Chapter Eight
THE TRADE-UNION QUESTION
Friday, or, the Day of Chrisgragitations
Why is it that
Old man Boole
Is always Secretly Right?
Or, is he? And forever left behind?
We are all political too-ools;
We are doo-oomed. Nuclear power plants are flooding Lower Canada.
Am I a screwdriver? No.
Am I a bolt? No.
I get to be a Nut. Dan Nuts, not Dat Nut. My ovaries descended! No, testicles, not icicles. And, who are you, to realize otherwise?
Whose are the hands that are wielding the tools?
Are they living hands? Are they loving hands?
Are they werewolf hands?
Are they gloved?
Are they proved?
Are they moved?
Are they shoved by others’ demands?
It’s too romantic
To be your downer
Should always take a chance to
Come back up.
--found in the men’s restroom of the Krakatoa, on a Tuesday…welded to the briar of the toilet, butt hovering above it. A sheet of paper, angelically white, stained with the red russet-smears of time. Buy “The History of Rust,” or a Jack the Ripper rippoff book, at your favorite Amazon deity. Or, join the giant book cult, and be sure to sell your favorite story to me. Books are nowadays a valid religion, where those who write them are those who read them…ouch. Authors, check your hearts and minds at the door, then witness the Dawn of Time. Selling work is a job. If you write, you can have your ideas ghost written or copy edited. But………….
.............HOW DO YOU escape from Redundancy? Wherever it may be. West of Harver Point, I guess. Gabe was one to enjoy the concept. He also vaguely enjoyed his notorietylessness, but not much. Ahu. He farted. That always shamed him.
Although maybe it meant he could do without fame’s empirical rising fortunes, he mused, it might be that it was difficult for him to blend in. He doubted it. After all, look how plain he was!
He never liked standing out of crowds very much. But he affected being a loner. “Most people” preferred that outlook, yes. All of the self-help books he'd read had said so, that people were basically alone deep inside. Except for that, to their authors, he and his "type" were presumably more social, more fully family-oriented, and more prone to make strange jungle noises when given the opportunity. Sometimes he suspicioned (as Gramma would playfully put it) that such things had more to do with the heads of authors than with human nature in general. Writers tend to be loners.
But, u c, Gabe would rather drift into the general electric crowd somehow… but what, which empty grammarian crowd? Am I comforted, being in a protective group, am I happier there, is it like a bulletproof vest or a line of coke, is there such a thing as real friendship, does it keep me healthy and sane? The single life alone can be a lark, singing merrily in the kozy fields. But I need all my dear friends. They’re a second family; I badly wish to prepare my way for a real one of those. How torturously I yearn to lovingly generate living, laving progeny that…oh, how it's mythical (the progeny)…to live and love and die for those kids.
Perhaps I can count on the urge, but when, and can I really count on…her? What do I see, when I look…she’s beautiful. She's happy and healthy and highly intelligent. She's rational and sensible. She’s got good wit. She has a way about her, an air of vulnerable grace, and she uses that to keep me to her…but she's BLACK. But I lover her, truly. Why, but-she’s-black? Why NOT? I'll saver her, ha ha har.
Why this TOWN? Why not THAT town? THAT town, maybe there's a job. THE job. Maybe there is cheap training. And maybe there's another lake, mountains close by, better skiing. Maybe there is the special something I've never seen nor heard of before (like, me going downhill skiing without a life preserver.) Maybe there is NOT. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm………….
I”ve an elemental grasp of my major necessities at this present time. What I'm lacking strongly is a formal education, a noble career interest, and a loverly wife. A WIFE…who’s stopping me, God? What's holding me back… I’ve all of life to explore…impassable vistas to despair and stare at, full of life lunacy, laughter and love. But, my girlfriend is not a Vista (plug, plug) to explore. No, she cannot yet allow me her fair passage. She gathers me in, then bades me to be still. I await her command. Someday, I devour ALL I survey.
It’s her ex, y’know. Her own life. She wants what I want, what I have to get, or I’m an automatic feedback in Artie’s scramming direction. Down. I feel I could talk Sara into it, into me, settling in with me…but I have this strange reluctance, too.
Am I good enough for her? I, Richard Hispanic, Spic, the wicked hippie hipster hick? Am I good enough for a yippie, I mean a yuppie, chick?
She represents a lifelong trap? No. A completed act. A sense of permanency, with no true permanence entailed, never any such item in Divorceworld, where anything goes wrong. Shit. Damn. Fuck. Yeah. God, in this Hell there's no such thing as such luck…overpopulation, yet. Who, us? No.
AIDS. Isn't it pathetic? I don’t have it. There was already gonorrhea and syphilis and chlamydia and etcetera the gods know what else anyway, now that? I hear the treatment might be worse than the “illness.” Maybe they are talking people into it for money. So, maybe it is less long slow goodbyes and more quick sharp deaths. Or lives; what's a mere five to seventeen years? The age of the perpetrator. Then again, it always takes a while, they're always trying to cure every available, researchable, financially biased medical illness. What’d befall if they left folks alone, instead? They might just go on living. And then there's cholera.
But there’s a cure for it, an outright cure. However, the vaccine has to be readily available. No AIDS vaccine as yet…it isn't really a disease, it's a condition. The condition is that you are a weird freak now. Gay or Black.
…cholera. People of Cholera? Yuckiest. Don’t run from me now, world, country, colored, people of color simplicity narcissism and light.
Think again, why not…I believe homos started and starred in this one, whatever a bow in the sky made out of condensed vaporized water means…but who cares? Men!!! I'm sure not gonna get testy about it. Is WHAT a weird joke? On me? On you? Or is it ptoooo? Boo. I HATE MY DAD FOR RUNNIN’ AWAY!
My name, Gabe Hooter, bugs me hard from time to time. It came from Gabriella, I think. That's my legal name. Gabriello Bochinche (plug) Sancto. Gramma was a Huter (mention) from North Dakota. Other side, I mean. Italian (eye-talian, are dju rilly new and clear?) For a length of time, I carried weird fears of something macabre and unwholesome sprouting from my name, as if twenty plants were growing from it, the type that sweepingly take over your indoor garden and covers the other green foliage over, choking it. As well as itself. You weed anyway, with meticulous care deftly flowing through your hands, and you go in with shears and spades and poisons, talking to the treacherously innocent plant, chopping up the roots, crying out your hardening lungs, because if you let it go for one moment it dominates and destroys you. But, in my furthest expanded mind, I am not a personally goddamned rotting vegetable. Neither is friend Artie, or Fred. (Who’s Fred? You’ll know, and soon.)
Sooo…Gabriello. Overtakes me? It's too long so I use Gabe.
But, however…what am I afraid of? Newness? An obliquely hidden reference? Pity? Romance being derivative? Marriage? Bosh?
I’m afraid of LIVING. Yep. But there, my dignity will fail you. It must have happened once before. But I'm not living for me. Why can't I be perfectly happy?
I guess I'll sail on blithely over these limpid local ponds. I’m healthy, fertile, strong, a nice guy, don't do drugs, am heterosexual, and don't mess around too much. Of course, horrible cholera might sweep out our way. This far north? Like a plant. I’ll get in its way, with others! I wonder if they keep any such vaccine at Ridgeview Hospital. I’ll ask Sara. She knows about that, I think.
I want to get married. H
aven't got a steady career. Yet. All’s shaky and unsupported. If bunches of people are going to die, I believe we oughta make some babies, not fart around, but people do that…I worry ‘bout poor folk, I sort of am one. But I'm gonna get ahead. By and by. Sara has an excellent perspective career, yeah.
Wow, she's a dietitian. She'll cook like a Goddess! She worries about her chances and maybe she'll have to split town. Shall I go with her? I hate to follow her at her heels, like a lost, demented little puppy dog; I need my own shtick. So loser.
