Porkopolis In the Ice and Rain: Part 1

"The shit that used to work won't work now..." -Warren Zevon, "My Shit's Fucked Up"


Cincinnati, Ohio --


1.

Whenever I'm in Cincinnati, I always know exactly where I am. For all it's faults -- and it has more than a few -- Cincinnati has always felt like home to me.

I don't know how many times I've been in and out of the downtown Greyhound bus depot; when I think about it, the weight of them seem to amount to more than the actual number, leaves me feeling like I've been through the bus depot here more than anyplace else. Actually, my first long bus trip was on a Greyhound from New Orleans to Lexington, Kentucky. I don't think I left from the Cincinnati station until the move out to Arizona... and that was a three day bus trip.

But I digress... it's so easy to do when you fall out of time except for when you're catching a Greyhound bus.

Once we got east of Chicago and a little more south, the weather cleared up; and except for some traffic delay trying to get through traffic in downtown Indianapolis, the trip ran on time and I made it to Cincinnati without shitting myself or dying of thirst.

And allow me to shamelessly plug (in the hopes that perhaps, upon reading my well crafted words that Greyhound Bus Lines will see it to their advantage to let me ride for free and extol the virtues of seeing America via bus. Of course, if Amtrak gave me a the same deal, I'd just as quickly extol the virtues of seeing America by rail.

(Is that whoring? Maybe. But I'm trying to see visit my daughter, see America, and do it without going bankrupt. And while I do have what could be termed a "hitcher's thumb," I'm certain that I'm not pretty enough to be picked up by anyone except a serial killer who prefers chubby Irish German wayfarers.)

Not my thumb.

I can't tell you enough, faithful readers, just how much EASIER Greyhound Express Routes are. The buses are newer, have free wifi, and more leg room. Moreover, on this particular trip, the bus didn't have more than 10 people on it. So it wasn't a sardine can and I was able to stretch out in relative comfort.

(If this seems like solid schmoozing to you, please contact David Leach, President and CEO of Greyhound Bus Lines and remind him that they need all the good press they can get.)

Pulling into the Cincinnati Depot then, was only fairly anti-climactic... I disembarked, rushed in, and found the cleanest possible bus station toilet to take what can only be described as a near mystic shit.

(BTW: this is a random chart describing how hitcher's thumbs, a recessive trait, are passed on.  Non sequitur? Yes. Ask if I care. Go ahead. I wanted to find a picture of a nasty public toilet. This is better, no?)

Since my bus was a day earlier than I had told anyone, I was -- as you might recall, my few and far between faithful readers -- I was a bit stuck for a ride. My first attempt to get a ride had fallen through anyway, having been in touch with Alex the Feminist Super Warrior, a friend and former student who, for reasons still unclear, seems to enjoy hearing from me from time to time. Alas, she was scheduled to go to Columbus to some rally or meeting or Tits Only kind of gathering. And I knew better than to expect her risk pissing off feminists... because this is something that should only be done when ABSOLUTELY necessary.*

My second attempt was also a failure. I checked with my older brother. But he was in Atlanta on business.**

Considering the possibility that I would end up taking a taxi or... if  had no other choice, a Cincinnati Metro Bus, I put in a call to another old friend, Eric M. I met Eric when we were both teaching at Northern Kentucky University, and he later became my boss at the now defunct Center for Access and Transition at the University of Cincinnati.*** 

Luckily, Eric M. was home and nothing better to do -- or so he led me to believe and I allowed myself to think -- and he agreed to pick me up. 

It's always good to see old friends. Of course, I was famished, and thirsty, so Eric drove across the creek (aka, The Ohio River) to  Covington to The Cock and Bull. The Cock and Bull is located in the part of Covington referred to as The Mainstrasse. It's worth checking out. Not only does The Cock and Bull have enough beer for even the most casual beer aficionado^, but the menu prices are (city) reasonable.

This is only SOME of the on tap beer at the Cock and Bull. I would've posted a picture of the burger, but it didn't last long enough. It was delicious. Medium Rare, baby!)

