Somebody’s Daughter

by Larry Narron

I walked down the long empty hall to my father’s room, thinking about the visions I’d had of him the night before, and all the other nights before, a specter haunting my dreams, covered in ashes, gray-eyed and wrinkled, hiccupping soot as he licked his lips and smiled at me, mumbling the unspeakable as he came closer, rising up at the foot of my bed. In the East, they call it the demon sitting on one’s chest. Those of the special talents, when they were close to the periphery of sleep would see them suddenly appearing, a little man made out of shadow, standing there at the foot of the bed, and when they saw him, they were paralyzed with fear. You literally can’t move, like when the mind wakes up far before the body, and the limbs—even the lungs—ignore all the body’s ordinary commands to move. The sense of powerlessness might be compared to drowning, I imagine.

Claire Standing, oil, 84 x 41, by David Settino Scott: http://www.davidsettinoscott.com.

Claire Standing, oil, 84 x 41, by David Settino Scott: http://www.davidsettinoscott.com.

Anyway, I wasn’t paralyzed now. I was walking down the hall to my father’s room, ready to face whatever I found in there.

I knocked on the door and let myself in. My father didn’t hear me approach. He was sitting on the far edge of his bed, facing away from me, watching TV, some History Channel show about flying saucers where they were interviewing pilots who said they’d seen them zipping over Europe during the Second World War—foo fighters, they called them.

The afternoon sunlight was coming in through the window directly behind the TV, the rays making what little white hair my father still had left on his head shimmer like the frail yet brilliant feathers of an ancient bird grown so thin that they had been loosened from the skin. He was like a weathered angel in the light, a shape that seemed to defy his nightly incarnations in my bedroom.

I noticed a little book about the rosary on his bedside pillow. I wondered when he’d decided to convert to Catholicism, or if he just suddenly found little religious trinkets comforting in the confusing, muddled landscape of old age. Maybe, in his mind, he’d always been a Catholic. My father tended to imagine things in order to fill in the gaps in memory that had been appearing with greater frequency and range in the years since he’d been admitted to this place. Oftentimes the made-up things were more real to him than the things that actually happened, the things he couldn’t remember had happened, or the things he refused to remember.

Hello? I said, trying to get my father’s attention. Mr. Wernick?

My father turned and smiled at me.  The pale blue cores of his eyes still shone through the foggy gray layer that had clouded over them both. Nurse Lucy, he said, flicking off the TV with the remote and tossing it onto the bed, we meet again. He stood and walked around the foot of the bed toward me. You look beautiful, my dear, as usual.

My father hugged me and I hugged him back the best I could. I was surprised by the warmth in his hands, his arms, his body, and I could tell that his body was not made out of shadow, but of flesh—a real man with blood in him that was still warm and flowing, wanting to pump to his heart for a little while longer, still. Even so, I didn’t understand how anything warm could be coming from him. The skin on his hands was spotty; it hung loose on his bones. Finally he let go and sat back down on the bed, facing me. I put my purse down on the floor and sat down on the chair across from him, against the wall.

And call me Sal, my father said. You know the drill.

I did know the drill—I’d been visiting him at least twice a month since he’d gotten sick. I looked out the open window behind my father on the far side of the room. Between the transparent white drapes that had been pulled aside, the hills of Fairfield were yellow, turning golden as the sun went down behind them. The green oaks lay scattered from each other in the golden hills. I wondered how anything could grow like that—alone, separated from all the others of its kind.

That’s a very pretty skirt you’re wearing, my father said, pointing and smiling. You look as beautiful as my wife did on her wedding day. Of course, she’s dead now, he added, still smiling.

I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Wernick.

He shrugged. Oh, that’s all right, he said. It’ll happen to all of us. I came to terms with that a long time ago—I was only seventeen. His smile faded. He folded his hands in his lap and looked down at his fingers for a moment. I couldn’t think of anything to say. But then he looked up.

Well, Nurse, he said, his smile reappearing mysteriously as he sat back down on the bed, you look just lovely, just like some of the girls from the war. There were so many beautiful girls in the war, he said. Have a seat.

Without any warning at all I lifted the hem of my skirt and moved my knee out so he could see the exposed tan flesh of my inner thigh. I pointed to the cigarette burns there, keeping my eyes locked on his.

He looked down at my thigh. There were a lot of beautiful girls in the war, he said again, this time with the remote and detached, ethereal monotone of someone talking in his sleep.

Mr. Wernick, I said, closing my legs and pulling my skirt back down over my knees, do you think we can try it again today? That is, if you’re comfortable?

He looked up suddenly. At that moment he had the appearance of someone trying to come to their senses after being shaken out of a deep sleep. Always comfortable, he said, and lay back down on the bed, closing his eyes. He pushed the rosary book to his side and laced his fingers together over his stomach. He let out a huge sigh. Kind of suits me, if you know what I mean.

Certainly, I said. Try to relax, Mr. Wernick.

He did try, and I proceeded to put him into a deep, deep sleep by reciting the little mantras we’d thought up together. I wasn’t sure if hypnosis would make him remember anything—it hadn’t so far—but I was desperate to keep trying, to do my best to help him recollect the past.  Perhaps it would require more than just showing him cigarette burns.

Once I’d gotten him into the trance I said, Tell me about your daughter. Tell me what you remember about Cynthia.

He shifted on the bed. His eyelids wrinkled and it seemed he really was trying to remember something. I looked at my father and was startled when I saw how old he looked; it seemed to occur to me suddenly and all at once. As he squeezed his already closed eyes even more tightly shut, his eyelids resembled the tightly twisted knots in the middles of ancient trees.

Somebody’s daughter, he said.

I waited. Yes? I said, when he wouldn’t go on.

Silence. Then he said, We’d taken a hill.

I didn’t understand. A hill? I tried to remember anything about a hill.

We’d taken a hill, he said again, and we were in the trees. The village was burning.  McCormick had already torched it, and whole place was on fire. We used to mow them all down, you see, without thinking one bit about it. At first it was just the enemy, of course. But then it wasn’t clear anymore who was the enemy. Nothing made any sense. We were so tired and it wasn’t clear. No sleep, the way you get after killing, what it does to you.

Silence. I waited for him to continue. Finally I had to ask him: What about somebody’s daughter? Whose daughter was she? We seemed to finally be getting to the point and I hoped he would finally face it.

My father sighed, his eyelids twisting up even more in the trance. I was in the trees, he said, walking between the flames. I could hear McCormick and the others calling me. I was still looking for survivors, anyone we could take as prisoners.

He stopped for a little while. I just sat there, looking at him. I didn’t know where he was going with this, but somehow I knew that, whatever he was going to tell me, it wouldn’t be fantasy; it wouldn’t be about the Rosary, our mantras, my assumed identity as Nurse Cindy.

I focused my attention on the pained look on my father’s face and I almost wanted to wake him up. I wanted to distract him from whatever it was he was in the process of trying to remember. I thought he might start crying. And besides, I wanted to bring him back to try getting him to talk about me. But I couldn’t speak, except to urge him to continue telling whatever story this was from the war.

The little girl, he said suddenly, walked right up to me through the burning trees. She was wearing this brown dress with little straps, but the straps had slipped off of her shoulders. The dress was coming off of her, peeling off, you could see quite a bit. The flames were going up on both sides of her, the smoke rising into the sky. I could see the huts of the village burning behind her. It was her village. I looked at the little girl and she looked at me, just standing there with her dress coming off. She had those dark eyes they all have. They just looked right inside me. But they weren’t studying me or anything. I looked back and tried to see inside her. I couldn’t. There were just these dark eyes that wouldn’t let up. He paused, let out a long heavy breath as if he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it in and needed to let it out now. But I remember, he said, thinking it was somebody’s daughter. She had to be, didn’t she? But she was all alone by herself and the village was burning, the heat making the sky quiver the way it does at airports when the planes are getting ready to take off on the runway. The girl…she had to have been only about six or seven. I remember how I raised my pistol and pointed it at her. I don’t know why, but she just stood there and kept looking at me like nothing had happened. She was somebody’s daughter, I kept telling myself. Where were her parents? Were they burning somewhere? Where’s your mommy and daddy? I said. But of course she just kept looking at me; she didn’t understand.  Finally, I lowered my pistol. I thought she might run away then, but she just went on with those eyes of hers. I remember thinking maybe I should take her with me, back to the others. We could find a medic or something. I remember how I thought I could get her out of there—I could save her life, if I really wanted to. But then I thought about how McCormick and the others would think I was crazy, how they’d tell me we couldn’t just take some little girl away with us. And I thought how it didn’t matter anyway, how her parents and whatever brothers and sisters she might have had were already burning. We’d killed everyone. Then, there was an awkward moment, I remember, when I tried hard to say something more. I really wanted so say something.  But I didn’t know what. Then I just turned on my heel and started walking back through the burning trees. I could feel the girl’s black eyes on the back of my head, burrowing, watching me retreat through the black smoke in the trees that started billowing up with the flames, covering everything.

My father stopped talking. He just lay there quietly, almost like he was sleeping. I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath his shirt. Outside, between the window’s white curtains, the sun was going down beyond the hills, their gold flaming out into brilliant reds and oranges.  The gnarled trees darkened.

Nurse Cindy, my father abruptly said. Are you still there? He didn’t open his eyes. But he had asked me this strange question—if I was there. At that moment something strange dawned on me: I realized right then that he wasn’t in a trance at all, that he couldn’t be in a trance and ask me a question like that. He had merely pretended to be hypnotized, perhaps so he could tell me this story he wouldn’t want to express or even acknowledge while he was awake. Had he been faking the trance all these times I’d come to see him? I wasn’t sure. He hadn’t told me anything like this story until now.

