Nothing Better To Do - a novel in stories - Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Letter to the Editor of the Serena Daily Banner:

Dear Editor:

I am perturbed at the praise which you have heaped upon the Serena Police Department in today's (Monday's) editorial about their efforts to snag child molesters over the internet. Isn't it bad enough that our Federal Government has taken it upon itself, spending billions of our tax dollars in the process, to police the entire world? Is it really necessary for a small town in Ohio to assign four police officers to entrap perverts from around the country? So Officer Paige grabbed a greasy trench-coated chicken hawk from Toledo by pretending to be a pimply faced cheerleader from the Serena Middle School... So what! Toledo is more than two hundred miles from here. If the Serena P.D. hadn't reached out to him via America On Line, the moron would never have set a foot on Serena soil in the first place.

If they want to police something, let them police this: cars that idle in front of my house in the middle of the night with stereos, more magnificent than the organ at the Mormon Tabernacle, blasting away at a gazillion decibels. The bass-line is so thunderous that, when it pounds against my chest, I fear it will stop my heart. These automobiles are driven by teenagers from Serena, not Toledo. And they have sought me out at my house right here in our town. Officer Paige wouldn't have to surf the web to find them.

I realize that the current curfew laws of this town are not being enforced. How could they be, when four officers are sitting at computer keyboards, instead of behind the wheel of a police cruiser? But let me dare to suggest that we enact another law, one which might more directly target the offenders, a noise pollution law. In the village in the suburbs of New York City, where I resided before I moved here, officers were authorized to ticket automobiles which were found playing their radios above a certain level. Summonses were issued and the Village Justice handed out stiff fines. In no time at all, word got out in surrounding towns that, if you drove through our village, you better turn it down and roll up your windows. It worked like a charm.

Id like to see that taken one step further. In addition to fining the users, we should go after the dealers, in particular Calvin's Car Tunes on the corner of State Street and Second Avenue. I ride by there all the time and I have witnessed him installing speaker systems which require the removal of entire back seats in order to fit them in. We should string up Calvin and send that other schmuck back to Toledo.

Very truly yours,

Harry Kresge

***

Kresge dropped his letter at the post office then set out to find a place out by the by-pass, called the Blue Moon Tavern. He hadn't been in a bar since he moved to Ohio, three months before. Someone had told him that this place was no fern bar. He hated fern bars and the yuppies they drew like flies. He had worked up a thirst while writing the letter to the editor of the local newspaper. He needed a cold beer, not one from the fridge, but one with a little local flavor. He wanted to see how the yokels would feel about a noise pollution law.

The parking lot of the Blue Moon Tavern was badly in need of resurfacing. There was a handful of vehicles, mostly old pick-up trucks. Harry didn't think his cinnamon red 1990 Taurus wagon would look too out of place here. Yes, this would do just fine.

Once inside, it took a minute for his eyes to adjust enough to see the half-dozen men at the bar. It was a good place to be on a hot summer afternoon, even if it did smell of stale beer and disinfectant cakes from the urinals in the men's room.

Harry picked a stool equidistant between two groups of men and ordered a draft. He looked up as the bartender was drawing his beer and was startled to see himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was surprised every time he looked in a mirror these days. He had let his hair go to its natural gray, instead of using that hair product with a lead acetate base, which he had been using for the last five years. He feared that the lead had been poisoning his brain. He had been applying it once a week. He was sure he was thinking more clearly, now that he had stopped for three full months. He hadn't yet gotten used to the gray, but it went well with the lines in his face. It went well with his new philosophy, as well: no more pretending to be what you're not.

I'm a cranky old man, he thought. So be it.

The bartender returned with his beer. "You live around these parts?"

"Right here in Serena," Harry said. "I'm new in town. Moved here from New York for some peace and quiet."

"What do you do?"

"I gave up being a lawyer to try my hand at writing."

"Shoot. You gave up them big bucks to move down here."

