Chapter Nine
It seemed that time was passing him by. In any event, something was passing him by, the music, morality, technology? Modern culture, in general, had suddenly gotten beyond him. Dot com. Dot com. Everything was a damn dot com. Television, radio, even billboards; dot com this, dot com that. Or, perhaps, he should say this dot com, that dot com. That was the order of it, wasn't it? Hell he wasn't even sure about something apparently as simple and common place as that. He knew it had something to do with the internet, whatever that was. Should he go on the way he was and let all this new-fangled computer stuff pass him by, or should he try to catch up? That was the question of the day for Hank Pitts.
One day he was driving over to Dayton in his pick-up when he spied a new store that had moved into one of those strip malls that had died of too much competition. "Comp U.S.A." was what the sign said. Hank figured it must have something to do with computers. It was a big place and there were lots of cars parked out front. He felt as if he could go in and wander around without being noticed, without makin' a fool out of himself. Hell, why not? Everything was an experience, and you can almost always learn from experience.
Hank felt like a groundhog who'd sprung bear trap. He'd asked a simple question of a salesman and ended up buying a desk top computer with a zillion gigabytes of somethinerother, which he was assured was "user friendly" and came with lots of free software and free internet service for a year.
He was so excited, he forgot what he had been going to Dayton for in the first place. He turned the truck around and headed right home. He was goin' on-line.
He soon discovered that "user friendly" is one of those relative terms. Hank was getting a headache trying to figure out what went where. He wasn't even sure what did what. But he got through it and, by nightfall, the colored lights of the computer screen were reflecting in his eyes and he heard those magic words for the very first time, "Welcome. You've got mail." The mail was from some fellow named Steve Case, who said he was the C.E.O. of America On Line and hoped that Hank would have a good time using his service. "That's nice," Hank mumbled to himself.
Hank thought this was pretty damn hot stuff. He was amazed by all the things his new computer could do. The only problem was, he didn't seem to need any of them. Oh, sure, he could write a letter, but he had no one to write to. He could email his kids, he supposed, but he didn't really have anything to say to them. He'd always been a man of few words. They knew he loved them. He didn't have to email that to them. What about this internet stuff, he wondered, the so called World Wide Web.
He surfed the web, as they say, night after night, until he finally decided that he had no practical use for it. One night his son called, said he'd been having trouble getting through. The line was always busy. So Hank told him about his new computer.
"You've got email, Dad?" his son had sounded amazed. "Wow, Hank Pitts has opened the 21st century with a bang."
So his son gave him his email address and that of his daughter, and Hank tried that out, but he was still a man of few words. The computer would sit there for days, sometimes weeks, before Hank would turn it on out of boredom. When he did, he would check his mail. Once in awhile, he would get a message from one of his children, but mostly there were advertisements, the junk mail of the internet. He heard they called it "spam". Hell, he liked spam, especially with grits and eggs. But he didn't like this stuff. He would delete it all without reading it.
One day he went online to check his mail and found that he had a message from someone named Debbie. Debbie was a window clerk at Post Office where Hank had been Postmaster before he retired. She'd be retiring, herself, in less than a year. He knew she had America On Line, because they had discussed it. She thought it was the bee's knees. She liked to do something called chat. It seemed to Hank that "chat" was all she did at the Post Office all day long anyway. Why she had to go home and chat some more was beyond him.
He wondered what Debbie could want. He hadn't been over to the Post Office for a few days. Perhaps he had a package. He opened the message. It said, "Click here for a good time." It was underlined, which Hank had learned meant to move the cursor onto it and click, and you'd get something else.
She must want to tell me about the Saturday Night Bean Supper over at the Legion Hall, he thought. Hell, I already know about that. He clicked anyway.
What he saw next changed old Hank Pitt's life forever. The screen filled with naked bodies doing all kinds of things to each other that they shouldn't be doin' in public, at least to Hank's way of thinking. The internet is public, isn't it? Hank asked himself.
Since his wife died, Hank hadn't been much for going to church, except for funerals and weddings. And when he was young, before he got married and settled down, he had been a randy son-of-a-gun. Of course, these days, his life was more sedentary. Maybe once a week, he'd drive over Hollowbrook to see the Widow Hutchinson.
So Hank was curious. He'd heard about this pornography on the internet, but he'd never seen it, himself. After awhile, he figured out what all this surfin' the web must really be about. No wonder so many folks were staying up all night playing with their computers.
Night after night, Hank surfed the web. There were thousands, no millions of pictures, mostly of women, letting men do horrible things to them. Some of them were teens. Some of them were grandmothers. Some of them were heavy-set and beyond. Some of them were even men that liked to dress up like women. But mostly they were beautiful young women with perfect bodies, what you might call models. Hank wondered where they got all these women, so many women who were willing to humiliate themselves in public. That's what it was wasn't it? Weren't they worried that someone they knew might see their picture? Weren't they afraid that they might be recognized?
He began to examine their eyes. He no longer cared to look at their breasts or their vaginas. He cared about their motivation. Maybe he even cared about them. He looked deep into their eyes and, mostly, he saw nothing. Especially with the model-types, there was nothing behind that shiny veneer of what he preferred to think was feigned enjoyment. These were the ones he called the professionals.
But, every once in awhile, he would come across a photograph that would strike him differently. There would be something in the face that would get his attention. He couldn't call it emotion. In these pictures, even indifference might pass for an emotion in comparison to the posed expressions of the professionals. It was sadness. Yup, he decided, that was what it was. Sometimes the sadness would show through, and that was what Hank set out to look for.
Every night on this new-fangled gadget with a zillion gigabytes of whatever, Hank would look for sadness. And when he found it, he would save it with the click of a mouse. He must have saved a hundred photographs of the deep sadness of humiliated women.
Sometimes, instead of going on the internet, Hank would spend the evening looking at the pictures he had saved, thinking of ways to make them less obscene; thinking, as an artist would, how he could paint these women, capturing their sadness, the sadness alone.
There was one photograph which he kept returning to. It was a photograph of a woman sitting on a toilet. It left nothing to the imagination, nothing, that is, unless you focussed on the sadness in her eyes. He had found it on a site called, "Women with hairy bushes," located at http://www.hairy_bushes.com/.
One night he decided to do something with the photograph. He had a program which could be used to do all kinds of manipulations. He could enlarge. He could sharpen, change the brightness and contrast, alter the colors, all kinds of things. And he could crop.
Hank started by cropping the photograph so that only about a quarter of it was left. All the obscene stuff was gone. What was left was this sad-eyed woman with her hair in disarray, head tilted to her right, resting on one hand. Her blouse was open revealing her small right breast. But it was the eyes that were the important part, eyes which, although they were downcast to the right, seemed to be looking at nothing, as if she were lost in thought.
He tried several crops before settling on one. Then he started using enhancements to take the picture out of the realm of photography and into his world, the world of the painting. He softened, posterized, balanced tone... He experimented over and over until he got it just right.
When he was done, he printed it out on the color printer, for which, up until this point, he'd never had a use. The end result was a painting worthy of Paris museum. "Woman, seated," he called it. Hank taped it on his refrigerator, where he would look at it while he ate his supper every night.
Hank did similar things to dozens of the other hundred-or-so photographs which he had saved, and he often went on the internet looking for more photographs to fix, but nothing came close to his first effort. There was something different about this woman. She looked like a foreigner. He imagined an exotic accent. He wondered about her, more than was, perhaps, healthy. He wished he could make her sadness go away.
As time passed, the Widow Hutchinson began to notice a certain indifference in her lover. He came around less; talked less, if that were possible; and seemed less enthusiastic in bed. She had been thinking that they ought to get married, make one household out of two, keep that rascal away from the Blue Moon. That would make more sense than the two of them carrying on this way, but now the prospect seemed about as remote as the man himself. After awhile, he hardly came around at all.
As for Hank, he stopped going on the internet altogether. He even considered selling the computer, or, perhaps, donating it to the middle school. He'd lost interest in fixing what was wrong with pornographic pictures. Putting brush to paint, to paper was more to his liking. He preferred landscapes, cornfields and farmhouses, woods and streams. Women were a bother.
***
One afternoon, Phil Rowley paid a social call to Mona Payne. It had been weeks since she had made him dinner and he had something he wanted to tell her about her son, another development in his amazing progress; that and the fact that he just plain wanted to see her again. There'd been this gnawing feeling in his chest in the intervening weeks. He needed to do something about it.
They swayed gently on her porch swing as he told her the story:
One Saturday, a couple weeks ago, Hank Pitts and I decided to take a ride down to Keeneland in Kentucky. That's something we do every now and then. It's not like we're gamblers or anything. It's just a day out. For twenty bucks, we have an afternoon's entertainment. I don't know if he mentioned it to you, but, this time, we brought House along with us to kinda give him a change of scenery.
We like to get to the track early to catch the daily double. I bet on a couple numbers I culled from the license plate on the car in front of us as we pulled into the parking lot. That's just something I always do. Hank bet his own plate. He was driving. As you can see, the two of us don't know much about improving the breed. House still had the twenty Freddie Edwards gave him, but he was holding onto it, it being the first money he had ever earned and all.
There were ten races on the card, mostly claiming races, usually about eight or ten horses in a race, so the odds weren't too bad. By the last race, neither one of us had lost much, so we decided to bet ten bucks apiece.
Hank was in front of me in the line at the ten dollar window. House had wandered off to get a hot dog, his third of the afternoon. In front of us in the line, a man and a woman were arguing. It started out soft, then got louder to the point where I thought something might happen. The man was obviously a farmer, dirty and bearded and in overalls. He talked like a man from Paintersville. Hank and I probably looked like a couple of hicks to some of the yuppies in the crowd, but there are hicks and then there are hicks. This guy looked like one of those in-bred types who rarely ventures off the farm. The woman was different. She had what sounded like a Russian accent.
The next thing I knew, the man hauled off and smacked her hard against the side of her head. She went down on her knees sobbing. It must have been a reflex reaction, but Hank knelt down next to her as if he were trying to comfort her. I guess it was a foolish thing to do, because that big hay seed was on a rampage. He kicked ole Hank right in the side of the head. Knocked him unconscious.
Well, I tried the grab a hold of the guy, but he tossed me off him like a bale of hay. Then he started after Hank, again. Suddenly, House was there as if he had just appeared out of thin air. He dropped his hot dog and his drink. Without a word, he grabbed the guy by the straps of his overalls and spun him around in a move that looked something like a pair of figure skaters. Then he shoved the guy to the ground and sat on the his chest. That farmer was big, but he looked puny in comparison to your son. After awhile, the man gave up struggling. House sat on him until the security force arrived. They cuffed him and held him for the city police.
An ambulance was called and the crew tended to Hank and the woman. They said she was okay, but they thought Hank needed x-rays at the hospital. They wanted to be sure he didn't have a concussion. The ambulance took Hank and I drove House and the woman to the hospital in Hank's car.
It wasn't any of our business, but the woman must have felt obliged to explain to us what the ruckus had been all about. She told us that was some kind of mail-order bride from Russia. I guess she would have done just about anything to come to America. She thought she would stay married to the farmer long enough to get a green card, then if she didn't like her situation, she would get a divorce. But she didn't liked her situation from the very start. The farm wasn't all it had been cracked up to be and the man was abusive on just about every level that a man can figure out how to abuse a woman. According to her, what we saw at the track was only a small part of her daily routine.
We waited while they ran some tests on Hank. When they were done with him, he found us in the waiting room. The woman, Irena, kissed Hank on the cheek. Well, he stared at her as if she had risen from the dead. In fact, she did look as if she had just climbed out of a grave. Her hair was a mess. Her skin tone was kinda grayish. And those eyes, those sad eyes. Hank just kept staring into them as if he had been hypnotized.
When I offered her a ride, she told us she had no place to go to.
Hank was acting awfully strange. "You can stay at my place," he told her. "You can stay as long as you want. I'm sort of an amateur painter. Maybe you can pose for me." Then he paused a minute while his face turned red. "With your clothes on, of course. Out on my back porch with my cornfield as a backdrop."
I almost dropped my teeth.
She stayed with him up until a couple days ago. Hank told me, the other day, she got a phone call from a Russian immigrant friend in New York. She promised her a place to stay and a couple of job opportunities. The next day, he drove her to the bus terminal in Dayton.
I don't know what's gotten into Hank, lately. He's been acting strange ever since he bought that darned computer. But there's one thing I do know. If House hadn't been along for the ride, we'd a been in a world of trouble.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Nothing Better To Do - a novel in stories - Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Harry Kresge picked up the phone. There were few seconds of dead air before someone would finally speak. Harry figured it was probably a sales call. He knew the drill: A computer dialed their number, now he would have to hold the line until the salesperson came on. Doesn't that just beat the band, he thought, I'm waiting for them to try to sell me something I don't want.
"Hello, may I speak to Jenny Chiu?" It was a woman's voice.
"She's not home."
"Is this Mr. Chiu?" Her voice sounded mechanical, almost computerized, as if she was reading from a script, reading with false enthusiasm, her bogus cheerfulness, a turn-off.
"Yes, this is Mr. Chiu," Harry lied for no particular reason, except it was probably easier than explaining, easier to say "no" with finality, when saying it with the imputed authority to speak on behalf of Jenny P. Chiu. He figured he could hang up when he finally tired of playing her and maybe she wouldn't call back. The man of the house would have spoken on the matter.
"Hello, Mr. Chiu. This is Betty, calling on behalf of Ameritech. How are you today?"
Harry wondered why they always started off this way. It provided him with the perfect opportunity to throw them off their script. "Not too good," He told the woman. "I just learned that my mother has been kidnapped by Albanian rebels in the Nicaraguan rain forest."
There was a moment of confused silence, then, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Then more silence as the woman fumbled, trying to find her place on the script. "Mr. Chiu, the reason why we're calling today is to introduce you to a wonderful new feature that will enhance the performance of your Caller-ID service."