 After a few beers and some much needed conversation, Eric M. drove me out to Anderson, one of the burbier places in the Greater Cincinnati Area. My Mom lives in Anderson, in a condo she bought a few years after my dad died. Eric M. has had a hell of year, and I've had what can be described as an interesting year... especially the last month or so... and we traded war stories and showed one another our scars. Eric M. is one of the majority of people who have, in one way or another, been screwed over by the economy. And because of the sheer number of Institutions of Higher Stupidity within the Greater Cincinnati Area, it's hard to make a decent wage as a college teacher. He's not married, which is probably one of the couple of things that's saving his ass from destitution. But he does have mortgage, a cat that's been old and sick for as long as I can remember, and very nearly Zen Garden -- pretty impressive for an Italian Catholic -- he spends a lot of time and money on when it's gardening season. He's also a good writer... when he actually writes. 

He's also had to deal with finding a the body of a dear friend and fellow tutor after he didn't show up for work. Adam, the friend ... though not a friend of mine ... committed suicide. I've sat with people when they died, and I've found people in conditions that could have led to their deaths. But I've been fortunate thus far, not to have to find a friend who killed himself. FORTUNATE.

Eric isn't the kind of person to call himself a victim of the times... he's too old fashioned and manly to do something like that... but I found it telling when a man whose ability as a teacher and a tutor impressed me early says to me 

"I don't know. I think I might be close to selling out."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"To the highest bidder," he said. 

[More later in the week, faithful few. I need to thank Eric Collins for his generous contribution to the re:visionary fund. If you like what you're reading at all, please think about donating to keep me on the road so I can keep writing about the America that everyone sees and no one talks about. Also: the phone number for the Greyhound Bus Lines Corporate Offices is: 214-849-8000]

*I know this from experience, dear readers. Oh yes. I know.

**My brother is one of those guys who gets Frequent Flyer Points and classifies the Hampton Inn as an "alright" hotel.

***This program was geared for students whose reading, writing, and math skills weren't sufficient to get into Freshmen General Ed classes. The program was eventually canned because UC cares more about looking good than education. If you are so inclined, email Greg Hand, VP of Media Relations, and tell him UC is proof of the decline of American Education.

^I define a beer aficionado as anyone who knows that Budweiser, while it's cheap and will get you drunk, really isn't beer. It's the chilled and homogenized piss of bourgeois beer makers who drink real beer and laugh at middle American schlulbs who don't know the difference.)

[Morning Glory]

The next day I woke up to someone banging on the door. I wasn’t sure of the time. I looked at my cell phone. The clock read 10:35. Shit. I didn’t know anybody who would be up at this time, let alone anybody who would be banging on the door. I rolled out of bed and stumbled downstairs, if only to tell whoever it was to shut the hell up and leave me alone.

I opened the door. There was a woman on the other side of it. It was Marie, the apartment complex manager. She was an attractive Latino woman with big dark eyes, a ghetto ass, and smooth dark skin. When I opened the door and the outside air hit me, I remembered I was naked; but I was too hungover and pissed off to care. Marie took a few steps back and made sure to look directly at my face.

“What do you want?” I asked. “It’s not the first of the month.”

“Don’t you think you should… put something on?” I couldn’t tell if she was really offended or if she felt the need to act that way. “There are kids around here.”

“They’re in school,” I said. “And if they’re not, they deserve what they get.”

“It’s SATURDAY.”

“Oh. They’re not up yet then. I wasn’t either, as a matter of fact.”

“There are FAMILIES here, Mr. Rafferty.”

“Did you beat on the door just to tell me that?”

“I could have you arrested.”

“Well, do that. I’ll tell them you sexually assaulted me.” Horror spread across her face. Of course it was all bullshit. But that’s what she got for waking me up. “I’ll tell them you threatened to evict me unless I put out. It’ll take YEARS to straighten out and by then you’ll have lost your sweet little gig here and I’ll be living in Alaska. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“I was just dropping off this notice Mr. Rafferty.” She held it out in front of her at arms length. I grabbed it from her and looked at it. It was a notice informing me I was late on the rent.

