“Should we… uh… DISCUSS this now?”
Alderman Cosko wasn’t usually so demure; but he was uncomfortable with being the de facto head of Town Council. He was in charge because the mayor was running late and the usual second in command – a wizened old codger named Fowler who predated every building in town except the barber shop – was stuck at a church function and couldn’t break away. And when that was the case – which happened more often than anyone in the town of Mt. Arliss was aware of since no one came out to the bi-monthly meetings – that meant Tom Cosko was in charge. And somewhere between the sudden rush of power, the fear of inevitable retribution – either from the mayor, his wife, or his constituency – and the concern over having a quorum, the portly, smiling, usually confident man shrank. Just a little.
“Well,” Alderman Rita Boflofsky said, sitting back in her chair. When she sat back in the chair the old wooden chair creaked like ancient bones and the sound of it made her visibly wince. She winced like it was her own bony frame making the noise. She winced the way fat people wince when they sit on chairs that won’t support them. Rita Boflofsky looked older than she was; she looked like a woman who had spent her entire life counting and keeping track of the number of M&M she ate. Her skin was taut and stretched like leather that had been left out in the sun too long and semi-salvaged from the rain. No one touched her on the shoulders for fear of being skewered by the bony protuberances. Small children had lost eyes because they wandered too close to her sharp swinging elbows when she walked. The tightness of her skin made her jaw look more prominent than it would have otherwise, and her dark beady eyes peered out from behind small librarian spectacles that sat neatly on the bridge of her narrow, short, nose.
“Well,” she repeated, looking around. “We might as well.”
The other three aldermen – Lena Linko from Ward 2, Cloris Hinkle from Ward 1, and Mackinaw Wojehovicz from Ward 4 – simply nodded their heads and said nothing. That was what they did most of the time, unless it was required by Robert’s Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.
Tom Cosko looked behind his left shoulder at the Chief of Police like he was asking for permission to speak, and the Chief nodded solemnly. Chief Dolarhyde was an old football buddy of the mayor’s, and also the mayor’s long arm. Dolarhyde was the star quarterback in the 80’s – that was before Mt. Arliss High was consolidated into the Arliss County school district and the school building itself was demolished to make space for an industrial park that was never built. Mayor Leslie Bane was the water boy. He was too short and too wide to play football. In fact, he was probably a midget; but his temper far exceeded his stature and while no one really liked him and none of the girls would date him for fear of ending up having midget babies, no one gave him a difficult time. He and Jeff Dolarhyde had been friends their entire lives because they grew up living next door to one another – until Dolarhyde joined the Marines and went off to the first Gulf War. He’d come back a hero of sorts, married a past Corn Harvest Beauty Queen, and had been a deputy Sheriff in Iowa until Old Man Cleary was forced into retirement.
By that time, little Leslie Bane had lucked into marrying the pretty daughter of a local big wig who had more or less financed his run for the mayor’s office – mostly, it was thought, to ensure that his youngest daughter would be able to hold her head up as the mayor’s wife instead of being that poor girl who married a midget. It was also thought that Bane would make the local tax code more favorable for his father-in-law’s business interests. But because he refused to be under anyone’s thumb, Bane did the exact opposite and instituted so many nitpicky taxes that his by the time his father-in-law and political backer died from prostate cancer, he near broke and had to declare bankruptcy just to pay the extensive medical bills. There wouldn’t have been money to bury him if the entire community hadn’t kicked in; his grave would be unmarked if the headstone maker Mr. Feany hadn’t donated a small rectangle plot marker with his name, birth, and death date. Since then, his terms as mayor ran concurrently because no one wanted to mess with a midget who would bankrupt his father-in-law simply because God had made him a midget.
“Uh… okay.” Cosko looked into the audience. The dozen or so chairs were unusually crowded. All of the faces were familiar. All but one. The rest were a group of concerned citizens who had approached the Town Council demanding something be done to stem the tide of outsiders, malingerers, and illegal aliens that had descended upon the town in recent months. They wanted form the Arliss County Citizen’s Committee (ACC) – which they proposed would be a kind of community watch group that would keep an eye on things and report anything suspicious to the police. They wanted money from the Town Council and they wanted the Council’s stamp of approval. The topic had been brought up before, and was currently on the agenda for the Finance Committee –which happened to include everyone on Town Council – and typically, such matters were discussed before the official bell ringing that meant the regular council meeting had begun.
The ACCC agenda was fairly simple. The corporate farm had brought in workers for harvest, rather than hiring local people, or even the farmers whose land they bought, seized, or acquired. These migrants were Mexicans, and not a one of the spoke a word of English. ACCC was convinced that they were all border jumpers that were bringing drugs across the border in addition to taking jobs that rightfully belonged to good, upstanding, native born Americans. Parents were worried about their children – particularly their daughters, who were surely targets for rape, gang sodomy, and possible sale into white slavery – and the Police Chief, while sympathetic, was short staffed as it was. Cosko didn’t know how he felt about it, but he was sure that he’d seen something like this in a movie. The only thing that was missing was the lit torches and pitch forks.
When they first approached the council, they intended to form a militia, and they went after the council in public when they were told no. After numerous phones calls, threats, and prolific letters to the editors of area newspapers, as well as letters of support from several conservative political action committees and grass roots organizations like the Tea Leaf Brigade and the Southern Knights of The Republic, they approached the town council again – this time calling themselves a Committee.
The unofficial leader of ACCC was Don Breeble. Tom had known Don for years because the man had antagonized him from the moment he moved into town fifteen years ago. Don was a farmer, a gun owner, and Christian – when it suited him. He was also former President of the local chapter of the John Birch Society, until he broke with them because he thought they were too wishy-washy. His farm was five miles from the Lake Pilot Campground and Resort; that hadn’t been a problem for him until Tom and Rosie Kendle decided to convert their general store into a cantine. Now, according to Don, it was just a place for “queers and border jumpers” to hang out, spreading their societal disease like those mosquitoes that carry the West Nile Virus. He’d written letters to the editors of every county paper every week for months, speaking out against the roaming hordes, the town council, and Cosko in particular. Cosko’s wife was being harassed by her friends and threatened by anonymous phone calls. Cosko remembered one call word for word:
“If your husband doesn’t care about protecting our wives and daughters from being attacked, maybe we ought to come for YOU. After ten or twenty of us are done with you, maybe your dumbass of a husband will see the light. What do you think honey? Ever wonder what it would be like to have a REAL MAN between your legs?”
Naturally Cosko reported these call to Chief Dolarhyde; but the calls didn’t stop.
He took a deep breath and looked at the face he didn’t know. He’d seen the guy around and had heard he was a reporter for one of the papers, The Illinois Advocate. No one knew anything about him, other than he was new in town and spent a lot of time at the Moose Head. Then he turned his attention back to Don Breeble. “Okay Don,” he said. “What have you got for us tonight?”
Don Breeble stood up smiling. His teeth were yellow, like the hair of his scouring pad beard. The people he brought with him –the other prominent members of ACCC – applauded. Don handed a stack of papers to the Clerk of Court, Mandy Calumny, and she passed them round to each council member. “What I have here,” Don spoke loudly, “is an outline – as the council requested – discussing what our aims are, why we’re a service to the community, and how much money we need and why. Everything’s specific and defined. There’s no malfeasance or new math accounting.” He laughed and the rest of the ACCCers laughed too.
“Have you approached other communities in the county?” Rita Boflofsky asked. “Seems to me that if you’re a county-wide organization that the county and other communities should shoulder the burden too. It’s not just on us because you happen to live here.”
“We’ve gone to the county board,” Don answered like he was anticipating the question, and to nearly every community in county.”
“And?”
“And we’re waiting on word from the county board. And every town except one has agreed.”
“And what do you need money for?” Cosko asked.
“To help cover the cost of patrols,” Don answered. “Upkeep of vehicles. We’ve been doing it on our own for some time, and we’ll keep on doing it that way if we have to. But we’re just trying to help protect what’s good and godly in our communities,” he turned and looked at his fellow ACCCers, all of whom nodded and grunted their agreement “and we’re just asking for a little help.”
Tom had heard stories about them doing it on their own. No one had died yet. Chief Dolarhyde and the County Sheriff were getting reports of threatening calls, rocks in windows, small brush fires, trucks and cars ran off the road. Of course, no one named Don Breeble and the ACCC; but no one had to. Everyone knew what was going on.
Don talked on for a few more minutes and was roundly and loudly applauded by the ACCCers in the audience. Tom looked behind him at Chief Dolarhyde, who wasn’t looking back at him, but who was looking down at a sheet of paper, nodding his head. Then he looked at Don Breeble, who smiled and winked at him. He thought about the voice on the other end of the phone that night at two in the morning and remembered that it had sounded familiar. He looked at the reporter whose name he didn’t know. Then he looked over at Rita Boflofsky and the other members of the quorum. It was a bad business. But he also knew that the mayor would support a motion to fund the ACCC. And he also believed the voice on the other end of the phone.
Lena Linko spoke up as if she had just woke up from a deep sleep. “I’m requesting a motion that we fund the ACCC in the amount of $500.”
“Where will the money come from?” Cosko asked.
“The general fund,” Rita said. “We’ve got it.” She looked at Mandy Calumny. “Don’t we?”
Mandy nodded.
“We should talk about this during the regular meeting,” Cosko said. “You know we can’t offer motions in committee.” He looked over at Don, with his wide smiling yellow teeth, and he thought about how his wife was afraid to go anywhere at night or alone. Or with him. “We have to follow the rules,” Cosko insisted. “Or none of it means anything.”
Don nodded his approval. Cosko felt Dolarhyde nodding too. Cosko looked over at the clock on the wall. It was time to start the meeting.
Showing posts with label Arliss Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arliss Stories. Show all posts
29 July, 2010
14 July, 2010
In Season: Part 3 [Illuminations]
Manolo was tired. There wasn’t a part of him that didn’t feel exhausted, worn out, or sore. Some of the other men in the bunk house had aspirina; but that never helped. A few others kept bottles of whiskey or tequila, if they could get it. But Manolo Dunne had no interest in that, either. The only thing he had any interest in was sleep.
The problem was, of course, that mot of the other workers wanted to blow off stream. They had all just gotten paid. And after they paid down their debt at the farm sundry and whittled down the amount they sent home to their families, they wanted to spend the remainder on drinking and the loteria.
One of the workers, and bitter half-toothless muscle named Roberto, interrupted Manolo’s thoughts and asked if he was going with them.
“¿A donde va?”
“La cantina. What you say, Gringo? You coming? Or you gonna stay here and play with yourself again?”
Manolo shook his head.
Roberto through his head back and laughed. “Ok, Gringo. Whatever you say.”
Manolo laid back on his bunk and looked at his hands. When he started following the migrant workers, his hands and feet would blister and the other workers, who hadn’t seen blisters since they were children, would laugh at him. They had expected him to quit, especially Roberto. Then when they found out that not only had he been to college but that he was only half-Mexican – they started calling him Gringo. He hated it, but let it slide. Whether they called him Manuel, Manny, Manolo, Gringo, or Ratón didn’t really matter to him. When he was in college some of the other students had called him Spick and he had learned to ignore them. After he had proven himself, most of the other workers started calling him by his name. All except Roberto, who was only tolerated because he could do the work of ten men. Manolo figured it was easier to forgive an idiot when the idiot was able to crush your head like a soft melon. And so he let it pass, and held to his purpose.
The blisters had long since passed, but the aches and pains still remained. And soon, the crops would be harvested and the aches and pains would still remain; but then it would be time to move on – move south, where the warmer climate meant a longer growing seasons and more work. And when that was finished, most of the workers would either go to Arizona and risk being caught on an expired work visa – those that actually had them – or they would cross back over into Mexico and wait for the harvest season to begin again. Most of the workers were illegal, and those that weren’t kept this fact quiet. A work visa could be hard to come by, but it was easy enough to change your name when someone disappeared and didn’t need it anymore.
He tried to pick up the book he’d been reading – Rimbaud’s Illuminations—but he was too tired to focus on the words. They blurred in front of his eyes and made him drowsy. So he put it away and took out the pictures he kept in the back. One was a picture of his sister Beatriz at her 16th birthday party. She was smiling at the camera and hugging him the way she used to hug him when she was a little girl. The party had taken place at their grandmother’s house in Nogales. He remembered every detail about the party: the music, the food, the bright balloons and decorations. She used to call him Manolito. She was the only one who could call him that without getting punched in the face.
The other picture was of their mother before she died. Beatriz clearly took after her, except that she was darker skinned and her eyes were brown, where Beatriz had hazel eyes like his. According to Abuela, their father had hazel eyes. Manolo barely remembered him, though people who had known him insisted Manolo looked a lot like him. Manolo remembered bits and pieces – the smell of his Old Spice aftershave, the sound of his laugh. Sometimes he heard his father’s voice in his dreams and it always scared him awake. He also remembered the things his mother had told him about his their father – that he was a strong, kind man. That he had been a war hero. That he loved him and Beatriz and her very much.
He hid the pictures in his book because he knew none of the others would look there. Since he pulled his weight during work, they gave him less of a hard time about he books he liked to read and the scribbling he did in his notebooks. They kept trying to tell him he needed to stop pretending he was a worker and go back to school, where he could read and scribble all he wanted.
Manolo put the pictures back in the book and put the book back in his knapsack, under the thin pillow under his head. Then he closed his eyes and tried to drift off to sleep, because the morning would come early.
The problem was, of course, that mot of the other workers wanted to blow off stream. They had all just gotten paid. And after they paid down their debt at the farm sundry and whittled down the amount they sent home to their families, they wanted to spend the remainder on drinking and the loteria.
One of the workers, and bitter half-toothless muscle named Roberto, interrupted Manolo’s thoughts and asked if he was going with them.
“¿A donde va?”
“La cantina. What you say, Gringo? You coming? Or you gonna stay here and play with yourself again?”
Manolo shook his head.
Roberto through his head back and laughed. “Ok, Gringo. Whatever you say.”
Manolo laid back on his bunk and looked at his hands. When he started following the migrant workers, his hands and feet would blister and the other workers, who hadn’t seen blisters since they were children, would laugh at him. They had expected him to quit, especially Roberto. Then when they found out that not only had he been to college but that he was only half-Mexican – they started calling him Gringo. He hated it, but let it slide. Whether they called him Manuel, Manny, Manolo, Gringo, or Ratón didn’t really matter to him. When he was in college some of the other students had called him Spick and he had learned to ignore them. After he had proven himself, most of the other workers started calling him by his name. All except Roberto, who was only tolerated because he could do the work of ten men. Manolo figured it was easier to forgive an idiot when the idiot was able to crush your head like a soft melon. And so he let it pass, and held to his purpose.
The blisters had long since passed, but the aches and pains still remained. And soon, the crops would be harvested and the aches and pains would still remain; but then it would be time to move on – move south, where the warmer climate meant a longer growing seasons and more work. And when that was finished, most of the workers would either go to Arizona and risk being caught on an expired work visa – those that actually had them – or they would cross back over into Mexico and wait for the harvest season to begin again. Most of the workers were illegal, and those that weren’t kept this fact quiet. A work visa could be hard to come by, but it was easy enough to change your name when someone disappeared and didn’t need it anymore.
He tried to pick up the book he’d been reading – Rimbaud’s Illuminations—but he was too tired to focus on the words. They blurred in front of his eyes and made him drowsy. So he put it away and took out the pictures he kept in the back. One was a picture of his sister Beatriz at her 16th birthday party. She was smiling at the camera and hugging him the way she used to hug him when she was a little girl. The party had taken place at their grandmother’s house in Nogales. He remembered every detail about the party: the music, the food, the bright balloons and decorations. She used to call him Manolito. She was the only one who could call him that without getting punched in the face.
The other picture was of their mother before she died. Beatriz clearly took after her, except that she was darker skinned and her eyes were brown, where Beatriz had hazel eyes like his. According to Abuela, their father had hazel eyes. Manolo barely remembered him, though people who had known him insisted Manolo looked a lot like him. Manolo remembered bits and pieces – the smell of his Old Spice aftershave, the sound of his laugh. Sometimes he heard his father’s voice in his dreams and it always scared him awake. He also remembered the things his mother had told him about his their father – that he was a strong, kind man. That he had been a war hero. That he loved him and Beatriz and her very much.
He hid the pictures in his book because he knew none of the others would look there. Since he pulled his weight during work, they gave him less of a hard time about he books he liked to read and the scribbling he did in his notebooks. They kept trying to tell him he needed to stop pretending he was a worker and go back to school, where he could read and scribble all he wanted.
Manolo put the pictures back in the book and put the book back in his knapsack, under the thin pillow under his head. Then he closed his eyes and tried to drift off to sleep, because the morning would come early.
12 July, 2010
In Season: Part 2 [Terra Non Grata
Later that night, Rosie sat at the card table in the back room, counted the reciepts and smiled. It had been more than seven years since she and Tom had moved back to Mount Arliss, took out the loan to buy the old campground, and began to set it right.
