FAILED MEMORIES
I’d left the doctor with bad news. I was 68. I’d figured that losing one’s memory at such an age wasn’t surprising. The Alzheimer’s diagnosis was brutal, but I was more saddened that I would need to retire from football than I was that I was terminally ill. At that point, I had been managing football teams for over 30 years. And the news nearly beat me, the very day I received it. But I regrouped my mind, and kept working as a manager for another two seasons. I made sure I had more trophies by the time I’d retired. I wasn’t unfamiliar with disaster in my career. My playing days were ended by a kneecap injury at the age of 28, when most strikers are in their prime. I certainly was at my best when it happened. The game was against our arch rivals. My nemesis opponent was the man who did it, and he did it deliberately, and was given a red card, and nothing else. When an assault charge would’ve been more appropriate. That injury was enough to land me disabled and in a depression for three years. In those days, footballers didn’t make the astronomical sums of money they do today. I had to work in awful jobs, as football was the sole qualification I had. I became an alcoholic, and gained weight, and if I hadn’t been dragged out of it, I would’ve died at a young age. Two things dragged me out. One was an old colleague and friend, named Francesco Balti, who convinced me to work with him as his assistant manager. The other thing was the lure of football itself. The maddening, addictive, eclectic nature of the sport. Francesco and I had taken hold of one of the minor teams in Rome, who were in the second division. It rejuvenated both of us, and we did brilliantly with what we had. We just missed out on promotion to the top league in our first season, and got to the semi-finals of the national cup. Our performance was enough to take us to bigger places after only a year. We were signed by Lazio as manager and assistant the following summer. I remember feeling so ashamed to leave that smaller Rome team, after we’d raised them from nothing. We nearly brought them a trophy and had thousands of hearts in our leadership. Then we broke them when we left. Because we wanted a more realistic chance of success. And they hated us when we bailed. Violently hated us. Therein lies the dark aspect of football. It got much worse when Francesco and I went to Lazio. Not just the violent hatred: all of it. We were cast into the hierarchy of a huge club in a top European city. The members of such elites can be seething tyrants when they expect performances from you. Those at Lazio were certainly that. We were very close to being fired only a few weeks in, when we were nearly beaten by our city rivals Roma. During that game, I’d never felt more terrified in my life. The brutal tackles, the tension that halted my breast whenever Roma got the ball, the disaster when they scored. The constant awareness that something could whack me in the head, thrown from the Roma fans behind me. Yet physical impact wasn’t as bad as the words they hurled. They knew my career had been finished by the kneecap injury, and they’d devised a song with lyrics especially for that. I tried not to listen, but I enveloped a rage; I wanted to retaliate, to cry. Then I did retaliate, because Lazio scored just before the final whistle. 1-1 equaliser. The goal saved my job, sent our fans into pandemonium, and silenced the Roma fans about my busted knee. And I jumped around with Francesco, and a photographer caught a snap of us mid-celebration. Which went up in the local paper next day. I looked like a clown, but I didn’t care. When I talk about the violence of football: that’s a crisp example. Football is ugly and barbaric, and yet those of us that love it keep returning to it for a masochistic fix. The violence got so bad at times that I wanted to leave. I couldn’t even live within Rome itself; I bought a house in the country instead to avoid the threat of the Roma hooligans. If they saw me walking about the city centre, what would they have done to me? There were stories of when fans from foreign countries came over during the European tournaments. The hooligans would hunt them with knives and slash them across the buttocks, then run off. Which was considered a minor assault by their standards … Thus, with Lazio, I learned what top-level football could be like from a coach’s perspective. And I wasn’t even the top man: Francesco was. He had double the load of stress. And quickly after we were paired at Lazio, our relationship began to peel away from friendship, replaced with the bare status of colleagues. Francesco changed. He became irritable and grouchy, even disrespectful to me in front of our players. He and I had played on the same teams since we were boys. He was a brother, a clever, handsome man. But being Lazio manager altered him irrevocably, and our bond died. It was me as well, of course. I decided to leave Lazio as Francesco’s assistant after two years, when I was offered a job elsewhere in Italy: Parma offered me their post as manager. The offer to take the sole helm of a club was too tempting, and my relationship with Francesco had deteriorated to such an extent anyway. We had one final argument, wherein both of us regressed to childish, insulting behaviour, none of it even about football. Which guillotined our relationship. And we never spoke as friends again. It didn’t help, in my following years at Parma, that I was now competing against Francesco in the same league. He and I created a rivalry, of which, I’ll admit, I was just as willing to contribute to. At that time in history, Lazio had won more than Parma had in terms of trophies. In fact, Parma had no trophies to its name back then. Yet rather focusing on changing that fact, I was obsessed with the head to head battle with Francesco Balti. I wanted to beat him in every game. And I didn’t. He beat me in our first four meetings. And he smiled with a glare and handshake after every final whistle. When I did finally beat him, I became that same writhing lunatic on the touchline, and celebrated in his face. And yet, throughout the entirety of my managerial career in Italy, I never beat Francesco statistically. His Lazio team beat me far more times. And I bet he was smug with that knowledge when he entered his grave, last year. I know I would have been. I also know that I am a far more successful manager than Francesco was. The success of which started after I moved to Germany, where I managed Hamburg. I was still fairly young for a manager, and it was a gamble to move to a different nation. Back then, foreign managers in Europe were rarely given managerial roles. But I’d done well at Parma. Though I had no honours, I’d guided them into a consistent league position, and a few famous wins against the big teams had contributed to my image. I won the German Cup with Hamburg in my first season. Suddenly, the press loved me. They were calling me a prodigy, a genius, and I drank their gushing language. I lived freely in the city centre, this time. And all the locals adored me and chanted my name, and I loved them in return. And for a time, I loved a young woman. Her name was Karin. So much that I married her and had a child with her within the space of a year. This all happened within the glamour of that first season when I won my first trophy. Karin had the longest, laciest eyelashes. She gave me German lessons, with humour and grace. She was intrinsically quiet and she could not stand football. Not because she disliked it, she just found it “too edgy” and she only sometimes listened to it on the radio. But she encouraged me with my success and admired me for it. When our little boy was born, she named him Henning. He came into the world just as the summer had started and the football season had just finished. And during that summer, we were a trio of beauty, and nothing could prune us from our little planet. With the dense German summer outside our open windows and the fast rejuvenation of a great city. I learned the marvel of fatherhood and the wonder of a child’s learning eyes. The next season with Hamburg VS came and went, and though I didn’t win anything that year, to come home to a new family after each day at work was glorious. Just after Henning reached his first birthday, I was offered a job in Rotterdam, Netherlands. To coach Feyenoord, who were at that point the biggest club I’d been approached by. I accepted, and took my wife and child to Rotterdam. In the first meeting with the Feyenoord board, they told me they wanted me to win the league, by beating the giants Ajax Amsterdam to it. The message was clear that I had one year to do it in, and if I didn’t, I’d get the sack. Rotterdam was completely different from Germany. In terms of culture, and the style of football. I lost my first match with the club, and that particular defeat, which was very unfair and unlucky, put an obsessive hook in me which never departed. From then on, winning the Dutch league was all I concentrated on. I never settled in the city, and neither did Karin or Henning. She was unhappy and exhausted with the toil of a baby. He couldn’t sleep, meaning we all couldn’t sleep. Meaning I was jittery at training and on match days. I couldn’t focus on tactics, or my new players. Thus, I resented Karin and Henning for getting in my way. I began to avoid going back home, to put more work into the club. This angered Karin, to such an extent that we began to argue every time we met. Throughout this turmoil, and my selfishness in choosing football over my family, I didn’t even notice when Henning started to get ill. It started as a chest condition, which turned into a spate of fevers. Karin had never been particularly strong physically, and was often ill herself during childhood. And I used this to blame her for a long time after what happened to Henning. Which was absurd, and just a way to defend myself for not being there when my boy needed me. I wasn’t even there when he was first taken to hospital. I was in Amsterdam instead, watching Ajax destroy my Feyenoord side 3-0. I got the news about Henning after the match, and went to the hospital, to meet a wife who was too furious to speak to me, and a child who was too ill to wake up. Henning had pneumonia. He died two days later. I resigned from Feyenoord. Karin divorced me, quite righteously so. I returned to Italy, broken. Returned to booze and depression, worse than ever. I’d just sit inside, and I had a lot of money to spend on drink and get fat. The Italian clubs at that period in football history were doing brilliantly, especially A.C. Milan. They were the team I played for when I was 28, which made it all unbearable. I stopped watching the TV and following the papers. My shame over ditching a poor team in Rome for a richer one, over destroying my relationship with Francesco, then again with my wife, and the death of my baby, made me turn away from football. I didn’t deserve football. And I would have given up, and died, and gone to Hell instead of joining Henning in Heaven, had I not received a phone call, one afternoon within that miserable era. I held the mouthpiece to my face, the room filled with the stench of beer. I didn’t recognise who it was at first. Filippo – an old defender I’d played with at Milan. Great player, and friend. We spoke for an hour, and he told me about his life and he made me laugh. He gave condolences for what had happened. I think somebody had tipped him off about how bad my state was; he had an agenda in calling, but I was welcome to it. Filippo had been playing in Sweden in his twilight playing years, as a defender for Malmo. He was 36, near to retiring, and much respected at the top team in Sweden. But the club weren’t doing so well, and had just sacked their manager. They needed somebody to come in for the final few months, and win the league for them. If I wanted it, Filippo would put a word in for me. Sweden was cold, but the cold was what I needed. I won what they needed me to win on that first arrival, and two more league titles consecutively. I was a man again, and reassured I was good at something in my life, even if I still didn’t deserve a gift. Following the success at Malmo, the radars of other European clubs twinkled nearer my dot. I became a ping-pong ball across the continent from then on. The Berlin Wall had recently collapsed; Europe was developing, and with it, the culture of football was expanding, making it easier to be a freelance man. After Malmo, I went to Panathinaikos, living in shimmering Athens for a year, where I won the league. Next, I went to Bordeaux, where I failed, where the fans hailed me as a natural loser, a flake, who had already been given too many chances. I was simply not genius. But, somehow, after that, I got a job in Spain, as manager of Real Betis. Of all the nationalities I’ve experienced, the Spanish are those that treat football most like a religion. Tens of thousands of fans, flashing in green and white, singing your name after you’ve won them the Spanish Cup. I was their God. Then I moved to Glasgow, Scotland. To manage Celtic, where the team colours were the same, but the culture of the place a polar opposite. Where there was none of the same class in the atmosphere or talent on the pitch. Where I was taunted for being a Catholic by Celtic’s arch-rivals Rangers. What else were they expecting, from an Italian man? Fans who quote the Bible, yet have never read it. I, who have, yet am not religious. I won the double very easily that season at Celtic and quit at the end of it, out of spite. Then moved to Red Star Belgrade, in Serbia, which was still pulsing from the break-up of the Balkans. I was afraid to go there but did it anyway. Serbia, where the fans are not fans so much as militant choirs, armed in perfect rhythm with their voices. I failed in that environment, so applied for a job in London, and got it. Let me tell you that there is no press as horrific as the English press. The Spanish football press live like they’re in orbit, and the Italians are too pretentious. But the English journalists don’t even understand the sport themselves. I didn’t last there long. I figured I’d trade continents after Europe. And picked the most disadvantaged one: Africa. I wanted to manage an international team; with all the languages I knew and places I’d been I felt I could go anywhere. Nigeria accepted me before the World Cup Qualifiers. The sheer lack of wealth in Africa astounded me. We’d play huge games to nigh empty stadiums; the local folks simply couldn’t afford to come. But the fans who did come were the most appreciative, who were only there to enjoy the sport, rather than see it as violence or revenge. I qualified with Nigeria and sent them to the World Cup, the first Italian man to do so. There was another more important first for me that year. I found a young player and I drafted him into the Nigeria squad. A midfielder named Mohammed Eze. I witnessed him playing at the age of seventeen and instantly knew he could play at senior level. And it worked. He was the reason we qualified, with his goals and assists. Eze Eze Ezeyyy, the Nigerians sang to him as he played. Mohammed was wiry, electric, bird-like on the field, and insanely shy off it. He lacked confidence and didn’t realise how good he was. I encouraged him to be arrogant with the ball, to experiment as he played. He was so young that he didn’t fit in with the older players at that stage. I told him he could come talk to me whenever he wanted. I’d show him replay tapes of how he’d performed, what he was doing well and how he could improve. Then when we flew off to the World Cup, Eze erupted. This crazy Nigerian prodigy. I let him flourish, and he got Nigeria out of the group stage, an unprecedented feat for an African team. We were beaten by Argentina in the next round, but Eze had made himself a worldwide star. Shortly after the World Cup, Borussia Dortmund got in contact with a managerial offer. And during the same phone call I said I would bring Mohammed Eze with me along to Germany. It was hard for him at the very start, moving to Germany, without knowing the language. He was the youngest and the only black kid on the team. He suffered from homesickness, and he wanted to head back to Africa. There were times when he’d even stay at my flat, not saying anything, lying on the couch. But I persisted and kept telling him that his talent and flair would be his life-stream. And we lit Germany up with it. Dortmund returned to being a power, and we brought the teeth back to the league titans Bayern Munich. I would go lightheaded when I saw my boy play. And I wasn’t aware of how stunned I was with him at that time. I eventually realised, even though it was so glaring, that I loved him not just for his talent: I saw Mohammed as my son. ‘My boy’, ‘my boy’, I called him that, and I was too stupid to see how my favouritism for him affected the other players. I built the team tactics around him so that his skills would best be nurtured. I’d failed my son Henning, and now I had this gifted footballer who I was subconsciously trying to redeem myself with. But it wasn’t just about self-redemption; I had a true love for Mohammed. Those years with Dortmund and Eze were amazing, and it climaxed with the German Cup final, against the devils Bayern Munich. I was sure that we’d win. We were even favourites to win. I’d won this same cup with Hamburg, many years before, I was convinced I’d reclaim it. But Bayern beat us. And in the following summer, Mohammed Eze signed for Bayern Munich, and left me. I’d lost a son, again, no matter how hard I’d tried. I’d made him what he was, and he left me for the enemy. I was staggered by that, and after that betrayal, it was as if all the hurt in football simply wasn’t sore anymore. I knew the pain, but I just accepted it. Bayern won the league the following two seasons, with Eze as their new star player, and his mentor was left forgotten. But I came back. And won the league with Dortmund after Bayern’s two titles. I’d never won such an illustrious league before, and I was 68. As I mentioned at the start, I’d just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I won the league again the next year, and then I retired from Dortmund because the illness was getting too heavy to control. I cited this reason at my final press conference, and I left Germany much-respected, and received acclaim from around the world in my departure. I returned to Italy, to my little hometown. With the olive oil, the funky vineyards and the bicycles on the silent hot streets. It was quiet, and for once I enjoyed the peace, and my body needed to rest. I could feel my mind degenerating. But before it dropped so low, I received a phone call from Mohammed Eze. He was his usual quiet self, and we talked about trivial things at first, him building up to what he really wanted to say. He thanked me for my support, and he hoped he hadn’t hurt me. And with his words, as a man of 70, it was only then that all the rivalry and mucky hatred of football was cleansed from me. Mohammed really was my son, and I his father. I told him he could call me whenever he liked if he needed advice. And he does still call me to this day. Despite my failing memories and old body. My memory is going, very rapidly now, but certain memories cannot depart from me. These days, I’m not much good to anybody aside from my equally brittle and old friends. I’ve never remarried because I’m too ugly. I have friends in Italy, Spain, France, England, Serbia. I travel to them, drink wine and play cards, and laugh at how bad my memory is. They still call me the ‘Don’ in Nigeria after our World Cup campaign. I was a better football manager than I was a player, as proven in my trophy cabinet. When I was a boy, I would’ve wanted this differently. If I hadn’t had that rival player break my kneecap at 28, none of this would have happened. Life is irony, and I’m so glad that it is. I hope that by bringing joy to millions of people, with something as simple as football trophies, I’ve managed to atone for my past failures with family and friends. I hope that my contributions to football will never be failed memories. THE END
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Idea Man Alan watched as the woman reached in her purse for a cell phone while standing in the reference stacks at the library. She was wearing a light blue pant suit, like from another century, he thought and not her best color. She even carried a matching pocketbook and he bet her phone cover matched too. She pushed a few buttons and began talking, loud enough for him to hear twenty feet away.