“So what’s this mean?”

“It means,” she said, “that you have five days to pay or move. Or we start the eviction process.”

“Uh huh.”

“And let me suggest, Mr. Rafferty…”

“Call me Raff. Anybody who sees me naked gets to call me Raff.”

“Let me suggest, MR. RAFFERTY, that you take this seriously. And next time,” she sniffed, let her gaze drift downward, arched her eyebrow, and frowned. “Put on some clothes. You’re embarrassing yourself more than you are me. Really.” She turned and shimmied away, laughing to herself.

I closed the door, locked it, and looked down at my limp cock. Fucking depression. I blamed depression. Lynda had blamed booze. She said to me, “You’re giving up your libido for a bottle.” Fucking hell. Used to be I could set the clock by my morning wood. Used to be. And here it was letting me down, literally. I couldn’t get it up for pathetic reality TV women, girls at the bar, or even porn. It had been months since Lynda and I fucked. And that was before she left. And she’d been gone almost three months. No wonder Marie didn’t respect me. No wonder Lynda didn’t, either. I dropped the notice on the floor and went back to bed.

Twenty minutes later someone else was banging on the door. This time I knew who it was; it was Randall. He was calling my name while he was beating on the door. Among his more annoying qualities, he rarely experienced the wonder of a full blown hangover. The bastard. Again, I considered ignoring it, but then I remembered he had my key and he’d probably use it if I didn’t answer. For all I knew, the fucker went and made a copy.

This time I pulled on a pair of shorts before I stumbled and opened the door. When I did, he was smiling.

“I thought you’d be asleep by the pool again,” he handed me my key. “You gave me your house key.”

“Thanks.” I moved so he could come in.

“Does this mean we’re going steady?”

“Fuck off, Randall. I’m not in the mood.”

“Well GET in the mood. We got us some PLANS today, son.” He made a face and sniffed. “Dude, maybe you should… I don’t know… CLEAN every once in a while? This place reeks of old ass and dead fish.”

I was trying not to look at the mess as I tried to make coffee. “And just how do you know what those things smell like?”

“I visit you.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee before I kick your head in?”

He smiled. “Nah. You know I don’t drink the stuff. It’s bad for you.” He pulled a cigarette out and lit it. “Besides, we don’t have time for coffee talk. Get cleaned up.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to the track.”

“You didn’t lose enough yesterday?”

“Shee-it. That was yesterday. I got a new lease on life today.”

Lucky fucking you. “I don’t feel like doing shit today, okay? Just let me wake up and go on about my day. You can tell me how much you lost later.”

“Come on, Raff. We’re meeting up with Steve and Paul and Chris. It’ll be fun, man. It’ll be good for you. And if you don’t have any money, I’ll stake you a few bucks. But you need to get your smelly ass in the shower first and get that creeping stank off, or I won’t let you in my car.”

If I waited until later that night, he wouldn’t care about letting me in his car because chances were I’d be driving him home. I had money. I had a little money. My unemployment payments were reliable, if nothing else was. I was behind on rent, sure; but losing a few bucks at the track wasn’t going to make any difference anyway.

“I need coffee.”

“We can get you coffee up at the bar.”

“Will they let you back in?” I don’t know why I asked.

He laughed. “You know better. That place needs me. I bring in all the good business.”

“Fine. Give ten minutes.” I pushed by him to get upstairs.

“Seven,” he said. “I’ll give you seven. Hey, I saw this cute spick chick when I pulled up. Longish dark hair; ghetto booty. You know her?”

“Marie.”

“You ever tap her?”

“Nah,” I answered. Briefly, I considered putting Randall on her trail; it would come to nothing but it would give him something to do besides roust me and it would annoy the shit out of her. She was only doing her job, I thought. So I decided to do her favor. “She’s a lesbian.” But I also said it for myself. I couldn’t have him trying to play grab ass with her; that would only make me homeless faster.

“Huh?”