The first few years were the hardest; Pilot Lake had developed a reputation over the years; drug busts, high school parties, and a regular group of homeless people who came in on the trains and squatted at the grounds to avoid being arrested had made the place terra non grata as far as the surrounding communities and tourists were concerned. The first reported gang rape had occurred there back in the early 80’s – a high school graduation blow out that had gone a little too far; the girl wandered into the police station, barely able to stand, barely covered with what was left her muddy cut-offs and her Senior year memorial t-shirt, and listed no less than 20 boys – the bulk of the championship high school football team – who got her drunk and took turns at her until they got too drunk and passed out. Of course, it never went any further than that; the girl had a reputation and the boys were thought well of. But the stigma stayed on the campground for years after; and even when she and Tom bought the place twenty years later, people around town made sure to tell them both about the “kind of property” they were buying. As if the land itself were debauched and cursed.
“How’d we do?” Tom entered the back room that doubled as a pantry and the office and fell into the other folding chair.
“We did pretty well,” Rosie answered, turning the calculator around to show him the number. “Between the campers we have now, the ones who made reservations for Labor Day, and the cantine – this will be the second year we show a profit.”
“How much profit?”
She shrugged. “More than last year. And definitely more than we’ve ever seen. Another few years like this and we might even pay the mortgage off early.”
“Well, shiit,” Tom said. Then he reached down and pulled his boots off. “I sure wish that somebody would’ve warned me that success hurt like this.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Put those back on; you know I can’t handle how your feet stink when you’ve been working all day.”
“Can’t help it,” he said. “You know that.”
“You CAN help it. Put those boots back on and leave them on til we get home and you can take a shower.”
“And the foot powder?”
“Yes, God,” she breathed. “Don’t forget the foot powder.” She loved her husband completely, in spite of the slouchy way he carried himself and inspite of his hereditary foot stink. He couldn’t help it, anyway. Even his parents said they made him leave his sneakers outside when he was growing up. Tom had a good heart and kind face, even if he didn’t let the one show and even if he covered up the other with several days’ worth of stubble that never seemed to grow into a full beard. He was a thoughtful man and a hard worker and she knew he loved her.
He smiled and reached down to pull his boots back on. “Fine.” After he’d pulled them back over his feet, he picked up the calculator to take a closer look at the number on the display. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We might actually be able to make a living at this.”
“Were you worried?”
“I’m always worried.”
“Well, that’s a good thing. But everyone seems happy and things are going … okay.” Rosie stopped herself short of saying “well” because she didn’t want to jinx their success. “The cantine was really a good idea.” She smiled and felt her insides swell up a little; it had been her idea.
“Not everyone’s happy.”
“Huh?”
“A few of the campers complained.”
She shook her head and asked about what; though she already knew the answer.
“Grant.”
“Just him?”
“Nope.” He sighed and pulled his old green ballcap off, exposing a salt and pepper scalp with a quickly receeding hairline. “Grant and his friends.”
“Not the farm workers?”
Tom nodded. “A few complaints about them, too,” he said.
“What’d you tell them?”
He shrugged.
“The same thing you usually tell them?”
He nodded.
“They’re good for business,” Rosie said. “They pay cash just like everybody else. They have fun, and don’t start trouble.”
“They don’t have to start trouble to make trouble.”
“So what? You want to stop them from coming?” She pointed to the calculator sitting between them. “You get a sense of what we’ll lose if that happens, right?”
Tom didn’t answer.
“And what’s the WORSE thing that can happen?” Rosie went on. “We have another customer base. Maybe we can look at rennovating those cabins on the south end of the lake – you know, like we talked about when we first bought the place. Maybe we can even build some NEW cabins. Dig deeper water and sewage lines. People would come out here in the winter, too, if we marketed it right…”
“Those farm workers can’t afford a to rent a cabin,” Tom said, “and they’re gone as soon as harvet is over.”
“They’re not the only customer base.”
“What?” Tom snorted. “You want to open a queer-friendly B&B? Out here?”
“I wish you’d stop using that word,” Rosie said. “It sounds awful when you say it.”
“They say it.”
“It’s different.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re changing the topic.”
Tom sighed. “Okay, so we rennovate and build a few cabins. Then what? If we scare off the campers, hunters, and people who fish, will we be able to stay afloat without them?”
“Don’t be homophobic.”
“I’m not. I DON’T care. I just…”
“And it doesn’t seem to bother you when those girls rub up on one another.”
It don’t seem to bother YOU either. “That’s not the same thing.”
It was Rosie’s turn to snort. “Oh REALLY? You want to watch me snuggle up to one of them? Maybe that blonde perky one who never wears a bra.”
Tom felt his stomach knot up, but the image in his mind excited him a little, too. “No. Of course not.” He sighed. “I’m not gonna DO anything, alright? They’re good business. What people do or who they are isn’t my business.”
Rosie smiled; then she stood up, walked over to her husband, and sat down on his lap. “It’ll be fine,” she cooed and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. “You’ll see.”
He grunted. “You really think we could rennovate those cabins?”
“After this season, maybe,” she whispered in his ear. “If we keep doing the way we’re doing.”
Tom liked the idea of the cabins. The south side of the lake was beautiful, even in the winter, and people would pay to be close to the water and have a regular kitchen and a normal bed to sleep in. He liked the idea of rennovating one of them just for him and Rosie; they could live on the property year round and move out of the house they rented in town. In the winter, they might get snowed in sometimes; but all that took was planning, a generator, and a wood fireplace. The image formed in his mind and made him relax. “We about ready to go home?”
“Yeah. I just need to finish the paperwork.”
He kissed her. “Well finish it, then. I need a bath and a beer.”
The first few years were the hardest; Pilot Lake had developed a reputation over the years; drug busts, high school parties, and a regular group of homeless people who came in on the trains and squatted at the grounds to avoid being arrested had made the place terra non grata as far as the surrounding communities and tourists were concerned. The first reported gang rape had occurred there back in the early 80’s – a high school graduation blow out that had gone a little too far; the girl wandered into the police station, barely able to stand, barely covered with what was left her muddy cut-offs and her Senior year memorial t-shirt, and listed no less than 20 boys – the bulk of the championship high school football team – who got her drunk and took turns at her until they got too drunk and passed out. Of course, it never went any further than that; the girl had a reputation and the boys were thought well of. But the stigma stayed on the campground for years after; and even when she and Tom bought the place twenty years later, people around town made sure to tell them both about the “kind of property” they were buying. As if the land itself were debauched and cursed.
“How’d we do?” Tom entered the back room that doubled as a pantry and the office and fell into the other folding chair.
“We did pretty well,” Rosie answered, turning the calculator around to show him the number. “Between the campers we have now, the ones who made reservations for Labor Day, and the cantine – this will be the second year we show a profit.”
“How much profit?”
She shrugged. “More than last year. And definitely more than we’ve ever seen. Another few years like this and we might even pay the mortgage off early.”
“Well, shiit,” Tom said. Then he reached down and pulled his boots off. “I sure wish that somebody would’ve warned me that success hurt like this.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Put those back on; you know I can’t handle how your feet stink when you’ve been working all day.”
“Can’t help it,” he said. “You know that.”
“You CAN help it. Put those boots back on and leave them on til we get home and you can take a shower.”
“And the foot powder?”
“Yes, God,” she breathed. “Don’t forget the foot powder.” She loved her husband completely, in spite of the slouchy way he carried himself and inspite of his hereditary foot stink. He couldn’t help it, anyway. Even his parents said they made him leave his sneakers outside when he was growing up. Tom had a good heart and kind face, even if he didn’t let the one show and even if he covered up the other with several days’ worth of stubble that never seemed to grow into a full beard. He was a thoughtful man and a hard worker and she knew he loved her.
He smiled and reached down to pull his boots back on. “Fine.” After he’d pulled them back over his feet, he picked up the calculator to take a closer look at the number on the display. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We might actually be able to make a living at this.”
“Were you worried?”
“I’m always worried.”
“Well, that’s a good thing. But everyone seems happy and things are going … okay.” Rosie stopped herself short of saying “well” because she didn’t want to jinx their success. “The cantine was really a good idea.” She smiled and felt her insides swell up a little; it had been her idea.
“Not everyone’s happy.”
“Huh?”
“A few of the campers complained.”
She shook her head and asked about what; though she already knew the answer.
“Grant.”
“Just him?”
“Nope.” He sighed and pulled his old green ballcap off, exposing a salt and pepper scalp with a quickly receeding hairline. “Grant and his friends.”
“Not the farm workers?”
Tom nodded. “A few complaints about them, too,” he said.
“What’d you tell them?”
He shrugged.
“The same thing you usually tell them?”
He nodded.
“They’re good for business,” Rosie said. “They pay cash just like everybody else. They have fun, and don’t start trouble.”
“They don’t have to start trouble to make trouble.”
“So what? You want to stop them from coming?” She pointed to the calculator sitting between them. “You get a sense of what we’ll lose if that happens, right?”
Tom didn’t answer.
“And what’s the WORSE thing that can happen?” Rosie went on. “We have another customer base. Maybe we can look at rennovating those cabins on the south end of the lake – you know, like we talked about when we first bought the place. Maybe we can even build some NEW cabins. Dig deeper water and sewage lines. People would come out here in the winter, too, if we marketed it right…”
“Those farm workers can’t afford a to rent a cabin,” Tom said, “and they’re gone as soon as harvet is over.”
“They’re not the only customer base.”
“What?” Tom snorted. “You want to open a queer-friendly B&B? Out here?”
“I wish you’d stop using that word,” Rosie said. “It sounds awful when you say it.”
“They say it.”
“It’s different.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re changing the topic.”
Tom sighed. “Okay, so we rennovate and build a few cabins. Then what? If we scare off the campers, hunters, and people who fish, will we be able to stay afloat without them?”
“Don’t be homophobic.”
“I’m not. I DON’T care. I just…”
“And it doesn’t seem to bother you when those girls rub up on one another.”
It don’t seem to bother YOU either. “That’s not the same thing.”
It was Rosie’s turn to snort. “Oh REALLY? You want to watch me snuggle up to one of them? Maybe that blonde perky one who never wears a bra.”
Tom felt his stomach knot up, but the image in his mind excited him a little, too. “No. Of course not.” He sighed. “I’m not gonna DO anything, alright? They’re good business. What people do or who they are isn’t my business.”
Rosie smiled; then she stood up, walked over to her husband, and sat down on his lap. “It’ll be fine,” she cooed and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. “You’ll see.”
He grunted. “You really think we could rennovate those cabins?”
“After this season, maybe,” she whispered in his ear. “If we keep doing the way we’re doing.”
Tom liked the idea of the cabins. The south side of the lake was beautiful, even in the winter, and people would pay to be close to the water and have a regular kitchen and a normal bed to sleep in. He liked the idea of rennovating one of them just for him and Rosie; they could live on the property year round and move out of the house they rented in town. In the winter, they might get snowed in sometimes; but all that took was planning, a generator, and a wood fireplace. The image formed in his mind and made him relax. “We about ready to go home?”
“Yeah. I just need to finish the paperwork.”
He kissed her. “Well finish it, then. I need a bath and a beer.”
In Season: Part 1
The seven foot tall queen was belting out “I Will Survive” and managing to easily out-Gloria Gloria Gaynor and the crowd was more or less following along. The crowd – now relegated to audience – at the camp ground cantine didn’t mind the free entertainment, even if a few of the card carrying members of the John Birch Society were shifting uncomfortablly behind their sweating bottles of light beer.
Every Saturday night during the season, Tom and Rosie, the owners of the Pilot Lake Camp Ground Resort turned the cantine – which also doubled as a general sundry store and the primary management office – into a karaoke bar. No liquor – couldn’t afford the extra insurance and didn’t want the extra hassle – but they sold cold bottles of beer and pre-mix margaritas in regular and strawberry, along with dollar cans of pop and the usual kinds of potatoe chips, pretzels, and Rosie’s homemade rice krispy muffins (which were really just muffin shaped rice crispy treats -- but she like calling them muffins because it made them sound unique.) Tom thought it would give people an excuse to get away from their camp sites and spend extra money on beer and munchables and conversation. Sometimes the campers ordered pizzas from town and sat around half the night just talking. It wasn’t complicated. It was just a nice time.
Gradually word got out and people who weren’t staying on the property came out and joined in. At first, they offered to pay a cover charge to come in; but Tom said, No that wouldn’t be right. And that turned out, at the time, to be a good decision; because the new people would come in, drink more beer and margaritas, kick in a little for the pizza, and the cantina became something of a community epicenter out in the woods, away from town and away from the two bars that dominated the nearly non-existent night life in Mount Arliss. At one point, Tom and Rosie even talked about getting the extra insurance the additional license to serve liquor, and open a full-service bar … at certain times and only during the regular season.
But then .. THEY came.
Tom knew he wasn’t the kind of person who didn’t like people because they were different; he’d grown up in Mount Arliss and knew just how intolerant some older folks were, and he didn’t see himself that way. At first, some it was just one or two Mexicans – migrant workers on the huge corporate farm that had eaten up several area farms after the men who owned them became too old and their sons didn’t have any interest in being farmers themselves. He didn’t mind and he didn’t ask any questions so long as they didn’t cause trouble and so long as they paid in cash. Then they started bringing their checks to the store to get them cashed, and before long, it was part of the regular business – in season, of course. Sometimes they even brought instruments and played their own music and drank beer (never margaritas, which Tom thought was odd) until it was time to close the doors.
And even THAT was okay; sure, some of his campground customers took offense; but the worst the Mexicans ever did was play their music and laugh a lot – which was kind of like getting a free concert. And they didn’t try to mingle with the campers; the kept to themselves and jabbered on and on in Spanish. Tom worried sometimes that they might be talking about him – though he had no idea why he thought they might – but mostly they seemed to be telling stories and showing pictures. And that seemed normal enough.
But then, he thought. Then them others had to start coming, too.
And Tom told himself after they started coming and buying beer and drinking A LOT of pre-mix strawberry margaritas that he didn’t really care if they were queer … not REALLY … even if it didn’t make any sense to him. Sometimes a couple of the lesbians would start getting frisky, and that didn’t really bother him too much. The only thing about it that really bothered him was that it didn’t bother Rosie, either. And most of the gays – the guys – you couldn’t even really TELL they were queer unless you were paying attention (which he never did) and none of them ever got frisky while they were in the cantine.
The problem was that some of them were a bit too … well … obvious. Like Grant, the seven foot tall queen who came out for karoke night and sang so much that the campers stopped signing up. It was like they were scared to tough the microphone after he’d used it … like queer was a disease they could catch the way people caught mono off of toilet seats. But everybody drank and everybody bought potatoe chips and pretzels – except the queers, and they didn’t hardly eat at all; but they drank a lot of pre-mix margaritas while they sang show tunes to one another. Everybody drank. And Grant drank and sang and drank some more. Some nights he drank so much that between him and the other queers, Rosie ran out of strawberry margarita mix three hours before it was time to close.
A few of the campers complained, but as Tom explained, he couldn’t simply NOT serve them without opening himself up to a lawsuit. And with the courts being the way they were and with the Democrats being in charge, he told them, what was he supposed to do? Tom had, in fact, voted a straight Democratic ticket the last election; but a lot of his customers were, like his neighbors, conservative church going people who liked things to Stay The Same.
The problem was that Grant was the most flamboyant of the queers and he didn’t seem to mind who knew it. Tom had to look at him several times when he first started coming into the cantine for karaoke night because in the right light Grant looked like he could’ve been a woman … or at the very least, one of those female impersonators he’d seen that one time in that bar down in New Orleans when he was on leave from the Army. He’d heard stories about people who drank too much and picked one of them up … just thinking about it made his stomach turn a little. If Grant had an advantage, it was that he was almost seven feet tall, which intimidated most anybody who might have, if he were smaller, taken exception to his behavior. And he never came to the cantine alone. And he never stayed if his friends left.
The cantine was crazy busy that night. The campground was full to capacity, the Mexicans had just gotten paid, and the queers were taking over the karoke machine. He made his way behind the bar to give Rosie a hand.
“How we doing?” he asked her.
“We’re running low on strawberry margarita mix,” she answered, while she was getting one of the Mexicans another round of beers for his table.
“What about the extra case?”
“Already gone through most of it.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah.”
“Should I run and get some more?”
She looked up and wrinkled her nose. “At this time of night? What’s open?”
He looked at his watch. He’d have to drive an hour to get to the nearest 24 hour grocery that carried the pre-mix margaritas. “Right.”
Rosie shrugged and smiled. “We’ll just make do and buy more for next time.”
“Make do,” Tom repeated.