"We don't have Caller-ID - and we don't want it. I told the same thing to the guy who called yesterday. Thank you. Goodbye." Harry hung up before she could find that paragraph in the script that deals with customers who haven't already signed up for Caller-ID.
Harry was pleased with himself. Mr. Chiu, hah! He smiled for a moment before a dark cloud crossed his moon of a face. Could it be the joke was on him?
He looked out the big picture window in the living room to see where Jenny's ten-year-old has wandered off. He had heard him getting his bike out of the garage, earlier, now he wasn't anywhere in sight. He hoped the little shit didn't get hit by a car, but he wasn't worried enough to go out and look for him. He had other things to do.
The washing machine had just stopped. Once again, he had forgotten to add fabric softener during the rinse cycle. Damn that phone call... He toyed with the idea of running the machine through the rinse cycle a second time, just so he could add softener. Jenny had a knack for catching him when he forgot. He decided to risk it. He unloaded the wet laundry into a wicker basket and took it to the clothesline in the backyard.
He looked around to see if Snake was in his yard. Do I give a shit if anyone sees me out here...? I've got more important fish to fry. Fish to fry... Literally, he thought. He had forgotten to take the chicken out of the freezer. It looked like Mrs. Paul's fish-sticks for the second time this week. Jenny was going to have a bird.
"Can I have a drink?" a small voice hollered out the back door.
"Be careful, don't spill!" Harry was glad to have a handle on the boy again.
The laundry hung, he came back into the kitchen to find an open container of milk on the table, a half-empty glass next to it. He had returned just in time to hear the front screen door slam behind the boy.
"Where you going?" Harry called after him, but there was no reply. So he was back where he started. He put the milk carton in the refrigerator, but left the glass where it was, in case the kid returned. Only two more weeks until school's back in session, Harry comforted himself. He couldn't wait to have the house to himself again. Summer is torture.
The glass on the table reminded him of something he'd forgotten to do. He went to the sink and started to load the dishwasher. The phone rang. He dried his hands on a dish-towel and picked up the receiver from the wall phone in the kitchen.
"Did you remember to vacuum?"
"Jeez, Jenny... Gimme a chance. I've been working like a slave all morning."
"Just reminding you," she said, her skepticism barely disguised.
"How's work?" he asked, hoping to sidetrack her.
As he talked, a movement caught his eye. He turned to see Jenny's daughter, trying to get his attention. She was cradling a half dozen pairs of jeans in her arms.
"Hold on a second," he told Jenny. "What is it?" he asked the girl. "I'm on the phone with your mother."
"Don't forget my jeans, when you do the laundry!" the girl said, dropping them in a heap at Harry's feet. She turned and stalked off to the self-imposed isolation of her room.
"What was that?" Jenny asked.
"Oh, nothing. Just the bitch giving me orders, again."
"Harry!"
"Yeah, yeah... I know..." He rolled his eyes. "But... Does she have to wear a clean pair of jeans everyday?"
"Make sure Billy practices the piano. And no video games. You got that? Where is he now?"
"He's in the bathroom," Harry lied. If Jenny knew he didn't have a clue where the brat was at that very moment, he'd have to endure the other lecture, the one about it not being good for the boy to be out gallivanting around all day.
The phone call finished, he went to the girl's room and listened at the door for a moment. The radio was playing softly. He knocked.
"What is it?" She sounded annoyed.
"I've already done the laundry. If you want those jeans washed today, do it yourself!"
The door flew open. The girl pushed past him, stomping emphatically all the way to the kitchen. She picked up the jeans and brought them back to her bedroom, where she dropped them in a pile in the middle of the floor. She slammed the door in Harry's face and turned up her radio.
"Bitch!" he tried to out-shout the radio. He went back to the dishes.
***
Now it was three o'clock. Harry heard the screen door. "Billy?"
"Yeah."
"Don't go anywhere. What do you want for lunch?"
"Cocoa Puffs," the boy responded without any hesitation, despite the fact that Harry had told him a hundred times that he can't have Cocoa Puffs for lunch.
"Grilled cheese, soup, or a hot dog?" Harry asked.
"French toast," the kid said, ignoring his menu.
"Deal." Harry was happy with the compromise. "While I've got you here, don't leave without practicing the piano."
"Later."
"Not later, either now, while I make your French toast, or right after you finish eating."
The boy turned on the television. Harry could hear him flipping channels until he got to the Jerry Springer show. There were the sounds of expletives being bleeped out, people shouting, furniture being smashed. Billy was laughing. He started to give Harry a play-by-play, calling it out all the way to the kitchen.
"Turn that shit off!" Harry moaned.
"Not yet. It's not over."
"Your lunch is ready."
"Bring it in here!"
***
It was six o'clock. Harry heard Jenny's car pull into the driveway.
"Your mother's here," he told the boy. "You better turn off that video game."
Billy jumped up from where he'd been manipulating the game controller on the couch. He unplugged the game and turned the television to the news. He barely scampered back to his seat by the time Jenny opened the door.
She stopped at the threshold and surveyed the room.
"What a shit-hole!"
"And a good evening to you, too. How was your day?"
"Don't try to be funny, Harry. My day sucked and the trip home was worse. I got a speeding ticket, 41 miles per hour in a 25 zone." She handed Harry the yellow summons.
Harry glanced at it idly, not really taking in any of the writing.
"I told the cop, 'I was only doing 35, you fat ass, and that was on a down-hill.'"
"Are you nuts?"
"Well not really, but I wanted to. And he wasn't really fat. In fact he was tall and skinny."
Harry glanced at the ticket, again. He was trying to locate the officer's signature. When he found it, he lets out a low whistle.
"What now?" Jenny asked.
"Orel Paige. You got a ticket from the notorious internet cop. I didn't know he was assigned to traffic."
She ignored Harry and looked around the living room, again. "Why is the video game on the floor? You call this room vacuumed? Did you feed my kids, Harry?"
The phone rang.
"I'll get it," Harry said, happy for the chance to escape. He picked up the receiver in the kitchen.
"Mr. Chiu?" asked an unfamiliar voice.
"Yes, this is Mr. Chiu."
Harry Kresge picked up the phone. There were few seconds of dead air before someone would finally speak. Harry figured it was probably a sales call. He knew the drill: A computer dialed their number, now he would have to hold the line until the salesperson came on. Doesn't that just beat the band, he thought, I'm waiting for them to try to sell me something I don't want.
"Hello, may I speak to Jenny Chiu?" It was a woman's voice.
"She's not home."
"Is this Mr. Chiu?" Her voice sounded mechanical, almost computerized, as if she was reading from a script, reading with false enthusiasm, her bogus cheerfulness, a turn-off.
"Yes, this is Mr. Chiu," Harry lied for no particular reason, except it was probably easier than explaining, easier to say "no" with finality, when saying it with the imputed authority to speak on behalf of Jenny P. Chiu. He figured he could hang up when he finally tired of playing her and maybe she wouldn't call back. The man of the house would have spoken on the matter.
"Hello, Mr. Chiu. This is Betty, calling on behalf of Ameritech. How are you today?"
Harry wondered why they always started off this way. It provided him with the perfect opportunity to throw them off their script. "Not too good," He told the woman. "I just learned that my mother has been kidnapped by Albanian rebels in the Nicaraguan rain forest."
There was a moment of confused silence, then, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Then more silence as the woman fumbled, trying to find her place on the script. "Mr. Chiu, the reason why we're calling today is to introduce you to a wonderful new feature that will enhance the performance of your Caller-ID service."
"We don't have Caller-ID - and we don't want it. I told the same thing to the guy who called yesterday. Thank you. Goodbye." Harry hung up before she could find that paragraph in the script that deals with customers who haven't already signed up for Caller-ID.
Harry was pleased with himself. Mr. Chiu, hah! He smiled for a moment before a dark cloud crossed his moon of a face. Could it be the joke was on him?
He looked out the big picture window in the living room to see where Jenny's ten-year-old has wandered off. He had heard him getting his bike out of the garage, earlier, now he wasn't anywhere in sight. He hoped the little shit didn't get hit by a car, but he wasn't worried enough to go out and look for him. He had other things to do.
The washing machine had just stopped. Once again, he had forgotten to add fabric softener during the rinse cycle. Damn that phone call... He toyed with the idea of running the machine through the rinse cycle a second time, just so he could add softener. Jenny had a knack for catching him when he forgot. He decided to risk it. He unloaded the wet laundry into a wicker basket and took it to the clothesline in the backyard.
He looked around to see if Snake was in his yard. Do I give a shit if anyone sees me out here...? I've got more important fish to fry. Fish to fry... Literally, he thought. He had forgotten to take the chicken out of the freezer. It looked like Mrs. Paul's fish-sticks for the second time this week. Jenny was going to have a bird.
"Can I have a drink?" a small voice hollered out the back door.
"Be careful, don't spill!" Harry was glad to have a handle on the boy again.
The laundry hung, he came back into the kitchen to find an open container of milk on the table, a half-empty glass next to it. He had returned just in time to hear the front screen door slam behind the boy.
"Where you going?" Harry called after him, but there was no reply. So he was back where he started. He put the milk carton in the refrigerator, but left the glass where it was, in case the kid returned. Only two more weeks until school's back in session, Harry comforted himself. He couldn't wait to have the house to himself again. Summer is torture.
The glass on the table reminded him of something he'd forgotten to do. He went to the sink and started to load the dishwasher. The phone rang. He dried his hands on a dish-towel and picked up the receiver from the wall phone in the kitchen.
"Did you remember to vacuum?"
"Jeez, Jenny... Gimme a chance. I've been working like a slave all morning."
"Just reminding you," she said, her skepticism barely disguised.
"How's work?" he asked, hoping to sidetrack her.
As he talked, a movement caught his eye. He turned to see Jenny's daughter, trying to get his attention. She was cradling a half dozen pairs of jeans in her arms.
"Hold on a second," he told Jenny. "What is it?" he asked the girl. "I'm on the phone with your mother."
"Don't forget my jeans, when you do the laundry!" the girl said, dropping them in a heap at Harry's feet. She turned and stalked off to the self-imposed isolation of her room.
"What was that?" Jenny asked.
"Oh, nothing. Just the bitch giving me orders, again."
"Harry!"
"Yeah, yeah... I know..." He rolled his eyes. "But... Does she have to wear a clean pair of jeans everyday?"
"Make sure Billy practices the piano. And no video games. You got that? Where is he now?"
"He's in the bathroom," Harry lied. If Jenny knew he didn't have a clue where the brat was at that very moment, he'd have to endure the other lecture, the one about it not being good for the boy to be out gallivanting around all day.
The phone call finished, he went to the girl's room and listened at the door for a moment. The radio was playing softly. He knocked.
"What is it?" She sounded annoyed.
"I've already done the laundry. If you want those jeans washed today, do it yourself!"
The door flew open. The girl pushed past him, stomping emphatically all the way to the kitchen. She picked up the jeans and brought them back to her bedroom, where she dropped them in a pile in the middle of the floor. She slammed the door in Harry's face and turned up her radio.
"Bitch!" he tried to out-shout the radio. He went back to the dishes.
***
Now it was three o'clock. Harry heard the screen door. "Billy?"
"Yeah."
"Don't go anywhere. What do you want for lunch?"
"Cocoa Puffs," the boy responded without any hesitation, despite the fact that Harry had told him a hundred times that he can't have Cocoa Puffs for lunch.
"Grilled cheese, soup, or a hot dog?" Harry asked.
"French toast," the kid said, ignoring his menu.
"Deal." Harry was happy with the compromise. "While I've got you here, don't leave without practicing the piano."
"Later."
"Not later, either now, while I make your French toast, or right after you finish eating."
The boy turned on the television. Harry could hear him flipping channels until he got to the Jerry Springer show. There were the sounds of expletives being bleeped out, people shouting, furniture being smashed. Billy was laughing. He started to give Harry a play-by-play, calling it out all the way to the kitchen.
"Turn that shit off!" Harry moaned.
"Not yet. It's not over."
"Your lunch is ready."
"Bring it in here!"
***
It was six o'clock. Harry heard Jenny's car pull into the driveway.
"Your mother's here," he told the boy. "You better turn off that video game."
Billy jumped up from where he'd been manipulating the game controller on the couch. He unplugged the game and turned the television to the news. He barely scampered back to his seat by the time Jenny opened the door.
She stopped at the threshold and surveyed the room.
"What a shit-hole!"
"And a good evening to you, too. How was your day?"
"Don't try to be funny, Harry. My day sucked and the trip home was worse. I got a speeding ticket, 41 miles per hour in a 25 zone." She handed Harry the yellow summons.
Harry glanced at it idly, not really taking in any of the writing.
"I told the cop, 'I was only doing 35, you fat ass, and that was on a down-hill.'"
"Are you nuts?"
"Well not really, but I wanted to. And he wasn't really fat. In fact he was tall and skinny."
Harry glanced at the ticket, again. He was trying to locate the officer's signature. When he found it, he lets out a low whistle.
"What now?" Jenny asked.
"Orel Paige. You got a ticket from the notorious internet cop. I didn't know he was assigned to traffic."
She ignored Harry and looked around the living room, again. "Why is the video game on the floor? You call this room vacuumed? Did you feed my kids, Harry?"
The phone rang.
"I'll get it," Harry said, happy for the chance to escape. He picked up the receiver in the kitchen.
"Mr. Chiu?" asked an unfamiliar voice.
"Yes, this is Mr. Chiu."