“Yeah. She likes chicks. Real militant, too. Hates men. Carries a big knife in case she feels like cutting somebody’s junk off. She needs more pussy than you.”

Randall whistled. “Fucking shit, man. I mean, I wouldn’t marry her or nothing…” he drifted off for a second. “Maybe she hasn’t seen the right dick yet.”

“I’m sure she’s met plenty,” I said. “Do you want me to shower or do you want to circle jerk over the apartment manager?”

“Shower,” he said. “I don’t spank in front of nobody.” His smile widened. “Unless she’s into that freaky shit.”

Pendleton Underground: Parts 3 and 4 of 7

3.

After I got off the phone with Red, though, I was in no mood to growl at the kids for hitting my door. I was in no mood to growl at anybody. Except maybe Brenda.



She didn’t like me because I stood her up once. Not long after my ex and I split, Brenda invited me to her house for dinner. I ended up getting drunk and forgetting about it. She never forgave me. Actually, I’d forgotten all about it until she started dating Pendleton. Naturally, she brought it up. “It’s no big deal,” she said smiling through her triple chins. Brenda was not a petite woman; then again, Pendleton liked his women on the big side. She was a pious and broken woman who was easy to impress. She didn’t think she was smart, and all of Pendleton’s books impressed her. She worshipped him – which he loved – because he ex-wife, my ex-mother-in-law, was a bitter shrew who never showed him any respect at all.



We were all friends for a while – Pendleton and Brenda and Linda and me. We went to their house for dinner all the time, and we played cards after until well after midnight. Pendleton usually cooked because the only food Brenda knew how to cook were TV dinners and frozen pizzas. Eating with them made me glad I’d forgotten that dinner date with Brenda; Pendleton was a decent cook and liked things spicy, the same as me.



We stayed friends until they got married. The small ceremony happened in Pendleton’s living room with a few friends attending and a homemade wedding cake that always seems to lean a little to the left. After she married him, Brenda took ownership of everything –including Pendleton. She didn’t mind if Red came around because he could help her husband work on the cars or fix the lawn mower; he was useful. I was all thumbs and useless and I drank too much; plus she thought I was mean to Linda sometimes. She also didn’t understand why I couldn’t seem to hold down a job, even though she’d never been able to keep one more than two months in the entire time I knew her.



“Fuck her,” I spat at the empty apartment. “Fuck her and her fat condescending head and her TV fucking dinners and fake piety and her hollow fucking prayers.”



After Pendleton married Brenda he rediscovered religion. He’d always had his own point of view on the subject; he once told me that God spoke to him and explained the purpose of evil in the world. But when I asked him to tell me, he only smiled and shook his head. “You need to find that answer for yourself.”



Give m a fucking break, I thought. Pendleton thought of himself as a spiritual man, but he didn’t go to church very much. “There’s nothing there I can’t get sitting on my back porch,” he said. Mostly I think he didn’t like the idea of having to dress up. Cleaned up with his shirt tucked in, Pendleton looked more like an irate bus driver than the misunderstood mountain man he wanted to be. But Brenda had insisted they go at least once a month; it was her family’s church and she wanted to prove to them all that she could land a husband who wasn’t either a stumbling alcoholic or her fourth cousin.



The scotch bottle was empty, but I wasn’t done drinking. I considered my options. I probably could’ve closed my eyes right then and gone to sleep; that would’ve been the smart option. But I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to stop thinking. I didn’t want to stop remembering. I didn’t want to stop the waves of anger pulsing in my arms and legs and chest. Normally Linda could talk some sense into me; but she was working an extra shift and wouldn’t be home until late. I was supposed to get up the next morning and teach. If I kept on, I wouldn’t feel like getting out of bed. All I’d feel was hungover and angry and all it would take was one stupid question and I’d bite some empty-headed student’s face off.



I put on my shoes and left. The sounds of the children playing echoed in my ears, nearly split my ear drums. So be it, I thought. If I’m deaf I won’t have hear anything anymore. No more children playing. No more silly questions. No more phone calls from Red. Nothing. Nada. Nunca. Silence.