Every Saturday night during the season, Tom and Rosie, the owners of the Pilot Lake Camp Ground Resort turned the cantine – which also doubled as a general sundry store and the primary management office – into a karaoke bar. No liquor – couldn’t afford the extra insurance and didn’t want the extra hassle – but they sold cold bottles of beer and pre-mix margaritas in regular and strawberry, along with dollar cans of pop and the usual kinds of potatoe chips, pretzels, and Rosie’s homemade rice krispy muffins (which were really just muffin shaped rice crispy treats -- but she like calling them muffins because it made them sound unique.) Tom thought it would give people an excuse to get away from their camp sites and spend extra money on beer and munchables and conversation. Sometimes the campers ordered pizzas from town and sat around half the night just talking. It wasn’t complicated. It was just a nice time.
Gradually word got out and people who weren’t staying on the property came out and joined in. At first, they offered to pay a cover charge to come in; but Tom said, No that wouldn’t be right. And that turned out, at the time, to be a good decision; because the new people would come in, drink more beer and margaritas, kick in a little for the pizza, and the cantina became something of a community epicenter out in the woods, away from town and away from the two bars that dominated the nearly non-existent night life in Mount Arliss. At one point, Tom and Rosie even talked about getting the extra insurance the additional license to serve liquor, and open a full-service bar … at certain times and only during the regular season.
But then .. THEY came.
Tom knew he wasn’t the kind of person who didn’t like people because they were different; he’d grown up in Mount Arliss and knew just how intolerant some older folks were, and he didn’t see himself that way. At first, some it was just one or two Mexicans – migrant workers on the huge corporate farm that had eaten up several area farms after the men who owned them became too old and their sons didn’t have any interest in being farmers themselves. He didn’t mind and he didn’t ask any questions so long as they didn’t cause trouble and so long as they paid in cash. Then they started bringing their checks to the store to get them cashed, and before long, it was part of the regular business – in season, of course. Sometimes they even brought instruments and played their own music and drank beer (never margaritas, which Tom thought was odd) until it was time to close the doors.
And even THAT was okay; sure, some of his campground customers took offense; but the worst the Mexicans ever did was play their music and laugh a lot – which was kind of like getting a free concert. And they didn’t try to mingle with the campers; the kept to themselves and jabbered on and on in Spanish. Tom worried sometimes that they might be talking about him – though he had no idea why he thought they might – but mostly they seemed to be telling stories and showing pictures. And that seemed normal enough.
But then, he thought. Then them others had to start coming, too.
And Tom told himself after they started coming and buying beer and drinking A LOT of pre-mix strawberry margaritas that he didn’t really care if they were queer … not REALLY … even if it didn’t make any sense to him. Sometimes a couple of the lesbians would start getting frisky, and that didn’t really bother him too much. The only thing about it that really bothered him was that it didn’t bother Rosie, either. And most of the gays – the guys – you couldn’t even really TELL they were queer unless you were paying attention (which he never did) and none of them ever got frisky while they were in the cantine.
The problem was that some of them were a bit too … well … obvious. Like Grant, the seven foot tall queen who came out for karoke night and sang so much that the campers stopped signing up. It was like they were scared to tough the microphone after he’d used it … like queer was a disease they could catch the way people caught mono off of toilet seats. But everybody drank and everybody bought potatoe chips and pretzels – except the queers, and they didn’t hardly eat at all; but they drank a lot of pre-mix margaritas while they sang show tunes to one another. Everybody drank. And Grant drank and sang and drank some more. Some nights he drank so much that between him and the other queers, Rosie ran out of strawberry margarita mix three hours before it was time to close.
A few of the campers complained, but as Tom explained, he couldn’t simply NOT serve them without opening himself up to a lawsuit. And with the courts being the way they were and with the Democrats being in charge, he told them, what was he supposed to do? Tom had, in fact, voted a straight Democratic ticket the last election; but a lot of his customers were, like his neighbors, conservative church going people who liked things to Stay The Same.
The problem was that Grant was the most flamboyant of the queers and he didn’t seem to mind who knew it. Tom had to look at him several times when he first started coming into the cantine for karaoke night because in the right light Grant looked like he could’ve been a woman … or at the very least, one of those female impersonators he’d seen that one time in that bar down in New Orleans when he was on leave from the Army. He’d heard stories about people who drank too much and picked one of them up … just thinking about it made his stomach turn a little. If Grant had an advantage, it was that he was almost seven feet tall, which intimidated most anybody who might have, if he were smaller, taken exception to his behavior. And he never came to the cantine alone. And he never stayed if his friends left.
The cantine was crazy busy that night. The campground was full to capacity, the Mexicans had just gotten paid, and the queers were taking over the karoke machine. He made his way behind the bar to give Rosie a hand.
“How we doing?” he asked her.
“We’re running low on strawberry margarita mix,” she answered, while she was getting one of the Mexicans another round of beers for his table.
“What about the extra case?”
“Already gone through most of it.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah.”
“Should I run and get some more?”
She looked up and wrinkled her nose. “At this time of night? What’s open?”
He looked at his watch. He’d have to drive an hour to get to the nearest 24 hour grocery that carried the pre-mix margaritas. “Right.”
Rosie shrugged and smiled. “We’ll just make do and buy more for next time.”
“Make do,” Tom repeated.
28 June, 2010
Rox
The kitchen was a goddamn sauna and Rox was in no mood to sit back there just because she was supposed to. The only other people who ever went back into the kitchen at the Moose Head was Kay-Kay, Coletta’s fifteen year old niece who worked when she felt like it and a repairman on the rare occasion one was actually called. Sometimes, Coletta’s brother – who was also the mayor of Mt. Arliss – interrupted his various duties (that Rox knew amounted to fucking around and jacking off) would come in and fix the clogged grease pit drain; but that was only if he couldn’t find an excuse not to and only after Coletta asked, begged, and nagged him for a few months. Before Billy was mayor, he’d been a not too successful plumber. Rox supposed he just didn’t like to be reminded of his shortcomings.
“Heh,” she laughed, lit a cigarette, and settled in on the outside stoop for one of the many smoke breaks she allowed herself when things were dead. She never took a break when the kitchen or the bar was busy. But she’d been taking a lot of break lately because business was so slow. “Heh,” she laughed again. “Shortcomings.” Before Billy was the mayor and before he was a plumber, he’d been ripe little son of a bitch who happened to be her boss’s son. One time she walked in on him – he’d been in high school at the time – with some girl. He had her on top of one of the back tables, naked from the waist down and spread eagle, ready to do his business. Rox’s interruption spoiled the mood. And not only did she have to see more of young Misty Cavanaugh – the preacher’s daughter who ended up running off to California to join a hippie cult – than she had ever wanted to see, she’d been forced to see Billy’s most pronounced shortcoming.
She let the smoke fill her lungs slowly, enjoying the moment. A few years back, she would still be busy with the lunch rush; but that was Before. Before Harold died. Before the statewide smoking ban. Before the economy tanked after the chicken plant closed. And there was always a rush on Fridays, too, after the first shift ended and everybody had their paychecks. But that was Before. And nothing lasts forever.
“Glad to see you’re workin so hard.”
The sound of Joe’s voice made her cringe whenever she heard it; and the only thing more annoying than Joe was Beth, Joes’s wife. She’d known them both for more than 25 years, and in all that time, Joe had never proven himself to be anything but a Class A Son of a Bitch. When he was younger, he liked to drink and chase women and, when neither of those things worked out in his favor, he took his frustrations out on Beth and their kids – all of whom had the sense to move away from home the first chance they got and never come back. Joe was older and slower; he knew he was too old and ugly to chase women, and he’d learned from the absence of his children that beating people wasn’t an effective way to make them love him. But he was still a nasty bastard, as far as Rox was concerned. And Beth, who stayed with Joe through it all and took his abuse, was just a dumb old bitch who probably didn’t have any sense to knock out of her in the first place.
“What’s your excuse?” She didn’t bother with the civilities with Joe, and he didn’t expect them.
“Oh, I did my work today,” he smiled.
“I thought Beth was the one who rolled you outta bed. But I guess if you managed it yourself, that’s all anyone ought to expect.”
Joe didn’t have the chance to answer her because Beth walked up from where she parked the car up the street. She looked at Rox. “You’re not workin the bar are you?”
I should tell them I am. Rox shook her head instead. “ Gary’s workin today.”
Joe chuckled. It was a hollow, humorless chuckle that reminded Rox of a death rattle. “Does he know HOW to work?”
About as much as YOU do. “It’s not busy,” Rox said, looking down at her cigarette. It was almost out.
“Let’s get inside,” Beth said, pushing Joe a little. “Before Gary decides to sit down. He may never get up again if he does.”
Joe and Beth didn’t offer a “See ya” or a “Talk to you later.” Rox didn’t offer them one, either. She took the last drag off her cigarette, crushed it under her foot, and lit another. They never ate at the bar when she was working, and the only other person in the bar was W.D. Schmidt. He never ate the bar regardless of who was working the kitchen. After Joe and Beth went inside, Rox’s hands shook a little and she shook her head. It didn’t seem to matter how many years had passed, but whenever she ran into Joe, her lower back and legs hurt in the exact same places he used to beat her Back in the Day. She pictured the young woman she’d been when, on the rebound from her first husband – who had also decided she was a good punching bag – she let herself fall for Joe’s bullshit. He’d been older; but that had been part of the attraction, probably. She didn’t blame Beth for not liking her. But she couldn’t abide any woman who didn’t have the self-respect to know when to leave.
She finished her cigarette slowly and looked in her pack. Only three more left. If I can make them last until my shift was over, she thought, I can buy another pack on the way home.
“Heh,” she laughed, lit a cigarette, and settled in on the outside stoop for one of the many smoke breaks she allowed herself when things were dead. She never took a break when the kitchen or the bar was busy. But she’d been taking a lot of break lately because business was so slow. “Heh,” she laughed again. “Shortcomings.” Before Billy was the mayor and before he was a plumber, he’d been ripe little son of a bitch who happened to be her boss’s son. One time she walked in on him – he’d been in high school at the time – with some girl. He had her on top of one of the back tables, naked from the waist down and spread eagle, ready to do his business. Rox’s interruption spoiled the mood. And not only did she have to see more of young Misty Cavanaugh – the preacher’s daughter who ended up running off to California to join a hippie cult – than she had ever wanted to see, she’d been forced to see Billy’s most pronounced shortcoming.
She let the smoke fill her lungs slowly, enjoying the moment. A few years back, she would still be busy with the lunch rush; but that was Before. Before Harold died. Before the statewide smoking ban. Before the economy tanked after the chicken plant closed. And there was always a rush on Fridays, too, after the first shift ended and everybody had their paychecks. But that was Before. And nothing lasts forever.
“Glad to see you’re workin so hard.”
The sound of Joe’s voice made her cringe whenever she heard it; and the only thing more annoying than Joe was Beth, Joes’s wife. She’d known them both for more than 25 years, and in all that time, Joe had never proven himself to be anything but a Class A Son of a Bitch. When he was younger, he liked to drink and chase women and, when neither of those things worked out in his favor, he took his frustrations out on Beth and their kids – all of whom had the sense to move away from home the first chance they got and never come back. Joe was older and slower; he knew he was too old and ugly to chase women, and he’d learned from the absence of his children that beating people wasn’t an effective way to make them love him. But he was still a nasty bastard, as far as Rox was concerned. And Beth, who stayed with Joe through it all and took his abuse, was just a dumb old bitch who probably didn’t have any sense to knock out of her in the first place.
“What’s your excuse?” She didn’t bother with the civilities with Joe, and he didn’t expect them.
“Oh, I did my work today,” he smiled.
“I thought Beth was the one who rolled you outta bed. But I guess if you managed it yourself, that’s all anyone ought to expect.”
Joe didn’t have the chance to answer her because Beth walked up from where she parked the car up the street. She looked at Rox. “You’re not workin the bar are you?”
I should tell them I am. Rox shook her head instead. “ Gary’s workin today.”
Joe chuckled. It was a hollow, humorless chuckle that reminded Rox of a death rattle. “Does he know HOW to work?”
About as much as YOU do. “It’s not busy,” Rox said, looking down at her cigarette. It was almost out.
“Let’s get inside,” Beth said, pushing Joe a little. “Before Gary decides to sit down. He may never get up again if he does.”
Joe and Beth didn’t offer a “See ya” or a “Talk to you later.” Rox didn’t offer them one, either. She took the last drag off her cigarette, crushed it under her foot, and lit another. They never ate at the bar when she was working, and the only other person in the bar was W.D. Schmidt. He never ate the bar regardless of who was working the kitchen. After Joe and Beth went inside, Rox’s hands shook a little and she shook her head. It didn’t seem to matter how many years had passed, but whenever she ran into Joe, her lower back and legs hurt in the exact same places he used to beat her Back in the Day. She pictured the young woman she’d been when, on the rebound from her first husband – who had also decided she was a good punching bag – she let herself fall for Joe’s bullshit. He’d been older; but that had been part of the attraction, probably. She didn’t blame Beth for not liking her. But she couldn’t abide any woman who didn’t have the self-respect to know when to leave.
She finished her cigarette slowly and looked in her pack. Only three more left. If I can make them last until my shift was over, she thought, I can buy another pack on the way home.
22 June, 2010
Deputy Dog
The mid-morning sunlight seeping in through the mini-blinds that covered the bedroom window woke him up. Erle moaned and grunted loudly – to himself because there was no one else in the room. Joanne was already at work. The kids were at her mother’s for the weekend because she wanted him to take her out over the weekend. On a date. He’d been married to Joanne for nearly fifteen years and had settled into the idea that he wasn’t obligated to date her anymore. That’s why people get married, right? So they don’t have to sneak off just to have a quiet dinner, a movie, and a fuck in the back seat of the car?
His feet hit the floor and a sharp pain shot up his left leg. It was hurting more than usual lately. Like if he sat too long, or when he first got out of bed. Joanne had been on him to get it checked out, but that would mean going to the doctor. They had insurance – mostly for the kids – but Erle just didn’t want to be bothered. The doctor was an ass, anyway. Another Ivy-League dipshit who was paying off his medical school loans by handing out flu shots in farm country. The last time Erle let Joanne nag him into going to the clinic, all that city faggot did was get on his case for smoking and tell him to cut back on fried food. And for that, he charged a $25 co-pay. To hell with that. The leg hurt, but he’d deal with it.
There was coffee left in the pot from earlier that day, so Erle poured some in a cup and nuked it for a few seconds to warm it up. There was coffee at the station; but Eugenia, the octogenarian secretary, couldn’t make decent coffee to save her life. It was more like dirt colored water, and that was about how it tasted. On a good day. Most days it had no flavor at all and it was so weak he could see the bottom of the cup when it was full. If they’d a made ME Chief of Police, he thought, I’d a gotten rid of that wrinkly old bitch and hire someone who knows how to make coffee. Or at least someone useless who would be worth looking at.
Joanne’s coffee was only slightly better; but at least he could add sugar to that and make it bearable.
The new chief – Chief Dolarhyde – put him on the mid-day shift. Dolarhyde was an out-of-towner. Sort of. He’d been BORN in Mount Arliss, but his parents moved to Chicago before he was even school age. Dolarhyde was a veteran – he’d done something to earn a medal in Iraq – and had been a deputy two counties over for five years before the City Council bent down and kissed his ass. Dolarhyde moved him, he had said, to “make better use of the city’s resources.” Bullshit. If that Schmidt woman hadn’t killed herself while in custody and forced Cleary to retire, Erle would’ve been next in line for the job. It was all but his. Everybody pretty expected him to be the next Chief. He was prepared for it.
And then that bitch… bah. He tried not to think about it. He’d gone to school with her. They’d even dated – if you can ever date a girl like that – and he visited her off and on over the years. Even after Joanne got pregnant and he married her and even after Rachel married that drunken idiot Jeremy Burns and popped out two more little bastards. Everyone knew what Rachel Schmidt was; and the only thing that anybody ever wondered was whether Jeremy was ever sober enough to consider the probability that those kids weren’t his.
But she’d finally gotten Erle back. When she hanged herself that pretty much ensured that he would never be Chief of Police. And since Joanne had no intention of moving more than ten minutes away from her mom and sister, that meant Erle was stuck being a deputy until he retired or died from the boredom.
Mid-day shift meant babysitting prisoners until the afternoon arraignments. Then, once they were back in their cells, on their way back to the towns they were arrested in to sit in cells there, or out on bail, Erle was out on patrol until his shift was over. There was nothing to patrol. Mount Arliss wasn’t big enough to drive around in. Sometimes he’d sit out in front of Siegerson’s or the Moose Head and try and catch drunk drivers; sometimes he sat out at the end of town to catch the speeders who missed the barely visible speed zone sign as they barreled into town.
And when he didn’t feel like doing any of those things (He just had to accessible by radio, which he mostly was) he dropped by Marie’s house.