"I didn't exactly give up big bucks. I might very well have been the poorest lawyer in the Apple. When people equate lawyers with sharks, they always forget one thing: A shark can never stop swimming, if it does, it will drown. I got tired of being out in the middle of the cruel sea, never able to stop moving."

"How's the writing business going?"

"Forget about it! The barking dogs and the teenagers with their car stereos have finally driven me in here."

"Hah. Welcome to Serena, Mister."

"Call me Harry."

"I'm Freddie."

"You read today's paper. Freddie?"

"Yup."

"You see that editorial about the four cops they've got assigned to patrolling the internet."

"Ain't that something, how they caught that pervert from Toledo. They should lock that son-of-a-bitch up and throw away the key."

"But do you think that the taxpayers of Serena should be paying for four full-time cops to go after some guy in Toledo, or anywhere else for that matter?"

"I never thought about it that way. You've got a point there." Somebody got his attention and he wandered off to draw some more beers.

Harry went back to staring at himself in the mirror, wondering if there wasn't something wrong with him. It seemed like he was out of step with the rest of the world, or at least with the rest of Serena, Ohio. In three months, he must have written a dozen letters to the editor. Not one of them was published, despite that fact that each one of them was more eloquent than anything else he had seen in that rag. It seemed that all they were interested in around here was the Four-H competitions at the County Fair and the up-coming high school football season. Things needed to be stirred up, but if the paper didn't see fit to publish his letters, it didn't look like he was going to get very far. In New York, his letters were almost always printed. The Times, the Daily News, the Post and, especially, the Village Voice, were his regular venting grounds. But in New York, he wasn't even a flea on an elephant's ass. He thought it would be different here. It was different alright, but not in the way he expected.

Freddie returned and tapped Harry's empty glass with his forefinger.

"Fill it!" Harry said.

Freddie brought another beer. "What do folks in New York think of the Bengals?"

"The Bengals...?" Harry was caught off-guard. "Oh, football. I don't know that New Yorkers think about the Bengals very much. Maybe the Jets fans do. I used to follow the Giants, but not anymore. It got to the point that I couldn't remember what happened from one week to the next. If you asked me, I couldn't tell you who won the Super Bowl last year. So I figured, what's the point? After awhile, it all becomes one big blur. It's the same with all sports. I even gave up on the Yankees."

Freddie was disappointed. Harry seemed alright for a New Yorker, but if they didn't have that male common ground of sports to fall back on, it didn't seem like there would be much else to talk about.

"What do you think about these goddam boom boxes on wheels?" Harry asked.

"You mean those cars that go thump, thump, thump? Those damn thumps could almost knock a person over."

"Yeah, that's what I mean."

"My kid's got one. I make him shut the stereo off before he turns onto our street."

"Good man! I wish my next-door neighbor would do that with her son. But the problem is she's deaf, literally. She probably wonders where the vibrations are coming from. Maybe she thinks we're having earthquakes. And her kid, he's a goddam sociopath. I keep threatening to call the cops, but it doesn't do me any good. He rolls up at midnight, wakes me from a dead sleep, then shuts her down. If I called the cops, by the time they would arrive, he'd be in bed, asleep himself. I've been thinking about taking a shotgun to his car."

"I know the feeling. I keep telling Cal Gardner he oughta stop installing those things, or take them down a notch, at least. But he's got eight kids to feed. The oldest one's seventeen and pregnant. Both his wives run off and left him. He says he can't afford to stop selling them. And besides, if he did, the kids would just run over to Dayton and buy them."

"That wouldn't be Cal of Calvin's Car Tunes, would it? I just wrote a letter to the editor of The Banner, suggesting that he be strung up."

"You don't want to be doing that." Freddie smiled. "He's one of my best customers. In fact he's right over there." He pointed to a man who was talking to two other men a few feet to Harry's left. "Cal, why don't you come on over here. I got a fella wants to meet you."

