Calico Cats - a short story

I wrote this short story following a dark period in my life. Rereading it after decades of separation from my first wife brought back many brutal and unpleasant memories. Like Mrs. Keller's calico cat, we sometimes become the target of random crazy people swinging hoes. Occasionally, we get lucky and escape.  

CALICO CATS

I should have stayed in bed that morning.  Instead, I was up long before dawn, watching an old black and white on the all-night movie channel.  I never saw the ending. The morning sun was breaking over the eastern horizon when someone began screaming outside my window.  I opened the door in time to see Johnson, my next-door neighbor, beating one of Mrs. Keller's cats with a garden hoe.  Mrs. Keller's frantic screams didn't seem to faze him.  Running out to the street, I jumped between Johnson's home and the old woman's flailing arms.  My eagerness quickly placed me in his line of fire.

     Johnson was a brutish little man.  Thick hair matted his shoulders and stubbled his pasty face with wiry bristles.  A single dark eyebrow left no gap between the bridge of his broken nose, imparting the look of perpetual anger.  Today, his anger was real.  When I stepped in his path, he nailed me with the hoe, continuing to swing it at me until I wrestled him to the sidewalk.  When the police finally arrived, dirt and blood covered Johnson and me.

     Two patrol officers cuffed Johnson and ushered him to their squad car.  One had to restrain old Mrs. Keller from tearing out his eyes with her bare hands.

     "He was suffering," Johnson said.  "I put him out of his misery."

     Johnson was right about the suffering.  He made sure of it.  First, he shot the cat with a pellet gun, then chased her with the hoe when she tried to escape.  Paralyzed and dragging her back legs, the cat was easy prey to Johnson's roundhouse swings.

     When the police pulled away, I grasped Mrs. Keller's shoulders to calm her down. She was having none of it and pulled away, wanting no part of any male, not even one who had tried to help.  It didn't matter.  A crowd had gathered, and someone from the neighborhood led her back home.  Mrs. Keller had fifteen cats.

*     *     *

     I went straight to Fat Ernie's after work.  The bar was always dark, even at five.  "Better for business," Ernie said.  I knew why. It was easier to mask cockroaches crawling up the walls.  Halfway through my second double, Jimmy Reardon tapped my shoulder and sat on the barstool beside me.

     "How you doing?" he said.

     "Low."

     "You look it.  Ernie, bring us another round."

     We were Ernie's only customers.  Looking angry, Ernie placed an extra tumbler and the open whiskey bottle in front of us before returning to whatever he was doing.  Ernie always looked angry.  Jimmy poured a shot from the bottle and downed it in one swallow.  When he slammed the tumbler against the counter, the sharp noise echoed through the empty bar like the crack of a small caliber rifle.  Refilling the tumbler, he sipped more whiskey and called for Ernie to bring us each a beer.

     "You like women?"

     "Course I do," I said.

     "Never seen you with any."

     I drained my shot, chasing it with beer straight from the can.  "Haven't met anyone I like lately."

     When Jimmy snickered, something rumbled deep in his chest, reminding me of a hyena attacking a rotting carcass.  His upper lip even curled up over his front teeth.  Jimmy was twenty pounds overweight and had a bald spot in his stringy brown hair.  But most of the workers at the plant liked him, especially the female workers.

     "What are you now?  Forty, forty-one?" he asked.

     "Close enough."

     "You ever gonna get married?"

     Darkness cloaked the deserted bar as I drained my shot and said, "Tried it once already."

     Jimmy didn't pursue the conversation.  Instead, he said, "Can I stay at your place tonight?  Janie kicked me out."

     I wondered what Jimmy must have done to cause Janie, his wife of twenty years, to kick him out.  He'd had at least one girlfriend the entire time I had known him, and everyone at the plant knew he played around.  Janie knew it and overlooked the fact, or else she was stupid.  Janie was not stupid.

     Motioning Ernie to bring us another beer, I said, "Let's have another drink."

     "Want to know what I did?"  I didn't, though I nodded anyway after downing another shot.  "Janie caught me in bed with Gloria Silverman.  I’d taken her home for a lunch break quickie because I thought Janie was shopping with her mother out of town.  Wouldn't have been so bad except her mother was with her when she caught us."

     I imagined the scene unfolding as Jimmy described it.  Janie's mother taught Sunday school and was the local elementary principal.  Jimmy seemed to enjoy recounting the tale.

     "Big stupid Gloria. She just lay there," he said.  "Didn't even try to cover her tits."

     When I motioned Ernie to bring us two more beers, Jimmy propped his elbows on the counter, for once his deranged grin gone.  "Funny!" he said.  "In twenty years, that's the first time I ever seen Janie cry."