Immediately, her attire aside, he hated the woman, providing him an interesting, slightly warm feeling all over, along with an idea for a new invention. He began scribbling quickly in his notebook so he wouldn’t forget. Alan really wanted to get up from the table to tell the woman how rude she was, and when he saw she was headed toward the checkout desk, still talking on the phone. he stood and walked quickly toward her. "This is a library," he said, when he was within a few feet of her, "Quiet is the operative word here, it's not a chat room." She continued talking on her phone. Alan heard the phrase, "so you'll pick up the pot roast..." and then the woman's words trailed off, when she looked up and saw Alan approaching. At the same time one of the library staff, a woman dressed severely in a dark green pant suit and carrying a stack of magazines, stepped between Alan and the woman. "Sir, this does not concern you, please go back to your table." "How do you know I have a table?" Alan asked, both flattered and upset that someone had been watching him. "Besides she's disturbing the library peace, and me, too." The woman took a few steps away from Alan, but still had the phone to her ear. "And don't forget the carrots, OK? I have to go now." She clicked off the phone, and, ignoring both the librarian and Alan, began pushing some more buttons. "See," Alan said in a loud voice, "She's a serial cell phone abuser. She's making another call." "Sir, please go back to your table. I will handle this." Alan looked at the staffer, blinked a couple of times, and said, "I certainly hope so." But he didn't move, watching the woman continuing to talk to someone else on her phone. "Yes, I'm in the library, and yes, I will get you the Grisham book and a six pack on my way home," clicking off the call. "Where is your new fiction?" she asked the librarian. "She shouldn't be allowed to take books out, she's already broken about seven rules of library etiquette," Alan said in a loud voice. "I'm going to call security," the librarian said. taking out her own cell phone. Back at his table, Alan rearranged his table space and outlined his own cell phone in pencil on a sheet in the notebook, and quickly sketched in some of the dials and buttons. He was currently at work on an alarm for outdoor sheds, which he felt had some promise for those who wanted to avoid fertilizer theft. He would have to decide between that product and this new invention. So many ideas…he mused, looking over his sketch. Alan was hopeful that whatever he worked on, it would have the near success of Instant Welcome, a device the size of a cigarette lighter which, when connected to a doorbell played a recorded message from the homeowner and allowed that person to record one back, so the resident would know who was calling and why, without having to look through the peephole, which he was sure had been engineered to fit the business end of a pistol barrel. With some special extra cost attachments, the homeowner or apartment dweller, could, if the caller was not known or invited, be able to spray water on the visitor through the peephole. Alan knew the device had the capacity to also spray ammonia or even acid. The As Seen on TV people had loved it, they said, though without the acid/ammonia feature, which was: "Not such a good idea," the response said. It was always nice to get personal comments, even when rejected, Alan felt. They did note that their surveys showed it would likely not do well in the Midwest, where, the letter added, homeowners often didn't lock their doors. Always looking at the mayonnaise jar as half full, Alan had created another idea to form a housebreaking team to work in Iowa and Minnesota as a means of increasing demand. He expected a positive reply from the marketing firm any day now. The cell phone abusing woman was still standing in line at the circulation desk, talking on her phone, the librarians oblivious to her disturbing behavior. He added some wires to his cell phone sketch, and then went to the reference department to find some data on small explosives. This is where it got tricky. He wanted to blow up the woman, but without any residual damage to the library, though after seeing their behavior, any of these so called librarians would deserve getting caught in the debris fallout. Alan's headache was back, the result, he knew of having too many ideas running though his mind. He focused on the desired result, the woman placing a new call, and exploding in a few hundred pieces of flesh and body fat near the periodicals area, her head ending up nestled against a copy of People magazine, dripping blood and ear cartilage on the floor, a look of utter surprise on what remained of her face. Of course it would have to be cleaned up before the children’s daily afternoon story hour. And, there might be some difficulty in gaining a patent, he guessed, but the profit potential seemed bright. Alan smiled at the thought and quickly added a note on how to mix a small amount of nitro-glycerin with a triggering agent. He looked up again and watched the woman leave the library, still talking on her phone. He jotted down information on creating three number codes which could use a microwave pulse as the trigger, effective within twenty five to thirty feet. He made another note to download some schematics of popular cell phones. He already possessed instructions for making a small nuclear device that he had intended for a neighbor’s dog that was forever peeing on his rhododendron plant, but found there was just too much paperwork needed to purchase uranium. He considered following the woman to see where she lived, but felt pulled to begin work on his cell phone idea. No doubt she was a regular cell phone abuser in public places. He would run into her again. When Alan arrived home a letter from the U.S. Patent Office had arrived. He had at least three patents pending for various projects and hoped this was one for his battery powered peanut shucker invention, one he was sure the Seen on TV people would love. It seemed affordable to offer two for one, and cheap to ship, which was where those companies made half its profits. He had some concerns about the demand, but the device was portable enough to bring to ball parks and stadiums, and even had an auxiliary plastic bag which would keep the shells off the ground or living room floor. He felt there might be some concern about the device's safety and the likelihood of lost index fingers in the shucker operation. But a product warning should be enough to avoid any liability. You want easier peanut shucking, you have to take some chances. He was sure plenty of people would be willing to risk a finger or two for easier shelled peanut eating. But this response was about a different invention, one he called Peeper Vision, a tiny magnifier that brought images at least 30 percent closer than the unaided eye. Alan skipped to the bottom of the letter and saw that his request for a patent was rejected, with one of the four standard reasons for denial checked: idea not of sufficient public interest. He neatly folded the letter and placed in the Peeper file, briefly wondering if he should have included some actual photos taken with the device in the submitted plans. Peeper Vision had been well tested in his own apartment. It was connected to a hard as diamond needle-shaped mini-drill that could silently penetrate most paneling, wood and wallboard. Alan had been able to watch the attractive woman next door. He thought her name was Lacy, though it could have been Tracy or even Macy, if her family had lived in New York. His living room was next to her bedroom and the Peeper had worked quite well in showing Lacy/Tracy/Macy in all her glory as she prepared for bed. Unfortunately, the woman had recently moved, probably just as well, he thought, since she had started to put on weight over the past month Alan was not interested in testing the device on the his new neighbor, Philip. He was not discouraged by the rejection, and began work immediately on what he would call, at least temporarily, Cell-Ray, hopefully not confused with the green, stalky stuff you eat, he laughed to himself. Phones are really small transmitters, so he felt he could add a second dimension to his invention as a back up to the explosives -- a small chip which magnified the volume of the received call by at least 75 percent. You could hear a call in Cleveland, even if you were in Akron, he thought. It certainly would be enough to burst an eardrum, just as an extra benefit. Alan wrote a note in his daily minder to visit the library again in two days on the off chance the rude cell phone lady would return. There he could to test his prototype's range, without the soon to be added explosives. The following morning he was ready to try out his newest invention. As planned, he had adapted the keyboard to respond to a three digit code, which would override the volume control in any other phone and mimic the super enhanced volume on Allan’s phone. If he’d wanted to be sadistic he thought, he could gradually increase the volume manually, but that also allowed the subject to pull away from the phone, defeating the ultimate purpose. So he set the volume at full on his design model, and made a mental note to substitute another of his phones into service for his regular use. But when his phone rang, ten minutes later, he automatically clicked it on and answered, forgetting at that moment that he should have reached for the unaltered phone. The three second delay from the telemarketer’s call just gave Alan a chance to say hello, twice, before the wall of noise blasted into his head. He didn’t know what hit him, staggering, knocking over his work bench, and falling on the prototype for Peeper Eye. He could feel the blood from his busted eardrum dripping on his neck, and then for a few seconds only, the diamond-sharp needle of the Peeper Eye as it penetrated his heart. end
Eva and Adam |
Tina Stager is a thirty-four-year-old single mom that currently lives in Spain with her son. She used to love writing ever since high school. Since then she has become an official translator and language teacher, languages German, English, Spanish and Catalán. After many years, she started writing her first novel last September, which is still in progress and hopefully soon to be published as well. Until then, there are some short stories that have been written over the years and her personal blog with updates. The author has just had a new book published: Lockdown Report Mallorca: They call it the new reality https://www.amazon.com/dp/8409200910 |
ALWAYS AND FOREVER
Years had passed. Back when we were talking to each other for the first time, I was excited, like a little schoolgirl, and I know you did not feel any different. You told me later. I was so excited that I got wet hands, and the smile on my face grew into a laugh that did not stop. Yes, it's been a long time ...
It's been a long time since we met for the first time. It was November 2, 2002. I still remember today. I had just started working at that new bar when you walked in. I was so nervous. There were many guests that night, so I didn’t have much time to talk, but it was enough to know what I wanted. I wanted you.
Shy and reserved, we greeted each other nicely.
When we finally had our first date, we had dinner together and could not meet our eyes with embarrassment. An unbelievable tension was in the air, and I would have loved to take you into my arms at the time. It seemed like a liberation when we went back to my place after dinner. You had offered to me to put up a shelf I had just bought.
You asked me to pass you the screwdriver, and as if by chance, our hands touched and slowly, we came closer to each other. The beginning of an incredible night!
The next morning, we sat silently at the kitchen table, unable to speak. It was not necessary, because we knew what the other thought. Incredible farewell pain lay in your eyes, and your hand was holding mine tight. For hours!
At some point, it was time. You had to go, and I felt the desperation in you and felt that something was wrong.
You were gone, and the grief started ...
Pain and tears were the results... for both of us!
But I did not want to give up so fast, and so I decided to fly you in. One and a half hours on the plain for not even a full day. One and a half hours heartbeat ...
16 hours with you.
Pleasant hours in which we ate together, laughed and loved each other.
Hours that burned with both of us in the heart and soul, and we have not forgotten until today. 16 hours in which a band has bound us for the rest of our lives, no matter what we do, connecting us inseparably, even as each has long gone their own way.
I still see you in front of me when I brought you to the airport, unable to accompany you on the platform, angry at the upcoming farewell, and your inability to enter into a future with the woman you love. I see the desperation in your eyes very clearly in front of me and still feel the pain we have felt.
No - your eyes are not lying.
After that, everything was much worse. More torment and more tears until I can no longer bear to see you suffer so much. I ended the relationship against my heart and against my feelings.
For months I screamed silently with grief. I fell asleep with unprecedented pain in my mind and woke up with a broken heart in the morning. It was over!
I could not stand sunshine and blue sky. The music that we heard together brought tears to my eyes, and again and again, I had the pictures of our time together in mind. They did not want to get out of my head.
But I am a fighter, and so I rummaged through my defiance. I did not want to suffer anymore, and I did not want to be alone. I plunged into a couple of relations with men, but they were far from what they were we had each other. My heart was not free for another man, and I knew it.
In between, we had contact again and again, and every time my heartbeat when we talked on the phone. The longing for you grew more significant still, but your fear was not defeated. There was no point in waiting any longer for us to come together someday. I understood it, albeit slowly.
I started to live a new life, but in my heart, you have a special place. Nobody will dispute him ...
Yesterday I heard your voice, and our conversation lasted for hours. Hours in which we dreamed together again of Later. From our porch, where we will one day sit to watch the sunset in front of the Mediterranean sea. Hand in hand and silent ...
Charvi Jain wants to live in a world where sentimentality is cherished. As a teen author, her flash fiction ‘The Phantom Coach’ will reprint in the Calliope’s Summer 2020 issue. When she isn’t penning, you can find her cuddling and amusing herself with the dogs of her neighbourhood. She writes all genres of fiction and doesn’t limit herself to any one and resides in New Delhi with her family. Her forthcoming work is a prose titled, ‘When Life Gives Her Lemons, She Squirts Me In The Eye’. |
THE PHANTOM COACH
A mystic whiff of lavender could be smelt in a few moments. The blood-curdling scenario was a hilarious movie scene for me. But I was unaware that the next moment will be as much appalling as much chuckle some it was the earlier moment. From that bewitching aroma appeared a vintage-faced, translucent and cadaverous soul. Everyone’s spine was chilling by that spirit. To me it seemed creepy. I heard once that this is a psychopath spirit who kills everyone in leisure but I couldn’t myself believe it as the reason for such brutal sin.
Abruptly, all windows got bedaubed with black blood, floor was spattered by black and blue veins of people who had died earlier by the hands of this soul. Witnessing the soul was a tough task but his quiddity could be felt all around. Those who tried to decamp were slaughtered viciously. One by one everyone got murdered by a spooky blood-stained knife. Fortunately, I was the last prey. As I was the last one, the soul gave me an opportunity to ask my last wish. Although I didn’t have any desire yet in my mind but I was inquisitive to know the cause for this. That psyche was deeply flabbergasted.
The soul shrieked in a daze, “You are the first person who asked me about my anguish else every person since five years just had their acquisitive wills.” The soul was no less voguish than a celeb in whole town by the name of Phantom Coach. Then it whimpered and I felt as if its agony was inexpressible, “Six years back, I was travelling by the same route. At that hour it was urgent for me to be in Salisbury city hospital beside my cardiovascular diseased wife. I left my new infrastructure enterprise in mid-way to be beside her. I was unaware that racism was rampant here. I was rebuffed boarding train because of being Negro and a remorselessly thrashed for my pleas to board.
No medication was rendered so I died on the spot. My wife couldn’t also endure the attack and died a week later. Bodies die hard but souls, they never die. My spirit went to see her grave in churchyard but the hatred which ignited in my heart against English was endless. Henceforth, I decided to murder every human who board this train at this time to seek my vengeance.” The story was sentimental and also sheer unjust. But unexpectedly, that soul didn’t kill me because of my question which wasn’t my business. An unanticipated jerk in the bus occurred and everything was back to normal. I was sole passenger in the bus and after five stations I reached my hometown.
The soul evanesced in the thin air leaving the same savor again. The phantom coach didn’t kill the driver so that I could reach home safe and sound. Now I do feel pity on his nemesis but there was no way by which I could assist him. But one thing which I wanted to do was to clear away the rumor so I went to the main headquarter which censored newspaper. The chief editor asserted, “Sir, we want a proof from your side to prove that earlier news published were false rumors. What we published earlier was on the basis of the fact that the soul bore a resemblance to a coach with wraith aura.”
I worked hard to create a counterfeit proof. The only proof which stroke my mind was a handwritten note. I wrote a short note on papyrus paper with quill in awkward hand. The paper was yellowish so that it seems old with an askew look as if it was kept under a load for long so it developed asymmetrical creases.
My dear wife
You died because I couldn’t stay beside you when you were going through hardships all alone. I couldn’t reach you because people on the train that night forbid me from boarding the train because they were racist. But I always loved you the most so, I think there is no reason for me to live in this world without you. Hence, I am committing suicide but I believe that even if my body dies, my soul is immortal and I will take revenge from every single patron of that train.
Your dear husband
Those half-witted editors believed my note in one go without any cross-questioning but they didn’t print the note as no curiosity was still left in people’s mind. The rumor was removed by printing a cessation in daily news with the head line, ‘The Rumor of Psychopath Sinner, The Phantom Coach’.
#
Brown Shoe
You resemble a fashionable, early twentieth century, woman’s, ankle high shoe, with elaborate brogue design and brown, silk laces. You’re made of beautiful, polished, brown leather, which has aged gracefully. Were you lovingly hand made by a master cobbler in Europe for a wealthy matron, or mass produced by immigrants for upscale shoe stores?
Were you worn by a wealthy socialite, or a beautiful debutante? Your size suggests you were worn by a petit woman, perhaps, a blond, brunette or a redhead? Was a man fortunate to have married you, or, did you simply date handsome suitors for your amusement?
Perhaps you were an entrepreneur, a professional woman, corporate chieftain, or a loving homemaker?
How many exotic travels did you enjoy, and romantic encounters did you relish? What were your heartbreaks and disappointments? Did you have children?
What has befallen you, beautiful brown shoe? Did you fall off the back of a thrift store truck, or return to visit your former neighborhood of stately Victorian homes, now replaced by skyscrapers? I pray you weren’t struck in the intersection as you traveled to your afternoon tea with friends, and I shudder to think, you might have been an elderly woman, slowly crossing the street, not making it through the crosswalk in time, before being hit by a careless driver.
As I fight rush hour traffic to present my grandmother’s eulogy, you remain in my thoughts, brown shoe. My grandmother lived to be 103 years old. She was a tireless, progressive, trailblazer in business and politics. She was active in the civil rights movement, fought for equal pay and justice for women, and was an ardent environmentalist. Until the last few years of her life, she had a busy social calendar which included her beloved ballroom dance classes. My grandmother was a “global citizen”, and was concerned for the future of the planet. Her credo was, “Everyone and everything has value and purpose in life.”
I want to rescue you from being crushed in the intersection, so I may cherish you as a valuable family heirloom, or provide you as a gift to my daughter who might research your history. Alas, I’m already blocks away, too late to retrieve you from the perilous intersection.
I pray a kind soul will recognize your beauty, retrieve you from peril, and you will find a home in an upscale vintage thrift store, clothing museum, or become a prized addition to a woman’s shoe collection.
As I peer into the rear view mirror, I see an old, homeless woman, pushing her shopping cart neatly packed with her life’s possessions. She stops, picks you up, and gently polishes you, as if finding you in a fine boutique. She carefully places you in her shopping cart with her other prized possessions.