Kresge got that sheepish feeling he always gets when he's stuck his foot in his mouth. He was sure that this Cal fellow would turn out to be alright, and then the paper would finally decide to publish one of his letters, the one suggesting that they lynch Calvin of Car Tunes. Oh well.

A dark, wiry, little man, about ten years younger than Harry, worked his way over to where Harry was seated and climbed up onto the stool next to him. He extended his right hand as Freddie was making the introductions and recounting some of their conversation about the thumps that came from the cars Cal had worked on.

"To tell you the truth, I can't stand the things myself. I wear a pair of ear protectors like they use over at the airport, whenever I'm working on them. The trouble is, they want them bigger and louder all the time and the manufacturers are eager to oblige them. I got into the car radio installation business back in the days of the eight-track. It seemed harmless enough. I've got too many financial obligations to quit now."

"It goes to show you, there are two sides to every story. I'd just like to fix that psycho boy who lives next-door to me."

"What's his name? I probably installed his rig."

"I don't actually know his real name, but the other kids call him Snake."

Cal's face lit up. "Of course, it would have to be him! He has a standing order with me for the most powerful equipment that hits the market. He works after school, weekends and all summer, just raising the cash to buy the stuff. His mother's deaf and his father ran off to Cincinnati. I left a message on the kid's answering machine, just before I came over here. I got a new pre-amp in today. Get this, they call it the Enola Gay model. It'll blow his socks off"

"And mine too, no doubt," Kresge added, dejectedly.

"Sorry 'bout that, but my oldest daughter is due around Thanksgiving and we don't know who the father is. Looks like I'll be adding another mouth. I wish there was some way I could help you."

"There isn't any chance you could cause the son-of-a-bitch to go deaf, too, is there?"

"Hell, they're all going deaf. That's why they have to keep making the stuff louder."

"How about something that will pop his eyes out of his head, make his brains run out his ears?"

Cal smiled at that thought. "This new pre-amp comes with a disclaimer. The output is preset at the factory and the control is sealed. There is a warning, in large print and red ink, not to break the seal. If you do, the company will not be liable for any damages. I would never take it upon myself to do such a thing. I would normally just install the pre-amp and not mention it to the customer. But with Snake..."

"Oh, yes! Please do it. If you tell that moron about the warning, maybe show him where the control is, he will surely break the seal and turn it all the way up. And it won't be your fault. Do you have any idea what might happen?"

"He's got four eighteen inch custom speakers connected to his sub-woofer. They fill the back seat and trunk of his Corolla. When they blow they'll probably take out his rear window. I never liked that kid - a real wise ass."

Cal pulled a slip of paper out of his wallet. It had Snake's phone number written on it. "Let me see if he's home, yet." He dialed his cell phone.

"Snake? You get my message? When you wanna bring it in? Okay, see you then."

Harry could hardly contain himself. "When's he coming in?"

"Saturday afternoon, after he gets off from work."

"What do you think will be the first thing he will do, after he leaves your place?"

"He'll take the car home, and try to break the seal."

"Precisely. But will he be able to get at it?"

"I'll be sure to set it up so he will, even if I have to draw him a map."

"Thanks, pal. You have a friend for life."

"There's only one thing I ask"

"Anything. You name it."

"Videotape it for me."

Harry agreed and they spent the rest of the afternoon and evening drinking beer and swapping stories.

***

Kresge opened the newspaper and was pleased to find that the editor of The Serena Banner, once again, had chosen to ignore his letter. It was Saturday. If they had been going to print it, it would have appeared by Thursday or Friday at the latest. Now there was nothing to do, but wait for Cal's phone call. He had promised to call as soon as Snake left Calvin's Car Tunes with his newly installed equipment. The camcorder was in place, aimed out Harry's bedroom window at the driveway of the house next-door. He scrambled some eggs with left-over sausage and peppers for his lunch and waited for the phone to ring.

Cal sounded excited when he called. "You know what that goddam kid wanted me to do?"

