"Nothing will Come of Nothing" (Chapter one thru three; a light drama, short novelette)

1964-71

Chapter I
Tony’s Background


Tony Garcia was once a karate expert, champion in San Francisco. To be frank, I wasn’t really all that impressed by the so called designation given him on behalf of the Gojo kai, Karate Dojo, but it meant a lot to Tony. I doubt he cared for karate all that much, yet painfully he learned it, and skillfully to offset any emotions concerned with inferiority he might inhibit, he was a shy kind of person, he had felt on being treated as a Mexican at Berkley University. By and large, there was a certain comfort in knowing as a second degree black belt, he could kick the daylights out of most anyone at the university, should they get too superior with him over his cultural roots, although a nice kind of lad, good natured, he never fought except at exhibitions, or at the dojo, and with other karate experts. He was a top pupil of one of the greatest masters of karate from Japan. He wasn’t really very fast, but his style and techniques, and force, made him a deadly opponent. All in all, this gave Garcia some kind of satisfaction, of some odd sort. When I knew him, for I was studying karate at the same dojo as he, while with the rest of the karate black belts in San Francisco, he seemed to fade into the woodwork; no one in particular could point him out by name. And during expositions, when I would be taking pictures of the sparing, he’d get mad if he saw one of himself receiving a kick or punch from his opponent. And he held a suspicion that perhaps I had it in for him, and liked the other guy more because he was white, and his face would show it, as if an elephant had sat on it, but I’d simply say, “The Camera speaks for itself.”
Tony Garcia was a member of high society, through his father being one of he richest Mexican families in San Francisco, and through his mother being from one of the oldest. He attended a prep school prior to going to Berkley. And played some baseball, basketball and football, and no one seemed to inflict any kind of race consciousness on him. That is to say, no one ever made him feel like a wetback, or Mexican that didn’t belong where he was. Upon graduation from college, he married, Colleen Macaulay, a blond haired Caucasian, he was married fifteen months, and had two children, a girl and a boy. Spent most of the $150,000-dollars his family gave him, with it taking a trip for 90-days around the world. Thereafter, he fell into a depression, with only $20,000-dollars left, the rest of the estate being in his mother’s hands, after his father had died, the previous year. Now his marriage became rather repellent, a life of domestic discontent, with a wife that wanted a rich husband, and so Tony at twenty-four years old, and his wife at twenty-two, were separated when Colleen found herself a new prosperous lover in Paris, a pianist twice her age. In any case he had been thinking of leaving her out of boredom, but he felt, pity for her, had he left her, and had he left, he would have underprivileged her of himself and his means, and so she simply beat him too the punch. For the most part, it was probably a most healthful departure needed by both individuals.
The divorce took place quickly after their separation, and Tony went to the East Coast, New York City, and mingled among the literary people of the city, and the artists thereof, with his $20,000-dollars left, and a $200 a month income his mother decided to give him, as a bonus to leave her alone. He found a job at a newspaper, and became a regular for the weekly cultural section of the paper, an assistant editor and then the sole editor, and with the new found prestige of editing, and seeing his name in print, he started writing his own novel. But the novel had to be written chapter by chapter on his own time, he could not afford to do it full time, as he would have liked to. Plus, much of his free time was spent courting the lady who wished to bring the paper up, her father owning quite a lot of stock in the newspaper, and she was very demanding to say the least: with his free time, his work time, and his writing time. Once this woman saw the impending downfall of the paper appearing, she grabbed $20,000-dollars from the paper, and Tony, and off they went to Germany, and spent a year in Frankfurt, and some time in Munich, and Heidelberg, where she had attended the university, for four years. Then to Paris, all this time, she supported Tony in his writing of his novel. At this time and juncture, Tony had three or four friends, me, Chick Evens, his girlfriend, Katharine Cooley, Hans Gunderson, from Darmstadt, Germany, who was now a part time professor at the University of Heidelberg, and was now in Paris, and Bernadette Vanderbilt, whom took a liking to Chick Evens, and whom Tony took a liking to her.
During the following summer months in 1970, Ms Cooley’s attitude appeared to be changing toward Tony, perhaps because his was changing and taking a more interest in Bernadette, she wanted him to marry her; at this time, Tony’s mother, up his allowance to $500 a month, making things more available for him.
He was moderately happy, but I suppose he preferred San Francisco or New York City to Paris, both familiar to him, but Katharine wanted Europe, if not Paris or Berlin, to be his place to discover his writing style, and complete his first novel. And when he finished the novel that summer it was rather good, but it was poorly received by the public, he was an unknown name, it was called “With and Without.”
Thereafter, he simply went to visit me, often at the bookstore “Shakespeare And Company,” to see how I was doing on my book, and to see if Bernadette Vanderbilt was there, and Hans Gunderson was staying at their apartment for a while Ms Cooley’s friend, and Ezra Daniel, a poet from St. Paul, Minnesota, my home town, who attended the University of Minnesota with me, he was working on a book of verse, living with me at the time, on the West Bank, in a small apartment, near Notre Dame Cathedral. This was when Bernadette, Ezra and I decided to go to the Oktoberfest together, in Munich, and Tony wanted to come along, but not with Katharine Cooley. And so there were four of us. This was when Tony started playing bridge instead of reading at the bookstore with Bernadette, and started working out at the local gym, as if trying to impress and get to know Bernadette better.
I became aware of Tony’s attitude towards Katharine one evening when he and Katharine and Bernadette and I were eating and drinking at the Lipp’s, Café. We had our dinner, coffee and wine, Tony mentioned to her he was going with us to the Oktoberfest, and Hans Gunderson could keep her company when he was gone. He told her he needed to get away from everything familiar, and just be with friends. She suggested he go to Heidelberg, or Augsburg, with Hans, he was going to do some discussion groups, and seminaries, and he could help, even get paid for his work, and that way all three of them could be together.
“I don’t know anybody in any of those places,” he said.
And I was going to tell Katharine she could come along, but Bernadette kicked me under the table, on purpose, before it came out of my mouth, she whispered, “I know what you’re going to say, but don’t she’s been with him a while know she knows everything about him, she’s a fine girl, let her go with Hans alone, maybe they’ll fall in love, and he appreciates her, maybe this separation will be more useful than he plans.”
I was kicked the second time by Bernadette, to insure I understood what I was suppose to do—be quite, and mind my own business.
“Hell,” I said, “why not go to Heidelberg for the illumination, it’s a great event and has festive activities, you and Hans can go,” I told Katharine.
Tony looked relieved. But Bernadette kicked me again. Then I said, “I think we got to go,” to both Tony and Katharine.
“Yes,” said Katharine.
“Oh, well,” I remarked, “let’s go Bernadette.”
“We’ll be okay,” said Tony, “go on now.”
“I’m not sure,” said Katharine thinking about my suggestion, “but we will be fine though,” she added.
“We’ll see you tomorrow at the bookstore,” I remarked in passing.
“Goodbye, good night, Chick,” said Tony, and started to finish his wine, looking at Bernadette as she touched up her face in a mirror, unnoticing Tony’s interest.