Nothing Better To Do - a novel in stories - Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Somewhere in his thirty-third year, Marvin Payne suddenly, and without any logical explanation, achieved a new level of intelligence. Brain-damaged at birth and virtually uneducated, folks around Serena never figured Marvin, or House of Pain, as they called him, would ever be meaningfully employed. They wondered what would become of him after his mother passed on. But one hot summer day, so the story goes, he walked into the house carrying a copy of the Serena Daily Banner and started reading the financial pages to his mama. Mona Payne supposedly told a neighbor that he had had the smell of beer on his breath that day and that prior to that he had never imbibed. There had been rumors that he had been seen in the Blue Moon Tavern that afternoon with Phil Rowley and Hank Pitts. House of Pain, himself, denied these reports, probably out of a sense of loyalty to the two old culprits.
Whatever the source of his new found abilities, House felt he was ready to go to work. For the next two weeks, he hounded his mother incessantly to help him find a job. This she would gladly have done, but for his insistence that she first try The Daily Banner. He wanted to be a reporter. She knew that was out of the question. And so, they were at an impasse. Finally, one morning, House took matters into his own hands and walked downtown to the offices of the newspaper.
On this special day, he wore a black child's cowboy hat perched atop his large pumpkin of a head, a gray tee shirt that didn't quite cover his considerable belly and black sweat pants that didn't quite reach down to his red Converse canvas high-tops. This cowboy hat, which would have blown off his head, were it not secured under his chin with a red draw-string, was a significant departure from his usual dirty white and green Oakland As baseball cap. You might say that he had dressed for the occasion.
When he returned home that afternoon, House was the proud holder of his first job, not as a reporter, but as night janitor. Gar Findlay, the Managing Editor of the newspaper, had told him he would give him the opportunity to work his way up. House was content with that compromise, figuring that it would only be a matter weeks before the folks at the Banner recognized his true worth. He would start sweeping up on Monday evening.
A few days earlier, Gar had received a phone call from Phil Rowley, apprising him of House's ambitions and asking him if there was any kind of job they could give him. He assured him that House had somehow become more intelligent and could probably hold down some kind of position. He had actually helped Phil on a plumbing job. Gar had already heard the rumors emanating from the Blue Moon, and, having always felt sorry for House, agreed to take him on.
On Monday afternoon, Mona Payne packed Marvin a lunch consisting of three bologna sandwiches on white bread with mustard, two slices of pound cake and a can of Genesee Cream Ale. She hadn't packed him a lunch in twenty years, since he had been a twelve-year-old in the third grade, but she still remembered what he liked. The beer was her own idea. She figured that his intelligence might need a little boost to get him through his first night on the job, so she inquired about the brand of choice at The Blue Moon and purchased a six pack at Dot's Market. That having been done, she convinced him to dress the way he had, the day he had worked with Phil, and sent him on his way.
House arrived at the offices of the Banner five minutes before his starting time of 4:00 p.m. He was met at the loading docks by the night foreman and handed the biggest push-broom he had ever seen. The brush portion was six feet long. Once they entered the area behind the docks, it was easy for him to understand the necessity for such a broom. The room was the size of the gym over at the grade-school, but darker and dingier. The cement floor was knee-deep in crumpled newspaper.
"This is easier than it looks," the foreman explained. "You start at the edges and sweep everything toward the middle. Come 'ere, I want to show you. You see this hole?" In the middle of the room was a rectangular hole about four feet by six feet. "You sweep everything into this hole. Underneath it, in the basement, is a baler. You don't have to worry about that. I'll run it. You sweep the paper into the hole and when the baler is filled, I'll run it - bale it all up. You see all this paper? We should be able to compress it all into one bale."
"You mean like hay?" House's eyes were wide in disbelief.
"You got it Bunky."
"House."
"What?"
"Just call me House. Everyone else does."
"You got it Bunky. You should be able to finish this job by the lunch break. After that, I'll take you up to the offices and show you what to do." The foreman left and House walked to one corner of the large room and started sweeping toward the middle.
As the foreman had said, the work was easier than it looked and House began to enjoy it, especially about half-way into the job, when he started to see some results. Whenever he reached the hole and swept papers down into it, the foreman would call up to him, "You're doin' fine Bunky. Keep up the good work!" House felt good about the job he was doing, although he suspected that the foreman was supposed to be up in the big room with him, helping him to sweep. After a couple hours, when the foreman came up to see how House was doing, House thought he smelled the odor of whiskey on his breath.
"You're a good worker, Bunky," he had said, as he looked around the room at the almost cleared floor. "The sooner you finish up, the sooner you can take lunch."
House liked the idea of that. He had already started thinking about those bologna sandwiches that were sitting in the brown bag which he had left by the door. He had even considered sneaking over and getting one to eat as he swept. Now, that bit of connivance wouldn't be necessary.
After he swept the last of the paper into the hole, he called down to the foreman and told him he was done.
"Get your lunch and come on down here, then." The foreman told him.
House found his brown bag then looked around, confused as to which door the foreman had gone through when he left him. He went over to the hole and started to climb into it.
"Jesus Christ, you don't want to do that Bunky! Use the door directly opposite the hole."
House found the door and went down the stairs which opened into the baling room. House looked around. In the middle of the room was a large piece of heavy machinery directly under the hole from upstairs. Along one wall was a steel table with pipe legs bolted to the floor. In a corner was an old recliner which looked like it had been salvaged from someone's trash. Next to it was a copy of the current edition of the Banner, opened to the sports section.
"Put your lunch over there!" The foreman indicated the steel table. "Then come over here and I'll show you how to thread the baling wire and I'll run the compressor."
When they finished, the foreman declared that it was lunch time and that since they had finished early, they would be able to take an extra fifteen minutes over the normal half-hour. He slumped into his recliner, reached under it and pulled out a flask.
"Lunch," he said, pointing to the whiskey. "What you got, Bunky?"
"House," Marvin corrected him. "Bologna."
"Now that I've seen that you can work, you can call me Norm," the foreman said.
House found a steel folding chair leaning against the wall. He opened it and sat. When he pulled the can of beer from his bag and opened it, Norm nodded in approval and gave him the thumbs up.
Norm dozed for awhile, then awoke with a start. He looked at his watch. "We'll give her another five minutes, then we'll go upstairs. They should all be gone by now."
***
The upstairs offices were a combination of cubby-holes in the center of a room about the size of the one House had just swept, surrounded along the walls by small offices with windows and doors that looked in upon the maze in the center. Norm handed him a smaller broom this time and gave him a canvas mail wagon to push around with him. "First you go around to all the rooms and cubicles and dump all the waste baskets into the wagon. Then you go back around and sweep every floor. I'll be down in the bailing room, tidying up. Come down and get me when you're done."
House had the place to himself. All the reporters and secretaries and whoever else worked here had long-since gone home. He felt good after the beer. So this was where he would be working when he got promoted to reporter, he thought. He smiled, trying to imagine which of the desks would be his.
He started in the outer offices. Most of the waste baskets were overflowing with paper waste. He began dumping them, stopping occasionally to read something that would slip to the floor.
The offices belonged to the different editors of the paper. Gar Findlay's office was clearly marked "Managing Editor" in gold leaf lettering on the glass pane in its door. It was in the corner and bigger than the others. House had been here before, the day he was hired. He had saved it for last. All the other baskets had been dumped, all the other floors swept. House looked at the clock on Gar's desk. Once again, he appeared to be ahead of schedule. He sat in Gar's large leather upholstered swivel chair and began handling the nick-knacks on his desk, fingering them as carefully as if they were rare treasured items. He opened and closed drawers.
To his right, on the floor was a wire waste-basket. House thought this was odd. He had already emptied a large brass one that had been quite full. This one had a label taped to the side that read "Letters to the Editor". House began to leaf through the pile. Every one of the letters was from someone named Harry Kresge. House had heard of this Kresge fellow. Freddie the bartender at The Blue Moon had been telling Phil and Hank about him. He was a lawyer from New York. He wasn't sure if he should dump this one. He went downstairs to find the foreman.
Down in the bailing room, Norm was laid out on the recliner, snoring loudly. House had to shake him to rouse him. "What? What? Geeze, don't ever do that! You done already?"
"Almost..." House went on to explain his dilemma.
"Yeah, you can dump it. It's like the Editor's private joke or something. When I first came on the job, I wasn't sure if I should dump it or not, so I asked, too. Go ahead. It's just more rubbish."
House went back upstairs. He dumped the can on top of the pile of trash which almost filled his wagon. He wondered what kind of special trash would get its own basket, labelled "Letters to the Editor." He pulled one off the top of the pile and began to read it:
Dear Editor:
It may not seem like much, but I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that I am no longer tailgated by tiny peroxide blondes in over-sized pickup trucks. This I attribute to having recently registered our car with the Ohio BMV and consequently having removed our telltale New York number plates. That first step toward immersion in Buckeyedom notwithstanding, we continue to be harassed, if not on the road, then at home.
The new neighbor's kid sets off firecrackers on our front lawn at all times of day and night in an apparent effort to get a second look at our teenage daughter. Just once, she came to the front door and excoriated him when he attached several bottle rockets to one of the small oaks in our front yard and sent them whistling onto our roof like a battery of Patriot Missiles in pursuit of an enemy Scud. Last night I had to go over there and remind him that it was 11:00 p.m. When I asked him to stop, he replied, "Oh, okay," staring at me as is if I had two heads.
I migrated to southwestern Ohio in an attempt to get away from the everyday noise of living in New York, the honking horns, garbage trucks, police and fire sirens, three-Concordes-a-day landing at JFK. I chose this place because I was somewhat familiar with the area, my son from my first marriage having attended college in nearby Hollowbrook. It looked like a nice quiet place to pursue a career as full-time writer.
There is an object lesson in what I am about to tell you, and it is this: Before you buy or rent a house, ask the owner if you can sleep in it for a couple nights.
The woman who lives next door to the little house we have rented here in Serena is deaf-mute, a fact that would be of no consequence to me but for certain aggravating factors. She is a pleasant woman who smiles and waves when she sees us. The problem is that she has a barking dog. Barking dogs are probably something Serenans don't even notice, much in the way that New Yorkers don't notice the yellow cabs which constantly have them in their cross-hairs. But a New Yorker will be acutely aware of a barking dog, tuning in to its every menacing growl, frightened yelp, off-pitch howl, and full-throated woof.
Imagine complaining to someone who can't conceive of that which is the very sum and substance of your complaint against them. If complaints to the non-hearing-impaired owners of barking dogs usually fall on deaf ears, try complaining when the owner really is deaf. So I haven't. I continue to smile and waive whenever I see her and she smiles and waives back, content in the silent world which I so long to attain. Ignorance is bliss.
A little about the four-legged offender himself: It looks like a ten-year-old miniature poodle that hasn't had a trim or a bath in a decade. As there is no logic to its barking, I have come to suspect that the dog itself may very well be deaf and/or blind. The usual things that will set a dog off, such as our ten-year-old son gliding his model airplane in the backyard or a boy setting off firecrackers, do nothing for this mutt. But when all is quiet and not another creature is about, he will suddenly let out with a string of barking that will continue, uninterrupted, for fifteen minutes, then, just as suddenly, stop. We might not hear from him again for an entire day. "Not bad," you say? You might be convinced to retract that, if you were subjected to the barking which occurs at unpredictable, random times, such as 4:30 a.m. and outside our bedroom window, while his owner sleeps soundly through it.
But there's more. Remember our young demolitions expert? He happens to be the son of the lady who can't hear and, therefore, operates with equal impunity to his furry sibling. If complaints to the non-hearing-impaired parents of unruly children usually fall on deaf ears, try complaining when the owner really is deaf. But you've heard all this before.
Ignorance truly is bliss. So is silence.
As I write this, I hear something that sounds like a dog whimpering in the yard of the house on the other side. We have lived here for all of two weeks. There has never been a dog there before. I look out the window and see something that looks like the mutt from the "Our Gang" comedies, right down to the black spot over one eye. Please tell me he's just visiting!
I guess I won't truly be a Serenan until barking dogs are as ordinary as the medallion cabs of my former life.
Very truly yours,
Harry Kresge
***
House liked the letter. It made him laugh. Freddie had said that this Harry Kresge was a funny fellow. House wondered if he knew that his letters to the Editor had all been thrown in the trash. Without knowing why, House decided to retrieve all the letters and take them home. There were about a dozen of them. He found a large envelope that had been in one of the waste baskets. He emptied it and used it to hold the letters. He filled it and stuffed it under his shirt. He decided it would be best not to mention this to Norm.
It was midnight, time to go home. The foreman was pleased with the job House had done. He promised to put in a good word for him. House knew that Norm liked him, because he worked hard and kept his mouth shut. If he could avoid waking him in the future, they would get along just fine.
That night House slept soundly atop the envelope full of letters which he had stuffed under his mattress. In the morning he would read them all.
***
Harry Kresge stopped to check his Post Office Box on his way to the Blue Moon. There was one letter, addressed to him in what he would later describe as a psychotic scrawl. The return address, also scrawled, purported to be that of the Serena Daily Banner. Harry opened it in the car, before pulling out of the Post Office parking lot. The letter was in the same hand:
Dear Mr. Kresge:
I regret that, due to space limitations, we are unable to publish your letter. I am, however, sympathetic to your plight and would like to offer you some advice.
My solution to your problem of the barking dog is to fight fire with fire. Get a dog of your own, a large vicious one. If you do not wish to own such an animal, borrow one. I have reason to believe that such a mongrel might be available. If you are interested I suggest that you speak to Morely Stevens. The dog's name is Godzilla. Need I say anything more?
The Editor
Kresge was both amused and a little bit frightened. He was certain that it had not been authored by the Editor of The Banner. But by whom? He would seek counsel at The Blue Moon over a cold one.
***
"Godzilla?" Freddie Edwards set the letter back down on the bar. He smiled wickedly. "Godzilla could swallow that mutt in one gulp."
"Well then, I'd have to say this letter contains nothing but sound advice," Kresge quipped. "But who could have written it?"
"Beats me. Morely should be in later. Maybe he'll know."
But Morely Stevens did not know. Neither did any of the other denizens of The Blue Moon. Phil Rowley, however, acted rather strangely when the letter was shown to him. Harry had the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. Had he recognized the handwriting? If he had, he wasn't saying.