You reminded me of lost loves, revered, departed relatives, and inequities in our world my beloved, grandmother would work tirelessly to resolve. My remarks at grandmother’s eulogy will have new meaning.
Thank you, brown shoe.
Recovery
This was the fourth or fifth time Andy was supposed to have been “sober.” He had lost count of how many legitimate tries he attempted amongst the trivial challenges of his youth, the “Sober Octobers” or the “30 dry days.” Small or large, they all failed. There was the time after he forced himself to see a therapist that he managed to get six months of sobriety out of: “I’m just gonna take it easy tonight,” until he was on the verge of excommunication from his friends; the excuse had run its course. Another year, after he got fired from his first real job, he tightened up. But he just exchanged one thing for another. Drinking fell out and, in its absence, he found himself inflicting a strict rigidity into his life, with the desperation of a man trying to reclaim twenty years. The tension he enforced only welled larger and larger, building the cliff higher and higher. He broke that sobriety stint by driving his car off the road with an open bottle of Jameson in the passenger seat. The crash was the only thing that shook through Andy’s meticulously built facade of success that complimented the Andy everyone loved: the twelve Whiskey rock’s deep Andy. By this time in his life, he didn’t even enjoy the feeling anymore, the glamour and euphoria. He had simply built up a life around those fleeting highs and was chained to it. He had defined himself in impossible terms and was sentenced to a life in constant pursuit of it.
“Uncle Andy!”
Lexi came bounding down the church hallway, dressed head to toe in purple. Her brown hair, which had been pulled into a pony tail at the beginning of the day, now had a halo of tangled flyaways – a sign of a good day spent running around. She was everything a kid is supposed to be.
“Hey! There she is!” Andy said slamming his cold water back and stacking the cup
beneath the hot water in his other hand. “How’s my girl doing?”
“Goooooooood! We did so much today! We got to glue these little furry balls to a giant wall to make a flower, and then we played tag for like seven whole hours, it was aweeeeeeeeeesome!” Lexi said bent backwards to look up at Andy from the hug she had enveloped him in, before skipping off towards the parking lot.
Looking after her, a tightness formed in the back of his throat. To be confronted with something so pure and happy was almost unbearable.
Andy struggled with the car seat he kept in the back of his trunk. Finally wrestling it out, he strapped it into the sleek leather interior of his latest model Mercedes. They looked out of place together, one being the antithesis of the other. But Andy loves these afternoons when he gets to play house, imbued with an instantaneous feeling purpose.
They fell into a comfortable silence on the way to Andy’s sisters house. Lexi, exhausted from the morning at Sunday school, silently looked out the window for most of the trip watching houses pass by.
“Do you think God chooses your life?,” Lexi asked out of the blue. The question hit Andy with the same effect as if the sky had opened up and a giant alien swallowed him whole.
“Getting deep today, huh Lex?” Andy glanced through the rearview mirror trying to
read her face. “Um, no, well, no… I think sometimes cosmically things line up, or maybe cosmically things are supposed to line up and sometimes we miss those trains. You know? Your choices always changing your outcome,” he rambled, trying to grasp at the few conclusions he had managed to come to over his life. A new wave of nausea washing over him.
“Hm. Like, what cereal I have in the morning can change my life?”
“No, like what city you live in, what kind of friends, how you live,” Andy listed off, as screenshots of each one flashed in his mind. Him and his friends sitting around a table pouring out Champaign. Work lunches spent chatting in suits over scotch. Andy laying on his couch paralyzed from anxiety. The face of every woman who has grown tired of trying to keep up with his lifestyle- always thinking that at some point he would choose them over a night out.
“Ok. I don’t think I wanna live in this city then,” Lexi shrugged.
“What makes you say that?”
“It all moves fast, no one has time, everyone looks sad,” Lexi decisively said. Andy couldn’t help but feel a smile twitch onto his face, the clarity of her wisdom could cut through diamonds. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the worry started to form that one day she would be able to tell when he had had one too many or was feeling rough when he picked her up in the morning. The anxious feeling in his stomach was becoming increasingly harder to ignore.
“Huh,” is all that Andy could muster back.
Andy’s sister was in the kitchen when they arrived, prepping the afternoon snack. Her hair sat in a haphazard bun that hadn’t been touched since she got off work Friday. The ripped and spotted shirt she slept in since she was a teenager hung off her shoulder.
“Hey! There you guys are. I was starting to get worried.” Her eyes darted between her brother and her daughter, scanning.
“Calm down Marissa, Sunday school just ran late….after all, they played tag for how long?” Andy turned to Lexi, scoping her up and lifting her over his head. Lexi, now suspended in the air, began laughing. “Seven whole hours!?”
“Ok, sorry…alright you two! Put her down and wash your hands. I’ve got food ready,” Marissa said with a tired smile, the faint hint of anxiety still present in her eyes.
Watching Lexi run down the hall, Andy felt Marissa turn to him- scrutinizing the bags under his eyes and clocking the crumpled T-shirt. He already knew his voice was too raspy. Wordlessly, she walked to the medicine cabinet, shook two Tylenol out on her hand, got a glass of water and held it in front of him- forcing him to meet her eyes. Andy played with the idea of denying it for a moment before reluctantly accepting. The two stood at opposite ends of the kitchen, disappointment and anger charging the air between them. Marissa was the first to speak, “What was it this time?”
“Out with friends, someone got a promotion and bought a couple of bottles for the table. One thing led to another.”
“Of course.” Marissa infused her words with a crushing air of indignance. He promised her and she needed him.
“Oh, come on Marissa. I’m not drinking drinking again, it was just for the promotion, I’m not going out for the shits and gigs of it, it’s not like that anymore,” Andy said, trying to minimalize.
“I don’t have anyone else, Andy. Mom and dad are gone. Lexi doesn’t have anyone but me and you, and you can never just fucking get it together. Let me make myself clear. Drunk, hungover, high, I don’t give a fuck whatever else. You ever drive her remotely, remotely, not all there again, it’ll be the last time you ever see her.” Marissa turned her back to Andy, dismissing him, before she turned around and added, “It’s just fucking exhausting. I can’t take care of two of you.”
Andy cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. He looked like a kid in time out. “Okay, I get that, I do. Honestly, it was just a one-time thing. I’ve been so much better lately and you know that! I’ve been trying to help out more with Lexi. It’s just hard. Work people are always drinking, friends are always drinking, there’s only so many times you can say “no, I can’t go” or go and not have a drink, before you turn into THAT guy,” Andy clumsily tried to explain.
“You are fucking forty Andy, it’s the time in your life when you can be THAT guy. Learn to say no god dammit. If the only thing you and your friends can “bond” over is a drink, that sucks. That fucking sucks. I’m calling bullshit on that,” Marissa said, daring him to try and rebuke her.
The drumbeat of Lexi’s footsteps running down the hall began and grew increasingly louder, a silent agreement seemed to pass between the two: table the issue and put on a smile.
The rest of the afternoon passed with little incident. Movies, homework help, dinner and
then came time for Andy to head back home. After he collected his things, Marissa caught him on the way out the door, “Remember what I said. You can’t keep doing this, I need you around, okay?” She gave Andy a swift hug that let him know she hadn’t totally given up on him and shuffled him out the door.
***
5: 23 PM: “Hey man, long weekend plans: the boys are getting a Limo for the day- pick up at 9 am, boozy brunch, drinks on the boat, into a BBQ at night. U in?”
“Sorry can’t, I’m out of town that weekend.”
3:30 PM: “Happy hour?”
“Sorry, working late today, maybe another time!”
9:32 AM: “Client Meeting. Pick a fancy restaurant, the guy really likes his wine…. Pretentious dick.”
“Why don’t we just have it in the office? Save the expense.”
10 PM: “Hey dude, haven’t seen you in like a month, where the fuck are you? We’re thinking of going out this weekend, join- it’ll be fuckin nutzzzzzz”
“I don’t really know, not feelin too hot.”
2: 55 PM: “Dude, whatever the fuck you are going through, it’s weird how M.I.A. you have been”
“Sorry, things have been insane lately, we will do something soon.”
9:30 PM: “Alright fuck this. Me, Riley, and Connor are on our way to your house right now, get dressed were going out.”
“hahaha ahhhh fuck…. Alright let’s do it.”
***
It was sometime around 1 am when Andy felt the familiar slump in his eyes. As he sat back and watched the bar around him, all the noise fell out and he was left watching from the outside as people around him obeyed the dance of the bar: throwing their heads back laughing, slamming tables to tell a story to their captive audiences, fruitlessly flirting with their waitress and exchanging glances with the cute girl at the table over. He was the puppeteer of them all.
Here, he elevated above the norm- living up to the potential, the quasi fame, the persona he saw in himself.
Andy’s phone had been buzzing for about a half hour, but he had long since numbed away his ability to care or notice. It was around 2 am when he finally checked it. 13 missed calls- Marissa. Even through the thick haze of whiskey, he knew something was wrong.
10 missed texts:
12:35 AM: “Andy pick up your phone.”
12:40 AM: “Andy, I know its late and I’m gonna just call you till you wake up.”
12: 55 AM: “I’m in the hospital right now, long story. We are all going to be okay, but Lexi is sobbing and needs someone to take care of her. Basically, my fucking appendix is going to burst, and I need to do that stupid surgery.”
1:00 AM: “Andy.”
1:01 AM: “Andy.”
1:07 AM: “Even with do not disturb you should be hearing this now.”
1:10 AM: “Andy wake the fuck up! They are going to make her wait in the child care area alone.”
1: 11 AM: “Fuck, Andy I need you.”
1:13 AM: “Andy.”
1:13 AM: “Andy.”
1:13 AM: “Andy.”
Andy couldn’t stand up right. If he showed up to the hospital like this Marissa would never let him see Lexi again, this would be it. Andy paced outside the bar. Every time he thought he came to a decision, he second guessed it. With one eye closed, he tried to tap out a message, fumbled his phone and it dropped on the ground. Andy used a sign pole to steady himself as he reached down, it began to buzz just as his fingers closed around it. Marissa. His finger hovered above the green answer button, arguing with himself over what to do, until it went to voicemail.
Andy felt like his legs might give out when he heard it. Instead of Marissa, it was Lexi. One of the nurses had let her use Marissa’s phone since she had just gone under. Lexi could barely hold it together, she had been crying so long she had gotten the hiccups, only managing to say “please come” before Andy could hear a soothing voice of a nurse in the background trying to prod the phone from her. The message ended with the nurses voice, “Hello sir, I am a nurse at Jackson. Just letting you know that I am looking after Lexi while her mom is in surgery, but she really needs someone here. She is not doing well, you are listed as both of their emergency contacts. We don’t have anyone else to call. If you could please make your way down to the pediatrics wing as soon as possible to get her, that would be great. Thank you.”
Wheeling around to the street, he tried to hail a cab and tripped. Steading himself against a car, he realized there was no point in this. There are mistakes you can recover from and ones you can’t.
So, he went home, went to bed and slept it off.
In the morning, Andy woke, took a deep breath and called Marissa. He feigned panicked confusion! Told her how he had missed every call! Every text! That he had just woken up and he couldn’t believe what he had done! Profusely apologizing the entire time.
Mistakes you can recover from and mistakes you can’t.
She forgave him. Afterall, it was 2 am and he was supposed to be sleeping. She had gotten a nurse to stay with Lexi for the whole surgery and promised her a new Build-A- Bear after this whole thing was over. Lexi was shaken but will be alright, Marissa said. Andy promised to come over and get Lexi so she could go home and let Marissa recover in the hospital.
“Thanks for stepping up recently,” Marissa said after they had finalized the plans, “I know... I know I got angry a while back, but I was just scared. For you, for Lex. But you did it.”
“Of course, Marissa, you were right. There are some things that are more important.” Andy walked into the bathroom and caught a glance at himself in the mirror, the shadow of last night’s whiskey had hallowed his face, “Ok, I’ll be there soon.”
It would be several months before he could meet his gaze in the mirror for more than five seconds, it would be a couple more after that before he could look at Lexi without wanting to cry and several years before he could admit to anyone what he had actually done. After that night he only picked up a drink once more. Halfway through his beer, he put it down- it disgusted him. Andy’s self-loathing and anxiety had reached its breaking point. Mistakes you can recover from and the mistakes you can’t.
Mark Williams lives in Evansville, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, and The American Journal of Poetry. His fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Drunk Monkeys, and the anthologies, American Fiction (New Rivers Press) and The Boom Project: Voices of a Generation (Butler Books). |
Ricochet
PHWACKK
Weaving through Shawnee National Forest, then hugging the Ohio River’s meandering banks a hundred miles before circumventing horse farms and tobacco barns southeast through Kentucky, the road from southern Illinois to Bardstown in 1970 had been as circuitous as Harlan Dillbeck’s subsequent journey: from teenage, five-string banjo prodigy to three-time Master Bourbon Taster Champion of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. If seventeen-year-old Harlan had waited a few more years to begin his drive, Interstate 64 would have been completed. That road would have been far straighter. As for his life, who knows?
Tonight, sixty-three-year-old Harlan—failed four-time Master Bourbon Taster Champion, as of moments ago—is in the Louis Philippe room at Bardstown’s Talbott Inn pulling his Glock 26 from its holster. “Rigged is what it was!” he shouts.
Is Harlan aware that Louis Philippe I, exiled King of France, stayed at Talbott Inn in 1797 while traveling to Nashville? Does Harlan know that King Louis, or one of his attendants, painted the mural of a French garden that the gun is aimed at now? Does Harlan realize that Jesse James, after spending a debaucherous evening downstairs in Talbott Tavern—site of tonight’s Master Taster Taste-Off—plugged the French birds and butterflies with shots from his six-shooter? Yes, yes, yes. And like Jesse, Harlan takes aim at the mural, though standing to the side for fear the bullets might ricochet off the protective Plexiglas at him. But in the instant before Harlan fires, tonight’s Taste-Off judge, the Reverend Sam Boone, enters the room.
PHWACKK-PHWACKK-PHWACKK-PHWACKK
From the souls of his loafers to the top of his head, Sam is little more than five feet tall—each shot zinging off the Plexiglass above his white comb over.
“Goddamn, Harlan!” shouts the Reverend Sam as he drops to the floor.
PHWACKK
“Didn’t see you coming, Sam,” says Harlan.
“How about that last shot, you fool?”
“Fool, you say,” says Harlan, waving the Glock’s nose in Sam’s direction as footfalls strike the stairway leading to the upstairs hall. “Not fool enough to know I’ve been cheated.”
“You’ve been hit,” says Sam, raising his arm from the floor and pointing at Harlan’s feet, where blood is puddling on the hardwood. “Serves your ass right.”
As it so happened, two of the ricocheted bullets had entered the plaster above Sam. A third had bounced off that wall and entered another. And two bounced off the third wall as well, completing their trip around the room, one plinking off the Plexiglas, another grazing Harlan’s right buttock, from which a trickle of blood runs off his shoe. Harlan’s ass had been served.
“I’ll be damned,” says Harlan, exploring his bloodied right cheek through the hole in his trousers before six Taste-Off contestants bound into the room and subdue him. Three contestants to each of Harlan’s arms. “Easy boys, I was just letting off some steam,” he says, when Reba Fenway, master taster at Heaven Knows Distillery, runs into the room—her long black hair in pursuit.
Legs as long as a thoroughbred’s. Eyes as green as blue grass. Two years ago, Reba would have feared for Harlan’s safety. “You all right, sweetie?” asks Reba, rushing to Sam, whose comb over has flopped over in the fracas.
When Harlan was seeing Reba, their fifteen-year age difference never struck him as unusual. But Sam and Reba? Good God.
“The Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming,” says Sam, standing with Reba’s help and pointing at Harlan. “I’d say it’s come for you today.”
“Not now, Sam,” says Reba. “You OK, Harlan?”
“Been better. This isn’t over, Sam,” says Harlan: butt-shot, blood-stained, angry.
Dolly Time
1967
“There must be something fishy goin’ on.”
From the kitchen, where fourteen-year-old Harlan was helping his mother with the dishes, the soprano voice sounded like nothing he had heard before. “Get a load a that!” Harlan’s dad shouted from the living room couch, where he was watching The Porter Wagoner Show on the family’s 21-inch, Zenith color console. Across the room, Harlan’s little brother, Duncan, was lying on the carpet shooting marbles at a row of plastic green soldiers, standing in dense green shag.
“I guess some large mouth bass left that lipstick on your shirt.”
“You’re old enough to be her father, Franklin,” said Harlan’s mother, June, stepping from the kitchen for a look. “Oh, my. She’s about to bust out of that dress. I liked Norma Jean’s voice better.”
“Bust is right. Who cares about her voice?”
“Now, Franklin,” said June.
“I think there’s something fishy goin’ on.”
Curious, Harlan stepped into the living room behind his mom, a dripping washcloth in his hand. “Whoa,” said Harlan, eyeing Norma Jean’s replacement. Harlan thought this girl sounded good, too.