Marie was from Someplace Else. She worked out of her house on Codger Street and lived off the money her husband made serving over seas in Afghanistan. She was another one like Rachel – just another whore – and he didn’t feel at all bad that she had hooked some soldier into marrying her. How some men were so dumb was beyond him. Marie wasn’t the kind of girl you married. She didn’t carry herself like a marriage-minded girl. She called herself an artist and she wore outfits that made her stand out. She had a tattoo right above her cunt. It was a small heart with three initials: JBF. Erle never asked her what the tattoo meant, but he’d seen it up close more than three dozen times since the two of them met.
When he was at home with Joanne, he thought about Marie. When he couldn’t avoid fucking his wife, he fantasized that he was fucking Marie. Joanne was still a pretty woman, even after having the kids; but she didn’t do the things Marie did. She didn’t treat him the way Marie treated him. When he was passed over for Chief, Joanne hugged him and talked about finances and adjustments that would have to be made since the expected pay raise wasn’t going to happen. Marie, on the other hand, greeted him at the door naked, carefully peeled his uniform off him and gave him a mind-numbing blowjob – and that was just on the enclosed front porch. By the time she got up off her knees and shimmied into the back bedroom, the only thing on Erle’s mind was how Marie liked it when he fucked her from behind and how she begged him to give it to her harder and faster.
There were only a five prisoners in lock up and of them, only one needed arraignment. Jefferson. He was from Yonkapple County. Brought in for being behind on child support. Erle didn’t know him or his situation, but from the way the prisoner talked, his ex was a queen bitch. That seemed right enough to Erle; but the law is the law (that’s what Old Man Cleary always said) and it didn’t matter how he felt about it. It came out in arraignment that the prisoner had been fired six months back and was unable to pay. Judge Henderson gave the poor bastard 30 days in county lock up and ordered restitution within a year.
After the hearing, Erle sat in the office and talked to Martin, who was just coming off the day shift and filling out paperwork. Martin bitched about his wife and the kids needing new shoes every two months. Then Erle asked how he liked the new Chief so far.
“Eh.” Martin answered, not looking up from his paperwork. “He’s alright I guess. Doesn’t talk much. When he does, it’s usually something important.”
“WELL now,” Erle snorted. “When you can break your lips away from his asshole, maybe we’ll have time to talk.”
Martin looked up and shook his head. “It’s not my fault you got passed over. And it’s not the Chief’s fault neither.”
“You sayin’ it’s MY fault??”
“No.” He sighed. “Things are what they are. What about that job over in Whiteside? You think about applying for that?”
Erle didn’t want to talk about it. He’d brought it up to Joanne, but she refused to move, and he couldn’t be Sheriff of a county he didn’t live in. He’d been friends with Martin going on 30 years; they played high school ball together and had gone to the State Championships both varsity years. He’d been the best man at Martin’s wedding and paid for that stripper to do a little extra for his last hurrah. They’d both been on duty when Rachel Schmidt hung herself; but as far as Erle could tell, Erle was the only one paying for it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be out on patrol?”
Erle looked up. Chief Dolarhyde was standing there, looking down on him. Dolarhyde struck an imposing figure. He was tall, wide-shouldered, and stood like a military man. The uniform made him seem even more intimidating, even though it wasn’t much different than the uniform Erle wore; Erle always thought the uniform made him look like a gas station attendant. He was pretty much right about that; but Dolarhyde would look like he was in charge regardless of what he was wearing. Erle stood up.
“Uh, yeah. I was just on my way out.”
Chief Dolarhyde nodded. “Good. Report any problems.”
Erle nodded and retreated from the office, not bothering to look back at Martin. Goddamn turncoat, he thought.
Without even bothering to pretend to patrol, Erle drove straight to Marie’s. He needed to relax and not think about his trouble for a while. When he got there, she was in the studio, covered in paint. Erle didn’t understand why she called her paintings art; they didn’t look like anything to him – just splashes of color on canvas. He asked her once why she didn’t paint something that looked like something – a tree or a deer or a house. She laughed and never really answered him. That didn’t bother him, though, because not long after that she climbed on top of him and rode him until every thought was gone from his brain.
She smiled when she saw him. “Don’t you knock anymore?”
He smiled. “I didn’t know I needed to.” Erle looked her over. Even covered in paint and wearing those overalls she wore when she painted, she was beautiful. He didn’t know if it was her deep dark eyes, dark hair, and olive skin, or maybe just her childless, beautiful body. Maybe it was the fact that she never wore anything under her overalls when she painted and he was two easy hooks away from absolute heaven. He approached her, kissed her, and reached for the hooks that held up her overalls.
“I should take a bath first,” she giggled and sighed.
“Why don’t we both take a bath?”
The bath was nice; Marie had a large bathtub with little air jets. They did it in the tub, laughing and sliding across one another in the soap. And after, they got dressed and Erle grabbed a beer from her refrigerator, feeling absolutely refreshed. He sank into her couch and closed his eyes, feeling the contentment a person feels after an impossible itch has been scratched.
Marie came in holding a beer and smoking one of her clove cigars. She say down on the couch next to Erle. “Rough day?”
“It’s a lot better now.”
She smiled and blew O rings. “That’s good.”
“Sorry I interrupted your … uh… painting.” He wasn’t sorry; but it was something to say that sounded nice.
“You like it?”
She was referring to the piece she’d been working on when he walked in, but Erle didn’t really look at it. He didn’t really look at anything she painted. “Sure,” he answered, taking a drink. “Sure I do.”
“That’s good. You’re going to see a lot of it.”
“How’s that?” Maybe she wants me to come over more often, he thought. He didn’t know if he could manage it. But after all, what else did he do all day? He couldn’t have her getting too attached, though. Couldn’t have her getting the wrong impression.
“It’s going to your house when it’s done.”
Uh-oh, he thought. Can’t have something like that around. How would I explain it to Joanne? “I appreciate that,” Erle said. “I really do. But don’t you think you’d be better off selling it?”
“I did.”
“Huh?”
“Your wife wants it. Says it will go with the new dining room.”
He nearly choked on his beer. “My wife?”
“Yeah.” Marie blew more O rings. “I ran into her on the street. She saw some of my paintings at the Arliss Town Festival last month and asked how much a commission would cost.” She smiled. “I gave her a good deal. A policeman’s discount.” She laughed.
The new dining room. Right. Joanne’s new and entirely unnecessary house project. New paint, new furniture. Joanne always had her nose stuck in design magazines. Erle felt his heart stop. “She doesn’t know does she? You didn’t SAY anything, did you? She didn’t…”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Marie reassured him. “And I don’t know that she’d care if she did know.”
“What do you mean??”
“Look, baby, don’t get upset.” She stood up, walked over to the ashtray by the recliner, and mashed out her cigar. “Why do you care? You’re here three days a week, anyway.”
He sighed, almost feeling relieved.
“It’s almost finished,” she went on. “The painting. I expect to deliver it by Friday.”
“DELIEVER?”
“Yeah. She said the painting would be finished by then. That’s part of the service.” She laughed. “I deliver and hang the art. When the customer wants me to. I like to make sure they have good homes.”
Erle was tuning her out. Marie in his home? In the home he shared with Joanne?
“She told me she was going to surprise you with it,” Marie said. “So be sure and act surprised.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there’s something else.”
What could possibly be worse than Marie and Joanne talking?
“John’s coming home.”
“Who?”
“John,” she repeated. “My HUSBAND.”
Oh. “Really?”
“Yes. He’s being discharged, believe it or not. His unit’s coming home and they’re letting him out. So he’ll be home in a few months.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “So this is going to have to be the last time, Erle.”
“Last time? What are you talking about? You just said MONTHS.”
“I want to be ready for him,” she said. “And anyway, this thing,” she motioned between them, “has run its course anyway. So you can’t come around anymore after today. Unless,” she smiled, “you’re interested in buying art.”
“Why does it have to stop?” Erle asked. “We can make adjustments. We can…”
“What? Meet in cheap motels two towns over? Or maybe we can fuck in YOUR bed when the wife and kids aren’t at home?”
“Listen,” he said. “If it’s about the painting or something Joanne said…”
“It’s not either of those things. One is business and the other is your business. This is about John coming home. It’s about me wanting him to come home.” She smiled down at Erle. “We’ve been screwing around, that’s true. But I love my husband. And you’ll never leave Joanne. It’s not like this could go on forever. She waited for Erle to respond; all he did was take a long drink from his beer. She shook her head. “Why don’t you finish that and head out, okay? It’s been … fun. But we both knew what this was. Right?”
He slumped even further into the couch. “Right.”
“And besides,” she said, “you’ll have the painting to remind you.”
Erle drained the bottle and set it on the small table next to the couch. When he stood up, pain shot up through his left leg and seemed to go straight to his head.
“You should get that looked at,” Marie said.
“Right,” he mumbled. Erle didn’t want to look at her; he didn’t want to remember her in this moment at all. In his mind, he was telling himself the way he would remember it so he could look at her when he saw her around town with her war hero husband. He put his gun belt and radio back on and walked out the door. When he got to his cruiser, a call came over the radio. It was Chief Dolarhyde ordering him back to the station
His feet hit the floor and a sharp pain shot up his left leg. It was hurting more than usual lately. Like if he sat too long, or when he first got out of bed. Joanne had been on him to get it checked out, but that would mean going to the doctor. They had insurance – mostly for the kids – but Erle just didn’t want to be bothered. The doctor was an ass, anyway. Another Ivy-League dipshit who was paying off his medical school loans by handing out flu shots in farm country. The last time Erle let Joanne nag him into going to the clinic, all that city faggot did was get on his case for smoking and tell him to cut back on fried food. And for that, he charged a $25 co-pay. To hell with that. The leg hurt, but he’d deal with it.
There was coffee left in the pot from earlier that day, so Erle poured some in a cup and nuked it for a few seconds to warm it up. There was coffee at the station; but Eugenia, the octogenarian secretary, couldn’t make decent coffee to save her life. It was more like dirt colored water, and that was about how it tasted. On a good day. Most days it had no flavor at all and it was so weak he could see the bottom of the cup when it was full. If they’d a made ME Chief of Police, he thought, I’d a gotten rid of that wrinkly old bitch and hire someone who knows how to make coffee. Or at least someone useless who would be worth looking at.
Joanne’s coffee was only slightly better; but at least he could add sugar to that and make it bearable.
The new chief – Chief Dolarhyde – put him on the mid-day shift. Dolarhyde was an out-of-towner. Sort of. He’d been BORN in Mount Arliss, but his parents moved to Chicago before he was even school age. Dolarhyde was a veteran – he’d done something to earn a medal in Iraq – and had been a deputy two counties over for five years before the City Council bent down and kissed his ass. Dolarhyde moved him, he had said, to “make better use of the city’s resources.” Bullshit. If that Schmidt woman hadn’t killed herself while in custody and forced Cleary to retire, Erle would’ve been next in line for the job. It was all but his. Everybody pretty expected him to be the next Chief. He was prepared for it.
And then that bitch… bah. He tried not to think about it. He’d gone to school with her. They’d even dated – if you can ever date a girl like that – and he visited her off and on over the years. Even after Joanne got pregnant and he married her and even after Rachel married that drunken idiot Jeremy Burns and popped out two more little bastards. Everyone knew what Rachel Schmidt was; and the only thing that anybody ever wondered was whether Jeremy was ever sober enough to consider the probability that those kids weren’t his.
But she’d finally gotten Erle back. When she hanged herself that pretty much ensured that he would never be Chief of Police. And since Joanne had no intention of moving more than ten minutes away from her mom and sister, that meant Erle was stuck being a deputy until he retired or died from the boredom.
Mid-day shift meant babysitting prisoners until the afternoon arraignments. Then, once they were back in their cells, on their way back to the towns they were arrested in to sit in cells there, or out on bail, Erle was out on patrol until his shift was over. There was nothing to patrol. Mount Arliss wasn’t big enough to drive around in. Sometimes he’d sit out in front of Siegerson’s or the Moose Head and try and catch drunk drivers; sometimes he sat out at the end of town to catch the speeders who missed the barely visible speed zone sign as they barreled into town.
And when he didn’t feel like doing any of those things (He just had to accessible by radio, which he mostly was) he dropped by Marie’s house.
Marie was from Someplace Else. She worked out of her house on Codger Street and lived off the money her husband made serving over seas in Afghanistan. She was another one like Rachel – just another whore – and he didn’t feel at all bad that she had hooked some soldier into marrying her. How some men were so dumb was beyond him. Marie wasn’t the kind of girl you married. She didn’t carry herself like a marriage-minded girl. She called herself an artist and she wore outfits that made her stand out. She had a tattoo right above her cunt. It was a small heart with three initials: JBF. Erle never asked her what the tattoo meant, but he’d seen it up close more than three dozen times since the two of them met.
When he was at home with Joanne, he thought about Marie. When he couldn’t avoid fucking his wife, he fantasized that he was fucking Marie. Joanne was still a pretty woman, even after having the kids; but she didn’t do the things Marie did. She didn’t treat him the way Marie treated him. When he was passed over for Chief, Joanne hugged him and talked about finances and adjustments that would have to be made since the expected pay raise wasn’t going to happen. Marie, on the other hand, greeted him at the door naked, carefully peeled his uniform off him and gave him a mind-numbing blowjob – and that was just on the enclosed front porch. By the time she got up off her knees and shimmied into the back bedroom, the only thing on Erle’s mind was how Marie liked it when he fucked her from behind and how she begged him to give it to her harder and faster.
There were only a five prisoners in lock up and of them, only one needed arraignment. Jefferson. He was from Yonkapple County. Brought in for being behind on child support. Erle didn’t know him or his situation, but from the way the prisoner talked, his ex was a queen bitch. That seemed right enough to Erle; but the law is the law (that’s what Old Man Cleary always said) and it didn’t matter how he felt about it. It came out in arraignment that the prisoner had been fired six months back and was unable to pay. Judge Henderson gave the poor bastard 30 days in county lock up and ordered restitution within a year.
After the hearing, Erle sat in the office and talked to Martin, who was just coming off the day shift and filling out paperwork. Martin bitched about his wife and the kids needing new shoes every two months. Then Erle asked how he liked the new Chief so far.
“Eh.” Martin answered, not looking up from his paperwork. “He’s alright I guess. Doesn’t talk much. When he does, it’s usually something important.”
“WELL now,” Erle snorted. “When you can break your lips away from his asshole, maybe we’ll have time to talk.”
Martin looked up and shook his head. “It’s not my fault you got passed over. And it’s not the Chief’s fault neither.”
“You sayin’ it’s MY fault??”
“No.” He sighed. “Things are what they are. What about that job over in Whiteside? You think about applying for that?”
Erle didn’t want to talk about it. He’d brought it up to Joanne, but she refused to move, and he couldn’t be Sheriff of a county he didn’t live in. He’d been friends with Martin going on 30 years; they played high school ball together and had gone to the State Championships both varsity years. He’d been the best man at Martin’s wedding and paid for that stripper to do a little extra for his last hurrah. They’d both been on duty when Rachel Schmidt hung herself; but as far as Erle could tell, Erle was the only one paying for it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be out on patrol?”
Erle looked up. Chief Dolarhyde was standing there, looking down on him. Dolarhyde struck an imposing figure. He was tall, wide-shouldered, and stood like a military man. The uniform made him seem even more intimidating, even though it wasn’t much different than the uniform Erle wore; Erle always thought the uniform made him look like a gas station attendant. He was pretty much right about that; but Dolarhyde would look like he was in charge regardless of what he was wearing. Erle stood up.
“Uh, yeah. I was just on my way out.”
Chief Dolarhyde nodded. “Good. Report any problems.”
Erle nodded and retreated from the office, not bothering to look back at Martin. Goddamn turncoat, he thought.
Without even bothering to pretend to patrol, Erle drove straight to Marie’s. He needed to relax and not think about his trouble for a while. When he got there, she was in the studio, covered in paint. Erle didn’t understand why she called her paintings art; they didn’t look like anything to him – just splashes of color on canvas. He asked her once why she didn’t paint something that looked like something – a tree or a deer or a house. She laughed and never really answered him. That didn’t bother him, though, because not long after that she climbed on top of him and rode him until every thought was gone from his brain.
She smiled when she saw him. “Don’t you knock anymore?”
He smiled. “I didn’t know I needed to.” Erle looked her over. Even covered in paint and wearing those overalls she wore when she painted, she was beautiful. He didn’t know if it was her deep dark eyes, dark hair, and olive skin, or maybe just her childless, beautiful body. Maybe it was the fact that she never wore anything under her overalls when she painted and he was two easy hooks away from absolute heaven. He approached her, kissed her, and reached for the hooks that held up her overalls.
“I should take a bath first,” she giggled and sighed.
“Why don’t we both take a bath?”
The bath was nice; Marie had a large bathtub with little air jets. They did it in the tub, laughing and sliding across one another in the soap. And after, they got dressed and Erle grabbed a beer from her refrigerator, feeling absolutely refreshed. He sank into her couch and closed his eyes, feeling the contentment a person feels after an impossible itch has been scratched.