The bar looked unusually crowded, so I didn’t go inside. I didn’t feel like being around people and having to play at being friendly. I kept walking. The scotch made my blood warm; I felt every drop of it coursing through my veins, pumping my heart, propelling me forward. Forward was all that mattered. I got as far as the corner drug store. I didn’t have enough cash for another bottle of scotch, so I settled for a reasonably cheap jug of table wine. The girl working the register eyed me carefully, but didn’t refuse my money. I walked out the automatic doors and cracked the seal. It was a serviceable burgundy; not usually to my liking, but it was the only red wine on the shelf.



If she had been there, Linda would have told me I was begging to be arrested. It was sweet that she still worried about – god knows why, since I rarely worry about myself; but she could never seem to grasp the basic laws of equilibrium. I wouldn’t get picked up because 1.) it was mid-week; 2.) I didn’t look homeless or like an illegal, and 3.) I wasn’t blocking traffic or impeding the forward progress of civilization. The only time anybody cared about a wandering drunk was when he became an affront to some respectable person’s sense of safety and balance. If we still lived in a small town, things would’ve worked out in a different pattern. Small town cops have nothing better to do than to set up speed traps and harass harmless drunks stumbling home from the bar; they have to do something in order to justify their existence. In a small town, one wandering drunk embodies the shaky line between order and chaos. In a city, especially one as self-involved as Phoenix with its image of being the new west coast, a wandering drunk in a decent pair of shoes isn’t the harbinger of anarchy; he’s a symbol of the economic recovery.



I kept the receipt, though. Just in case.



4.



Pendleton was annoyed by my ability to use reason to justify what he saw as unreasonable and unjustifiable behavior. He probably cut me some slack because my drinking didn’t pick up until after his daughter (Actually, she was his step-daughter.) and I split up. Also, I think he felt a little responsible, since he was the one who bought me my first beer.



I was eighteen and my ex and I had just started dating. She was seventeen and occupied nearly all of my attention, and he was worried that we were getting too serious too fast. To try and pull me away, he started taking me with him on his junk jaunts. Almost every Saturday he’d get up early and hit every yard sale, estate sale, and junk shop he knew. And he knew them all. And they knew him. He never looked for any thing in particular. Mostly, when people collect things, they focus on something specific. Baseball cards. Comic books. Tiffany lamp shades. Native American Figurines. Rare books. But not Pendleton; he collected everything and anything. It was like unearthing rare treasure to him. He kept piles of figurines, broken machines, buttons, pins, books, records, and furniture. He had two old Victrolas that, had he put the working parts together, he would’ve had one working record player; he didn’t, though. “It’ll ruin the value,” he said.



The junk dealers laid in wait for him with boxes of knick knacks and odds and ends. Once he came home with the carcass of an iron belly wood stove that was rusted beyond recognition and use. All it needed, he claimed was some repair and it could be useful again. He had to leave it on the front porch, though, because there was no room in small trailer for it.



I tried to understand his fascination, but I never really got into it. I kind of thought he went on his jaunts to get out of the house and away from the harpy voice of his wife and her continual attempts to force him into her idea of respectable self-improvement. My ex told me, with critical tone, that he’d been “that way” since the accident. It happened at work. One of the other mechanics was moving a truck full of engine blocks and rolled over Pendleton’s feet and ankles; the guy was clearly high, apparently. But he was the owner’s son, and when the doctors told Pendleton he’d never be able work on his feet again – they didn’t even think he’d be able to walk again (mostly because the insurance wouldn’t pay for the necessary operations) – the garage made it out that he’d been working on car in the path of the truck, making the accident his fault. That meant that not only did he lose his job, but he didn’t get any worker’s comp, either. I can’t say I blamed him for being a little bitter.