"So, you want to borrow Godzilla for a week or so?" Morely asked Harry.
"Christ Almighty!" Hank chimed in. "Talk about the cure being worse than the disease... I was scared to feed that son-of-a-bitch over at Morely's place. I'd be damned if I'd take him home with me."
"All you got to do is chain him up in the yard," Phil said.
"Yeah, and push his food bowl over to him with a long stick," Hank added.
"Must be some dog," Harry said. "If it's alright with you, Morely, I'm game."
"Hell yes, it's alright with me," Morely said. "Just keep your girlfriend's kids out of the yard.
***
Morely Stevens arrived with Godzilla in a big wire cage in the back of his pick-up. The dog looked like a cross between a Doberman Pincer and a German Shepherd. Before he removed the dog from its cage, he carried a large pipe and a heavy galvanized chain into Harry's backyard. He pounded the pipe into the ground with a sledge hammer, having chosen a spot where the length of the chain would allow the dog to roam along the fence between Harry's yard and the yard next door.
"That should do her," he said when he finished rigging the chain. "Let's get the dog."
Harry's girlfriend and her two children watched wide-eyed out the windows as Morely removed the large snarling dog from the cage. Godzilla was on a short leash and Morely was having all he could do to control him as he led him into Harry's yard. When he finally managed to get the dog chained to the pipe and had set out bowls of food and water, he shook Harry's hand and turned to leave.
"I never liked that goddam dog."
"You are going to take him back, next weekend, aren't you?"
"We'll see..." Morely smiled wickedly.
***
"You got video?" Freddie asked, expectantly.
"Not this time, pal," Harry said. "It must have happened in the middle of the night."
"What exactly did happen?"
"All there is is circumstantial evidence. A hole chewed through my chain-link fence, bits of gray fur scattered about my yard, and a hole in the ground where Morely had pounded in the pipe."
"What did your neighbors say?"
"Not a peep. Who knows..? With that stereo thumping away all the time, they might not have noticed their dog is missing. Of course, I did clean up the fur. But there wasn't much I could do about the fence. Hey, both dogs are gone. Who's to say their dog didn't chew the hole and attack my, er..., Morely's dog?"
"Does Morely know yet?"
"Sure. I called him right away. Says he hopes no one ever finds Godzilla. He's glad to be rid of the dog."
The phone rang. Freddie answered it at the back bar, by the cash register. "It's Morely, for you." Freddie stretched the long chord and handed Harry the receiver.
"Harry?" Morely's voice was grave.
"Yeah?"
"You'll never guess who just showed up at my place, carrying the mangiest carcass I've ever seen."
"Godzilla?"
"You got it. Animal Control pulled in the driveway, right after he got home. Seems they've been following him for an hour or so, afraid to go after him."
"What'd they say?"
"They gave me a summons for not having a dog license. It's a fifty dollar fine."
"I thought Godzilla had a license."
"He does. The other mutt didn't have one. I told them he was mine, too. I figured it would be easier that way - less questions. I got a fifteen dollar fine for Godzilla being loose without a leash. They figured that since the other dog was dead, they'd let me go on that one."
"Har. Come on down here, I'll buy you a beer and give you the money for the fines."
"You know what the worst part of it is?"
"No, what?"
"I wanted them to take Godzilla and put him away, but they wouldn't do it. I told them, look what he did! He killed my other dog! You know what they said?"
"No, what?"
"They said, how'd they know the other dog didn't die of natural causes? They was just afraid to deal with the son-of-a-bitch."
"Where's Godzilla, now?"
"Chained up out by the barn, again. You want him?"
"Hell, no. Get your ass down here. I'll buy you a beer."
"Make that a shot and a beer."
"You got it."
Somewhere in his thirty-third year, Marvin Payne suddenly, and without any logical explanation, achieved a new level of intelligence. Brain-damaged at birth and virtually uneducated, folks around Serena never figured Marvin, or House of Pain, as they called him, would ever be meaningfully employed. They wondered what would become of him after his mother passed on. But one hot summer day, so the story goes, he walked into the house carrying a copy of the Serena Daily Banner and started reading the financial pages to his mama. Mona Payne supposedly told a neighbor that he had had the smell of beer on his breath that day and that prior to that he had never imbibed. There had been rumors that he had been seen in the Blue Moon Tavern that afternoon with Phil Rowley and Hank Pitts. House of Pain, himself, denied these reports, probably out of a sense of loyalty to the two old culprits.
Whatever the source of his new found abilities, House felt he was ready to go to work. For the next two weeks, he hounded his mother incessantly to help him find a job. This she would gladly have done, but for his insistence that she first try The Daily Banner. He wanted to be a reporter. She knew that was out of the question. And so, they were at an impasse. Finally, one morning, House took matters into his own hands and walked downtown to the offices of the newspaper.
On this special day, he wore a black child's cowboy hat perched atop his large pumpkin of a head, a gray tee shirt that didn't quite cover his considerable belly and black sweat pants that didn't quite reach down to his red Converse canvas high-tops. This cowboy hat, which would have blown off his head, were it not secured under his chin with a red draw-string, was a significant departure from his usual dirty white and green Oakland As baseball cap. You might say that he had dressed for the occasion.
When he returned home that afternoon, House was the proud holder of his first job, not as a reporter, but as night janitor. Gar Findlay, the Managing Editor of the newspaper, had told him he would give him the opportunity to work his way up. House was content with that compromise, figuring that it would only be a matter weeks before the folks at the Banner recognized his true worth. He would start sweeping up on Monday evening.
A few days earlier, Gar had received a phone call from Phil Rowley, apprising him of House's ambitions and asking him if there was any kind of job they could give him. He assured him that House had somehow become more intelligent and could probably hold down some kind of position. He had actually helped Phil on a plumbing job. Gar had already heard the rumors emanating from the Blue Moon, and, having always felt sorry for House, agreed to take him on.
On Monday afternoon, Mona Payne packed Marvin a lunch consisting of three bologna sandwiches on white bread with mustard, two slices of pound cake and a can of Genesee Cream Ale. She hadn't packed him a lunch in twenty years, since he had been a twelve-year-old in the third grade, but she still remembered what he liked. The beer was her own idea. She figured that his intelligence might need a little boost to get him through his first night on the job, so she inquired about the brand of choice at The Blue Moon and purchased a six pack at Dot's Market. That having been done, she convinced him to dress the way he had, the day he had worked with Phil, and sent him on his way.
House arrived at the offices of the Banner five minutes before his starting time of 4:00 p.m. He was met at the loading docks by the night foreman and handed the biggest push-broom he had ever seen. The brush portion was six feet long. Once they entered the area behind the docks, it was easy for him to understand the necessity for such a broom. The room was the size of the gym over at the grade-school, but darker and dingier. The cement floor was knee-deep in crumpled newspaper.
"This is easier than it looks," the foreman explained. "You start at the edges and sweep everything toward the middle. Come 'ere, I want to show you. You see this hole?" In the middle of the room was a rectangular hole about four feet by six feet. "You sweep everything into this hole. Underneath it, in the basement, is a baler. You don't have to worry about that. I'll run it. You sweep the paper into the hole and when the baler is filled, I'll run it - bale it all up. You see all this paper? We should be able to compress it all into one bale."
"You mean like hay?" House's eyes were wide in disbelief.
"You got it Bunky."
"House."
"What?"
"Just call me House. Everyone else does."
"You got it Bunky. You should be able to finish this job by the lunch break. After that, I'll take you up to the offices and show you what to do." The foreman left and House walked to one corner of the large room and started sweeping toward the middle.
As the foreman had said, the work was easier than it looked and House began to enjoy it, especially about half-way into the job, when he started to see some results. Whenever he reached the hole and swept papers down into it, the foreman would call up to him, "You're doin' fine Bunky. Keep up the good work!" House felt good about the job he was doing, although he suspected that the foreman was supposed to be up in the big room with him, helping him to sweep. After a couple hours, when the foreman came up to see how House was doing, House thought he smelled the odor of whiskey on his breath.
"You're a good worker, Bunky," he had said, as he looked around the room at the almost cleared floor. "The sooner you finish up, the sooner you can take lunch."
House liked the idea of that. He had already started thinking about those bologna sandwiches that were sitting in the brown bag which he had left by the door. He had even considered sneaking over and getting one to eat as he swept. Now, that bit of connivance wouldn't be necessary.
After he swept the last of the paper into the hole, he called down to the foreman and told him he was done.
"Get your lunch and come on down here, then." The foreman told him.
House found his brown bag then looked around, confused as to which door the foreman had gone through when he left him. He went over to the hole and started to climb into it.
"Jesus Christ, you don't want to do that Bunky! Use the door directly opposite the hole."
House found the door and went down the stairs which opened into the baling room. House looked around. In the middle of the room was a large piece of heavy machinery directly under the hole from upstairs. Along one wall was a steel table with pipe legs bolted to the floor. In a corner was an old recliner which looked like it had been salvaged from someone's trash. Next to it was a copy of the current edition of the Banner, opened to the sports section.
"Put your lunch over there!" The foreman indicated the steel table. "Then come over here and I'll show you how to thread the baling wire and I'll run the compressor."
When they finished, the foreman declared that it was lunch time and that since they had finished early, they would be able to take an extra fifteen minutes over the normal half-hour. He slumped into his recliner, reached under it and pulled out a flask.
"Lunch," he said, pointing to the whiskey. "What you got, Bunky?"
"House," Marvin corrected him. "Bologna."
"Now that I've seen that you can work, you can call me Norm," the foreman said.
House found a steel folding chair leaning against the wall. He opened it and sat. When he pulled the can of beer from his bag and opened it, Norm nodded in approval and gave him the thumbs up.
Norm dozed for awhile, then awoke with a start. He looked at his watch. "We'll give her another five minutes, then we'll go upstairs. They should all be gone by now."
***
The upstairs offices were a combination of cubby-holes in the center of a room about the size of the one House had just swept, surrounded along the walls by small offices with windows and doors that looked in upon the maze in the center. Norm handed him a smaller broom this time and gave him a canvas mail wagon to push around with him. "First you go around to all the rooms and cubicles and dump all the waste baskets into the wagon. Then you go back around and sweep every floor. I'll be down in the bailing room, tidying up. Come down and get me when you're done."
House had the place to himself. All the reporters and secretaries and whoever else worked here had long-since gone home. He felt good after the beer. So this was where he would be working when he got promoted to reporter, he thought. He smiled, trying to imagine which of the desks would be his.
He started in the outer offices. Most of the waste baskets were overflowing with paper waste. He began dumping them, stopping occasionally to read something that would slip to the floor.
The offices belonged to the different editors of the paper. Gar Findlay's office was clearly marked "Managing Editor" in gold leaf lettering on the glass pane in its door. It was in the corner and bigger than the others. House had been here before, the day he was hired. He had saved it for last. All the other baskets had been dumped, all the other floors swept. House looked at the clock on Gar's desk. Once again, he appeared to be ahead of schedule. He sat in Gar's large leather upholstered swivel chair and began handling the nick-knacks on his desk, fingering them as carefully as if they were rare treasured items. He opened and closed drawers.
To his right, on the floor was a wire waste-basket. House thought this was odd. He had already emptied a large brass one that had been quite full. This one had a label taped to the side that read "Letters to the Editor". House began to leaf through the pile. Every one of the letters was from someone named Harry Kresge. House had heard of this Kresge fellow. Freddie the bartender at The Blue Moon had been telling Phil and Hank about him. He was a lawyer from New York. He wasn't sure if he should dump this one. He went downstairs to find the foreman.
Down in the bailing room, Norm was laid out on the recliner, snoring loudly. House had to shake him to rouse him. "What? What? Geeze, don't ever do that! You done already?"
"Almost..." House went on to explain his dilemma.
"Yeah, you can dump it. It's like the Editor's private joke or something. When I first came on the job, I wasn't sure if I should dump it or not, so I asked, too. Go ahead. It's just more rubbish."
House went back upstairs. He dumped the can on top of the pile of trash which almost filled his wagon. He wondered what kind of special trash would get its own basket, labelled "Letters to the Editor." He pulled one off the top of the pile and began to read it:
Dear Editor:
It may not seem like much, but I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that I am no longer tailgated by tiny peroxide blondes in over-sized pickup trucks. This I attribute to having recently registered our car with the Ohio BMV and consequently having removed our telltale New York number plates. That first step toward immersion in Buckeyedom notwithstanding, we continue to be harassed, if not on the road, then at home.
The new neighbor's kid sets off firecrackers on our front lawn at all times of day and night in an apparent effort to get a second look at our teenage daughter. Just once, she came to the front door and excoriated him when he attached several bottle rockets to one of the small oaks in our front yard and sent them whistling onto our roof like a battery of Patriot Missiles in pursuit of an enemy Scud. Last night I had to go over there and remind him that it was 11:00 p.m. When I asked him to stop, he replied, "Oh, okay," staring at me as is if I had two heads.
I migrated to southwestern Ohio in an attempt to get away from the everyday noise of living in New York, the honking horns, garbage trucks, police and fire sirens, three-Concordes-a-day landing at JFK. I chose this place because I was somewhat familiar with the area, my son from my first marriage having attended college in nearby Hollowbrook. It looked like a nice quiet place to pursue a career as full-time writer.
There is an object lesson in what I am about to tell you, and it is this: Before you buy or rent a house, ask the owner if you can sleep in it for a couple nights.
The woman who lives next door to the little house we have rented here in Serena is deaf-mute, a fact that would be of no consequence to me but for certain aggravating factors. She is a pleasant woman who smiles and waves when she sees us. The problem is that she has a barking dog. Barking dogs are probably something Serenans don't even notice, much in the way that New Yorkers don't notice the yellow cabs which constantly have them in their cross-hairs. But a New Yorker will be acutely aware of a barking dog, tuning in to its every menacing growl, frightened yelp, off-pitch howl, and full-throated woof.