Marie came in holding a beer and smoking one of her clove cigars. She say down on the couch next to Erle. “Rough day?”
“It’s a lot better now.”
She smiled and blew O rings. “That’s good.”
“Sorry I interrupted your … uh… painting.” He wasn’t sorry; but it was something to say that sounded nice.
“You like it?”
She was referring to the piece she’d been working on when he walked in, but Erle didn’t really look at it. He didn’t really look at anything she painted. “Sure,” he answered, taking a drink. “Sure I do.”
“That’s good. You’re going to see a lot of it.”
“How’s that?” Maybe she wants me to come over more often, he thought. He didn’t know if he could manage it. But after all, what else did he do all day? He couldn’t have her getting too attached, though. Couldn’t have her getting the wrong impression.
“It’s going to your house when it’s done.”
Uh-oh, he thought. Can’t have something like that around. How would I explain it to Joanne? “I appreciate that,” Erle said. “I really do. But don’t you think you’d be better off selling it?”
“I did.”
“Huh?”
“Your wife wants it. Says it will go with the new dining room.”
He nearly choked on his beer. “My wife?”
“Yeah.” Marie blew more O rings. “I ran into her on the street. She saw some of my paintings at the Arliss Town Festival last month and asked how much a commission would cost.” She smiled. “I gave her a good deal. A policeman’s discount.” She laughed.
The new dining room. Right. Joanne’s new and entirely unnecessary house project. New paint, new furniture. Joanne always had her nose stuck in design magazines. Erle felt his heart stop. “She doesn’t know does she? You didn’t SAY anything, did you? She didn’t…”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Marie reassured him. “And I don’t know that she’d care if she did know.”
“What do you mean??”
“Look, baby, don’t get upset.” She stood up, walked over to the ashtray by the recliner, and mashed out her cigar. “Why do you care? You’re here three days a week, anyway.”
He sighed, almost feeling relieved.
“It’s almost finished,” she went on. “The painting. I expect to deliver it by Friday.”
“DELIEVER?”
“Yeah. She said the painting would be finished by then. That’s part of the service.” She laughed. “I deliver and hang the art. When the customer wants me to. I like to make sure they have good homes.”
Erle was tuning her out. Marie in his home? In the home he shared with Joanne?
“She told me she was going to surprise you with it,” Marie said. “So be sure and act surprised.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there’s something else.”
What could possibly be worse than Marie and Joanne talking?
“John’s coming home.”
“Who?”
“John,” she repeated. “My HUSBAND.”
Oh. “Really?”
“Yes. He’s being discharged, believe it or not. His unit’s coming home and they’re letting him out. So he’ll be home in a few months.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “So this is going to have to be the last time, Erle.”
“Last time? What are you talking about? You just said MONTHS.”
“I want to be ready for him,” she said. “And anyway, this thing,” she motioned between them, “has run its course anyway. So you can’t come around anymore after today. Unless,” she smiled, “you’re interested in buying art.”
“Why does it have to stop?” Erle asked. “We can make adjustments. We can…”
“What? Meet in cheap motels two towns over? Or maybe we can fuck in YOUR bed when the wife and kids aren’t at home?”
“Listen,” he said. “If it’s about the painting or something Joanne said…”
“It’s not either of those things. One is business and the other is your business. This is about John coming home. It’s about me wanting him to come home.” She smiled down at Erle. “We’ve been screwing around, that’s true. But I love my husband. And you’ll never leave Joanne. It’s not like this could go on forever. She waited for Erle to respond; all he did was take a long drink from his beer. She shook her head. “Why don’t you finish that and head out, okay? It’s been … fun. But we both knew what this was. Right?”
He slumped even further into the couch. “Right.”
“And besides,” she said, “you’ll have the painting to remind you.”
Erle drained the bottle and set it on the small table next to the couch. When he stood up, pain shot up through his left leg and seemed to go straight to his head.
“You should get that looked at,” Marie said.
“Right,” he mumbled. Erle didn’t want to look at her; he didn’t want to remember her in this moment at all. In his mind, he was telling himself the way he would remember it so he could look at her when he saw her around town with her war hero husband. He put his gun belt and radio back on and walked out the door. When he got to his cruiser, a call came over the radio. It was Chief Dolarhyde ordering him back to the station
03 June, 2010
The Cat Situation
The problems with the cats had been going on for a week and a half, and they were fighting more when no one was home; I’d leave and run errands (on the days I had the car) or to walk to the library or the Restaurant on Main Street to sit and drink coffee and read, and when I got back home the carpet was covered with tufts of long dark hair intermingled with short orange ones.
Muriel and I talked about it a little, but in our conversations it became clear that the cat problem was my problem; she didn’t have time, she said, to deal with One More Thing. The subtext of her statement was, I understood, that I had all the time in the world. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, and maybe she wasn’t aware of the assumptions she was making; but it did seem like, from the beginning, because I was the one who accidentally stepped on Che, I was the one who would ultimately deal with it. Then again, there was some truth in her assumption – not that I had All This Time To Do Stuff (which I probably did, if only I had managed my time more efficiently), but that it was My Job to take care of the problem.
Even in the most enlightened of marriages – which our certainly is – there’s always a certain amount of role playing and delineation of duties. Neither of us is particulalry organized, and neither one of us is especially Type-A enough to need that level of control in our relationship. But her level of organization, which was precise and exact in her work life, was the exact opposite in her private life. In some ways I’m probably opposite. My public life is a disorganized mess; I’m lousy at remembering peope’s names; I forget birthdays, important dates, less promininent holidays, and less than pleasant obligations I’d rather not deal with. In my private life I had managed, through repetition, to simplify my life and save myself certain troubles. I always put my glasses in the same place when I take them off at night, even when I’m drunk. I always put my red Bybee coffee cup in the same place. One of the first things I do whenever I move to a new place is establish a new routine. I know that’s supposed to be the hobgoblin of mediocre minds, but when I have some semblance of routine it allows me to save energy I’d waste in more pleasing ways. I don’t have to think about where my glasses are or where my coffee cup is or where I put my keys. My cigars are always in the same place, and so are my pens and paper. Most of the time, I put things back in the refrigerator where I found them so I don’t have to spend time scanning to find it again. I am horribly reliable in my routines; and when I am forced to break my routine, it pretty much fucks with my entire day.
This problem with the cats was one of those things that was screwing up my routine. I was constantly having to separate them, yell at them, shoo them back into hiding. They wouldn’t eat in the same room anymore, wouldn’t drink from the same water bowl, and if they happened to cross paths somewhere in the house – and since the house wasn’t very big, it happened often – they would immediately square off against one another.
The top of my right hand still bore the scars of my last attempt to pull them apart phyiscally, but they were healed more or less. Since then, though, I refused to pet them or pick them up or do anything other than feed them and clean their damned litter box; and I didn’t like doing those things. I would’ve put them both out and let them fend for themselves if it hadn’t been for Muriel’s insistence that it would be cruel.
“They’ve always been house cats,” she protested.
“They didn’t always use me for a fucking scratching post, either.”
She also tried to make me feel guilty for not making nice with Che. Sometimes he’d come out of hiding and want to get up in my lap and I wouldn’t let him.
“He’s trying to make up!”
“No. He’s trying to trick me so he can try and claw my nuts.”
“So you’re not going to forgive him?”
“Let him scratch you and see how forgiving you feel.”
“He’s just a CAT. It’s not like he really remembers it.”
“So why’s he trying to make up?”
Whenever we talked about The Cat Situation, I always ended up feeling like I was the one being unreasonable; but I refused to accept that as the correct response. I wasn’t the one who mauled them, after all. I was the one who got mauled. And more than that—I was also the one who fed them and who cleaned up their disgusting fucking litter box. I cleaned up after them because Muriel couldn’t deal with the smell. Whenever they decided to puke up a hair ball onto the carpet, I cleaned it up. Whenever they didn’t like the change in food and puked – always on the carpet – I cleaned it up. The time Che decided to sneak and eat beans off the stove and he got the running shits – again, all over the carpet – I was the one who cleaned it up. When his claws had to be clipped, I was the one who did that most of the time, because (at the time) I was the least likely to get scratched.
The solution had always been in front of us, but we usually didn’t have the money to get the cats declawed. They’d been destroying our furniture for years; but we resisted getting them declawed because, well, it seemed so MEAN. What if they got out accidentally and had to defend themselves? Not that either of them would ever wander further than two steps out the door before trying to get back inside; they were spoiled and on some level, I always suspected they knew it. Che especially. Nine could survive on his cat food box lable cuteness and whorish personality; Che had pretty much always been a little fucker to everyone except me and (most of the time) Muriel.
Well, since he felt like being a fucker to the one who actually took care of him, I told Muriel they HAD to get declawed.
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to be a scratching post again.”
“What about the money?”
“Call the local vet and find out how much it’ll cost.”
“Why do I have to call?”
“Don’t you know somebody who knows somebody there?”
She hated when I used her ability to network against her. “Yes.”
“Then call and ask. You might get a special rate.”
“They’re not gonna give me a rate.”
“They might.”
She knew she couldn’t argue with me. She’d gotten every stick of furniture we owned because she people knew her from when she’d been at the theatre those summers working with props and scene design; and they all liked her. “Fine.”
But that didn’t solve the immediate problem of what to do with them. The problem was usually two-fold. For one thing, we rarely had the pool of expendable cash; even when we were both working, we never managed to do better than living paycheck to pay check; and we were both college educated and prepared for our inevitable entrance into the middle class. But that entrance never happened. We both made the mistake of following our passions rather than Being Smart. The guidance counselors tried with me, as I’m sure they tried with her, as I saw in my students when they sat in my classes as college freshman. The advice is almost always the same and it hasn’t really changed: study something Smart. Something that will help you Get A Job and Live The Way You Want To Live. Have a passion? Leave it as a hobby; live a Good Life and once you retire, THEN you have your passion to keep you company in your decrepitude. Even as a kid it didn’t make sense to me that the whole goal of it all – college, marriage, life – was to Live For Later. As a result, I have tended to make decisions and live in ways that Weren’t So Smart. It was only on small ocassions that it came back to bite me in the ass. When the car needed repair. Whenever I talked to my extended family. When I quit a job because my dignity is more important to me than a paycheck. When I dared to presume I had a right to a fair shake from the administrative zombies who run colleges and universities.
The Cat Situation was another one of those times when my lack of disposable income came back to bite me in the ass.
The other problem was that Che, since he was more than 5 years old, cost more to declaw than Nine. There was a greater risk that something might happen – i.e., when they anesthetized him he might not wake up – so naturally they charged more. It was a goddamn racket; veterinarians hadn’t yet organized themselves into Animal HMO’s, but it’s only a matter of time. The last one we went to in Arizona told us it would cost a $1000 to declaw Che. And that didn’t include the medicine and post-operative check up. Nine was younger, so he would cost around $600. And even when I was working at ASU and Muriel was working overtime, that was more money than we could afford.
I expected the vet in Mount Arliss to be considerably cheaper; but a dollar for a cup of coffee is still too much when you don’t have a dollar to spare.
When she came home later that evening, she told me she’d called the vet in town.
“How much?”
“Not as much as I thought.”
“That sounds promising.”
She told me it would cost $250 dollars a piece to get them declawed.
“It doesn’t matter that Che is older?”
“Nope.”
“Awesome.”
“I set up an appointment for next week, on Monday. I can drop them off on my way to work; but you’ll have to pick them up after.”
“Fine.”
Che must have heard us talking, because he came out of hiding. He rubbed up on my leg and tried to get in my lap, and a shooed him off.
“He just wants in your lap!”
“Maybe after he gets declawed.”
“You’re just being stubbom. Are you sure you want to do this? We can call and cancel.”
Che hissed and arched his back because Nine came out of his hiding place and into the living room. Nine started yowling and crouched, ready to attack. They hissed at one another and yowled and I shooed them both back into their respective hiding places. Then I looked at Muriel. “Monday was the soonest?”
She sighed. The decision, although necessary, wasn’t sitting well with her. That she is soft-hearted is one of the things I love most about her; she helps remind me not to give up on humanity, in spite of however much I want to. She doesn’t try to see the best in all things; it’s something she just does. And no matter how many times she gets disappointed by the general mediocrity of everyone around her – sometimes including me – she never gives up. But she knew we didn’t have a choice this time.
“Yes. It was the soonest.”
Muriel and I talked about it a little, but in our conversations it became clear that the cat problem was my problem; she didn’t have time, she said, to deal with One More Thing. The subtext of her statement was, I understood, that I had all the time in the world. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, and maybe she wasn’t aware of the assumptions she was making; but it did seem like, from the beginning, because I was the one who accidentally stepped on Che, I was the one who would ultimately deal with it. Then again, there was some truth in her assumption – not that I had All This Time To Do Stuff (which I probably did, if only I had managed my time more efficiently), but that it was My Job to take care of the problem.
Even in the most enlightened of marriages – which our certainly is – there’s always a certain amount of role playing and delineation of duties. Neither of us is particulalry organized, and neither one of us is especially Type-A enough to need that level of control in our relationship. But her level of organization, which was precise and exact in her work life, was the exact opposite in her private life. In some ways I’m probably opposite. My public life is a disorganized mess; I’m lousy at remembering peope’s names; I forget birthdays, important dates, less promininent holidays, and less than pleasant obligations I’d rather not deal with. In my private life I had managed, through repetition, to simplify my life and save myself certain troubles. I always put my glasses in the same place when I take them off at night, even when I’m drunk. I always put my red Bybee coffee cup in the same place. One of the first things I do whenever I move to a new place is establish a new routine. I know that’s supposed to be the hobgoblin of mediocre minds, but when I have some semblance of routine it allows me to save energy I’d waste in more pleasing ways. I don’t have to think about where my glasses are or where my coffee cup is or where I put my keys. My cigars are always in the same place, and so are my pens and paper. Most of the time, I put things back in the refrigerator where I found them so I don’t have to spend time scanning to find it again. I am horribly reliable in my routines; and when I am forced to break my routine, it pretty much fucks with my entire day.
This problem with the cats was one of those things that was screwing up my routine. I was constantly having to separate them, yell at them, shoo them back into hiding. They wouldn’t eat in the same room anymore, wouldn’t drink from the same water bowl, and if they happened to cross paths somewhere in the house – and since the house wasn’t very big, it happened often – they would immediately square off against one another.
The top of my right hand still bore the scars of my last attempt to pull them apart phyiscally, but they were healed more or less. Since then, though, I refused to pet them or pick them up or do anything other than feed them and clean their damned litter box; and I didn’t like doing those things. I would’ve put them both out and let them fend for themselves if it hadn’t been for Muriel’s insistence that it would be cruel.
“They’ve always been house cats,” she protested.
“They didn’t always use me for a fucking scratching post, either.”
She also tried to make me feel guilty for not making nice with Che. Sometimes he’d come out of hiding and want to get up in my lap and I wouldn’t let him.
“He’s trying to make up!”
“No. He’s trying to trick me so he can try and claw my nuts.”
“So you’re not going to forgive him?”
“Let him scratch you and see how forgiving you feel.”
“He’s just a CAT. It’s not like he really remembers it.”
“So why’s he trying to make up?”
Whenever we talked about The Cat Situation, I always ended up feeling like I was the one being unreasonable; but I refused to accept that as the correct response. I wasn’t the one who mauled them, after all. I was the one who got mauled. And more than that—I was also the one who fed them and who cleaned up their disgusting fucking litter box. I cleaned up after them because Muriel couldn’t deal with the smell. Whenever they decided to puke up a hair ball onto the carpet, I cleaned it up. Whenever they didn’t like the change in food and puked – always on the carpet – I cleaned it up. The time Che decided to sneak and eat beans off the stove and he got the running shits – again, all over the carpet – I was the one who cleaned it up. When his claws had to be clipped, I was the one who did that most of the time, because (at the time) I was the least likely to get scratched.
The solution had always been in front of us, but we usually didn’t have the money to get the cats declawed. They’d been destroying our furniture for years; but we resisted getting them declawed because, well, it seemed so MEAN. What if they got out accidentally and had to defend themselves? Not that either of them would ever wander further than two steps out the door before trying to get back inside; they were spoiled and on some level, I always suspected they knew it. Che especially. Nine could survive on his cat food box lable cuteness and whorish personality; Che had pretty much always been a little fucker to everyone except me and (most of the time) Muriel.
Well, since he felt like being a fucker to the one who actually took care of him, I told Muriel they HAD to get declawed.
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to be a scratching post again.”
“What about the money?”
“Call the local vet and find out how much it’ll cost.”
“Why do I have to call?”
“Don’t you know somebody who knows somebody there?”
She hated when I used her ability to network against her. “Yes.”
“Then call and ask. You might get a special rate.”
“They’re not gonna give me a rate.”
“They might.”
She knew she couldn’t argue with me. She’d gotten every stick of furniture we owned because she people knew her from when she’d been at the theatre those summers working with props and scene design; and they all liked her. “Fine.”
