Vanderbilt was walking down the cinder block and cement hallway that lead to the Kill Floor. He obstinately still referred to it as "The Kill Floor" despite Canterbury Meat's recent memo that went out to everyone in the plant, including his USDA Office, advising that from this point on the decision has been made to refer to the center of slaughter operations as "The Harvest Floor," and that any in-plant correspondence should refer to Kill Floor by its new designation. Some''Suit;" some shithead of a marketing major who'd never set foot in a packing house had no doubt come up with this semantic brainstorm. Vanderbilt could just imagine the unctuous asshole presenting his suggestion during a brainstorming session in some boardroom.
"We're dealing with an image problem in this aspect of the meat industry. It's easy for enviro-nut groups such as PETA to label us as the bad guys when they can dump a bucket of blood and offal on us in the eyes of the public. The term "slaughter' has such negative connotations. Same with "Kill Floor." Why don't we begin to refer to a "Kill Floor" as "The Harvest Floor," from now on. When John Q Grocery Shopper thinks of harvest, in his mind he conjures up shocks of wheat, images of trees resplendent in their Fall colors; a Thanksgiving feast of turkey, ham, apples, squash and corn; the rich harvest of a land laden with bountiful crops; a cornucopia of plenty resting upon a table." These are the kind of images we want the term "Harvest Floor" to engender."
He smiled, extended his arms, and puctuated his suggestion with...
"We'll be feeding them wholesome family-friendly, industry-friendly images."
This was the kind of suggestion the CEO of Canterbury Meats liked. It cost nothing and it could be easily implemented with a memo. "Make it so," he ordered, relishing the opportunity to use the catch phrase that he'd stolen from Star Trek's Captain Piccard.
Such was the dialogue Vanderbilt imagined in his dark anti-capitalist musings. "And so it went." Vanderbilt mused sourly. "Corporate America is as adept at double-speak as any of the politicians that they own."
Hearing some loud voices ahead of him, Vanderbilt was roused from his bitter reverie by the sight of one of the Medical Management staff and a Kill Floor foreman pushing a wheelchair down the hall. The employee slumped in the chair, a young Hispanic woman, looked as though she had just woken up from a hundred year Rip Van Winkle slumber. She was still visibly groggy.
Ebeneezer Orness met Vanderbilt in the hallway a few seconds after the wheelchair and company had moved on. Vanderbilt normally had to behave professionally and keep his pro-union, anti-capitalism sympathies to himself, but "Eb" was one of the few people who worked in the plant that he trusted enough to allow himself to vent his thoughts to. A vocal critic of his employer, and a staunch union advocate, Eb would have been handed his walking papers a long time ago, except that he was good at his job. His precise cuts as a backsaw operator ensured that the company would maximize their yield on carcasses that he split. To put it in layman's terms, he made them enough money to where they could overlook his heretical views.
Eb wiped the sweat from his forehead and muttered, "it's a god-damned blast furnace out there today. It's pushing 100 degrees already and it's only a little past eleven." He motioned down the hall in the direction of the wheelchair and observed "that's the 6th goddamned person that's collapsed on the Kill Floor today."
It's the same every summer," Vanderbilt responded, hardly the type of commiserating comment that Eb was looking for. The back-saw man mopped his brow again, then pointed upstairs and snorted contemptuously.
"Corporate don't care. They sit in their comfortable little air-conditioned cubicles. The only time we see any of them is if they join us for a smoke out in the Cancer Shack, (Canterbury, citing a rare concern for the health and well-being of its employees, confined smoking to a tin-roofed area outside the plant). We grunts down here are as disposable as Bic lighters. If enough of us break down physically, or have the balls to walk away from these brutal working conditions in this economy, they'll just send another bus down to Mexico to bring up another load of warm bodies."
"Mexico, my ass," Vanderbilt retorted. "You're behind the times. The flavor of the month now is refugees from Myanmar. I'm sure you've noticed all the little Asians that have been coming in with the recent crops of new hires. They're allowed to emigrate here because of their status as "oppressed Christians." Our government, in its infinite wisdom, even pays half their wages in order to help them ease their way into settling into a new culture. It's a win-win situation for the big packing houses. The Feds pick up half their wages and the new hires are too damn scared to even listen to any talk about joining a union.'
"Yeah," Eb growled, I'm not surprised. I remember it used to be the Mexicans who were the ones who would come around with stunned, frightened expressions on their faces. They used to respond "no habla Union" when I'd approach them about getting one in the plant here. Not anymore. Now they're approaching me. They've been in this country long enough to know that management isn't supposed to treat them like dogs. Now some of them are coming up to me and asking me about a union. Things are heating up."
Has management noticed any changes in their change of attitude? Are they getting nervous?" Vanderbilt asked.
"Damn right management's worried," Eb admitted, looking in both directions before he began to speak again. "Talking about forming a Union is the road some of the smarter Mexicans are starting to travel down now. The boys upstairs are starting to feel the heat. Now they've got the foremen putting down the Hispanic workers every chance they get. I heard one of them, you know, the greasy Frenchman we all call "Butt Fuck Chuck," yell at Roberto the other day when he let an abscessed head get past him. He said something to the effect that "You goddamned Mexicans aren't worth a shit. These little Asian kids are working circles around you."
"Divide and conquer," Vanderbilt muttered grimly. "One of the World's oldest management tools."
"Yeah," Eb agreed. "It's all about "team" when they want us to add to our work load or take a hit on one of our benefits. When the weather warms up though and tempers smolder, and resentment flares up among the slaughter employees like so may small prairie fires, they'll start bulldozing firewalls between the races to keep the conflagration from spreading. Goddamned conniving greedy sons of bitches. All this talk about cultural diversity, acceptance and toleration gets flushed down the toilet when it stands in the way of the corporate bottom line." Eb looked both directions down the hall again, then whispered, "a few of us are meeting with the Meat Packers Union this evening to see if they'll invest money or manpower in a drive to get the Union recognized here. They're reluctant to help us though. The votes gone have gone against them too many times in this plant."
"Yeah, I've witnessed a few of those former campaigns. The same corporate whores who whittle away at their wages and benefits constantly; the same assholes who are constantly running time/study job reports to see how much more labor they can squeeze out of every job, are now calling every employee into an office individually to stress how important they are to the team and how letting the "god damned Union thugs" in would be the death of the company. Ofttimes you'll see the employee exiting with the corporate cheerleaders arm around him or her, actually beaming because they've been made so much of. Another holy warrior enlisted to smite the evil union by being cajoled into refusing to sign a union card."
"Things are heating up though," Eb insisted. "Maybe this will be the summer. We've got to get someone in that can talk to the Nigerians. We've no one right now who can speak their language, yet you can bet the company has interpreters who can. You can bet you'll know what message they'll be hearing and how they'll vote."
"Yeah, they still haven't assimilated yet," Vanderbilt observed. The company has built a little community for them just to the east of the plant. It also serves to isolate them from the community a bit so that the locals don't realize just how many black non-English speaking employees they're bringing in. The fulfillment of every greedy capitalist's dream from the West Virginia coal barons to George Pullman's community in Chicago. Workers shackled to a company town. Remember the old song by Tennessee Ernie Ford?
Sixteen tons..what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.
" You don't have much of a singing voice, Vanderbilt, but that song is just what we're up against," Eb complained, the anger boiling just beneath the surface of his conversation. "Wherever there's poverty in the world now, the big packers send out recruiters to exploit it. How the hell can we fight an economy that's gone global? An economy run by greedy corporations who callously recruit from war zones and disaster devastated populations such as Haiti in order to use these people looking to better themselves to beat down the wage scales and break the Unions in this country? I don't know how the hell we can fight them within the system when they pay lobbyists to make certain the laws are written for their benefit."
Eb looked down both directions of the hall again. To Vanderbilt it almost seemed a paranoid reaction, but then Eb lowered his voice and when he spoke, Vanderbilt realized why Eb didn't want anyone to overhear him.
"Union membership is down to ten percent of the workers in this country, after a high of thirty five percent sometime after World War Two. Corporate America and their political toadies still think that's too threatening a number though. They won't rest until the Union label goes the way of the dinosaur. Let's face it. The system's broken. We need to take the battle to the streets; tar and feather or hang a few CEOs, torch a few factories. It's a war and they're showing us and our families no mercy as they beat us down. It's time we start fighting back."
"Ssssh," Vanderbilt cautioned him. "I don't care how good a worker you are. That kind of talk will get you fired."
"I don't care anymore," Eb said defiantly. "I really don't. I just don't know if I can handle another summer in this hellhole."
"You will, " Vanderbilt assured him, trying to settle him down a bit. "You've only got a few more years until you retire with full benefits. Curb your tongue or it will get you into trouble. You can still work for change. Just be discreet about it."
Both men turned. The supervisor of the head-boning table was steadying a groggy employee, a wizened little caucasian gentleman in his 60s whom everyone called Tattoo Tommy because of the profusion of body art that he sported.
"Here comes another one. Things are really heating up out there," Vanderbilt observed, dreading the thought that he'd soon have to head back to that hot, humid blast furnace of a Kill Floor
"Things are going to be heating up a lot more," Eb assured him. "Just wait and see."
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The Autograph
as though they were treasured possessions. "DiMaggio was flawless,"
he'd marvel. "Cinema perfect, caviar and Hollywood. Did you boys know
that he was married to Marilyn Monroe? Man, it was something to watch
him range the outfield with the grace of a gazelle."
Time to Tender an apology to Joyce Kilmer
"Trees"
Think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair
Upon whose bosom snow has lain
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
My college writing instructor, you know the type: erudite, supercilious, with a voice dripping with just a trace of a sneer. The kind of man you meet in so many professions; an insecure individual who likes to build himself up by tearing others down. A pedantic, hollow man; eloquent yet empty. This fountainhead of knowledge devoted part of a lesson to Joyce Kilmer's beloved poem, "Trees." Not to laud the virtues of the poem, of course. That would make for a boring lecture. To this molder and shaper of undergraduate minds, the poem was an object of derision. According to Professor Supercilious, "Trees" was just an example of an incompetent poet stringing together some mixed metaphors.
I can still hear him reciting it, his suave voice brimming with sarcasm.
"The tree's hungry mouth is prest
Against the Earth's sweet flowing breast."
He'd give us a sardonic little grin and sneer, "lovely image, isn't it? Now watch this. Next the tree is going to somehow manage to turn a flip that a Chinese acrobat might envy. It can manage to...
'Raise its eyes and look at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.'
"What a neat trick," he flippantly observed. "Maybe," he suggested, "the tree has managed to turn a somersault. But no. Its mouth is still sucking the sweet milk of earth while it lifts its leafy arms to pray and yet it can stand and look at God all day. It's just a very limber tree, that's all. It's a contortionist tree."