     Ernie continued to chatter as alcohol and my otherwise foggy brain began filtering out his words and locking onto the memory of my failed marriage.

*     *     *

     The occasion was our first dinner guests.  Lingering doubts cloaked and accommodated so long faded as my bride and I watched them depart our little apartment.  When I slipped my arm around her waist, my touch produced an unexpected stiffening in her backbone and ignited the intense green of her eyes.  I'd seen the look before, and maybe it wasn't so surprising, just unwelcome.

     Black hair and deep olive skin framed Joyce's foreboding darkness.  Darkness is well remembered from our wedding night when I had to coax her into confirming our marriage vows.  Now, dim porch light, saturated with crimson, masked her darkness. It couldn't completely hide the approaching storm.

     Joyce wrenched from my grasp, went inside, and slammed the screen door behind her.  My face flushed as I followed her into the kitchen, where corroded fixtures glared down at us, exposing her anger and my inability to cope.  She left little time for me to ponder what secret caused her to react violently to innocuous events.

     Her silence burned away like ignited oxygen, and when she smashed a casserole against the wall, some of it stuck to the yellowed paper.  The rest dropped in meaningful clumps on the white tile floor.  Bits of broken china crunched beneath my shoes as I stepped back to get out of her way, and Joyce's voice now raised an octave above average and accompanied a grimace that covered her face as entirely as a sinister veil.

     "I hate you!" she screamed.  You purposely embarrassed me in front of the Robertson's."

     "That's crazy, and you know it.  The casserole was fine," I said.

     Joyce's angry whisper blared like a foghorn.  "You badgered me into cooking something dry and tasteless.  They hated it, and so did you."

     "It's just your imagination."

     "Then imagine this," she said.

     She grabbed the stack of dirty dishes from the sink.  When she smashed them against the floor, plates exploded, and shards of china ricocheted off walls.  Our last crystal wine glass sailed past my head.  Joyce tore at it with a salad fork when I raised my hand.  She sliced me from shoulder to wrist before I could wrestle it from her grasp.

     "Stop it," I said.  "Are you crazy?"

     Inappropriate words and ill-advised.  Joyce dropped the fork and attacked me with her fists, screaming and pounding my face and head.

     "I'm not crazy, you hear?  Don't ever say that again.  Don't you dare ever say it?"

     Fending away her ineffectual blows, I grabbed her wrists and held on until she wrenched away, angry tears streaming from her red-rimmed eyes.  By now, her voice had become a high-pitched, angry whine, and she leaned back against the wall, glaring at me as if I were an axe murderer.  At least, that is how I felt.

     "Don't touch me," she said.

     "Please calm down," I said, risking scratch marks as I stepped forward, grabbing her shoulders and trying to quiet her rage.

     Wheeling around, she nailed my shin with an angry kick, then raked her fingernails across my face.  Backing quickly away, I touched my cheek, wet from a trickle of blood.  In my heart, I felt she owed me an apology. What raced from my mouth was something different.

     "Sorry about dinner.  Please forgive me."

     My words only amplified her fury.

     "You embarrassed me, and now you think I'm crazy.  You went out of your way to make me look like a fool.  Now I hate you for it!"

     "You're twisting my meaning.  We both know you're not crazy. It was just a figure of speech."

     "Don't lie to me.  I know exactly what you meant," she said, rushing out of the kitchen into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it with a fatal click.

     Closing my eyes, I poured water from the tap, sprinkling some on my face and forehead before following her to the bathroom.  I got no answer to my worried rap on the door.

     "You all right in there?  Please come out, Joyce.  Can't we settle this without fighting?"

     Glass shattering against bathroom tile was her reply to my pitiful question.

     "Leave me alone.  I hate you."

     Her voice, trembling with emotion, revealed the angry fit had elevated from smoldering conflict into a hot frenzy.  Sensing our argument had suddenly promoted from dissension to siege; I quickly backed away down the hall.  Married less than a fortnight, I could think of nothing else to do.

     "I'll be in the living room," I said.  "I won't bother you anymore.  I promise."

     Joyce opened the door before I reached the end of the hall, slamming it violently against the wall until it rattled on the hinges.  When it stopped vibrating, she stood with tightly folded arms, glaring with wild, accusing eyes that flashed even greener amid hallway gloom.

     "Why did I ever marry you?  I ask myself every day."

     She didn't wait for an answer.  Wheeling around, she put her shoe through the wall, glaring at it as plaster crumbled in an explosive thud.  I could only stare at the hole, wondering which meager monthly requirement we would have to forego to pay for its repair.  I couldn't imagine because, by now, my mind was numb.  As I retreated down the hall, Joyce dogged my steps, confronting me at the bedroom door.