I’m right here, Mr. Wernick, I assured him. The sound of my voice seemed to put him at ease.

Both of us were quiet for a long while. It was apparent my father wasn’t going to say anything more.

After a while, I said, When you hear the sound of the door closing, Mr. Wernick, you are going to wake up.

Supine on his bed, my father nodded in his fake hypnotized state. Okay, he said.

You can watch TV, I said, until you get tired. There’s something on about UFOs.  I won’t be here when you wake up.

Okay.

I picked up my purse from the floor and stood. I was about to head for the door, but something told me I should stay. I just stood there and looked down at my father lying there on his bed, the sunset spilling through the window onto his bed. I thought I should say something, maybe about the burns, but I didn’t know what exactly. Finally I just reached over and picked up the rosary book and flipped through it. I knew it was filled with mantras I’d never want to familiarize myself with; it didn’t offer me the kinds of false memories I needed. I put it in his hands and his fingers closed over it firmly, his eyes still closed, his expression still unchanging. In that moment, he might as well have been lying in a coffin.

I turned and walked out the door, closing it softly behind me. The long white hall outside his room was still empty. I walked down the hall and into the lobby. Nurse Cindy, who’d let me in, whose name I shamelessly assumed during these visits to my father, was gone, but there was a receptionist behind the front desk. I didn’t look at her, didn’t sign out, just walked past her and out the door into the soft evening light. The dark sunlight was shining on the asphalt, making the shadows lengthen as I walked across the parking lot toward my car. A part of me wanted to go back, to ask him once more if he could at least try to remember me, what he did to me. But the truth was…I was scared. I was afraid that, if he did remember, and he said my name, I would look at him and wouldn’t be able to recognize him at all. It wouldn’t be my father there anymore, just someone made out of shadow, someone who could paralyze with a stare.

Having previously supported himself by sorting mail, spinning signs, and washing windows, Larry Narron (after graduation from UC Berkeley), now lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.  He can be reached at: lmnarron@gmail.com. This story originally appeared in Issue 50 of Palomar College’s literary journal, Bravura. It is republished with the author’s permission.

Night Life in Happy Jack’s: ‘Two-Beer’

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

Bob ‘Two-Beer’ Bullnair refuses to listen to reason, especially if he’s into his third beer. Two-Beer works exclusively for Rafe Monk. He is around my height, six feet, but at least 200 beans of non-defined farm-boy strength that is the awe of fellow fishermen, for Two-Beer will outwork, outlift and outlast anybody on the waterfront. His Midwestern pie-face owns tiny black eyes that are pathetically sincere, especially when he hits on women before his second beer. He is totally honest, trustworthy and earnest, will do anything for anybody, is intelligent and has a degree in engineering from the University of Iowa, and yet here he is, a deckhand in Morro Bay, California, living in a windowless shack and unable to get laid and avoid beatings.

On this Sunday evening Two-Beer’s button eyes are pinpricks inviting disaster. He wants a beer but I know we’ll all be in big trouble if I serve him one, and so, for the twentieth time, to distract him, I ask him why he ended up fishing in Morro Bay when he could be a serious person with a high-paying job in the grown-up tech world.

“I don’t wanna be like other people and do what other people do,” he tells me. “I do what I wanna do. And don’t you go mentioning my college degree again. Fuck the degree! I want people to think I’m stupid, but you know I’m not. You probly think you’re smarter than me, ‘cuz you’re a wise-ass, and you write for that shitty paper, but you’re not as smart as me. All you can do is tend bar and write shit. Otherwise, you’re good for nothin’.”

“I drove a cab.”

“Anybody can drive a cab.”

“Not everybody can drive a cab. It’s a harder job than you think.”

“Bullshit. If you can do it, anybody can do it.”

“You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t tend bar, either.”

“I could so. Anybody can tend bar.”

“Not you. A bartender needs diplomatic skills. You argue with everybody. You have no social amenities. You can’t be around booze without drinking, and you’re an idiot of a drunk. And you can’t fight.”

“Bullshit. I’ll kick your ass. I was on the high school wrestling team and won my matches, went to the state championships. The Midwest is wrestling country. I’d squeeze you into a pretzel.”

“You only fight when you’re drunk. Two beers and you’re helpless. You have no idea how many times I’ve saved you from a beating, but you never remember, because three beers and you black out. Rafe, Farraday…, they all have to watch you like hawks when you go up the coast. You go in bars like this, where nobody knows you, somebody’s gonna beat your ass into a bloody pulp.”

“I’ll have my second beer now, Mr. Know-it-all.”

“I’m not gonna serve you a second beer. Know why? There’s women in here, and women are always your natural enemy. Especially after two beers. I mean, you might even get laid in this dive if you had just one beer, or smoked a little weed.”

“Who are you? My social director? My shrink?”

“I’m your bartender, an important person in your milieu. I’m also your friend. I look out for you. I’m sick of seeing you get beaten senseless by people who have no business beating you senseless, and I’m sick of hearing about people beating you senseless. Somebody’s got to protect you from yourself. I care.”

“I know you do, but that doesn’t mean I hafta accept your protection or you caring about me. I’m my own man. I’m not a boy. I’m thirty-two years old. Besides, I’m unimpaired, and indestructible. I can take more punishment than you’d ever take, Mr. Know-it-all-tell-everybody-their-business bartender. Now gimme that beer, if you don’t mind, sir!”

“What are you gonna do if I don’t give it to you?”

He cracks his innocent Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Newman grin. “You know I’d never hurt you. You know the second beer I’m okay. It’s the third one I run into trouble.”

“My guess is you’ve had more than one in your dump or in other bars before coming down here.”

“I want my second beer, Franklin!” He’s becoming angry, pushing.

“I saw you coming out of Legend’s.”

“They wouldn’t serve me. I’m eighty-sixed.”

“I’m absolutely positive you’ve been nipping.”

“Fuck you! Gimme my fucking beer, man!”

“Go away, Two-Beer!”

“Don’t call me Two-Beer! I hate that name. It demeans me. I’m an educated person and I deserve dignity, you arrogant fucker. My name’s Bob Bullnair. Serve me!”

I walk away. Two-Beer looks especially persecuted, tells Homer Carp and Joe Farraday, who are sitting nearby, he’s being picked on because he’s a proud Native American. (He’s only ¼ Osage). Finally, he’s at the front door. He hisses at me, scrooches up his face to show his revulsion at the mere sight of me, and gives me the finger in a very exaggerated, menacing manner, and shouts, “I’m goin’ down to the wharf where they respect me, asshole. Fuck YOU-U-U-U!” He storms out through the swinging doors. Homer, at the end of the bar, flashes his grin, which looks like his teeth are a bunch of misshapen nails protruding from his lips. Farraday, who sits beside Weasel Frazier, displays his grin, which resembles a dog sneering.

Beer Can Bessie shows up and takes her usual stool up front and as far away from the crowd as possible and orders a bottle of beer and we exchange the usual hugs. I light her cigarette with our bar matches, which have no logo on the cover. It’s raining hard outside and she has on her overcoat and hat and doesn’t bother to remove them. She just got off work as an RN at the emergency room at a hospital in San Luis Obispo. Vera, Carp’s live-in woman, diminutive but known for her ferocious manner as “The Wolverine,” comes in through the back door, walks around Homer without acknowledging him or his friends and sits beside Bessie as I draw her a beer and light her cigarette. I sip a shot of top-shelf vodka while they talk. I fetch and devour a burrito from down the street. I’m savoring a cup of coffee with Kahlua when John, who manages the Pizza Palace two blocks down, calls.

The Pizza Palace has a rustic dining room and an enclosed patio with tables and serves pitchers of beer, and evidently Two-Beer came in claiming I’d sent him down. John served him a pitcher of beer and he began bothering some gal who was with a framer called Ortho, and when Two-Beer hissed and insulted his girl and got his pitcher dumped on his head and then got slaughtered before a few regulars pulled Ortho away, John and the crew threw him into the street.

Bessie and the Wolverine turn to see Two-Beer stagger through the front doors looking like he stuck his face in a garbage disposal. His T-shirt is torn half off his body and his hair is soggy with beer as he sidles up to the bar while I hold the phone, his eyes little nasty lasers.

“Do me a favor, Franklin,” says John, on whose Pizza Palace sponsored basketball team I once played point guard and helped lead them to their only city league championship and lone trophy. “Don’t ever send that mongoloid lunatic down here again, okay?”

“I didn’t send him down there, John. I wouldn’t sick the crazy bastard on my worst enemy.”

“He said you told him I’d serve him because we’re big hoop buddies.”

“I never said any of that, John. I’d never pawn the puke off on you.”

Two-Beer yells at me, “GIMME A BEER, YOU GODDAMN BUNION!”

“Oh, I see you got the moron now, huh? He ran everybody out of here. I’m talking families with kids. Thanks a lot, pal. Maybe I’ll send one of my blacked-out drunks to your place, huh?”

“That’s all I got, John.”

“GIMME A FUCKIN’ BEER YOU SEMEN-SUCKIN’ QUEER!”

“He called one of my waitresses, a high school girl, a wart, a bunion, and a cunt, and hissed at her, and she ran out of here crying hysterically.”

“I’m sorry, John, I really am, but I’m telling yah, man, I NEVER sent the puke down there.”

“I gotta go, Dell. I got a mess to clean up. Thanks for sending that crazy person to my establishment and ruining our good name, I really appreciate it.”

After hanging up, Two-Beer is sort of draped over the bar, eyeing me up with persecuted malevolence, blood dripping from his nose and swollen, cut lips, face slack. “How about some coffee, Bob?” I say to him.