But for now, I'm meeting Sara and Artie and Caza to drive out to Arapahoe Lake, way up north, to picnic while viewing the spectacular water shows. Dazzling. Pyramid skiing. By novices! I always did wanna try that. Would they hire me? Those companies always seem to prefer local types, somehow.
Maybe I can talk to the show group leader and sign up for practice. Wonder if Saragina’s try ‘er. Artie, surely, would rediscover swimming. Caza’s of too much of a lady. Funny. It's sort of a weird coincidence…
It turned out later, someone had kidded Gabe. Only professionals may pyramid ski at Arapahoe Lake. Somethin’s gotta give, somethin’s gotta give, somethin’s gotta like medley old music playin’ bliss in mah workah’s brain, a Broadway show tune, scratchy echoes of Busby Berkely recordin’s phantooming in a distorted long hall, the voices said, once again, softly, they disabled, but th’ other kind is kep’ aroun’, too. What, no babies?
Ah, ahm an ol’ rad hippy from way back, they didn’ get th’ lot of us oh good, righteous. Real disabled on welfare, not ME, hit's okay now, to say no, and besahds nothin’ll ever mek it okay fer years. Ah been drankin’ since mah sisters was raped by my uncle, before then, more’n fifteen years at least…watchin’ Dad die from liver, and he always swore he was tamer…Caza still wants her old Artie and ah wanna get her an old age. Life insurance? Ah don't think ah got anything fatal but ah’m an alkie. Do tell. Swell.
Why did daddie want his woman in a bottle…it would be great if he wanted her in bed, yeah, if she did, if he had what ah got, an’ that’s all, an’ he wanted to wife her, he was after his type, yeah, sure, but my uncle, an’ ah don’t mean mehbe (an’ what else ah don’t mean in this worl’?) and a’ my sis, what was he doin’ with her at me fer? An’ my mother wouldn't listen ta crazy me an’ my father threw me hup ‘gainst th’ brick wall and knocked me cold, crack mah jaw, when ah said so, from th’ word GO man that father was a violent SOB yep. If’n ah stop drankin’ ah could write sheet music, make moneh, and set a few radio an’ TV words to tunes make dough t’buy a house inna country fer me and Caza and her people have ‘em ovah fer coffee an’ MOO-VIES, burn incense, eat lutefisk on a rainy day, moom ovah Miami, come Hell of high water.
Bad ol’ Goddess Hel would draw back th’ curtains ever’day an’ in would pour th’ ridi-culous sunlaht, fo’ rail all day. Ah’m all blahnded with love, an’ so ah go puts daw-wan ‘nother beer an’ crush th’ can and go out for a walk to let off steam. We’re all in this alone.
Smell the brav’ry, breathe in thet salt sea AY-ER, bah th’ oceans, early in th’ stoam, no relation to sobriety intended or needed, an’ ah kin see th’ whole worl’ clairly wit’ out mah contac’s, mah lainses, Mayan, an’ thar’s whut ah needs, a Panpahps er a git-tar, an’ ah go sits in th’ fields, palayin’…ah could be Jaysus th’ Shep-herd, but ah, ah’m too clean. Clean. Yeah, ah’m clay-in…clean billah health.
Aneh day naw…ah gots th’ hair, metal rocks, ah’ll get some exposhu on nat’l tayvay, yee-eh. Ah goes on an’ plays may bottle, blows hit, like a microphone, phwooo, phwoo-phwoo, that hollow monoto sound. Or ah whips out mah ol’ git-tar and plays th’ first chord of “Stairway to Heaven,” ovah an’ ovah an’ ovah agin lahk this weird fren’ o’ mahn used to. Polka hearty down. This beat is gone, tomorrow, man!
On t’other hand, if’n ah stopped drankin’ ah might actually see the world for whut it is. Ah lotta hooey! Ah could get it up a whole lot better. However, Caza might get prego, and to hell with what-then-what. I know what. No baby ah’m. Ah meks ‘nough dough, me woom-man. Th’ circle can hol’. She would, too, fer me, the bas-tarred. Ooooops, ah means me. Ah’m th’ bastard. Fer her.
“Cept it’s fer her, mah deal, ah guess. That’s what they say. Or so. Don’t know what she sees in me but ah treats her nice an’ ah allus takes her out when ah gots aneh dough hon me at hall whatsoever. Sheee-yit.
Ah a Blen’ from Montanner an’ ah gots a Hooter fer a fren’
Smell THET day-laight.
DANIEL WILSON NUTS, a happy young lad in his own peculiar way, stopped by to visit the house of a man they'd told him might be gay. Okay! He didn't know what to expect, at first, when newly going in there, but the gentleman of the house, he said to "please pull up a chair." So there.
“Square!” Dan blurbilly guffawed.
“Oh, I’m not all that square,” quoth the older gent, who was about fifty. “Fifty-ish,” Dan’s erstwhile gay friend had told him. Only other well-known gay in Rama. The real crowd inhabited Unionville. "In fact, I'm not even straight." There were these certain streets, see… “But, who IS, nowadays?”
The older gentleman spoke in a barely audible, pondering murmur. "May I get you a beer, I apologize, it's in cans, or a glass of excellent wine? I'm going to have a class myself." He disappeared into the kitchen, presumably to fetch the wine. He wasn't so terribly fetching himself. But he was very nicely dressed.
Dan sat in a chair across from the one Mr. Jones, his host, had been sitting in. It wasn't an orange plastic-covered lounge chair. Dan attempted to admire it, but it was really very obnoxiously loud and ugly. It had a decent back and looked plush.
Mr. Jones came back in with two glasses of a rare vintage burgundy, grown locally and "bottle in 1927, have a sip won’t you, I haven't had this fair of youthful company since last year at least." Dam blushed, trying to think of matching the tone and color of then wine (what, flapper liquor?) But it was too deep of a red to get away with it. It was genuinely purple. So Dan tried to elevate his voice an inch, one whole notch higher. Gay men do that, Dan reasoned.
“Its taste is…fruity," he murmured to the soft-spoken older man, who crossed his legs elegantly at the knees. They were long, thin, tapering legs, encased enticingly in thin cotton trousers of a pale robin’s egg blue, painted on muscular legs. Jones certainly knew how to dress, Dan reflected, with some degree of jealousy; that’s gotta be two or three hundred dollars’ worth of houndstooth smoking jacket and another hundred-and-a-half’s worth of shiny silver silken shirt under it. How exquisite. He must have quite a piece of money.
“What do y’do for a living, Mr. Jones, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
Mr. Jones put her--his--aristocratically lengthy, pale white hands together, fingertips lightly touching, and seemed to be attempting to affect a desirous, meant-to-be-attained authority. "You wouldn't probably understand what I'm capable of, no. You question, however, pertained to my present career and it's likeliest nature? My chosen, my highly established, ambitious, belaborious work? Yes?
“May I ask you what your fondest hopes and dreams are? Surely, I can help you to fulfill them. Would you care to do more with your spare time than take in the occasional Sunday children's matinee, or cruise in cheap cars?" The old man's eyes glittered with menace, and perhaps with tears beseechingly. "Or would you rather take up the brave struggle of the kings right of fun on your lonely own, hmmm, my boy? That could be awfully dangerous."
Dan put his hand under his chin and his elbow on his leg. He cocked his head over to one side. "I'd rather not drink this wine," he told Mr. Jones, handing him back the glass. A dry smile played over his face. "Do tell," Mr.-Jones airily breathed pinching the breeze succinctly with his bushily mustachiod lips. A very small ‘o’ was thus pictorially described. "I had thought as much from such a young fellow as…"
“I’d like a crispy clear, blanca, clair de lune wine,” Dan gushed, but firmly stated. "A slate-smooth, pristine, dry, touched with the graceful t
ang of the white grape, dry white wine. And make it another vintage year, NOT the one I was born in, if you so please." Quiet descended, it was stifling. He was mildly a cutesy paranoiac, the only such boy he knew of in a small Northern town. What did this older gent think of a gay with no experience, who just needed a mentor?