But that didn’t solve the immediate problem of what to do with them. The problem was usually two-fold. For one thing, we rarely had the pool of expendable cash; even when we were both working, we never managed to do better than living paycheck to pay check; and we were both college educated and prepared for our inevitable entrance into the middle class. But that entrance never happened. We both made the mistake of following our passions rather than Being Smart. The guidance counselors tried with me, as I’m sure they tried with her, as I saw in my students when they sat in my classes as college freshman. The advice is almost always the same and it hasn’t really changed: study something Smart. Something that will help you Get A Job and Live The Way You Want To Live. Have a passion? Leave it as a hobby; live a Good Life and once you retire, THEN you have your passion to keep you company in your decrepitude. Even as a kid it didn’t make sense to me that the whole goal of it all – college, marriage, life – was to Live For Later. As a result, I have tended to make decisions and live in ways that Weren’t So Smart. It was only on small ocassions that it came back to bite me in the ass. When the car needed repair. Whenever I talked to my extended family. When I quit a job because my dignity is more important to me than a paycheck. When I dared to presume I had a right to a fair shake from the administrative zombies who run colleges and universities.
The Cat Situation was another one of those times when my lack of disposable income came back to bite me in the ass.
The other problem was that Che, since he was more than 5 years old, cost more to declaw than Nine. There was a greater risk that something might happen – i.e., when they anesthetized him he might not wake up – so naturally they charged more. It was a goddamn racket; veterinarians hadn’t yet organized themselves into Animal HMO’s, but it’s only a matter of time. The last one we went to in Arizona told us it would cost a $1000 to declaw Che. And that didn’t include the medicine and post-operative check up. Nine was younger, so he would cost around $600. And even when I was working at ASU and Muriel was working overtime, that was more money than we could afford.
I expected the vet in Mount Arliss to be considerably cheaper; but a dollar for a cup of coffee is still too much when you don’t have a dollar to spare.
When she came home later that evening, she told me she’d called the vet in town.
“How much?”
“Not as much as I thought.”
“That sounds promising.”
She told me it would cost $250 dollars a piece to get them declawed.
“It doesn’t matter that Che is older?”
“Nope.”
“Awesome.”
“I set up an appointment for next week, on Monday. I can drop them off on my way to work; but you’ll have to pick them up after.”
“Fine.”
Che must have heard us talking, because he came out of hiding. He rubbed up on my leg and tried to get in my lap, and a shooed him off.
“He just wants in your lap!”
“Maybe after he gets declawed.”
“You’re just being stubbom. Are you sure you want to do this? We can call and cancel.”
Che hissed and arched his back because Nine came out of his hiding place and into the living room. Nine started yowling and crouched, ready to attack. They hissed at one another and yowled and I shooed them both back into their respective hiding places. Then I looked at Muriel. “Monday was the soonest?”
She sighed. The decision, although necessary, wasn’t sitting well with her. That she is soft-hearted is one of the things I love most about her; she helps remind me not to give up on humanity, in spite of however much I want to. She doesn’t try to see the best in all things; it’s something she just does. And no matter how many times she gets disappointed by the general mediocrity of everyone around her – sometimes including me – she never gives up. But she knew we didn’t have a choice this time.
“Yes. It was the soonest.”
27 May, 2010
Smart Young Fella
When I didn’t feel like staying home, I wandered up to the bar to hang out and attempt to forget my petty frustrations. It never works – not really. But just because it never works doesn’t mean that it will never work; besides, there was little else to do. I’d already gone through all the books in the small and underappreciated public library that were worth reading. Muriel usually had the car, which put me on foot, and the walk to the bar was a reasonable one that also presented an excuse for exercise. The place was usually deserted – at least it was during the winter when everyone was busy hibernating and shoveling snow. As long as the wind chill wasn’t too low and there wasn’t too much ice on the streets – Mt. Arliss actually did a pretty good job of keeping the streets clear in town – I’d hoof it up to the bar for a few cocktails and to watch the television.
I hadn’t managed to pick up much in the way of work yet, though, so I had to limit my trips much more than I would normally. There is apparently not much call for a freelance writer and ex-college instructor; but I had hope that something would happen with the Spring thaw that seemed imminent. Muriel continued to hope that I’d wander back into teaching – something online so that I could stay home and do something useful while still being able to not wear pants – but I resisted. Not that there were a lot of options in education, anyway. Although my resume looks decently impressive, I was sure I’d managed to burn every bridge I had. Getting let go from ASU in the name of budget cuts was only an excuse; the Department Chair had been looking for a way to get rid of trouble makers – he referred to us as “boat rockers.” And my problems there were not new ones; I’d had the same problems almost everyplace else I ever worked.
I’m lousy at office politics. I don’t have the taste for them, nor do I have any interest in developing a taste. All I wanted to do was teach and be left alone; but then there’s my OTHER problem. I can’t keep my mouth shut. People who survive the institutional politics of higher education do so because they either learn to exploit the system or they keep their heads down to avoid having it cut off. I made the mistake of getting involved with some other instructors who wanted to start a union and improve our contracts. We weren’t asking for a lot; we weren’t even asking for a raise as much as we were asking for job security. But there were more peons and lackeys than there were people who understood the meaning of solidarity; so when the part-timers got axed – in the name of budget cuts -- and our course loads and class sizes went up, they put their heads down and took it like a barely legal virgin in an underfunded porno. And when the Powers That Be started cutting instructor positions, they started with us. Our ability and evaluations meant nothing; the Department Chair and his Dominatrix the College Dean wanted pack mules, not thoroughbreds.
When I went to the bar, it was to have someplace else to go; but in Mount Arliss, my options for distraction were extraordinarily limited. So mostly I kept to myself and only talked when there wasn’t anyone there but the bartender or when I had something to say. I listened a lot, though, and figured out pretty quickly that it was better to say very little. Mount. Arliss, like most small towns, can be charming, friendly, and endearing – especially if you’re the nostalgic sort trying to convince yourself there’s still something pristine and untouched and pure on the Earth … that somewhere, away from the crowded cities, there’s some idyllic Eden that harkens back to those television reruns of Andy Griffith and Leave it Beaver. But small towns can also be breeding grounds for xenophobia and misdirected anger. And in a place like this one, where the average age is 50 and diversity is defined as owning a Craftsman lawnmower instead of a John Deere, where the economy has been in a perpetual downturn since the 1970’s, somebody has to shoulder the blame. And generally, the blame is shifted to Blacks, Mexicans, Arabs, and liberals. Usually in that order.
Every bar has a group of dedicated regulars, and the Moose Head was no exception. Bill Watson was one of them, of course. He always had something to say about anything that was going on and he did his level best to leak the news before it came out in the paper just to annoy his older brother Bob, who owned the local newspaper. Bill and I had talked before, but rarely over anything more exciting than whatever was on the TV in the bar; mostly he gossiped about local people I didn’t know and drank his four or five beers and went home. Retired from one of the companies that pulled out and closed the plant several years before, he was a regular at the bar and was there most weekday afternoons.
That particular day was no exception; Muriel was working late again and I didn’t feel like sitting at home. The weather was decent – partly cloudy and in the mid 40’s – and the drinks were always cheap. When I got there, Bill was already there, along with the other members of what I would later be told was the Mount Arliss Round Table. The five old men named themselves the Round Table as a kind of joke that was never really funny to begin with. They got the name, not from Arthurian Legend – which they only became familiar with AFTER the name had settled in – but because they often came in for lunch and sat around a large round table near the center of the bar; the table was built around a structure supporting post that ran ceiling to floor and could seat up to eight.
“So where you from, young fella?” The unofficial leader, a guy named Don, asked me. I turned around on my stool at the bar to face him and told him we’d moved there recently.
“From where?”
“This time it was Phoenix.”
So we talked about Arizona… the weather, mostly, and life there after the real estate bubble finally burst. While we were talking, another member walked in. This one was another crusty old fucker named Jed. He was short, with cloud white hair that was mostly gone at the top, with a big bushy mustache and a thick pair of tri-focal glasses. When he sat down, Madge the owner, who was working the bar, got his usual beer for him without his having to ask. We were introduced and the conversation moved on to immigration.
“So what do you think about all a them pouring over the border and ruining the state?” Don asked.
“All of WHO?”
“Them MEXICANS,” Bill cut in.
“God damn illegal aliens,” Don said.
“Should fuckin’ kill ‘em all,” Jed said.
“I don’t know that I’d use that word,” I answered.
“What word?” Don asked.
“Ruin,” I answered. “I don’t know that it’s fair to say they’re ruining the state.”
“They’re taking OUR jobs,” Jed defended.
“They’re mostly CRIMINALS,” Bill added.
“And they’re coming over here, stealing and killing and raping women,” Don finished.
The three of them sat there looking at me, waiting for my response. From the expressions on their faces, I thought they were expecting me to recant.
“I’m not saying,” I chose my words carefully, “that something doesn’t need to be DONE about border policy…”
Bill cut me off. “Damn right!”
“… but it needs to make sense. And so far, it doesn’t.”
Now the expressions on their faces were a mixture of confusion and contempt. “And just how,” Don finally asked “how should it make sense?”
The bar was quieter than usual – which is saying something considering it’s deserted most of the time – and I again chose my words very carefully. I talked about Arizona Red State politics and how it’s extreme pro-corporate stance means that the tax base is mostly made up of the dwindling middle-class and the working poor; I talked about how construction companies during the real estate boom used undocumented workers because they could pay them a fraction of what an American worker would accept and far less than anybody can actually live on; I talked about Sheriff Arpiao and his random racial profiling raids; then I told them that border policy will never really change because that would eliminate a large and inexpensive work force that the pro-corporate structure needs to do the grunt work. When I was finished I noticed the tone of my voice from the last word that hung on the air in uncomfortable silence. Muriel hated it when I used that tone with her. She called it my teacher tone.
Don, Bill, and Jed stared at me a while longer. “You seem like a smart young fella,” Don said.
“I have my moments.”
“Then you’ve read the CONSTITUTION, I presume?”
“Yeah. The Bill of Rights, too.”
He ignored the last part of my comment, but I thought I saw Jed roll his doughy eyes. “And what does the Constitution say about the role of government?”
I knew where this was going. I can tolerate most idiots, but an unoriginal idiot is intolerable. “To protect and defend,” I said.
“EXACTLY!” Don sat back in his chair with a triumphant expression on his face.
“We need to NAIL DOWN that fuckin’ border,” Bill proclaimed.
“What about Canada?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Well,” I said. “It’s a much bigger border. If a drug mule or a terrorist is gonna get through, they’ll have a much better chance of coming in through Canada. Or are you saying there aren’t any white drug dealers?”
“Now I wasn’t saying that AT ALL,” Don protested.
“Or what about port security?” I went on.
Bill started to look confused. “Huh?”
“Most cargo containers go through unchecked,” I said. “We don’t have any idea what’s in most of them. If all you’re worried about are criminals and terrorists, why don’t we do a better job with our ports.”
“You have a point,” Don said.
“And did you know that most of our ports aren’t even owned by US companies?” I asked.
“Huh?” That was Jed.
“It’s true,” I said. “Look it up.”
“But that’s not what we’re talkin’ about,” Don said.
“We just need to shoot all those fuckers,” Jed added.
“I know I’d like to be down on the border checkin’ green cards,” Don said. “No green card…” he held the thumb and forefinger of his right hand like a gun. “ ..BOOM!”
The three of them laughed.
“You don’t have a problem with guns, do you?” Don asked me.
“Guns? No. Idiots with guns? Yeah.”
“That’s alright, then,” Don said. “For a while there you were sounding a little liberal.”
And you were sounding a little retarded. “I use my brain,” I said.
“You’re a smart young fella,” Don repeated. I didn’t know whether he was paying me compliment or not; from his tone I suspected maybe he wasn’t. I knew better than to think that I’d change their minds, and that wasn’t really the point. No one changed their mind about anything. Not really. I looked at my empty scotch glass; I’d drank four or five in the midst of my exchange with three of the five and spent more than I had planned to. I didn’t feel drunk, but the conversation had ruined the relatively peaceful mood I’d been in. Sure, I was a little bored; but not bored enough to walk into a fight. I drained the last bit of scotch and tried to erase the homicidal fantasies that were fomenting in my mind.
I used to be able to tolerate dumbasses. Someone had told me once – my dad maybe – that people mellow as they age. And while I was certainly not old, I knew that I certainly wasn’t getting more mellow as time marched on and my hair turned grayer. It was the exact opposite; with each passing day I was less and less patient with the misguided, the confused, and the ignorant. No wonder I needed to get out of teaching. At least I was still sure it had nothing to do with the students.
I turned around and looked at Madge; she was trying not to look at me. I left a few dollars for a tip and left.
When I got home, the cats were hiding from one another: Che was under our bed and Nine was hiding under a pile of Muriel’s clothes in the unused bedroom. The sound of the door opening and closing drew each of them out into the open. Che took one look at me and growled. Nine started growling because Che growled, and then the eyeballed one another and prepared to pounce.
“Get!” I yelled. “I don’t feel like dealing with your bullshit today!”
Che snarled, but he turned tail and retreated back under the bed. Nine, with his usual punch drunk thickness, prepared to follow Che and finish the confrontation. I yelled at him again and he turned tail and scampered back under the pile of clothes.
“Too much disharmony,” I said aloud. Sometimes it was just too difficult; dealing with people, dealing with the cats, dealing with Muriel’s absence. That, at least, was better; used to be she’d come for the entire summer. Last summer I was left on my own and it was miserable. At least now I saw her every morning before she left and every night when she came home. At least I could feel her next to me in the bed at night. It was unfair; so unfair that hers was the only company I could handle for any length of time. So unfair for her.
I drank some water and then poured myself a scotch from the half bottle under the kitchen sink. It was almost five in the afternoon. Muriel wouldn’t be home for a few more hours, and I wasn’t hungry. So I turned on the radio, found the classical station, and sat back in my rocking chair – listening and drinking myself back into the harmonious and peaceful center found only in the absence of others.
I hadn’t managed to pick up much in the way of work yet, though, so I had to limit my trips much more than I would normally. There is apparently not much call for a freelance writer and ex-college instructor; but I had hope that something would happen with the Spring thaw that seemed imminent. Muriel continued to hope that I’d wander back into teaching – something online so that I could stay home and do something useful while still being able to not wear pants – but I resisted. Not that there were a lot of options in education, anyway. Although my resume looks decently impressive, I was sure I’d managed to burn every bridge I had. Getting let go from ASU in the name of budget cuts was only an excuse; the Department Chair had been looking for a way to get rid of trouble makers – he referred to us as “boat rockers.” And my problems there were not new ones; I’d had the same problems almost everyplace else I ever worked.
I’m lousy at office politics. I don’t have the taste for them, nor do I have any interest in developing a taste. All I wanted to do was teach and be left alone; but then there’s my OTHER problem. I can’t keep my mouth shut. People who survive the institutional politics of higher education do so because they either learn to exploit the system or they keep their heads down to avoid having it cut off. I made the mistake of getting involved with some other instructors who wanted to start a union and improve our contracts. We weren’t asking for a lot; we weren’t even asking for a raise as much as we were asking for job security. But there were more peons and lackeys than there were people who understood the meaning of solidarity; so when the part-timers got axed – in the name of budget cuts -- and our course loads and class sizes went up, they put their heads down and took it like a barely legal virgin in an underfunded porno. And when the Powers That Be started cutting instructor positions, they started with us. Our ability and evaluations meant nothing; the Department Chair and his Dominatrix the College Dean wanted pack mules, not thoroughbreds.
When I went to the bar, it was to have someplace else to go; but in Mount Arliss, my options for distraction were extraordinarily limited. So mostly I kept to myself and only talked when there wasn’t anyone there but the bartender or when I had something to say. I listened a lot, though, and figured out pretty quickly that it was better to say very little. Mount. Arliss, like most small towns, can be charming, friendly, and endearing – especially if you’re the nostalgic sort trying to convince yourself there’s still something pristine and untouched and pure on the Earth … that somewhere, away from the crowded cities, there’s some idyllic Eden that harkens back to those television reruns of Andy Griffith and Leave it Beaver. But small towns can also be breeding grounds for xenophobia and misdirected anger. And in a place like this one, where the average age is 50 and diversity is defined as owning a Craftsman lawnmower instead of a John Deere, where the economy has been in a perpetual downturn since the 1970’s, somebody has to shoulder the blame. And generally, the blame is shifted to Blacks, Mexicans, Arabs, and liberals. Usually in that order.
Every bar has a group of dedicated regulars, and the Moose Head was no exception. Bill Watson was one of them, of course. He always had something to say about anything that was going on and he did his level best to leak the news before it came out in the paper just to annoy his older brother Bob, who owned the local newspaper. Bill and I had talked before, but rarely over anything more exciting than whatever was on the TV in the bar; mostly he gossiped about local people I didn’t know and drank his four or five beers and went home. Retired from one of the companies that pulled out and closed the plant several years before, he was a regular at the bar and was there most weekday afternoons.