Chapter II
To Europe and the
Novel


That summer Tony Garcia went for a weekend to Augsburg, with Katherine and Hans, and Bernadette, with his novel, and it was accepted by a fairly first-rate publisher, with the help of Arthur Burg, a rich Polish-German Jew, living in Augsburg, and a friend to Hans Gunderson. It had previously been published by a Paris publisher, with a first edition of only 1200 copies, which only sold three hundred to date, it would be now translated into German, as well as French, still the American edition had not seen the light of day though. After the publication, and contract, his attitude on the way back to Paris, made it unlivable for the other three, and he was flirting with Bernadette, and a few women at the publishing firm. He was now more enthusiastic about remaining in Europe however; the first German edition would be 5000-copies. Arthur Burg, as well as his associates at the publishing firm, commended his novel decidedly, and his outlook had shifted to a new zenith. And now he was falling in love, head over heals with Bernadette, and Bernadette, who had an eye for Chick Evens, was simply being kind to Tony, she had no real interest in him, but she did catch Mr. Burg’s eye, whom was in cloth designing filed, the world of fashion, likened to Lilly Ann, in San Francisco, and the publishing business, his income for the year of 1967, was 53-million dollars. As far as Tony went, it would have seemed to an on looker, he had never been in love in his entire life.
For the most part, Tony had married out of desperation of having someone available for him, and I would guess, Katherine was his rebound, and now he was starting to realize he was an eye-catching number to women. This changed his personality in the following months, and was not all that pleasant to have around, for his book was doing well, going into a second printing of 12,100-copies, and even a publisher from New York was taking interest in his English manuscript, and there seemed to have been some connections between New York, Paris and Germany on the matter, and several thousand dollars in contracts in the making.
Then there was another thing that took place. Tony started reading Frederic Manning’s “Scenes and Portraits,” (1930 edition), it sounds as if it should have been, no big deal, but one must have an open mind, and some wisdom to go along with this reading, and he read it, and reread it, it is a very ominous and indulging book, from the mystic writings of “The King of Uruk,” and those of “At the House of Euripides,” to scenes dealing with “Paradise of the Disillusioned,” if read too early in life, it can be, as I mentioned before, more menacing than reassuring. It recounts impressive, fables, if not truths hidden between the lines, truths, philosophical substance, other writes have missed, in the ardent adventures, and struggles of humanities existence.
For a man to take this serious at twenty-five, as a handbook to life, can be most weighty if not grave, it would have seemed to me, there were more practical books for him to read, more that he was equipped for and he created some uncertainties because of his impressions, for on the study of the whole book, he felt it was pretty sound. No one quite understood how this book influenced him, but it did.
“Hello Tony,” I said. “Did you stop by to cheer me up, Chick?”
“How about you and me going to Tibet, and get some Chinese wisdom and write some spiritual idioms?”
“No,” I commented.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I’ve never had any interest in going to Tibet, or writing sacred things, or freezing in the high mountains, I got enough of that growing up in Minnesota.”
“Those monks in Asia got a lot of wisdom, you know.”
“They look awfully boring to me.”
I had only stopped over to see how he and Katherine was doing, I had several more pages to type at the bookstore, for one of my chapters in my book, and I needed to get going.
“Do you know any wise sayings?” he asked.
“Out of sight, out of mind…” I said, and he gave me a crucial smile.
“No, that’s why I want to go, make up some original ones, get inspiration.”
“Why me, you got Hans and Katharine?”
“No; listen, Chick, if I paid your way, and my way, and all the food and lodging, would you go with me?”
“No,” I said, “I like Europe, Germany in particular, and Paris for writing at the moment, and want to got to the Octoberfest in a six weeks.”
“All my living days, I’ve wanted to go on such a trip, see Lhasa, and the Potala Palace, the center of Tibetan life, where the Dalai Lama fled the country some ten-years ago.”
“Don’t be silly,” I remarked. “You now can go anyplace you want, you got plenty of money, and you don’t need a chaperone, or bodyguard.”
“I know, but if you agree to go, I’ll get started then, and somehow I just can’t get moving.”
“It’s called depression, get out of this apartment and do something.”
“Since my book now is in three languages, and New York picked it up, my life is going so fast I can’t keep up with it.”
“It’s just a life, nothing dangerous in it for you or me, no sense in making it more difficult: boxers and fighters, and matadors, and bulls and cocks that kill one another in cockfights, and soldiers that fight in wars, they got to live to the height to the hilt, they got to worry, not us, we just pace back and forth, get fed write this and that, just constantly entertain ourselves; I’m not interested in being a monk, or writing what monks write.”
“No, I don’t think I’d like war or bullfighting, or boxing as a profession, or even karate as a teacher, it doesn’t interest me.”
“Perhaps it is because you’ve only read books on the subjects, if you got involved with them!”
“I still want to go to Tibet.”
He had a determined mind, for a Mexican.
“As Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, ‘Nothing will come of nothing…’”
I had discovered that was the best way to get rid of my presence, with my friend, he had been drinking, and once drinking he talked, and talked and talked until he fall to sleep, and got blue in the face in the process. And there were a lot of liquor bottles around his end table, and where he sat.
“Chick;” said Tony, “I’m twenty-five, and I’ve lived one tired of my life, I got to figure out what I’m going to do with the other two thirds, do you ever think like that?”
“No, I just make a plan, and follow it though, and make a new plan and follow that one through, and don’t worry about the other two-thirds, because today is today, and that is all I have, I live in the present, in the moment.”
“Well, I still want to go to Tibet.”
“Listen up, Tony, most cities all look the same, most all the people in the cities have self-interest as their number one God, I’m serious, you get tired of going from city to city looking for something that is different, moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that. Usually if you find one good spot, and you stay there, you can reach out all over the world from that one spot, and do and see everything you want, and get ahead, but moving everything you got from here to there, all the time, you never will. So I like visiting Paris, and Germany, and waiting for the Octoberfest, and then back home I go.”
“But you haven’t been to Tibet yet, have you?”
“No, and if I went there with you tomorrow, the way I feel today, and missed the Octoberfest, I’d hate it. This is a good town to be in, in the summer, and Germany in the fall.”
“I’m sick of Europe; I’m sick of Paris, and the Quarter. Nothing happening to me here, I’m even tired of the night lights.”
“Well,” I remarked, “I got to get down to the bookstore and borrow their typewriter, and get those several pages out.”
“You don’t really have to go, you just want to get away from me, I can tell. Do you care if I go down to the bookstore with you and you and I just chum about?”
“I think you’re hoping, Bernadette, is there, correct?”
“Do you mind?”
“No, come along.”
We walked down to the bookstore, and I typed my pages as he read some more out of the book “Scenes and Portraits” and glanced at the newspaper. I went upstairs into a back room, there was Bernadette, sleeping on a cot. She was asleep with her arms covering her head. I didn’t want to wake her, but I knew Tony would should he see her.
“Bernadette,” I said, and shook her by the arm and shoulder slightly. She looked up, smiled, and blinked several times as trying to clear her vision.
“I was dreaming of you and me,” she said.
“Gosh, what was I doing, or what were you doing?”
“I’m sure you’d like it to be some imaginary thing, but it is none of your business, it is my dream, we were just hugging, nothing more, so keep your mind where it belongs.”
“Talking, or dreaming?” She laughed, said, “I wish you didn’t have Multiple Sclerosis, you always need so much sleep, and get so tired so easily.”
I could imagine her dream; she was kind of disappointed in my physical ailments. We went down the steps to meet with Tony, lest he spot us talking and take offense, with his over sensitivity of his Mexican heritage.