     "Can't we just go to bed," I said.  "This won't seem so bad in the morning?"

     "That's it.  Sex is all you ever think about.  Doesn't anything else ever cross your mind?"

     And suddenly, the argument's culmination.  Sex was it, and her anger mirrored like bludgeon wounds from injured eyes burned my exposed soul.  Rage howled from deep within her being, as alive as beasts enraptured by the moon.

     "Sex, sex, sex!" she screamed.  "You can go to hell for all I care."

     "What's wrong with sex?  Your parents have five children," I said as if my feeble defense meant anything.  "They don't think it's a sin."

     "My parents have nothing to do with us."

     Remembering bony white stripes on her backside, I thought otherwise. Still, I was reluctant to fuel our argument by mentioning her fitful relationship with a fiercely religious mother and physically dominant father.  I tried a different tact.

     "Maybe we should just hold each other, Joyce.  I can do without sex."

     Slapping away my extended hand, she said, "I don't want you near me.  You're dirty.  If you loved me, you'd get circumcised like every other man."

     I still feel the warm flush her accusation caused.  Touching my belt, I leaned back against the wall.

     "It wasn't my decision."

     "It is now," she said.  "What kind of man are you?"

     "I'm twenty-three.  Why is it necessary now?" I said, knowing it was much more than my uncircumcised penis that disgusted her.

     "It's necessary if you ever want sex with me again.  If you were a man, you wouldn't worry about pain," she said.  "But you're not a man, are you?  It's unfair for you to touch me with something so dirty."

     "It's not dirty," I said with little conviction.

     "Dirty and ugly, just like you are dirty and ugly.  No one would have ever married you except me.  I only did it because I felt sorry for you.  Now you've ruined my life."

     When I clenched my fist in anger and slammed it into the wall, she screamed, "That's right, wreck the house.  I'll pay for it while you attend your precious classes."

     "Stop it," I said, seeking any excuse to mask the gaping consequence of my defused anger.  "I'll quit college if that's what you want."

     "You would, wouldn't you?  Do you think I like working in that stinking factory to pay the rent?  Why don't you ever think about me and what I want and need?"

     I had no answer or frame of reference to solve our long-term dilemma, though I knew how to end the argument.  A single, garbled word held the solution: Distance.  My confused mind repeated it, reminding me what to do.

     "Go to bed," I said.  "I'll sleep on the couch.  We can talk in the morning."

     "Fine with me.  You can sleep there every night for all I care.  You disgust me," she said, hurrying to our bedroom.

     The bedroom lock clicked, sounding dead and final.  My jaw was sore from grating my teeth. My soul was numb.  When adrenaline finally flushed from my body, leaving it as relaxed as my soul, I returned to the kitchen, swabbed my face with a damp napkin, and poured cold water over my swollen knuckles.  With my mind reeling from the silent aftermath of our argument, I sat at the kitchen table, staring in blessed silence at wads of bloody napkins.

     I could only clean away the glass and ruined casserole before tiptoeing down the hall and listening to Joyce's breathing behind our closed bedroom door.  Like the key to our failing marriage, the door handle responded with locked resistance.  With empty confusion still banging against raw temples, I grabbed an old afghan from the closet and retired to the living room.

     The hard couch wasn't quite long enough for comfort.  That night, it felt more like a funeral slab, its lumps and springs cold as damp earth beneath my back.  Wadding my torn shirt as a pillow and stuffing it beneath my head, I turned off the lights and pulled the afghan around my neck, staring blindly into the darkness long past the broken lamp's last fading flicker.

*    *    *

     Jimmy Reardon jostled my shoulder, rousing me from my alcohol-induced recollection.  Several patrons had joined us at the counter, and now pool balls clacked in the rear as Ernie waited on a table and Mick Jagger's suggestive strains vibrated the flashing jukebox in the corner.  I handed Jimmy the keys to my house.

     "Don't mind if Gloria drops by, do you?" he said as he walked out the door, not waiting for my reply.

I left Fat Ernie's at midnight, staggering home only to find my bedroom door locked and sounds of sex coming from inside.  It didn't matter much as I collapsed on the couch without undressing.

  At three in the morning, I was still awake, pacing the floor, reliving painful images that seemed somehow caught in an endless brain loop.  Two sleeping pills and too many shots of whiskey had failed to anesthetize my Technicolor memories of calico cats racing in terror from the hoe.

 

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.

A Gathering of Diamonds - an excerpt

Epilog

Louisiana Mental Hospital 1984

Ain’t nothing good gonna last forever. The words to the song played in my mind backdropped by the metallic drone of a medical device dripping mental comfort into a vein in my arm. It meant I didn’t have to think or face reality.