That particular day was no exception; Muriel was working late again and I didn’t feel like sitting at home. The weather was decent – partly cloudy and in the mid 40’s – and the drinks were always cheap. When I got there, Bill was already there, along with the other members of what I would later be told was the Mount Arliss Round Table. The five old men named themselves the Round Table as a kind of joke that was never really funny to begin with. They got the name, not from Arthurian Legend – which they only became familiar with AFTER the name had settled in – but because they often came in for lunch and sat around a large round table near the center of the bar; the table was built around a structure supporting post that ran ceiling to floor and could seat up to eight.
“So where you from, young fella?” The unofficial leader, a guy named Don, asked me. I turned around on my stool at the bar to face him and told him we’d moved there recently.
“From where?”
“This time it was Phoenix.”
So we talked about Arizona… the weather, mostly, and life there after the real estate bubble finally burst. While we were talking, another member walked in. This one was another crusty old fucker named Jed. He was short, with cloud white hair that was mostly gone at the top, with a big bushy mustache and a thick pair of tri-focal glasses. When he sat down, Madge the owner, who was working the bar, got his usual beer for him without his having to ask. We were introduced and the conversation moved on to immigration.
“So what do you think about all a them pouring over the border and ruining the state?” Don asked.
“All of WHO?”
“Them MEXICANS,” Bill cut in.
“God damn illegal aliens,” Don said.
“Should fuckin’ kill ‘em all,” Jed said.
“I don’t know that I’d use that word,” I answered.
“What word?” Don asked.
“Ruin,” I answered. “I don’t know that it’s fair to say they’re ruining the state.”
“They’re taking OUR jobs,” Jed defended.
“They’re mostly CRIMINALS,” Bill added.
“And they’re coming over here, stealing and killing and raping women,” Don finished.
The three of them sat there looking at me, waiting for my response. From the expressions on their faces, I thought they were expecting me to recant.
“I’m not saying,” I chose my words carefully, “that something doesn’t need to be DONE about border policy…”
Bill cut me off. “Damn right!”
“… but it needs to make sense. And so far, it doesn’t.”
Now the expressions on their faces were a mixture of confusion and contempt. “And just how,” Don finally asked “how should it make sense?”
The bar was quieter than usual – which is saying something considering it’s deserted most of the time – and I again chose my words very carefully. I talked about Arizona Red State politics and how it’s extreme pro-corporate stance means that the tax base is mostly made up of the dwindling middle-class and the working poor; I talked about how construction companies during the real estate boom used undocumented workers because they could pay them a fraction of what an American worker would accept and far less than anybody can actually live on; I talked about Sheriff Arpiao and his random racial profiling raids; then I told them that border policy will never really change because that would eliminate a large and inexpensive work force that the pro-corporate structure needs to do the grunt work. When I was finished I noticed the tone of my voice from the last word that hung on the air in uncomfortable silence. Muriel hated it when I used that tone with her. She called it my teacher tone.
Don, Bill, and Jed stared at me a while longer. “You seem like a smart young fella,” Don said.
“I have my moments.”
“Then you’ve read the CONSTITUTION, I presume?”
“Yeah. The Bill of Rights, too.”
He ignored the last part of my comment, but I thought I saw Jed roll his doughy eyes. “And what does the Constitution say about the role of government?”
I knew where this was going. I can tolerate most idiots, but an unoriginal idiot is intolerable. “To protect and defend,” I said.
“EXACTLY!” Don sat back in his chair with a triumphant expression on his face.
“We need to NAIL DOWN that fuckin’ border,” Bill proclaimed.
“What about Canada?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Well,” I said. “It’s a much bigger border. If a drug mule or a terrorist is gonna get through, they’ll have a much better chance of coming in through Canada. Or are you saying there aren’t any white drug dealers?”
“Now I wasn’t saying that AT ALL,” Don protested.
“Or what about port security?” I went on.
Bill started to look confused. “Huh?”
“Most cargo containers go through unchecked,” I said. “We don’t have any idea what’s in most of them. If all you’re worried about are criminals and terrorists, why don’t we do a better job with our ports.”
“You have a point,” Don said.
“And did you know that most of our ports aren’t even owned by US companies?” I asked.
“Huh?” That was Jed.
“It’s true,” I said. “Look it up.”
“But that’s not what we’re talkin’ about,” Don said.
“We just need to shoot all those fuckers,” Jed added.
“I know I’d like to be down on the border checkin’ green cards,” Don said. “No green card…” he held the thumb and forefinger of his right hand like a gun. “ ..BOOM!”
The three of them laughed.
“You don’t have a problem with guns, do you?” Don asked me.
“Guns? No. Idiots with guns? Yeah.”
“That’s alright, then,” Don said. “For a while there you were sounding a little liberal.”
And you were sounding a little retarded. “I use my brain,” I said.
“You’re a smart young fella,” Don repeated. I didn’t know whether he was paying me compliment or not; from his tone I suspected maybe he wasn’t. I knew better than to think that I’d change their minds, and that wasn’t really the point. No one changed their mind about anything. Not really. I looked at my empty scotch glass; I’d drank four or five in the midst of my exchange with three of the five and spent more than I had planned to. I didn’t feel drunk, but the conversation had ruined the relatively peaceful mood I’d been in. Sure, I was a little bored; but not bored enough to walk into a fight. I drained the last bit of scotch and tried to erase the homicidal fantasies that were fomenting in my mind.
I used to be able to tolerate dumbasses. Someone had told me once – my dad maybe – that people mellow as they age. And while I was certainly not old, I knew that I certainly wasn’t getting more mellow as time marched on and my hair turned grayer. It was the exact opposite; with each passing day I was less and less patient with the misguided, the confused, and the ignorant. No wonder I needed to get out of teaching. At least I was still sure it had nothing to do with the students.
I turned around and looked at Madge; she was trying not to look at me. I left a few dollars for a tip and left.
When I got home, the cats were hiding from one another: Che was under our bed and Nine was hiding under a pile of Muriel’s clothes in the unused bedroom. The sound of the door opening and closing drew each of them out into the open. Che took one look at me and growled. Nine started growling because Che growled, and then the eyeballed one another and prepared to pounce.
“Get!” I yelled. “I don’t feel like dealing with your bullshit today!”
Che snarled, but he turned tail and retreated back under the bed. Nine, with his usual punch drunk thickness, prepared to follow Che and finish the confrontation. I yelled at him again and he turned tail and scampered back under the pile of clothes.
“Too much disharmony,” I said aloud. Sometimes it was just too difficult; dealing with people, dealing with the cats, dealing with Muriel’s absence. That, at least, was better; used to be she’d come for the entire summer. Last summer I was left on my own and it was miserable. At least now I saw her every morning before she left and every night when she came home. At least I could feel her next to me in the bed at night. It was unfair; so unfair that hers was the only company I could handle for any length of time. So unfair for her.
I drank some water and then poured myself a scotch from the half bottle under the kitchen sink. It was almost five in the afternoon. Muriel wouldn’t be home for a few more hours, and I wasn’t hungry. So I turned on the radio, found the classical station, and sat back in my rocking chair – listening and drinking myself back into the harmonious and peaceful center found only in the absence of others.
25 May, 2010
Nondenominational: Part 1
After Sunday service, Pastor Stan began thinking about how to approach the new couple who had just moved to town; well, they hadn’t JUST moved. In fact, they had been living in Mt. Arliss for several months. Outreach wasn’t typically an issue because everyone, at some point, gravitated to one of the several churches in town; it was just something people did. Even if people claimed they weren’t especially “religious” (Pastor Stan had heard that one many, many times) people eventually found their way somewhere. Going to church was a good way to meet people, get involved in the community, get a sense of things. It also gave other people a chance to meet you and begin to get a sense of who you were. Young couples with children generally attended church to meet other parents and to help their sons and daughters meet people and make friends. Going to church – any church – was a signal to people that a new comer wanted to be part of the goings on of the town. It also let people know Where You Stood, which was crucial to social acceptance.
Not that there was much difference in the churches; except for those Unitarians one town over in Jonston (which Pastor Stan had trouble understanding) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses that had taken root one town over in another direction (which Pastor Stan considered only slightly less dangerous than Mormons), the denominations were conservative because the people in the area were conservative. They supported prayer in schools, the right to bear arms, low taxes, the war, and abstinence instead of sex education. They were farmers, or the children of farmers, and understood that the Good Lord had given them the Earth to use and take care of. And except for the Catholic Church (which Pastor Stan didn’t personally have a problem with, but many in his congregation did), the different churches got along pretty well. As a Methodist, Pastor Stan knew his place in the local hierarchy, and he was grateful that the Evangelicals, the Charismatics, and the Apostolics hadn’t taken hold. That they were extreme had been their undoing in Mt. Arliss because Mt. Arliss wasn’t a town that liked extremes. Which meant that, as a Methodist, Pastor Stan was generally liked or (at least) treated with a modicum of respect by people outside of his pastoral concern.
From what he could tell, no other church had bothered to reach out to the new couple and they hadn’t reached out to anybody else. According to the Pussmans, who were part of his congregation, the woman worked and the husband didn’t. He could be seen around town, either at the library or at the Moose Head, and no one really knew what to make of him. Peter Pussman seemed leery of him because he drank and Brenda wasn’t sure what to make of him because he seemed to have no ambition at all. There was some word around town that the husband had been a teacher before moving to Mt. Arliss; but he seemed to have no interest in finding a teaching job. Pastor Stan had also heard from Bob Watson, the publisher of the Mt. Arliss Standard, that the husband was a writer, or wanted to be.
He waited until Tuesday to pay a visit. Monday was never a good day for outreach; people were moodier on Mondays, and if they going to be having a bad day, the chances were better than average that it would happen on a Monday. Tuesday was a neutral day. Not frustrating like Mondays and not Hump Day. He hardly ever did any outreach on Fridays, except for shut ins who already knew him. Thursdays could be a good day or a bad day; and if, for some reason, the husband wasn’t home when he dropped by, Pastor Stan would try again on Thursday so he could at least say he’d done his due diligence.
Actually, the thought of another young couple was pretty exciting. Most of his congregation was significantly older than him; he wasn’t yet 40 and some people still thought of him as young. Of course, they liked what they saw as his passion and vigor; and they liked that his wife Patricia was also young and vigorous. His and Patty’s kids, seven year old Casey and ten year old Madison, attended Arliss County Incorporated Schools. Those things lent him the authority that his age denied him. The new couple was around his age, and he imagined what it would be like to have another couple around his own age to talk to. Similar backgrounds. Similar memories. The new couple didn’t have children – which would give them one less thing to talk about. But maybe, he thought, maybe once they settle here for a few years they’ll have kids and will come to him and Patty for advice. The thought made him smile.
He made sure to wear his lucky tie Tuesday, but once he got in his car to drive over to the house he thought better and took the tie off. He didn’t want to appear too stuffy; older people expected a certain level of decorum, but this man was his age. They came from a similar place and a similar time and (he hoped) had similar notions about things. He thought about all the other things they could talk about. Attending college in the 1990’s. Music. Growing up in the 1980’s. Grunge. Pastor Stan was trying to remember the names of the bands he’d like when he was a kid. Banabanabingbong? Whambam? Madonna? Black Hole Sunshine? He expected – because the man had been a college professor – that he would be more liberal than most in town; Stan prepared himself for that. And he kept telling himself the man’s name. Someone said his name was Boone and that he was originally from Kentucky. Boone, he repeated. Jarvis Boone. His wife’s name was Muriel. She worked at the theatre – another indication that they might be a more modern couple than what he (and Patty) had become accustomed to.
The Boones (Pastor Stan kept telling himself to think of them as The Boones) lived in an old house on top of the hill on North Teetum Street. It was one of the last old houses in town and the other houses, over a period of 75 years, had grown up around it. Old Mrs. Chisum had lived there before she died at the ripe old age of 101 – she’d been an old time Baptist, so Pastor Stan had only known her slightly – and the house sat empty for about year until The Boones moved in. The house was on a large corner lot that needed mowing.
He pulled his car in front of the house carefully. There wasn’t a car in the driveway; but it could be in the garage. Plus he’d heard that the husband – Jarvis – Mr. Boone – Boone – didn’t drive much and that he walked everywhere. They only had the one car and his wife – Muriel – Mrs. Boone – usually drove it. Before he got out of the car, he looked at himself in the vanity mirror and smiled his friendliest smile. Instinctively, he grabbed his bible that was sitting on the passenger seat; but then he thought better of it and left it in the car. “There will be time for that,” he said to his reflection.
When he knew someone, Pastor Stan would enter the enclosed porch and knock on the interior door; but he didn’t want to presume. Luckily the doorbell was on the outside instead of the inside. He took a deep breath, straightened his back, and rang the doorbell.
Not that there was much difference in the churches; except for those Unitarians one town over in Jonston (which Pastor Stan had trouble understanding) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses that had taken root one town over in another direction (which Pastor Stan considered only slightly less dangerous than Mormons), the denominations were conservative because the people in the area were conservative. They supported prayer in schools, the right to bear arms, low taxes, the war, and abstinence instead of sex education. They were farmers, or the children of farmers, and understood that the Good Lord had given them the Earth to use and take care of. And except for the Catholic Church (which Pastor Stan didn’t personally have a problem with, but many in his congregation did), the different churches got along pretty well. As a Methodist, Pastor Stan knew his place in the local hierarchy, and he was grateful that the Evangelicals, the Charismatics, and the Apostolics hadn’t taken hold. That they were extreme had been their undoing in Mt. Arliss because Mt. Arliss wasn’t a town that liked extremes. Which meant that, as a Methodist, Pastor Stan was generally liked or (at least) treated with a modicum of respect by people outside of his pastoral concern.
From what he could tell, no other church had bothered to reach out to the new couple and they hadn’t reached out to anybody else. According to the Pussmans, who were part of his congregation, the woman worked and the husband didn’t. He could be seen around town, either at the library or at the Moose Head, and no one really knew what to make of him. Peter Pussman seemed leery of him because he drank and Brenda wasn’t sure what to make of him because he seemed to have no ambition at all. There was some word around town that the husband had been a teacher before moving to Mt. Arliss; but he seemed to have no interest in finding a teaching job. Pastor Stan had also heard from Bob Watson, the publisher of the Mt. Arliss Standard, that the husband was a writer, or wanted to be.
He waited until Tuesday to pay a visit. Monday was never a good day for outreach; people were moodier on Mondays, and if they going to be having a bad day, the chances were better than average that it would happen on a Monday. Tuesday was a neutral day. Not frustrating like Mondays and not Hump Day. He hardly ever did any outreach on Fridays, except for shut ins who already knew him. Thursdays could be a good day or a bad day; and if, for some reason, the husband wasn’t home when he dropped by, Pastor Stan would try again on Thursday so he could at least say he’d done his due diligence.
Actually, the thought of another young couple was pretty exciting. Most of his congregation was significantly older than him; he wasn’t yet 40 and some people still thought of him as young. Of course, they liked what they saw as his passion and vigor; and they liked that his wife Patricia was also young and vigorous. His and Patty’s kids, seven year old Casey and ten year old Madison, attended Arliss County Incorporated Schools. Those things lent him the authority that his age denied him. The new couple was around his age, and he imagined what it would be like to have another couple around his own age to talk to. Similar backgrounds. Similar memories. The new couple didn’t have children – which would give them one less thing to talk about. But maybe, he thought, maybe once they settle here for a few years they’ll have kids and will come to him and Patty for advice. The thought made him smile.
He made sure to wear his lucky tie Tuesday, but once he got in his car to drive over to the house he thought better and took the tie off. He didn’t want to appear too stuffy; older people expected a certain level of decorum, but this man was his age. They came from a similar place and a similar time and (he hoped) had similar notions about things. He thought about all the other things they could talk about. Attending college in the 1990’s. Music. Growing up in the 1980’s. Grunge. Pastor Stan was trying to remember the names of the bands he’d like when he was a kid. Banabanabingbong? Whambam? Madonna? Black Hole Sunshine? He expected – because the man had been a college professor – that he would be more liberal than most in town; Stan prepared himself for that. And he kept telling himself the man’s name. Someone said his name was Boone and that he was originally from Kentucky. Boone, he repeated. Jarvis Boone. His wife’s name was Muriel. She worked at the theatre – another indication that they might be a more modern couple than what he (and Patty) had become accustomed to.
The Boones (Pastor Stan kept telling himself to think of them as The Boones) lived in an old house on top of the hill on North Teetum Street. It was one of the last old houses in town and the other houses, over a period of 75 years, had grown up around it. Old Mrs. Chisum had lived there before she died at the ripe old age of 101 – she’d been an old time Baptist, so Pastor Stan had only known her slightly – and the house sat empty for about year until The Boones moved in. The house was on a large corner lot that needed mowing.
