildings, out there, she realized as she took in gulps of clean, cooling, pure air. But, where…?
Once more, that break, a summer breeze longed for, expected and indecipherable, did not arrive, ringing, choking, or otherwise.
She HAD done that Drug.
Stupid her. That cocaine. Two lines. No more!!! It made her into a big, fat, intolerable unprepared Turkey. Never again! Partying was the worst thing ever. What was she doing, looking around for another man? Stupid, stupid she! I’m too smart, too mature and together for this, and if not, there will be Hell to pay. Mom was right, drugs take away your ability to think straight, like with our Artie.
She HAD spaced out on setting the fire by herself…alone. WHY? Clearly, she needed a man, or Someone Else…sombody absurdly rhetorical…
…WHO USED TO play pool; he was a decent-enough player
At playing the fool, nor good as God’s slayer.
He could get all balls down in twelve sets--or ten;
Perhaps fourteen was the minimum, hum.
Well, he was a pretty fair ball-pusher-inner.
He smoked a special kind of ‘baccy called Havana Gold,
The cigs were self-rolled, he smoked ‘em controlled,
Never more than half-a-pack-a-day, and never over Christmas.
It was too late to know an old man, his wife dead ten long years
He never did talk about THAT
What hanging around really is. Remarriage?
I visit my woman’s grave, snarls he. Because I recall that…
…Harmin Boole’s secret, unknown, unspeakably unknowable wife lay sleeping, or possibly otherwise, in the cemetery on the other side of the lake, diagonal from Shell Park, facing Tomato. The town authorities, through local ordinance said not to drink the water from Shell Lake. Nobody ever did. It was green and infectious at shoreline, smelling of algae, which was pretty smelly. However, koi, big goldfish the size of small salmon, swum in the lake, and the kids caught ‘em.
And measured them for length. The longest fish, caught on a certain day, determined what kid got to skip school, covered by (usually) his classmates, every summer on that Glogger’s Day. Said kid got to ride with the Helgramont family on the ferry out to Harver Point. The Feast of Summer Wealth was held on the ferry. At the feast, this kid traditionally stole a loaf of bread. It had to be a whole loaf.
“Harmin,” said Gabe Hooter one day, when he caught the old man heading for the bar for a glass of beer.
“What d’ya want,” asked the old man. He always acted mildly suspicious of Gabe, though no one knew why. “D’ya want to buy me a beer?”
“There’s a space opened up in the town pea patch, I heard. If you want it, you can go sign up for it at Town Hall.” Gabe said this without much hope.
“You know, I been waitin’ fer that fer ‘least six years or seven more. But I own my own gravesite, free an’ clear, and guess what, youngun’? Town law says I can do whatever I want with it ‘cuz thet piece of land is my property. ‘Long as I don’t put toxic wastes there or try to live there. No animals either. But that’s all they wrote.
“And I can see my wife as often as I damned well please. Now, Gabe, tell me the size of this piece of pea patch they’re sellin’ to folks.”
Gabe smiled at Harmin, offering no comment. He looked sideways over the bar at the five long rows of colorful hard liquor. For sale, displayed and made for consumption.
“It’s about the size of both your grave plots. Not really any bigger.”
On the word “bigger” Gabe struck thirst for an amaretto and cream.
Harmin Boole smiled to himself, but Gabe saw. He too looked down. Then Harmin looked at “Beau,” a tad bit too triumphantly. “Well, aren’t we populous, eh, youngun Hooter. Aren’t we though!” And the old man walked away, picking up his pool cue as he went, back over the pool table.
“Rack ‘em up fer me, boy, and we’ll have a game if you like that. You know who’s th’ likeliest t’ get beat.” Gabe stayed over at the bar, hands in his pockets. “Okay,” he said, and ended up beating Harmin two out of three.
The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos Page 8