“Let’s all give Miss Dolly here a hand,” Porter said as the studio audience broke into applause. Were it not for the washcloth, Harlan would have clapped, too.
“Got him!” said Duncan as a bazooka man disappeared in the loom.
Little did Harlan know, the seed of his life had been sewn. After that night, Harlan and his dad never missed The Porter Wagoner Show. “Dolly time!” they’d call to one another. And though his interest in Dolly did not wane, Harlan also enjoyed listening to Porter’s band, The Wagonmasters, and specifically to Buck Trent the banjo player. While listening to Buck, Harlan’s right thumb and first two fingers would pick against his shirtfront as his left hand fretted up and down an imaginary banjo. It was as if, before this life, he had been a picker in another. But another seed had been sewn, too.
Almost fifty years later, Harlan will call his brother, Duncan, from the Nelson County jail, asking him to drive from Illinois to Bardstown and pay five thousand dollars in bail. “For shooting my ass and threatening another,” Harlan will explain. “A preacher, so-called.”
In the course of the conversation, Duncan will inform Harlan that, as boys, they had consumed life-altering amounts of perchloroethylene from their well water. For Duncan will have recently discovered that their childhood home had been built atop a dry-cleaning dumpsite. “We drank that stuff for years, Harlan. The doc says that’s why I hear things—you know, my voices. Could be why you get so angry.”
“That and about a million other reasons. You still hear the Irish kid? Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“Yeah, I still hear Kevin. And others. But I just found out about the water a few months ago. I would have told you sooner, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I thought knowing this might make you even more pissed off. Besides, everybody’s got to live with something or other.”
“Percho what?”
“Perchloroethylene. PERC, they call it. For me, it took forty years to kick in. For you, I’m guessing sooner.”
“Who knows? Hey, Dunc, they want me back in my cell. Coming, Patti.”
“Patti?” says Duncan.
“Deputy Patti. See you tomorrow, Dunc.”
“You’ll see Darlene, too. She won’t let me drive anymore. She’s afraid Kevin might tell me to go off a bridge or something. Slow as Darlene drives, probably be more like tomorrow night before we get there.”
“Take I-64 through Louisville.”
But that December, 1967, after badgering his dad for a banjo the past three months, Harlan’s dad relented, driving to Evansville, Indiana, where Harlan found a Kay five-string for fifty dollars—his dad’s fifty dollars—before picking up a copy of Banjo Made Easy by Buck Trent himself.
“Merry Christmas, Son,” said Franklin.
The Final Dram
Earlier tonight, seated at the Talbott Tavern bar with nine other Taste-Off contestants, Harlan suspected there was something fishy going on when he caught more than a hint of vanilla in the final round.
Harlan thought that he’d done well, though the third round had given him some trouble. Swishing that dram between his cheeks, he couldn’t decide whether it had aged five years or six. “Six,” he’d guessed, after sensing a bit more smoke from the barrel and spitting the bourbon into a Talbott Tavern glass.
The contestants, master tasters all, had now sampled nine drams from his or her distillery and guessed the number of years the tastes had aged in charred, white oak barrels. Each dram, a full three scruples, had been poured by the Reverend Sam Boone, pastor of Sudden Glory Fellowship and director of Forever Yours Funeral Chapel in nearby Shepherdsville. With Sam standing barely taller than the bar, it was hard for Harlan to imagine Sam Boone’s blood coursed with even a scruple of his distant relative Daniel’s courage.
“You have one more minute to guess,” Sam said to Harlan, leading off round ten. Sitting next to Reba Fenway, at first Harlan thought her perfume was throwing him off. Euphoria, Harlan recalled from the two years they had dated. But no, it wasn’t that.
Harlan had worked at Rowan Brothers since he was seventeen, working his way up to master taster. At sixty percent corn, Rowan Brothers tended toward the sweet side. But this . . . You could use it on a pancake, Harlan thought before spitting into the glass, now ten drams full of a Rowan Brothers blend.
“That’s wheated bourbon. Didn’t come from any of our barrels,” said Harlan.
“Thirty seconds to name a year,” said Sam.
“You’ve made a mistake. Or someone has. I’m telling you, this isn’t Rowan Brothers.”
“Twenty.”
“Come on. What’s this all about?”
“Ten,” said Sam, smiling at Reba.
“Alright, ten. Ten goddamn years!”
Minutes later, Sam announced, “From Rowan Brothers, with nine correct tastes, this year’s runner-up is Harlan Dillbeck. And our Master Bourbon Taster champion, from Heaven Knows, Reba Fenway! A perfect ten. Congratulations, Reba. Harlan, wait.”
But by the time Sam had finished his announcement, Harlan was off his barstool, heading for the Talbott Inn stairs. Stairs that Jesse James himself once climbed.
Maryann by the Hand, Martin by the Neck
1968 — 1969
By summer, Harlan was picking “You are My Sunshine.” By fall, he’d mastered “Will the Circle be Unbroken.” Soon after that, “I’ll Fly Away,” which he was ready to do. If Harlan had had his way, he would have turned sixteen, dropped out of school, bought a car, and headed for Nashville.
Harlan’s break came while playing “Blue Moon of Kentucky” at his high school’s spring talent show. Jerry Lawson, lead guitarist for The Illinois Ramblers, was there that night to accompany his daughter Maryann on his Martin twelve-string. Maryann had just knocked “Crazy” out of the Shawnee High gym when Harlan took the stage. Six bars in, he was surprised to hear a twelve-string rhythm to his five-string melody. Looking behind him, there stood Maryann and her dad. “Blue moon of Kentucky keep on shining,” crooned Maryann, soon to be announced, along with Harlan, that night’s co-winner. “Shine on the one that’s gone and left me blue.”
That summer, 1969, Harlan and Maryann travelled throughout southern Illinois, southern Indiana, and western Kentucky with The Ramblers, playing county fairs, church socials, and VFW’s. Onstage, Jerry introduced Harlan by saying, “I could tell a natural when I heard one, folks. Before I knew it, I grabbed my Maryann by the hand, my Martin by the neck, and took the stage with—Harlan Dillbeck, everybody!” Then Harlan would play a few riffs of “Clinch Mountain Backstep,” his favorite.
Those were heady days for Harlan. Taking up the lead from Jerry on “Cripple Creek” or “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” Harlan noticed teenage girls drifting toward the stage, clapping and dancing as he picked. Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell that Maryann, onstage to his right, noticed, too.
For the first time, he saw Carbondale, Vincennes, Paducah. For the first time he saw real money. At thirty dollars a show, by August sixteen-year-old Harlan had earned enough to buy a 1960 Plymouth Belvedere with one hundred forty thousand miles and two white-walls. It was in this car that Harlan saw much more.
Harlan had always admired Maryann. She’d played Laurey in the school musical, Oklahoma! With legs as high as an elephant’s eye, Maryann high jumped on the boys’ track team. She western rolled as high as she was tall. District champion.
One night that August, The Ramblers played the Saint Ambrose Bierstube in Jasper, Indiana. They had finished their final set, and while Jerry and the band imbibed beer inside a tent, Harlan and Maryann imbibed each other inside The Ramblers’ van. They made love a second time inside an empty goat pen at the Vanderburgh County Fair. The remaining times, in the Belvedere’s back seat, became a blur in Harlan’s mind. He guessed he’d wait awhile to go to Nashville.
In October, with Harlan cheering her on, Maryann ran a consistent fourth man on the boys’ cross-country team. By November, five pounds heavier, she was running seventh. There would be no high jumping for Maryann next spring.
Deputy Patti
Harlan and Maryann’s son, Lawson, had been thirty-two when Harlan last saw him—fourteen years ago at Harlan’s father’s funeral. Franklin had had a heart attack while watching The Rock defeat Hulk Hogan on Pay-Per-View.
As Deputy Patti escorts Harlan to the lobby, at first Harlan thinks his sister-in-law, Darlene, is standing next to an overweight guard and a prisoner. Duncan, wearing khaki slacks, has gained weight. Lawson has that look.
“Hey, Lawson. Hello, Darlene. Put on a little weight there, Dunc,” says Harlan before awkwardly hugging all three.
“It’s the psycho drugs they’ve got me on. They make me hungry. I’m up fifty pounds. Why are you limping?”
Pointing to the hole in his pants, Harlan says, “I told you, I shot myself in the ass.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, good to see you.”
“Good to see you, Dunc. Pretty as ever, Darlene.”
“Right. They let you drink in there, Harlan?” asks Darlene, blowing salt-and-pepper bangs from her eyes.
“Sober as a judge. Didn’t expect to see you, Lawson. How’s your mother?”
“Fine, I guess.”
“The boy could use some help,” says Duncan—the boy being nine years younger than he.
“What kind of help?”
“Could you take this somewhere else, Harlan?” asks Deputy Patti, looking up from her desk, her skin several shades darker than her khaki uniform.
In the past eighteen years, Patti had booked Harlan into jail five times. But with only the faintest of laugh lines beside her dark brown eyes, her age was hard to tell. “Shift change,” says Patti. “We try to clear the lobby. You’ll be getting notice of your court date in the next few days.”
“Thanks,” says Harlan, “I know the drill. Patti, this is my sister-in-law, Darlene, my brother, Duncan, and Lawson, my son. How about some dinner, everybody? On me. There’s a diner not far from here. You, too, Patti. We’ll wait.”
“Maybe next time, Harlan,” says Patti, smiling as she stands. “Nice to meet you all.”
Harlan had heard that Patti teaches Jazzercise. Looking at her now, as she walks ahead to open the door, he believes it. “Next time—good one, Patti. I’ll take you up on that.”
My Old Kentucky Motor-In Inn
1970
In March, Harlan was called into his music teacher’s homeroom. Facing Mrs. Kleinschmidt at her desk, he took a seat on the piano bench and eased back against the keyboard.
“I think this might be an opportunity for you, Harlan,” Mrs. Kleinschmidt said, opening a colorful brochure. “Have you ever heard of Stephen Foster?”
“I think he lives in Kentucky.”
“No, but I can see why you might think so. He died a long time ago. They put on a play about him every summer at the amphitheater in Bardstown. With the way you play that banjo . . .”
Mrs. Kleinschmidt went on to say that she thought it might be a good way for Harlan to earn money the summer before his senior year. “You’ll need it,” she said. “What’s your baby’s name?”
Everyone knew about Harlan, Maryann, and their baby. And word had gotten around that Jerry Lawson had no intention of letting Harlan play with The Ramblers that summer. Mrs. Kleinschmidt was right; Harlan could use the money. Maryann kept telling him that her dad would come around, but in the meantime, Harlan couldn’t even come to the Lawson’s house to see his son. “Lawson,” answered Harlan.
“I made a call to Bardstown,” said Mrs. Kleinschmidt. “The auditions are in two weeks. They said that you should be prepared to play the three songs I’ve written down on this brochure. They’ll ask you to play two songs in the key beside each song.”
“Thanks, Mrs. K,” said Harlan, leaning forward for the brochure. “Why not?” he said, striking a discord on the piano keys as he leaned back.
After learning “Ring, Ring the Banjo” in F, “Oh! Susanna” in D, and “Camptown Races” in G, after telling Maryann he would see her in a few days and giving Lawson’s foot a squeeze (at Harlan’s house), Harlan jumped into his Belvedere, weaved through Shawnee Forest, hugged the Ohio River, and wound around Kentucky horse farms and tobacco barns on his way to Bardstown. With his banjo by his knee.
Slipping ten of thirty dollars from his banjo case, Harlan paid for a room at My Old Kentucky Motor-In Inn, across Stephen Foster Avenue from My Old Kentucky Home. “The place that’s in the song?” Harlan asked the desk clerk.
“That’s the one.”
The auditions were to be held at Bardstown High the following day. After a cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake at a nearby diner, Harlan returned to his room and ran through the three songs again. He was fidgeting with the rabbit ears on a black and white TV, when he heard a banjo playing “Camptown Races” in a nearby room.
Was Harlan impressed by what he heard? Did he think that this rendition compared to his own? Did he fear for tomorrow? Yes, possibly, no. For why would anyone auditioning tomorrow, no matter their skill, be playing “Camptown Races” in D? After checking the brochure one last time (Camptown Races: G), Harlan turned off The Wild Wild West and fell asleep, never dreaming years would pass before he’d see Maryann, Lawson, or home.
Kevin’s Plean
“Ate here the first night I came to Bardstown,” says Harlan, after arriving at the diner from the jail. “April, 1970. Seventeen years old.”
Sitting in the booth beside Darlene, across the table from Harlan and Lawson, Duncan asks, “Was it called Camptown Diner then?”
“Same name. Same booth,” says Harlan, squirming on the well-worn red vinyl. “The doc said my cheek could be sore for months.”
“How’d you shoot yourself again?” Duncan asks.
“Again? Pass the ketchup, Aunt Darlene,” says Lawson.
“No, just the once. And it’s a long story,” Harlan says. “Ketchup on a hot brown?”
“Don’t worry, he won’t,” says Duncan.
“What do you mean, he won’t?”
“No, I was telling Kevin not to worry. You won’t be telling any long stories, will you? Kevin hates long stories.”
“No, guess I won’t,” says Harlan, frowning at Darlene.
“His doctor says it’s best for him to engage his voices,” says Darlene. “I’m not so sure.”
“Anyway, what kind of help do you need, Lawson?” asks Harlan.
Twenty minutes later—after listening to Lawson explain how he might have helped his friend Timmy steal what some people call drugs from Duke, a bad dude who might have killed them if Timmy hadn’t cut off Duke’s little finger, and how Duke, never mind his drug raps, called the cops and fingered Lawson and Timmy, but the cops said that since Lawson had been in no trouble compared to Timmy, he could skate with one hundred hours community service if he rolled on Timmy, which, since the whole idea had been Timmy’s, Lawson did, but after working off his CS hours cleaning kennels at the pound, he heard that Timmy was so pissed (“sorry, Aunt Darlene”), mad at him for rolling, Timmy put out a thousand dollar contract on him—Harlan sides with Kevin. He hates long stories, too.
“Some friend,” says Harlan.
“We thought he should skip town,” says Duncan. “And here we are. This is some serious coffee.”
“What’s your mother say, Lawson?” asks Harlan.
“It was her idea for me to come here. Mom says if anyone would know what to do, what with all the trouble you’ve been in—”
“Not now, Lawson,” says Darlene.
“No, your mother’s right. I’ve had my share of run-ins,” says Harlan. “Now I almost killed a mortician. The water made me do it, right Dunc? You all about finished? It’s almost nine o’clock. They’ll be closing soon.”
With the moon over Kentucky barely shining through the clouds, they get into Duncan and Darlene’s Dodge Ram—Darlene driving, Duncan beside her, Harlan and Lawson in the back seat—and head for Harlan’s house near the high school.
“I heard what he said. I’ll ask him,” Duncan says to—Kevin? “Thought you said the guy you shot at was a preacher, Harlan.”
“Claims to be. Has his own church and funeral parlor. Gets them coming and going.”
“What’s with you and him?” asks Darlene. “Turn here?”
“Next light. Sam and me, we go way back. Another long story. Don’t worry, Kevin,” says Harlan, staring at the back of Duncan’s head.
“Maybe don’t get him started. It’s getting late. He has trouble sleeping as it is,” says Darlene, stopping at the light.
“A church and funeral home?” asks Duncan.
“Bingo,” says Harlan.
“Way bleedin’ back, you say?”
“Bleedin’?”
“Sometimes he talks like Kevin,” says Darlene. “County Sligo.”
Unfastening his seat belt, Duncan turns toward the ack seat. Smiling in the red glow of the streetlight, he says, “We might just have a plean.”
“Plean?” asks Lawson.
“Irish for plan,” explains Duncan. His smile turns green.
Driving through the intersection, Darlene says, “Oh, no,” as though she’s been down this road with Duncan and Kevin before.
“You missed the turn,” says Harlan.
Doo-dah in D
1970
After a breakfast of eggs and grits at Camptown Diner, Harlan drove to Bardstown High. Eager for his audition to begin, he had to sit in the auditorium for two hours as, one-by-one, college-age girls sang, “Why No One to Love?,” “Wilt Thou Be Gone, Love?,” and “If Only You Had a Mustache”—each girl performing two requested songs. By the time the girls finished, Harlan thought he could have grown a mustache. But then it was the boys’ turn to sing, “Open Thy Lattice, Love,” “Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair,” and “Beautiful Dreamer,” unendingly, it seemed. Though several girls had caught Harlan’s eye, his ears had had enough.
“We’ll break an hour for lunch,” announced a large man in baggy madras shorts and leather sandals. “Then we’ll hear the banjos.”