"Next the poet gives us the ridiculous image of a tree wearing robins in her hair. What hair? The armpits maybe of the 'leafy arms' she lifts in prayer? Nothing else would seem to make any sense given what we've read of the tree's anatomy thus far." Our instructor shrugged, as though totally confused, then continued.
"Then there's the question of the tree's 'intimate' relationship with rain. 'Intimate.' What an interesting word choice." The instructor smirked, then after a pause said, "maybe we'd better not go there. "Let's address the bosom question instead."
"Joyce Kilmer, being the incomparable craftsman that he is, next gives us the image of the tree with snow on its bosom. Now where in the devil is this part of his tree's anatomy located, anyway? Somewhere, I guess, between 'its leafy arms raised up to pray' , its hairy armpits and its ground-suckling mouth. This goes beyond simple acrobatics and suggests a tree limber enough to out-contort a Hindu yoga practitioner."
We all laughed. If I remember right, our erudite instructor ended the lecture with something like.....
"His poems are read by fools like we,
But only Kilmer can screw up a tree."
Actually, he used a different word than "screw," but that's not the point. The point is...we laughed. The lecture made me feel as smug as a junior high boy who has just learned a new "dirty" joke, or has heard a secret that he shouldn't have. It made me chuckle when I'd visit my grandparents. It made me feel somehow superior to them when I'd look up and see Kilmer's poem hanging on their living room wall.
It was painted on a round varnished wood plaque. The poem's text was written just below and to the right of the tree, as if it was sitting in the shade. It rested there like a young man enjoying a mid-day respite from plowing perhaps, or from weeding the garden.
My grandparents knew more about work than they did about literature. My grandfather was a plumber. He made his living by channeling water through or unclogging crap from pipes. You can make a successful argument that a good plumber is an artist in his own right. Having demonstrated my ineptitude at it, I know that I have more respect now for those who practice the profession than I did when I was a college student who looked down with some disdain at manual labor.
My grandmother was a beautician. She blew out a knee and a hip after years of standing behind an operator's chair, trying to transform frumpy Loretta Lockhorns into someone as glamorous as Marilyn Monroe. One can successfully argue that cosmetology is as much an art form as any profession. It certainly takes an artist's vision, dedication and skill to know what to diminish and what to enhance.
Perhaps Joyce Kilmer's poem on their wall gave them some moments of pleasure after a hard day's work. Perhaps they only had time to glance at a line or two as they walked past it, in which case the mixed metaphors that my instructor found so laughable would never have occurred to them. The attraction of the poem, no doubt, for hardworking folks such as my grandparents, was that for a few moments, at least, Joyce Kilmer's images could transport them away from the stress and the aching muscles of their lives and slip them into an idyllic woodland scene.
Certainly the poem probably brought them more pleasure than their grandkids did. My parents struggled to get by in the early years of their marriage, and needed two full-time incomes to pull themselves out of debt. Most of the debt was my fault, thanks to expenses incurred due to my premature birth. My sister and I were dumped on my mother's parents during summer vacation and whenever there were holidays during the school year.
With both of my grandparents working, as well as owning a small resort of fourteen cabins and a lodge to keep up, they didn't have much time to give to us. Ray & Gen's Cabins" had over the years been allowed to dilapidate past respectability into a rural bowery, best exemplified by the ever present bottle of Jim Beam that my grandfather kept on his worktable in the laundry building. The spartanly furnished cabins were occupied by this time mostly by alcoholic single males. My sister and I were not allowed to wander out of the area that comprised 'the cabins," and we both resented having to be there. Me especially. I kept envisioning my friends in the neighborhood getting together for a ballgame or enjoying the freedom to play in the creek or roam in the woods behind our homes.
The woods. What images that simple phrase conjures forth in one's mind. Perhaps that's the reason "Trees" is so popular. The poem tugs at the heart, not at the intellect. We've all enjoyed the peace , beauty and solace of the forest. More people can identify with the sentiments expressed in "Trees" than with those expressed in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Not that such a comparison makes "Trees" a better poem. If one were to carry an argument like that to its illogical conclusion, Britney Spear's "Oops, I Did It Again" has more merit than "The Wasteland." No, that's absurd. T.S. Eliot has and will continue to stand the test of time as have you, Mr. Kilmer, whereas the "Pop-tart" will go through her fifteen minutes of fame quicker than a much more talented and just as self-destructive a singer, Janis Joplin, could slug down a fifth of "Southern Comfort."
Yes, Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" has given a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. In that respect Joyce Kilmer is and continues to be a well-loved poet despite what critics like Professor Supercilious do to demean his reputation. In all honesty, there's no telling what his literary career would have been had he not been killed in action in France toward the end of World War I. It was an unnecessary death. He had five children and was thirty years old. He wouldn't have had to go. He bought into the rhetoric, though, that it was "the War to End All Wars," and he felt compelled to enlist to do his part to make it so.
Mr. Kilmer, it's time to tender you an apology. Your poem, "Trees," has stood for generations like a majestic oak. Its honesty and imagery are simple enough for anyone to understand. Sure there are more erudite, more accomplished, and more learned poets out there to read, but Mr. Kilmer, your poem has managed to reach out and earn the love of an audience that normally doesn't give a damn about poetry.
Perhaps there's a lesson in this. Until we, as writers, learn to touch the hearts of our readers as you have yours with your "Trees," we'll be lucky to pull more than a couple dozen people into a poetry reading. People want poetry that they can understand, that they can derive comfort and solace from; not verse laden to the density of lead with obscure literary and historical allusions. As for me, if I could write one poem that can move as many people as your "Trees" has, I'd consider myself a success as a writer, as you have been proven over time to be.
I wouldn't mind having that plaque on my wall now. Perhaps your words could transport my thoughts as well to the soul-healing beauty of a verdant forest. At any rate, it's worth a try.
Think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair
Upon whose bosom snow has lain
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
My college writing instructor, you know the type: erudite, supercilious, with a voice dripping with just a trace of a sneer. The kind of man you meet in so many professions; an insecure individual who likes to build himself up by tearing others down. A pedantic, hollow man; eloquent yet empty. This fountainhead of knowledge devoted part of a lesson to Joyce Kilmer's beloved poem, "Trees." Not to laud the virtues of the poem, of course. That would make for a boring lecture. To this molder and shaper of undergraduate minds, the poem was an object of derision. According to Professor Supercilious, "Trees" was just an example of an incompetent poet stringing together some mixed metaphors.
I can still hear him reciting it, his suave voice brimming with sarcasm.
"The tree's hungry mouth is prest
Against the Earth's sweet flowing breast."
He'd give us a sardonic little grin and sneer, "lovely image, isn't it? Now watch this. Next the tree is going to somehow manage to turn a flip that a Chinese acrobat might envy. It can manage to...
'Raise its eyes and look at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.'
"What a neat trick," he flippantly observed. "Maybe," he suggested, "the tree has managed to turn a somersault. But no. Its mouth is still sucking the sweet milk of earth while it lifts its leafy arms to pray and yet it can stand and look at God all day. It's just a very limber tree, that's all. It's a contortionist tree."
"Next the poet gives us the ridiculous image of a tree wearing robins in her hair. What hair? The armpits maybe of the 'leafy arms' she lifts in prayer? Nothing else would seem to make any sense given what we've read of the tree's anatomy thus far." Our instructor shrugged, as though totally confused, then continued.
"Then there's the question of the tree's 'intimate' relationship with rain. 'Intimate.' What an interesting word choice." The instructor smirked, then after a pause said, "maybe we'd better not go there. "Let's address the bosom question instead."
"Joyce Kilmer, being the incomparable craftsman that he is, next gives us the image of the tree with snow on its bosom. Now where in the devil is this part of his tree's anatomy located, anyway? Somewhere, I guess, between 'its leafy arms raised up to pray' , its hairy armpits and its ground-suckling mouth. This goes beyond simple acrobatics and suggests a tree limber enough to out-contort a Hindu yoga practitioner."
We all laughed. If I remember right, our erudite instructor ended the lecture with something like.....
"His poems are read by fools like we,
But only Kilmer can screw up a tree."
Actually, he used a different word than "screw," but that's not the point. The point is...we laughed. The lecture made me feel as smug as a junior high boy who has just learned a new "dirty" joke, or has heard a secret that he shouldn't have. It made me chuckle when I'd visit my grandparents. It made me feel somehow superior to them when I'd look up and see Kilmer's poem hanging on their living room wall.
It was painted on a round varnished wood plaque. The poem's text was written just below and to the right of the tree, as if it was sitting in the shade. It rested there like a young man enjoying a mid-day respite from plowing perhaps, or from weeding the garden.
My grandparents knew more about work than they did about literature. My grandfather was a plumber. He made his living by channeling water through or unclogging crap from pipes. You can make a successful argument that a good plumber is an artist in his own right. Having demonstrated my ineptitude at it, I know that I have more respect now for those who practice the profession than I did when I was a college student who looked down with some disdain at manual labor.
My grandmother was a beautician. She blew out a knee and a hip after years of standing behind an operator's chair, trying to transform frumpy Loretta Lockhorns into someone as glamorous as Marilyn Monroe. One can successfully argue that cosmetology is as much an art form as any profession. It certainly takes an artist's vision, dedication and skill to know what to diminish and what to enhance.
Perhaps Joyce Kilmer's poem on their wall gave them some moments of pleasure after a hard day's work. Perhaps they only had time to glance at a line or two as they walked past it, in which case the mixed metaphors that my instructor found so laughable would never have occurred to them. The attraction of the poem, no doubt, for hardworking folks such as my grandparents, was that for a few moments, at least, Joyce Kilmer's images could transport them away from the stress and the aching muscles of their lives and slip them into an idyllic woodland scene.
Certainly the poem probably brought them more pleasure than their grandkids did. My parents struggled to get by in the early years of their marriage, and needed two full-time incomes to pull themselves out of debt. Most of the debt was my fault, thanks to expenses incurred due to my premature birth. My sister and I were dumped on my mother's parents during summer vacation and whenever there were holidays during the school year.
With both of my grandparents working, as well as owning a small resort of fourteen cabins and a lodge to keep up, they didn't have much time to give to us. Ray & Gen's Cabins" had over the years been allowed to dilapidate past respectability into a rural bowery, best exemplified by the ever present bottle of Jim Beam that my grandfather kept on his worktable in the laundry building. The spartanly furnished cabins were occupied by this time mostly by alcoholic single males. My sister and I were not allowed to wander out of the area that comprised 'the cabins," and we both resented having to be there. Me especially. I kept envisioning my friends in the neighborhood getting together for a ballgame or enjoying the freedom to play in the creek or roam in the woods behind our homes.