On one of the jaunts he took me on, we stopped and looked at an old Chevelle. It had been beaten up and abused and left out at the mercy of the elements. The body was covered in rust. The wheel wells in the front and the back were deteriorating. The tires were rotting. The engine was locked up. The seats were torn – done by cats, the owner said. He wanted $500 for the wreck. He would’ve asked for more, he told Pendleton, but his old lady was tired of looking at it and was making him get rid of it. Pendleton stared at the car for a long time. After a while, the owner stopped talking to him and wandered away because Pendleton looked like he was in trance. Had it been somebody else, they guy might’ve made him shove off; but Pendleton was good head and half taller and half a man larger. He wasn’t someone that anybody forced to do anything.



At first, I thought he was going to buy the car; but then he looked over at me and asked if I was ready to go. We left and before we stopped at one of his usual stops – a junktique shop housed in an old gas station on Elm Street – Pendleton stopped at a 7-11 and brought a couple of 22 ounce bottles of beer. He gave me one and drank his without saying anything. He just stared out the windshield. I drank mine. I’d never had beer before, and I’d always heard that nobody liked it the first time they drank it. But I did. It tasted like ginger ale to me. I drank it down pretty quickly, and Pendleton and I went on. He never mentioned it to his wife or my girlfriend, and we never talked about it.

Pendleton Underground: Part 2 of 7

Pendleton hated my drinking; he grew up with parents who were rotten, miserable drunks that took their miseries out on him. Even after they quit drinking they still acted like drunks, and well into his adulthood they heaped whatever abuse on him they could. He called them dry drunks. Sometimes he spat on the ground when he said it. Yet while he despised my drinking, he only ever mentioned it to me twice. The rest of the time he just shook his head in his silent, disapproving way.

I drank my tumbler of cheap scotch and sat on the balcony, smoking. The sun was setting. The weather finally cooled off and Arizona was tolerable.

My voice came back just in time for Red to call; somewhere on the bus ride from Cincinnati to Phoenix I lost it. On the 21/2 day trip that had been an advantage; not being able to talk meant that other, more gregarious passengers lost interest in me. I’m not sure what it is about travel that compels people to find complete strangers to talk to. Filling the empty hours with stories and not-so-funny anecdotes from their lives does nothing to make the hours less empty. A big boned woman got on the bus at Fort Hood and sat down next to me. She started telling me that she was going to Hollywood because her high school sweetheart had cheated on her before he deployed to Afghanistan. “I’m going to be a movie star,” she said. “And when he sees me in the movies, he’ll see what he missed out on.” I guess that was as good a reason as any to get on a bus and bother total strangers; if I had been able to talk though, I probably would have told her that she was more likely to end up giving $20 blow jobs in the front seats of cars and taking it up the ass for an extra 10. She was cute enough to hook, but the camera would not appreciate her broad chest, round face, and saddle-bag hips. There was a vacant look in her dishwater eyes that made me think of dead fish. When she found out I couldn’t talk, she moved next to a nice looking old man who, (I overheard) was carrying his dead sister’s ashes to some ancestral place in order to release them.

Pendleton would’ve enjoyed eavesdropping on them, and he would’ve enjoyed talking to the jilted girl. Despite her broadness, she had firm grapefruit tits and he would have enjoyed picturing her topless. Of course, he would’ve been polite; he prided himself on being a gentleman. He called it Southern Gentility.

My tumbler of scotch was empty again, so I refilled it. The cooler weather brought people out of hiding and into the twilight. My neighbors were sitting out on their balconies and all the kids were playing in the small patch of green space that substituted for a courtyard. Sometimes when the kids played kickball one of them would inadvertently hit my door. When that happened I usually stuck my head out and told them to hit somebody else’s door. I made sure to sound mean enough to scare them off. That worked usually worked for two or three days before it happened again.

I learned about being a man from Pendleton. He was really good at it, too. Mean and scary. The first time I went to pick up my ex-wife for a date, he sat in his chair and stared at me the entire five minutes I stood in his living room. Actually, it’s unfair to call it a living room. They lived in a small rundown trailer at the time. The closet-sized back bedroom was occupied by my ex and her sister. Pendleton and his wife slept in the front room. The bed doubled as a couch, and his chair sat facing the door. I was so nervous that I never took my hand off the door knob. He told me later that it was a game he liked to play with people – especially boys who came to date his daughters. He didn’t have to talk, he said, because he was big enough to not have to. “Being silent is better than cleaning a shotgun or showing off a knife collection,” he said. Silence was a less specific threat that relied on the other person’s imagination. Then he told me he liked me right off because I was clearly scared shitless. That, he told me, meant I had a vivid imagination.