“How about some cawww-fee?” he mocks sneeringly. “Don’t try an’ schmooze me. Don’t try an’ outsmart me, cuz yah can’t, yah bunion.”

“Why you calling me, of all things, a bunion, Bob?”

“A boil, a wart, a …pus-tule.”

“Why you callin’ me those awful names, Bob? I’m on your side. I’m your friend.” I pour myself out a vodka, sniff it.

“Fuck you, I got no frenz…damn you, pus-face, I want my fuckin’ BEER!”

“You settle your dumb, sorry ass down,” Bessie says quietly.

Still draped over the bar, his head turns like a turtle’s toward Bessie. “Who the fuck are you?”

“You don’t wanna know, dipshit.”

“Who you callin’ a dipshit?” he says defensively.

Bessie calmly appraises him. “When’s the last time you got laid, stupid?”

Two-Beer’s trying to focus now. “None-a yer bizness, bitch.”

“You haven’t been laid in years. You gotta pay for it, like a beggar, though I doubt even the most desperate, drug-ridden hooker’d have you. You’re uncouth. A loser.” She takes out a new cigarette and I light it. She blows out smoke. “Poor stupid fisherman. Eat your poor lonely heart out.” She takes a slug of her beer. Turns back to me. “Give him a beer. I’ll take charge.” Two-Beer gazes at me, mouth agape, horribly bloodshot eyes terribly confused. I draw him a draft. He looks at it.

“Go ahead, drink your beer, stupid ape,” Bessie says. “Dig your own grave. You’re just about the stupidest, lamest male hide and pair of balls in creation, goddamn drooling, slobbering yokel, you’re like somebody’s abandoned goddamn St. Bernard.”

Two-Beer mutters, “My name’s Bob Bullnair and you can kiss my white ass.”

“Oh, that’s real intelligent. You’re a scholar as well as a boor.”

Two-Beer takes a swig of his beer—half of it trickles down his throat. Everybody’s looking on. I turn down the jukebox. Freshen up my shot. Lean back against the bar. These are golden moments, make the job worthwhile.

“Intelligent? I got a diploma from the University of Iowa, white-trash bitch. Whatta you got? Look like a homeless wench t’ me.”

Bessie looks him over. “So you’re gay, huh? A homo?”

“I ain’t a damn queer! Fuck you! I’m a man!”

Bessie snuffs out her cigarette. Finishes off half a bottle of beer, puts it down, studies Two-Beer, who gapes at her, licking his bloody, sliced, swollen lips. “I guess we’ll have to see about that,” she says. She tosses some bills on the bar, squeezes the Wolverine’s arm, stands and walks over to Two-Beer. She withdraws a hanky from her purse and dabs at his face. Two-Beer watches her, half standing now. She looks him up and down. Puts her hanky away. “Look,” she says “if you just shut your trap and follow me out the door like a good dog trying to please his master, you might just get lucky. You up to it, dipshit?”

Two-Beer straightens, teeters. He nods. He swigs his beer, most of it streaming down his neck. He flashes his Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Newman grin. Bessie snags him by his torn T-shirt and tows him lurching out the door while everybody cheers and claps. I lift my shot and bolt it. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

 

Going Native

FICTION.GOING-NATIVE

by Larry Narron

Oscar stood on the curb in front of his school and waited for his mother’s boyfriend, Ted, to pick him up. It was a Friday in June, as well as his sixth birthday—Ms. Lindsey had even brought him a cupcake during recess, and he got to blow out the candle too—and he was looking forward to spending time with his father (who he was in the habit of calling by his first name, Randy) later that evening.

He glanced down at the two, blue plastered-together slivers of construction paper that he held in his hands, the edges still wet and sticky from his liberal use of the glue-stick. He was afraid of scissors, and so that morning Ms. Lindsey had stood behind him with her warm cigarette breath beside his cheek, and her long yellow hair almost tickling his neck as she held his hands against a cold and rusty left-handed pair barely held together by a single loose bolt and directed his nervous fingers to slowly cut the thick paper into the shape of a raindrop.

He’d written, in as even lines as he was capable of writing, a poem of his own authoring about raindrops with a purple Magic Marker® in his best handwriting which, he knew, wasn’t as good as some of the other kids in his class, especially the girls. But the poem itself was good. Of that he was certain. And he thought that Randy would think it was a good raindrop poem when he gave it to him later that evening.

Oscar had been waiting for a little more than an hour, and now not just the school but the sidewalk itself was nearly devoid of children, and the sun was sinking low on the horizon beyond the white range of endless houses in the west when Ted suddenly came sailing past him in the pickup. About forty feet beyond the place where Oscar stood, the truck jerked suddenly to the right and rolled up onto the curb with a screech of the tires. The truck stopped, then realigned, and Oscar could see Ted looking back over his shoulder through the dirty glass as he backed the truck up—slowly this time—parallel to the curb, stopping finally when he reached the place where Oscar stood.

Through the rolled-down passenger-side window Oscar could see Ted leaning over the seat, looking at him. Immediately he felt the rushing wave of whisky and beer and cigarettes squeeze out of the car and envelope him.

Almost didn’t see you there, buddy, Ted slurred. He took a long drag from the cigarette that had, until that moment, dangled somewhere out of view. The cigarette looked as if it had been smoked as much as it could be smoked, but as Ted sucked on it the thing glowed a weak red and flickered for a moment like a defiant, dying breath before dimming into nothing. He jerked the thing violently away from his mouth and turned his head and exhaled a huge cloud of smoke into the cab. He flicked the butt out the driver’s side window and turned back to Oscar. Happy birthday, bud. Hop in.

Oscar got in the truck and they pulled away from the school. The truck made a wide turn onto the boulevard that cut straight through the center of town. Ted glanced quickly at Oscar, turned his attention back to the road. Whatcha got there, bud?

Oscar looked down at the huge paper raindrop he was holding carefully with both hands on his lap. A raindrop poem, he said. Made it in class.

Ted shot him another glance, longer this time, his eyes narrowing as he stared for a good few seconds at the paper raindrop before turning his attention back to the road to discover in that instant that he’d veered off into the other lane. Up ahead, in the distance, the traffic was coming toward them. He pulled back into his own lane before Oscar had even noticed. No problem.

So the white man thinks he can make a poem about the rain now, hmm? Ted said, his face flushing slightly.  He shook his head and scoffed.

Oscar looked at him, confused.  He waited patiently for the explanation he knew would come if he just kept quiet.

The white man doesn’t know shit about the rain, Ted was saying. It sounded to Oscar as if he was saying it to himself as much as he was saying it to him. You’d have to be Indian to understand about the earth, to make a poem about it. Is that some shit they teach you in school?  Jesus Christ. Christopher Columbus Day and Pocahontas and her big cartoon tits, right? Sure they do. He laughed again, shaking his head. He cocked his head to the side and spit out the window.

Oscar was quiet for a moment. He looked down at the raindrop poem in his lap and started to feel sad. Then he remembered: But Randy, he said, turning to Ted, said that you’re not a real Indian. He said you just pretend it. Randy says Indians don’t have blond hair and blue eyes.  Randy said—

Fuck Randy, Ted cut him off, gripping the wheel with both hands. Randy knows an awful lot, doesn’t he?

The truck sailed through a red light without incident.

I mean, Ted said, quietly, Randy wouldsay something like that. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Know what I mean, bud? He turned to Oscar and smiled through his yellow teeth.  The smile dissolved as he turned his head to look back at the road. Hey, he said after a few minutes, Randy didn’t happen to give you the check your mom wanted? Did he, bud?

No, Oscar said, I haven’t even seen him yet.

An Indian goes into hiding

When they got home Oscar’s mother made him take a shower, even though he’d already taken one the day before. He was drying off when he heard the doorbell ring—barely distinguishable amidst the Enya music blasting on the other side of the bathroom door—and he knew it was Randy coming to see him for his birthday. Oscar quickly finished drying and hurried into his clothes. He opened the door and saw Ted crouched low to the ground in the middle of the living room. He crept low, staying below the window sills. Oscar glanced out the window to see if anyone was looking into the house. When he looked back at Ted, hunched in the corner, his eyes were open wide. Ted held a finger up to his lips and looked at Oscar.

Oscar, Ted whispered in the way Oscar knew people whispered when they were going to say something that was very important. Don’t say anything. It’s your dad, bud. Don’t tell him I’m here. Ted remained crouched as he turned and hurried across the living room and down the hall toward his mother’s bedroom. Oscar watched him go into the room and climb into the closet. He looked at Oscar and put his finger to his lips again as he slid the door slowly and quietly over himself, and disappeared inside.

Oscar turned away and ran through the living room and down the other hall that led to the front door of the house. His mother was standing in the doorway, facing away from him and blocking any view of Randy he otherwise might have been able to get. She was screaming and Randy was screaming. Enya was singing.

This is bullshit, Randy said. Come on, Meredith. You know that son of a bitch was living here less than two weeks after I moved out. You can’t expect me to believethat shit.

Oh, don’t you sound intelligent? Real smart, Randy. You figured it out. So I was cheating on you. Jesus Christ.

Does he have a job yet? Are you guys gonna get married or was he just planning on living off of my money for a few years before he bails out on you? He already bailed out on his kid, now he thinks he can raise mine.

Shut up, Randy. Just shut up.

He thinks he’s a goddamn Indian, Meredith. A fucking Indian. You realize you’re both totally fucking crazy, right? I hope you at least realize that. You’re fucking the medicine man. Great. So what’s Oscar gonna be when he grows up? A fucking shaman? Randy laughed the way he did when he thought that something was stupid.