The woods. What images that simple phrase conjures forth in one's mind. Perhaps that's the reason "Trees" is so popular. The poem tugs at the heart, not at the intellect. We've all enjoyed the peace , beauty and solace of the forest. More people can identify with the sentiments expressed in "Trees" than with those expressed in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Not that such a comparison makes "Trees" a better poem. If one were to carry an argument like that to its illogical conclusion, Britney Spear's "Oops, I Did It Again" has more merit than "The Wasteland." No, that's absurd. T.S. Eliot has and will continue to stand the test of time as have you, Mr. Kilmer, whereas the "Pop-tart" will go through her fifteen minutes of fame quicker than a much more talented and just as self-destructive a singer, Janis Joplin, could slug down a fifth of "Southern Comfort."
Yes, Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" has given a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. In that respect Joyce Kilmer is and continues to be a well-loved poet despite what critics like Professor Supercilious do to demean his reputation. In all honesty, there's no telling what his literary career would have been had he not been killed in action in France toward the end of World War I. It was an unnecessary death. He had five children and was thirty years old. He wouldn't have had to go. He bought into the rhetoric, though, that it was "the War to End All Wars," and he felt compelled to enlist to do his part to make it so.
Mr. Kilmer, it's time to tender you an apology. Your poem, "Trees," has stood for generations like a majestic oak. Its honesty and imagery are simple enough for anyone to understand. Sure there are more erudite, more accomplished, and more learned poets out there to read, but Mr. Kilmer, your poem has managed to reach out and earn the love of an audience that normally doesn't give a damn about poetry.
Perhaps there's a lesson in this. Until we, as writers, learn to touch the hearts of our readers as you have yours with your "Trees," we'll be lucky to pull more than a couple dozen people into a poetry reading. People want poetry that they can understand, that they can derive comfort and solace from; not verse laden to the density of lead with obscure literary and historical allusions. As for me, if I could write one poem that can move as many people as your "Trees" has, I'd consider myself a success as a writer, as you have been proven over time to be.
I wouldn't mind having that plaque on my wall now. Perhaps your words could transport my thoughts as well to the soul-healing beauty of a verdant forest. At any rate, it's worth a try.
The Empty House
My father turned his back to me and watched through the living room window as the moving van pulled away with my family's possession
"How long till he gets to Monmouth?" he asked me, his usually authoritative voice softened to a whisper.
"He's got another home to load, then he'll deliver their goods first," I told him. "He says it will take about three days."
Swede nodded. His broad shoulders sagged slightly as he realized that we had nothing left to sit down on. His eyes scanned the empty house with the practical mind of a man who had spent his lifetime in the construction industry. His ability to apply textured plaster and tape sheet rock had put me through college. He always professed to be proud of his "boy." I'd always suspected, though, that he would have been happier with a son who was less bookish and more adept with a football or basketball. I'd never been much to brag about at the coffee shop on Saturday mornings. While his caffeine cronies related Homeric tales of their offspring's athletic exploits, my father had his nearsighted son and no bragging rights at all. It had to be frustrating for so gregarious a man to have nothing to contribute to the conversation.
"It's just a house now," he observed, his back toward me still as he continued to gaze out the living room picture window. "It's the people that live here and their belongings that make it a home."
"Yeah," I acknowledged. I looked out at the bleak coldness of a February landscape. The front yard was stripped as bare of foliage and color as the house had been of life. The wind was swirling shimmering flakes of frozen snow about. They skittered across the ice to find refuge in small drifts that huddled on the east edge of the driveway. It was nothing to concern myself about. The new owners could get their shovels out.
Swede winced as a loud caterwaul of outrage came from one of the two cats imprisoned in one of the empty bedrooms. "They're still pissed off at us, aren't they?" he murmured. "You know." he said, still in that strangely muted tone of voice, "they fear change too. Just as much as we do."
"Yeah," I grunted as I walked over to the kitchen sink to splash some water on my face. "Just a bit flushed from the bullwork of helping to load the van, I guess," I apologized. It felt uncomfortably warm and claustrophobic in the empty house that had been my family's home for more than a decade and had been the scene of the first six years of my son's life.
"How'd the mink cage work out that I borrowed from Chet?" Swede asked.
"I've got it partitioned into three compartments," I informed him, looking down the hall to avoid looking at his face. "I'll lay a blanket down at the bottom of each compartment. They'll be comfortable enough. I've got the sedatives from the vet, too. Hopefully they'll settle the cats down. Otherwise the ten hour trip to Monmouth will be a horrible serenade."
Another yowl erupted from the bedroom as though to assure us that the sedatives wouldn't work. That was Josephine that time," Swede asserted. "I'd recognize her voice anywhere." He walked down the hallway toward the bedroom, as though contemplating going in to attempt to reassure her. Then he shook his head and came back into the kitchen. "I'd better leave her alone," he decided aloud.
"Thanks for coming to help us pack," I told him, trying to steer his thoughts away from the agony of having to listen to the cats give voice to their uncomprehending fear.
"When are you kids leaving?" he asked.
"As soon as Nancy gets back from taking care of the last of the paperwork at the bank." I responded, although it was information that he already knew. "And as soon as we get Napoleon in."
"When he comes in I'll help you sedate all three cats," Swede volunteered. "You'll have a hell of a time doing them all by yourself."
"I've doctored them before," I reminded him. "Everything from Josie's broken pelvis to Napoleon's kidney infection."
Swede looked up at the lights on the chandelier and asked "what are you doing with the cats while the three of you are at the motel?"
"The realtor said that we could leave them at the house. It's empty anyway, and all we're waiting for is the mover to deliver our stuff. We'll be there painting and cleaning for much of thedaytime. It isn't like we'll be abandoning them, except for the nights."
Swede slid open the sliding glass door that led from the kitchen to the second story deck. I watched him through the thick glass as he called Napoleon, repeating the cat's name several times. His voice had a mournful quality to it, as though indicative of some deeper pain than just our moving a day away.
Swede stepped back into the kitchen. "Are you happy with the house that you've bought?" he
asked.
"I think so," I responded. "Time will tell." I had to suppress a bit of a chuckle. Swede had always expressed an aversion toward monstrous old houses with high ceilings and deteriorating plumbing. I knew he wouldn't be impressed with the three story old Victorian dowager that my wife and I had fallen in love with. But then, he and I had never agreed on much of anything.
We heard a scratching, clattering noise on the outside of the house. Swede and I looked at each other, both recognizing the sound. Napoleon,our old battle-scarred tabby, had always been too impatient to wait at the front door to be let in. He'd discovered that by leaping three feet he could catch a hold on the cedar siding above the exposed, stuccoed portion of the basement. Using his claws to dig into the siding as though it was a trunk of a tree, he'd pull himself up the corner of the house to the deck that protruded from the kitchen. Then he'd wait to be let in through the sliding glass door.
"That's the last time that he'll use that enterance," Swede observed sadly, looking down at the grey tabby. My father went over to the door,slid it open, knelt down and whispered "come on in, big guy."
Napoleon, recognizing the voice that coaxed him in, rubbed up against Swede's legs as my father stroked his back. Then, tiring of the attention, he moved forward to where the kitchen table would have been. He always used the legs of the table to rub his whiskers on. Abruptly the cat stopped and looked about in evident confusion. He began to give out a series of increasingly panicky yowls as he tried to comprehend the absence of familiar objects and scents.
"It's alright, Napoleon," Swede whispered soothingly, attempting to reassure the spooked animal by kneeling to take hold of him.
Napoleon was beyond reassurance. He eluded Swede's grasp and ran into the living room, wailing his distress at the changes in his environment. His howls were now joined by those of the two cats that
were locked in the bedroom but determined now to add their chorus to his plaintive yowls.
"Jesus Christ," marvelled Swede, shaking his head in agitated astonishment. "I've never seen anything like this ever happen before." He looked as though the cat's distress was causing him physical pain.
Napoleon let loose with another series of ear-splitting complaints. Swede winced visibly at each howl of feline anxiety.
I tried my luck at easing Napoleon's worry. Picking up the big, frightened tabby, I began to cradle him in my arms. He was quivering with fear as he panted, already exhausted by his vocal protests.
"Settle down, big guy," I whispered, gently stroking his head. I looked over at Swede and saw that he was slipping on his coat.
Napoleon gave out another mind-shattering howl.
"I've got to get out of here," my father decided, in a voice choked with helplessness. "I just can't take this anymore."
I rocked Napoleon in my arms. His pupils were wide and black, testimony to his fear. "It's alright, big guy," I assured him, stroking him gently. "Everything's going to be alright, you big old baby."
My father looked at us for a moment, then turned away from us and went downstairs to the foyer. I heard the front door open, then shut softly as he slipped away. Napoleon howled again, a meowwwwwwww that echoed mournful as taps through the emptiness of the house that was no longer a home.
"How long till he gets to Monmouth?" he asked me, his usually authoritative voice softened to a whisper.
"He's got another home to load, then he'll deliver their goods first," I told him. "He says it will take about three days."
Swede nodded. His broad shoulders sagged slightly as he realized that we had nothing left to sit down on. His eyes scanned the empty house with the practical mind of a man who had spent his lifetime in the construction industry. His ability to apply textured plaster and tape sheet rock had put me through college. He always professed to be proud of his "boy." I'd always suspected, though, that he would have been happier with a son who was less bookish and more adept with a football or basketball. I'd never been much to brag about at the coffee shop on Saturday mornings. While his caffeine cronies related Homeric tales of their offspring's athletic exploits, my father had his nearsighted son and no bragging rights at all. It had to be frustrating for so gregarious a man to have nothing to contribute to the conversation.
"It's just a house now," he observed, his back toward me still as he continued to gaze out the living room picture window. "It's the people that live here and their belongings that make it a home."
"Yeah," I acknowledged. I looked out at the bleak coldness of a February landscape. The front yard was stripped as bare of foliage and color as the house had been of life. The wind was swirling shimmering flakes of frozen snow about. They skittered across the ice to find refuge in small drifts that huddled on the east edge of the driveway. It was nothing to concern myself about. The new owners could get their shovels out.
Swede winced as a loud caterwaul of outrage came from one of the two cats imprisoned in one of the empty bedrooms. "They're still pissed off at us, aren't they?" he murmured. "You know." he said, still in that strangely muted tone of voice, "they fear change too. Just as much as we do."
"Yeah," I grunted as I walked over to the kitchen sink to splash some water on my face. "Just a bit flushed from the bullwork of helping to load the van, I guess," I apologized. It felt uncomfortably warm and claustrophobic in the empty house that had been my family's home for more than a decade and had been the scene of the first six years of my son's life.
"How'd the mink cage work out that I borrowed from Chet?" Swede asked.