Chapter III
Café de Fore
and Les Deux Magots

It was a warm summer night and I sat at an outside table on the covered entrance of the Café de Fore, Tony had just left, and Bernadette was watching me get drunk and the electric lights on under the terrace that read in neon lights, “Café de Flore,” switched on, there was a stop sign and traffic lights I was watching in front of our table, and a crowd of people walking by taxis pulling up and pulling out and dropping off folks for evening dinner, on two sides of the cafe. I watched a few nice looking women walk by, and then lost sight of them, and Bernadette, commented, “Men don’t think of sex in the same way women do, do them?”
“Well, what would you think?” I remarked.
“Pardon,” she said, “what’s the matter?” she asked, “you thinking about those women that just walked by?”
“Sure. Aren’t you?”
“Don’t you know? You never know in this town what men and women are thinking.”
“Men think of sex as being pumpkin soup, women think of it as, shopping for the recipe,” I stated.
“Would you like to go somewhere else?” asked Bernadette.
“No.”
“Why?”
“There isn’t anywhere to go.”
“My apartment, or to the Eiffel Tower at the lower restaurant, I know the manager there, we don’t need a reservation.”
“The coffee here has a great boost but it only lasts for a short time, but the wine is teriffic, what kind is it?” She grinned and made a point of not laughing, because I didn’t know what I was drinking, although I paid for it and it was expensive.
“Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee de la Reine des Bois, Domaine de la Mordoree,” said Bernadette.
I stopped a taxi it pulled up to the curb, and we both settled into the backseat of the car, and we were driven down to her apartment on Saint Germain Boulevard. I looked at the clock in the car it was 11:00 p.m., we turned off Saint Germain, and was left off on the side street of the hotel. Inside her hotel, she cuddled against me, and she said she had look up at me after a few minutes, and I had fallen to sleep. And she put a light blanket over me for the evening as I fell to sleep on the couch, and she in her bedroom.

“What happened to me last night?” I asked her in the morning.
“Never mind,” she said, a bit disturbed.
“Are you up set?” I asked.
“Yes, a little but I can’t blame you, your sick and I feel sick and the whole world is sick.”
She came out of the kitchen into the light that came through the windows behind the sofa, the Seine was a block away in the background, you could see it from the window, as well as Notre Dame Cathedral.
“You don’t need to drink much do you and you go out like a light bulb!”
“Yes, that’s so true. And my gout, I got the gout also.”
“It doesn’t matter all that much to me, to women such things are not all that important.”
“You’re British, right?”
“I’ve know you for six weeks, and you don’t know yet?”
“Well, I know you come from a well to do family, and you have some relatives in Minnesota, and in San Francisco, but where in England?”
“Shipton,” she stated.
“American-British, Right?
“Something on that order.”
“Good, I don’t detest either one.”
“I met an Arthur Burg, in Augsburg, Germany; he took a liking to me.”
“How do you know?”
“A girl knows these things.”
“Would you like to go for breakfast?” I asked. I really didn’t want to eat, I wanted to go to my place and sleep, but knew she did, and it would be nice to keep her company, she never liked eating alone. So we went and had breakfast at Les Deux Magots, we had boiled eggs, coffee, orange justice, and pastries.
“It isn’t bad here,” she said, “it’s fashionable.”
“Better than on the other side of the river.”
“But I like the German food also,” she commented, “let’s order another bottle of wine,” she said, “I’ll pay for it this time if you don’t mind?”
We drank another bottle of wine, and Bernadette made a joke, “Why did the bacon laugh?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Because the egg cracked a joke.”
“Where did you find that joke?” I asked Bernadette.
“My nephews… how about this one, “Where do ghosts make their beer?”
“Just say it!”
“At the boo—ery!”
“I can’t believe this, how many nephews you got?”
“It’s a shame you got MS. We get on well, how does it affect you anyhow?”
“Hard to get an erection… !”
“Yes, I figured as much. You are blunt aren’t you?”
“I don’t know how I got it, I just got it.”
“Oh, those dirty diseases.”
We would have continued on with the subject of illnesses, but she had already agreed it was a damn shame, and I didn’t say anything more on the subject, a calamity is just that, a calamity, and better to be avoided after you know enough about what it is, and how it is, no sense in belabouring it.
“Everyone’s meeting tonight at the Moulin Rouge; you know it’s been around since the 1880s. You got to be there.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Tony, and Hans, and me and Katharine, and I think your buddy Ezra will be there.”
“How about your buddy, Arthur?”
“I wish he was, but he’s in Augsburg, says he might meet us at the Oktoberfest though. You must come dear.”
“Of course, I’ll come,” I said.
“And bring Ezra!”
“Thanks, we’ll be there,” and I got up and left, went back to my small apartment by where Bernadette’s hotel was and laid down on the bed, I needed to write more, but the wine was getting to me, and my foot was sore, the gout was starting to plumage my system. It all was too much for me, the night before, and this morning, the wine and the late hours.

