The Museum of Stars-1 of 4

Museum of Stars- Part 1 of 4

Prologue

We always arrived before dawn. The Robertson

Stone Works was in the bottom of a

cavernous quarry on the edge of town and on

moonless mornings it was pitch black outside the

building. You could see orange points of light

as men smoked cigarettes in randomly parked cars,

but that was all. The light on the outside of

the Works was burned out and nobody cared enough

to change the bulb. Robertson would have ordered

somebody to do it but he never arrived until well

into the daylight hours.

When the time came, the day shift men, pale from

long hours inside the building, emerged from

their rusted pickups and old sedans and shuffled

into the huge wooden warehouse like structure.

Other dust covered and pale men exited into

different rusted cars and pickups and sped away.

When the time clock was working we punched in.

Normally it wasn’t. We said fuck it and let

Gabby the foreman try and figure out who was on

time and who wasn’t, and he never did. Gabby was

a big fat bastard who only left his desk for

lunch or when production was too slow and he

needed to crack the whip. He could really make

us move when he had to.

I rode my bike to work whenever I could. I rode

through rain, stinging wind, and snow. I was

postal on that bike. I even rode on ice. I

couldn’t afford a car, and on top of that I

hadn’t driven in a really long time. When I was

younger I caused an accident that turned me off

driving for good.

When the weather was downright dangerous, I had

to take the bus. It had blue lights on the

inside and reminded me of one of those tunnel

nightmares I just couldn’t shake. I always sat

in front, near the exit, where I could bolt at

any minute if I had to. That way I could listen

to news on the driver’s radio too. He let me out

about a half mile from the Works, way off his

normal route, and I walked through an industrial

park that had passed the day when people

manufactured things there. It had become just

warehouses for stuff shipped over from China.

There was never a soul around at that time of

morning, not even a trucker.

When I rode my bike I’d roll in and chain it to

the building. None of the other guys rode bikes,

but most of them were not above stealing

something to sell. They were some of my only

friends in the world, but they still ranked

pretty low on my ethics scale. I didn’t blame

them for their situation because I was helping to

put them in it. Out of revenge, two of us had

been sabotaging Robertson Stone Works for a

couple of years and it was really beginning to

show. Our paychecks were starting to bounce left

and right and sometimes these guys didn’t have

any money.

We were stonecutters. We took large pieces of

stone and made them into smaller pieces that fit

logically into the world. We cut windowsills,

carved fireplace mantles and park benches, and

cut stone panels to cling to the outsides of

skyscrapers. We carved replacement pieces with

fancy Latin names for churches and university

buildings.

Stone is cut wet or dry. We had big saws that

cut rough stone blocks into panels and workable

pieces. The blades had small diamonds embedded

on the end of them- that’s what did the cutting.

If the friction of the blade on stone got the

diamonds hot they would wear away faster or break

off. Water was sprayed on the saw blades to keep

them cool. The men who ran the saws were

called ‘sawyers’.

Those of us who were carvers or ‘hand workers’

cut and carved stone with hammers and chisels and

smoothed it down with grinders. We did all our

work dry and made a lot of dust. To make a piece

of stone smaller you need to cut it down chip by

chip or grind it off into dust. We made quite a

mess.

I know I run the risk of going Moby Dick and

getting into minutia, but I want you to

understand about the dust. I won’t bore you by

talking about dry cracks or feldspar or Vitruvius or

bush hammers. But you need to know a little about

stone shops and dust in order to understand my

world.

Like how when we came in on a Monday morning, all

the dust in the air had settled on the floor.

Intricate patterns would be imprinted on the

cement floor where insects and mice had crawled

around. Courting and mating rituals and death

sprawls were all imprinted in the dust, as if we

were visiting a recently unearthed archeological

site. Epic battles between individuals were

recorded, with the vanquished sometimes lying

dead, covered in a fine layer of dust. Teddy,

Robertson’s slow nephew who worked as the

janitor, would sweep them all away into the pages

of history when he arrived.