"I've got it partitioned into three compartments," I informed him, looking down the hall to avoid looking at his face. "I'll lay a blanket down at the bottom of each compartment. They'll be comfortable enough. I've got the sedatives from the vet, too. Hopefully they'll settle the cats down. Otherwise the ten hour trip to Monmouth will be a horrible serenade."
Another yowl erupted from the bedroom as though to assure us that the sedatives wouldn't work. That was Josephine that time," Swede asserted. "I'd recognize her voice anywhere." He walked down the hallway toward the bedroom, as though contemplating going in to attempt to reassure her. Then he shook his head and came back into the kitchen. "I'd better leave her alone," he decided aloud.
"Thanks for coming to help us pack," I told him, trying to steer his thoughts away from the agony of having to listen to the cats give voice to their uncomprehending fear.
"When are you kids leaving?" he asked.
"As soon as Nancy gets back from taking care of the last of the paperwork at the bank." I responded, although it was information that he already knew. "And as soon as we get Napoleon in."
"When he comes in I'll help you sedate all three cats," Swede volunteered. "You'll have a hell of a time doing them all by yourself."
"I've doctored them before," I reminded him. "Everything from Josie's broken pelvis to Napoleon's kidney infection."
Swede looked up at the lights on the chandelier and asked "what are you doing with the cats while the three of you are at the motel?"
"The realtor said that we could leave them at the house. It's empty anyway, and all we're waiting for is the mover to deliver our stuff. We'll be there painting and cleaning for much of thedaytime. It isn't like we'll be abandoning them, except for the nights."
Swede slid open the sliding glass door that led from the kitchen to the second story deck. I watched him through the thick glass as he called Napoleon, repeating the cat's name several times. His voice had a mournful quality to it, as though indicative of some deeper pain than just our moving a day away.
Swede stepped back into the kitchen. "Are you happy with the house that you've bought?" he
asked.
"I think so," I responded. "Time will tell." I had to suppress a bit of a chuckle. Swede had always expressed an aversion toward monstrous old houses with high ceilings and deteriorating plumbing. I knew he wouldn't be impressed with the three story old Victorian dowager that my wife and I had fallen in love with. But then, he and I had never agreed on much of anything.
We heard a scratching, clattering noise on the outside of the house. Swede and I looked at each other, both recognizing the sound. Napoleon,our old battle-scarred tabby, had always been too impatient to wait at the front door to be let in. He'd discovered that by leaping three feet he could catch a hold on the cedar siding above the exposed, stuccoed portion of the basement. Using his claws to dig into the siding as though it was a trunk of a tree, he'd pull himself up the corner of the house to the deck that protruded from the kitchen. Then he'd wait to be let in through the sliding glass door.
"That's the last time that he'll use that enterance," Swede observed sadly, looking down at the grey tabby. My father went over to the door,slid it open, knelt down and whispered "come on in, big guy."
Napoleon, recognizing the voice that coaxed him in, rubbed up against Swede's legs as my father stroked his back. Then, tiring of the attention, he moved forward to where the kitchen table would have been. He always used the legs of the table to rub his whiskers on. Abruptly the cat stopped and looked about in evident confusion. He began to give out a series of increasingly panicky yowls as he tried to comprehend the absence of familiar objects and scents.
"It's alright, Napoleon," Swede whispered soothingly, attempting to reassure the spooked animal by kneeling to take hold of him.
Napoleon was beyond reassurance. He eluded Swede's grasp and ran into the living room, wailing his distress at the changes in his environment. His howls were now joined by those of the two cats that
were locked in the bedroom but determined now to add their chorus to his plaintive yowls.
"Jesus Christ," marvelled Swede, shaking his head in agitated astonishment. "I've never seen anything like this ever happen before." He looked as though the cat's distress was causing him physical pain.
Napoleon let loose with another series of ear-splitting complaints. Swede winced visibly at each howl of feline anxiety.
I tried my luck at easing Napoleon's worry. Picking up the big, frightened tabby, I began to cradle him in my arms. He was quivering with fear as he panted, already exhausted by his vocal protests.
"Settle down, big guy," I whispered, gently stroking his head. I looked over at Swede and saw that he was slipping on his coat.
Napoleon gave out another mind-shattering howl.
"I've got to get out of here," my father decided, in a voice choked with helplessness. "I just can't take this anymore."
I rocked Napoleon in my arms. His pupils were wide and black, testimony to his fear. "It's alright, big guy," I assured him, stroking him gently. "Everything's going to be alright, you big old baby."
My father looked at us for a moment, then turned away from us and went downstairs to the foyer. I heard the front door open, then shut softly as he slipped away. Napoleon howled again, a meowwwwwwww that echoed mournful as taps through the emptiness of the house that was no longer a home.
Old Men Drink Scotch and Water
Malcolm MacGregor tossed his briefcase on the front passenger's seat
and glowered at the dashboard clock as he got into his car. It was
after nine p.m. already. Good Lord, he hadn't realized that the meeting
had run that late. "Those blowhards from advertising tend to run off at
the mouth as much as they tend to run over their budget," he muttered
disgustedly to himself as his car pulled out of the parking lot and
onto the frontage road. His blue Corvette eased down the frontage road,
then shot onto the expressway with a burst of speed. God, he loved his
car! It was youthful, stylish, and the women really admired it. Yeah,
it was his toy. "At least the traffic's light now," he whispered, still
angry but trying to snatch some solace from the late night meeting that
had wrought such havoc upon his normal routine. It had even deprived
him of Happy Hour at the CASTAWAY.
The CASTAWAY was one of the bars whose neon lights glow invitingly just
off the expressway. The CASTAWAY'S neon logo was a barefoot beachcomber
sitting contentedly on a sandy isle with a drink in his hand. Above him
a palm tree rose to challenge the somber ebony emptiness of the
evening.
Happy Hour had become Mac's social life. Until seven p.m. he could
drink two Coors Light for the price of one and let the pressures of his
job slide from him like soapsuds and dirt under the barrage of a warm
shower. His ex-wife, Marcia, could never understand that. Happy Hour
was his "humanizing" session, but to her it had always been a challenge
to her feminine wiles. To think that he would want to spend time in a
tavern rather than hurry home to her, upset her. Maybe she would've
been happier if he would've driven straight home and slapped her around
a bit, like so many husbands do. He'd seen so many women hanging on to
abusive husbands as though they feared by letting go they would plunge
into a bottomless abyss that would swallow their screams in an eternity
of freefalling fear.
Yeah, she hadn't liked his cattin around a bit either. She couldn't
understand that a guy had to go out and prove himself as a man on
occasions, just as he has to do at work everyday. What else could he
say? At least they hadn't made the mistake of having a kid or two
before their marraige disintegrated.
Oh well. She'd remarried soon after. "She's probably even happy," he
murmured, hoping maliciously though that she wasn't.
He was almost fifty five now. Either he was getting older or his job was
getting tougher. Some days he felt like the sullen, half-crazed bag
lady he'd see sometimes during the morning rush hour as she'd be
ramming her shopping cart forward against the flow of pedestrian
traffic. There were more and more lonely ass-dragging mornings.
Mornings he felt awash and adrift in a swiftly moving current of
humanity. Mornings he felt as confused about his own relation to the
universe as the blind man on the street corner must as he senses the
schools of people darting indifferently past him.
Yeah, he was a little past fifty. Still in good shape though if you
overlooked a little greying above his temples and the beginning of a
spare tire around his gut. "It isn't how old you are," he reminded
himself mentally. "It's how old you feel. And I can still run with the
best of them."
It was half past nine when Mac picked up the CASTAWAY'S sign in the
darkness. "No sense in confusing my car," he muttered, smiling smugly
at his wit as he pulled off the expressway and made his way into the
bar's parking lot.
"You're late, Mac," Mike, the tall, dark-haired bartender chided him,
tearing his gaze away from the gorgeous blonde co-ed with the nice rack
that he was seducing conversationally just long enough to acknowledge a
regular customer and good tipper. "I can get you two beers for Happy
Hour price yet, though."
"Thanks," Mac replied as he looked around, hoping to spot a familiar
face. Mac missed the regular crowd. This late in the evening it was all
mostly college kids with a smattering of older yuppie males who were
there sniffing after the younger "meat." Even the music had been turned
up louder. The "stop for a couple after work " crowd was gone. Glenn
Gehringer of the thick brown mustache, the flirtatious mind-set and the
acutely cynical political insights had long since found someone to go
home with. His barstool was now occupied by some pudgy-cheeked,
rodent-faced fat kid wearing a college fraternity shirt. Jake the
Laundryman had cleaned up his act and gone home, and "Chip," the
Frito-Lay driver had long since departed, taking his Viet-nam stories
home with him. Yeah, like a chameleon the CASTAWAY had put on a
different "night" face and Mac felt like his watering hole was a
stranger now rather than a friend.
Mac hunched over his two beers at the bar as if hoping to leave the
raucous crowd of college kids behind him. He studied the familiar faces
on the shelves of the bar just in front of the mirror. At least THEY
never changed. Jose Cuervo, Yukon Jack, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels. They
were all there. A constant. Just like Happy Hour. There was even a
bottle of Cutty Sark. Mac's old man liked his scotch. He called it
"chasin the skirt" when he'd stop at the bar for a scotch and water
after work. Once Mac asked his dad what he meant by that, Mac's dad, as
proud a Scot as you'd ever want to meet, whispered, "It's from Burns,
laddie. Dinna they not teach you bout him here in tha new country?" Then
he launched into a boisterous recital of "Tam O'Shanter," a poem about
a drunken Scotsman who comes upon the devil and some witches cavorting
and dancing. He's so taken by the beauty of a witch in a short outfit,
a "cutty sark" that he bellows his approval. This ill-timed
indiscretion caused the evil dancers to give him chase.
Mac managed a wan smile ashe remembered his father's rendition.
Mac wasn't much for poetry himself. No time or patience for it. Then he
remembered what Mike the bartender had said to him once after he told him
about his father andhis love of reciting Bobby Burns while in his cups. "It's the old men
who drink scotch and water," he said slyly. "We young studs, we've got
to stick to our beer."
Mac checked himself out in the mirror. By God, he looked pretty good
yet. No college punk anymore. More distinguished. Mature. Yeah, that's
it. More mature. Marcia should have stood by him for God's sake. "I'll
be she hasn't got as good as me at home right now," he wagered to
himself, comparing himself to Marcia's second husband who took delight
in ballroom dancing, oil painting and in staying home with her. Not
much of a life for a man.
Mac looked up into the mirror as the barstool beside him was occupied
and a strong scent of perfume began to seduce his nostrils. She was a
fine-looking bitch, a real stunner. Yeah, she was dressed to the hilt
too, showing enough cleavage to leave no doubt that she had substantial
"assets." Oops, she was looking in the mirror too, and she caught him
savoring those mouth-watering melons of hers. She smiled though. That
was a good sign, and then she asked him, are you here on
business?"