Meredith screamed. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just stop it.

Let me see my goddamn son.

From where he stood in the hallway Oscar could see his mother lift her hands from her hips and hug herself with her arms. She stood there.

It’s not Saturday.

It’s his birthday. I want to see him. Please.

It’s not Saturday, Randy.

Meredith. Please.

Oscar turned and ran back down the hall and through the living room. He ran up the stairs, leaping over every other step as he hurried to his bedroom. He went inside and got the raindrop poem from where he’d placed it on his pillow to let the glue dry. He closed the door behind him so that no one would hear him if he started crying. When he realized that he wasn’t going to cry, he grabbed the poem from his pillow and burst back out of his room and trotted back down the staircase to the living room, smiling.

Just as he reached the end of the hall where his mother was, she slammed the door shut on Randy. She locked it. She turned and looked startled when she saw Oscar standing there. A piece of paper was dangling from her left hand. Oscar looked and saw that it was the check she had kept asking him to get from Randy.

Is he gone yet? Oscar heard Ted calling from the closet in the bedroom behind him.

Meredith looked over Oscar’s head. Just hold on a second, Ted. I’ll be right there, honey.

She looked back at Oscar and smiled. What’s that you got there, Oscar? she said, pointing to the paper raindrop. You make that for me in school today?

Before he could even think how to answer his mother, her gaze dropped away from him and she studied the check in her hands.

Enya finished singing one song, began singing another.

FICTION.GOING-NATIVE2The Indian way

After dinner that night, his mother had to leave to go to a meeting at the place where she worked. She told Oscar and Ted to have fun, that she would be back later that evening, and then she left.

Ted had been drinking since about an hour before they sat down to have dinner from one of the big bottles that he kept in the high-up kitchen cabinets. After a while he started talking in his Indian voice again (the way he did when he got very drunk), the voice of the Indians on old, black-and-white TV shows. At least that’s what Oscar thought that it sounded like. He couldn’t exactly place where he’d heard a voice like that before.

After his mom left, Ted made Oscar do the dishes, but afterward he was allowed to watch cartoons in the living room for a while. His mom said she didn’t let him watch the good cartoons like Ninja Turtles because they were too violent, but he was allowed to watch Captain Planet because it talked about taking care of Mother Earth. Ted left him alone and went out into the backyard for almost the whole cartoon.

Captain Planet was almost done saving the rainforest from the lumberjacks when Ted came back inside, looking stone-faced and serious. He stumbled into the living room. Oscar, he said, it is time you learned a great Indian secret. You will come to the backyard now. He took a giant swallow from the nearly emptied bottle dangling from his fist. Come to the sweat lodge. He motioned. I will show you the way.

Oscar turned off the TV and looked at him. He didn’t know what to say. He thought if he said something, it might be wrong.

Your birthday is a very special time in life, Ted was saying. It is time for the great ceremony.  The stones have already been heated. Come. Ted took another gulp from the bottle, turned and walked back outside.

Oscar was afraid of following Ted, but he was also afraid of what might happen if he didn’t follow, so he rose from the couch and followed Ted out into the deep purple evening. He stood next to his mother’s boyfriend in the middle of the backyard. The stars, partially obscured by the thickening clouds, shone only dimly in the sky. A cool breeze blew softly through the darkness, almost as if it wanted to pass unnoticed through the yard.

They approached the sweat lodge together. It was just a makeshift hut covered with a black tarp. Oscar could see a small piece of the tarp that covered the wall that faced them swaying in the wind, reflecting the moonlight, and he realized in that moment that it was covering the entrance. From what he could tell by the way the tarp flapped, the entrance was so small you would have to get down on your hands and knees to crawl through it. He wondered when Ted had finished building the thing; just yesterday morning it was only a pile of wood lying in the grass.

Ted prodded Oscar with the bottle. Get in, he said, and be careful of the stones.

Oscar turned and looked up at Ted. It occurred to him then that he did not know if he was more frightened of Ted or of the idea of trying to squeeze into the hole.

Get in, Ted said more firmly. The medicine men have always said that this must be done.  Medicine is the way to purify, to heal the body and the mind. And the soul. The white man must be purified. He finished what was left of the bottle and lobbed it off into the grass by the fence.

Oscar, realizing now that he had no choice whatsoever in the matter, got down on his hands and knees and crawled reluctantly toward the door of the sweat lodge. When he reached it he lifted the flap of tarp that covered the small entrance and immediately felt the heat rush over him.  The blinding steam billowed out through the door something desperate to get out, as if there were something in there it absolutely must escape from before…before what? Inside, deep in the steam near the ground, in the middle of the lodge, he could see the smooth round stones glowing red in the shallow pit, pulsing slowly like the ends of cigarettes. For a moment, Oscar thought he heard an animal growling somewhere in the darkness behind him. Then he realized it was Ted.

Get inside, he said.  You’re letting the heat out.

Oscar pushed himself all the way in, feeling the hot steam as it swallowed him. Yeah, swallowing him, that’s what it was doing. As he pulled his legs into the sweat lodge, the tarp that concealed the small entrance fell slack behind him. The steam made it so he couldn’t see very well, and it made his eyes water and swell and sting. Already he felt uncomfortable trying to breathe. He inhaled cautiously, but the steam made his throat swell anyway; it burned in his lungs, but exhaling was a relief, even though it almost hurt as much as breathing in. He kept his breaths short, realizing then that deep breaths would only make it more uncomfortable, more painful. He crawled through the darkness, scraping against the wall to avoid the stones, noting that the interior of the sweat lodge was also coated in plastic tarp that had been stapled to the wall in some places, was sagging in others, bubbling from the heat. Above him, the plastic also drooped and bubbled in the places where no staples held it to the ceiling. Even with the glow from the heated stones, he could barely see the ceiling and the walls of the sweat lodge’s insides because it was so obscured by the thickening steam that kept billowing up from the stones in the pit, and the blackness of the walls and the ceiling seemed to add an inky stain to the steam that hung in the room, darkening it more, threatening to turn it entirely black—the hot blackening breath of the mouth, the mouth that had swallowed him, the mouth that was hungry forever for heat and steam.

Clinging to the tarp, he crawled around the glowing stones and sat against the wall on the far side of the sweat lodge where he faced the entrance—no, where he faced the mouth of whatever grim beast whose jaws he had been foolish enough to crawl inside. He sat Indian style, the way he had learned last year in kindergarten, thinking that this was how Ted would want him to be sitting. The black plastic covering the wall behind him was damp and sticky from the hot steam.  It clung to his back, even through the fabric of his shirt, and stuck to it with the help of the sweat that was forming there beneath it, that he could feel dripping down to the top of his pants. He swallowed, his throat not just dry but burning now, he realized, swelling and aching from the steam. He looked over the glow of the stones toward the low, now-covered entrance on the opposite side of the lodge. The dim red light made the floor glow, illuminated the lowest parts of the walls as well, and the plastic section of tarp that hid the entrance. The plastic shimmered in the red glow as a breeze drifted through the backyard.

There was a rustling sound that came from beyond the flap that dangled over the sweat lodge’s entrance, the sound of animals—dogs, maybe—digging, rustling through the wet grass and the weeds. Ted’s face popped through the hole. Oscar could barely see the outline of it through the thickening steam, but its surface glowed a soft red because of the heated stones.

Boo, Ted yelled, and burst out laughing.  He choked suddenly, coughed and heaved, his breath warm and rank from the bottle, mixing into a sickening soup with the steam floating in the darkness.

Ted squeezed through the hole and seemed to grow larger in the darkness as he sat up in the small, cramped room, his legs gleaming red, his torso and his face now entirely enveloped in the darkness and the steam. His body blocked the door, a permanent eclipse. He sat Indian style. It is the Indian way, he said.

Oscar stared at him, terrified. Indian way? Where had he heard that before? Hadn’t Randy said something about the Indian way once? Or was that just a dream he’d had? He almost remembered something then, but not quite.

The ceremony is sacred to my people, Ted said slowly in his strange voice, spacing out the words and emphasizing each one as if it were a completed statement of its own. Now his whole face was a shadow, a face made out of shadow, a shadow that breathed forth steam. You must be purified for what your people have done to mine.

Oscar tried to move and found that he couldn’t. He felt paralyzed with fear, as if a spell had been cast upon him that meant to keep him there. His lungs filled with the hot air and it burned worse than he felt he could bear. He wanted out. He tried to keep his breathing slow and even, but it was now quickening beyond his control, and the pain from the heat only increased with it.  The gleaming started swimming in the darkness in front of his eyes, the darkness blinking in and out of frame in subtle flashes that continued to flicker and pulse. He could feel his chest pounding with pain. He could barely recognize the strange voice of his mother’s boyfriend now as his speech slowed down even more, the octaves plummeting lower than Oscar had ever heard before from him.

The rain, Ted said deeply, and Oscar remembered no more.