A Telephone Wait ((Cody's Invisible Dime)(summer of '81)) In English and Spanish

A Very Short Story

A Telephone Wait
((Cody’s Invisible dime) (summer of ’81))


He come up to a telephone booth, attached onto a grocery store that was also a gas station, and pretended to drop a dime into the proper slot. I saw from his profile he looked serious, kind of, maybe a little forlorn as he did it, he was playing a half mile away from his home apartment building, on York Street, with his brother Shawn, and a few neighbourhood kids. His face was fair, and he did everything slowly as though he was thinking, if not uncertain of something.
But when I came to the corner in my car, stopped, rolled down the window, he was still standing at the outside phone booth attached onto the building, talking to someone, looking a wee concerned, this boy of nine-years old.
When I put my hand out the window to wave him over to the car, I knew he saw it from the corner of his eye.
He appeared as if to know I was going to be right where I was, and there I was when he fully turned about, calmly and ghostly surprised at the same time; if anything it seemed to be a light form of insight he had.
“What’s the matter, Cody?” I asked as he came rushing to the side of my car window.
“Oh. I’m all right,” he commented, excited to see me, catching his breath.
“You get enough sleep. I’ll see you this weekend, if you mother lets me. Thought I’d go looking for you. So I drove around the neighbourhood.” Then we heisted, both smiling at one another, “What is it?” I asked him.
He hesitated, but his body movements told me he was trying to put some words together, looking up into the sky, and down at the ground, then eye level, not quite knowing how to explain it.
“Do you need something?” I asked.
He shook his head ‘No!’
“All right. If not, do you mind if I ask who you were talking to on the phone?” I remarked.
“You, dad!” He said, energetically, with a smile.
“Really?” I said.
“What did you ask?”
“For you to come visit me here.”
His face was now bright in wonderment, and merriment; there were bright areas under his eyes.
“Oh,” I said, what else could I say?
Cody stood still on the side of the car a moment he seemed somewhat detached from what had just happened.
“How do you feel, Cody? I asked him (he couldn’t say amazed, but he looked it) (he had been pretending to call me on the phone, pretended to drop a dime into the phone slot, and all of a sudden I appeared. Coincidence, perhaps, but I doubt he thought so.)
I sat back a tinge, in my seat, smiled, his little hands on the car door over the window slots, I could see his fingers a ways inside the car, as if he wanted to jump in, or open the door: perhaps, thinking I’d stay longer.
“Why don’t you try to go join your friends, I know your mother gets mad if she sees you talking to me.”
After a moment he said, to me, “Did you hear me talking dad?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “someone did.”


Written 6-23-2009
Dedicated to that little boy

Spanish Version


Un Cuento muy Corto
Espera en el Teléfono
((La Moneda Invisible de Cody) (Verano de 1981))



Él se acercó a una cabina telefónica, que estaba junto a un supermercado donde también había un grifo de gasolina, y fingió poner una moneda en la respectiva ranura del teléfono. Lo vi de perfil, parecía serio, talvez un poco triste mientras hacía esto; él estaba jugando a ocho cuadras de su departamento, en la calle York, con su hermano Shawn y otros niños del vecindario. Él hacía todo esto lentamente mientras estaba pensando, si no vacilando en algo.
Pero cuando llegué a la esquina, y detuve mi carro bajando las ventanas, él todavía estaba parado afuera en la cabina telefónica, hablando con alguien, luciendo un poquito preocupado, este niño de nueve años de edad.
Cuando saqué mi mano afuera de la ventana del carro para saludarlo, supe que él me había visto por el rabillo de su ojo.
Parecía que él sabía que yo iba a estar justo donde estaba, y allí estaba cuando él se volteó totalmente, calmada y fantasmagóricamente sorprendido al mismo tiempo; si algo había, parecía que era una forma leve de perspicacia que él tenía.
“¿Qué pasa Cody?” pregunté mientras que él vino corriendo hacia el costado de mi carro.
“Ah, estoy bien”, él comentó, emocionado de verme, recuperando su respiración.
“Duerme suficientemente que te veré este fin de semana, si tu madre me deja. Pensé que iría a verte, por eso maneje alrededor del barrio.” Luego sonreímos el uno al otro, “¿Qué es esto?” le pregunté.
Él vaciló, pero los movimientos de su cuerpo me dijeron que él estaba tratando de encontrar las palabras, mirando hacia el cielo y hacia abajo, al suelo, luego levantó sus ojos, no sabiendo cómo explicar esto.
“¿Necesitas algo?” pregunté
Él movió su cabeza, “No”
“Esta bien, si no, te molestaría si pregunto con quién estabas hablando en el teléfono” recalqué.
“¡Contigo papi!” él dijo enérgicamente, con una sonrisa.
“¿De verdad?” dije.
“¿Qué pediste?”
“Que me vengas a visitar acá”.
Su cara ahora estaba brillando de asombro y alegría, había áreas brillantes debajo de sus ojos.
“Ah” dije, ¿qué más pude decir?
Cody estuvo parado inmóvil al lado del carro por un momento él parecía algo apartado de lo que acababa de suceder.
“¿Cómo te sientes Cody?” Le pregunté a él (él no pudo decir: asombrado; pero lo parecía) (él estaba fingiendo llamarme por el teléfono, fingió poner una moneda en la ranura del teléfono, y de repente me aparecí. ¿Coincidencia? Talvez, pero dudo que él lo pensara así)
Me recosté atrás un poquito, en mi asiento, sonreí, sus manitos en la puerta del carro sobre la abertura de la ventana, pude ver sus dedos un poco dentro del carro, como si quisiera saltar dentro, o abrir la puerta: talvez, pensando si yo me quedaría más tiempo.
“¿Porqué no tratas de unirte a tus amigos, yo sé que tu mamá se pone muy furiosa cuando te ve hablando conmigo”.
“Después de un momento él me dijo, “¿Me escuchaste hablando contigo papá?”
“Eso no importa” dije, “alguien lo hizo”.

Escrito el 23 de Junio del 2009
Dedicado a ese niño.