"No" he smiled as he turned to talk to her face to face. "Just a bit
later than usual. That's all."
She turned her barstool to sit facing him, and as she did one of her
legs brushed against him. She had long blonde hair that tumbled like a
stream of sunlight down her shoulders, and she was wearing a satin
teal-colored blouse with a black skirt that was indecently short. He
glanced down at the leg that was pressed against his, moving slightly
now in an erotic message of arousal. Then he looked up at her face.
God, she was YOUNG. So Beautiful, too.
Mac thought to himself. "I guess I've still got what it takes," as he
looked triumphantly at her. Her soft pink lips parted just enough so
that she could moisten them with her tongue. Then she whispered, "my
name's Tamara."
"Mine's Mac," he gulped. "Malcolm MacGregor." He reached for his second
beer in a desperate attempt to buy time to think of what to say next.
Mike the bartender looked over at him, smirked, and winked at him. Then
he whispered something to the blonde that he'd been hitting on and they
both glanced over at him, then laughed.
"May I buy you a drink, Tamara?" Mac asked her. May as well get down to
the basics, he thought. Man, she was gorgeous.
"I'm not here to drink," she said coyly. "I'm looking for something
else, and figure that maybe you are too." She slid her leg slowly,
languorously along his and said, "I hope we can work something out
between us."
"I've nowhere to be tonight," Mac assured her. "Do you want to leave
right now or have a drink or two first?"
"You got a couple hundred bucks on you?" Tara asked, her voice suddenly
changing to brusque and businesslike.
Mac looked at her dumbly for a moment, not comprehending at first, the
shift in the conversation. Then it dawned on him.
"You mean....you're a hooker?"
She looked at him impatiently. It was the look of frustration that you
might see a worldly sister give her naive young brother. "Yes," she
whispered. "A working girl. I ain't got time to sit and drink, Mac. Do
you want to get it on with me or not? I've got my van out in the parking lot."
"I..I've never had to pay for it before," Mac assured her, stammering
slightly.
"Well. you will me, Mac, if you want me. Do you think I'm hustling an
old guy like you for the fun of it?" She looked at him, suddenly
contemptuous. "I've got tuition coming up and a payment due on my
Mercedes. Did you really think I'd hit on you if there weren't a payday
in it for me?"
Mac pulled away from her as though she were a prophetess forecasting
the end of the world, and stumbled slightly as he rose from his
barstool and fled. He dared not look back. To think that she saw him as
an old man was a sucker-punch to his pride, his manhood and a
frightening harbinger of a decline into impotency, a nursing home,
spoonfed meals and a drool-bib.
Mac's pride forced him to drive past the CASTAWAY the next evening. He
needed a drink though, so he looked for another sign that looked
welcoming. He saw promise in a sign that read KOZY KORNER that hung
above a red brick building adorned with a faded Schlitz beer sign.
Yeah, he remembered Schlitz. "You only go round once in life, so you've
got to grab for all the gusto you can get." Yeah, that looked
promising.
Mac opened the door and was greeted by the smell of stale beer and
cigarette smoke. The long bar was scarred by burns and rings of stain,
and the interior was dark and devoid of people other than a couple of
elderly pensioners sitting with a cribbage board between them and a
husky, grey-haired stevedore of a woman bartender who sported as many
tatoos as the wrestler who calls himself The Undertaker.
"What do ya want, buddy?" she demanded.
He looked around glumly at the silent jukebox. the faded caricatures of
the Hamm's Bear behind the bar and the rows of dusty liquor bottles.
Yeah, there it was, the old Cutty Sark. Yeah, he'd chase the
skirt.
"I'll have a scotch and water, I guess." Mac sighed, as he gazed in the
dusty mirror behind the bar at the forlorn expression on his middle-aged
face.
and glowered at the dashboard clock as he got into his car. It was
after nine p.m. already. Good Lord, he hadn't realized that the meeting
had run that late. "Those blowhards from advertising tend to run off at
the mouth as much as they tend to run over their budget," he muttered
disgustedly to himself as his car pulled out of the parking lot and
onto the frontage road. His blue Corvette eased down the frontage road,
then shot onto the expressway with a burst of speed. God, he loved his
car! It was youthful, stylish, and the women really admired it. Yeah,
it was his toy. "At least the traffic's light now," he whispered, still
angry but trying to snatch some solace from the late night meeting that
had wrought such havoc upon his normal routine. It had even deprived
him of Happy Hour at the CASTAWAY.
The CASTAWAY was one of the bars whose neon lights glow invitingly just
off the expressway. The CASTAWAY'S neon logo was a barefoot beachcomber
sitting contentedly on a sandy isle with a drink in his hand. Above him
a palm tree rose to challenge the somber ebony emptiness of the
evening.
Happy Hour had become Mac's social life. Until seven p.m. he could
drink two Coors Light for the price of one and let the pressures of his
job slide from him like soapsuds and dirt under the barrage of a warm
shower. His ex-wife, Marcia, could never understand that. Happy Hour
was his "humanizing" session, but to her it had always been a challenge
to her feminine wiles. To think that he would want to spend time in a
tavern rather than hurry home to her, upset her. Maybe she would've
been happier if he would've driven straight home and slapped her around
a bit, like so many husbands do. He'd seen so many women hanging on to
abusive husbands as though they feared by letting go they would plunge
into a bottomless abyss that would swallow their screams in an eternity
of freefalling fear.
Yeah, she hadn't liked his cattin around a bit either. She couldn't
understand that a guy had to go out and prove himself as a man on
occasions, just as he has to do at work everyday. What else could he
say? At least they hadn't made the mistake of having a kid or two
before their marraige disintegrated.
Oh well. She'd remarried soon after. "She's probably even happy," he
murmured, hoping maliciously though that she wasn't.
He was almost fifty five now. Either he was getting older or his job was
getting tougher. Some days he felt like the sullen, half-crazed bag
lady he'd see sometimes during the morning rush hour as she'd be
ramming her shopping cart forward against the flow of pedestrian
traffic. There were more and more lonely ass-dragging mornings.
Mornings he felt awash and adrift in a swiftly moving current of
humanity. Mornings he felt as confused about his own relation to the
universe as the blind man on the street corner must as he senses the
schools of people darting indifferently past him.
Yeah, he was a little past fifty. Still in good shape though if you
overlooked a little greying above his temples and the beginning of a
spare tire around his gut. "It isn't how old you are," he reminded
himself mentally. "It's how old you feel. And I can still run with the
best of them."
It was half past nine when Mac picked up the CASTAWAY'S sign in the
darkness. "No sense in confusing my car," he muttered, smiling smugly
at his wit as he pulled off the expressway and made his way into the
bar's parking lot.
"You're late, Mac," Mike, the tall, dark-haired bartender chided him,
tearing his gaze away from the gorgeous blonde co-ed with the nice rack
that he was seducing conversationally just long enough to acknowledge a
regular customer and good tipper. "I can get you two beers for Happy
Hour price yet, though."
"Thanks," Mac replied as he looked around, hoping to spot a familiar
face. Mac missed the regular crowd. This late in the evening it was all
mostly college kids with a smattering of older yuppie males who were
there sniffing after the younger "meat." Even the music had been turned
up louder. The "stop for a couple after work " crowd was gone. Glenn
Gehringer of the thick brown mustache, the flirtatious mind-set and the
acutely cynical political insights had long since found someone to go
home with. His barstool was now occupied by some pudgy-cheeked,
rodent-faced fat kid wearing a college fraternity shirt. Jake the
Laundryman had cleaned up his act and gone home, and "Chip," the
Frito-Lay driver had long since departed, taking his Viet-nam stories
home with him. Yeah, like a chameleon the CASTAWAY had put on a
different "night" face and Mac felt like his watering hole was a
stranger now rather than a friend.
Mac hunched over his two beers at the bar as if hoping to leave the
raucous crowd of college kids behind him. He studied the familiar faces
on the shelves of the bar just in front of the mirror. At least THEY
never changed. Jose Cuervo, Yukon Jack, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels. They
were all there. A constant. Just like Happy Hour. There was even a
bottle of Cutty Sark. Mac's old man liked his scotch. He called it
"chasin the skirt" when he'd stop at the bar for a scotch and water
after work. Once Mac asked his dad what he meant by that, Mac's dad, as
proud a Scot as you'd ever want to meet, whispered, "It's from Burns,
laddie. Dinna they not teach you bout him here in tha new country?" Then
he launched into a boisterous recital of "Tam O'Shanter," a poem about
a drunken Scotsman who comes upon the devil and some witches cavorting
and dancing. He's so taken by the beauty of a witch in a short outfit,
a "cutty sark" that he bellows his approval. This ill-timed
indiscretion caused the evil dancers to give him chase.
Mac managed a wan smile ashe remembered his father's rendition.
Mac wasn't much for poetry himself. No time or patience for it. Then he
remembered what Mike the bartender had said to him once after he told him
about his father andhis love of reciting Bobby Burns while in his cups. "It's the old men
who drink scotch and water," he said slyly. "We young studs, we've got
to stick to our beer."
Mac checked himself out in the mirror. By God, he looked pretty good
yet. No college punk anymore. More distinguished. Mature. Yeah, that's
it. More mature. Marcia should have stood by him for God's sake. "I'll
be she hasn't got as good as me at home right now," he wagered to
himself, comparing himself to Marcia's second husband who took delight
in ballroom dancing, oil painting and in staying home with her. Not
much of a life for a man.
Mac looked up into the mirror as the barstool beside him was occupied
and a strong scent of perfume began to seduce his nostrils. She was a
fine-looking bitch, a real stunner. Yeah, she was dressed to the hilt
too, showing enough cleavage to leave no doubt that she had substantial
"assets." Oops, she was looking in the mirror too, and she caught him
savoring those mouth-watering melons of hers. She smiled though. That
was a good sign, and then she asked him, are you here on
business?"
"No" he smiled as he turned to talk to her face to face. "Just a bit
later than usual. That's all."
She turned her barstool to sit facing him, and as she did one of her
legs brushed against him. She had long blonde hair that tumbled like a
stream of sunlight down her shoulders, and she was wearing a satin
teal-colored blouse with a black skirt that was indecently short. He
glanced down at the leg that was pressed against his, moving slightly
now in an erotic message of arousal. Then he looked up at her face.
God, she was YOUNG. So Beautiful, too.
Mac thought to himself. "I guess I've still got what it takes," as he
looked triumphantly at her. Her soft pink lips parted just enough so
that she could moisten them with her tongue. Then she whispered, "my
name's Tamara."