With only three dollars in his wallet and twenty hidden in his banjo case—figuring two for supper, ten for that night’s room, a buck-fifty for breakfast, and eight for gas money home—Harlan found a corner market, where he bought an apple and a Snickers bar for lunch. Back at the school, he was bending down to the water fountain outside the auditorium, when someone said, “You pick a mean banjo, brotha.”
Lifting from the fountain, Harlan turned and, across the hall, saw a painting of a grim old man with a coonskin cap on his head, a rifle on his shoulder, and a hound by his side. Only then did Harlan realize he was looking over the top of someone’s blonde buzz-cut.
“That’s my great-great granduncle Daniel. I’m Sam Boone,” said the little guy, extending his right hand toward Harlan while holding a Gibson banjo in his left. A Mastertone, Harlan noticed. “What you got there?” Sam asked, nodding at Harlan’s case.
“A Kay,” said Harlan, shaking the smallest hand he guessed he’d ever shook. About the size of baby Lawson’s foot. Couldn’t reach three frets, Harlan thought. “Name’s Harlan Dillbeck. Where’d you hear me play?”
“In your room last night. Never would have guessed that was nothing but a Kay. I’m two doors down from you.”
This was who he’d heard playing? Harlan had heard that Earl Scruggs has small hands, but Sam Boone’s hands are no bigger than a cat’s paws. “Where you from, Sam?”
“Paris,” Sam said. “Kentucky. Good luck, Ferlin.”
“It’s Harlan. Good luck yourself.”
Ten minutes later, baggy shorts led the six banjo hopefuls backstage. Taking their seats in a row of folding chairs, four of the boys looked to be in their early twenties. As for Sam, it was as if a teenage voice was coming from a ten-year-old’s body.
“How long you been playing?” Sam asked, sitting beside Harlan.
“Couple years.”
“Couple years? When I started, my banjo was bigger than me.”
“Still is, looks like,” said Harlan, eyeing the Mastertone standing in Sam’s lap, its tuning pegs two feet higher than Sam’s shit-eating grin. The little guy was getting on his nerves.
“OK, boys, we’ll go in alphabetical order,” baggy shorts said before disappearing through the stage curtains. “First up, Rusty Baker,” the same voice, amplified, said as a red-haired boy two seats down from Harlan stood and parted the curtains with the neck of his Vega Sunburst. “‘Ring, Ring the Banjo,’ Rusty,” the voice said, followed by a banjo’s ring.
Harlan was thinking Rusty wasn’t half bad when Sam said, “Sounds like his finger rolls are missing a thumb.” Slipping a silver pick onto his own right thumb and a blue plastic pick onto each of his first two fingers, Sam asked, “What do you say, Ferlin?”
“I’d say give the guy a chance,” Harlan said as Rusty wrapped up “Ring, Ring the Banjo” and, as instructed, kicked off “Oh! Susanna.”
“Lighten up,” said Sam, popping each knuckle, shaking both hands, and swiveling his head from shoulder to shoulder. By now Sam was no longer getting on Harlan’s nerves. He had reached the summit and planted a flag.
“Next up, Sam Boone. ‘Oh! Susanna,’ Sam,” the voice said.
Earlier that year, Harlan had heard James Taylor sing “Oh! Susanna” on the radio. He sang it like a love song. But here was Sam playing like he was off to “Camptown Races.” Harlan’s version of “Oh! Susanna” took three minutes. Sam had wrapped it up in two.
“Little quick there, aren’t you, Sam?” the voice said to Harlan’s satisfaction.
“Anyone can play it slow, sir,” Sam answered.
“Well, let’s see what you can do with “Camptown Races.”
Sam had not made it to the first doo-dah when Harlan realized he was playing in D, just as he’d played last night. Why weren’t they stopping him? Meanwhile, aside from Rusty, the other contestants were squirming in their seats. “D?” one boy said. Here again, Sam was managing to turn twelve furlongs into no more than eight. He’d already reached the finish.
“Now that’s more like it,” the voice said, pleased with the speed, it seemed. “Thank you, Sam. Now let’s hear what Harlan Dillbeck can do. Same two songs, Harlan.”
With his mind on “Camptown Races,” Harlan parted the curtains, took the stage, and played “Oh! Susanna.”
“Played like the love song it is,” said baggy shorts, seated in the auditorium’s front row.
“Thanks, sir. Uh, said Harlan, fingerpicks twiddling, “I think we’re supposed to play ‘Camptown Races’ in G.
“Let’s see,” the man said, fumbling through some papers. “That’s right. G it is.”
“But he played in D,” Harlan said, pointing to the curtains with his Kay.
“He did? Well, I guess you’d better play in D, too. Don’t you boys tune in G?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Blind man could play in G. Give us what you got in D, Harlan. Only fair.
“Yes!” a voice shouted from behind the curtains. Sam’s “yes,” no doubt.
Normally, Harlan could have played this song, any song, in D. But he’d been practicing in G. And he was angry. The little fucker planned this all along, Harlan thought as he ripped into the strings.
If they had stopped Sam from playing in D, he probably could have played in G, too. He’d no doubt practiced in both. Sam must have hoped they’d play in alphabetical order, that he’d be asked to play “Camptown,” and baggy shorts would require the others to play in D—a key in which they had not practiced. Sam had nothing to lose and principal banjoist to gain, Harlan thought. ALL THE DOO-DAMN DAY! Harlan’s banjo wailed.
“Good God, Harlan, it’s a song, not Chickamauga,” baggy shorts said. “But thanks, I guess. Roy Jones, you’re next. Any relation to Grandpa?”
Upset with Sam, baggy ass, and himself, Harlan’s banjo nearly took out Roy Jones as they passed each other through the curtains. “Gets a little tricky in D, don’t it . . .” Sam began with a wink as Harlan walked toward his seat.
Had it occurred to Harlan to grab his case, jump into his car, and head home? Yes, yes, yes. And he more than likely would have had Sam not added “brotha?” to his question, at which point Harlan grabbed Sam’s Mastertone, shouted, “Brother my ass!” and, with one hand on its neck and the other on its tailpiece, snapped the banjo with his knee.
Counting Jail Cells to Sleep
An hour ago, Harlan, Duncan, Darlene, and Lawson, after springing Harlan from jail and eating dinner at Camptown Diner, arrived at Harlan’s house. Now, lying in his bed, staring at a water-stained ceiling, it occurs to Harlan that this is the first night he has ever slept under the same roof with his son. How is that possible?
It had all started the day he turned Sam’s Mastertone into a mandolin and his own life into one of confinement in Bardstown—at first involuntarily, but then, aside from a few nearby getaways, he’d just stayed.
He’d finally driven to Nashville, years after quitting the banjo. One night, across from the Ryman at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, after hearing a man call Tennessee whiskey, “bourbon,” Harlan broke the man’s jaw and spent four nights jail. For threatening a tour guide at Graceland (Harlan considered Elvis overrated, the tour guide had not), he’d spent three. If not for his undisputed skill for tasting, Rowan Brothers would have lost its taste for Harlan years ago. Counting jail cells—the time be booed Pete Rose in Cincinnati, the time he put a nine ball through a mirror in Knoxville . . . —Harlan falls asleep.
The next morning, Harlan ties on his Rowan Brothers, Bottoms Up in the Bluegrass apron and fries some bacon and eggs. At the sound of footsteps, he turns from the stove to see Duncan and Darlene entering the kitchen from the guest room. “Some apron,” says Duncan. Looking down, spatula in hand, Harlan sees two bare butts—a man’s and a woman’s, unmistakably—poking up through blades of grass.
“Bacon and eggs all right?” asks Harlan. “Coffee?”
“Sounds good,” says Duncan, pulling a chair out from under the table and scooting in beside Darleen. “So, Harlan, what kind of terms you on with that mortician preacher?”
Arriving at Harlan’s house the previous night, everyone went straight to bed—in Lawson’s case, a foldout couch in the basement. They’d planned to discuss Kevin’s plean in the morning.
Turning to the stove, with his back to Duncan and Darlene, Harlan says, “Terms? I told you, I fired five rounds at Sam.”
“Thought you said you guys go way back.”
“Back to hell.”
“Well, Kevin thinks that Sam, being a mortician, could say Lawson’s already dead. Then we run an obituary here and in the Southern Illinois Times. That way Lawson’s friend won’t send anyone to kill him. He’d already be dead.”
“You don’t get it,” says Harlan, bringing bacon to the table. “Sam and I don’t talk.”
“And being a preacher, he could say a few words at the funeral,” says Duncan. “Charlotte says it’s OK for fathers to cover up for their sons. She says Confucius said so. Tell the preacher that. Pass the bacon, Darlene.”
“Confucius? And who’s Charlotte?” asks Harlan.
“His Unitarian minister in Vermont voice,” says Darlene. “Just be glad he doesn’t start singing with her.”
“Singing?” Harlan says when, with the look of a dead man, Lawson walks into the kitchen.
“Morning, Lawson,” says Duncan, “What do you want on your tombstone?”
Rubbing his eyes with his thumbs, Lawson bumps into Darleen’s chair and says, “I never gave it much thought.”
“Not bad,” says Harlan. “More coffee, Dunc?”
Three cups later, Duncan still hasn’t let go of the plan, explaining how a funeral would be necessary to convince “eegit Timmy” that Lawson’s dead.
“Irish for idiot,” Darlene explains.
But by Duncan’s fifth cup, Harlan has to admit that Kevin’s plean, despite Harlan and Sam’s history and the annoying Irish expressions, makes sense. “Suppose I could talk to Reba.”
“Reba? The woman you used to see?” asks Duncan, helping himself to more bacon.
“She’s with Sam now. She might get Sam to listen.”
“You know, Harlan, maybe you should get a cat,” says Duncan.
“Why would I want a cat?”
“Keep you company. You and your history with women. We wouldn’t take a million dollars for Robinson Crusoe. We found him stranded at an interstate rest stop on our way home from a Cards game. Didn’t we, Darlene?”
“That we did,” says Darlene, as if the Robinson Crusoe story had grown old. “And his litter box needs to be changed.”
“In that case, we’d better get going,” says Harlan. “Let’s write us an obit.”
“Now we’re suckin’ diesel,” says Duncan.
A Career is Born
1970
Before shortening Sam’s Mastertone, there were three things that Harlan had failed to consider: first, the agility of a large man in madras shorts and sandals; second, the malicious damage laws in Nelson County Kentucky; and third, the noon checkout time at My Old Kentucky Motor-In Inn. At the crack of a banjo and Sam’s “Sumamabitch!” the big thespian had leapt onto the stage, run through the curtains, and grabbed Harlan in a bear hug. “Someone, call the police,” the man said. Meanwhile, the motel clock kept ticking.
Following an explanatory phone call home in which Harlan’s father said, “Night in jail might do you good,” Harlan spent not one but five incarcerated nights, each one accruing an additional ten dollars in motel fees. That fifty dollars, plus court costs, two hundred thirty-five dollars for a new Mastertone, and one hundred in punitive damages, meant Harlan would not be leaving Bardstown anytime soon. After learning that Harlan was almost five hundred dollars short, Judge Rowan said, “You can catch up on your schoolwork this summer. Can you lift an empty bourbon barrel, Son?”
Unbeknownst to Harlan, Judge Rowan, along with his brother, were co-owners of Rowan Brothers Distillery. Harlan had just had his first job interview. “I suppose,” Harlan said.
“Yes!” shouted Sam, rising from his seat in the courtroom.
Sam in the Purse
As Duncan, Darlene, and Lawson finish breakfast, Harlan calls in to Rowan Brothers for a personal day. Then, over another pot of coffee and occasional objections from Lawson, the four of them compose his obituary.
Satisfied with their efforts, Harlan suggests that his guests take a tour of My Old Kentucky Home while he contacts Reba about Kevin’s plan. “The place that’s in the song?” asks Lawson.
“That’s the one.”
Intending to catch Reba at work, Harlan gets into his van, a black pearl Honda Odyssey. Driving northwest out of town, he passes warehouse after warehouse filled with aging Rowan Brothers bourbon before veering northwest onto State Highway 245, bound for Heaven Knows Distillery in Bullitt County. Seems impossible, Harlan thinks. Forty-six years since he rolled the other way, thinking he would win the audition, make some money, and earn Jerry Lawson’s respect.
All these years Harlan had assumed it was Sam Boone that had gotten under his skin at Bardstown High. But maybe—what had Duncan called it, percho-something?—maybe that had, too. It would explain some things. That first summer, he’d lobbed a cherry bomb onto The Stephen Foster Story stage during Sam’s performance. Shortly after that, he’d inscribed PAID IN FULL with his thumb pick on the motel owner’s car hood, costing four more nights in jail, three hundred dollars in damages, and another six months in Rowan Brothers servitude. One night in February, 1971, after learning Maryann had married The Ramblers’ drummer, Carl Baumgart, Harlan heaved his banjo into the Beech Fork River. One summer day in 1979, after batting fifth for the Rowan Brothers Softball Hotshots, he took out Sudden Glory Fellowship shortstop, Sam Boone’s, left knee with a cleats-up slide. Then there was the broken jaw at Tootsie’s, the argument at Graceland, and so on.
Time was, about 5:00, Friday afternoons, Harlan would walk into the office at Heaven Knows and say, “Working hard, Connie?” to receptionist, Connie Arbeit—a woman about his age with big blonde hair—before walking into Reba’s office, unannounced. There, he’d wait as Reba finished entering notes from that day’s tastes into her desktop. Then he’d follow Reba to her house in Shepherdsville, where he kept a weekend’s worth of clothes.
They had met at Reba’s first Taste-Off, held annually at Talbott Tavern. Harlan finished third that year, but first in another respect, for that night Reba had agreed to a drink that led to two that led to dinner three nights later.
“Working hard, Connie?” Harlan asks now as Connie looks up from her desk.
“Harlan Dillbeck!”
“Never could fool you, girl. Reba busy?”
“Let me check,” says Connie, tapping the phone on her desk. “How you been, Harlan? Other than shooting yourself.”
“Heard about that, did you?”
“Reba, there’s a Harlan Dillbeck here to see you. Good looking fella. With a limp, looks like . . . Uh, huh . . . Go on in, Harlan.”
Harlan knew, as everyone did, that Reba got the job as Heaven Knows Master Taster thanks to her father, Forest. Before Forest Fenway retired, he’d master-tasted for Heaven Knows for half a century. The night Harlan met Reba at her rookie Taste-Off, she’d said, “Thanks to Daddy, I could tell wheat bourbon from a rye time I was ten.”
Though it had only been two years since Harlan dated Reba, walking into her office feels like stepping back fifty. Gilt-framed photographs of Whirlaway, Citation, Adolph Rupp, and Joe B. Hall line the mahogany paneling. Irving Stone biographies, the complete works of James Michener, and Forest Fenway’s many First-Place silver Taste-Off snifters fill the converted, cherry gun case shelves.
“See you haven’t changed a thing. Other than your trophy,” says Harlan, nodding at the snifter on Reba’s walnut desk.”
“About that, Harlan.”
“No need.”
“Well then, have a seat.”
There was a time when Reba shared Harlan’s view of Sam. “An arrogant little man,” she’d once said. But then one June Sunday morning at Reba’s house, all that changed.
Harlan had awakened to find himself alone in Reba’s bed. He was about to get up, when she walked into her bedroom, dressed. “Where you off to?” he’d asked.
“The Lord’s house. Be back in a few hours. Sleep in, sweetie.”
Lying on his back, staring at the revolving fan above the bed, Harlan guessed it had been forty-some years since he’d been to church—other than his parents’ funerals. And though he’d never known Reba to attend, he figured which church she was heading to was none of his business—as long as it wasn’t Sam’s church. But good God, the Lord couldn’t live there. Plus, he’d heard her car door slam. It was summer; the sun was shining through the blinds; and Sudden Glory was just two blocks up Plum Street. If she was going there, she would have walked. Besides, Reba knew how he felt about Sam, the little bastard. Harlan went to sleep, awakening a few hours later to the sight of Sam, hanging from the bedroom doorknob, grinning from the corner of a Sudden Glory bulletin inside Reba’s purse. Grinning like he’d won another contest.
“It doesn’t mean a thing,” Reba had said, kicking off her shoes inside her closet. “We ran into each other at Walmart. In light bulbs. He said he was preaching on forgiveness, and that we should come. You in particular.”
Flinging the sheet from his body, Harlan said, “Got a better chance of seeing me in one of his caskets than his church.”
“That’s what I told Sam, pretty much. I know how you feel about him. Truth told, it’s a shame you didn’t hear his message,” said Reba, stepping from her dress. “And my, can he play that banjo.”
“Played you for a fool is what,” said Harlan before he jumped from bed, pulled on a Rowan Brothers T-shirt, stepped into his jeans and left.