Big Blowoff Maui (short story of a storm in 2001)

Big Blow off Maui
(12/2001)



It was dark and there was water in the street and no lights on the road, and the trees were blown down everywhere, I had heard once we got off the plane at the Maui airport, a storm was coming, it evidently had come. The streets and everything was full of water, gutters, and cars and just everywhere was water and the wind was picking up, a moon was scarcely seen overhead and dark clouds and plenty rough weather seemed to be brewing. So I grabbed my wife’s hand and got into the escorted tourist van. And we were headed for our hotel within minutes; it was off the Western Harbour.
When we got to the hotel all the lights were out, and the wind was picking up, “Man,” I said to Rosa, “this is some storm coming.” Like a hurricane in the makings.
It was just as dark as an empty barrel, looking down into it, we couldn’t even recognize our hotel, the driver had to shine his headlights on the sigh, and point to it, and when we got out, he was gone like a flash.
As we walked to the back of the hotel, where there was kind of a plaza area with a pool in the middle of it, trees and all types of greenery were blowing in wind, water from the sea and branches from the trees, and birds, whole trees and some dead birds, a few pelicans, all kinds of birds trying to escape, everything floating in the sky, flying by, blowing in the wind, you had to look everywhichway, lest you get slapped with something, someplace on your body.
Everyone had gone inside to two of the four buildings, one serving food on a lower bottom floor, a hot meal cafeteria style, and Rosa and I were hungry, very hungry. The other part that was opened was by the desk clerk.
We talked to the hotel clerk, got our keys to our rooms, and we went and put our luggage in it, but there were no lights. And it now was raining hard; I started to look out towards the sea, and to where they were serving hot food, kind of back and forth, one on each side of me, thinking: should we go eat or run back to our rooms.
“Let’s see what they got left to eat,” I told Rosa “we ought to eat something before morning,” we had flown directly from Minnesota, to San Francisco, and then onto Maui, with very little to eat.
We were way on the other side, across from the plaza, to where the café was, and we ran, getting slapped with the air, and blows of water from the sea carried by the winds, the hotel was a hundred yards from the beach.
When we got to the café, the floor was under an inch of water, “We haven’t had a storm like this in a decade,” said some voice serving food behind a long row of tables, to a guest in front of me. The food looked like it was mostly picked over. And the sign read $25.00. And it was take it or leave it (written under the $25.00-dollars), and where the nearest café was—only God knew.
“If this storm would just take a break until we get settled in,” I commented to Rosa.
There we were standing up with our trays and dishes of food, bits and pieces of leftovers, looking out a glass window at the tall tress looking as if they were going to be ripped out of the ground any minute, and a few smaller ones were already ripped up and out from its roots and all. We looked about, there was no place to sit down, and so we ate standing up.
It made me shaky to think how much the dinner cost; it was the closest thing to anything eatable though.
As we finished our food and walked outside, I could see the tops of the trees floating as if they were ships out at sea. And you could hear the hard twisted winds, its whistling and noise clanking, in your ears, braches breaking. I hung onto Rosa as if onto a little dinghy, and she I, we took a couple of breaths like doves and nearly swam to our hotel rooms.
I could see Rosa’s hair was tied down somehow, close to her head, and I had to carry my hat. She was right up close to me, when we got into our apartment building; the hallway was dark, drenched. We went up one flight of stairs, and once in our apartment, I had to let go of Rosa, and I heard a great thump, looked out the window, thought a building crashed, but it was a large tree had fallen by the pool, and then I noticed lighting and thunder and there was no longer a moon to be seen.
My head felt tired, stiff and then I rested on the bed, fully clothed, in case I had to get up quick, for whatever reason, and fell to sleep. It wasn’t any good staying up or worrying (the hotel staff was not going to vacate the hotel, and told us to simply lock ourselves in our rooms and outwait the storm), the wind was like a hammer, and the rains lashed out like glass, clear and sharp against our windows and stone building. That night it came onto Maui, like a blowing storm out of control, and it blew for hours and hours and hours. You couldn’t get out of the hotel, until morning, even if you wanted to, and where would you go anyhow. But it came out all right, in the morning, Maui was as if it had a nightmare, and had taken a sedative.


No: 419/ 6-22-2009
Dedicated to my sidekick, Rosa

Sons with no Mothers (a short story on greed)

Sons with no Mothers
(July of 2007, to December)


Every time I meet Adelmo and Jaime (these two sons without mothers) they greet me, walking with or without friends, down the streets or in the plaza of Huancayo, Peru, they put their hands out to me.
“Hello Lee, old friend,” they say to me. I tell them, “You have no blood in your face.” It is bad and a cold insult to a Peruvian. But true in their cases, and they know it. And it doesn’t faze them.
And they tell me some sad story of how little they have. They make it very sad, they even believe what they’re telling me, believe in their own lies.
These are sons without a mother for you. They spend another person’s money and say they are broke only to ask for more money to borrow at a later date. Try to get a cent, or a sole from them— god-forbid a dollar, out of them. It’s in possible.
Every time I see them, in front of other friends, I wonder how they are swindling them, thinking of cheating them: what kind of blood is in their veins? I ask myself.


At one time Adelmo received $1500-dollars from me to do something for me, something he never did, never intended to do. And it did not have any effect on him knowing he had to pay me back, but couldn’t because he spent the money, so he said. He owed me $1000-dollars, he wouldn’t pay me (he did although get together $500-in five months, and begged I give him time for the rest).
“You can trust me for it,” he’d say, “aren’t we friends?”
“It’s not a matter of trust,” I said, “it’s a matter of money you took by deception—by not fulfilling your part of the deal, and never having any intentions to do so.”

“I haven’t got it,” he’d say.
“You have it,” I said, “it’s just you have other plans for it.”
“You don’t understand,” he’d comment, adding “don’t worry about it, I’ll pay you soon.”
“When?” my wife would ask.
“Soon!” he’d say.
“Pay me some now!” She told him (this rhetoric went on for six months. And my wife was getting a sharp sound in her ears, as if over stressed. I told her to back off leave it alone. But she continued a while longer.)

“I can’t,” he’d say to her time and again (then he did pay that five-hundred, but that was two months before we left Huancayo, for Lima.)
“My god,” I told him to his face, “you’re ahead of the journalist school and you can’t pay $1000-dollars and you got a daughter in college, and you spent my money and then you talk to me like nothing happened, as if you and I are best friends, what kind of a man are you?”
At that time he was going to all kinds of engagements and charging people for this and that, and I suppose that is how he got the five-hundred dollars together, but that was all he’d give. I told him a few times, “You have no blood in your face,” and he’d stare at me with his innocent droopy dog like eyes. Look at me as if I was tarring his heart out of his chest. Nothing, exactly nothing bothered him, cold as a fish on ice. They spend another person’s money on themselves or for vanity’s sake, and they never, ever pay. Just try to get a cent, and god forbid, a dollar from them.


Jaime was a young friend who worked for a newspaper in Huancayo. We, he and a girlfriend, a married woman—he took a liking for, my wife and I, went to Villa Rica together for a poetry reading. When it came time to pay the driver, each owing him 55 soles (about $20.00 dollars), he looked at me, dumbfounded, said, “I only took with me fourteen soles, I expected you to pay for the transportation.” And he expected me to pay for his girlfriend’s transportation. I felt sorry for the guy so I gave him 100 soles, so he could help his woman friend also with the fare. But once he got the money, he told her to pay her own way. Then after that he wanted advice from me as his psychologist, free.
Often during these months, he’d show up at my apartment, and I’d ask, “For what are you here for?”
“For my own business, thought I’d stop on by…” then he’d wait around until lunch time, when we had to go, and tag along for a free lunch at a café; and even ask after I’d pay for the lunch, for a desert. He had written two small articles on two of my books, and somehow, figured I owed him life and limb.
As I have said before, here are two souls without mothers, and no blood in their faces.