"Mine's Mac," he gulped. "Malcolm MacGregor." He reached for his second
beer in a desperate attempt to buy time to think of what to say next.
Mike the bartender looked over at him, smirked, and winked at him. Then
he whispered something to the blonde that he'd been hitting on and they
both glanced over at him, then laughed.
"May I buy you a drink, Tamara?" Mac asked her. May as well get down to
the basics, he thought. Man, she was gorgeous.
"I'm not here to drink," she said coyly. "I'm looking for something
else, and figure that maybe you are too." She slid her leg slowly,
languorously along his and said, "I hope we can work something out
between us."
"I've nowhere to be tonight," Mac assured her. "Do you want to leave
right now or have a drink or two first?"
"You got a couple hundred bucks on you?" Tara asked, her voice suddenly
changing to brusque and businesslike.
Mac looked at her dumbly for a moment, not comprehending at first, the
shift in the conversation. Then it dawned on him.
"You mean....you're a hooker?"
She looked at him impatiently. It was the look of frustration that you
might see a worldly sister give her naive young brother. "Yes," she
whispered. "A working girl. I ain't got time to sit and drink, Mac. Do
you want to get it on with me or not? I've got my van out in the parking lot."
"I..I've never had to pay for it before," Mac assured her, stammering
slightly.
"Well. you will me, Mac, if you want me. Do you think I'm hustling an
old guy like you for the fun of it?" She looked at him, suddenly
contemptuous. "I've got tuition coming up and a payment due on my
Mercedes. Did you really think I'd hit on you if there weren't a payday
in it for me?"
Mac pulled away from her as though she were a prophetess forecasting
the end of the world, and stumbled slightly as he rose from his
barstool and fled. He dared not look back. To think that she saw him as
an old man was a sucker-punch to his pride, his manhood and a
frightening harbinger of a decline into impotency, a nursing home,
spoonfed meals and a drool-bib.
Mac's pride forced him to drive past the CASTAWAY the next evening. He
needed a drink though, so he looked for another sign that looked
welcoming. He saw promise in a sign that read KOZY KORNER that hung
above a red brick building adorned with a faded Schlitz beer sign.
Yeah, he remembered Schlitz. "You only go round once in life, so you've
got to grab for all the gusto you can get." Yeah, that looked
promising.
Mac opened the door and was greeted by the smell of stale beer and
cigarette smoke. The long bar was scarred by burns and rings of stain,
and the interior was dark and devoid of people other than a couple of
elderly pensioners sitting with a cribbage board between them and a
husky, grey-haired stevedore of a woman bartender who sported as many
tatoos as the wrestler who calls himself The Undertaker.
"What do ya want, buddy?" she demanded.
He looked around glumly at the silent jukebox. the faded caricatures of
the Hamm's Bear behind the bar and the rows of dusty liquor bottles.
Yeah, there it was, the old Cutty Sark. Yeah, he'd chase the
skirt.
"I'll have a scotch and water, I guess." Mac sighed, as he gazed in the
dusty mirror behind the bar at the forlorn expression on his middle-aged
face.
Longing to Disappear
Ever since he was a child, Mortimer McConnell had dreamed of
disappearing. No, it wasn't that he'd carved that visible a niche for
himself in this world. Just the opposite. Surprisingly, for a tall,
hulking, big-boned young man like Mortimer, anonymity was a state that
he didn't have to work toward. He moved with the painfully awkward
uncertainty of an uncoordinated giant. Even in high school he had been
that "big, tall...you know...oh, what's his name," or worse yet,"Lurch"
a nickname given him because of his supposed resemblence to the Addams
Family's Frankenstein of a butler.
Yes, Mortimer had longed to disappear even then, to vanish in a cloud
of mystery that would banish the laughter, replacing it instead with an
aura of baffled astonishment. Like unrequited love, Mortimer's longing
to disappear gradually festered into an obsession. Every person that he
encountered was masking a sneer of contempt for him, and every set of
eyes that didn't avert their gaze from his burning glare of combative
anger was probing his mind for dark and guilty secrets.
Eve his job had become distasteful for to him. He had nothing in common
with the beer swilling, sex-obsessed losers that he worked with, and
the job itself was maddeningly repetitive. Finally he quit. He just
walked away from the receiving dock at the discount store one
afternoon, pleading illness. It wasn't a lie, he was sick to death of
humanity. Two days later he called his supervisor to let him know that
he wasn't ever coming back. A phone call was good enough. That way he
didn't have to see anyone or go through the phony amenities of goodbyes
and best wishes. You know, all that crap that you say but don't really
mean to someone whom you've worked with but don't really care
about.
He had enough money saved to last a few months, at least. Maybe longer
if he scrimped on his meals a bit, turned down the heat and only burned
one light at night. Television wasn't a temptation any longer. He'd
kicked in the picture tube in a fit of anger. It had been one of those
happy huggy people commercials that had pissed him off. You know, one
of those commercials that they crank up the sound on. This one was so
sickeningly upbeat that it had even including singing. He didn't have
to put up with that crap. Now that he'd drawn the drapes on that
annoying electric window to the world, he was truly alone. But he was
still dissatisfied.
He knew that there had to be a way to disappear. He couldn't want
anything like he wanted to disappear so badly, he reasoned, without it
being possible somehow. It just wouldn't be fair otherwise. In a world
that had cheated him of so much, he desperately hoped for fair play in
this one urgent desire.
For years Mortimer had pored through tomes of occult lore, tales of the
supernatural and old, discredited volumes of metaphysical quackery. Now
that he'd forsaken his job, he had even more time to devote to his
research. Maybe their was a nugget of truth to be extracted from those
veins of delusion. Maybe he could discover a passage that would
suddenly make things clear to him. Maybe he'd find the key that would
allow him to slip into another plane of existance and leave this
contemptable world behind.
Charles Fort, in his "Lo," and "The Book of the Damned," those wierd
compilations of bizarre and inexplicable events, had written of
individuals fortunate enough to have managed to unaccountably
vanish.
Mortimer read the mystifying account of David Lang, a farmer in
Tennessee, who stepped into a window in time, a vortex, or who knows
what. He just vanished. He disappeared in plain sight of his wife and
children while walking from their house to the barn.
Stranger yet, where he disappeared there appeared later a circle of
dead grass about fifteen feet in circumference. Several months later
his children came running frantically into the house. They said that
they heard their father's voice faintly, plaintively, calling for help.
His family listened with impotent anguish as the voice faded gradually
away into the oblivion of the lost.
Mortimer was obsessed with the case of Dorothy Arnold as well, the
debutante who disappeared in New York's Central Park in 1910. Could her
case somehow be connected with the sudden, inexpicable appearance of a
magnificent white swan in Central Park Lake? She'd written a poem
shortly before she vanished, comparing herself to one.
Living within eight blocks of Central Park, Mortimer seized upon this
area as his best hope to find a way to enter that unknown land that
lies beyond our ken. He'd always avoided the park in the past. Too many
noisy people, loving couples ad obnoxious kids. Now he wandered the
park resolutely in the twilight hours before the night, after most
people have left with the daylight. He started packing a .38 too. No
muggers, punk kids or other trash of humanity were going to stand
between him and his search.
Evidently, Mortimer decided, there are occasional rifts in the fabric
of our existance that a person can step into if he is fortunate enough
to find one. No doubt that's what had happened to Lang and Arnold, he
reasoned, althogh it must be harder to come back out of one of those
strange portals than it is to enter one. May an individual couldn't
return once he'd stepped through the rift. No problem. He didn't figure
he'd have any desire to step back into the world he knew and longed to
escape from.
After wandering the park for a couple of months, Mortimer was becoming
acutely sensitive to his surroundings. He could feel an eerie,
indecipherable presence in the area surrounding Central Park Lake. It
was something unearthly. It was a sinister force that he felt he could
almost reach out and touch. Almost. He'd found a couple of circles of
brown grass too. He was getting close. He could feel it. It would only
be a matter of time now before he could step out of this world into
that glorious unknown beyond.
"There's that crazy son of a bitch that I've been telling you about,"
whispered one of the three young thugs who were watching Mortimer from
behind some bushes, like predatory animals stalking their prey.
"He lookin for somethin?" the youngest of the three wondered
nerviously. ""Ya think he's alone? He keeps stickin his hand in his
pocket. Ya think he's packin some power?"
"He ain't lookin at nothin but the ground," the third male growled, his
voice honed to a hardened edge by inner city rage. "Let's go for
it."
The huddled behind the bushes to plot their assault. here were loud
whispers, a couple of nervous questions, then three almost simultaneous
grunts of assent. One of the figures rose from behind the bushes and
slipped away to the right.
Mortimer was oblivious to their noise and movement though. He'd seen a
shimmering flash of light off to his left, then darkness. Then
anunaccountable flash of light again. No, it wasn't fireflies. He'd
been fooled by them before. There was something strange, something
eerily different. Maybe he'd just gotten a glimpse of an enterance to a
portal.
Moving toward it, he tripped on a tree root and fell to the ground. He
cursed softly, but was more embarrassed at this confirmation of his
clumsiness than he was hurt. He had stayed in the park too long
tonight. He could hardly see the footpath, much less obstacles such as
tree roots now that he'd deviated from the sidewalk.
There it was though. There was that inexplicable flash again. It looked
like one of those lamps that you turned on with the rest of the lights
in the room off. You know, the kind of lamp that flashes multi-colored
bursts of light in a room, then goes dark so that the next display of
light will be yet more dazzling.
A lava lamp. That's what it was called.
Rapt in wonder and in hope Mortimer began to grope toward that coaxing,
shimmering beacon.
The young nervous member of the trio deliberately cracked a branch off
to Mortimer's left, then coughed loudly as he approached Mortimer,
holding his hands out to assure the stranger that no harm was
meant.
"Excuse me, Mistah. I've lost the path. Can ya point me to it,
maybe?"
"Leave me alone," Mortimer muttered bitterly, still vainly hoping for
the shimmering puzzle to return. Yes, there it was. It was only a few
yards away. Then it disappeared again.
The intruder moved between Mortimer and where the light had been.
Mortimer panicked. "Get out of my way!" he screamed at the young man as
he tried to push his way past him to head toward the light.
Suddenly an arm locked itself around Mortimer's neck from behind. He
tried to get at his gun, but now another pair on hands had grabbed his
arms and were pulling them behind him. Mortimer kicked, he wriggled; he
broke free for an instant but was pulled to the ground from behind. He
rolled away and kicked up at one of his attackers and knew that he'd
done damage. The guy had grunted in pain.
Mortimer turned to look for the lights. They were gone. By that time
two of the men had come back at him. One of them hit him a numbing blow
on the side of the head and the other tackled him from behind.