"Let me guess. He wanted you to break the seal and turn it all the way up, yourself."

"Exactamundo. Of course, I refused to do it. And I made sure I had witnesses. I also made him sign that paper you wrote up, saying that he received the pre-amp in sealed condition and was advised not to touch it. Get ready, he should be there in ten minutes. Don't forget the video."

"Thanks. I'm all set."

Ten minutes later, Harry heard the moment of truth thumping like the heartbeat of Mother Earth, herself. It was about three blocks away.

***

On Saturday nights, the Blue Moon Tavern was always busy. On this particular night, every stool and every booth was occupied and there were a few additional standees at the bar. Harry and Cal had arrived early and helped Freddie hook Harry's camcorder to the large screen television which was suspended from the ceiling over the service end of the bar. Then they took seats at the other end, where they would have a perfect view of the screen. The Reds were playing a night game in Philadelphia. The game started at 7:30. By the fifth inning, they were down by six runs and the crowd at the bar had started to lose interest. Now it was time for the seventh inning stretch and a long run of commercials. Without any fanfare, Freddie switched the TV to video mode and pushed the button on the camcorder which started the tape.

Thump, thump, thump. The large speakers of the bar's stereo system provided a fair, though somewhat diluted, approximation of the sound of Snake's car as it approached his driveway outside Harry's bedroom window. The crowd in the Blue Moon suddenly became quiet. On the screen was depicted a vacant driveway. In a minute or so, a car pulled into it. The thumping had grown louder all the while, then suddenly stopped. The driver, a teenage boy with a baseball cap turned backward on his head, shut off the engine and got out of the car.

"Hey, that's Snake!" someone yelled.

"What happened to the ball game?" someone else called out.

"Fuck the ball game!" came another voice.

On the screen, Snake had gone to the trunk of his Corolla and opened it. He leaned inside and appeared to be looking at something. After a few seconds he went somewhere, off screen, and returned with a screw driver and a pair of pliers. He leaned back into the trunk, where he appeared to work for about five minutes. Then he closed the trunk and got back into the car and leaned toward the center of the dashboard.

KABLOOM! The trunk lid blew off the car and flew off screen. In actuality, it had landed on the roof of Harry's house. The car itself had risen about two feet. It came down with such force that it must have flattened the springs and busted the shocks, because it settled with the frame on the ground and the wheels canted outward. A baseball cap flew out the driver's side window.
"Holy shit!" someone broke the silence of the stunned crowd in the bar. Then there was loud cheering and laughing, followed by silence again, as they waited for the driver to reemerge. On the screen, it was a full two minutes before the door opened and Snake climbed out. His hands were clasped over his ears and he appeared to be crying. Once he was fully out of the car, he did a pirouette and fell to the ground. Soon the screen filled with people, apparently neighbors who had run out of their houses to see what had happened.

The crowd in the bar was laughing and cheering again. "Good on him!" one of them shouted. The rest voiced their agreement. "Play it again!" someone else shouted. There were no more requests for the ball game.

Cal leaned over to Harry. He had to shout in his ear, to be heard over the crowd. "It's a good thing for him, that he had his windows open. I can't imagine what would have happened if that concussion had been bottled up in there. As it is, the doctors over at Memorial say it'll be at least a week before he gets his hearing back."

Harry looked pleased with himself. "His mother had the car towed to the junkyard as soon as they got back from the hospital."

Freddie rewound the tape and they were running it again, when a grizzled old farmer type wandered over to where they were sitting. His smile was so broad it threatened to shatter his face along its considerable wrinkle lines. "What the hell did you do to that boy?" he asked Cal.

"Nothing. He did it to himself." He pulled a copy of the paper he'd had Snake sign earlier that day from his shirt pocket and handed it to the farmer.

The man read it and laughed. "Reminds me of the old monkey trap. The kid just couldn't resist the banana. But who the hell was the Johnny-on-the-spot who got it on tape?"