Dan sat with the awfulest blank expression on his face, indicating nothing, watching the room pitch and whirl around him. He felt dizzy from drinking coffee earlier that day, the kind you could stand a spoon in and watch it melt. Dan liked his drinks warm mostly, and strong, not too subtle to taste them.
But his eyes seemed to dance merrily, promising Mr. Jones something. They sparkled shining in the interior of a late afternoon gloom. It was wet outside, dampening steadily with yet another soggy rain, very normal for that time of year. Dreadful. What was a poor boy still a virgin to do here?
“You’ll be wanting dinner next, I assume. And you’ll be giving me careful directions for serving it, and insisting I prepare, personally, a perfectly chilled, or perhaps you’ll require heated, heated it is, organically manufactured ice cream dessert? Cough-cough. I'm quite unwell in this weather. All very well, my dear boy. My dearest, dearest boy." Jones got up and once more went into the kitchen, to collect the requested bottle of vintage white wine. "We’ll see what else we have, then, we will. Care for some cheese? I have fresh Brie, two pounds. And a few slices of extra-dark pumpernickel to go with." He punched the dark air in front of him, smoothly, lost in the kitchen shadows. Buried in dusky shadows.
Dan demurred, unseen. He loudly stated into the darkness ahead of him, speaking from his chair, that he was "not your ‘boy,’ not yet, anyway. I'm a man, for a girl, altogether, that is." He stood up and walked in a very few paces into the moody kitchen. “I’m tallish for a tyke and as tall as you, I’d say.”
There were two prominent racks of dishes sitting on the counter, one washed and the other dirty and waiting to be washed. Also there was a knife rack to one side, holding four or five good-sized nice. Dan took careful note of this, not really knowing why.
They both returned to the darkening living room. Mr. Jones flicked on a gently fluorescent amber light, a mere 40 watts of soft-glowing incandescence. Orange. Must be his favorite color. It was pretty enough.
Jones thought his age showed more readily in the normal light outside, where a mutual friend had arranged this meeting. That friend already had his lovers all lined up and was rumored to be completely unavailable himself.
“You’ll like each other. Age doesn't matter much. I promise!" he had cried, this friend, spiriting away like a fairy sprite. Dan wondered about that. Who was this arcane older dude? He wanted to find out, he figured he would.
Dan liked all people, as a general rule, and always wanted to get to know them better "than I'm ever normally allowed to. I'm attracted to handsome men especially, but I like nobody who’ll break down and talk to me." Anyone who knew Dan knew the truth of this.
“Yes,” breathed the calm-looking but throaty-voiced Mr. Jones. "I know what you mean. Isn't a good conversation the most charming thing, whenever you should run into someone nice? And set them to talking. People tell you the most fascinating things."
“I love to get in a word edgewise whenever I can. Edgewise…is there a gay joke associated with putting something in, shall we say, edgewise?" Dan tittered impishly, nervously, trying to look charmingly diminutive—which required scrunching down in his chair--but he felt wracked with pangs of embarrassment. He sipped at his glass rapidly, maintaining his cool, and smoothed his brown straight hair back. This vaguely tantalized Mr. Jones, who was reacting. He intentionally teased, he decided, while remaining aloof and distant. He hoped his insides were still his, that he was filling them out with his own spirit, his own motivating forces. It didn't quite feel that way, couldn't force it. Practise makes perfect…
Mr. Jones looked lovingly and appreciatively at Dan, as though examining a grown son who pleased him, finding him whole and sound and good. "Such a charming young man you are. Such decorum you show! I haven't got a lot of time tonight, you know…
“…having to get up in the morning and all, but if you’ll be patient with me, I have a story I'd like you to, ah, participate in." He offered Dan a most inviting smile.
“Oh, you do? Offered Dan defensively in the way of simple witticism. He was growing sizable nervous and was severely undecided about what course of action, other than passive, that he could take at this point and still come across as even a remotely dignified human being. Or, he wanted to run screaming out the door, but felt too relaxed to bother. The wine was hitting him. He indicated casual, careless acceptance of the story game. He hoped it wasn't childish. Was he only visiting a new work father?
Mr. Jones leaned back, the orange chair making tasteless squeaking noises under his copious behind. He smelled of expensive cologne, which I should have told you before, but as usual you just weren't listening. Oooooh!!!! Well, he began the story that he wanted Dan to participate in, as follows:
The Boatman
This is a murder mystery where you are supposed to guess who is most responsible for the murder. It isn't necessarily the murderer. Here are the events, as they occurred:
A woman was going out on her husband and seeing a lover. This was because her husband had become very unloving and also because he was sadly and conveniently gone a lot. Other than that he took care of all her usual needs. The lover, on the other hand, gave her love, warmth, and sex, but was very stingy when it came to money. Also, he wouldn't marry her. He didn't have the money to take care of her, he said.
Woman had to cross a river to go see her lover. There was a bridge she could cross on foot, for free, and there was a boat she could take, but the boatman charged a small fee, and she had to wait for the boat.
One night, she and her lover saw her husband coming home across the river. In a few minutes he would discover her absence and become suspicious. She decided to go home, hopefully in time to convince her husband that she had only been out for a short while, not out seeing a lover. It was getting dark, too.
She didn't have enough money on her to take the boat, and she didn't want to cross the bridge on foot in the dark. "There’s a murderer on the bridge," she told her lover.
“I KNOW. I read about a murder on the bridge yesterday, in the paper. And, you know, guess what else? These murders always seem to happen at night. And whoever it is took his wallet."
She begged him for enough money to take the boat safely across but he was stingy when it came to such favors. He told her to pay. What a non-supportive fellow, eh?
So she went down to the river's edge, as swiftly as possible, to try and talk the boatman into taking her cross. He wouldn't do it unless she paid him immediately, and she didn't have half the money needed. So she gulped, and decided to cross the bridge. By then it was pretty much nightfall.
The murderer met her on the bridge, killed her, and left her body there. Her husband, the lover and the boatman found out the next day. The murderer wasn't never, ever, ever caught. Never ever, never ever, never ever ever even caught! Nopesies.
Now, you HAVE been given all the pertinent data about the murder. You are requested to choose, in order of importance, the most-to-the-least responsible persons regarding the actual commission of this here crime. Whom do you believe to be the most responsible persons regarding the actual commission of this here crime? Whom do you believe to be most responsible? Who is the Author of the Crime?
Each party involved in this story symbolizes an important matter in our lives. The characters you pick will reveal, in their order of chosen responsibility and importance, what you feel is most important to you in your life.
Now, who is most responsible for the murder? And in what order?
“What about her hairdresser?" joked Dan, instantly. "And don't they have any children, what about little ol’ them, how’d they cause it, and won’t they mourn Our Mama after she’s dead and gone?"
“Nop
e, quoth Jones, “you’re supposed to guess the nature of Chief Responsibility, dear dead Indian warrior, for the murder. Who among them all is the guiltiest party, or parties?"
“The dad-blasted murderer, of course. But you clearly wanted me to say something else." Dan’s blue eyes twinkled merrily over his fluted aperitif glass.
The older man, whose first name Dan was idly beginning to wonder about, especially as he didn't even know if the name "Jones" was for real, who wore his years athletically and well, who had a goodly three inches (of height, standing with shoes on) on Dan, gazed at the younger and infinitely cuter man with eager expectancy. Of what, we know not for. He seemed to be awaiting a most juicy, wonderful, choice, virtuously—did I say, virtuously?--magnificent reply. Dan blinked at him.
Tired, droozy, Dan finally “gave with the jack, mack.”
“Oh, I guess the woman is the most responsible. She messed up, she cut out on her husband, she should've stayed overnight with her lover, she was ugly…"
“Really?” broke in Mr. Jones, licking his lips cattishly, looking for all the world like the Pharaoh’s daughter first viewing Moses through the bullrushes. "She should?"
“Yeah, and then I’d put her husband next, because he was such a cad that didn't love her enough, and then, ah, I guess the lover, then the boatman, such a stingy, then the murderer. That's your less obvious assignment-of-blame method, right?"