They guy that he's hurt with his kick had gotten up now. "I'll show
you, you son of a bitch." he shouted angrily.
Mortimer saw it as though it were a slow motion film; first the flash
of silver, then the lunging movement that thrust it forward at him, and
finally the impact. He felt a searing, frightening moment of intense
and overwhelming pain as his stomach took the knife to its hilt. Then
he felt it withdraw, and then re-enter his body with more murderous
fury.
As he sensed his life slowly ebbing from his body, Mortimer McConnell was
wishing for the last time in his life that he could disappear.
disappearing. No, it wasn't that he'd carved that visible a niche for
himself in this world. Just the opposite. Surprisingly, for a tall,
hulking, big-boned young man like Mortimer, anonymity was a state that
he didn't have to work toward. He moved with the painfully awkward
uncertainty of an uncoordinated giant. Even in high school he had been
that "big, tall...you know...oh, what's his name," or worse yet,"Lurch"
a nickname given him because of his supposed resemblence to the Addams
Family's Frankenstein of a butler.
Yes, Mortimer had longed to disappear even then, to vanish in a cloud
of mystery that would banish the laughter, replacing it instead with an
aura of baffled astonishment. Like unrequited love, Mortimer's longing
to disappear gradually festered into an obsession. Every person that he
encountered was masking a sneer of contempt for him, and every set of
eyes that didn't avert their gaze from his burning glare of combative
anger was probing his mind for dark and guilty secrets.
Eve his job had become distasteful for to him. He had nothing in common
with the beer swilling, sex-obsessed losers that he worked with, and
the job itself was maddeningly repetitive. Finally he quit. He just
walked away from the receiving dock at the discount store one
afternoon, pleading illness. It wasn't a lie, he was sick to death of
humanity. Two days later he called his supervisor to let him know that
he wasn't ever coming back. A phone call was good enough. That way he
didn't have to see anyone or go through the phony amenities of goodbyes
and best wishes. You know, all that crap that you say but don't really
mean to someone whom you've worked with but don't really care
about.
He had enough money saved to last a few months, at least. Maybe longer
if he scrimped on his meals a bit, turned down the heat and only burned
one light at night. Television wasn't a temptation any longer. He'd
kicked in the picture tube in a fit of anger. It had been one of those
happy huggy people commercials that had pissed him off. You know, one
of those commercials that they crank up the sound on. This one was so
sickeningly upbeat that it had even including singing. He didn't have
to put up with that crap. Now that he'd drawn the drapes on that
annoying electric window to the world, he was truly alone. But he was
still dissatisfied.
He knew that there had to be a way to disappear. He couldn't want
anything like he wanted to disappear so badly, he reasoned, without it
being possible somehow. It just wouldn't be fair otherwise. In a world
that had cheated him of so much, he desperately hoped for fair play in
this one urgent desire.
For years Mortimer had pored through tomes of occult lore, tales of the
supernatural and old, discredited volumes of metaphysical quackery. Now
that he'd forsaken his job, he had even more time to devote to his
research. Maybe their was a nugget of truth to be extracted from those
veins of delusion. Maybe he could discover a passage that would
suddenly make things clear to him. Maybe he'd find the key that would
allow him to slip into another plane of existance and leave this
contemptable world behind.
Charles Fort, in his "Lo," and "The Book of the Damned," those wierd
compilations of bizarre and inexplicable events, had written of
individuals fortunate enough to have managed to unaccountably
vanish.
Mortimer read the mystifying account of David Lang, a farmer in
Tennessee, who stepped into a window in time, a vortex, or who knows
what. He just vanished. He disappeared in plain sight of his wife and
children while walking from their house to the barn.
Stranger yet, where he disappeared there appeared later a circle of
dead grass about fifteen feet in circumference. Several months later
his children came running frantically into the house. They said that
they heard their father's voice faintly, plaintively, calling for help.
His family listened with impotent anguish as the voice faded gradually
away into the oblivion of the lost.
Mortimer was obsessed with the case of Dorothy Arnold as well, the
debutante who disappeared in New York's Central Park in 1910. Could her
case somehow be connected with the sudden, inexpicable appearance of a
magnificent white swan in Central Park Lake? She'd written a poem
shortly before she vanished, comparing herself to one.
Living within eight blocks of Central Park, Mortimer seized upon this
area as his best hope to find a way to enter that unknown land that
lies beyond our ken. He'd always avoided the park in the past. Too many
noisy people, loving couples ad obnoxious kids. Now he wandered the
park resolutely in the twilight hours before the night, after most
people have left with the daylight. He started packing a .38 too. No
muggers, punk kids or other trash of humanity were going to stand
between him and his search.
Evidently, Mortimer decided, there are occasional rifts in the fabric
of our existance that a person can step into if he is fortunate enough
to find one. No doubt that's what had happened to Lang and Arnold, he
reasoned, althogh it must be harder to come back out of one of those
strange portals than it is to enter one. May an individual couldn't
return once he'd stepped through the rift. No problem. He didn't figure
he'd have any desire to step back into the world he knew and longed to
escape from.
After wandering the park for a couple of months, Mortimer was becoming
acutely sensitive to his surroundings. He could feel an eerie,
indecipherable presence in the area surrounding Central Park Lake. It
was something unearthly. It was a sinister force that he felt he could
almost reach out and touch. Almost. He'd found a couple of circles of
brown grass too. He was getting close. He could feel it. It would only
be a matter of time now before he could step out of this world into
that glorious unknown beyond.
"There's that crazy son of a bitch that I've been telling you about,"
whispered one of the three young thugs who were watching Mortimer from
behind some bushes, like predatory animals stalking their prey.
"He lookin for somethin?" the youngest of the three wondered
nerviously. ""Ya think he's alone? He keeps stickin his hand in his
pocket. Ya think he's packin some power?"
"He ain't lookin at nothin but the ground," the third male growled, his
voice honed to a hardened edge by inner city rage. "Let's go for
it."
The huddled behind the bushes to plot their assault. here were loud
whispers, a couple of nervous questions, then three almost simultaneous
grunts of assent. One of the figures rose from behind the bushes and
slipped away to the right.
Mortimer was oblivious to their noise and movement though. He'd seen a
shimmering flash of light off to his left, then darkness. Then
anunaccountable flash of light again. No, it wasn't fireflies. He'd
been fooled by them before. There was something strange, something
eerily different. Maybe he'd just gotten a glimpse of an enterance to a
portal.
Moving toward it, he tripped on a tree root and fell to the ground. He
cursed softly, but was more embarrassed at this confirmation of his
clumsiness than he was hurt. He had stayed in the park too long
tonight. He could hardly see the footpath, much less obstacles such as
tree roots now that he'd deviated from the sidewalk.
There it was though. There was that inexplicable flash again. It looked
like one of those lamps that you turned on with the rest of the lights
in the room off. You know, the kind of lamp that flashes multi-colored
bursts of light in a room, then goes dark so that the next display of
light will be yet more dazzling.
A lava lamp. That's what it was called.
Rapt in wonder and in hope Mortimer began to grope toward that coaxing,
shimmering beacon.
The young nervous member of the trio deliberately cracked a branch off
to Mortimer's left, then coughed loudly as he approached Mortimer,
holding his hands out to assure the stranger that no harm was
meant.
"Excuse me, Mistah. I've lost the path. Can ya point me to it,
maybe?"
"Leave me alone," Mortimer muttered bitterly, still vainly hoping for
the shimmering puzzle to return. Yes, there it was. It was only a few
yards away. Then it disappeared again.
The intruder moved between Mortimer and where the light had been.
Mortimer panicked. "Get out of my way!" he screamed at the young man as
he tried to push his way past him to head toward the light.
Suddenly an arm locked itself around Mortimer's neck from behind. He
tried to get at his gun, but now another pair on hands had grabbed his
arms and were pulling them behind him. Mortimer kicked, he wriggled; he
broke free for an instant but was pulled to the ground from behind. He
rolled away and kicked up at one of his attackers and knew that he'd
done damage. The guy had grunted in pain.
Mortimer turned to look for the lights. They were gone. By that time
two of the men had come back at him. One of them hit him a numbing blow
on the side of the head and the other tackled him from behind.
They guy that he's hurt with his kick had gotten up now. "I'll show
you, you son of a bitch." he shouted angrily.
Mortimer saw it as though it were a slow motion film; first the flash
of silver, then the lunging movement that thrust it forward at him, and
finally the impact. He felt a searing, frightening moment of intense
and overwhelming pain as his stomach took the knife to its hilt. Then
he felt it withdraw, and then re-enter his body with more murderous
fury.
As he sensed his life slowly ebbing from his body, Mortimer McConnell was
wishing for the last time in his life that he could disappear.
Wellness Training
“You’ll never guess where you’re going next week,” Harley chortled, smug in his possession of information that he knew would be as unwelcome to me as the flashing lights of a cop car would be to a hard working guy; the kind of everyday joe who had stopped for a few beers on a Friday evening and might now be looking at a DUI.
By his shit-eating grin and his mocking tone of voice, I had a pretty good idea where I
was being detailed to. Turkey Ridge.
“The Ridge?” I moaned disgustedly.
Harley’s snicker at the grimace on my face confirmed my fear. Just another case of “no sympathy in a packing house.” We labor in an environment where a disability becomes
a derisive nickname, or a run-in with the law elicits laughter instead of pity. In fact, the
usual callous packing house response is…”Don’t come to me looking for any sympathy.
Look it up in the dictionary. You’ll find it tucked in there somewhere between ‘shit’ and
‘syphilis.’”
“Yeah,” Harley gloated, savoring my situation as though it was a tumbler of Jack and Coke. “You’re on the night shift, too. You really got screwed over, dude.”
His obvious pleasure at my predicament grated on my mood, which had instantly plunged
to an anti-establishment attitude worthy of the most radical member of the Michigan
Militia. I gave him a look of utter contempt and growled “How’s your love life, you pathetic turd?”
Militia. I gave him a look of utter contempt and growled “How’s your love life, you pathetic turd?”
He walked away smiling. His quest to find his ideal soul-mate, (I mean, we’re talking
a submissive and docile young lady with huge hooters and nymphomaniac tendencies who also just happens to be a superb cook and housekeeper) had been unsuccessful up to this point. In fact, his latest object of adoration had recently spurned him to enter into a lesbian relationship. Normally his lack of success with women was a sensitive subject that could plunge him into depression and morose responses of grunts and monosyllables. It was a pretty cheap shot on my part, but it had glanced off the obese biker as though it was an arrow tipped with a rubber suction cup. He realized that my response was just a spear thrust compared to the tac-nuke news of the Turkey Ridge detail that he had just dropped on me.