Imagine complaining to someone who can't conceive of that which is the very sum and substance of your complaint against them. If complaints to the non-hearing-impaired owners of barking dogs usually fall on deaf ears, try complaining when the owner really is deaf. So I haven't. I continue to smile and waive whenever I see her and she smiles and waives back, content in the silent world which I so long to attain. Ignorance is bliss.
A little about the four-legged offender himself: It looks like a ten-year-old miniature poodle that hasn't had a trim or a bath in a decade. As there is no logic to its barking, I have come to suspect that the dog itself may very well be deaf and/or blind. The usual things that will set a dog off, such as our ten-year-old son gliding his model airplane in the backyard or a boy setting off firecrackers, do nothing for this mutt. But when all is quiet and not another creature is about, he will suddenly let out with a string of barking that will continue, uninterrupted, for fifteen minutes, then, just as suddenly, stop. We might not hear from him again for an entire day. "Not bad," you say? You might be convinced to retract that, if you were subjected to the barking which occurs at unpredictable, random times, such as 4:30 a.m. and outside our bedroom window, while his owner sleeps soundly through it.
But there's more. Remember our young demolitions expert? He happens to be the son of the lady who can't hear and, therefore, operates with equal impunity to his furry sibling. If complaints to the non-hearing-impaired parents of unruly children usually fall on deaf ears, try complaining when the owner really is deaf. But you've heard all this before.
Ignorance truly is bliss. So is silence.
As I write this, I hear something that sounds like a dog whimpering in the yard of the house on the other side. We have lived here for all of two weeks. There has never been a dog there before. I look out the window and see something that looks like the mutt from the "Our Gang" comedies, right down to the black spot over one eye. Please tell me he's just visiting!
I guess I won't truly be a Serenan until barking dogs are as ordinary as the medallion cabs of my former life.
Very truly yours,
Harry Kresge
***
House liked the letter. It made him laugh. Freddie had said that this Harry Kresge was a funny fellow. House wondered if he knew that his letters to the Editor had all been thrown in the trash. Without knowing why, House decided to retrieve all the letters and take them home. There were about a dozen of them. He found a large envelope that had been in one of the waste baskets. He emptied it and used it to hold the letters. He filled it and stuffed it under his shirt. He decided it would be best not to mention this to Norm.
It was midnight, time to go home. The foreman was pleased with the job House had done. He promised to put in a good word for him. House knew that Norm liked him, because he worked hard and kept his mouth shut. If he could avoid waking him in the future, they would get along just fine.
That night House slept soundly atop the envelope full of letters which he had stuffed under his mattress. In the morning he would read them all.
***
Harry Kresge stopped to check his Post Office Box on his way to the Blue Moon. There was one letter, addressed to him in what he would later describe as a psychotic scrawl. The return address, also scrawled, purported to be that of the Serena Daily Banner. Harry opened it in the car, before pulling out of the Post Office parking lot. The letter was in the same hand:
Dear Mr. Kresge:
I regret that, due to space limitations, we are unable to publish your letter. I am, however, sympathetic to your plight and would like to offer you some advice.
My solution to your problem of the barking dog is to fight fire with fire. Get a dog of your own, a large vicious one. If you do not wish to own such an animal, borrow one. I have reason to believe that such a mongrel might be available. If you are interested I suggest that you speak to Morely Stevens. The dog's name is Godzilla. Need I say anything more?
The Editor
Kresge was both amused and a little bit frightened. He was certain that it had not been authored by the Editor of The Banner. But by whom? He would seek counsel at The Blue Moon over a cold one.
***
"Godzilla?" Freddie Edwards set the letter back down on the bar. He smiled wickedly. "Godzilla could swallow that mutt in one gulp."
"Well then, I'd have to say this letter contains nothing but sound advice," Kresge quipped. "But who could have written it?"
"Beats me. Morely should be in later. Maybe he'll know."
But Morely Stevens did not know. Neither did any of the other denizens of The Blue Moon. Phil Rowley, however, acted rather strangely when the letter was shown to him. Harry had the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. Had he recognized the handwriting? If he had, he wasn't saying.
"So, you want to borrow Godzilla for a week or so?" Morely asked Harry.
"Christ Almighty!" Hank chimed in. "Talk about the cure being worse than the disease... I was scared to feed that son-of-a-bitch over at Morely's place. I'd be damned if I'd take him home with me."
"All you got to do is chain him up in the yard," Phil said.
"Yeah, and push his food bowl over to him with a long stick," Hank added.
"Must be some dog," Harry said. "If it's alright with you, Morely, I'm game."
"Hell yes, it's alright with me," Morely said. "Just keep your girlfriend's kids out of the yard.
***
Morely Stevens arrived with Godzilla in a big wire cage in the back of his pick-up. The dog looked like a cross between a Doberman Pincer and a German Shepherd. Before he removed the dog from its cage, he carried a large pipe and a heavy galvanized chain into Harry's backyard. He pounded the pipe into the ground with a sledge hammer, having chosen a spot where the length of the chain would allow the dog to roam along the fence between Harry's yard and the yard next door.
"That should do her," he said when he finished rigging the chain. "Let's get the dog."
Harry's girlfriend and her two children watched wide-eyed out the windows as Morely removed the large snarling dog from the cage. Godzilla was on a short leash and Morely was having all he could do to control him as he led him into Harry's yard. When he finally managed to get the dog chained to the pipe and had set out bowls of food and water, he shook Harry's hand and turned to leave.
"I never liked that goddam dog."
"You are going to take him back, next weekend, aren't you?"
"We'll see..." Morely smiled wickedly.
***
"You got video?" Freddie asked, expectantly.
"Not this time, pal," Harry said. "It must have happened in the middle of the night."
"What exactly did happen?"
"All there is is circumstantial evidence. A hole chewed through my chain-link fence, bits of gray fur scattered about my yard, and a hole in the ground where Morely had pounded in the pipe."
"What did your neighbors say?"
"Not a peep. Who knows..? With that stereo thumping away all the time, they might not have noticed their dog is missing. Of course, I did clean up the fur. But there wasn't much I could do about the fence. Hey, both dogs are gone. Who's to say their dog didn't chew the hole and attack my, er..., Morely's dog?"
"Does Morely know yet?"
"Sure. I called him right away. Says he hopes no one ever finds Godzilla. He's glad to be rid of the dog."
The phone rang. Freddie answered it at the back bar, by the cash register. "It's Morely, for you." Freddie stretched the long chord and handed Harry the receiver.
"Harry?" Morely's voice was grave.
"Yeah?"
"You'll never guess who just showed up at my place, carrying the mangiest carcass I've ever seen."
"Godzilla?"
"You got it. Animal Control pulled in the driveway, right after he got home. Seems they've been following him for an hour or so, afraid to go after him."
"What'd they say?"
"They gave me a summons for not having a dog license. It's a fifty dollar fine."
"I thought Godzilla had a license."
"He does. The other mutt didn't have one. I told them he was mine, too. I figured it would be easier that way - less questions. I got a fifteen dollar fine for Godzilla being loose without a leash. They figured that since the other dog was dead, they'd let me go on that one."
"Har. Come on down here, I'll buy you a beer and give you the money for the fines."
"You know what the worst part of it is?"
"No, what?"
"I wanted them to take Godzilla and put him away, but they wouldn't do it. I told them, look what he did! He killed my other dog! You know what they said?"
"No, what?"
"They said, how'd they know the other dog didn't die of natural causes? They was just afraid to deal with the son-of-a-bitch."
"Where's Godzilla, now?"
"Chained up out by the barn, again. You want him?"
"Hell, no. Get your ass down here. I'll buy you a beer."
"Make that a shot and a beer."
"You got it."
Thursday, June 26, 2008
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.
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.
Nothing Better To Do - a novel in stories - Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Freddie Edwards needed a new gas-fired water heater. It was something he had let slip out when he sought Phil's recommendation on a make and model. Phil having been in the plumbing business, he was sure to have an educated opinion on the matter. Freddie wasn't trying to put the arm on Phil for a little free plumbing work. To the contrary, he was afraid Phil would insist on it and Freddie really wanted to avoid that. Phil was getting a little old to be doing the kind of heavy lifting involved in such a project. Besides, the old water heater was still operational. It was just getting old and threatening to spring a leak at any time. Freddie was thinking ahead to the time he couldn't avoid it any longer, when he'd call Phil's son to do the job.
"Not to worry, I'll get House to help me with the lifting." Phil had lit up at the prospect of making himself useful. "I'll come over to your place and look the job over. I'll tell you what I'll need to complete the work. You just run over to Lowe's and pick up the fittings and have them deliver the water heater. When it comes, I'll get House and we'll run over and pop it in. It won't take us more than an hour."
Freddie protested because he knew Phil wouldn't take a penny for his work.
"Just toss House a couple bucks and that'll do 'er," Phil insisted.
Freddie looked over at House. He had looked pretty glum from the moment he and Phil had come in, as if something had been bothering him. Now he was smiling, obviously pleased at being included in the project. There was no way Freddie could say no. He poured them a couple of beers, insisting they were on him.
Two weeks later, Freddie called Phil to tell him that the water heater had been delivered. Phil called House and made arrangements to pick him up. When he knocked on the door of the Payne residence, it was Mona who opened it.
"Well, hello, Philip Rowley. How can so many years pass in a town like this without two souls bumping into one another?"
Phil was dumb struck. Mona had always been a nice-sorta looking woman, nice figure, nice hair, almost-pretty face. But the years had added character in the form of care lines. Phil had always thought there was something missing, but had never been able to put his finger on it. Mona'd had one of those faces that was like a blank canvas waiting for something special to be painted on it. How that could have been with all that she had gone through, he couldn't begin to imagine. But here she was, a completed work of art. He reached deep inside for words. "I guess we've both been so busy with our own lives and belonging to different churches and such..."
"I was sorry to learn about Alice. How are you doing?"
Phil had lost his wife to cervical cancer, two years before. "Oh, I'm managing... Between being alone and being retired, sometimes I get up in the morning and don't know quite what to do."
"I want to thank you for asking House to help you. He has mentioned you often in recent times, always in connection with some kindness you have afforded him."
"Well, I've got to tell you, he's been good company. He seems to be improving a lot as of late."
"He certainly has, and I understand that I owe a lot to you and Hank Pitts for that."
Phil felt the heat creeping up the back of his neck. "Thank you, ma'am." He wondered if she had heard about that infamous day in the Blue Moon.
"I'd like to ask your opinion on something, while House is getting dressed."
"Sure ma'am." Phil sounded like a school boy.
"Please call me Mona."
"Sure, Mona."
"House has been talking about getting a job. Do you think he could actually handle something, you know, simple?"
"A couple months ago, I never would have thought of asking him to play plumber's helper for me, but he was the first one come to mind when Freddie mentioned this job, especially since he's so strong."
"He wants to work at the paper."
"Well, he could probably do something over there, if they had an opening. Let's see how he does today."
With that, House came out onto the porch. "Howdy, Phil. I'm ready for work." He was dressed in clean overalls and work boots. He wore a locomotive engineer's cap.
"Oh, boy," Phil whistled. "You sure are. Okay, then, let's go!"
"Behave now, you hear," Mona called to them as they stepped off the porch.
Phil wasn't sure who she was talking to, but suspected it was him. He thought she might have meant no stops on the way home, such as at the Blue Moon. "Uh huh..."
"Plan on having dinner with us tonight, Phil!"
"Okay, thanks, Mona." Phil looked over at House. The smile on his face was so broad, Phil was afraid his head might crack in half. "What you smilin' about?"
"Oh, nuthin'"
***
Freddie Edwards place was a tiny ranch-style slab house in a tract that had been built up about ten years before the big typhoon. The storm had torn through the neighborhood, picking houses at random and flattening them into piles of toothpicks and shingles. Freddie hadn't lived there at the time, but this house was one of the many that had been spared, thus it had it's original configuration, three small bedrooms, one bath and an attached garage.
All that had been salvageable of the houses that had been destroyed were the slab foundations. The folks who had lived in those houses, the ones that had survived, that is, had been anxious to sell and get the hell out of Serena. A local lawyer had bought them up, cheap, and hired a contractor to build two story houses on the original slabs with bigger rooms and an extra half-bath. They dotted the neighborhood like miniature castles in a suburban fifedom. Phil still harbored an undefined resentment for that lawyer and those perfect two story houses. He preferred the simple houses like Freddie's. He and Alice had lived in one of those houses when Philly was a baby.
Freddie's wife let them in. Freddie had just left for work over at the Blue Moon. Phil found the new water heater in a large box in the garage. The old one was still hooked up in the laundry room. The only difficulty would be working around the other items in the closet-size room, the water softening equipment, the furnace and washer and drier, all of which made for a very tight fit. With House's help, Phil un-boxed the new heater and checked the location of the fittings, then he went into the laundry room, found the shut-off valve for the gas line to the old heater and turned the lever to the off position. All the while he worked, he was careful to explain to House what he was doing and why. House showed his comprehension by asking relevant questions. This pleased Phil. Maybe Philly can find something for him to do, he thought.
As he started to undo the gas-pipe connections, he asked House what he thought of this kind of work.
"This is nice work, Phil, but I'd like to be a newspaper reporter."
Phil stopped and looked up from where he was wedged in behind the water heater. "Where'd that come from?"
"I dunno... Maybe it was when you and Hank and Freddie got me to reading the Banner over to the Blue Moon. After that, I started reading the paper every day. Then I started thinking it would be neat to be the one who writes the articles."
Phil went back to work on the pipes. When they were all undone, he and House moved the heater into the backyard, so they would have room to get the new one into place.