~

There was a time, a year ago maybe, even though it sometimes felt like more, when Ted wasn’t there, when Randy was still married to Meredith, and they weren’t screaming. Randy and his mom were still living together with Oscar in the old mobile home park on the other side of the city. This was when Randy was working all the time, trying to get enough money to buy the new house in the nice neighborhood with the cul-de-sacs. Oscar remembered there was this one time when so many days went by and he didn’t even get to see Randy once. Randy would come home late at night after Oscar had gone to bed. And he’d leave early in the morning before he woke up.   He told his mom and she just looked at him and sighed and said, Tell me about it. So Oscar started telling her and she started yelling and sent him to his room. But then, one night, Randy snuck quietly into his room and woke him from sleep. There were dark bags hanging under his eyes, which were puffy and red, the veins in them thick and swollen, bulging even. He told Oscar to come with him into the living room. Shh, Randy said. They had to be real quiet because Mom was sleeping. They sat down on the couch in the living room and watched TV with the sound turned down so low there was almost no sound at all. It was a show—an old black-and-white one—about cowboys and Indians. Randy whispered something about how the Indians always whispered to each other when they went out hunting, and how they hid in the fog that blanketed the hills and kept them invisible to the cowboys, and how their horses ran through the fog with their hoofs never touching the ground, silent as ghosts. Oscar watched the cowboys shooting all the Indians on TV, the Indians firing back with their bows and arrows to no avail, tumbling down in the long wet grass, gun smoke puffing from their punctured hearts.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. But it was still dark when he felt the hand that was shaking him. He found that he could only open his eyes halfway, but he realized that he hadn’t gone to his room, that he’d fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, and he looked up into the darkness and saw that it was Randy who was shaking him gently, whispering. Oscar, come on now. Remember, you said you wanted to go fishing. Oscar didn’t remember, but he grew suddenly excited at the idea of fishing so early in the morning and he wanted to go. He got up from the couch and walked in a daze to his room to get his jacket and his shoes. When he came back to the living room, he saw Randy bending down in the darkness, closing the latches on the tackle box slowly and carefully, so they wouldn’t click too loud. He handed Oscar the fishing poles to carry and they went silently out of the house into the chill of the nearly lightless early morning. They got in the truck and let it warm up for a while before backing slowly out of the driveway into street.  As they drove through the mobile home park, Oscar looked out the window and up into the foggy darkness in the sky. The stars were all behind the clouds.

Randy turned the truck around the corner. They were driving toward the back of the mobile home park—it wasn’t the normal way to leave. Oscar turned to his dad. Where are we going, Randy? Randy smiled. We’re going fishing. But Randy, Oscar complained, this isn’t the way out of the park. Randy looked at him and smiled. We’re going the Indian way. He turned back to the road and peered into the fog as he drove them toward the back end of the park. There was a tear in the chain-link fence just wide enough to drive the truck through. They went through the opening and drove slowly down the long alleyway lined on each side with broken-down trailers that sunk into the wet, disintegrating asphalt. Long wet weeds grew up out of the asphalt around the sagging trailers. Their windows were boarded up and their wavy metal sidings were pocked with rusty holes. This is where the Indians live, Randy said. And he pointed to the boards nailed over the windows. See? They’re in there, hiding from skinwalkers. Oscar turned and looked at his father, his eyebrows coming together as he frowned at him skeptically. Skinwalkers? What’s that? Yeah, Randy said, and paused for a moment before continuing. Witches, he said. Witches that look like people sometimes, wild animals others. See, they can change into anything. They live in the caves out there in the hills, in the mist, and they talk to the wolves, and the coyotes.  And when the coyotes and the wolves go somewhere to die, the skinwalkers take their skins and wear them. The hair of the wolves is where they get their magic from.

Is it good magic? Oscar wanted to know.

Oh no, Randy said. It’s a very bad kind of magic. It’s a dark and terrible power that they have.  And that’s why the Indians are hiding here. Randy pointed again to the trailers as they slowly neared the end of the alley. Oscar looked again at the holes on the metal siding of the trailers, wondered if the Indians were looking out at them through the holes as they drove past. It’s why they have to keep quiet, Randy said. It’s why they have to whisper. That’s why they call this place the Indian way. But what about the cowboys? Oscar said. Why don’t the cowboys shoot the skinwalkers with their guns? Randy shook his head. Bullets can’t hurt them, he said. Their magic protects them. Oscar continued staring out the window, watched the trailers that seemed almost to float by them in the darkness. Then suddenly they were out of the alley, and onto the open road. Oscar recognized the place where they were now as the truck sped up, descending the hill that went down toward the lake.

~

FICTION.GOING-NATIVE.skinwalkerThe skinwalker

Oscar awoke and found himself in the cave with the skinwalker. It was sitting opposite him, blocking the cave’s entrance, and the cave was full of its blooming breath that burned hot from within. It sat Indian style, its legs aglow from the heated stones, its face blurred by the dense shadows that seemed to collapse in on themselves inside the steam. He could not see the skinwalker’s eyes—only the thickening shadow where its face was—but he knew with a terrible intuitive certainty that it was looking at him, through him, as if it were determined on focusing on something buried deep inside his head. He thought he could see the shadows that hid its face warp into the shape of sinuous lips, and smile at him, but the rest of its expression was still obscured by its hot breath that hung nearly motionless in the darkness of the cave, loomed suspended above the orange glow of the stones, the stones of its spell-making.

Oscar’s throat was hot and dry. He tried to breathe in and felt pain. He was sweating all over, dripping, shaking with terror but unable even to fidget from his position on the floor of the cave; he was still sitting Indian style, and his legs were asleep beneath him.

Today you are no longer a boy, the skinwalker said in the voice of the Indians. Today you are a man.

Oscar suddenly became conscious of his tongue in his throat and managed a scream. He willed the feeling back into his legs, the strength to stand, but as he did so he nearly collapsed into the hot pit of stones. The skinwalker was startled. It flinched at Oscar’s scream and sudden movement. Oscar scurried in a panic around the stones, making for the tiny door of the cave it was blocking. He swung his small fists at the thing, screaming and coughing, and screaming.  His fists thudded uselessly against it. He was not hurting it but he realized had startled the thing, caught the skinwalker off guard, and it growled at him, made to get up, giving him just enough space to squeeze by it and throw himself through the black tarp that hung over the opening of the cave. He heaved himself forward, ripping through the black crinkly darkness. The plastic that covered the entrance gave way and tore under the force of his desperate, flailing fingers. He tumbled through the tarp and crashed down into the wet dirt and the weeds. Instantly he felt the ice-cold mud on his face and hands and arms. The air was cool on his face. The soft breeze touched him as if to comfort him, to remind him that he had escaped. He sucked in the cold and soothing air. He didn’t want to let it out again.

He felt a violent slapping on his back. The skinwalker, blinded by its breath, was trying to squeeze out of the cave. It struggled to get a hold on Oscar’s shirt.

Oscar shrieked and pulled away through the dirt, wanting to get as far away as possible as the thing tried to pull him back into the cave. He felt a tug, his shirt ripping—and he was free.

Get back here you little brat!

Oscar pushed himself to his feet. The skinwalker squeezed out of the cave, stood and lunged after him. It grabbed ahold of Oscar’s arm and yanked hard on it. Oscar screamed again, heard a sickening popping sound below his shoulder that was immediately followed by a sharp and unbearable pain. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled away, stumbled through the dark yard under the clouded stars, hugging his injured arm to his chest, trying his best not to cry from the throbbing pain, sending it rippling into his neck in waves that only seemed to grow bolder in their effort to crash mercilessly against the tender shores of his brain.  Inevitably, his head began to pound and ache.

The house was in front of him, he saw. He stumbled toward the sliding screen door that led back into the house. He went inside, into more darkness. He remembered then that his mother was out at a meeting. She still wasn’t back. She’d left him with Ted but he’d started talking in his Indian voice and drinking and had turned back into the skinwalker. He remembered his father had stopped by earlier, but then he had left, went back to sleep in his little apartment in another city. He fumbled for the light switch in the darkness, only succeeded in stumbling into a chair at the dining room table. He winced, let out a short, half-muted sob, decided to forget the chair and felt his way through the darkness to the living room. He managed to avoid slamming into the coffee table, found his way around it, collapsed on the couch. He pulled his arm into his chest and hugged it tight, feeling the endless waves of pain pulsing  through him as he prayed wordlessly for them to subside.

The skinwalker stepped in through the screen door, cursing. It went right for the cabinets in the kitchen and started throwing the doors open, looking for bottles. Finally it came back out—empty-handed. It stared at Oscar through the darkness for a moment, saying nothing.  Finally it walked over toward him and crouched down beside the coffee table. It reached for the bundle of sage leaves on the middle of the table, fumbled in its pocket with the other hand and pulled out a lighter. It held the flame up to the sage leaf and flicked it a few times before the sage caught fire. The skinwalker shook the sage back and forth until the little flame burned out.  Smoke rose through the darkness, spinning slow as it meandered toward the ceiling.

To clear the house of evil spirits, it said in its low and measured Indian voice, still waving the burning bundle of sage back and forth, the smoke now spreading outward through the air as it rose. Its voice choked on sobs. The spirits will leave us now. But sounded only half-convinced of itself.

Oscar clutched his arm and fought back tears, stared at the skinwalker kneeling beside him as it slowly waved the sage back and forth in the darkness. Oscar held his breath and watched it, and saw that it had started weeping softly over the edge of the coffee table.

He watched it for a long time like that.  Finally, when the sage had finally burned away, the skinwalker stood wordlessly. It looked down at Oscar for a moment. Then it turned and walked silently down the hall to his mother’s bedroom, went in, and shut the door softly behind it. §

Having previously supported himself by sorting mail, spinning signs, and washing windows, Larry Narron (after graduation from UC Berkeley), now lives and writes in Portland Oregon.  He can be reached at: lmnarron@gmail.com

 

NIGHTLIFE IN HAPPY JACK’S: THE REAL COMPUTER VIRUS

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

I was tending bar at Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, a notorious fisherman’s dive habituated by a foul, abusive crowd of ex-cons, cranksters, drug-whores, hard-core alkies, and their coteries. I’d been there six years, fighting off the harpies and mayhem, when my hoop pal, Charlie Richardson, who was part owner of a restaurant/bar on a golf course in Los Osos, offered me a job tending bar nights.