The following week, Harlan didn’t go to either Heaven Knows or Shepherdsville. But after not hearing from Reba in almost two weeks, he’d driven to her house on a Saturday, hoping to talk, when the Forever Yours hearse parked at her curb had left him speechless. After slamming his Odyssey into the hearse’s rear bumper, Harlan found his voice and more. For within seconds of contact, the hearse’s rear door opened and Sam, wrapped in a sheet, jumped out, giving Harlan clear view of a stretcher. There, wrapped in nothing, lay Reba.
“Thing is,” says Harlan, lifting the snifter from Reba’s desk and buffing it with his shirtsleeve, “I got a favor to ask.”
52 19 G
April 6, 1980
After unloading empty barrels for years, Harlan now oversaw the placement of them, bourbon-filled, in Rowan Brothers’ twenty-five warehouses. Twenty thousand, fifty-three-gallon barrels per house. One morning in September, he was in Warehouse 19, walking down a barrel-lined aisle streaked by east-facing sunlight. He was looking for a barrel that had been in place ten years. As long as he.
Like him, the bourbon had aged. Like him—aside from a few solitary trips to Rupp Arena, Churchill Downs, and Nashville—it had not moved.
He’d bought a little house not far from Bardstown High. Summers, he played left field for the Hotshots. Dated a few girls. Even came close to marrying Betty Moffett, a Bardstown vet tech. One night after dinner, Harlan picked up Moses, Betty’s orange tabby, and sat beside Betty on her couch.
“I asked you over tonight to say I’m sorry,” said Betty, “but I’ve prayed on it, and as long as you make spirits for the Devil, I can’t marry you.”
In Harlan’s way of thinking, the closest thing to the Devil was the anger that would surface in himself. He would look back with pride to turning his back on the Devil that night. For without one word, Harlan smiled at Betty, lowered Moses into Betty’s lap, and walked out.
Day after day, walking down rows of barrels, Harlan had begun to think of them as friends, quiet friends who never judged him. Looking up at stacks of barrels, he imagined the bourbon inside, soaking up tannins as it aged.
Many years later, Harlan would look back and wonder how his life had passed so quickly. Aside from occasional romances and obligatory Rowan Brothers parties and picnics, he’d spent his life alone. If not for his three First-Place snifters and intermittent jail time, he’d hardly lived at all.
But that day in Warehouse 19, as Harlan walked down the aisle with instructions to pull barrel 52 19 G, Fill Date 04 06 70, it occurred to him that could have been the day he’d snapped Sam’s banjo. One crack. Everything had resounded from there.
A few steps later, he looked up, stopping where the sunlight slashed across the fill date. The Master Taster had sampled the bourbon yesterday. Unlike Harlan, its time had come today.
Searching for Mushrooms at NASCAR
As Harlan returns the shirt-shined snifter to Reba’s desk, she says, “Let me get this straight. You want Sam, who you tried to shoot, to put your son’s obituary in our paper and the Illinois Times. Never mind he’s alive. Then Sam performs a funeral service—closed coffin, I hope—followed by a graveside service. Surprised you don’t want a meal at the church afterwards. Anything else?”
“Southern Illinois Times. And a meal might be nice,” says Harlan, smiling.
“Who writes the obituary?”
“Got it right here,” says Harlan, pulling a sealed envelope from his back pocket.
Reaching for the envelope, Reba says, “I’ll talk to Sam tonight. I owe you that much. But I doubt you’d do this for him.”
“No, don’t guess I would, seeing as how he steals a man’s woman, fixes contests, and I don’t run a church or funeral home.”
“I beat you fair and square, Harlan. Sam said so.”
“Take Sam’s word plus a dollar, and you’ve got fifty cents.”
“And as far as him stealing me, Sam was there for me when you weren’t.”
“In the back of a hearse, you mean.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. With that temper of yours, you’ll never get close to anyone. At least not me. Everyone’s out to get you, according to you. It gets old, Harlan. Sam, he sees the best in people.”
“That’s because to him everyone is some fool to best. Company included. And when did I ever lose my temper with you?”
“Look, Harlan. I said I’d talk to Sam. I’ll give him this envelope and let you know what he says. I think you’d better go.”
Walking past Citation, Harlan turns and says, “Tell Sam this needs to happen yesterday. Could mean life or death for Lawson, and Duncan needs to get home.”
“Your brother still hearing things?”
“Funny you should ask. This plan, it was— Just call me soon as you can.”
*
Southern Illinois resident, Lawson F. Dillbeck, 46, died tragically Wednesday, April 18 after falling off his father’s roof in Bardstown, Kentucky. A graduate of Shawnee High in Jefferson County, Illinois, and owner operator of Lawson’s Lawns and Such, he enjoyed hunting mushrooms in Shawnee National Forest and NASCAR. He is survived by his mother, Maryann Baumgart (stepfather, Carl); father, Harlan; uncle, Duncan (aunt, Darlene; cousins, Ron and Don); and ball python, Carl. The Light shines on the enlightened, and Lawson was well lit. Memorial service to be held Saturday, April 21, 3:00 at Forever Yours Funeral Chapel in Shepherdsville with burial at Rose Hill Cemetery to follow. The Reverend Sam Boone officiating. He will be missed.
“You write this, Harlan?” asks Reba, lowering The Kentucky Standard to her desk as Harlan, Duncan, and Darlene enter her office. “No wonder the envelope was sealed.”
It’s Friday. Reba convinced Sam to help; Sam took the obituary to The Standard; and Harlan has returned to Heaven Knows the following day. “Reba, this is my brother, Duncan, and my sister-in-law, Darlene,” Harlan says as Reba walks around her desk to greet them. “We thought Lawson should lay low.”
“Good thinking,” says Reba.
“We’ve heard a lot about you,” says Duncan, accepting Reba’s hand. “Sorry things didn’t work out for you two. Nice office.”
“Pleased to meet you,” says Darlene, giving Reba a hug. “Euphoria?”
“Yes, it is. Harlan, pull up some chairs,” says Reba, touching his shoulder and catching his eye.
There was a time, looking into Reba’s green eyes, Harlan saw his reflection as if cast from a bountiful sea. Looking into Reba’s eyes now, knowing they were more apt to reflect Sam, Harlan felt like he was drowning. “We all pitched in a word or two,” he says, nodding at The Standard.
Returning to the chair behind her desk, facing Harlan, Duncan, and Darlene in their seats, Reba asks, “Why a fall from your roof?”
“That’s the kind of thing he does, cleans gutters—and such,” says Harlan.
“Reads like he searches for mushrooms at NASCAR. Did he find his snake there, too?”
“Jesus, Reba. It’s an obit, not a book.”
“What’s this about being enlightened?”
“Charlotte’s idea,” says Duncan. “She’s a minister.”
“According to this, Sam will be missed,” says Reba, folding The Standard and tossing it aside.
“Not likely,” says Harlan.
“Listen, Harlan. I didn’t call you over here to insult Sam. We have some planning to do.”
“We want the cheapest damn coffin he’s got.”
*
Seems like a lifetime ago, Harlan thinks before realizing it was a lifetime ago—when he stood behind red velvet curtains as Maryann walked through them and sang “Crazy.” Only this time there is an organ droning in the background as Harlan parts green tweed for her to exit. Looking as though she could still run a six-minute mile, Maryann leaves the anteroom at Forever Yours Funeral Chapel, places her hands on the casket (closed), and starts weeping. “I saw your mother act like this in Oklahoma!,” says Harlan.
“What were you doing there?” asks Lawson from a corner of the anteroom. “Who do you see out there besides family?”
Family—a word Harlan had not considered until now. Lawson, Duncan, Darlene, Maryann, and even her husband, Carl. Took a funeral to bring them together. “Sam, glad-handing a few friends of mine from work,” says Harlan, “Connie Arbeit, Reba. There’s Deputy Patti.”
“But do you see anyone who doesn’t belong here?”
Turning toward Lawson, Harlan says, “You mean other than a man at his own funeral with a snake around his neck.”
“I told you, the name is Carl,” says Lawson, stroking the snake between the eyes. “Just like my dad.”
Since Duncan informed him of the water they once drank, Harlan imagined it rising through Illinois soil much like the voices that rise in Duncan and the anger in himself. But this time, it’s not anger, it’s disappointment that surfaces at the sound of “my dad.”
“Did you ever think of me as your dad?”
“Not at first. I was only one year old when Mom married Carl. He was my dad, far as I knew. But by the time I turned sixteen, I couldn’t stand the guy—always telling me what to do, don’t smoke this or why’d you do that and shit. I named Carl, Carl, to get even. Started telling friends my real dad lived in Kentucky.”
“Don’t see why you can’t have two.”
“Cool,” says Lawson, stroking Carl-the-snake’s skin.
“Sam’s about to start. Just stay where you are and enjoy your funeral. And hold onto Carl,” says Harlan, parting the curtains, giving Lawson a glimpse of the chapel.
“Some coffin. What is that, plywood?” asks Lawson.
“Pine,” says Harlan. Then he slips out.
Around ten o’clock the previous night, Maryann and her husband had arrived at Harlan’s house with Lawson’s snake, which had been in Maryann’s care since Lawson fled Illinois. Harlan learned that when Maryann’s Carl wasn’t drumming, he ran a paint store. “I could give you some suggestions,” he’d said as he looked at Harlan’s drab walls.
They had gathered in Harlan’s living room, and all but Duncan had capped off the day with shots of Rowan Brothers’ best. “None for him. He hears enough voices as it is,” Darlene had said.
“Suppose my walls could use some color,” said Harlan before turning toward the couch, where the snake lay extended across Duncan’s and Lawson’s shoulders.
When the python’s head swiveled, Harlan noticed an unusual marking between its brown eyes. In the center of a coppery splotch, a smaller brown splotch looked like another eye. A three-eyed snake with a flickering forked tongue. “You have somewhere you can put that thing tonight?”
“Carl sleeps with me,” said Lawson.
“Not tonight. You and I’ll be sharing the foldout in the basement. The day I sleep with a snake . . .”
“We’ll sleep in your van.”
After finishing their bourbon, they’d turned in: Duncan and Darlene to the guestroom; Lawson and Carl to the van; and Harlan to his basement, just below his bedroom, where Maryann and her Carl slept.
But now at Forever Yours Funeral Chapel, seated in the front row between Harlan and Carl Baumgart, Maryann stands, steps to the casket, and sings, “Tears in Heaven,” tearfully.
Sounds as good as ever, thinks Harlan. And with Lawson alive as ever, Harlan is impressed by her tears. But surprisingly, by the third stanza, Harlan feels tears welling, too. Exactly who he’s crying for—who knows? Lawson? Eric Clapton? “’Cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven,” sings Maryann.
“Oh, but we do!” Sam shouts from behind a shortened pulpit. Wearing a black suit with a black string bowtie, white hair in place, he continues, “Thank you, Sister Maryann. Folks, in Psalms 6:6, King David said, I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping, drenching it with my tears. Like King David, we have wept. We have flooded our beds with tears for Brother Lawson.”
Could sell tears to a baby, Harlan thinks.
“But in Acts 21:13, Paul says, Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? And that’s what I ask you today. Why are you weeping, folks? This should be a day of celebration!”
He’ll be pulling out his banjo next, Harlan is thinking when he hears a door creak from the rear of the chapel.
“Can I get an amen!” shouts Sam.
The Five Susanna Chorus
1998
To this day, twenty-eight years after arriving in Bardstown, Harlan had not seen The Stephen Foster Story (aside from the time it took to heave a cherry bomb at Sam onstage). But Harlan’s parents were visiting, and his mother insisted they see it. The problem was that Harlan’s father had insisted on a pre-play tour of Rowan Brothers, where, beginning with a taste of the 160-proof white dog, straight from the pot still, and ending with a sampling of eight aged bottled bourbons, Franklin got sloshed. “They all same the taste to me,” he said, after sipping a sweet blend.
Running late for the show, Harlan took his parents to Camptown Diner. But after downing the roast beef special and drinking four cups of coffee, Franklin was no less sloshed.
Thirty minutes later, ten rows in front of Harlan, Franklin, and June, a young Stephen Foster was singing “Oh! Susanna” (too fast, thought Harlan, but at least Sam’s not on banjo), when all five Susannas lifted twirling skirts to their faces and grabbed bright-colored garters from their thighs. “Get a load a that!” said Franklin.
Taking his eyes off the stage, Harlan saw his father reaching for a garter as it sailed into the audience, reaching . . . reaching . . . before tumbling onto a woman in row nine, sending both Franklin and the woman into row eight on top of a young girl. “Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me,” Stephen Foster sang as a large man—the girl’s father, presumably—heaved Franklin into row seven.
One day, Harlan would attribute the rage he felt to the dry-cleaned water he’d consumed as a boy. But that day, with the help of his twenty-five-years-of-service Rowan Brothers ring on his finger, he broke the large man’s nose with no thought at all.
That night, Franklin, who had come to his son’s defense in the ensuing ruckus, slept soundly in a cell he shared with Harlan. Awake on his bunk, Harlan wasn’t thinking of the nose he had crushed, the play he had stopped, or the jail time he faced. Instead, he thought of the young deputy, Deputy Patti, who had found an extra pillow for Franklin before removing the weapon from Harlan’s right hand—the ring that had splintered a nose. “Procedure, Mr. Dillbeck. We’ll take good care,” she said with a voice as smooth as twenty-year bourbon.
In Cold Blood
“Amen!” replies everyone but Harlan. Instead, turning toward the door-creak, he sees an orange Fighting Illini hoodie and camouflage pants walking up the aisle—the face inside the hood, a man of forty, maybe fifty years, sporting a braided red goatee.
But it’s not the goatee, it’s the man’s bandaged right hand that grabs Harlan’s attention. Hadn’t Lawson’s friend Timmy lopped off a man’s finger? With his good hand, the man lowers his hoodie and grabs a seat beside Reba, three rows back. Harlan turns toward the anteroom. Between its green curtains, Lawson’s blue eye grows large.
As for the celebration Sam called for, it isn’t much of one. Duncan says, “No one sharpens mower blades like Lawson.” Maryann tells how Lawson once stayed up all night kneading Carl. “His snake,” she explains. “It swallowed a squirrel.”
Following Sam’s benediction, as the mourners pay final respects, Harlan positions himself beside Maryann and Carl-the-husband in front of Lawson’s casket. With one hand on the lid, Harlan is prepared if anyone, namely the red-bearded stranger, tries to look in. But when the man approaches, he barely glances at the coffin. “Sorry, dude,” he says, offering his left hand to Harlan.
“You a friend of Lawson’s?” Harlan asks, scanning the ink on the man’s left knuckles--D U K E--before giving them a shake.
“You might say. We both know a guy who asked me to see old Lawson off,” says Duke, whose amber eyes quiver like bourbon in a shot glass.
“Thanks for coming,” says Harlan.
“See you at the cemetery,” says Duke.
Next in line, wearing a flattering black silk dress and pearls, Deputy Patti takes Harlan’s hand in hers. “I’m so sorry, Harlan.”
“Thank you, Patti. Nice of you to come.”
“I don’t want to alarm you,” Patti says in a near whisper, “but we received word from the Jefferson County, Illinois, jail. They overheard a conversation between a prisoner and a visitor named Howard Earl, goes by Duke, the man you shook hands with. I saw his ink, too. That’s why I’m here, partly.” Continuing in a normal voice, she says, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs.—”
“Baumgart,” says Maryann. “Thank you for coming.”
“Patti, Maryann. Maryann, Patti,” says Harlan. “I owe a lot to Maryann and Carl, Lawson’s other dad.”
“Hear that, Lawson?” says Carl, performing a two-fingered drumroll on the coffin.”
Judging by the thumps, Harlan can tell that Sam forgot to fill the coffin—with newspapers, bricks, whatever—to give it heft. Duncan had suggested kitty litter. Kevin, empty bourbon bottles.
“Lawson’s only father, more like,” says Maryann, as though anger had been surfacing in her, too.
“Um, nice to meet you all,” says Patti. “See you both later.”
“No, wait,” says Harlan. “I’ll walk you to your car.” Then, looking at Maryann, Harlan says, “I appreciate you and Carl being there for Lawson when I wasn’t.”
“You mean for the first forty-six years?”
“You have a right to be upset. It’s just that one thing led to another. Your marriage for one. Then it seemed too late. Maybe now things can be different—for us all,” says Harlan, glancing at the anteroom.
“We’ll see. At least you got off to a start this week. I’ll give you that.” Turning to Patti, Maryann says, “It would have meant a lot to Lawson.”
A short time later, Duncan, Darlene, Maryann, and Carl Baumgart join Harlan near the hearse, parked outside Forever Yours. “Pretend it’s got a body in it,” Harlan tells them before Sam’s nephew Danny, the hearse driver, steps from the car.
With Danny pinch-hitting as sixth pall bearer, they lift the coffin above a dented bumper into the hearse, a dent for which Harlan had paid to be fixed. “Must a been a little guy,” Danny says as the pallbearers get into the car. Judging by Danny’s smirk, Harlan suspects Sam has filled him in. But all has gone well so far. Why take any chances? Aside from Duncan singing the chorus to “This Little Light of Mine” and Darlene whispering to Harlan, “He’s singing with Charlotte,” they drive to Rose Hill in silence.