Jones, the semblance of the look of the true British faggot passing over his features, thanks to lessening light from outside, bobbed his head in a sad little nod.
Then, Jones revealed to Dan what the characters signify, what each one of them means as an ingredient in the game of life’s mysterious puzzle:
The lover, obviously, symbolizes sex. The boatman stands for magic--would you have thought capitalism magic? The murderer stands for money, the wife signifies love, and the husband relates to marital fidelity or loyalty. "And the murderer shouldn't really go last…" But Jones didn't want to hear Dan reading his list.
Leaving Dan to ponder his troubles, and to give the order of his choices some more complex thought, Jones got up one more time and vanished into the darkened kitchen. Puttering noises commenced to emanate from thence. Jones was poking about in his refrigerator, searching its depths for newer goodies to tempt Dan’s palate and soul with. From the sounds of it he was finding a few such somethings.
How suspenseful can you get, boy.
While he was busy, and pretty much invisible, Dan recalled the list, seeing what his alleged, numbered priorities in life would be if this game were for real: love, fidelity, sex, magic, and, weirdly last, money. Perhaps that figures, as he wasn't planning on raising a family. He was happy to see that fidelity topped the list after sex. But this was funny to him, not funny haha, but funny teehee…he didn't believe in the reality of fairy tales. Fairy that he was, or might be, he'd chosen roles as the most important focus in his blessed, athletic and suddenly purposeful life.
The wife and the husband were most to blame for the murder, he reasoned, because when it came to roles, they had least fulfilled theirs. She was a runaround, and he was a rotter. Then the rest of the characters got the blame. But, murderers don't count? The murderer isn't so very much to blame for the murder? The police wouldn't think so, would they? Dan had heard the authorities didn't like to become involved in domestic violence issues, but they sure didn't pin the crime on the husband or whoever, would they? Wrong? Well…
Dan didn't believe people "got away" with letting role expectations slide. And, as to Dan, the other three characters had sort of fulfilled their friggin’ roles…
…but come to think, there is such a thing as a cinnamon roll. Yummy!!!
Mr. Jones called out to Dan from the shadowy kitchen.
“Oh, my dear little chap, I have something special for you in here. I've been preparing this surprise for the last five minutes, at least. Are you finished with my funny little game, The Boatman? I’ve discovered the very thing, something sure to take your mind off your problems, and your minty breath a-wayyyyy!” Silence answered him. Jones continued, loudly and joyfully:
“Please feel happy to enter and explore. I'm waiting for you…with baited Brie!"
Nothing happened. Why, how odd!
Lomanian Smith, a stranger and a complete one to Dan ‘til around noon that very day, came striding out of his darkened kitchen wielding a big, fat, huge, wooden butcher’s block. And a shiny flat tableknife. And a huge chunk of Brie in his other fist. While wearing a black eye patch. Like Menachim Begin! He looked all over: No Dan, in or out of wretched old sight. But the back door was sighing, creaking, open and blowing bangingly against the wall, in the gentle and soft-blowing winds…
(Plug in deathly maudlin, what-a-sorry-state-I’m-in music, hereabouts)
…you were SUPPOSED TO HAVE CHOSEN the murderer, first. In spite of ME. But, you really did choose the woman, I think. Do y’know what THAT means? Do you? It's MURDERER, you young fool, and it’s ME! I’M the one most responsible! The one who went right ahead and bloody killed HER!! Get it? GET IT??? Get—it—you’re gone. Ohhh.
After having waved his arms wildly enough to practically fly, "Smith," alias "Jones," sighing oh no, that CAN’T be right, collapsed into his favorite orange settee, holding the bread-and-butter blade carefully away from him so as not to harm himself. Woe is me, he unmeasurably misthought, I am doomed to CERTAINLY!! I almost taught him the MOROFF, but instead, I've lost another sweet young VICEROY!! The LAST one ran away, too-ttooo. My joke fell through. And through… and through.
How bloody, bloody ODD…the only sweet PEOPLE I've possibly managed to kill, or even to slay, up to this point, is my dear little kittens. And they were certainly not all that willing. To say the least. As is they were really intelligent, but they didn't want to live, not with me around, not anymore. How sad and quaint of me it was!
And, oh, elemental of Her. They were dying, those kittens…fiddling with human tempers. I love them both.
How strange it all is. Oh look, “High Noon” with Gary Cooper is on. Is John Wayne in this one? Dan? Oh, my Daniel. You were older, weren’t you?
Dan, through the intercession of a blind Providence most of us suspect and few of us manage actual belief in, had principally romped spontaneously out the back door. He’d speedily left, off in his car, heading for Unionville.
He had a car. It was an old clunker, a ‘70s orange VW he’d bought with his after-school work money. While saving up for a bright, beet red Ferrari, which he was planning to rent out daily to strangers. Uber of Seattle plug! He drove it to the Big City and purchased two cinnamon rolls at the foreigners’ bakery. One for tonight, and one for tomorrow morning. Mmmmmmmm…
I wonder if Mr. Jones likes rancid apple butter. With gummy worms.
Providence had taken a soft-core hand once more. Dan drove home, having lost Mr. Jones’ address (it was in Rama and he’d thought he’d remember it, but he didn’t) and not having the phone number, as he was unable to call him, he disappointedly (not very?) went home and sat alone with his sweet meats. He went ahead and ate both that same night. With apple butter, home-made by his mother. He caught the tail and of "Midnight’s Last Kisses," the ten-o-clock movie, and as he watched he yearned for a romance he had yet to physically experience. There’d been only joys and sorrows. That's why he took off.
I’ll hold out for someone younger, more like wonderful me," murmured the cinnamon-smeared tongue of Dan, who'd forgotten to brush his teeth before taking to his bed-chamber, located within the top floor of his parents’ humble three-bedroom ranch-style abode. He sprawled, naked and tan, brown from the sun, all over his unmade and crumb-laden bed.
He sort of ate a pillow. Zeus would've thought him a beautiful site.
He rolled onto his back, legs wide apart, his nearly hairless body vainly exposed to the cool, empty air. The ceiling light was brilliantly assaultive, as usual. An arm went over his cool blue eyes. He ran a hand over his youthful, muscular, sleek
and sensuous hard breast, up and down his regally muscled right arm. He was lovely, a sight for lovers to enjoy. His open palm felt cool and smooth against his perfect chest, which was fuzzy, covered with light-catching, enticingly downy small hairs, and which ostensibly and intensively burned with an unquenchable inner fire, long untouched by man or woman, and heartily undoused.
Unshared, unshaven, still virginal, yet virtuous, looking for trouble, and tinged tinglingly and tinkingly with guiltless sadness and supernal happiness over the usual and unreal exigencies of existence, plus other such past events, Dan was feeling himself…wanting, needed to be loved. He was proudly rejecting all the heartless goodbyes of the future-past, such as the remorseless call to leave home, and soon. Desire was pulling with deep passion at his hot and vital soul, activating all his fiery, yearning smooth limbs, fleshing with red and heated blood the pale, male, and altogether whitened flesh that no one has found beautiful and delectable and worth hours of hungry love-making, but surely, someday, someone would. Should I give up, though, and ask Chrissy Goneschlaw out? Her old man won't complain! Would anyone even care?!?
He dreamed, lying back with his head on his interlocked hands, of young, virile well-pumping men, of unreachably lovely, virginal young women, of one sweetest girl child pinning for the dreams of remote yesterdays, and of a fairy hand he couldn't quite entirely touch, million and millions of trackless, peakedly candle-lit deep blue redundant miles away…
Next morn, his bore of a brother pulled the myriad wound-up sheets off from Dan's sweaty, smelly, writhing body. “Ewwww, you’re such a mess!" he yelled. "You stupid twerp, you!” Dan returned, shout for anger shout.
That brother of his, whose name was, technically, Albert, boxed his ears to “wake” him.