No: 421 (6-22-2009).

Kina Malpartida and Halana Dos Santos, in: Championship Fight (a barroom sketch)

Kina vs. Halana, in:
Championship Fight (a barroom sketch)

June 20, 2009


Sitting in a bar in with my buddies in Lima, Peru watching the world woman’s Boxing Championship bout called “Champion of the Poor,” between Kina Malpartida, of Peru and Halana Dos Santos of Brazil…and


“I never saw a female boxer fight so hard to the styles of a man before, and with near the same strength, clean and swift and as beautiful as Mohammad Ali. There never was a woman like that. She moved just like a bull and tiger both in one, like Rocky Marciano, she was a little nervous at first though.” Lee told his drinking buddy, Enrique.
“Do you know her?” one of the men asked sitting next to Enrique, in the bar.
“Did I know her? I know about her like you know about nobody in the world and I love boxing like you love the God of Wine (the man was drinking a glass of Trapiche, Malbec, 2008, red wine, from Argentina.) She is the greatest, finest, Peruvian, most stunning woman boxer that ever lived, and Halana couldn’t put her down like a dog, as she thought she might.”
“Did you go down and see the fight?” asked the stranger.
“No. I was right here, it just ended. She’s the only female boxer worth her salt.”
Lee tried to be respectful to the bald headed wino, who said all this in a high melodramatic way, but Enrique was starting to shake his head as the stranger leaned over by him.
“You should have married her,” said the wino.
“It wouldn’t have hurt her career,” said Lee, to the bald headed wino, “but I’m already married.”
“Well I guess that’s a drawback, a husband isn’t what she really needs anyhow,” said the stranger.
“Gosh, what a fighter she was,” repeated Lee.
“That is a fine way to look at it,” commented Enrique, his brother-in-law, “Didn’t Kina knock her out, it happened so fast I didn’t get to see the end result?”
“A technical knockout is what they call it,” said Lee, “she was in the corner, and it was curtains, had they not stopped the fight.”
“It was a trick,” said the wino, “the Peruvian took Halana by surprise.”
“Kina knocked her down,” said Lee.
“She turned to smile at me, and that got the Peruvian the knockout!” remarked the wino.
“I thought you said you weren’t at the fight?” said Lee.
“No, you said you were not at the fight, I went out just for the fight.”
“It was a great fight,” remarked Enrique, then whispered to Lee, “I hope to god this creep leaves.”
“How can you say that?” said the wino to Lee and Enrique.
“I say it because it’s true,” Enrique said. “I’m the only one here sitting next to you, leave us in peace.”
“What did he say?” said the wino to Lee.
“He said you’re a drunken wino, and he knows Kina and she’s going to come here after the fight and knock the shit out of you for bothering her brother-in-law.”
“It’s a lie,” the wino said.
“It’s true,” Enrique said, “That’s truly what he said.”
“It’s a lie,” the wino said proudly.
And just then, some woman next to the wino hauled off and hit the wino, and he fell on the floor, and she said, “And it doesn’t make any difference to me whether you believe it or not, I’m the sister-in-law of Kina,” and the drunk just smiled as he looked up at her, and said, “It could be possible.”



Written one day after the fight, 6-21-2009
Inspired by, and dedicated to: Kina Malpartida.

The Quadruple Knockout! (Donkeyland Fight, 1960)

The Quadruple Knockout!
[Donkeyland; and the Cayuga Street Gang; 1960]




I really couldn’t say for sure, but what I remember was we all stopped playing baseball in the empty lot, and walked over to the new kid standing somewhat in the way of the players; he had moved in by Ernest Brandt’s house, his first name was Buddy, can’t remember his last name. He had a white tea shirt on (a muscleman shirt), looked pressed and even, real clean. We were all dirty from playing baseball, all but him that is, and he looked too clean for us, so we tried to ignore him, but he wouldn’t let us. It was the summer of 1960, I was thirteen years old, almost fourteen, in three months that is. And Buddy was all of fifteen and half a-foot taller than I, but I was weight lifting, and had fourteen inch biceps. It was a hot and dusty day there in the empty lot, and somehow we all were called into Buddy’s little interruption, he wanted to tell us something, and he did:
“Anytime anyone of you guys want to fight me, I’m ready,” and he said it loud and he said it clear and he said it with a smirk on his face, and he looked ready, but he wasn’t ready, at one moment he even looked as if he was going to walk away at the same time, everyone talking among themselves over who got to fight him, and here is this guy standing there, as if he was Bruce Lee.
All of us boys were saying amongst ourselves, almost as if in a football huddle talking who was going to tackle that guy:
Voices in all directions saying: …me, me, I’ll fight him. No, let me fight him; meee…let me have him…. Echoes from all directions
Jack, my close friend at the time, wanted to fight him bad, he was always hyper, and he was real comfortable with the idea at first, but he didn’t do anything. The train of guys (or so it seemed), were all standing in that empty lot around him now, I among them, Indian’s Hill to the side of us, Cayuga Street in back of us, and him in the front of us, everyone gambling for the right to punch him out, or try.
Jack said, “Let me take him on,” then started cussing as he usually did, but he didn’t throw a punch, as he listened to the other boys argue with their hands gripping into a fist mode; the lucky guy would be me, and I was heated up, and I was ready to go, to do it.
Doug, and Roger, were there, Larry (the tough guy of the neighborhood) was not, he most likely—had he been there—most likely would not have hesitated, and the guy would have been hamburger, he would have thrown the first punch, and the fight might have been over before the guys stopped arguing. And so the dispute was with us. And the more the confrontation went on, the more I wanted him, as if he was the prized bull and I the matador, and he stood there like a bull, wanting anyone to charge, to come to forward, not waste his time. So I figured—it should me be.
Now there was a circle around him as I said before, and he stood quietly, stone-still, as everyone wagered for the right to fight him, and everybody wanting the right to fight him, but nobody fighting him, and I looked, just stared at him, saying to my mind’s eye, what am I waiting for. I had been weight lifting, had several fights before, but was no tough guy, not like Larry Lund, anyhow, but was getting a reputation—somewhat.
“Can’t I have him,” I said, and everyone looked at me, I mean everyone, and they looked at one another, and Buddy looked at me, and he shook his head okay, as if it was okay for me to fight him, and when he took one step forward before he even put up his fists, just that one step, I grabbed him and threw him on the ground like a runaway chicken who knows his head is coming off with an ax soon; and I never stopped punching his face-in until someone grabbed me off of him (I think it was Jack): lest I make him hamburger.
I suppose I was waiting to show the boys what I was made out of; this was a chance, they’ll tell me later how I was—I figured. But I had lost control somehow, a light went off inside my head, I didn’t like that, it was dull youth telling me to fight I presume, and I had won the fight, light on or off it didn’t matter to me, yet in years to come this would be repeated somewhat in other fights, to win was the main thing, and once you started, took that leap forward, you didn’t stop until your opponent was down and out. But was it unfair? I mean I jumped the gun; didn’t give him a chance. I didn’t look at the Golden Glove Rules, and I think Buddy did, none of us neighborhood guys did, I just punched, grabbed, and I didn’t squander any time in the process. He was perhaps a better puncher than I and he expected me to punch his way, so he could march on to victory, and I knew my fight would have to be by strength, surprise, push and force, and then a relentless number of punches, perhaps four, or double even that, but as most fights are, it is that first solid punch often, and if he was a puncher, I’d never get a second I knew that, and down he flee like a raging bull to the ground.