"Morely Stevens, I'd like you to meet Snake's new next door neighbor, Harry Kresge. He just moved into town."

Morely shook his hand. "Welcome to Serena, Harry."

***

One afternoon, about a week after Snake was released from Memorial Hospital, Harry started to experience a rhythmic rumble throughout his house. It was unmistakably the bass line of one of Calvin's sub-woofers, yet it was somehow different, of more seismic proportions.

Harry checked his watch. Sure enough, the high school had just let out. He went to the picture window in the living room at the front of the house. He had an unobstructed view of the entire street to his left, including Snake's driveway. There were no suspect autos in that direction. His view to his right was somewhat blocked by his own garage which stuck out from the front of his house. He thought the noisy car might be parked just out of his view, in front of the house next door. He doubted it. Those neighbors had never caused him any trouble. The problem was that deep bass is far less directional than treble.

Harry opened his front door and stepped outside. The sound seemed to be coming from his left, after all. From Snake's house, in fact. He walked down his driveway just to be sure. There were no cars on the street to his right. The sound was definitely emanating from the Snake residence.
Harry went back inside. He slumped onto the couch, trying to reason out this new noise problem. He had never heard a home stereo system with such a powerful sub-woofer - only in those stupid cars. Both his house and Snake's were constructed of brick. He had all his doors and windows closed and locked, yet this new thumping was louder than anything he had heard from Snake's car, except for that one time. Was it possible that he had salvaged the stereo and purchased new speakers?

Harry grabbed the yellow pages and found the number for Calvin's Car Tunes.

"Is it possible Snake's stereo could have survived the blast?"

"Most definitely," Cal responded. "The amp is equipped with a circuit breaker which kicks in if the power peaks over a certain level. The problem is, they don't kick in in time to save your speakers if there is an initial spike in power which is way over the limit. That's what happened to Snake. But he could have pulled the system out of the car, reset the breaker and hooked up new speakers."

"But how could he play it in his house?"

"Oh, that's easy. He has a power adapter. He bought it from me a couple years ago. He bought his first system before he was old enough to drive. Since he didn't have a car, he hooked it up in his room. Now he's got the Enola Gay Model workin' in there, eh? Must feel like a fuckin' earthquake."

Harry hung up and went back to the couch. Thank God for school, he thought, at least I'll have peace during most of the day. The sound stopped. Harry leaned closer to the window to see if anyone would come out of the Snake pit. Sure enough, Snake and two of his adolescent buddies, all three with their caps turned around backward on their heads, came out of the house. Snake was bouncing a basketball. They headed up the street and out of sight.

The next morning, Harry was awakened by the same bass-line. It vibrated his house and his bed. He peeked out his window, hoping that there would be a car parked outside. But there wasn't. He looked at the clock: 6:30. Snake would be getting ready for school. In twenty minutes it stopped. Harry looked out the window a second time and spotted Snake leaving the house with his books.

As he lay there, unable to get back to sleep, Harry pondered, once again, getting even. But this would be next to impossible. His and Calvin's first such escapade had required a great deal of luck. Snake would be more secure inside his own home. There was nothing to do, but be patient. In a few months, Snake would be stone-deaf, and Harry would have the last laugh. But wait... Deafness was nothing new to Snake. It had been a presence in his life since his birth. Harry had seen him talking in sign language to his mother on numerous occasions, their hands furiously crocheting sentences as they, no doubt, argued about something. After one such conversation, he had even seen the old lady haul off an smack him on the top of his head. He remembered wishing it would happen more often.

Then it came to Harry. Snake, the noisiest person Harry had ever had the displeasure to know, had no fear of permanent hearing loss. The more impaired his hearing, the more he cranked it up. It was as if Snake had a deaf-wish. And even if, in the end, he could no longer hear the music, he would be able to feel it thump, thump, thumping against his chest, like the very heart-beat Harry, himself, felt as he lay there considering his predicament.