MmmmERRphhh. God, Albert, you’re ugghh-lyyy. UGHSSLLLIIIIEEEESS!!!
ATHLETICS INTO NARNIA for perpetuity. WHAT CHILDREN? WHO said anything about kids? I never said anything in my LIFE!!!
What the hell IS in the sou-er, spiri-er, on the mind of that, uh, short-necked man in the moldy old cashier? “We all are. You are, too. I can’t help myself. You should drop dead, now. Cryin’ out loud! C’mere, sport.”
But it’s never time to go back there, ha-nahp. To that place, and with the best of times…
We’ll, I need to run and jump and play and it IS not such a good feeling to beat out the other person. Since when? Several people. True. In fact, I never seldom have managed. But, I have gived my all. Spo-radically. In shorts, exercise and competition are good, as versus evil. So is getting ready for them, apparently. Warm-up! TIME!!! And, in addition to divisiveness, there is also, alSO this weird little old thing called getting ready for the after-life……………………
…but, NEVERTHELESS, stiletto true was the baseball game, and Los Angeles brave the crystal-blue day, no other colors, buried in a bright, beautiful, sunny bottomless pit of depression hovering in the green under white located in “Graceland Fields,” the series of empty used-car weedy lots nestled ‘mongst the “upper Forties” of small and sophicated-with-Bavarian charm Rama-town, WA, USA, West Hemi, Terra Gaia, former Indiaola, in Sasiparolles. It’s the Bahamas, here, you geese, on the field, talkin’ to y’all, move ‘em, le’s show ‘em some stuff, you things! C’mon people, let’s GO! Use that dynamic persuasion that sells encyclopedias door-to-fuckin’ –door!
“Whyrya bein’ a bunch of glunky unsalted macademian slugs, pupils?” screeched Saragina the D, foremost lunch-eating believer in the sans-forever nature of the earth, largest possible flawed squared-off diamond, as an eternally-lasting art form, even next to Hooperville …and we are all going out there, running, to stande forthe and shewe that we can all run aroun’ like liquid crystal light inside of it, revealing every tragically earthen flaw. Our flaws. Their flaws. Dog claws. Santa’s comin’ up.
And, it just so happens to be a mixed-sex dealiwhompers game, and even numero of boys and girls on t’either sahd. Oh the “field,” which is choked full of yaller dandelions. Stomped. Them flahrs are fixin’ to pay the price, I know.
Mr. Goneschlaw is the big fat black-clad umpire. He has the very best suit in the universe on. It is per-completely and down-underly padded, and if Douglas Fairbanks, either Junior or Senior, should happen to so much as twitch a pencil-thin mustache anyplace nearby, he has the chest that can stop all the bullets. Okay?
But…Bob Goneschlaw do thumps his muscle-padded, soft foam doll frontispiece, the green smell of red cedar fills the air, and he explicitly does the Tarzan yell anyway, that settled that, well done Bob, in spite of having a WHITE deformity-hiding face mask on. Yesss, DO the “Heaven,” deaf knife-welding paid-off plaid girl…the glossy paper marches on. To CANADA!!!
And, a certain loud coach gets as loud as he pleases throughout all the festivities. He frowns big, he throws his striped hat down on th’ bad ump and other such miserable calls, an’ point at all the bad players’ faces an’ screeches “yer too GOOD fer me, you Cronies!!” In lower Hungarian. So Harmonious.
But, still, all-energy Cloadia, being a very leggy Amazon, wearing zilch, gets the most “home?” runs in, kicked untowardly by some flabbergasted menfolk, and Suzette is cheering soprana, the most prettily and angelically, with raspberries in a box, from the stands, sans peripathetic her parents. Home is far away. Sharone catches six fly balls, and Gabe takes all the attention awa’, Scarlette team pushed madly through the fields Will, from Cloadia by hitting straight nothing but said lengthy, lounging-like-lizards those previously mentioned straight-up pop flies that linger into the perpetuity of the minds of every and each spectator but Ned England, who sacredly? and casually, saunters up to the place each of ivy times, hitting straight outward-bound balls that everyone is running around and pretending are improbable to catch. Sharone gets one. She eats it. “Not bad!” she whines.
But Ned yells the Hawaiian love call, throws the bat down at the ground at that moment, THE Moment, and his spare unknown rapid girlfriend sets off a grotesquely deadly hand siren when the two right, enter and April Handover is bouncing her boobies and pounding a hippie (Artie) whilst standing over second, who ARE children, no, again? May I sew you to a sheet? A dick? When they are about to…oops, it worked. They crashed into each other and dropped it!!! Four players. But then, oh IBM, NOT THE ARM FARTS, NED! Sight of Superman flyin’. Everyone points. Superman pukes. Cut back to Ned. With Clothes From New York on rattlin’ racks being pushed madly through the fields. And everyone else does Donald Duck.
Be MEMORABLE. Special orders do. Another shot, long fade-back, of children. Shot of running Ned. Where does Ned run away, to?
Sharone just enjoyed the game for its one snake, close-up on snake, and shopped at most of the appropriate moments. She thought she was the only adult on the field, as you could tell from muscles of her facial expressions. Incidentally, she was VERY pained. But, you know how adults are…they fall right over. While leaning towards a bunt that dribbled over to left field.
LOUD SOUNDS of an ominous floor-powered vacuum cleaner. "Clean it up, le’s go!” Much field earthquake motion, medium Richter, a fine cheese indeed. Edam. Yep, FINE.
The Dame, chubby and bouncy every run she hit out, and she got in four…Harmin haunted her, specifically, at every base she got, whispering things in her ear that apparently were so screamingly funny she kept collapsing and had to be poked into running for the next base. Gabe was caught between second and third and stopped the ball with his hat, catchingly it is swift-neatly, like God, instantly pretend-throwing it in a quick lob to first, of course. Vu Den. “YERRR OUTTT!!! Awww.
Oh, shit, WE ALWAYS pee first, experts say. So that's why the Lady Caza Zoo only made it to first, too, and did so, fortunately not being publicly too embarrassed nor embarrassable, and far away from the Porta John. But still-as-a-hundred-pound-note that was a spot of crying as Saragina gently took her over back to the stands. There, she shits.
Saragina got her THE CRYIN’ TOWEL, FOR GOOODDAMNFERLUNG GEESE!!! Rofe-shadowing…wedding.
Can’t understan’ it. Never!
We were all overwhelmed, yea verily yea, by the sudden mystical appearance of…Mr. Ellery Queen the Transvestite, wearing a screaming-pink flowery hat, with pin flashing history in-the-making and his-and-hers symmetrically-padded organdy dress suits, a women's shiny black string silk Colonel Sanders chicken tie, a to-the-sixth-knee pleated Amish grice-laced velveteen skirt like in Able Johnson cartoons, with dolphin-bone reinforcements manufactured by hand in Haiti, and chunky Irish-Polynesian native two-inch thick rainbow jewelry genuinely loud enough to acidify the raining boos that right-away died, as soon as he waved to Dan. Plussed, Dan Nuts gave him a happy cherry-blossom wave (new and improved) from shortstop, near the Bus Stop, as soon as he waved to Dan. They only sighed aloud like a girl, once. Whoosh!!! But the regular first-relief pitcher, Artie the B., coughed once and fell down immediately--from accessive drink, natch, that Demon Home Run, so--cobblestone, jerking all his flagella madly. It was up to Thom Da, the Helicopter, who spun aroun’ several liberal times fast, to pitch the next ball (sound of “wop-wop-wop-wop-wop wop wop wop” as is the sound of most helicopters. Thom wops those balls right into that there glove.