July, 2006 (Note: Donkeyland was what the St. Paul, Police called the area where he Cayuga Street Gang hung out); Revised and reedited June 5, 2009

On the porch in the summers (Grandpa and me)

On the porch in the summers
(Grandpa and me)


From a little after midmorning, until near twilight of a long still, anguish dead summer day, we’d be on the porch, old grandpa Anton, still swearing away, cussing as always, mom said it was his way of getting it out—on that fresh hot artless porch with a sofa on it, and screens all around it, with blinds half down, fastened with a string, feeling the blinds would keep the sun out and the porch would be fresher, but when it went down in the east, it slashed its full yellow rays into the side of the porch, almost blinding you, I thought of it as being no more than the eternal sun getting ready to meet the eternal night, and clash, vibrantly clash, with the condensed and hyper-distilled look on grandpa’s face, before going away, until sunrise, when it would wake him up again on the porch, he slept there in the summers, not in his bedroom: I was simple an idle boy, with no rank, young flesh with a long embattled vanishing old stream, vanishing in interval, running one space to the next until his bones dried up, and the ghost in him mused with his shadow docilely as if it were the voice of fate haunting him in his own house. Out of this calm thunderclap, he would change from man to animal, to demon. It seemed grandpa wore those eternal dark blue or black, suites and all, all the time, it suited him well.
Grandpa was sitting in the sofa so bolt upright, in the curved soft sofa, he slept on in the summer, although his bone structure was rigid as well as having iron shinbones and ankles—and an air of impotent, self-puzzlement, indomitable frustrated look, as if he was long dead. As if at any moment, outraged summarized could be called to mind, upon a peaceful scene, sulfur-reeking, from his lips like a beast, yet I knew for the most part he was harmless. Mother would say, “That’s just the way he is, you can’t change an old goat, or teach one new tricks,” wild and relaxed, he’d remain, with his air of bleak, fatigued and dilapidated gulp of air.
His voice didn’t stop, but somehow vanished in his mumbling, grumbling, complaining and rumble-jumble carrying on, in a bloodless face, paradoxical, then it vanished…as sudden and as quick as the way it started, just like nothing, a puff of smoke, it vanished and I seemed to watch the smoke suddenly float out of the porch and be soaked up by the earth.
Then there was this savage quiet he produced. Him sitting and me standing on the porch, as if there was a coffin—a smelly gloomy over rotting coffin, between us, and I was near fearful to move, immobile and pontific, creating in me my future garrulous, if not imitative, outraged baffled ghosts. Perhaps the one that is helping me write this epistle about him and me on the porch in those now far-off summers of my formative years.
We seldom talked to one another, just long silences usually, as if we were not people, in a land of no language. It seemed as if he had a demon—who came out of nowhere warning him he was in the land with a strange, violently strange creature, me. Without gentleness he’d destroy without regret something, yes, saved by this demon.
And when I left for the Army, and college, and for my travels, I am sure he said “I don’t imagine he will come back here, and settle down as a grandchild should, he’s a wild one, not like his brother, already working and making plans, this one he will leave, enter some literary profession, be married, but never remain married. Perhaps he will be out among young friends instead of the old family.”
I was only twelve then, standing on that porch, due to his astonishment, I did exactly all he knew I’d do, have exchanged no more than fifty-words in our whole lifetime, living in the same house, ten-years, he did not recognize me as he revealed a character worth noticing, indicating a cold, implacable and to a certain degree, callousness.
The dusty heat of the day, those summer days, he’d walk back and forth, pacing the floor in the house from the porch to the kitchen, as if it was a half mile between each, and its actual size—it was of fifty-feet—of rug and a shabby rug at that, yet it had the same air as the half mile would have had, same quality, his face would remain grim, for a grim endurance is what he had, created to fit into his little smaller world, the one he put into his pocket, took out in the hallway, as if it was in a tomb, in his slow and heated weighed down time. He’d look at his wrist, check his watch, the time, the dim face now looking at an expressionless grandson, urgent and intent to be more than he would ever expect.
“He wants to tell me something, I know he does,” my grandfather thought, staring at me: oh yes, I could read his mind, but if he had asked me what I was thinking, it would displease the demon that stayed with him, then he’d tell himself, “There is no reason to talk to him, he’s already mummified.”
And mother would say, “He’s seventy years old, going to be eighty soon…” as if he was already vanished from this earth, fled to none knew where, but he was right here, in front of me, breathing the same air, hearing the same talk going on in the house, just not talking to me. My childhood was full of this, him, echoing with sonorous defeat to make a friend out of a grandfather that was interchangeable and almost numberless. It would have seen, or does seem, did seem, he had a war going on with some personal ghosts.
“Ah,” said my mother, “But why tell me about it, what can I do, I can’t change him!”

No: 410/6-4-2009

Riding the Rails: Chicago Bound

Riding the Rails: Chicago Bound





Chick Evens and Tom Fortuna, stood still looked about the railroad yard.
“It’s all right,” Tom said.
“You mean the lousy brakeman’s gone—right,” Chick asked Tom.
“He’s nowhere insight,” remarked Tom.
Evens wiped his hands on his trousers, getting the dirt off of them, he looked down the tracks a-ways, could still see the lights of the caboose, it had left the Jackson Street Railroad Yard, had slowed down a mile away at the Mississippi Railroad Yard (where they were at now, near their homes), but was going in the opposite direction he and Tom wanted to go, wanted to catch a ride from St. Paul, to Chicago. They were both fifteen-years old, it was a Friday night, they figured they’d jump the train as it slowed down, and be in Chicago by morning, have breakfast and if their luck held out, be back in St. Paul by noon the next day for lunch.
The train was coming, he could feel the distinct power in its movement of the ground, unlike anything else, it woke him up—vibrated through his feet to his stomach and arms and throat and jaw and teeth, startled his inners, the sound was so loud and powerful, he could feel, if not sense, and was convinced the train would soon bear down upon him.