I’d lain on the same bed for more months than I cared to remember, my reality reduced to the metallic drip, which had become a mantra to my mental pain. Only one thing helped me maintain my sanity: the pretty nurse who I could never really see because my eyes wouldn’t entirely focus, never failed to check on me when she came on shift. This particular night, she whispered something in my ear.

“Open your eyes. I have something important to tell you.” I heard her, subliminally as much as anything. I didn’t want to think about what she had to say. “Please, open your eyes for me.”

I struggled to speak, and she gasped when I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Julia,” she said.

“Thanks for taking such good care of me, Julia.”

“You are alive,” she said. “The other nurses said you never speak.”

“I had nothing to say until now. What do you have to tell me that is so important?”

“A package arrived for you a while back. I think it’s from your brother,” Julia said.

“Why didn’t someone give it to me?” I asked.

“The other nurses think of you as a dead man.”

“I’m not dead,” I said. “Just a little drugged up.”

“They keep you that way instead of putting you in a padded cell. I turned off your psychotropic drug drip when I came on shift. Nothing is going into your veins right now except water.”

“You’re not afraid of me?” I asked.

“I don’t believe you’re dangerous. I brought the package with me. I opened it for you.”

“What’s in it?” As I struggled to focus my eyes, she placed something in my palm. “I can’t see it. Please tell me what it is.”

“I think it’s an uncut diamond. A black diamond,” she said. “There’s a note with it.”

“From my brother?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What does it say?”

“It says, ‘I need your help.’ Bill.”

I pulled the needle out of my vein and struggled to sit upright. “Why would my brother be in trouble?”

“There’s a letter in your file from the Fayetteville, Arkansas police department,” Julia said.

“Fayetteville?”

“The location of the University of Arkansas.”

“Please, open it and read it to me,” I said.

Julia extracted the letter and began to read. “Dear Mr. Logan, I’m sad to inform you that your brother Tim has gone missing in the Ouachita Mountains. The region covers many miles of wilderness in the Ouachita National Forest. Local police have given up on the search and believe there is a good chance your brother is dead.”

“My God!” I said.

“What do you want to do?” Julia asked.

“I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” I said. “Tim needs me.”

“You can’t just leave. It’ll take a week before the hospital will let you go.”

I rolled off the side of the bed, promptly falling on my face. Julia put her shoulder beneath my arm and leveraged me to my feet.

“That’ll be too late. Do I have clothes?” I asked.

“Your belongings are in storage,” she said.

“Here at the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get them for me?”

“I’ll lose my job,” Julia said.

Clasping her hand in mine, I stared into her big blue eyes. “I don’t want you to do that. Can we somehow make it look like I escaped?”

“They’ll know I helped you. Someone other than you would have to turn off your drip.”

“If the electricity goes off, how long will it take before someone from maintenance checks on it?” I asked.

“A backup generator comes on automatically,” Julia said. “It’s only happened a couple of times since I’ve worked here. It doesn’t take long before the place is swarming with electrical workers.”

“What if just the electricity in this room were to malfunction?” I asked.

“It sets off an alarm at the nurse’s desk. The nurse on duty would buzz me to check on it.”

“Then I have an idea,” I said. “Please get my clothes. I promise not to get you into trouble.”

I waited alone for ten long minutes in the dimly-lit room. Julia finally returned with a suitcase and a box of my personal belongings. My wallet was intact, complete with driver’s license, an unexpired credit card, and about a hundred dollars in cash.

“You won’t get far on foot,” she said. “Please don’t steal a car.”

“How far is the airport from here?” I asked.

“About ten miles.”

“Is there a phone I can use?”

Julia pointed to the phone by my bed. “I don’t think anyone has ever used it. Who are you going to call?”

“A taxi to take me to the airport. If this credit card still works, I’ll rent a car.”

“But then they’ll know where you’re going,” Julia said.

“I’m not a fugitive, or guilty of any crime I know of,” I said.

Julia watched the door as I changed out of my hospital gown into familiar clothes that no longer fit me. She was a handsome woman, six inches shorter than I was, with curly blond hair and a slightly crooked smile that went perfectly with her big blue eyes. A metallic pitcher of ice water sat on a wheeled tray near the bed.

“What’s the story on the pitcher of water?” I asked.

“Maintenance puts them in every room, even if there are no visitors.”

I used the phone to call a cab, then grabbed the pitcher of water. An electrical outlet sat beside the bed, six cords plugged into it.

“Give me twenty minutes, then pour water on this connection. It’ll short out the drip and all the other instruments. Toss the pitcher on the floor near the connection. It’ll look like I accidentally knocked it off the tray by the bed. By the time you report me missing, I’ll be on my way to the airport.”

“Oh, Tom, are you going to be okay?” Julia asked.