Before Thom completed his pitchin’ game, we were inundated by the flood of over-weight transvestites during the second half of the game, fourteen at least, spilling out of the stands in the gate after the sighting of UFO Jones, posing on a red-white-and-blue children's dirt bike, psychedelic hippie van nobody noticed parked in the Somebody’s Otherside Probellum parking lot, very rutted and gravely, located on California Place Way at the edge to the natural divine cliff--very angry Hadean music is bbbbuuubblinggg and blorbllingg up from the cliff, and SOME deadbodies say, it's the disappointed music of the Stages. The STAGES, screams Sara the D, cupping her “hand” over her mouth and spilling all the orange juice. So, there's a limp, ah sez, limp, shot of the Stooges, on the field back-board, for y’all. I don't want. All of you. I do, too, except for the few. Who knew how to screw? Me, in my wazoo.
I must learn to assemble other language structures. Rank memorization! It should be late kindergarten. Yeah. Then I can translate all that running, hitting, fielding, air-whoomphing all three locally-owned bats at once, and giving IT (close-up of “It” Mr. Jones being given everybody's jewelry and wallets cuz he has a Derringer jewel-encrusted…all we had, while hitting the ball funny and standing around continues…) I can translate it all into Transvestese.
Cold birdies jeered, and Chandover was being played screamingly loud in the midst of the second half to drown out the booing for “Thievin’ Jonesies”—this song was spilling out of the cliff via speakers somebody planted down there earlier--and that's WHEN the transvestites in their flashy dayglo, mylar and spandex clothes whoopingly, swoopingly swarmed the strawberry fields, stooping so low (and bending over and showing off their slips to do it!) as to punch face to take over the (the only one) the Colored Pristine Children of the Corny Beaux Arts out on the field, yeah. Bats! Man! They were lookin’ fer sheer raw recruits and the four urban Popes dressed as television familiars, disguisin all the white peoples, were the only ones the transview didn’t mercilessly SLAUGHTER with killin’ savage infightin’; using many smaller and foldable knives this time, so that only the disguised white players were left alive. They joined the rest, lying down to get done, those gamins, and stood there twitchin’, twitchin’ infra-red freckles, until finally all the dead colored people, the BLOODY dead color-fulled people, lovingly and sexily arose, shaking off the grass, rattling silver shames, and--with knives sticking out of ‘em—pulled ‘em out and killed the Transview BACK. Also, they kicked them, and pulled their rainbow HAIR. Some of whom them-they turned their maxi-length silk vests inside OUT, reflecting gobbets of field sunlight--pause for old game chant:
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts;
Three BIG pairs of monkey-feet
And chopped-up baby PARAKEET!
“Alright, people, let’s get some RUNS in!!!” Sara pounded her glove ‘til all the down stuffing came out. The Transview, who had very sexy bodies and FABULOUS torn dee-resses, but who clearly needed to lose weight on dietrim and who were deathly weighty matter, anyhoo, and so were being killed, in their gold and silver lame, and nowadays, dearie, you can get INCREDIBLY cheap pearls that go with anything, reet, and they all died, I swear, you can ask, but good, shot of Jones dumping dye on his head, blonde dye. I WOULD dig.
“Even when they were making voluminous vomiting cat noises and girlishly sophisticated Bronx cheers, before and during and after the air-raid sireen BLASTED to signal the arrival of the imposturing Canadian Mounties on those jury-built reclining bicycles, they WERE the boys next door, number two, and counted, seated securely on the worsted backs of each OTHER, red and black alone, a full 90o angle taken in England, it’s melting me, a mountie who’s french and against mitterand sticking out of the back of another mountie. In either direction. What you will, you Kostenvoranschlag!”
“Why should I give away my best strategies? Is it soup, yet?” Ed Bitters was bitterly vying for a place in the game’s conversation.
Emilia Bitters, in the far-right field wearing a feather boa, kept screaming “alRIGHT! Alright! ALRIGHT! But please, could we have a little of the old real Armenian Left? Share and new? Some compassion, SOME humanity, PleaSE have the AUdacity to create the proper manner of rescuing B-girls and B-pictures and the Being, and allow all Halloween CHILDREN (‘nother shot of children) wearing snipping blue-and-white beanies (they did it again, ousters) in the living room that can die inadvertently or conspicuously, just twist that TV knob. Nowadays you use the remote. Yet you sit there, unconscious still.
“You may breathe, next,” Emilia sighed, twisting her hair. If she died during this baseball game, their insurance was merely enough to bury her, a tiny memorial service, and pay off the remainder of the house annuity equities.
Please. Send no flowers, hers are Black roses!
Artie did get to throw the ball, uh, and other stuff, and obviously to describe the game cancha tell, all the way across the field, like in the Presidential elections (is Dread the same as Quailing?) Quiet, normal shot of his doing so. Twelve times. And Cloadia T. caught it like before Ned had, once or twice. And, Sara the g killed the most transvestites, her knife invisible, shaming you all, flashing, their heels clicking, praying to Sears and Penneys, but the paying audience in the stands were only paying/standing to attention, and they excepted the faked Jackie Robber’s Sons of Norway Tons of Phonie Blood that was thrown to the I can't stands-it people up ‘airs, in separately-wrapped boring, three-inch plastic tubes, Hollywood-style, so’s you could see, in clumped handfuls, dozens, some frozen and blue, tossed by Boole, DaMartain, Sharone, Caza, Artie’s sitter and Goneschlaw’s Jeannie Ontermeyer (who became one four-armed and six-legged being to do it), and both that ever-popular Alfie Hitchcox and Woods “Himself” Owlienda, painted brilliant green for St. Pat’s overshoe spastics, came in with a cameo, like in their own movies but worse, and me, (who can't swap genius or whatever favors Blondes) as ME, showed up unsuffrageably TOO. Honest!!!!!!!!!!!
It was grated orange peels, with sugar on ‘em. Baked, not fryed! Also was ther ad certaine Bold Pawn. SPOT AND ROVER!!
Saragina’s side, thereto, lost. Caza bought ‘er a commisserative Bud and Gabe tossed her paper roses made of kleanex, pink and yellow and blue. Dozens!
Ain’t that Auntie-Climactic? What a lousy chemise! Yep, he SHORE IS. Hang on. EVERY YEAR OR so at Christmas, Gabe felt…sad. Purely, intentionally, irrationally sad. Tears were involved. They seldom fell far.
He set aside $25 in October and another $25 or so in November. Then he grabbed whatever extra money he possessed in December (often as much as $100) and bought trinkets, jokes and honest gifte-ware for his family. Shipped it. With love and his heart.
His family sent him nice enough gifts. By January, this year, he'd received a three-volume set of Tendebarger’s Heavy Alliance trilogy, a tennis rac
ket with two cans of lime green fuzzy tennis balls, one of which arrived deflated, and a solid fool’s gold paperweight weighing 22 kilograms, exactly. Ten pounds of phony gold, shiny rock. What it supposed to represent heavy metal?
It came in a box labeled “Superchap’s Real Kryptonight.” Every square inch of the outer wrapper was stamps. He cut himself soundly while opening the box. Turned out to be from Gramma HeLouise, who else. She still thinks I'm twelve, mooned Gabe, tying the dayglo shoelaces on his fancy lace-ups with the thirteen pictures of naked well-formed California surfer girls outlined in silhouette running up the sides of his screaming yellow socks. Which glowed in the dark. You put them in the microwave, see, setting it on ‘popcorn’ and then…
…phone ringing off the hook. Mounds of cat fur on the rug from before, when AcQuirance ruled the roost. Fumble, grope. Whoozat?
“Hi, Gabe Sancto here, what’s your personal lifelong difficulty?”
No answer. Only dead silence. Possibly a fart.
“I’m sorry. Who are ya really?” Still no answer. Light breathing “You one of those guys needs a girlfriend? I don’t know you. I’m a man.”
Clicks, about five, in rapid short duration like gunfire. Then an extremely loud, very obvious gunshot occurred. Might have been a cap gun. There remained a serious echo in Gabe’s head. It reverberated.
Gabe blinked, not believing any of this. His ear rang copiously. So that’s a men’s “ear-rang.”
Further deafening silence, some clicks. Then another, more muffled gunshot. After that, Gabe thought aloud. What came immediately to mind, and into the phone.