Winding through the cemetery, Harlan spots a fluttering white tent above an open grave. Soon the hearse comes to a stop. Behind it, Patti, Connie Arbeit, and Duke step from their cars—a beat-up Dodge van in Duke’s case. Orange. After the pallbearers feign Lawson’s dead weight to the gravesite (even Danny affects a grimace), a black Lincoln Town Car drives up; Reba and Sam step out; and Sam begins.
“Four days ago, it pleased God to lead Lawson to his daddy’s rooftop. But brothers and sisters, Lawson did not die that day,” Sam says with a grin aimed at Harlan. “And though we commit his earthly vessel to the ground, Lawson is with his heavenly Father now, standing on the rooftop of heaven,” he shouts. “Hallelujah!
“Lawson’s family invites you to share a lunch that the good ladies at Sudden Glory Fellowship have prepared. Now, may the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God Almighty, and the spirit of the Holy Ghost be with you today and evermore. Amen.”
An hour later, Harlan is standing in the desert line at Sudden Glory Fellowship with Deputy Patti. He’s scooping cherry cobbler into a bowl when he feels a tap on his shoulder. “Got a question about Lawson’s snake,” says Duke.
“Duke, Patti. Patti, Duke,” says Harlan.
“How’d you know my name?” asks Duke. “Oh, yeah,” he says after Harlan taps his own left knuckles.
Up to now, standing in line at Sudden Glory, Harlan had managed to avoid Sam. What was there to say? Thanks, to a guy about to make five thousand dollars? (“He’d normally charge six,” Reba had said. “But since there’s no body . . .”) But here Sam is, cutting in line, envelope in hand. “Suppose you want to settle up,” Harlan says, squirting whipped cream on his cobbler.
“Now, Brother Harlan, we’ll get to that soon enough,” Sam says, stuffing the envelope into his suit pocket. “Nice to see you again, Deputy. Patti and I met when my nephew Danny got into a little trouble,” Sam explains to Harlan. “That where you two met? Who’s your friend?” Sam asks, looking up at Duke.
Tomorrow morning, Duncan and Darlene will depart for Illinois. Tomorrow afternoon, Maryann and Carl Baumgart will leave, too. The next day, Sam, Patti, and Harlan will meet with Judge Rowan, old Judge Rowan’s son, to discuss Harlan’s Talbott Inn charges. In the judge’s chamber, Patti will offer to create a Jazzercise for Anger Management Class, JAM; and Sam will consent with the judge’s decision to sentence Harlan to one year of JAM attendance (Wednesday nights, Bardstown High). Given the importance of Harlan’s master taster status and the fact that this Judge Rowan, as did the preceding one, has much at stake in the distillery, Harlan will not be surprised at his honor’s leniency. But Harlan will be grateful to the judge, to Patti, and to some extent, Sam.
“Duke, Sam. Sam—” Harlan says in the desert line. But faster than Harlan can complete the introduction, Duke yells, “Snake!” at the sight of Carl slithering from the kitchen, serpentining beneath the desert table, and coiling behind Sam. Faster than Lawson, running from the kitchen, can reach Carl, Duke pulls out a Smith and Wesson from underneath his Fighting Illini sweatshirt and takes aim—the snake a clear shot if not for Sam in the way. Giving no thought to more than forty years of grievances, Harlan lowers his shoulder and drives Sam into a double-frosted chocolate sheet cake.
PHWACKK-PHWACKK
“Drop the weapon,” says Deputy Patti, squeezing Duke’s bandaged hand and yanking down.
“Shitsake!” yells Duke, dropping his gun and himself to the yellow linoleum.
Rising from the sheet cake, wiping chocolate from his eyes, Sam looks to his right and says, “He’s been hit.” Standing beside Sam, Harlan runs his hand across his butt and thinks, not again.
“Hands behind your head,” demands Patti.
“I was aiming for the snake!” yells Duke.
Securing Duke’s hands with her pearls, Patti says, “Harlan Dillbeck, you have some
explaining to do. I thought your son was dead—before now.”
Before now? Harlan thinks, turning from Patti. And there, beneath the dessert table, motionless atop his snake, lies Lawson—a red rivulet running on the floor.
Two months from now, leaving Wednesday night JAM with Patti, Harlan will say, “I could never bring Carl to class. The vibrations from the music would scare her. She wrapped into a ball this morning when a fire truck went by. It’s what ball pythons do when they feel threatened. Like that day at Lawson’s funeral.”
“Wait, Carl is a she?”
“Yeah. Lawson didn’t know that when he named her. He didn’t think much of his other dad back then.”
“You know, Harlan, if you called her Carla it would clear things up.”
But for now, at Sudden Glory Fellowship, it’s still Carl. And the only visible part of Carl is the tip of her tail, sticking out from beneath Lawson, whom Harlan falls upon to embrace. Meanwhile, Duncan, Darlene, and Carl Baumgart rush to Lawson’s side. “Lawson!” Maryann screams, squeezing into the space beneath the table atop Harlan. Despite the shock of the moment, Harlan imagines the picture this would make: a stack of Carl-the-snake, Lawson, and Harlan himself, topped by Maryann beneath a table filled with cobblers and pies.
“Mom, Dad, you’re getting heavy. Carl’s been hit,” mumbles Lawson from below.
“Praise God!” shouts Sam nearby.
Maryann is first to stand, followed by Harlan, then Lawson. In a bleeding mottled ball, curls Carl. “It’s just a flesh wound, looks like. Someone, get a towel,” says Carl Baumgart, cue for Sudden Glory Parishioner, Connie Arbeit, to run into the kitchen and hustle a dishtowel back. With two wraps around the python’s body, Carl staunches Carl’s cold blood.
Still on his knees, Duke says, “You gotta believe me,” his red goatee braid swinging from Harlan to Patti as he pleads. “I didn’t come here to shoot nobody. I seen the obit, and I figured Timmy being in jail hadn’t, and since he was willing to pay a stack to kill Lawson, why not cash in? So, I visited Timmy and told him I thought Lawson might be in Kentucky with his daddy. I said I’d come over here and kill him and bring back the proof. That snake took me by surprise, is all.”
“What kind of proof?” asks Lawson, lifting Carl to his shoulders.
“That three-eyed snake. Everybody knows you wouldn’t go nowhere without it. Timmy, he said, ‘Bring me back Carl, alive, and I’ll know the snitch is dead.’ Timmy always liked that snake. Me, I thought whoever wound up with it would be happy to give it up. I’d tell Timmy I pushed you off your daddy’s roof, show him the obit, and give him the snake. Anyways, I was about to ask where the damn snake was, when there he was. Who was in the casket?”
“So, you tried to kill your proof, dumbfuck?” asks Lawson. “Sorry, Reverend.”
“Looks like,” says Duke. “Probably would have if I hadn’t shot left-handed.”
By this time, Reba has cleaned the chocolate from Sam’s face. She’s dabbing his lapel with a napkin, when Sam asks Lawson, “Love that serpent, do you?”
“Yes, sir,” Lawson says, stroking Carl’s third eye.
“Couldn’t see your way to give it up?”
“No, sir.”
With Duke on his knees, Sam, short as he is, looks Duke in the eyes and says, “Look here, you go back and tell this Timmy fella you got here too late. Lawson was already dead. You seen his body at the funeral. Make sure Timmy sees the obit, and tell him Harlan wanted the snake. How much for you to do that, Duke?”
“A thousand?”
“Two hundred.”
“Deal.”
“Harlan, give the man his money,” says Sam.
“And trust him to do what you say?”
Leaning into Duke’s left ear, Sam says, “Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Don’t He, Duke? First your finger, then God knows what. I have me some friends in Paris. They might just like to take a motorcycle ride to Illinois.”
“Bang on boyo!” says Duncan.
“I catch your drift, Reverend,” says Duke. “Paris?”
Ladling a drink from the punch bowl, Sam says, “Now then, Harlan, let’s have us a word. And thank you, Patti. Nice pearls.”
Following Sam upstairs into his office, Harlan sees two five-string banjos, a Deering standing in a chair and a Gibson lying in an open case across Sam’s desk. “Have a seat,” says Sam.
Harlan has not held a banjo since he tossed his Kay into the Beech Fork, but picking up the Deering, he can’t resist playing the riff he used to play when Jerry Lawson introduced him in the Ramblers.
“‘Clinch Mountain Backstep.’ Not bad,” Sam says, before lowering his fruit punch to the desk, picking up his Gibson, and playing the first nine notes of “Dueling Banjos.” Pausing, Sam looks at Harlan while grinning that shit-same grin from decades ago.
If it were up to Harlan’s mind, he would not accept the duel. More than forty years since he’d last played. He’d have to be a fool to accept Sam’s challenge. Da-da da da da da da da daa, Harlan’s fingers reply.
Da da da da da da da daa, plays Sam, before Harlan’s mind wins out. Lowering the Deering, Harlan sits and pulls out his checkbook. “What do I owe you? Let’s get this over with.”
After putting the Gibson in its case, Sam reaches into his suit pocket, opens the envelope, and says, “According to this, five thousand three hundred eighty dollars and thirty-seven cents—for the Norwich Pine, taxes, and my services. But seeing as how you might have saved me from being shot, let’s call it an even five thousand three hundred. Fair enough?”
“How about five thousand four hundred and you put in a word for me with the judge.”
“About you almost shooting me at the Talbott?”
“What else would I mean?”
“Fifty-four hundred it is. But just so you know, I did this all for Reba’s sake. I could lose my license over this.”
“Your license to steal, you mean,” says Harlan as he rips out a check.
Picking up the Gibson, Sam launches into “Camptown Races,” in D, to no surprise. Glaring down at Sam, Harlan picks up the Deering and, in G, joins in—discord the likes of which raises Reba up the stairs and, for all Harlan knows, Stephen Foster from the dead.
Two months later, leaving Wednesday night JAM, Harlan says, “Good point, Patti. But Lawson’s called her Carl for nearly thirty years. Be hard to call her Carla now.”
“Thirty years? Pythons live that long?” asks Patti, walking hand-in-hand with Harlan down the steps from Bardstown High. A full moon shining in the east.
“Out in the wild, they don’t. Kind of like us in a way. You and me could live a long time, now,” says Harlan, giving Patti’s hand a squeeze.
“Listen to you,” says Patti, squeezing back.
Looking down at their clasped hands, in the mix of moon and streetlight, Patti’s slender brown fingers complete the back of Harlan’s white hand. “Lawson’s working graveyard unloading a late shipment of barrels,” says Harlan. “How about you stay at my house tonight?”
Up to now, Harlan and Patti’s relationship has consisted of meals at Camptown Diner and Jazzercise at Bardstown High. But last Wednesday night had ended with a hug on Patti’s doorstep.
“I have to be at work by seven in the morning. You’ll have to drop me off at my house by six.”
“Yes, officer.”
Walking down the sidewalk toward Harlan’s van, Patti says, “I’ve been meaning to ask, that day at the church, when you and Sam went into his office, what did you talk about—before you started playing?”
“Nothing much. Sam wanted his money.”
“That’s it?”
“That and he wanted me to know that he did Lawson’s funeral for Reba’s sake.”
“Well, he did talk to Judge Rowan for you,” says Patti.
“Between you and me, I paid him to speak to the judge.”
“I didn’t hear that,” says Patti as Harlan aims a key at his van and punches the opener. “What is it between you two, anyway?”
“It’s a long story. But just because two men can’t stand the other, it doesn’t mean they can’t help each other out when— Oh hell, I don’t know. Let’s go home,” says Harlan, opening the door for Patti to his Odyssey.
John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who formerly practiced in Arizona, California, and Nevada. He is also retired as an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborist and currently holds seven active categories of California state contracting licenses, including the highest category of Class A General Engineering. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press). John has had pieces published in A Gathering of the Tribes, Alternating Current, Blue Mountain Review, Clark Street Review, Conceit, Homestead Review, Line Rider Press, Lucky Jefferson, Oddball Magazine, Palm Springs Life, Pegasus, Pen and Pendulum, Saint Ann’s Review, The Courtship of Winds, The Mindful Word, The Writing Disorder, and Wilderness House Literary Review. |
The Season of Liars and Thieves
Santa Clause's Christmas was coming, and sleep was elusive as Codger incessantly stressed over what he could afford to spend on the three grandchildren living in his home as they lie safe and warm in their beds. Because of recent events he didn't know how he could guide his dysfunctional family through the next year until the promise of a new harvest was upon him. And, he was overwhelmed with misgivings as to what could go wrong next year. This had been the season of liars and thieves, and once they establish a foothold years can pass before their rapaciousness can be rooted out. Any old school stoner knew that they must be eradicated in order for marijuana to become reacquainted with its original premise of being the drug of peace and love, of being the only drug that users willingly and generously share, of being the harmless and good-natured trickster that laughs in the faces of all its oppressors and joins in the mirth of all its proponents.
His stepchildren, friends of his stepchildren, friends of their friends, and even his friends had taken advantage of him with impunity. They had gnawed the financial and emotional flesh from his bones and now seemed intent to pick the carcass clean. Any generosity or trust that Codger had extended towards them was met with swift and unrelenting cruelty. Desperation had swept across the high plateau turning otherwise decent caring folks into greedy animals and those of suspect morality into degenerate shysters. Codger had had his fill of them, had wanted out, had wanted a better life, and had come to the realization that he would never get out and that this was the last crack at a decent life that he was ever going to get.
He was so disrespected by the local millennials that some had become blatant enough to not even bother to drop the "Old" in front of his nickname. He knew that most of them involved in the local weed trade looked upon him as a sentimental old fool too stuck in his ways to embrace wax and shatter. He also knew that back in the day he would have banged their heads together to see if any cranial matter dropped out which was something he sincerely doubted because it had become evident that their infatuation with the butane processed cannabis byproducts was destined to fuck everything up. While the kids claimed that wax and shatter were purer forms of THC and required less to produce a stronger high, he lamented that the drug of peace and love had come to requiring a blow torch for ignition in much the same manner as crack cocaine. And as for requiring less, how would these kids really know? because all Codger had ever seen them do was hit on all of it until it was completely gone.
Marijuana was now being sold by the gram, and the recent staunchest proponents of the new "green rush" were cross-over corporate douche-bags so naive of the causalities of a national seventy-nine year marijuana probation that they didn't seem to realize that all the advances in quasi-legalization could all be taken away with the slightest shift in federal politics. Their false sense of security irritated him to no end and he took to referring to their new industry standards as, "amateur hour." And, the new paradigm they imposed was gaining inertia with no end in sight.
This season had been an ordeal of gargantuan proportions, and its ongoing cavalcade of horrors hadn't played themselves out yet. Everything started out innocently enough. At planting time in the spring hope and a spirit of generosity reign supreme. Growers are keen on committing to giving a little of the harvest to this guy and that gal. Everyone looks upon the eventual crop as limitless and the solution to all their financial problems. They diligently fertilize and tie the plants eagerly awaiting the summer solstice which is the first indication that the final reward is within reach. Each day brings a little less daylight, with the increasing amount of darkness signaling the plants to get on with their efforts of procreation. To perpetuate the species is the goal of all organisms in nature, and marijuana is no different. The physically demanding pre-spring soil preparation work prior to planting leaves grower's hands raw and their muscles stiff and aching. It's a rewarding pain mixed with equal measures of humility and satisfaction.
Entering his seventh season at what law enforcement would classify as a "commercial grower" he was up for trying something new. He never grew more than 99 individual plants knowing full well that the difference between 99 and 100 is one year versus five years in the federal pen if the feds decided to ignore states rights and make an example out of him. Previous harvests had proved aggravating and exhausting by requiring up to three solid months of 14 hour days, seven days a week, to get it all in and trimmed, processed, bagged, and ultimately sold. Three months with his fingers stuck together with gooey resin, with his clothes reeking, and avoiding being seen in public before the harvest would wind down and he could once again rejoin the human race. Hiring help was always a risky proposition because loose lips sink ships, and any aggrieved helper could turn on him causing Codger more problems than he could ever cause them. Not that he wanted to cause anyone any harm. "Live and let live," was the credo he had lived by his entire life, although he had to admit that his lifetime had been filled with mooches, tools, con men, shysters, and out and out thieves. Oftentimes he felt that there must be a bright red "S" standing for sucker emblazoned across his forehead. He must give off a vibe that invited mistreatment. He didn't know what it was but he didn't doubt it for a minute. The preponderance of the evidence was that he was a sap, and seemingly unable to change or otherwise escape his lot in life, the only thing he could do was to avoid contact with the rest of mankind. Most marijuana growers live a lonely existence, anyway. It's a strange business because the only guarantee of an innocuous lifestyle is secrecy concerning that lifestyle. The less people that know anything about the business the greater the chances that there will continue to be a business, but somebody has to know something about the business or there would be no need to be in business. Anybody who doesn't believe that cops routinely visit the popular marijuana procurement web site "Weed Maps" is a fool in waiting. The grower's thread of commonality with any other form of business, however, is that nothing happens until there is a sale. Sales are paramount, and an affinity for salesmanship is king. He realized that he was limiting his opportunities by preferring to fly under the radar and find buyers through referrals and relationships built up over time, but he also realized that slow and steady also served to limit his exposure.