Because I was wearing down from the venal clientele in Happy Jack’s, I’d been mulling over a change, feeling, at 56, that I needed a drastic change. I was told by Mr. Richardson that I was perfect for this new venue because its theme was a sports bar and I was a sports media maven as well as an athlete who understood players and games.

The clubhouse was spacious, well-lit, clean, unlike the sewer-rancid, gloomy, grotto-like Happy Jack’s. Scattered throughout the clubhouse were about ten TVs, controlled by two satellite systems that appeared as intricate and extensive as the instrument panel on a jet plane.

The manager, Greg (also a part owner,) was there to break me in. (I was still working at Happy Jack’s, just testing the waters here). Throughout the clubhouse were tables, to which very pretty, very wholesome young girls delivered meals from a nearby kitchen. The atmosphere among customers and employees was sunny, upbeat. Used to being verbally abused and even threatened, occasionally attacked and retaliating, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and courtesy of golfers. No cursing or spouting unintelligible gibberish, just a crew of civilized middle-class suburbanites, and good tippers to boot.

But then there was this cash register. Greg felt I already knew how to work such a register, but when I explained I had never done so, he told me it was “a snap” and it wouldn’t take but a few minutes for him to teach me. A very patient person, he did not realize that since l969 I had only worked registers into which I simply pounded out the amount, hit a SALE button, and ka-ching, out popped the tray, and I made a quick transaction.

This new register looked nothing like the solid-state, anvil-heavy registers I was used to, was this skinny, fragile-looking contraption with a big glowing screen.

“You’ll really like this register,” Greg told me. “It’s real simple, once you get used to it. It does all your adding, so there’s no chance of mistakes.”

“I don’t make mistakes with numbers, Greg. I can add. I won a mental arithmetic contest at the Pomona Fair when I was ten years old. I pride myself in being a fast, power bartender.”

Greg raised a hand to stop me. “Look, this machine has a price list for all items, which automatically go into a computer. This makes it easier for you early on, when you don’t know prices. This register keeps track of past purchases, inventory, and makes it easier to do taxes and keep track of checks and credit card transactions….”

“Credit cards? I’ve never used a credit card machine. I’ve worked street bars. We don’t accept credit cards, only cash.”

“There’s a button on this register for checks, cash, credit cards, employee discounts, personal tabs, kitchen food, bar snacks….”

“How many goddamn buttons are there for all these different things?”

“Nine.”

“That’s a lot of buttons to keep up with, man. I’m used to one button.”

He placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Once you get used to it, you’ll love this register. I mean, if you won an arithmetic tournament, you can certainly master this register. In fact, I predict, that within a day or two, you’ll LOVE this register….”

“What about credit cards? I don’t know how to operate a credit card machine that’s computerized. Where I work, those pukes aren’t allowed credit cards…most of ‘em don’t have drivers licenses.”

“Dell, calm down.” He squeezed my shoulder to show me reassurance and confidence. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

My first shift, Greg sat at the bar playing a video game, keeping an eye on me. The maze of buttons had me flustered and lost, so that Greg kept having to leave his obsessive playing of a video golf game to push buttons and explain things to me. I felt like a stupid person in front of him and the customers each time this happened. While ringing up one measly drink, I dithered with the register as people held up their empty bottles and glasses. One man asked me to please turn on the Laker game on the TVs while another wanted a hockey game, so Greg had to discontinue his golf video game to regulate the satellite system, which entailed more complications to distract and confuse me. I did manage to mix all the drinks to stem the tide of demands and collected tickets and punched them in the register and commenced hitting buttons.

Suddenly tape streamed out of the register and kept coming, piling up on the floor in folds. Bells dinged. The screen filled with advice to halt the onslaught, but I panicked in following directions, and finally, as customers looked on, Greg peered up from his game and quickly came behind the bar to hit a button and halt the flow. My pride was wounded. Trained at Harrah’s Club and having worked busy clubs and entertained folks at the same time, I considered myself a professional.

Anyway, Greg collected the tape and piled it on the back bar and I started fresh. By this time golfers sitting along the bar were starting to exchange glances, and Greg, despite his constant support and encouragement, was glancing at me with mounting concern. Twice he had to come back and show me how to operate the credit card machine. I finally got it on the third try, but still, I dreaded my next bout with this machine, because, like the cash register and satellite system, it too had its little host of tricks to torment me.

At the end of my first shift my final ring was around forty-grand. Greg and I had a big laugh as he showed me how to close up and operate a complicated burglar alarm, which involved more buttons. The places I’d worked in the past had alarms where a simple turn of a key turned it on or off. The entire bevy of systems and buttons had me intimidated, demoralized, and unnerved.

My second shift, Greg remained patient while I continued to muddle through. Even as I was still struggling with the register, he decided to break me in with the satellite system, which proved, as I feared, more complicated and touchy than the register. There was a thick book with all code numbers of satellite channels, and these proved vexing, not to mention operating the system by itself. But, since I was busy, Greg got all the channels in order while I waited on trade. I was still frustrated by the register. I mean, you could not just ring up a vodka/tonic when in a hurry. You hit two buttons and then had a choice of alcohol, wine, or beer. I pushed alcohol and a barrage of liquors appeared on screen. I picked vodka. Up popped a dozen brands of vodka. I pushed Smirnoff. Hit another button for mixes. Up popped a list. I hit tonic. Then I hit other buttons to make a sale. Still, from time to time, for no known reason I could find, tape flowed and spilled on the floor, and the hateful screen dinged and pointed out advice.

I began to sweat, grow tense, lose heart, wilt. As I continued to fall behind, Greg repeatedly came back to stem the flow of tape. I found myself doubling up a fist with which I desired to violently savage this fucking demented machine. I wanted to pick it up and run out among the happy couples and families eating at tables and slam the thing onto the floor and stomp it into smithereens.

My second night, during which I amassed good tips, I rang up around 25-grand, 23-grand over. Still, I operated the credit card machine flawlessly and, at closing, turned on the alarm without a hitch, impressing Greg, who claimed the crowd was taking a liking to me.

I worked my four shifts at Happy Jack’s, slamming around, getting drunk, and returned to the clubhouse, still training. My third shift I was close to mastering the register; only one brief flow of tape which I adroitly halted. So, on the following night, Greg saw fit to step out for a little dinner, leaving me alone, expressing confidence in my ability to operate all systems. The moment he slipped out the door a shiver of terror rippled through my body. My mouth went dry. My palms turned clammy. And it turned out to be a very busy night—cheap taco special. I had to ring up food bills for waitresses, credit cards, tabs, employee discounts, etc., all needing separate buttons. I immediately fell behind and tried to do too many things at once and hit a wrong button and tape streamed out and piled up on the floor. Bells dinged. The screen advised me. There was no Greg to help me. Then somebody requested a golf channel and told me the number, but since there were two systems, I tried the wrong system and all 10 TVs blinked off, so there was nothing but static on all 10 TVs while patrons clamored like an unruly mob for drinks and games.

I became sort of petrified, unable to function, to even move, my brain vaporizing. I was lathered in sweat, gulping for air, hands shaking, teeth clacking. I began to go faint and held onto the bar to keep from collapsing on the floor where tape was quickly piling up. Finally, after swigging a shot from a bottle of vodka like a skid-row drunk, I stormed into the kitchen and corralled the sweet 19-year-old waitress, Melody, who recoiled in shocked, pop-eyed horror at the sight of me.

“My God,” she gasped, touching my inflamed, sweaty face, “are you sick?”

“Melody, I’m having a seizure! I’m hyperventilating!” I gnashed my teeth as sweat geysered from my forehead, burning and blinding my eyes. “Things are closing in on me, Melody!” I heard myself shouting in a dry, strangled voice., following her out to the bar and going behind it. “The register,” I cried pointing at it. “I’m no match for it. The sonofabitch is gonna kill me!”

Everybody in the clubhouse had ceased what they were doing to stare at me. “Poor thing….” Melody murmured, very concerned. “Do you want me to call the paramedics?”

“No. Take over, honey. I’ll drive myself to the hospital. The bar, it’s all yours, kid, the tips, everything. I gotta go. Tell Greg I quit.”

I dashed to the door. Glancing back, Melody, with a couple strokes of the finger, had all the games back on and the register working. I ran to my car and drove to Cayucos and went straight to the local tavern and downed several shots of good vodka chased with beer and soon recovered, back on an even keel, dry, calm, relieved.

Next night I was almost giddy facing my scabrous crew at Happy Jack’s. “You worthless faggot piece of shit,” Homer Carp, an obnoxious fisherman with teeth that looked like they belonged to a barracuda needing an orthodontist, snarled at me. “I hear you’re goin’ to work at a pussy golf course.”

I poured myself a vodka and swilled it. “Why don’t you get some new choppers, fatass.” I retorted.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

 

The real shame of American culture

COMMENT.THE-REAL-SHAMEby Stacey Warde

A woman at the thrift shop today asked me if I was homeless.

I had just pulled a pair of Levi jeans off the rack, and a book on writing I’d discovered off the shelf and placed them before her.

“Do you take credit or debit cards?” I asked.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said, “We only take cash. We’ve just had too many problems with cards. That’ll be four dollars.”

I didn’t have any cash on me. I thought my card would do the trick.

Then, she asked: “Are you homeless?”

“Um, no,” I replied. I wore a uniform T-shirt with the company logo of the landscape outfit I work for and sported a pair of pruners in a holster on my belt. I’m a laborer but I’m not homeless, I said.

We just made a quick stop between jobs so that I could find a cheap pair of work pants.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she responded. “I thought you might be homeless. We sometimes can give items free to customers who are homeless.”