“I’ve never been okay a day in my life. Why start now?”

Julia put her arms around my shoulders, her hug the most reassuring mental stimulus I could remember feeling in many years.

“I’m going to pray for you, Tom,” she said.

Grabbing her shoulders, I kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Julia.

“Where will you go?”

“Though I’m not sure, for the first time in ten years, I’m excited to be on my way.”

Chapter 1

A white-tailed doe racing across the road roused me from a flashback and sent adrenaline buzzing through my brain. Slowing the red Mustang I’d rented at the airport, I clutched the wheel as pain behind my eye nudged me back to reality. Beyond the hood stretched the foothills of northern Arkansas. It was early autumn, the colors around me as bright as a fresh coat of paint.

I’d left Mandeville at dawn, stopping only once in Little Rock for gas and a cold drink. Though the last few miles were missing from my memory, the narrow highway forced me to concentrate on driving and forget the reason I’d come here in the first place.

Heat devils rose off the blistered blacktop. Early October sun warmed the skin on the back of my neck. After cresting the next hill, I saw a tall building topped off with a clock tower crowning the horizon. Its windows glimmered in the afternoon sun, and I didn’t have to check the map to know I’d reached Fayetteville.

The college town lay nestled in a bowl-like valley in an ancient range of rolling hills. It had weighed on my thoughts for the past thirty days as I pulled into a filling station to stretch my legs and top the gas tank.

A massive sandstone courthouse occupied one corner of the town square. Shops and stores rimmed its periphery, people in shorts and casual clothes browsing store windows and soaking up the late afternoon sun. A man clad in overalls and clutching an oily red rag interrupted my thoughts.

“Help you?” he asked, his hillbilly twang making his question sound foreign.

“Fill it up,” I said, leaning away from his black-toothed grin.

He used the oily rag to dab his sweaty neck, a rumpled welder’s cap crowning his bald head. I could smell his breath, stale from last night’s whiskey when he rested his hairy forearms on the door of my car. The dagger tattoo on his hand looked as if he’d put it there himself.

“Where you from?” he asked, likely as curious about my accent as I was of his.

“New Orleans.”

“Kid in school here?”

“Something like that. Which way is the college?”

“Down the road a piece,” he said, pointing his nicotine-stained finger.

“Is that the courthouse next door?”

“That and the police station.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d have much crime around here.”

“About the same as the hair on a mangy yellow dog,” he said.

I waited for him to smile. He didn’t. Instead, he stole a cockeyed glance at me to see if I had. When I obliged, he rubbed his chin and spat a glob of tobacco juice on the concrete.

“What’s the population?” I asked.

“Bout thirty thousand when school’s out. Twice as many counting college kids,” he said, wiping his mouth with an oily hand.

“Is there someplace nearby to get a sandwich and cold drink?”

“College strip around the corner,” he said. “Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” I said, saluting him as I drove out of the parking lot.

I cruised down the brick pavement. It didn’t take long to find the bustling square that reminded me of a similar area near the LSU campus in Baton Rouge. Fall semester had begun, scores of students in cars, on bicycles and more on foot, crowding the four-block quadrangle. After parking in a vacant alley between a tee shirt shop and barbecue joint, I went inside for a sandwich.

Boisterous students were still pouring into the café when I exited a half hour later. Though late afternoon heat remained, the sky had begun turning the color of turquoise, the humidity so high it almost felt like a kick in the groin when I took a deep breath. I had only a moment to think about it as I noticed a uniformed woman gazing into my car, frowning as she scribbled something on a notepad.

“Problem, officer?”

“Your vehicle’s in a no parking zone.”

She had a pleasant voice and spoke in neutral Midwestern tones instead of the pervasive twang of the man at the filling station.

“I didn’t see a no-parking sign,” I said.

“Because there isn’t one. You’re blocking an alley,” she said. “I could have had you towed.”

“Sorry. I’m from out of town.”

The young cop stared at me and shook her head. “You know what they say about ignorance of the law?”

Glancing away from her cool stare, I read the tag on her uniform that said her name was Armstrong. Officer Armstrong was no taller than five-three, her short hair sun bleached almost white. She had expressive eyes the same hue as the darkening sky. I marveled at how every straight seam of the young woman’s uniform defied the heat and humidity.

“Uncle,” I said.

 Officer Armstrong didn’t smile. “Can I see your driver’s license?” I fished it out of my wallet and handed it to her, waiting as she made a notation on her pad. “Is this your car, Mr. Logan?”

“I’m renting it.”

She returned the license to me, along with a traffic ticket.

“The courthouse is closed for the day. You can pay this tomorrow when it reopens.”

“Thanks, Officer Armstrong,” I said.