He pulled his car in front of the house carefully. There wasn’t a car in the driveway; but it could be in the garage. Plus he’d heard that the husband – Jarvis – Mr. Boone – Boone – didn’t drive much and that he walked everywhere. They only had the one car and his wife – Muriel – Mrs. Boone – usually drove it. Before he got out of the car, he looked at himself in the vanity mirror and smiled his friendliest smile. Instinctively, he grabbed his bible that was sitting on the passenger seat; but then he thought better of it and left it in the car. “There will be time for that,” he said to his reflection.
When he knew someone, Pastor Stan would enter the enclosed porch and knock on the interior door; but he didn’t want to presume. Luckily the doorbell was on the outside instead of the inside. He took a deep breath, straightened his back, and rang the doorbell.
17 May, 2010
The Day After
She hated the panicked feeling of gasping for air. But the pain that shook her body down to the bones whenever she coughed and spit up pieces of her lungs was worse; and even with the oxygen, the cough never really stopped because her lungs never stopped filling with liquid. Whenever Loleen Bausendorfer took off her oxygen and tried to remember what it felt like before her body turned against her, tried to drown her in her own fluids, she couldn’t sit for more than two minutes. She couldn’t take more than a step out her wheelchair or off her bed without getting dizzy and feeling like she was about to die. Annmarie, her daughter-in-law, was always giving her a difficult time and insisting that she leave the oxygen on and that she not move around so much; but Loleen was tired of the noise the tank made and tired of the plastic itching under her nose and tired of being stuck in her son’s house. She was particularly tired of Annmarie, who Mitch had married in spite of his mother’s objections; but living there was better than being in the hospital, and at least Candice the hospice nurse came in the evening to check on her.
Not that being in a hospital would do her any good. Loleen knew she was dying. So did everyone else. Mitch knew she was dying and insisted she move in. Annmarie knew she was dying and resented that she was doing it in her house. Her grandchildren knew she was dying, but didn’t have any patience with her anymore now that she was too sick to make her famous double chocolate cookies. Loleen knew that the only reason she was living with her son and his family was that there wasn’t enough money to put her in nursing home – and that would have almost been better, if she didn’t know that people got stuck in nursing homes so that their families could learn to forget about them.
The day before had been a busy day. Annmarie drove the 80 mile round trip from Mt. Arliss to Silverton to take her shopping at JC Penny’s. It was an important trip. They’d gotten up early. The kids didn’t want to go and weren’t silent about their displeasure. Annmarie wasn’t all that excited about going, either, but Loleen had impressed its importance upon her and promised to pay for the kids to eat at McDonalds. Loleen didn’t like that she had to nag and bribe her family – the people who should want to take care of her. If it were Annmarie’s mother, there would have been no question; but Annmarie’s mother lived out of state. Loleen understood that it was a maudlin reason to go shopping. And while it was true that Loleen still had some nice dresses, none of them suited the purpose.
None of them was a dress she wanted to be buried in.
And since her death was, according to Dr. Sims, imminent she wanted to make sure all the details were taken care of. Mitch wouldn’t have a clue what to do and she didn’t trust Annmarie to put in the kind of care and attention to detail that it deserved. Loleen had already picked out her casket, her headstone, and had chosen the songs and even the preacher. All that remained was the dress.
Annmarie was forced to push Loleen around in the wheelchair; this didn’t bother Loleen much except that she had to keep reminding her to slow down. Deciding how she wanted to look for all eternity was a serious task. And it was a detail most people would take for granted. It was bad enough that she’d heard Annmarie talking to her son about cremation. Cremation! Like they were some aboriginal tribe on some backwards subcontinent! And who would visit her in the cemetery if all that was left of her was a pile of ashes? Annmarie would just as soon have her cremated and put the ashes in an old coffee can and bury her in the backyard next to the dog.
Loleen didn’t like the first seven dresses she looked at. Well, she’d liked the fifth one okay; but she said she didn’t like it because Annmarie was sighing and hemming and hawing like her time was being wasted. All the woman did was work at Mitch’s bar sometimes and watch Spanish soap operas. She didn’t even really take care of Loleen. If Mitch hadn’t rebuilt the downstairs bathroom so she could use it herself, she was sure Annmarie would have let her sit in her own mess until Candice arrived. And Candice was a sweet girl; but she wasn’t family.
So she made Annmarie wait through the sixth and seventh dresses – both of which were fine, she supposed. But by the time she got to the eighth dress, Loleen was getting tired, and she was getting a headache because the grandchildren refused to behave.
The dress was a deep purple dress with a gold and silver floral design; the fabric was soft. It struck Loleen as almost royal – maybe because of the purple. And while she would have never bought a purple dress before, she knew it was the perfect one.
Propped up on pillows as she was because she couldn’t lie down and sleep anymore, she took the oxygen tube off and stared at the dress hanging over the closet door. She lay there watching the dress while her lungs filled up with fluid and her breathing became more labored and her body instinctively prepared for another round of coughing. What a beautiful dress, she thought. Then she closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to be perfectly still forever, clothed in that purple dress and removed to a place far away from the sounds of her grandchildren, her son’s wife, and the pain that woke her up every morning.
Not that being in a hospital would do her any good. Loleen knew she was dying. So did everyone else. Mitch knew she was dying and insisted she move in. Annmarie knew she was dying and resented that she was doing it in her house. Her grandchildren knew she was dying, but didn’t have any patience with her anymore now that she was too sick to make her famous double chocolate cookies. Loleen knew that the only reason she was living with her son and his family was that there wasn’t enough money to put her in nursing home – and that would have almost been better, if she didn’t know that people got stuck in nursing homes so that their families could learn to forget about them.
The day before had been a busy day. Annmarie drove the 80 mile round trip from Mt. Arliss to Silverton to take her shopping at JC Penny’s. It was an important trip. They’d gotten up early. The kids didn’t want to go and weren’t silent about their displeasure. Annmarie wasn’t all that excited about going, either, but Loleen had impressed its importance upon her and promised to pay for the kids to eat at McDonalds. Loleen didn’t like that she had to nag and bribe her family – the people who should want to take care of her. If it were Annmarie’s mother, there would have been no question; but Annmarie’s mother lived out of state. Loleen understood that it was a maudlin reason to go shopping. And while it was true that Loleen still had some nice dresses, none of them suited the purpose.
None of them was a dress she wanted to be buried in.
And since her death was, according to Dr. Sims, imminent she wanted to make sure all the details were taken care of. Mitch wouldn’t have a clue what to do and she didn’t trust Annmarie to put in the kind of care and attention to detail that it deserved. Loleen had already picked out her casket, her headstone, and had chosen the songs and even the preacher. All that remained was the dress.
Annmarie was forced to push Loleen around in the wheelchair; this didn’t bother Loleen much except that she had to keep reminding her to slow down. Deciding how she wanted to look for all eternity was a serious task. And it was a detail most people would take for granted. It was bad enough that she’d heard Annmarie talking to her son about cremation. Cremation! Like they were some aboriginal tribe on some backwards subcontinent! And who would visit her in the cemetery if all that was left of her was a pile of ashes? Annmarie would just as soon have her cremated and put the ashes in an old coffee can and bury her in the backyard next to the dog.
Loleen didn’t like the first seven dresses she looked at. Well, she’d liked the fifth one okay; but she said she didn’t like it because Annmarie was sighing and hemming and hawing like her time was being wasted. All the woman did was work at Mitch’s bar sometimes and watch Spanish soap operas. She didn’t even really take care of Loleen. If Mitch hadn’t rebuilt the downstairs bathroom so she could use it herself, she was sure Annmarie would have let her sit in her own mess until Candice arrived. And Candice was a sweet girl; but she wasn’t family.
So she made Annmarie wait through the sixth and seventh dresses – both of which were fine, she supposed. But by the time she got to the eighth dress, Loleen was getting tired, and she was getting a headache because the grandchildren refused to behave.
The dress was a deep purple dress with a gold and silver floral design; the fabric was soft. It struck Loleen as almost royal – maybe because of the purple. And while she would have never bought a purple dress before, she knew it was the perfect one.
Propped up on pillows as she was because she couldn’t lie down and sleep anymore, she took the oxygen tube off and stared at the dress hanging over the closet door. She lay there watching the dress while her lungs filled up with fluid and her breathing became more labored and her body instinctively prepared for another round of coughing. What a beautiful dress, she thought. Then she closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to be perfectly still forever, clothed in that purple dress and removed to a place far away from the sounds of her grandchildren, her son’s wife, and the pain that woke her up every morning.
10 May, 2010
The Problem With Jewelry
When Bill Watson spoke – which was entirely more often than most people thought he should have – every sentence that left his mouth carried a sense of finality. Whether he was talking about the weather or the government or the price of corn or the state of somebody’s marriage and the fates of their ill-conceived children, his tone was convincing even when his words were not.
He suffered through his retirement with all the nobility he could muster by running a semi-permanent garage sale in his front yard. When it wasn’t raining and when it wasn’t the dead of winter, he sat in his front yard behind three large tables full of stuff he dug out of his basement and his barn to sell. Late Spring and Summer and early Fall were his best times because he took advantage of the traffic of people visiting the unusually large number of antique and junktique shops in Mt. Arliss and unincorporated Arliss County. There were nearly as many of these shops as their were churches, except that the churches did a little better financially and the shops were a little more interesting to outsiders; and Bill Watson, who believed unerringly in the tenets of Democratic Capitalism as well as the divine notion that Arliss County was the true center of the universe and potentially the true location of the biblical Eden, took full advantage as best he could. He was not one to haggle on a price; but as he often remarked, when he asked $5 for a solid metal pipe wrench in workable condition, it was significantly cheaper than having to buy a new one.
Bill stayed at his tables until 3 in the afternoon during the week, and after that he could be found at his usual stool at the Moose Head, where he had been a regular since the bar opened its doors. He had first walked in the door a middle-aged man and had, like the bar and the entire town, aged to a functional decrepitude. He had weathered changes by not changing at all; and like most men who dealt with the world in this fashion, his resilience had made him a little cocky. He did not like the world and did not apologize for it – but he would be damned if that was going to make him lie down and quit.
On good days, the television in the Moose Head would be showing an old rerun, like Bonanza, Bewitched, or The Rifleman. He liked Bonanza and The Rifleman, and he thought Elizabeth Montgomery had had nice legs back the day; but that was only when Bob and Ethel were in the bar because Bob only watched reruns of old television shows he had watched when he was younger and flush and things were good. (Ethel still watched her soap operas and enjoyed Wheel of Fortune; she thought Pat Sajak was still cute and that Vanna White was still a Hollywood slut who got lucky.)
On this particular day, I was sitting next to Bill and Gary was tending bar. Gary was the only non-family member who bartended and it was generally thought that he was kept on because he couldn’t do much else besides play a mean game of pool and beat any video game out on the market. After Bob and Ethel left – earlier than usual – Gary switched the channel to VH1.
“Christ,” Bill muttered. “Why people want to WATCH music, I’ll never know. Used to be, we’d LISTEN to music.”
“It’s more than music,” Gary tried explaining. “They have their own shows now.”
“REALITY television,” he countered. “What a stupid idea. People watch TV to get away from reality, not live in it. Or…” he paused to take a sip of his Old Style Beer, “… they USED’ta.”
He looked up at the television, probably to find something else to bitch about. It didn’t take him long. “What the hell is THAT?” Bill pointed at the screen. On it, there was a former basketball player going into rehab. This presented two problems for Bill: 1) he was rich and 2) he had pierced not only both ears several times, but both nostrils and he had two loops in his bottom lip. To Bill’s credit, that the man was also black didn’t matter so much, though others would have made that more of an issue.
“It’s one of those rehab shows,” Gary answered. Gary was a large man whose very existence some claimed was proof of the existence of god because most people of his size would not still be able to walk around… though he did wheeze considerably and was heckled mercilessly about his love of pretzels and potato chips and was happily engaged in a long term relationship with a woman everyone but me had met.
“Rehab,” Bill scoffed. “Will ya LOOKIT that guy? What’s all that shit in his face?”
Gary shrugged.
“Piercings,” I said.
Bill turned and looked at me, his head bobbing up and down the way it did when he was about to make a pronouncement. “Well, ya SEE that? THAT’S what’s wrong with things.”
“What is?” Gary asked.
He turned and nodded at the television. “That’s why THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE.” Bill said.
“Jewelry?” I asked.
He turned and looked at me again and we locked eyes. He stared, shook his head, and then turned his attention back to his beer.
“I’ve heard a lot of things,” I went on – probably because I’d had two scotches too many – “about why the world is screwed up. But I never considered that it might be jewelry.”
Gary chuckled a little, but checked himself when Bill glared at him. Bill refused to look at or address me and when he left, he didn’t acknowledge me either. By the time he left, I’d switched to beer; after Bill left the bar, Gary bought me a beer and switched the channel to a baseball game.
He suffered through his retirement with all the nobility he could muster by running a semi-permanent garage sale in his front yard. When it wasn’t raining and when it wasn’t the dead of winter, he sat in his front yard behind three large tables full of stuff he dug out of his basement and his barn to sell. Late Spring and Summer and early Fall were his best times because he took advantage of the traffic of people visiting the unusually large number of antique and junktique shops in Mt. Arliss and unincorporated Arliss County. There were nearly as many of these shops as their were churches, except that the churches did a little better financially and the shops were a little more interesting to outsiders; and Bill Watson, who believed unerringly in the tenets of Democratic Capitalism as well as the divine notion that Arliss County was the true center of the universe and potentially the true location of the biblical Eden, took full advantage as best he could. He was not one to haggle on a price; but as he often remarked, when he asked $5 for a solid metal pipe wrench in workable condition, it was significantly cheaper than having to buy a new one.
Bill stayed at his tables until 3 in the afternoon during the week, and after that he could be found at his usual stool at the Moose Head, where he had been a regular since the bar opened its doors. He had first walked in the door a middle-aged man and had, like the bar and the entire town, aged to a functional decrepitude. He had weathered changes by not changing at all; and like most men who dealt with the world in this fashion, his resilience had made him a little cocky. He did not like the world and did not apologize for it – but he would be damned if that was going to make him lie down and quit.
On good days, the television in the Moose Head would be showing an old rerun, like Bonanza, Bewitched, or The Rifleman. He liked Bonanza and The Rifleman, and he thought Elizabeth Montgomery had had nice legs back the day; but that was only when Bob and Ethel were in the bar because Bob only watched reruns of old television shows he had watched when he was younger and flush and things were good. (Ethel still watched her soap operas and enjoyed Wheel of Fortune; she thought Pat Sajak was still cute and that Vanna White was still a Hollywood slut who got lucky.)
On this particular day, I was sitting next to Bill and Gary was tending bar. Gary was the only non-family member who bartended and it was generally thought that he was kept on because he couldn’t do much else besides play a mean game of pool and beat any video game out on the market. After Bob and Ethel left – earlier than usual – Gary switched the channel to VH1.
“Christ,” Bill muttered. “Why people want to WATCH music, I’ll never know. Used to be, we’d LISTEN to music.”
“It’s more than music,” Gary tried explaining. “They have their own shows now.”
“REALITY television,” he countered. “What a stupid idea. People watch TV to get away from reality, not live in it. Or…” he paused to take a sip of his Old Style Beer, “… they USED’ta.”
He looked up at the television, probably to find something else to bitch about. It didn’t take him long. “What the hell is THAT?” Bill pointed at the screen. On it, there was a former basketball player going into rehab. This presented two problems for Bill: 1) he was rich and 2) he had pierced not only both ears several times, but both nostrils and he had two loops in his bottom lip. To Bill’s credit, that the man was also black didn’t matter so much, though others would have made that more of an issue.
“It’s one of those rehab shows,” Gary answered. Gary was a large man whose very existence some claimed was proof of the existence of god because most people of his size would not still be able to walk around… though he did wheeze considerably and was heckled mercilessly about his love of pretzels and potato chips and was happily engaged in a long term relationship with a woman everyone but me had met.
“Rehab,” Bill scoffed. “Will ya LOOKIT that guy? What’s all that shit in his face?”
Gary shrugged.
“Piercings,” I said.
Bill turned and looked at me, his head bobbing up and down the way it did when he was about to make a pronouncement. “Well, ya SEE that? THAT’S what’s wrong with things.”
“What is?” Gary asked.
He turned and nodded at the television. “That’s why THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE.” Bill said.
“Jewelry?” I asked.
He turned and looked at me again and we locked eyes. He stared, shook his head, and then turned his attention back to his beer.
“I’ve heard a lot of things,” I went on – probably because I’d had two scotches too many – “about why the world is screwed up. But I never considered that it might be jewelry.”
Gary chuckled a little, but checked himself when Bill glared at him. Bill refused to look at or address me and when he left, he didn’t acknowledge me either. By the time he left, I’d switched to beer; after Bill left the bar, Gary bought me a beer and switched the channel to a baseball game.
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