This is a church-run outfit in Los Osos, one that provides income for the church and opportunities to serve the poor.

“Well, I’m not homeless,” I said, “but thanks for asking.”

“I’d be offended if someone had asked me if I was homeless,” she said apologetically.

“Really?” I said quickly, incredulous. “Why be offended? Especially in this economy. No, there’s no need to feel ashamed, not for being homeless” I added, the fires burning, “the people who need to feel ashamed are the Wall Street bankers who’ve robbed this country blind for the last ten years.”

She wouldn’t look at me, refused to engage further in my fulmination against the real shame of American culture: it isn’t homelessness but greed. That’s why this country is so fucked up.

That’s why a church woman intending to do well, to serve the poor, would feel offended if someone had asked her if she were homeless.

The more homelessness and child poverty, the more shame to those who hoard their wealth. The real crux of shame in American culture is greed, not poverty.

All that comes to mind, when I think of it, are the French Revolution and peasants who tear down the ramparts and bring to ruin the elite, the effete aristocracy, who would let the poor eat cake rather than deign to show compassion; and the biblical lament, “Woe to you who hoard your riches and refuse to hear the cry of the poor!” §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. For a more extended version of this essay, visit ColdType.net.

Through the window of a train

city-life.through-the-window-of-a-train.IMG_7206by Stacey Warde

Mom called me once to ask if I’d like to come to a party she wanted to throw for a bunch of old pals. She called it a “Geezer Gathering,” made up of high school friends from more than 50 years ago.

“No, not really, mom. That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun,” I told her.

“Well, would you consider coming down to help me set up?”

“OK, sure, mom. I’ll go to your geezer gathering.”

So, I jumped on the train for a six and one-half hour journey along the rickety Amtrak rail to the Santa Ana station, not far from mom’s old Victorian home in Tustin where I grew up and where she planned to have her party. I’m closing on the geezer range myself; mom was just 17 when I was born. I had plenty to ponder as I got on board the train.

The ride along the pristine California coastline that morning was hypnotic, the noise of the train and chatter of passengers muffled by a modern remake of “The Music of Thelonious Monk” jangling through the ear buds plugged into my laptop. It’s heavenly to turn off the world like that, listen to music, drink coffee and peer out the window of a fast moving train.

Even with this technology at my fingertips, however, a laptop at my disposal, I felt “old school.” No tablet, no smart phone, no iPad, just a clunky old laptop and cheap cell phone with pay-as-you-go service. No special features anywhere on my person—unless you’re looking for something non-digital.

The train is generally a good ride, if for no other reason than you don’t have to worry about driving through LA traffic or paying for gas, the view is nice, and it’s easy to tune out the world if you like, indulge in a book, bury yourself in a story, become an obsessive-compulsive thumber, texting nonsense to anyone who will pay attention, or simply take a nap over the hum of the rails.

That day, however, I ignored the passengers as much as possible. I didn’t feel like being social, even though I’m generally a social person and was feeling a touch lonely. Things hadn’t been going so well at home. I needed to get away and so this trip was a welcome diversion from my dysfunctional life.

A cute but annoying little girl swung her legs in the aisle, supporting herself on the seats in front of me, pushing up with her hands, lifting her weight and swinging her legs back and forth. Her grandma ate donut holes and peered at the rugged coastal terrain through the window, paying little attention to the girl. Close they were, but occupying two completely different worlds, I thought.

For some reason, the view from the train that morning evoked a nostalgic kind of hope, the sort of hope I knew and indulged more as a younger man, when the world seemed larger, filled with new and endless possibilities. Wispy clouds turned pink in the distance and the morning light grew bolder, another day of promise rising with the sun. Back in the day, I’d see opportunity everywhere I looked.

As I get older, I’m sadly learning, the possibilities seem to get narrower, and less inviting. I’ve noticed how much more difficult it is for older, boomer types like myself to get too hopeful, especially now with the economy as doubtful and uncertain as it ever was, but even more so as we turn gray and decrepit.

But that day, if it’s not hope that I felt, there was at least the suggestion of something like hope, a mystery, anyhow, that wasn’t shrouded and foreboding but perhaps even gleaming, putting a different—if not new—light on things. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But I knew things were changing. Perhaps it had something to do with breaking up my routine, the sense that I could not go on like I had been, feeling depressed and trapped. What it was, I did not know. Or maybe it was how the light played through the shimmer of gray marine layer hugging the coastal line as the train turned heavily toward the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific, under the glare of light and thick marine layer, summer grey and wet, popped in and out of view through the train window as we rolled further south, stopping momentarily at the Lompoc station, the misty morning holding down the coastline under a white blanket of timelessness. It’s hard to tell time in this coastal purgatory of summer mist. Is it still morning, or afternoon?

In either case, the landscape of scrub oak, green cypress, marshes, and sea birds dropping into view out of the mist kept bringing me back to the present moment—the only moment I know that has any real possibilities—as I looked out the train window.

I wondered at the long, long line of old fence posts tilted and worn, no rails or wire between them, holding nothing, just standing awkwardly erect, one after the other, for a distance that seemed absurd. It was a ghost fence that ran along the tracks between the train and the ocean below. What could that fence line have been built for? How long has it been standing like that with nothing to hold or keep out?

I had other absurdities on my mind as well. My girlfriend of seven years said we should end our love affair. We should try living as roommates, she said, until one of us decides to move. I wanted to move; so, I guess, did she. Neither of us could really afford it. We were both broke, held together by another sort of ghost fence.

“Get out now!” a friend told me. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

I thought he was being alarmist, a little melodramatic, as friends can be when they’re watching out for you. I didn’t know that he’d gone through a similar breakup. I didn’t know that he also had kept separate rooms in the same house with his former girlfriend—for nearly six months.

“It was fine until she started fucking the guy she left me for in the room next to mine,” he told me. “You better get out when you can, dude.”

Not long before I hopped on the train, she asked if I’d thought about finding another place. It’s a good idea, she suggested. It’s nothing personal, she assured me, and I believed her, it’s what’s best.

As I looked out the train window, and pondered the flight of a distant heron, the message sank in: It’s over, it’s time for me to move on, and I’m a lot older now than I was seven years ago when we started, the possibilities for lifelong companionship narrowing ever more precipitously. Ah, the end of another conjoining of minds and bodies that could only wrap themselves into a tangled web of tears and unhappiness instead of blissful companionship.

“We’re not right for each other,” she said.

All those years, we kept pushing the wrong buttons, couldn’t seem to find the right ones, and each time it got so messy and hurtful and confusing.

“I don’t want you to feel sad,” she said.

I wouldn’t feel sad if I wasn’t a bit touched, hounded by a confusing mix of the cynic and the romantic, always hoping, always doubting. It’s a curse, really. I don’t know where it comes from but the tension between hope and doubt seems always to bring my relationships to ruin. I did feel sad.

As the train rolled on, I could feel myself moving on, drifting, searching, hoping, doubting.

“So, you gonna find yourself another cute hot young thang—huh?” an older friend asked after I’d told her that my gal, nearly 20 years younger, wanted to separate.

“I’m not looking, really. I’m happy to be a free agent, that’s all.”

My friend moved her body close to mine, and put her lips next to my ear: “You like young pussy, don’t you?” she whispered.

I gagged. Well, that’s not the only thing, I stammered.

Yes, I thought, my gal’s young, and beautiful, no doubt, but she’s smart and caring and, for some damn reason, we couldn’t get along very well. We agreed on that. We had some fine moments amid the turmoil and troubled times. I seldom felt the difference in our ages, only when the occasional stranger mistook her as my daughter. Sex wasn’t the only thing that kept us together.

Still, it felt absurd, in a way, if not entirely liberating, to be moving on, at least at that point in my life, where I wanted to be more settled, and it becomes clearer by the moment that my days are numbered, that soon I will also be a geezer. I tried not to think too hard that life is short, or at least not get morbidly obsessed with the idea, just acknowledge the fact, that I’m older now. I’m no spring chicken, as mom likes to remind me, and it’s quite possible that I will remain alone.

No one my age wants to be alone. I learned this a long time ago from an older friend, a monk, whose entire life was dedicated to celibacy, solitude and prayer.

“The thing I fear most,” he said of death, “is that no one will notice that I’m gone.”

Even in his solitude, he wished not to be alone or forgotten. Even in that final separation through death, he wished to be remembered.

I had high hopes, and so did my young girlfriend, that we could work things out, work through our troubles and stay together until the end—and be remembered. Along the way, perhaps, we both knew it wasn’t going to work, but we’re stubborn, and kept at it, and maybe, in the end, our stubbornness is what brought us to that painful juncture of breaking away.

Now, I’m left with this thought: “Why did I hold on for so long? Will I soon be living in a trailer park, sad, lonely, broken up and finished like so many other geezers who grow old and die in their aluminum fire traps without so much as a hint of their loss?”

Or what about this thought: “Will the white blanket of timelessness that has obscured my view of things and seemed to rule my mind then be swept away, as the coastal breezes outside the train window now lift the misty veil, to uncover lighter, more hopeful possibilities? Are any possibilities left?”

The damned romantic and cynic in me were at it again, stirring up the ridiculous inner tension between hope and doubt, as the train rolled on. Where do these feelings come from?

At the geezer gathering, I’d be co-host with mom to a party of older folks, but not much older, people in their 70s who are closer to the precipice than I am, whose view of any sort of timelessness or aloneness is probably much sharper and more poignant than my own. Perhaps that precipitous view is where the romantic and cynic in me may actually, one day, finally find common, quiet ground.

Like my monk friend, in death I fear not being remembered; in life, I fear being alone.