Pendleton Underground: Part 1 of 7

He was dead and buried for a month before anybody called to tell me.

“I wasn’t s’posed to tell ya,” Red said through the phone. “Brenda made me PROMISE. But I jus’ didn’t think it was RIGHT. Ya know?”

That Brenda didn’t want me to know didn’t surprise me. She and I didn’t get along even before Pendleton married her. She was about the same age as me, which made Pendleton 20 years her senior. He and I had managed to stay friends even though my marriage to his daughter didn’t last; I suppose it had something to do with the fact that his marriage to my bitch of an ex-mother-in-law failed not long after and he moved in with me instead of living in his truck. Even though we got along alright, the two of us in the same living space wasn’t ideal for a lot of reasons – not the least of which that it caused tension between him and my soon to be ex-wife. By the time my divorce was final, I had abandoned the trailer we’d been living in (that I had been living in with his daughter before she left) and moved on to less greener pastures. We managed to stay friends, though, and when he married Brenda I did my best to be happy for him.

The last conversation I had with Brenda was in a hospital waiting room. Prior to that, I hadn’t spoken to her or Pendleton for about two years.She told me to keep in touch. I knew she didn’t mean it. So I didn’t. I liked to think he understood; it’s hard being friends with someone when you don’t get along with his wife, and I didn’t want to cause any trouble. It was easier to move on. It was Red who called to tell me Pendleton was in the hospital and that his condition was pretty serious.

Red first came around because he was dating a friend of my future ex-wife’s; and when that relationship ended because he wanted to settle down and have kids and she wanted to collect stuffed animals and relive the sexual abuse heaped on by her step-daddy, Red stuck around. He and Pendleton could talk about cars. Before the accident that ruined him for work and eventually contributed to his death, Pendleton was a mechanic… and from what I could tell, a pretty good one. He had that magic touch. All he had to do was put his meat hook hands in an engine and regardless of what was wrong or how long it sat, the fucker started every single time. With me, Pendleton talked about books. He never went to college; but he thought it was important to be educated, and he read everything he could get his hands on – from history and sociology to theology, new age medicine, and economics. He told me once that he thought of himself as “a student of human nature.” I asked him what he thought of my nature. He laughed and didn’t answer. Before long Red started reading books so he and Pendleton could talk about that, too.

“Did he go back to the hospital?” I asked. I could hear Red breathing through the phone and he sounded like he’d been drinking. “Was he there for a while? In the ICU? Was he…”

“It was kind of sudden,” he cut me off. “He died at home. It was his heart. It just gave out, ya know? I mean… hell. It was under so much strain anyway, and along with everything else…”

Pendleton was a big man. He once bragged to me that he caught an engine block when the chains holding it up came undone. If he hadn’t caught it, he said, his boss at the garage would have been crushed.

“Thing is,” he also told me, “if I HADN’T caught it and he had died, I probably would’ve ended up getting his job. And if that had happened, I’d probably still be working.”

Red was trying really hard to get off the phone. So I let him. There was no point in prolonging the conversation anyway. Without Pendleton as a common factor, I wasn’t sure there was anything left for us to talk about. I wondered briefly how he felt about breaking his promise to Brenda; but Red clearly saw a larger obligation. That was just the way he was; his days were ruled by his obligations the way a dog is ruled by a leash. Red lost sleep if he got to the end of his day and some small thing was left undone. That was another thing we didn’t have in common; my only obligations have always been to myself. And if I can’t sleep, I drink until I do.

We exchanged our goodbyes. He said he’d call again. He said for me to call him. He told me not to be a stranger. He told me I should visit him so that we could go out drinking the way we used to. I said goodbye and thanked him for telling me. I told him to take care of his family. Then I hung up and poured myself a drink.