"Now, this new one's gonna be heavier, because it's glass lined. It's a more efficient piece of equipment, holds the heat better. The pipes don't quite line up the way the other one did, but we're gonna have to get it in place, before I can figure out what changes I've got to make. We're just talkin' a couple of inches here and there. If we're lucky, we can fudge it. You get me?"
"Uh huh..."
By the time they got the new water heater almost into position, Phil was wedged into a small square pace between the heater, two walls and the furnace. "This son-of-a-bitch is bigger than the other one."
"It don't look bigger."
"Well it is, must be an inch all around. I can barely squat down in here to get at the fittings." Then he laughed. "Wouldn't it be a hell of a thing if, after we got this thing hooked up, I couldn't get out? Freddie'd have to bring me my meals back here!"
"And a cold beer every now-and-then..." House added.
"Damn, House. I do believe you're developing a sense of humor. Get me a smaller wrench! This one's too big."
House reached into Phil's tool box and picked one that looked to be the right size.
"You're a good man, Charlie Brown. Now, push the heater towards me about an inch."
House put his shoulder into it and it moved.
"Okay, now give me that big wrench again! Shit, I can hardly move."
The water pipes were all connected. Phil always saved the gas for last. When the gas fitting was finally tightened, he twisted his body to get at the gas valve. "Son-of-a-bitch, the bugger won't turn."
"Can I help you, Phil?"
"Naw, you couldn't even get one of your big paws back in here. You know how I was kidding about being stuck in here? Well, it might not be so funny after all. Hand me that hammer, I'm gonna have to tap this sucker a bit to get it to move."
House handed him a ball-peen hammer and waited while Phil tapped at the handle to the gas valve. Suddenly, there was a hissing sound.
"Oh, shit. I broke the pipe. If the pilot is still on in the furnace, this son-of-a-bitch might blow. House, you see another gas valve like this one I've been working on? There should be one for the furnace and then another one, a main, to shut both lines off. Hurry, boy, I can't move!"
House looked around. He spotted a valve on a pipe that ran into the furnace. It was out of his reach, but he figured that wasn't the right one, anyway.
"Hurry, Marvin, or we're gonners!"
With his eyes, he traced the gas line back to where it came into the house from outside. There it was, another shut-off valve with a handle like the one Phil had been working on. House scrambled up on top of the clothes drier and stretched as far as he could over the heater to get to it. This one was stuck, too.
"It won't move!"
"Put some muscle into it, you can do it!"
With as much strength as he could muster, stretched out as he was, he strained against it. Slowly, it started to give and he finally managed to move it into the off position. The hissing stopped. Then he climbed down and opened the small window in the laundry room to air out the place.
***
They were seated around a table that was filled with goodies. There was a baked ham, glazed yams and spinach pie. For desert, there was apple Betty with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
"Believe it or not, I've had plumbers' helpers who didn't know a main shut-off valve from a toilet plunger. Marvin, here, probably saved my life today. A few more seconds and the pilot from the furnace would have lit off the escaped gas and there would have been a fireball. I was helpless, wedged in there the way I was."
Mona smiled proudly. "So I take it you think he's ready to hold down a job."
House had wandered away from the table to an easy chair in the corner. He looked up from his newspaper and smiled as if he knew there was more to it than that.
Freddie Edwards needed a new gas-fired water heater. It was something he had let slip out when he sought Phil's recommendation on a make and model. Phil having been in the plumbing business, he was sure to have an educated opinion on the matter. Freddie wasn't trying to put the arm on Phil for a little free plumbing work. To the contrary, he was afraid Phil would insist on it and Freddie really wanted to avoid that. Phil was getting a little old to be doing the kind of heavy lifting involved in such a project. Besides, the old water heater was still operational. It was just getting old and threatening to spring a leak at any time. Freddie was thinking ahead to the time he couldn't avoid it any longer, when he'd call Phil's son to do the job.
"Not to worry, I'll get House to help me with the lifting." Phil had lit up at the prospect of making himself useful. "I'll come over to your place and look the job over. I'll tell you what I'll need to complete the work. You just run over to Lowe's and pick up the fittings and have them deliver the water heater. When it comes, I'll get House and we'll run over and pop it in. It won't take us more than an hour."
Freddie protested because he knew Phil wouldn't take a penny for his work.
"Just toss House a couple bucks and that'll do 'er," Phil insisted.
Freddie looked over at House. He had looked pretty glum from the moment he and Phil had come in, as if something had been bothering him. Now he was smiling, obviously pleased at being included in the project. There was no way Freddie could say no. He poured them a couple of beers, insisting they were on him.
Two weeks later, Freddie called Phil to tell him that the water heater had been delivered. Phil called House and made arrangements to pick him up. When he knocked on the door of the Payne residence, it was Mona who opened it.
"Well, hello, Philip Rowley. How can so many years pass in a town like this without two souls bumping into one another?"
Phil was dumb struck. Mona had always been a nice-sorta looking woman, nice figure, nice hair, almost-pretty face. But the years had added character in the form of care lines. Phil had always thought there was something missing, but had never been able to put his finger on it. Mona'd had one of those faces that was like a blank canvas waiting for something special to be painted on it. How that could have been with all that she had gone through, he couldn't begin to imagine. But here she was, a completed work of art. He reached deep inside for words. "I guess we've both been so busy with our own lives and belonging to different churches and such..."
"I was sorry to learn about Alice. How are you doing?"
Phil had lost his wife to cervical cancer, two years before. "Oh, I'm managing... Between being alone and being retired, sometimes I get up in the morning and don't know quite what to do."
"I want to thank you for asking House to help you. He has mentioned you often in recent times, always in connection with some kindness you have afforded him."
"Well, I've got to tell you, he's been good company. He seems to be improving a lot as of late."
"He certainly has, and I understand that I owe a lot to you and Hank Pitts for that."
Phil felt the heat creeping up the back of his neck. "Thank you, ma'am." He wondered if she had heard about that infamous day in the Blue Moon.
"I'd like to ask your opinion on something, while House is getting dressed."
"Sure ma'am." Phil sounded like a school boy.
"Please call me Mona."
"Sure, Mona."
"House has been talking about getting a job. Do you think he could actually handle something, you know, simple?"
"A couple months ago, I never would have thought of asking him to play plumber's helper for me, but he was the first one come to mind when Freddie mentioned this job, especially since he's so strong."
"He wants to work at the paper."
"Well, he could probably do something over there, if they had an opening. Let's see how he does today."
With that, House came out onto the porch. "Howdy, Phil. I'm ready for work." He was dressed in clean overalls and work boots. He wore a locomotive engineer's cap.
"Oh, boy," Phil whistled. "You sure are. Okay, then, let's go!"
"Behave now, you hear," Mona called to them as they stepped off the porch.
Phil wasn't sure who she was talking to, but suspected it was him. He thought she might have meant no stops on the way home, such as at the Blue Moon. "Uh huh..."
"Plan on having dinner with us tonight, Phil!"
"Okay, thanks, Mona." Phil looked over at House. The smile on his face was so broad, Phil was afraid his head might crack in half. "What you smilin' about?"
"Oh, nuthin'"
***
Freddie Edwards place was a tiny ranch-style slab house in a tract that had been built up about ten years before the big typhoon. The storm had torn through the neighborhood, picking houses at random and flattening them into piles of toothpicks and shingles. Freddie hadn't lived there at the time, but this house was one of the many that had been spared, thus it had it's original configuration, three small bedrooms, one bath and an attached garage.
All that had been salvageable of the houses that had been destroyed were the slab foundations. The folks who had lived in those houses, the ones that had survived, that is, had been anxious to sell and get the hell out of Serena. A local lawyer had bought them up, cheap, and hired a contractor to build two story houses on the original slabs with bigger rooms and an extra half-bath. They dotted the neighborhood like miniature castles in a suburban fifedom. Phil still harbored an undefined resentment for that lawyer and those perfect two story houses. He preferred the simple houses like Freddie's. He and Alice had lived in one of those houses when Philly was a baby.
Freddie's wife let them in. Freddie had just left for work over at the Blue Moon. Phil found the new water heater in a large box in the garage. The old one was still hooked up in the laundry room. The only difficulty would be working around the other items in the closet-size room, the water softening equipment, the furnace and washer and drier, all of which made for a very tight fit. With House's help, Phil un-boxed the new heater and checked the location of the fittings, then he went into the laundry room, found the shut-off valve for the gas line to the old heater and turned the lever to the off position. All the while he worked, he was careful to explain to House what he was doing and why. House showed his comprehension by asking relevant questions. This pleased Phil. Maybe Philly can find something for him to do, he thought.
As he started to undo the gas-pipe connections, he asked House what he thought of this kind of work.
"This is nice work, Phil, but I'd like to be a newspaper reporter."
Phil stopped and looked up from where he was wedged in behind the water heater. "Where'd that come from?"
"I dunno... Maybe it was when you and Hank and Freddie got me to reading the Banner over to the Blue Moon. After that, I started reading the paper every day. Then I started thinking it would be neat to be the one who writes the articles."
Phil went back to work on the pipes. When they were all undone, he and House moved the heater into the backyard, so they would have room to get the new one into place.
"Now, this new one's gonna be heavier, because it's glass lined. It's a more efficient piece of equipment, holds the heat better. The pipes don't quite line up the way the other one did, but we're gonna have to get it in place, before I can figure out what changes I've got to make. We're just talkin' a couple of inches here and there. If we're lucky, we can fudge it. You get me?"
"Uh huh..."
By the time they got the new water heater almost into position, Phil was wedged into a small square pace between the heater, two walls and the furnace. "This son-of-a-bitch is bigger than the other one."
"It don't look bigger."
"Well it is, must be an inch all around. I can barely squat down in here to get at the fittings." Then he laughed. "Wouldn't it be a hell of a thing if, after we got this thing hooked up, I couldn't get out? Freddie'd have to bring me my meals back here!"
"And a cold beer every now-and-then..." House added.
"Damn, House. I do believe you're developing a sense of humor. Get me a smaller wrench! This one's too big."
House reached into Phil's tool box and picked one that looked to be the right size.
"You're a good man, Charlie Brown. Now, push the heater towards me about an inch."
House put his shoulder into it and it moved.
"Okay, now give me that big wrench again! Shit, I can hardly move."
The water pipes were all connected. Phil always saved the gas for last. When the gas fitting was finally tightened, he twisted his body to get at the gas valve. "Son-of-a-bitch, the bugger won't turn."
"Can I help you, Phil?"
"Naw, you couldn't even get one of your big paws back in here. You know how I was kidding about being stuck in here? Well, it might not be so funny after all. Hand me that hammer, I'm gonna have to tap this sucker a bit to get it to move."
House handed him a ball-peen hammer and waited while Phil tapped at the handle to the gas valve. Suddenly, there was a hissing sound.
"Oh, shit. I broke the pipe. If the pilot is still on in the furnace, this son-of-a-bitch might blow. House, you see another gas valve like this one I've been working on? There should be one for the furnace and then another one, a main, to shut both lines off. Hurry, boy, I can't move!"
House looked around. He spotted a valve on a pipe that ran into the furnace. It was out of his reach, but he figured that wasn't the right one, anyway.
"Hurry, Marvin, or we're gonners!"
With his eyes, he traced the gas line back to where it came into the house from outside. There it was, another shut-off valve with a handle like the one Phil had been working on. House scrambled up on top of the clothes drier and stretched as far as he could over the heater to get to it. This one was stuck, too.
"It won't move!"
"Put some muscle into it, you can do it!"
With as much strength as he could muster, stretched out as he was, he strained against it. Slowly, it started to give and he finally managed to move it into the off position. The hissing stopped. Then he climbed down and opened the small window in the laundry room to air out the place.
***
They were seated around a table that was filled with goodies. There was a baked ham, glazed yams and spinach pie. For desert, there was apple Betty with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
"Believe it or not, I've had plumbers' helpers who didn't know a main shut-off valve from a toilet plunger. Marvin, here, probably saved my life today. A few more seconds and the pilot from the furnace would have lit off the escaped gas and there would have been a fireball. I was helpless, wedged in there the way I was."
Mona smiled proudly. "So I take it you think he's ready to hold down a job."
House had wandered away from the table to an easy chair in the corner. He looked up from his newspaper and smiled as if he knew there was more to it than that.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Nothing Better To Do - a novel in stories - Chapter 2
Chapter Two
House of Pain tip-toed gingerly down West Main Street at a pace that was almost negligible. Many years before, the youth of Serena, Ohio had bestowed that title, House of Pain, upon Marvin Payne precisely because of this excruciatingly slow manner of walking. And because he was as big as a house.
Phil Rowley was stopped at the light where Main intersects with Church. Spotting him as he was about to step off the curb and cross in front of him, Phil bet himself that the light would change to green just as House arrived at the bumper of his truck. At this pace, by the time he was clear of Phil's rusty green Ford pickup, the light would have changed again.
"Can't you move any faster than that?" he called out his window when House finally did step in front of the truck. Phil immediately realized his mistake.
House stopped and turned to face Phil's vehicle, apparently noticing it for the first time. The light over his head turned to green. He smiled in recognition of the driver as if the light had actually gone on inside his head instead of above it.
Am I in a goddam cartoon? Phil wondered. In his dirty green and white Oakland A's cap, his long-sleeve black and white vertically striped shirt, buttoned up to the neck, except for where a button or two was missing in the area of his considerable belly, his loose fitting, dirty gray sweat pants and his fuzzy red house slippers, House, indeed, resembled a bizarre Disney-like rendition of Tweedle Dum, or perhaps a Tweedle Dee who hadn't shaved in two or three days.
"Damn, House, ain't you got no sense at all? This is the hottest day of the summer!"
"Mama says..." House seemed to forget what she said, but he knew she said something and it had to do with his outfit.
A car horn sounded behind Phil's truck. "Get in!" He figured it would be the fastest way to get moving again.
By the time the big man climbed into the truck, the light had gone red again and a whole line of cars and trucks was honking behind him.