She didn’t react when I used her name. Ignoring my eye contact, she said, “Next time watch where you’re parking.”

I watched as she strolled to a tan and white police cruiser, her tires spinning in loose gravel as she hurried away and disappeared over the hill. Raising my car’s canvas top, I switched on the air conditioning full blast.

It was late when I reached the hillside college, shades of crimson and pink already draping the surrounding hills. Though the person I was looking for had likely left for the day, I decided to give the place a look. As I parked and walked toward the largest of several stone buildings, hazy clouds began masking the sky and a sudden chill permeated the air.

Overhead, a hawk floated in a thermal updraft as cyclists, laboring up the steep grade, passed on the street. A jogger brushed past on the sidewalk, almost knocking me down. It wouldn’t have taken much. After thirty days flat on my back in a hospital bed, my muscles labored from the strain of the hilly campus. Finding the front entrance locked, I found an open door in the back.

Down a darkened hallway, someone hummed as he pushed a broom across the floor. The tune echoed inside the empty building, reminding me of the interior of a cave. For a moment, it threatened to overload my fragile mental state.

The cleaning person could have been on the third floor or ten feet away. It didn’t matter. The drifting sound caused a predictable reaction. I began to feel the madness starting to return. Against my will, my thoughts started racing back to distant murky memories. This time, it didn’t happen.

The red glow of a nearby fire alarm returned me to reality, though it left me with a throbbing head. I was looking for a water fountain when a light radiating from an open door revealed a name on the glass that read Dr. Theodore Fridel. I rapped on the window to get the attention of the man sitting behind a desk.

“Help you?” he said, opening the door.

Dr. Fridel looked nothing like I had imagined. Instead of old and gray, he was probably on the front side of thirty. Didn’t matter because he seemed older as he gazed at me with myopic eyes trapped behind thick-framed glasses. His hair and mustache were coal black, the same color as his eyes. They clashed with his peach-colored sports jacket and zigzag tie he’d probably bought at a garage sale.

“I’m Tom Logan,” I said. “You were my brother’s thesis adviser.”

Understanding replaced Fridel’s initial disbelief as he pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

“Your brother?”

“Half brother. Much younger.”

“I see,” he said. From the way he blinked his eyes and frowned, I could tell he didn’t. “How can I help you?”

“I’m trying to find out what happened to Bill.”

“I’m sure you read the police report. . .”

I held up a hand to stop him. “I was hoping you could add something. Explain why my brother seems to have vanished without a trace.”

“Regrettably, it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. Though I was Bill’s thesis adviser, we were never close. Your brother was quite secretive.”

Our father and both our mothers were young when they’d died. Old enough to be Bill’s father, I was present during most of his formative years. Secrecy was only one of his unusual traits of which I was well aware.

“Maybe you can tell me something about this,” I said.

Reaching into my shirt pocket, I pulled out a small leather pouch. Professor Fridel’s mouth opened when its sparkling contents rolled across the desk.

When he regained his senses, he said, “Is this a diamond?”

  

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

Motorcycle - a short story

Written after a failed marriage and while I was still suffering from deep depression caused most likely by my time in Vietnam as an infantry foot soldier, much of this story is autobiographical. Like the lead character in the story, my life was in a mess. I somehow managed to keep my day job and most of my relationships, probably because it was during the "wild and crazy" days of the Oklahoma Oil Boom of the 80s and almost everyone at the time was drunk, stoned or both. There's a grain of truth in every fiction and there was a real person I met one night who called himself Blue Angel. And yes, I owned a 750 Triumph Bonneville, just likes James Dean.

Motorcycle

Dying twilight and flashing neon beckoned me into one of the many stripper bars skirting the edge of town. I parked my bike beside a row of Harleys and opened the black enamel door, blaring rock and roll flooding over me as I made my way through the crowded barroom. A tipsy dancer had just begun her gyrations on center stage and I grabbed the first empty chair I came to.

When my eyes finally adjusted to the subdued light, I noticed the man sitting beside me had a big pear-shaped head and a screwy grin on his pug-ugly face that indicated he was already drunk. He was also obese; his double chin dove into hairy flab wedged beneath the gaudy western shirt he wore.

Unmindful of my sudden critical stare, or foaming brew dribbling down his neck, the fat man slugged beer straight from the pitcher without an offer of apology. Despite his repugnancy, I couldn't turn away, his ugliness hopelessly mesmerizing me.

The man's blackened teeth looked like California asphalt on a hot August day, and a motorized wheelchair supported his bulky frame. He grinned when he finally noticed me staring at him. Had I been sober myself, I'd have probably searched for another chair. I wasn't.

I was wishing I had minded my own business when he said, "Kinda motorcycle you ride?"