Turkey Ridge is a decrepit little river town, a community built on a swamp, a river rat sanctuary devoid enough of beauty to actually deserve to have a packing plant as its major industry. If you walk into one of the town’s restaurants, an appetite-killing exercise in itself, you’ll soon discover that the main topics of conversation always revolve around guns and “dawgs” and women, the only variable being the order in which they’re brought up. During my second night detail there, I finally, in exasperation, asked one of the gut-pullers what people did for entertainment in Turkey Ridge.
“Drink,” was his succinct reply.
My experiences have since proven him right. Turkey Ridge is worse than hell; it’s a hemorrhoid on the ass of the universe.
I’m not really certain if it’s the water or just generations of inbreeding, but even the USDA inspection crew at Turkey Ridge borders on the sociopathic. Especially the women. Don’t take me wrong. There are a lot of fine women working in the USDA, and Dorothy Collins is still the benchmark that I measure all slaughter inspectors by. Turkey Ridge, however, has spawned its own unique breed of womanhood. I mean, these charmers are just out and out “psycho-babes.” You know the type; the “Fatal Attraction” broad on steroids and amphetamines. Downright scary to have to work next to.
I was sitting in the break room at the Turkey Ridge plant on Monday afternoon, when Dr. Dorkman walked in. Dr. D. is our regional supervisor. He’s an up and coming young suck-ass with his gaze firmly fastened on one of the cushy Washington DC Washington Potomac .
Dr. Dorkman and the supervisor at the Turkey Ridge plant have a good working relationship though. The supervisor, Dr. Asskissir, is a little Pakistani fascist who detests everything about Western civilization but the paychecks. He’s got both his hands attached firmly to the rungs of the promotion ladder as well. Needless to say, he’s also got his lips as firmly attached to Dr. D’s ass as a Cardinal’s are to the ring of the Pope. The first thing these two Washington wannabes do when they hook up is to lock themselves in the office for awhile to plot how to put one over on us. We expected no good when they emerged in typical buddy-buddy form just before the night shift was to begin.
“I’ve called in three intermittents tonight,” Dr. Asskissir announced, looking to Dr. Dorkman for his approval. “Dr. Dorkman and I will be taking you off the line, three at a time, to give you a course on Wellness Training.”
“Wellness Training,” I muttered sarcastically. “What’s the government going to waste money trying to teach us next? Fiscal responsibility?”
I suppose that I should know by now that I ought to keep my mouth shut. I detest bureaucratic phonies though, and the contemplation of those two assholes attempting to shovel some bullshit government course like that at us pissed me off as much as a matador’s red cape would a bull.
Drs. Dorkman and Asskissir both poured sour looks my way, but otherwise ignored me. It was just Vanderbilt waxing cynical again. They’d become used to it.
I didn’t draw the first opportunity to sit in the office, slug down massive amounts of caffeine and listen to their banal presentation. My turn would come later. Right now I was working on the viscera table across from Jeff Paniagua, one of the intermittents, and next to “The Amazon,” one of the USDA’s most infamous “psycho babes.” She was in a foul mood because she’d lost the draw too and now would have to wait for her Wellness Training until after supper. Wanting to flaunt her foul mood for everyone to notice, she moved down the line away from us to sulk in silence. The Amazon wasn’t to be trifled with when she was wearing a chip on her shoulder, which was most of the time, so her voluntary choice to shun us didn’t bother me in the least. I mean, this is the psycho-babe who once volunteered to clean her sister-in-law’s house while she was being hospitalized after a caesarian delivery. During the course of her housecleaning, she got it into her mind that the family’s new baby would be better off without their two cats around. She bragged later in the office of how she thrust each of the family pets into an empty potato sack. One at a time she carried each agitated, caterwauling sack out to the highway. Then she’d wait for an approach of a semi. As it neared she gleefully hurled the bag into the air in front of the oncoming truck, then took off and ran into the woods. To have done this, not once, but twice, is an indication that I’d better be wary of this individual when she’s working with a knife next to me. I mean, we’re obviously not talking about a mentally well-adjusted human being here.
“Where’s Lady tonight?” I asked Jeff. “Our Lady of the Perpetual Illness” was another reason that we had to be grateful for the Government’s gender hiring quotas. She’d earned her nickname due to the many illnesses she’s used as excuses to miss work. From beriberi to a reaction to a brown recluse spider’s bite, to work-related mental stress, her sick leave documentation has ranged from the imaginative to downright ludicrous. Last time I’d been in Turkey Ridge, she’d called in unable to make it to work because the oil light in her car had come on, and she didn’t have enough money to buy a quart of oil. I was curious to find out why she was missing today.
“You mean you haven’t heard?” Jeff laughed bitterly. “She was gone all last week. Sounds like she’ll be gone for awhile.”
“What’s wrong with that flighty broad now?” I asked disgustedly.
“You’ve heard, of course, that’s she’s pregnant,” he began. I nodded. USDA employees are supposed to distance themselves from company personnel so as in theory not to compromise enforcement of the regulations. Our Lady though, had gotten herself a bellyful of child by one of the bung-droppers.
“So,” I responded. “She’s not due for a few months yet.”
“Let’s pretend that I’m Paul Harvey providing you with ‘The Rest of the Story’,” Jeff laughed. “It seems that she’d scratched a winning lottery ticket, so she decided to invest in another tattoo. Something really tasteful. A strand of a barbed wire fence around her left tit to match the one already wrapped around her right one.”
“That’s a set of breastworks that you’d have to be one brave soldier to storm,” I observed. “I mean, that kind of an artful image has about as much sex appeal as a pig with the dry heaves.”
I firmly believe that nothing defaces a beautiful female more than a tattoo. It’s like spraying gang graffiti on the Venus de Milo. Given Our Lady’s emaciated looks and Marlboro-honed voice however, the image of the tattooed breasts that I had conjured up in my mind was more gut wrenchingly repulsive than aesthetically offensive.
“Now she’s come down with hepatitis,” Jeff continued, after a short pause for effect. “The tattoo artist’s needle was tainted, probably.”
“Jesus Christ!” I gasped, shuddering. “That shit can be contagious. Have you guys been tested yet? How long has she been working with the product since she’s been infected?”
“Who knows,” Jeff shrugged, rolling his eyes disgustedly. “The Little Fascist won’t tell us anything.”
"Think Doctor Dorkman knows?"
“Yeah,” Jeff replied, in the same bitter disgusted voice. “We jumped his ass about it earlier this week and he got real defensive. He assured us that he was aware of the problem and would handle it.”
“What has he done?”
“Far as I know… nothing.”
“Any of you guys been tested yet?” I asked him. “If it’s Hepatitis A, that shit can ravage your liver, your kidneys; it can even kill you.”
“As far as we know, our fearless leaders are trying to keep a lid on the problem. Dorkman doesn’t want a story to break about a Hepatitis scare in a plant in his region. Not only would the publicity be devastating for the plant’s potential sales, but it might possibly have an adverse effect on Dorkman’s promotion chances. You know that’s what he’s most concerned about.”’
“I’ll bet,” I agreed. “But if the disease spreads from the plant here, it could be his career on the line. Especially if the word got out and he didn’t do anything about it.”
“It’s got everyone scared,” Jeff continued, having looked over his shoulder before he commenced speaking again. “Mike, on the day shift, he’s got a youngster with kidney problems already. He went out and got himself inoculated after work yesterday. He was that afraid of bringing anything home. So did Davey Fillmore. His wife just had a baby and when she heard about Lady, she ordered him to go to the doctor, NOW! Lady gets to wallow at home in front of the TV while all this is brewing, which doesn’t help our morale any.” He looked around again to make certain that none of the company employees had come within earshot, and then continued.
“I guess we’ll just wait to see what happens,” he sighed dejectedly. “Maybe we’ll find out more when we get our turn to do the Wellness Training.”
Our time arrived later that evening. Jeff, the Amazon, Whitey McConnell and I were reminded that we needed to remain in the office after lunch. I mouthed another sarcastic comment about the absurdity of the government wasting money on a “Wellness” course.
“I’ll bet it did wonders for Ted Kennedy.” I was ignored, as usual, so I shrugged and went over to pour myself another cup of coffee. It was going to be a long, boring evening.
Dr. Dorkman and Dr. Asskissir came into the break room and gazed down upon us with the patronizing looks that supervisors bestow upon underlings.
“Are you ready to learn how to live a more satisfying and healthful life?” Dr. Asskissir asked. It was obviously the lead-in question from the teaching program. It had the phony aura of faked spontaneity that only a clueless bureaucrat would attempt to pass off with feigned enthusiasm as his own words.
“Before we get started, perhaps we’d better address the issue of Our Lady’s hepatitis,” Jeff Paniagua broke in abruptly.
“It’s under control,” Dr. Dorkman insisted defensively, glaring at Jeff for daring to bring up the subject. “It’s not the dangerous hepatitis. None of you have anything to worry about.”
“That’s what they told the peasants during the Black Plague,” I muttered. Then the absurdity of the scene registered in my mind and I broke in with a Monty Python routine.
“Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.”
My attempt at humor was lost on both Asskissir and Dorkman. They looked at me as though I was a leper.
“Let’s get down to business,” Dr. Dorkman finally sighed. “Open your notebook to page one.”
Dr. Asskissir was passing out expensive-looking binders that no doubt cost the USDA $15-$20 apiece. Expensive clothing for a doll made of garbage, I mused to myself. Then I spoke my next thought aloud.
“I’ll bet one of Dubya's Texas
Whitey McConnell brought us back to Our Lady’s hepatitis when he asked, “As Union Rep, may I have some written assurance that we employees and that the company product are at no risk from hepatitis?”
“That’s enough,” said Dr. Dorkman sternly. “I don’t want to hear any more speculation about a supposed hepatitis panic.”
“That’s enough,” chimed in Dr. Asskissir, attempting to sound just as authoritative. “We have everything under control.”
“That’s what Captain Smith, the master of the Titanic said,” I observed, brandishing my wit again. “Can we say, ‘Iceberg ahead?”
“Can we say ‘insubordination?’ countered Dr. Dorkman, looking at me in exasperation. “Dr. Asskissir and I have a course to teach.”
I mouthed an obscenity under my breath that addressed his relationship with his mother,
but I realized that I’d pushed the two sanctimonious assholes to the limit of their patience. Recognizing my silence as submission to their authority, the Gods condescended to smile upon us peasants again.
“Now, as Dr. Dorkman suggested a few moments ago, let’s turn to page one in our Wellness Training manual,” Dr. Asskissir intoned in his irritatingly officious voice. “How you choose to live your life and what hazards and abuses you choose to subject your body to can drastically alter your physical and mental well-being.”
He paused…. for dramatic effect I assume; then resumed reading from his handbook. “Let’s start with Chapter One. ‘Coping with Stress in the Workplace.’”
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