No matter what, his primary desire was to limit the drudgery of the harvest in any way he could. To that end, Codger agreed to devote 24 of his 99 planting spaces to growing another man's crop. It was a basic grow contract type of arrangement. The other guy provided the clones from a strain of his choosing, while Codger incurred all expenses and provided all of the labor associated with bringing the plants to harvest. At harvest time, the other guy could choose any or all of the plants for a per unit price of $1,500, or he could decline them all. The selected plants would be chopped and removed from the site while any unselected plants would become the sole property of Codger. Everything went splendidly well at first. An indoor strain of OG Kush reached five feet in height by early August and expectations ran extremely high. Then, unexpectedly, disaster struck in the form of an infestation of botrytis, a fungal infection that Coder had never experienced before. The coddled indoor strain simply didn't possess the genetic proclivity to resist what all his other outdoor strains had never fallen prey to. A growing program which stressed fast growth and rapid turnover of as many as six crops a year under indoor lighting conditions with an emphasis on the mainlining of readily available nutrients had produced weak tissued plants that couldn't withstand outdoor conditions. It was a hard pill to swallow. First was the loss of a potential $36,000 in income, and second was the admission of the other guy that this had happened to him before. That would have been useful information for Codger to consider before agreeing to the arrangement, and Codger was left with the overwhelming feeling that withholding information is about as close a cousin to lying as it gets. The botrytis spread through the OG Kush like wildfire, and he was forced to pull them all and remove them from the garden as quickly as possible or risk losing his entire crop. Once the disease got a foothold, it didn't want to be eradicated, and he engaged is a season long fight of removing it from his previously resistant strains which equated to a ten percent loss of what he had left.
Codger took it on the chin. Perhaps he should have been wiser and performed a more thorough due diligence. Perhaps he was blinded by thoughts of what the other guy had to gain without so much as a passing notion that he most certainly didn't have nearly as much to lose as Codger did. The old man cursed his naivety and stupidity but took heart in the fact that two thirds of the crop could still save his season with any luck at all. Events to unfold would soon prove that such was is short supply.
It had been a long hot summer that caused the plants to steal more time in the maturation process. When an organism only gets one season to live, who can blame it for dragging its feet in the inevitable march towards death? Strains that had previously hit peak bud hardness and THC content by mid-September plodded along into mid-October. Codger began trimming operations with a sense of urgency. An early season frost could spell disaster, and one could occur as early as the beginning of November or not until well after Thanksgiving. The safe thing to do would be to pick up the pace as if it wasn't blistering to begin with. Although green trimming was far easier than dry trimming the slightest hint of freezing weather would dictate bringing in the entire crop within a day, hanging it, and struggling through a dry trim. Codger hoped for the best, but at the start of the second week of November, the frost came signaling the onslaught of winter cold that descended with a vengeance. All the hang rooms were filled to the gills, the wood stove perpetually stoked, the complaints of cold hands on the part of his helpers thoroughly ignored. Slowly the one pound bags began to accumulate on the finished product table, and slower still the buyers drifted in. They were pickier and cheaper than ever before and they weren't shy about walking away to visit those growers willing to be beaten down. Codger determined to wait them out. They could lie all they wanted to about the quality of the other guy's weed but he knew what he had, and that eventually they would be back. To keep the price up he turned to fronting smaller amounts of five pounds or less to an out-of-state dealer; a kid in his mid-twenties who he had shaky experiences with in the past. The kid came back within a week of his last visit, threw half of the cash on the table and attested that the marijuana was moldy. He had a sample of moist weed, about two ounces in all, in which there was no mold. Codger suspected that the kid had let the bags get super hot in the trunk of his car causing condensation to occur and the product to thus moisten - an amateur move to be sure. Live and learn, send this fool on his way, and chalk it up to experience; no real harm, no foul. The old man was soon to discover that the kid had neglected to bring back all of the remaining weed that he was complaining about claiming that he didn't want to risk crossing state lines with such an inferior product. The kid stated that he felt entitled to it because of the inconvenience he had suffered, and that he might pay up if his arm was twisted. Between him and his larger twenty something companion Codger knew the odds of a physical confrontation were against him, and that even if he prevailed that he would never see his money; that this lying thief had decided that there was no more that could be squeezed out of the old man, and that he most certainly would not be coming back. Codger had a stun gun within reach as well as a 357 caliber rifle hidden in the next room, but decided to let it go. He threw the bastards out knowing that he was $2,500 worse for wear. He hoped for better dealings to come, but all that would actually come would be the crippling blow that would be the defining moment in the season of liars and thieves.
Thanksgiving was coming. He wanted to visit friends over in Phoenix. He grew weary of the toiling harvest. Again, he let down his guard by rationalizing that a big score was what he needed. A big score to right this listing ship. A big sore as the payoff for all the work and worry he had endured during this trying season. He felt he deserved it, that it was due to him. And then, as if by magic or miracle, take your pick, a big score presented itself, and the old fool jumped at it.
Young Dickey had been frequenting Codger's property more or less for the past decade. A friend of his three stepdaughters, he and his girlfriend had even lived in the guest house with the youngest stepdaughter for half a year. As usual, none of them saw the need to pay any rent, despite the dictates of their signed lease, and in disgust Codger eventually evicted them all. A few years passed as Dickey rose in the ranks amongst local pot brokers and slowly started to regain Codger's trust by cutting him favorable deals, and by keeping the price up for him. Codger taught Dickey how to grow and advised him that with his recent penchant for hard work that he had everything he needed to make it in this business, if he could curb his cockiness. At first Dickey seemed to take this to heart. Now a father of three children, he displayed what Codger felt was a maturing responsibility by working a job in construction during the summer months as the crops swelled in the soil and growers clung to the promise of a fruitful season on the cusp of realization. Codger had even bought Christmas gifts for Dickey's children over the last two years. Any generational or other differences between the two men were apparently kept in check, at least at harvest time. Any beefs between growers and buyers are put on hiatus when the weed is flowing from the field to the end toker. They could always be reignited during the dog days of summer when the plants were seemingly set on automatic pilot and all that can be heard in the gardens is the faint but vibrant hum of cannabis growth heralding the insatiable march towards flowering and the rich robust hardening of the nugget-like buds. It's a peaceful restful time, and most of those beefs waft away on gentle summer breezes. In actuality it's the calm before the storm, portending: take your rest now all ye growers because sleep will be evasive once the trimming begins in earnest.
Come November Dickey had orchestrated a few smaller scale deals, always with the hint that something really big was in the works. Codger knew that more deals are eluded to than are ever realized; it's just the nature of the business. In fact, lies are frequently told by potential buyers in hopes of holding their place in line. Experienced growers would take all the scuttlebutt in stride as they sold as much as they could to whoever they could as soon as they could - first come, first served, in other words, with all sales being final. The third Sunday of November Codger's trimming and watching of football was interrupted by Dickey and three associates consisting of two men and a woman. Codger didn't like strangers at the trim house, especially during the season, but Dickey vouched for them and further intimated that they were the driving force behind the previously alluded to big score, a megadeal involving a hundred pounds. They bought one pound each of Codger's four remaining available strains and left. Dickey stayed behind to explain that the deal was going down on Tuesday, and inquired as to how much Codger could contribute to it? Thirty pounds was what Codger could have ready by then. Dickey would pick it up Tuesday afternoon and pay on Wednesday. In past dealings Codger had frequently fronted Dickey five to ten pounds, and given the stature of this megadeal, thirty seemed like a drop in the bucket. Codger was about to receive his big score for the season, $30,000, and he was sure that Dickey had built his cut into his negotiations with the buyers; at least he said he had. Codger marveled at Dickey's drive and organizational abilities, because to get a hundred pounds cobbled together amongst the local mom and pops in two days time was no small feat. The young man had certainly grown up and was now poised to rise amongst the ranks of big buyers and in the annals of local weed lore. Fast becoming a legend, he probably wouldn't be working summer construction any more. Codger was happy for Dickey and happier still to see the season ending on a high note. Dickey made the pickup on Tuesday and called early Wednesday to advise Codger that the buy had been delayed by a day. He volunteered to bring the pot back if Codger was nervous or upset by this. Codger was nervous, but saw little advantage in having thirty pounds coming in and going back out in the span of a day. He always tried to keep traffic to a minimum and not draw attention to his place of operation. He trusted Dickey for they had a relationship that had seen the test of time, that had weathered the trials of resolving generational differences, that was now poised to prove to be extremely lucrative in the future. Furthermore, he knew some of the moms and pops that had thrown into the deal. Most were cautious and experienced and had been in the game for years. He would have his money early Thursday morning, none the worse for wear.
Con men are more frequently referred to as con artists because there is an art in getting otherwise intelligent people to believe in their yarns. Codger got that sick sinking feeling midmorning Thursday when his calls to Dickey went unanswered. Then came that fateful call from another grower, a friend who stated that he was standing amidst the chaos of what was formally Dickey's family's living room. They had obviously cleared out in a rush, and there was nothing of value, absolutely nothing, left behind. Codger sank to his knees and rolled his throbbing head against the cold concrete floor. He couldn't cry. He was too stunned to cry. What a fool he was. What a sap. What a patently stupid old man. His family would suffer; he would suffer; his friends would suffer at the hands of Dickey's betrayal.
There was precious little sympathy for an obvious fool. Friends and family asserted that he certainly should have known better. A few said they felt sorry for Codger but there was an underlying air of disbelief and false pity bordering on contempt. Codger couldn't even summon up a spiteful hate for Dickey from the depths of his being. When someone gets hit for thirty large the overwhelming emotion amongst them self and others is that they somehow had it coming. Codger didn't have it within himself to seriously contemplate killing Dickey if he ever came across him again. Someone capable of that most definitely wouldn't be growing the drug of peace and love as a means to survival. Codger asked himself how would he feel if he were to mysteriously receive a photo of Dickey through the mail with a bullet hole through his head, and he had to admit that he wouldn't want that to happen. He had been duped, outmaneuvered, and made a complete fool of, and he would have to live with that knowledge through the next trying growing season with its requisite perilous harvest. Who could he turn to? Certainly not the police. Dickey knew this when he cooked up his treachery and picked out his marks. Codger had to wonder what Dickey could have accomplished if only he had used his considerable intellect for good. Both men would have to live with the parts they played in this fiasco of greed and gullibility, and unless someone did avenge the wrong Dickey had done them, he most certainly would have to live with it longer.
Codger was shaken. Codger was numb. Codger no longer cared if anyone reinserted the "Old" in front of his nickname once the gossip spread like wildfire throughout the small community where nothing is kept secret for very long. Let them laugh. Let them choke on their laughter. Most didn't have the balls to do what he did to survive, and most wouldn't be able to pick themselves up and get back in the game. The depression started to begrudgingly lift as life wore on, and Codger accepted the shortcomings of his age.
While chewing on a slice of pizza, one of his front teeth broke free from previous dental work, dropped to the table, and rolled onto the floor. There was an ugly gap left behind with just a stub of previous cement protruding below the gum line. Nothing bespeaks poverty more than missing teeth, and Codger had been losing many of them over the course of the last four years. Up until now they were to the sides of his mouth, and he at least had a presentable smile. Trying to preserve some semblance of dignity he glued it back in. The tooth hung on precariously for three weeks before breaking loose again. He saved it in a jar of mouthwash so that he might be able to reuse it in the event of a job interview or an important meeting, as if any such thing was ever going to happen again. He practiced speaking in front of the bathroom mirror with his lips covering all his remaining teeth to see if he could pull it off without detection. He couldn't. Watching television, he couldn't help but notice the gleaming smiles on everyone else, in particularly talk show authors hawking their most recent titles. He had dreamed for years that he would be among their company, and now that dream was gone, at least for three or four months, but most likely for the remainder of his life.
The process of aging, that great buzz kill that eventually afflicts us all, was now forefront in his thoughts. How many years did he have left? And, more importantly, what would his quality of life be during those years? He had been turned down for a $250,000 life insurance policy, and had lowered his sights to a run-of-the-mill burial insurance policy. An even deeper depression overtook him once again. He didn't want to go to bed at night, and he most certainly didn't want to get up in the morning. He forced himself to perform the most basic of tasks: cook, clean, get the kids to school, but the thought of doing any meaningful projects simply exhausted him. From experience, he knew that he would be forced from this numbing slumber come planting season, that motivation comes from action and not the other way around, that the warmth and vibrant activity of spring would snap him out of it. But for today, right here and right now, all he wanted to do was lay his head on his pillow and go to sleep.
He felt an occasional tightness in his chest and pain between his shoulder blades when he carried his granddaughter of two years about his property on his shoulders on the quarter mile hiking trail he had cut through the blanketing chaparral. He was determined that she would be a chip off the old block. She loved being outdoors and displayed genuine excitement and glee as she pointed out the rabbits and squirrels scurrying about for cover on the ground and the gliding ravens overhead. To be at peace amongst nature in the company of the one person who might carry on his environmental ethic gave him great solitude, so he ignored the pain. He would push on through, too tough and determined to concede to defeat. The liars and the thieves could wrong him no more for he would be sager, he would be more dilligent, he would be more stubborn. He would be what he had never before wanted to be - a bitter old man - who wouldn't trust anyone anymore, if that's what he needed to be. A new growing season was now upon him and things would turn out differently and most certainly for the better; if they were to turn out at all. This upcoming season would be the sweetest of the sweet seasons. They could still occur if he were wiser, if he were at all lucky, and he would be certain to make his luck this time around.
With the coming of March Codger bucked up and started preparing the garden for a mid-May planting. It would be wise to turn newly purchased manure and fertilizers, as well as other soil amendments, into the rows early so that they could mellow and blend together in anticipation of receiving the new seasons' root stock. He wouldn't get rich this year or any other year for that matter. To simply survive was an achievable goal, a truth that permeates the lives of other growers worldwide. It's true of the poppy farmers of Afghanistan, it's true of the coca leaf farmers of Peru, it's true of the migrant workers of America's southwest, and it's true of the mom and pop marijuana growers of California's interior plateaus; and that truth is that the person most closely tied to the soil always makes the least. While unfair in the extreme, this truth is the gateway to another truth, that being that what they get will be enough to survive. Usually not well, but to survive just the same. The heartbeat of any planting season is that not only will the plants be granted another year of life, but also will be the lives of those who plant the plants. The humming rhythm of all human life on earth starts with the planting season, and this season would be no different. Codger forgot all his troubles and worries if only for this brief moment in time. It was time to put the plants in the ground and start this humble yet majestic cycle anew. It lifted his spirits, it gave him fleeting hope, it renewed his life.
On Mother's Day the long awaited planting of his beloved marijuana clones commenced. Codger's heart soared at the thought of the plants taking hold and then taking off. Marijuana's will to first survive and then ultimately flourish is awe inspiring He was halfway done and pushing for the finish line when the inevitable happened - the culmination of one life even as others were about to begin. The ultimate cycle of nature being brought full circle. His fingers and toes started to tingle while the pain between his shoulder blades stabbed like a dagger. Then his heart wretched, sputtered, and wretched violently again. Codger could see the bright green flush of growth immediately coursing through the freshly planted marijuana that was not yet three minutes in the ground, and yet already urgently searching for the sun. What a beautiful thing he thought as his head rested gently upon the nutrient rich well prepared soil. And, it was a beautiful thing for his personal darkness to come as he gazed upon the plants while thinking of himself as fortunate indeed to be able to wish them well for the season.
There would be no more of these sweet seasons. There would be no more memories of his worst season. There would never again be a season of liars and thieves. There would be no more.
The end.
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BEKAH SCHOFIELD
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CHEYANNE BOONE
CHRISTIAN MCCULLOCH
DAVID HOWARD
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HARRISON ABBOTT
H. E. GRAHAME
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IVANKA FEAR
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JOHN C. KRIEG
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JON KIRSCH
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KE'SHAUN MCCRAY
KRISTEN PETRY
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LUIS CASIANO
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MATTHEW TRUCCO
NATE VIRAMONTES
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NICOLE SARRANTONIO
RUTH Z. DEMING
SEANA BRUFF
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SUSAN TAYLOR
TERRY SANVILLE
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TIMOTHY WELDON
TINA STAGER
WILLIAM KEVIN BURKE
WILLIAM WOMACK
YASH SEYEDBAGHERI