"You reffing somewhere?" Phil kidded, examining House's shirt.
The younger man was almost Phil's son's age, a few years younger. Phil had known him all of his thirty-two years. If he didn't understand something, and that meant most things, he wouldn't respond at all. He stared forward, that same dumb smile frozen on his face. The story around town was that his Mama had dropped him on his head the day she brought him home from the hospital and he was never right after that. The very next day, his father, Marvin Payne, Sr., moved out West to work on the pipeline and was never heard from again. Phil had his own ideas on the subject. House's mother probably should have sued the hospital. He'd seen the anesthesiologist in the Blue Moon Tavern, earlier on the day House was born, three sheets to the wind.
The light changed. Phil ground the Ford into first gear and continued straight ahead on Main. "Where you headed, Marvin?"
House looked at him quizzically. No one ever called him Marvin. Even his mother had taken to calling him House.
"So, where's it gonna be?" Phil asked, again. "The library, the college...?"
"Damn, Phil. You know I don't read." House had finally gotten one of Phil's barbs. Phil was pleased. "You going plumbing, Phil? I could go with you..."
"I'm retired now, Marvin. Don't you remember?"
Five years before, Phil had turned his modest plumbing business over to his son. He had envisioned functioning as a sort of unpaid advisor until his help was no longer needed. But his son had had other ideas. Soon the business had begun to thrive as it never had. Whereas Phil had limited his clientele to town and had usually employed but one helper, his son expanded throughout the entire county and now had a half-dozen licensed plumbers scurrying about in neat red and white vans with a snappy logo painted on the sides. He had a half-page ad in the yellow pages and two thirty second spots a day on the radio - and no time for his old man. As the business had grown, inside Phil, there had grown a mixture of pride and abandonment. There was never anything for him to do when he stopped by the shop. He even had to go through a receptionist to get to see his son, if his son had time to see him, that is. Sometimes he felt as useless as tits on a bull.
They were at the center of town where Main crosses Toledo. Phil stopped for the light and, as he always did when he passed through town, he surveyed the damage. In the spring of 1975, three twisters had crossed paths and linked up, forming one large unusual tornado with winds that behaved contrary to the science of the times. It leveled much of Serena. The courthouse, the bank, the post office and a dozen or so of the two and three story brick and stone buildings were still standing. The only new buildings were in a strip-mall which, by some developer's twisted imagination, had been named Serena Towne Square. The rest was parking lots, small municipal lots, here and there, free parking, where buildings had been destroyed by the big tornado twenty-five years before and never rebuilt. The town had taken the land for taxes and paved it over because there was nothing else to do with it. No one wanted to pump money into a critically wounded town. Only that one developer had taken a chance and he'd gone under because of it. Half the stores in the new strip mall remained unrented.
"This is where I turn." Phil said.
"You want me to get out?"
"Lest you want to go to the Blue Moon..." Phil was counting on him saying no.
"Ain't never been to the Blue Moon." House made no move to budge from the truck.
"All right, come on along then." This ought to be interesting, Phil thought. "I'll buy you a beer."
"Mama said..." A dark look crossed House's face. It wasn't so much that he couldn't remember enough to finish the sentence this time as it was that what he did remember was along the lines of a warning. It quickly passed, however, replaced by the same confused smile. House wasn't used to folks being nice to him, although Phil had always been kinder than the others. And Phil must have passed that on to his son, too, because young Philly had never teased him like the other boys had when they were growing up.
The Blue Moon Tavern was a white stucco cinder block road house out by the by-pass. Inside it was cool and dark. House had heard of the Blue Moon, seen it from the road, but he'd never been inside. Now he understood why they called it the Blue Moon. It seemed like it was always night time here. A blue haze of cigarette smoke hung low over the bar like clouds back-lit by a blue neon sign, the meaning of which House couldn't understand. The letters looked like this: L I T E.
"Who's this you got with you?" the bartender, Freddie Edwards, asked Phil as he wiped the bar in front of the two stools the men had taken.
"This is House, Mona Payne's boy," Phil said.
"How're the A's doin' this year?" Freddie tried to be polite.
"Huh?" House didn't have a clue who the Oakland A's were. His Mama had picked up the hat for a buck-and-a-half at a flea market along the interstate outside of Cincinnati.
"Give us a couple of Gennys," Phil said, trying to sidetrack the confusion. "You seen Hank Pitts yet, today?"
Freddie set two large drafts in front of them. "He was in here earlier. Said he had an errand to run and to tell you he'd be back in awhile. Your boy was in here, too. He had a couple of his fellers snaking out my drain out back."
"What'd he charge you for that?"
"Dunno. He said he'd send me a bill. I trust him. After all, he's your boy, ain't he?"
"Hell, why didn't you ask me, Freddie? I'd a done it for nothin'. What're friends for? I'll talk to him."
"Dontcha be doin' that. A man's gotta make a living.."
"Hah! You notice what he was drivin'?"
"Dammit, Phil, you know I ain't got no windows in this place."
"He's got him one of them big yuppiemobiles. Flat as it is around here, what the hell's he need something like that for? Goddam status symbol, that's what for..." Phil drained his glass and looked over at House to see how he was making out.
House's glass was empty and he was staring straight ahead. He seemed to be smiling at himself in the mirror behind the bar. Phil wasn't sure if he had been paying any attention to their conversation, or, if he had, if he had understood it.
"What say, House? You ready for another one?"
"I gotta pee."
"You go right ahead. I'll order us a couple more."
The two men watched him tip-toe to the men's room. "Ain't he the one whose mother dropped him on his head?" Freddie asked, once House was finally gone.
"That's what they say. A goddam shame, eh?"
"What's he doin' hanging around with you?"
"To tell you the truth, neither one of us has anything better to do. He never hurt nobody. It's a shame the way folks treat him."
"Uh huh..."
The front door opened letting in a blast of heat and sunlight. The silhouette of a man limped through the door.
"You know how hot it is out there?" Hank Pitts gasped as he slid onto the stool next to Phil.
"Pray tell," Phil said.
Hank was retired from the Post Office. He had ended his career as the Postmaster in Serena. When he wasn't in the Blue Moon, he'd be sitting on his back porch, listening to the wind rustle through the corn in his large garden as he painted with water colors and worried about his two grown children. His daughter moved to Chicago after attending the local community college and, last he had heard, was doing something with computers. His son went to college and law school out of state and was working as a Public Defender in L.A. Neither of Hank's children were married, but each of them was living with someone: his daughter, with another girl from town - they moved away together to avoid small town scrutiny; his son, with a woman who had a young son from a previous relationship - he had represented her on a drug possession charge. Hank's wife, Emily, died of complications from a stroke while the two children were still in college and, thus, had been spared the hand wringing and second guessing, the uncertain Morse code of the dry leaves of the corn stalks rat-a-tatting against each other under an angry red sun.
"I was over to Morely Stevens' place just now to water his garden and feed his animals. He and Sue are up in Michigan, visiting their son. You know that goddam crazy hound he keeps chained up in his yard?"
Phil flashed a broad smile. "Godzilla?"
"Yeah, that's the one. Every time I go over there, that mutt comes after me full bore, snarling and barking like he'd like to rip my throat out. Then he hits the end of his chain and almost strangles himself. He never learns. Well, today he looked up from where he was sleeping in the shade and never even bothered to get up, put his head back down, let out a big sigh and went right back to sleep. That's how hot it is!"
Freddie set a Genny in front of him and Hank immediately guzzled it down. He handed the mug back to Freddie without ever putting it down on the bar. "I'll have another, my good man."
Hank turned to watch something that had caught his eye. House was tip-toeing back from the men's room. "It's so hot, I think I'm hallucintin'. Right now, I'm imagining that I'm seeing the House of Pain coming out of the men's room."
"That's him, alright," Phil said, "and I'd appreciate it if you'd take it easy on him."
"He come in with you?"
"Yup. And I just bought him his first beer."
"Damn, it's hotter'n I thought. You must be losing it, ole Hoss." Hank turned to House. "How ya doin' young man?"
"Phil bought me a beer." House had dribbled urine down the front of his sweat pants. The wet trail matched nicely with the other stains, but was prominent just the same, even in the dim light of the Blue Moon.
"I can see that." Hank pointed to the wet spot.
House smiled, shrugged his shoulders and slid back onto his stool on the other side of Phil. He picked up the newly filled mug and drank from it, staring straight ahead, again.
Hank elbowed Phil gently. "I guess you brought him along for conversation, in case I wasn't here."
"Like I told Freddie, neither one of us had anything better to do. And now that you're done feeding Godzilla, I can see you're in the same boat."
"I wonder how his Mama's doing. I bet it's been twenty years since I've seen her." Hank kept his voice low so House wouldn't hear, not that he would have been paying attention.
"Why don't you ask him?"
Hank leaned over the bar to talk around Phil. "How's your Mama, boy?"
"Mama says I shouldn't drink beer."
Phil looked around at the source of that pronouncement. House's glass was empty again. "I can't see where it'll do you any harm. Besides, I'm sure it would be all right with your Mama, if she knew you was with me. Right?"
"I guess so. Okay, then. I'll have another."
Phil looked at Hank like he'd just heard a baby utter it's first words.
Hank leaned over and whispered in Phil's ear. "Let's get him good and drunk, then drop him on his Mama's front porch."
"Might as well. Too damn hot to go fishing. Hah." Phil turned toward where Freddie was, down the other end of the bar. "Bar-keep, another round!"
Freddie gave him the finger before retrieving their glasses and refilling them.
"How far you go in school?" Hank asked House.
"Third grade. I was twelve. They made me quit. Said I was too old."
"How old are you now, House?" Phil asked.
"Thirty-two, I think."
"I was right. It's been twenty years." Hank said. "Last time I saw his mother was when she used to bring him to the school." Hank bought the next round. "You know how to read?"
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember? What's that say?" Hank pointed to the blue neon sign.
House mouthed the letters, L I T E, then pronounced the word, "Lite."
"Hell, that's not bad." Phil sounded amazed. "Give that boy another beer!"
Freddie brought House another beer and a copy of The Serena Banner along with it. "What's that say?" He pointed to the headline for the lead article on the front page, smiling like he was up to something.
House struggled with it. He got through "Clinton" and "oral sex" okay. All the while the other three men were giggling like pranksters. He even knew that Clinton was the President. But "Monica Lewinsky" was more than he could handle.
"Give him, another beer!" Hank said. "I think I see how this works. We've just got to grease the skids a bit."
"Try it again," Freddie suggested, after House finished the new beer.
"Monica Lewinsky," House replied, smoothly.
By this time, the other men at the bar had noticed what was happening. When they heard Monica Lewinsky, they voiced their universal approval, shouting, whistling and clapping.
"Show him the sports page," Phil said.
"Reds win opener, drop night-cap to Mets," House read.
For every beer they had bought House, Hank and Phil had also consumed one. After awhile, they added up to a considerable amount. Phil was beginning to feel a bit tipsy. "Show him the financial pages!" he slurred.
"Why not? We got nuthin' better to do..." Hank slurred back.
"Dow Johns Industrial Average up one hundred sixty points. NASDAQ slides as investors move money out of internet start-ups and into blue chips," House read.
"This one's on the house," said Freddie.
"S'bout time, you cheap bastard!" Hank said as he slid off the stool and onto the floor.
House got up from his stool and helped Hank back onto his. He continued on to the men's room, striding like a Mummer in a parade. When he returned, Freddie handed him the sports section again. "How are the A's doing?"
"I think they'll probably win a hundred games this season," House replied without looking at the paper.
Freddie's jaw went so slack it almost dropped onto the bar.
House smiled. "Just kidding. I don't follow baseball."
Phil moved his face to within six inches of House's. He stared into his eyes. "Who are you?" He looked at Hank, who was resting his head on the bar. "Hank! Wake up! I think the boy's possessed." He turned back to House. "Who's in there with you, boy?"
"It's Marvin. Marvin's in here."
Phil backed up. A chill ran down his spine. When it reached his knees, it cut them right out from under him. He crumpled to the floor.
"Give me a hand, will you, Freddie?" House called to the bartender. "I think he's fainted."
Freddie came around from behind the bar and the two of them dragged Phil over to a booth. Then they retrieved Hank, supporting him with his arms over their shoulders. They slid him into the booth on the bench next to Phil. Freddie returned to the bar. House slid onto the bench opposite the two men.
"You alright, Phil?" House asked.
"I'm okay, Marvin."
"He's okay, Marvin," Hank snorted. Then he turned to Phil. "I think it's time we drop him at his Mama's," he chuckled as if it were some private joke.
"You think he's ready?" his conspirator giggled drunkenly.
"I think I better drive," said Marvin.
House of Pain tip-toed gingerly down West Main Street at a pace that was almost negligible. Many years before, the youth of Serena, Ohio had bestowed that title, House of Pain, upon Marvin Payne precisely because of this excruciatingly slow manner of walking. And because he was as big as a house.
Phil Rowley was stopped at the light where Main intersects with Church. Spotting him as he was about to step off the curb and cross in front of him, Phil bet himself that the light would change to green just as House arrived at the bumper of his truck. At this pace, by the time he was clear of Phil's rusty green Ford pickup, the light would have changed again.
"Can't you move any faster than that?" he called out his window when House finally did step in front of the truck. Phil immediately realized his mistake.
House stopped and turned to face Phil's vehicle, apparently noticing it for the first time. The light over his head turned to green. He smiled in recognition of the driver as if the light had actually gone on inside his head instead of above it.
Am I in a goddam cartoon? Phil wondered. In his dirty green and white Oakland A's cap, his long-sleeve black and white vertically striped shirt, buttoned up to the neck, except for where a button or two was missing in the area of his considerable belly, his loose fitting, dirty gray sweat pants and his fuzzy red house slippers, House, indeed, resembled a bizarre Disney-like rendition of Tweedle Dum, or perhaps a Tweedle Dee who hadn't shaved in two or three days.