Chick touched the stepladder attached onto the freight car that ran parallel to him, as he ran and allowed the pull of the train to automatically lift and pull his body over and up onto its steel ladder—next to it, then he’d hang on with one hand, pull the rest of his body up and to the ladder bars, as Tom would do the same, was doing the same, and Chick noticed underneath the boxcar was a hobo or bum (a hobo being a traveling worker, and a bum being a bum), and in-between two boxcars (the one he was hanging onto, and the one Tom was hanging onto, next to his) was another vagrant; both he and Tom, hanging onto the side ladders, attached to the freight cars. He could hardly see them, but they were there, moving shadows nonetheless, and with the moon being their lamp, he could see their outlines.
The gravel and packed sand along side the tracks, extended beyond the rim of the steel tracks, and solid wooden row of timbers. In part He was about to do what the hobos were doing, riding the rods, that required skill and lots of courage, and it required a man to position himself under the freight car, hanging onto a rod, as Jack Dempsey did when he was sixteen, Evens at fifteen, but not to the extend Jack did. In those far-off days, folks had to go long distances to find work; this was an adventure trip, nothing more. Therefore, he simply, grabbed with one hand, and jumped with one foot landing on that ladder I mentioned, at the end of one freight car, and there he was. The metal ladder went to the roof of the car, he remained on its first step, held with two hands the third bar to the ladder, gripped the iron like bar in front of him with no breathing space between bar and fingers.
Chick was not what was called ‘a teenage-freight rider, riding the rails’ as many teenagers did during the depression years in the 1920s and 30s, on a regular bases, but from his perspective, and Tom’s, it was presumed simply, and attempted at simply, for its romanticism of the road, and in time, Chick Evens would travel the roads throughout the whole United States by car, trains and planes, then crisscross the world by planes. But today, for now, this evening, at this very moment, it was his first ride on a freight train, and his first, attempt at riding the rails, as they say; call it the spirit of adventure.

The boxcars started to speed up; there was acceleration, a rush inside of Chick, along with the trains forward thrust. Likewise, Tom was hanging on tight, heart-wrenching: it was a free ride, open air, exhilarating, and Evens tried to get another look at the traveler underneath the freight car on the car’s structural rods he got a glimpse of his hand hanging beyond the boxcar, and his elbow, his smudged and muddy boots, then he saw another man climbing a ladder beyond Tom’s boxcar, looking like he was going to ride the deck (on top of the railroad car), unless it was a guard. He thought maybe he should have tried an empty gondola car, that is, an unoccupied caboose, but that would have been too dangerous, once in it you’d not be able to escape easily, if someone put a spike in the door, and most of them were closed anyhow, so this was for the most part, safer, yet one needed to be mindful of the risk.

Four miles outside of St. Paul, the train started to slow down; Chick could see and feel the slower movement of the train. What he was hoping was there’d be no swaying trains, coming the opposite way, it could sweep him off the train into it, the one riding the rods were safer, they were confined in a smaller space, less detectable than he, who had to hang exposed, and hang on for dear life; whereas, those under him could roll out and off the train when he wanted to with no difficulty or move back farther in, plus he got only a little dust and cinders on him, whereas Evens got them all, even got dirt thrown in his face, and that got a little fearful for him, and the monotonous sound of the wheels, could lull a man to sleep, on the rails, and falling to sleep, meant falling to your death. Although one needed to be careful if he road the rods, because at road crossings, one could get their cloths caught in planks, and be pulled under the train itself, and cut in two. For some this kind of life, was a lifestyle, for Chick Evens, as already pointed out, it was an adventure, no more, and one that appeared to be ending sooner than expected.
Another three miles and then the train came to a dead stop. They were in some railroad yard, a junction, there was a highway to the left of them, and lights, from a restaurant, a gas station and a bar lit up the area he was in.
Chick stepped down off the ladder backwards, it was easier to pull his self off and then be facing forward in a comfortable option to take a second step, to catch oneself, and not get hurt. The same way he got onto the ladder, achieving solid footing. Then he looked straight ahead, the sign read: “New Port,” and he said to Tom: “Well, exactly where are we?”
(A man yelled from the top of the roof, ‘You kids get the hell out of here before…!”)
“Let’s get going,” said Tom.
“Where is New Port?” Chick asked Tom.
Tom a little embarrassed, remarked, “Seven miles from where we started out from, my older sister lives out here with her husband. And there isn’t any more trains going to Chicago, and only one leaving here at 2:00 a.m., to go back to the Jackson Street Yards, only slowing down at the Mississippi Yards.” (Tom had watched trains pretty much, knew about them, but as far as Chick was concerned: the blind was following the blind.)

“So now we got to walk seven miles back home, is that right Tom?” asked Evens, as if he didn’t know, nor needed any confirmation, but out of anger. Tom looked at Evens, smiled, Evens’ face was unhappy, said in a blunt way, “And we are only 393-miles from Chicago.”
Tom looked at his watch, “its 11:20 p.m., we should get back in a few hours if we keep a good stride.” He commented.
He looked at Tom, “Let’s sit down over by the embankment, rest, get our wind, and then head on back.”
And there they sat, blank like, looking off into emptiness, to nowhere, discouraged, but Evens came to the point after a minute or two of meditation: he got his ride, learned a few things along the way, and for now that would just have to do, it would have to be good enough, like it or not, and his composure showed it was—under the circumstances— showed that it was kosher.
“Let’s go Tom,” said Chick.
“Sure,” said Tom, droopy faced, not looking forward to the seven mile walk back along the tracks, “What’s the matter?” Asked Tom.
“I’m alright, just thinking it will be about 3:00 a.m., by the time we get back.”
“I don’t know, but that sounds about right,” said Tom.
“Come on; let’s get going then, no time to waste.”

It was 2:45 a.m., when Evens walked through the door of his home, everyone sleeping, and he went directly to the bathroom, which meant he had to go halfway into his mother’s bedroom, “Who’s that?” she said.
“Just me, Chick mom, went to the bathroom?”
“Oh, when did you get…?” and before she could finished her statement-question, and before Evens had to lie, she fell back to sleep.

June 1, 2009: No: 409./ds