“Artie! It's you! Stop blowing your head off at me!" Gabe was feeling an obtuse irritation in the manner of hackles furtively sneaking up his brown back. Well, someone was…he chuckled drily at the phone. Ha ha. Ha. Such a humorous phone. Look, it even has a cord…
…there was a very loud thud, as in a large body hitting the floor. Loud, hard thud. Like, THUD!! Gabe became speechless, unsure what to do. He finally decided, clamming up, hanging up and calling the police sound swell. Find out!
The first thing the cop asked was where he was calling from. He refused to say.
“Look, it's not me doing this. I'm not the one. Somebody else is a prankster and is playing funny games with my phone." Gabe’s thick chest tightened inside, like an oncoming flu. He thought about taking aspirin. Or poison. A beer--?
“Okay, spare me your Almighty address, but we wanna do what we can to help you. Alright? Alright. Don't get all worried. I'm here.
“If you have one of those three-way caller lines we can tap the other gentleman’s line when he's calling you. It's a male, right?" "Yes." "Also, right now we can try to trace your last incoming call. If you’ll hang up, we’ll do that, and I'll call you back right away with the results. What’s your phone number, Mac?"
Gabe had the TV on and was watching the Autodaughter monologue when the phone rescreamed its blare. Same cop as before. He sounded Jewish. Like from New York.
“We got a phone booth for ya, at the corner of 20th Ave. and N Rudnick St. Izzat familiar? Any friendly enemies in that vicinity?" The cop’s voice, nasal, urbane, was friendly but absurdly condescending. Gabe feared being mistaken for a pervert. You know how the police are. They think they know it all. What can you tell them?
“No, but if you hum a few bars…nah, it's nowhere I know." Gabe’s mind skipped a beat, as though he were lying or knew something unconsciously. What? Where was…near Shell Park. No, he wasn't lying…
“It’s not anywhere near the bar. That’s down south, around 30th Ave., I think. Hey, Shirl, where's the bar, the tavern in Rama? The one around 30th? You know?" There was loud backgroundish fast whispering, the crackle of static and maybe a normal conversation. Gabe couldn't tell, or say anything either. “Hey, the bar’s on 21rst at Guild. You can walk up Guild from the bar, or Rudnick, and walk over. Twelve blocks either way. Pretty far hike. That's what you think? Guy you know from that bar?"
What a spectacularly foolish idea. Believing I know just whom to blame for a change. “Yeah, there is one. I’ll take at him later. I can handle it, s’okay. May I call you again if I find out what happened?’ Gabe at least couldn’t doubt his answer. What else could he say?
“Call us anytime, we’re your friendly neighborhood police, we’re here to serve and protect you folks. We have to, we get paid with your tax dollars, Mr. Sancto. Izzat s-a-n-c-t-o?” “Right.” “What did you say your first name was, again? Could you spell it? And if you could give us your complete home address, we can fill out a report and assign you a case number, start a file for ya, make your life much easier. You can refer back to it all later." Fair enough, Gabe reflected. He gave the cop his name and address. He hung up. TV time.
The monologue was long over. The rock band was garish and mediocre. Gabe felt obligated to turn the sound off. Completely. Mrs. Stigowitalia probably was attempting, without luck, to fight the pain away in sleep. She’d told him the noise didn't bother her, but he thought it did.
Ah, deaf television for another hour, then bed.
Before he turned it off, they advertised a movie featuring African natives with dyed red hair leering fatuously at the camera. As titles flashed, he pushed the button. I'm sorry, but they did not look the least bit fierce. Nope.
Gabe “the Beau” Sancto snores merrily away, assumedly confronting an invincible sniper he can't ever seem to find…not even in his wildest dreams.
“SEE ME! HERE I am!” But, he wouldn’t cross the street. There was something not kosher about crossing the street. But what, at his age? At last he admitted, though only to himself, that he was truly afraid for his life.
Guessing which building whoever-it-was had fired at him from, he turned halfaways towards it, slowly lining up with the shots. He waved his right arm over his head, ignoring the pain, curving it towards him, willingly the patsy target. He sported a very bloody sleeve. He invited the shots, he consulted the sniper! He lived, anyway, only to suffer. His legs and arms and soul arched, work-tired, both and all must have ached for the mistake of simple rest. Why not ask for it? And so, to wit, he did:
“GO ON!” Gabe, coughing into his hand, shouted hoarsely. “SHOOT ME! I’m totally defenseless! I can't stop you! You want it? SHOOT IT! What do you WANT? Here I AM, you sadistic weirdo!”
There was a deep, oncoming sense of a head cold. Gabe knew the symptoms. He laughed, hicupping, childishly running back over to the exact spot he'd been at when the shots were originally fired, as though he were the lust-crazed madman he seemed to be.
Well, that he really was.
This was exceeding helpful to the sniper, who didn't need any. Another shot was shortly fire. Gabe stood, unbending to the last, his fists opening and closing at his sides, and he urbanely and inexplicably lusted. After death, perhaps? Or sleep. Maybe death reminded him of Black Saragina keeping him too long at bay. When would their light craft sail, on the choppy Nordic waters?
Such luck he was having. The shot had missed him, just barely. Gabe thought, relief flooding and relieving his heart for only a moment, it had.
IT WAS a chilly January morning in Rama. A cold front had been blowing down from Vancouver for the past week or so, but showed signs of relenting. Meanwhile, I had logs crackling with red, orange and yellow heat in the fireplace. I was safely snuggled into my plush maroon velour couch, which needed vacuuming from Roscoe’s fur and the ever-present flea eggs and feces. I was cozily and snuggly wrapped in a boy’s brown plush fake fur lion’s-figure blanket. And I was dozing off into a gusty dream, my mind barely there, book dropping out of my weakening, sleep-laden hands…
…no, I wasn’t dreaming. Perusing the original of the Necronomicon had inspired no fantasies, no illusions of blustering music. The wind was up outside, and the knock on the door was real. I laid the erstwhile Koran down. It didn't bounce. It stayed there. Closed, an object, and harmless.
As I opened the door, light from the hallway did very little to frame
Gabe in anything like a "shimmering glow," as I lived in an apartment building. However, his, ah, nicely-heighted, muscular warm body did cast a lengthy shadow across my thickly carpeted floor. He seemed taller without my shoes one. I mean, my shoes, y’know. I wear high-heels. For work.
Without a word, he stepped inside and drew me to him. His leather jacket was open and my shimmering fad-silk, blue and silver silken acrylic nightgown quickly absorbed most of the cold from his shirt. But he stopped me from shaking. "You can't imagine how many times I've wanted to hold you," he gently murmured, squeezing me mother-tight. In that moment, I was back home, for all time.
He buried his newly smooth and chilly brown face in my undone hair, which was an abject mess, and I could feel the touch of his strong, chilled leathery hands on my back. Oooh, I jumped! He's a powerful man, with a gentle touch, but gosh his hands were COLD! I felt an exquisite rush of sheer insipent pneumonia. Feeling that touch was as natural and exciting as it had been for me with my first husband, who turned out to be a wife-beater. Oh, well. I was still trying to figure him out. Even so…
It was five-twenty in the am. I needed to be at work by six-forty-five. But Gabe stood there holding me, like I needed, after a long night spent with the fire and an unreadable book, and all I could do was glow all over until I heated him through. With that, Christian or Moslem love? Then, of all unexpected madnesses, he separated from me, mutteringly indicating the bedroom--I clutched at my throat, but he shook his head No and with a sparkle in his eye, he said aloud that he always accepted my desires.
I took to my bedroom quickly and dressed. We have morning coffee at the Fantastic, scrupulously reading the entire local paper, which was a hundred-page birdcage liner called the Unionville Herald-Gazette. It nonetheless ran a few more local stories than ads, but not quite, and we held hands across the table. This worked wonders for me, but after this morning's charming event, I was forced to tell Gabe to hold off in his imminent expectations towards future blissful couplings. I told him so, and requested that he never ever do that, ever again, even though I loved it. I couldn't believe it, he said yes!