"Damn, House, ain't you got no sense at all? This is the hottest day of the summer!"
"Mama says..." House seemed to forget what she said, but he knew she said something and it had to do with his outfit.
A car horn sounded behind Phil's truck. "Get in!" He figured it would be the fastest way to get moving again.
By the time the big man climbed into the truck, the light had gone red again and a whole line of cars and trucks was honking behind him.
"You reffing somewhere?" Phil kidded, examining House's shirt.
The younger man was almost Phil's son's age, a few years younger. Phil had known him all of his thirty-two years. If he didn't understand something, and that meant most things, he wouldn't respond at all. He stared forward, that same dumb smile frozen on his face. The story around town was that his Mama had dropped him on his head the day she brought him home from the hospital and he was never right after that. The very next day, his father, Marvin Payne, Sr., moved out West to work on the pipeline and was never heard from again. Phil had his own ideas on the subject. House's mother probably should have sued the hospital. He'd seen the anesthesiologist in the Blue Moon Tavern, earlier on the day House was born, three sheets to the wind.
The light changed. Phil ground the Ford into first gear and continued straight ahead on Main. "Where you headed, Marvin?"
House looked at him quizzically. No one ever called him Marvin. Even his mother had taken to calling him House.
"So, where's it gonna be?" Phil asked, again. "The library, the college...?"
"Damn, Phil. You know I don't read." House had finally gotten one of Phil's barbs. Phil was pleased. "You going plumbing, Phil? I could go with you..."
"I'm retired now, Marvin. Don't you remember?"
Five years before, Phil had turned his modest plumbing business over to his son. He had envisioned functioning as a sort of unpaid advisor until his help was no longer needed. But his son had had other ideas. Soon the business had begun to thrive as it never had. Whereas Phil had limited his clientele to town and had usually employed but one helper, his son expanded throughout the entire county and now had a half-dozen licensed plumbers scurrying about in neat red and white vans with a snappy logo painted on the sides. He had a half-page ad in the yellow pages and two thirty second spots a day on the radio - and no time for his old man. As the business had grown, inside Phil, there had grown a mixture of pride and abandonment. There was never anything for him to do when he stopped by the shop. He even had to go through a receptionist to get to see his son, if his son had time to see him, that is. Sometimes he felt as useless as tits on a bull.
They were at the center of town where Main crosses Toledo. Phil stopped for the light and, as he always did when he passed through town, he surveyed the damage. In the spring of 1975, three twisters had crossed paths and linked up, forming one large unusual tornado with winds that behaved contrary to the science of the times. It leveled much of Serena. The courthouse, the bank, the post office and a dozen or so of the two and three story brick and stone buildings were still standing. The only new buildings were in a strip-mall which, by some developer's twisted imagination, had been named Serena Towne Square. The rest was parking lots, small municipal lots, here and there, free parking, where buildings had been destroyed by the big tornado twenty-five years before and never rebuilt. The town had taken the land for taxes and paved it over because there was nothing else to do with it. No one wanted to pump money into a critically wounded town. Only that one developer had taken a chance and he'd gone under because of it. Half the stores in the new strip mall remained unrented.
"This is where I turn." Phil said.
"You want me to get out?"
"Lest you want to go to the Blue Moon..." Phil was counting on him saying no.
"Ain't never been to the Blue Moon." House made no move to budge from the truck.
"All right, come on along then." This ought to be interesting, Phil thought. "I'll buy you a beer."
"Mama said..." A dark look crossed House's face. It wasn't so much that he couldn't remember enough to finish the sentence this time as it was that what he did remember was along the lines of a warning. It quickly passed, however, replaced by the same confused smile. House wasn't used to folks being nice to him, although Phil had always been kinder than the others. And Phil must have passed that on to his son, too, because young Philly had never teased him like the other boys had when they were growing up.
The Blue Moon Tavern was a white stucco cinder block road house out by the by-pass. Inside it was cool and dark. House had heard of the Blue Moon, seen it from the road, but he'd never been inside. Now he understood why they called it the Blue Moon. It seemed like it was always night time here. A blue haze of cigarette smoke hung low over the bar like clouds back-lit by a blue neon sign, the meaning of which House couldn't understand. The letters looked like this: L I T E.
"Who's this you got with you?" the bartender, Freddie Edwards, asked Phil as he wiped the bar in front of the two stools the men had taken.
"This is House, Mona Payne's boy," Phil said.
"How're the A's doin' this year?" Freddie tried to be polite.
"Huh?" House didn't have a clue who the Oakland A's were. His Mama had picked up the hat for a buck-and-a-half at a flea market along the interstate outside of Cincinnati.
"Give us a couple of Gennys," Phil said, trying to sidetrack the confusion. "You seen Hank Pitts yet, today?"
Freddie set two large drafts in front of them. "He was in here earlier. Said he had an errand to run and to tell you he'd be back in awhile. Your boy was in here, too. He had a couple of his fellers snaking out my drain out back."
"What'd he charge you for that?"
"Dunno. He said he'd send me a bill. I trust him. After all, he's your boy, ain't he?"
"Hell, why didn't you ask me, Freddie? I'd a done it for nothin'. What're friends for? I'll talk to him."
"Dontcha be doin' that. A man's gotta make a living.."
"Hah! You notice what he was drivin'?"
"Dammit, Phil, you know I ain't got no windows in this place."
"He's got him one of them big yuppiemobiles. Flat as it is around here, what the hell's he need something like that for? Goddam status symbol, that's what for..." Phil drained his glass and looked over at House to see how he was making out.
House's glass was empty and he was staring straight ahead. He seemed to be smiling at himself in the mirror behind the bar. Phil wasn't sure if he had been paying any attention to their conversation, or, if he had, if he had understood it.
"What say, House? You ready for another one?"
"I gotta pee."
"You go right ahead. I'll order us a couple more."
The two men watched him tip-toe to the men's room. "Ain't he the one whose mother dropped him on his head?" Freddie asked, once House was finally gone.
"That's what they say. A goddam shame, eh?"
"What's he doin' hanging around with you?"
"To tell you the truth, neither one of us has anything better to do. He never hurt nobody. It's a shame the way folks treat him."
"Uh huh..."
The front door opened letting in a blast of heat and sunlight. The silhouette of a man limped through the door.
"You know how hot it is out there?" Hank Pitts gasped as he slid onto the stool next to Phil.
"Pray tell," Phil said.
Hank was retired from the Post Office. He had ended his career as the Postmaster in Serena. When he wasn't in the Blue Moon, he'd be sitting on his back porch, listening to the wind rustle through the corn in his large garden as he painted with water colors and worried about his two grown children. His daughter moved to Chicago after attending the local community college and, last he had heard, was doing something with computers. His son went to college and law school out of state and was working as a Public Defender in L.A. Neither of Hank's children were married, but each of them was living with someone: his daughter, with another girl from town - they moved away together to avoid small town scrutiny; his son, with a woman who had a young son from a previous relationship - he had represented her on a drug possession charge. Hank's wife, Emily, died of complications from a stroke while the two children were still in college and, thus, had been spared the hand wringing and second guessing, the uncertain Morse code of the dry leaves of the corn stalks rat-a-tatting against each other under an angry red sun.
"I was over to Morely Stevens' place just now to water his garden and feed his animals. He and Sue are up in Michigan, visiting their son. You know that goddam crazy hound he keeps chained up in his yard?"
Phil flashed a broad smile. "Godzilla?"
"Yeah, that's the one. Every time I go over there, that mutt comes after me full bore, snarling and barking like he'd like to rip my throat out. Then he hits the end of his chain and almost strangles himself. He never learns. Well, today he looked up from where he was sleeping in the shade and never even bothered to get up, put his head back down, let out a big sigh and went right back to sleep. That's how hot it is!"
Freddie set a Genny in front of him and Hank immediately guzzled it down. He handed the mug back to Freddie without ever putting it down on the bar. "I'll have another, my good man."
Hank turned to watch something that had caught his eye. House was tip-toeing back from the men's room. "It's so hot, I think I'm hallucintin'. Right now, I'm imagining that I'm seeing the House of Pain coming out of the men's room."
"That's him, alright," Phil said, "and I'd appreciate it if you'd take it easy on him."
"He come in with you?"
"Yup. And I just bought him his first beer."
"Damn, it's hotter'n I thought. You must be losing it, ole Hoss." Hank turned to House. "How ya doin' young man?"
"Phil bought me a beer." House had dribbled urine down the front of his sweat pants. The wet trail matched nicely with the other stains, but was prominent just the same, even in the dim light of the Blue Moon.
"I can see that." Hank pointed to the wet spot.
House smiled, shrugged his shoulders and slid back onto his stool on the other side of Phil. He picked up the newly filled mug and drank from it, staring straight ahead, again.
Hank elbowed Phil gently. "I guess you brought him along for conversation, in case I wasn't here."
"Like I told Freddie, neither one of us had anything better to do. And now that you're done feeding Godzilla, I can see you're in the same boat."
"I wonder how his Mama's doing. I bet it's been twenty years since I've seen her." Hank kept his voice low so House wouldn't hear, not that he would have been paying attention.
"Why don't you ask him?"
Hank leaned over the bar to talk around Phil. "How's your Mama, boy?"
"Mama says I shouldn't drink beer."
Phil looked around at the source of that pronouncement. House's glass was empty again. "I can't see where it'll do you any harm. Besides, I'm sure it would be all right with your Mama, if she knew you was with me. Right?"
"I guess so. Okay, then. I'll have another."
Phil looked at Hank like he'd just heard a baby utter it's first words.
Hank leaned over and whispered in Phil's ear. "Let's get him good and drunk, then drop him on his Mama's front porch."
"Might as well. Too damn hot to go fishing. Hah." Phil turned toward where Freddie was, down the other end of the bar. "Bar-keep, another round!"
Freddie gave him the finger before retrieving their glasses and refilling them.
"How far you go in school?" Hank asked House.
"Third grade. I was twelve. They made me quit. Said I was too old."
"How old are you now, House?" Phil asked.
"Thirty-two, I think."
"I was right. It's been twenty years." Hank said. "Last time I saw his mother was when she used to bring him to the school." Hank bought the next round. "You know how to read?"
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember? What's that say?" Hank pointed to the blue neon sign.
House mouthed the letters, L I T E, then pronounced the word, "Lite."
"Hell, that's not bad." Phil sounded amazed. "Give that boy another beer!"
Freddie brought House another beer and a copy of The Serena Banner along with it. "What's that say?" He pointed to the headline for the lead article on the front page, smiling like he was up to something.
House struggled with it. He got through "Clinton" and "oral sex" okay. All the while the other three men were giggling like pranksters. He even knew that Clinton was the President. But "Monica Lewinsky" was more than he could handle.
"Give him, another beer!" Hank said. "I think I see how this works. We've just got to grease the skids a bit."
"Try it again," Freddie suggested, after House finished the new beer.
"Monica Lewinsky," House replied, smoothly.
By this time, the other men at the bar had noticed what was happening. When they heard Monica Lewinsky, they voiced their universal approval, shouting, whistling and clapping.
"Show him the sports page," Phil said.
"Reds win opener, drop night-cap to Mets," House read.
For every beer they had bought House, Hank and Phil had also consumed one. After awhile, they added up to a considerable amount. Phil was beginning to feel a bit tipsy. "Show him the financial pages!" he slurred.
"Why not? We got nuthin' better to do..." Hank slurred back.
"Dow Johns Industrial Average up one hundred sixty points. NASDAQ slides as investors move money out of internet start-ups and into blue chips," House read.
"This one's on the house," said Freddie.
"S'bout time, you cheap bastard!" Hank said as he slid off the stool and onto the floor.
House got up from his stool and helped Hank back onto his. He continued on to the men's room, striding like a Mummer in a parade. When he returned, Freddie handed him the sports section again. "How are the A's doing?"
"I think they'll probably win a hundred games this season," House replied without looking at the paper.
Freddie's jaw went so slack it almost dropped onto the bar.
House smiled. "Just kidding. I don't follow baseball."
Phil moved his face to within six inches of House's. He stared into his eyes. "Who are you?" He looked at Hank, who was resting his head on the bar. "Hank! Wake up! I think the boy's possessed." He turned back to House. "Who's in there with you, boy?"
"It's Marvin. Marvin's in here."
Phil backed up. A chill ran down his spine. When it reached his knees, it cut them right out from under him. He crumpled to the floor.
"Give me a hand, will you, Freddie?" House called to the bartender. "I think he's fainted."
Freddie came around from behind the bar and the two of them dragged Phil over to a booth. Then they retrieved Hank, supporting him with his arms over their shoulders. They slid him into the booth on the bench next to Phil. Freddie returned to the bar. House slid onto the bench opposite the two men.
"You alright, Phil?" House asked.
"I'm okay, Marvin."
"He's okay, Marvin," Hank snorted. Then he turned to Phil. "I think it's time we drop him at his Mama's," he chuckled as if it were some private joke.
"You think he's ready?" his conspirator giggled drunkenly.
"I think I better drive," said Marvin.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Like voices
The water running down the shower drain sounded like voices coming up through the air duct from downstairs. I thought of this later as I was waited on by the Gale Storm looking gal at Subway, the one with high cheekbones and puffy cheeks and just a hint of puffiness under the chin, the one with eyes that giggle at a joke that only she knows and will never tell. Cousin Molly all over again, something lost on a back road in rural Massachusetts that till this day I will never understand.
I thought of it again as I read Carlin's obituary. Now there was a guy who could cut through the bullshit. There was a guy who could tell you, "Come on, get off it," and make you love him for it.
The water running down the shower drain sounded like voices...
I thought of it again as I read Carlin's obituary. Now there was a guy who could cut through the bullshit. There was a guy who could tell you, "Come on, get off it," and make you love him for it.
The water running down the shower drain sounded like voices...
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