Dancing strobes flooded center stage with silver light, further accenting his drunken grin. I straightened in my chair and said, "Triumph Bonneville 750. Like James Dean."

"Most people 'round here ride Harleys," he said.

Glancing around the crowded barroom, I saw what he meant. Leather-clad, bandanna-headed bikers of both sexes crowded the stripper bar, rotating strobe lights magnifying their greasy hair, deadhead tattoos, and silver earrings. The fat man's raspy voice shattered my flight of fancy.

"What's your name, bub?"

"Denzil. You?"

"You can call me Blue Angel."

I needn't have worried about my inability to suppress a drunken snicker. Blue Angel didn't seem to mind. He was apparently either used to the look or else he just didn't give a damn. I forgot about my musings when the girl on stage winked at me and jutted her breasts in a brazen manner. Blue Angel whistled, using his index fingers to tightly stretch his thin lips, managing to produce a piercing shrill.

"Pleased to meet you, Blue Angel."

"Nam," he said, seeing my inquisitive glance at his withered legs. "Landmine."

After comparing tiny legs with his bloated body, I had trouble believing his deformity was anything other than congenital. I kept my opinion to myself, not wishing to insult him even further.

"I was there," I said. "Infantry."

Blue Angel grabbed the elbow of a passing waitress, ignoring my assertion, and ordered another pitcher. His broken-tooth grin had all but vanished from his inflated cheeks.

"I ride a Harley," he said.

Advanced inebriation and a pinch of embedded meanness marked my blurted reply, regretted the moment I spoke the words. "The hell you say. Cripples can't ride bikes."

My drunken grin failed miserably to indicate that I meant the vicious remark in the best possible way. Blue Angel's own smile revealed he had taken no apparent offense. He just kept describing his cycle.

"Three-wheeler. Hand controls. Custom made."

On stage, the nude girl with broken hearts tattooed on her breasts gyrated to the caustic strains of a Bob Seeger psycho-melody. Multi-colored strobe lights flared in my face. From a shadow-cloaked corner, the waitress returned with Blue Angel's pitcher of beer and he tipped it to his lips, swilling beer until it gushed from his mouth, wetting his shirt. He shoved it toward me when he finished.

"You work, Denzil?"

"Longshoreman."

"Married?"

"Not now," I said, shaking my head.

"Marrying soon, myself," he said. "Luanna's crippled too. Met her at a paraplegic convention. Gonna marry her right here on center stage.

"Terrific," I said.

"Hell's Angels comin' from all over the country. Big event. Be here or be square."

Ignoring his off-handed invitation, I returned my attention to center stage where two blondes were dancing in an odd pseudo-sexual parody. Blue Angel whistled to the waitress, hastily ordering another pitcher.

By now I was totally anesthetized by cold beer, blatant sex, and loud music. When we finished the second pitcher, I ordered yet another. Awash in noise, beer, and gyrating naked dancers, Blue Angel wheeled himself to the bathroom. When he returned he slid out of his wheelchair, onto his back on the filthy floor. Without success, he struggled to get up.

I tried lifting Blue Angel's dead weight back into his unwieldy vehicle but found he was heavier than he looked. Two bikers wandering over from the pool table helped, grinning as if they'd performed the same task many times before. After we'd killed another pitcher of beer, Blue Angel asked me to show him my bike.

"Why not?" I said.

Through the crowded barroom, I wheeled him, past milling bikers, out the side door to the parking lot flooded with interfering rays of moon and neon. Parked between a black Harley and candy apple pickup we found my metallic blue Triumph.

"No Limey bike's good as a hog," Blue Angel said. "Least it ain't a rice burner."

"Faster than any hog," I said. "And lots of rice burners."

"Maybe. Take me for a ride?"

"You crazy?" I said. "I couldn't even lift you off the floor in there. How do you expect me to get you on back of the bike?"

"Jack and Banjo will help."

"But you wouldn't stay put, even if we managed to get you on back."

"Then strap my ankles to the bike frame with bar rags. I'll hang on."

Shaking my head, I said "I might not make it home myself, drunk as I am. You want to go for a ride on the back of my bike, Blue Angel then you must be drunker than me."

Blue Angel's lips curled into a pleading pout. "I ain't that drunk. Please take me. I never been on a Limey bike before."

"Maybe next time," I said, wheeling him back toward the strip bar.

*  *  *

I don't remember when I began stopping after work for drinks at the Blue Note Lounge. Sometimes I stayed until Jimmy Turner, the owner, kicked me out and closed the place. Sheila didn't mind much. She was busy with her own life, new job, summer softball league and all. That summer she met Big Zina, playing ball on the same team. Before long Big Zina began going everywhere with us. Out to eat, to the movies. I didn't mind. When Big Zina was around Sheila was always in a good mood. When she wasn't. . .