I looked through the train window into the distant fields where farm workers hunched low from the waist to pick strawberries. I ate a piece of strawberry with my yogurt that morning; it was surprisingly sweet and delicious. The breeze outside the train finally broke up the timeless white sheet of marine layer into patchy clouds and blue haze, a perfect August day along the Pacific Ocean. The beaches of Southern California were assuredly crowded by then as the train barreled down into L.A. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.

Night life in Happy Jack’s: Mitzi comes to the rescue

IMG_6070

Editor’s note: This episode of Dell Franklin’s “Night life in Happy Jack’s” is the first chapter of a book he’s written, titled “Bartender.”

by Dell Franklin

Sunday evening in Happy Jack’s Saloon in Morro Bay and they’ve been at it all day in the murky crumbling grotto, sharks and barracuda and minnows swarming in the cavernous dank dark tank. Some in this crowd have been up for days without sleep or nourishment and are engrossed in babbling conversations or playing pool in the area off the back door or jerking spasmodically at video games up front where horrific sounds of mayhem mingle with the reverberating beat and wailings from the jukebox at nonstop full volume—as requested by the riffraff.

I’m nipping. By 9 p.m.,  I’ve had my burrito from down the street and topshelf vodka makes everything copacetic. Earlier I’d had to deal with little Johnny at the urgency of even some of the most gnarly fisherman, because Johnny, no longer employable as a deckhand, was walking around bare-footed like a somnambulist, dreamy smile on his face, making small-talk with terrified barflies while a rod with a Dirty Harry barrel protruded loosely from his belt line, as if the baggy over-sized Hawaiian shirt could hide it!

Anybody who looks into Johnny’s eyes recognizes cornered animal darkness. “Please,  get that crazy person outta here!” begged Mitzi, the former stripper gone a little chunky around the edges but still with the best walk in town. “He’s scarin’ the shit outta me, and I don’t scare easy.”

“Who do you think I am? Clint Eastwood? Take him to bed, Mitz.”

“You’re NOT funny, Dell! Look, everybody’s freaked!”

I eventually motioned Johnny over like an old pal. He came to the end of the bar where I leaned on the board that lifts so one can go in and out without ducking under. I offered my hand. His soft shake and stare unnerved me. We’d hardly talked before.

Johnny, how yah doin’, man? Everything cool with you?”

“Right on, I’m way cool…,” his voice far, far away.

“Look, I don’t want anybody fuckin’ with you, Johnny. I’m here to watch over you, bro’. I don’t want any asshole tryna take your piece away from you, man. That’s YOUR rod, man.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate that.”

“So what I’d like to do, to be on the safe side, is I’d like to hide your rod in the safe in the office, you know, lock it up, and then you can have your drink and enjoy yourself without worrying about some asshole hasslin’ you over it, or callin’ the heat, bro’.”

Like a child, he asked, “You think it’s a good idea, bro’?”

“I do, Johnny.”

“Okay, bro’. You’re the boss. It is what it is.”

My arm around Johnny, I walked him into the office. He handed me his rod, which I carefully placed in the safe. “See, Johnny, now your piece is safe, bro’.”

“Thanks, man.”

Back in the bar, Johnny resumed his sleep-walking, slow-talking, directionless prowl and everything was fine. Somebody bought him a drink. I got very busy. Around 10 p.m., he was at the end of the bar.

“Bro’, I need my piece. I’m leavin’.”

“You got it, bro’.”

Happy Jack’s is the oldest bar in the county, has a reputation from Alaska to San Diego for its wild brawls, which over the years have involved knifings, bludgeon-bashing and shootings. And here I am, a fisherman’s bartender who hates fishing and fish, suffers chronic seasickness, fears water, and is allergic to drudge work, which they all know, but as long as I pour good drinks when they want them and manage to keep the peace when it counts, I am accepted grudgingly though, at this point, deservedly disrespected.

 ***

So this late crowd forges on, propelled by the powder. The fishermen have cash, and the sea hags yap continuously. Yet cropping up is a new paranoia: A couple from Fresno that nobody likes and seem inauthentic bikers. It’s the female spreading the panic, a glaring moll with an astounding pair of jugs and ass in tight jeans. Again, it’s Mitzi who’s at the bar.

“What’s with THAT dish?” she asks.

“She came up to me, and commented how everybody in here is either drunk out of their minds, zonked on downers, or buzzed to the max on coke or crank. When I shrugged, she asked ME what I was gonna do about it. I told her this was Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, which meant we were unusual, and I was not the DEA, and she informed me she was a police officer from Fresno.”

“No shit?”

“I asked if she was on duty. She warned me not to mess with her, even if she was off duty, because she’s still the law. I told her there were other bars in town. She just gave me a filthy look and walked off with her Miller Lite. Didn’t even leave a tip, but the husband in leather vest and chaps did.”

Mitzi peers at the lady cop as she chews on her man in the poolroom. “She’s too gorgeous to be a cop; unless she’s undercover as a hooker or porno queen. She’s really hard, Dell.”

“Maybe you can soften here up, ey, Mitz?” I leer.

Five minutes later, Mitzi engages her in conversation. Mitzi is in black heels, black jeans, black V-necked T-shirt, her jet-black hair curved like crow’s wings at her chin, highlighting her cheekbones.

The cop suddenly lashes out at her man and he throws up his hands and storms out of the poolroom and out of the bar and across the street to the Circle Inn, our competition and my former employer. The cop grits her teeth, steaming. Meanwhile, Mitzi catches my eye as she sort of leads the woman toward the area where I’d previously visited with Johnny and motions me over. When I arrive, the cop glowers at me. I stand before the two women drumming my fingers on the bar as the joint fills up as usual on Sunday nights with off-duty wait-people and bartenders from restaurants down on the embarcadero, three blocks away.

Mitzi whispers in the cop’s ear and she opens her purse and reluctantly tosses a twenty on the bar and Mitzi takes my hand and whispers in my ear, “Two Miller Lites and two shots of Goldschlager.”

I do as told while regulars along the 22 wobbly stools wave bills and hold up glasses to get my attention. I make change and, before the cop can snatch her money, Mitzi flips me two dollars and I cram it in my crowded snifter and move down the bar to wait on two young sweeties from the Sea Horse Bar & Grill, Tiffany and Kelly. Just old enough to drink, they are now cocktailing and adorable and make big-time tips and come here on Sunday nights to slum and be outraged as they become indoctrinated into the serious bar society in Morro Bay. I prepare their foofoo drinks and they smile and tip appropriately and I tread the boards and when I look down to the end of the bar Mitzi smiles impishly and waggles her index finger at me and points to the bottles and shot glasses and I do it again and, before the cop can snatch change from a new twenty, Mitzi flips me three dollars.

During a lull, I slip out from behind the bar to collect glasses and bottles piling up in the poolroom and on tables and ledges in the lounge area off the dance floor and band stage. I place them all on the bar for future disposal or washing and when I arrive at the end of the bar Mitzi and the cop are facing each other and Mitzi has her hand on her shoulder like a comforting sister and the shrew seems to be softening ever so slowly. When Mitzi points to the bottles and glasses I quickly fill the order and, this time the cop doesn’t try to snatch her money, and Mitzi flips me a sawbuck and puts a sympathetic hug on her before they turn back to the bar.

One of the diminutive Mexican immigrants in the poolroom catches my eye and nods at me and heads to the john, which is down the hall away from the poolroom and past the office. I wait a minute and join him pissing in twin commodes as he shoves two spoonfuls of coke under my nose. I snort hard, feeling the dust shoot up my nostril and down my throat. When I return to the bar, Mitzi has her hand on the cop’s ass and her middle finger riding up under her snatch.

Back behind the bar I down a double shot to even out the immediate rush and then wait on and schmooze with a couple off-duty harbor patrol guys and a fisherman named Homer Carp, and the next time I look up Mitzi and the cop are gone. Tiffany motions me over with a cutesy-cutesy smile she charms the old droolers in the Sea Horse with. “Can you please please watch our drinks, Mr. Super bartender, sir? We’re going to the little girls room.”

“Sure, babies.”

About two minutes later Tiffany and Kelly scurry up to the bar looking like they saw a ghost. Tiffany, hands on hips, stern as a schoolmarm, exclaims, “Do you know what’s going on in the lady’s room, sir?”

“No I don’t.”

“There’s two naked women in there, and that Mitzi, she’s on her knees eating the other woman’s pussy!”

I shrug. “Well, shit happens in Happy Jack’s.”

“Shit HAPPENS? That all you have to say? You CONDONE it?”

“Not necessarily, no, but nor do I disapprove,” I explain, pouring myself one more, lifting it in a mindless salute, and to what I do not know, and certainly not lesbian shenanigans in the head. With glee, I down it.

She glances at Carp and the harbor patrol boys, then back at me. “You don’t DIS-approve? What would you do if two men were in the men’s room and one was giving the other a blow job?”

“I’d throw their asses out!” I snarl. “Happy Jack’s is not a gay bar!”

“Oh, but it’s okay with women, right?” Very sassy.

“Look,” I say, trying to be reasonable. “Sex between two men is repulsive, and it spreads AIDS. But two women? I find that sensual and exotic and…titillating. It really turns me on.”

They slam down their drinks and storm out. They’ll be back another time.

Meanwhile, half an hour later, Mitzi and the cop, who looks like she’s been tranquilized with an ecstasy pill, are headed toward the front swinging doors, possibly to find a motel room, if I know Mitzi. The husband comes in later, asking around for his woman, but nobody gives him a straight answer. The last words to me from Mitzi, before they left, with a wink, were: “I own this bitch. I’m gonna make a real woman outta her.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.