A CALMER MOOD
As the air grew neater with the cherished promise of impending spring weather, air heavy with the smell of rain mixed with mud, and all the budding trees shaking off their green outer cases of growing life, the average Raman passerby felt lovingly surrounded by nectarous perfumes and rain-washed breezes. The green, vibrant smell of new growth, brought out by rain. Splatterdashing pearls of spring rain carelessly aimed multiple minor blows all over the above Raman passerby’s body. He didn’t mind.
Passersby? Que pasa. Time for another long Hail Marriage pass…
The said passerby, a respectable Mr. Gabriello “Beau” Hooter variety of being, jauntily wore, to his own satisfaction, a light brown wind-breaker, one with rubber overshoes -? No, Mac, just a coat and black tennis shoes, with one soggy reddish fedora hat. He was partial badly injured. An aluminum crutch was supporting him, an ablest falling third leg, with genuine rubber shoe. But how odd-fashioned…
Gabe felt that he presented little picture of discomfort or fear to any outside viewer, as his hands were stuffed in his pockets, his head was tipped forward slightly ala the James Dean in-the-rain photography, and he was typically stumping-walking. Except that he was stiffly dragging his left leg with every other step. His brown leather shoe lightly scraped the concrete sidewalk. Inside it, his foot felt warm, disturbed, and jolted.
Aaaar aar Arrr. I'm Long John Slivers. Dey done broke m’wood. My wooden leg, which was under me, they done shot it out from under me for good. The MUD did it, tro’.
We mission workers were on location, at a outdoor worksite, and the truly terrifying violence, routine of a typical gangsta movie matinee--or was it a slapstick farce? --sprang up around us without so much as a by-your-leave of a What’s-Up-Doc. Mr. Herlando Megusky, our current site boss and a tallish chap, was heatedly arguing with the work crew supervisor over whether or not to continue forth into the late afternoon, as it was raining harder and the ground around the cement base of the office building we were constructing the base of was getting too soogy to stand around in without likely repeatedly falling over. Megusky thought that was insane.
“These men are agile-footed as the deer! It's an insult to believe they're gonna be slippin’ and slidin’ from two inches of mud! Two whole inches? You’re nuts.”
The on-site supervisor, a greenhorn with two years of experience, not exactly fresh from college, carefully explained to Megusky “the facts of life pertaining to this particular building foundation’s concrete support job.
He looked like he knew what he was saying. He spread his hands in apology, and spoke in a low-voiced monotone.
“First, it’s newly set, and we need to tarp it over to keep the concrete from leaching into the runoff. We have plenty ‘nough tarp. If it rains anymore it’ll run.
“Second, if anybody falls and hurts himself, and I can tell you a minute ago my feet went out and I almost did, we owe them. We owe them beaucoupe de benefit bucks.”
“We got workman’s comp.”
“Yeah, but our monthly dues for the private insurance company we signed on with last year shoot up astronomically if we lose somebody to an accident. And what about the poor guy who has one? Don't he get hurt anyway? Don’t he count?
“And what about Lorraine, over there?” The on-site supervisor carefully indicated the only female worker on the jobsite. "Would you like to see her flat on her ass? The pratfall might be hilarious to you, but the results are very harmful to our…" His voice was steadily rising in strength and pitch.
At that moment, as though by Zippy’s magic command, someone handed Gabe a board from behind him and placed it a little bit too low. Down he went, butt first, in doing so revealing that they were dealing with a definite four inches of mud, and the splash falling on his right leg and revenging himself on the clothes of his work-mate. “HA--aaaaaaallllltt-ttttt!”
Believe it or simples, Gabe’s leg wasn't broken. The patella was temporarily popped out of his right knee soundly and he couldn't seem to move or to bend it. The on-site super called a local ER and was told to bring him in. Once he was in ER, they manipulated his kneecap gingerly and only partially back into place, and then they splinted and taped his leg as though it were broken. The job was canceled until next Monday, or whenever the rain slowed. “Me first, quoth the “Beau,” and they all laughed quietly.
“Nope, we go home, and you collect all the on-site pay to finish your contract for this job. Then you sign the necessary paperwork ta git-cher midical benies. You will.
“Jus’ levitate yourself to the office—nah, we’ll drop you off. Then I gotta go get my kid away from his school’s chemistry project and get home. You get three different forms to kill time with, Gabe, but I’ll help you fill ‘em out if you’re grimacing too much."
“No sweat, fireman, I get top-notch billing whenever slip-day I do this. We gotta tail Phil to wear his glasses all the time on these muddy outside-jobs." Oddly enough Phil really hadn't been wearing his fairly thick eyewear. Privately, Gabe had to wonder how badly he needed ‘em. Perhaps he should buy him a pair. Or slug him one!! He didn't think Phil was trying for him “of a purpose,” as Gramma’d say, probably not. No, of course not!
Friendly Phil was a regular, sophisticated, lanky young chap who liked to go to the latest South American releases or science fiction technicalities as fantasies, see all the best of the new endeavors, and offer everyone at work free SRO passes. He got these by trading with some of his Unionville buddies. His best friend’s mom and dad ran a theater in town. He instantly began bending over backwards to be friendly after the accident.
Gabe huddled, wrapped in a blanket, in a stove-warmed corner of the site trailer, having a cup of coffee Phil had gotten him unasked. He just got Gabe a cup and apologized. But he prepared that cup of java very carefully, speaking to Gabe for twenty long minutes.
“These things hap
pen. I broke my arm when I fell of a two-story house I was tryin’ to shingle last year. In a driving rain, rotted roof giving and creaking and moanin’ an’ groanin’ under me. Broke through the water main, bent it over double, the abruptest event of my life. Arm busted in two places, leg sprained. It'll cost ya precious time for yer leg t’heal. I know.” He had a Gabe on the back as he set his coffee cup down on the desk. "God, I'm sorry, Gabe." The super also was commiserative.
“If you need help, I keep a slush fund for equipment and utilities. I'm allowed to borrow from it, but no interest needed from you. Due back anytime!" Gabe thanked the super, whose name was Arnold, and took a cab home after Phil cashed his check for him. Phil was loaded with supplicational apologies. He offered Gabe six movie tickets. Huzzah!
“Beau” took them, and, for his troubles, was able to take Sara, Caza, Artie, Sharone, and even tiny little serif or sans-serif Cloadia to see “Revenge of the Giant Salamanders" for free on Wednesday night that very week. Artie sprang for the hot-buttered popcorn. Sharone bought the drinks.
Gabe’s knee took its time in returning to use as he required both Sara and Sharone manipulating it gingerly into position. This was a highly specialized practise taking place over several weeks. He could finally bend it without hearing popping noises.
“I ought to do this more often. Wow, I’ve got two sensational ladies thronging sexily at my knee level. My poor old leg doesn't hurt so much anymore, never, now." He sighed, tragically, but a touch triumphantly. It was dawning on him.
“How lucky can one ever-lovin’ man get in these fourteen or so lifetimes?" whooed Artie. In reply, Saragina kissed Gabe’s kneecap, and it slipped silently back into place. With a “click” that Gabe could feel.
Gabe was back at work within eight days. He couldn't miss the four all-day seminars on learning how to wire internal structures without overlapping, causing electrical problems, or putting any of those wrong-cased wires up anybody else's erstwhile anus. Including Artie’s – he howled louder than an air raid siren, when Gabe found him behind the outhouse…nah, I’m jus’ kiddin’, ser’ously.
Laissez-failure! I should tell you, I left the Elimination Process out…removing the drunken, running amock references to Black people having children. When in doubt, throw it out. This book is well-rounded, but anti-racism is its forte. On another hand, sexism can be nice…if it relates to reality. If not, oh well, that bare, barbed wire will have to go up somebody’s ass, sooner or later…kiddin’ agin!
The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos Page 18