Sheila had never smoked during our seven-year marriage. That summer I began finding ashtrays filled with butts, hers and Big Zina's. I also found a half-smoked roach in an ashtray. Sheila and Big Zina confessed to buying a lid to smoke at a Peter Frampton concert. They spent the weekend out of town, seeing Peter Frampton and doing other things with some of the girls from the team.

Shortly after our divorce, I bought a motorcycle, a metallic blue Triumph Bonneville 750. I knew nothing about motorcycles, never ridden one, but had an immediate need to wrap my legs around a powerful engine and drive it, very fast, down the highway.

After selling my old Mustang I began going everywhere on the bike. Even in the rain. Most of my free time I spent swilling beer at the Blue Note. Sometimes I made it home without remembering where I had been, or what I had done. Once two teenage boys lifted the cycle off the pavement when I tumped it over, leaving the bar. I remember the shock in their eyes when I charged out of the parking lot, barely missing the front fender of a passing car.

About that time Jimmy kicked me out for good. In a drunken fit, I threw a pitcher of beer at his frosted-glass mirror behind the bar. Unsatisfied with the ensuing explosion, I capped it off by smashing a couple of chairs and tables with my fists and feet. Jimmy and two regulars tossed me out on my face.

"Don't ever come back," he said as I powered away on my cycle.

After Jimmy banned me from the Blue Note, I began frequenting sleaze joints and biker bars populating the back roads leading to the ocean. It was there I met Rhonda.

Rhonda had red curly hair, a tattoo on her left shoulder and ultra red lips the same intense color as her skin art. Her personality also matched her hair. She smoked pot, used various drugs, slept around and had no visible means of support. Between jobs, she had explained. Rhonda lived in a three-room wood-framed cracker box on the wrong side of town.

Shortly after we met, we made love - spontaneously. In the front room on her shabby couch. We were both drunk, Rhonda's libido further stoked by pot and coke. I made do with beer and a couple of shooters. As we made love I noticed her faded green curtains gaping, wide open, for the world to see. The front door was also open.

"Think I better close the door and window?"

"Why?"

"Because someone might see us."

"Fuck 'em," she said.

Rhonda had long since sorted out her life, going through men faster than some women go through nail polish. As I was becoming attached to her, she had already finished with me, tossing me away like an empty bottle. Leaving a bar one night, drunk and alone, I motored past her place, maybe to satiate my morbid curiosity. See who she was with. Perhaps, deep down, I thought she might be alone and be happy to see me.

Parking the Triumph in the drive, I strolled up to her front door, peeking through the window before I knocked - a good thing because she wouldn't have answered anyway. She was on her back and she wasn't alone. Rhonda and a long-haired, nearly nude man was in motion on the shabby couch, feeling the apparent throes of full-blown, drug-assisted sexual nirvana. I had to kick-start my heart, and then my bike.

Gunning its engine, I trenched Rhonda's front yard as I sped away, nearing sixty by the time I reached the approaching intersection. It didn't matter that the light was red because I didn't have time to stop anyway. An old woman wheeled her Chevy directly in front of my fleeting path and I still remember her startled look when she saw me sliding toward her. I was very much out of control.

Concerned motorists pulled the cycle off my chest, the accident sparing me, and mostly the motorcycle, but leaving me cut, scratched and black and blue. When the cops finally released me, I watched headlights trailing away into the night, feeling the fool. I walked home alone after the tow truck had hauled away the bike.

*  *  *

"You awake?" Blue Angel said, tapping my shoulder.

"Sorry," I said, glancing up into his big cow eyes.

A nude dancer was weaving a sexual burlesque on the grimy wooden stage in front of us and lightning flashed through the open front door. I could smell rain blowing in from the north.

"Gotta go," he said, tapping the counter. "Don't forget my wedding next Saturday. Right here, same time."

Jack and Banjo suddenly appeared, pushing through smoke, shadows and frenzied customers, wheeling Blue Angel out the front door. They lifted him into the bed of an awaiting pickup and drove away as rain began to fall. I watched them disappear into the neon-illuminated gloom, and then rested my head on the counter.

By now my brain pulsated with a deep-seated ache, threatening to burst straight through the skull. Resting my head on the bar, I closed my eyes, letting loud music and bar noises resonate through flesh, bone and the distressed wood of the stage. The moment provided scant solace. Instead, I screamed through space, straight to the back of the truck with Blue Angel, my suddenly blurred thoughts a vision of street noise, glimmering neon, and passing humanity. Blue Angel flashed his blackened grin when he saw me.

"Welcome home, Bub," he said.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.