We went into the break room and started the

coffee first thing every morning. We’d bought

everything for the break room ourselves,

including the coffee maker. Robertson was way

too cheap to buy anything not directly related to

production. Vince Potter, Colfax, and me, the

three carvers on the day shift, would each grab a

cup and then head out to our benches to see what

the guys from the night shift had produced. We

kept our tools and all the information we needed

for the current job at our bench. We each shared

a bench with a guy from the night shift. That

was all I shared. Under no circumstances would

anyone from the night shift use my stone carving

tools. They were all I had from the first stone

shop I’d worked in, and just holding them brought

back memories of better times.

We called the night shift guys the Van Men,

because the three of them lived together in a

camper van. They called it the ‘sin bin’

whenever they referred to it, and they seldom

spoke to anyone but each other. Their work

habits were nothing if not irregular. Some

nights they would get more done than we imagined

possible from one shift. Other nights it was

clear they hadn’t even touched a tool. Sometimes

direction disappeared with the sun and we would

come in to find an entire job cut perfectly

backwards. The night shift foreman was afraid of

them. They listened to speed metal on the radio

and he though they were devil worshipers. No

matter what they did he never said a word. He

had a wife and kids and figured that one of those

freaks would have no remorse about killing him if

he got on their nerves. If they could live

together in that van a prison cell would be like

a busman’s holiday.

Vince Potter was the senior stonecutter and in

charge of the day shift. Once we had our coffee

and figured out what the Van Men had or had not

done, Vince would plan out our day and we would

begin.

Don’t for a minute think of romantic images of

men carving stone- bearded artisans hungering to

bring out the soul of the rock. Artists make

terrible cutters. They can’t read tape measures

and they don’t like to make the same piece twice,

let alone twenty times. We had a couple of them

try, but they didn’t work out. There’s no

romance in cutting stone for buildings. Romance

is for the people who get to live and work in

them. You can wax poetic on limestone and read

Ruskin, but you won’t be anywhere near the mark

unless you understand the dust.

We were working on a remodel of a housing

project. It was an enormous job. The city was

trying to spruce the place up with low brick

walls next to all the sidewalks and around all

the dumpsters. They were going for some kind of

European look by tearing the siding off all the

buildings and replacing it with stucco. We had

to make limestone caps for all the new walls.

The caps had to be heavy enough so that two

teenagers couldn’t lift them off and use them as

weapons. The walls were really just bulletproof

places for the cops to hide behind when they went

on drug busts.

The straight cap pieces were simple but the ones

that went around the corners required a lot of

cutting and grinding. The air cleaning equipment

at the Works was broken and no one would fix it

unless cash was paid up front. That wasn’t about

to happen. Word had gotten out to all the trades

that the Works weren’t in the best financial

shape.

All the dust I made grinding stone just hung in

the air. I was engulfed in a cloud of dust.

When I looked up I couldn’t see Colfax standing

ten feet away from me. He was making dust too.

On my bench the dust was six inches deep. When

limestone dust is fresh it flows in you hand like

water. It feels lighter than cotton candy.

I was just about finished with one of the corner

pieces when I looked up and saw a white speck

buzz past me. A fly coated in dust.

When a fly gets caught in a stone ship its fate

is sealed. It flies around and maybe bothers a

couple of people. It lands and flies away and

keeps collecting dust. And then, one time when

it lands, it discovers it can’t take off again.

Its wings have collected too much dust for it to

ever fly again. I’m sure it tries. But it can

only walk around, collecting more dust, until it

suffocates or gets buried alive.

I stopped and watched the fly. It buzzed past me

a couple of times, confident in its fly ness,

still naïve about its future. It flew further

down the shop, through the cloud of dust Colfax

was making. And then it was gone. I stood for a

moment, waiting to see if it would return. But

it must have kept going

I returned to the piece I was working on, and on

to more pieces. But really all I could do the

whole day was ask myself why in the hell there

were miles of green fields under the beautiful

blue skies.



Chapter 1

It was only after Thahn and Le Han

Nguyen’s unborn baby died that Colfax and I

decided to shut down Robertson Stone Works. We

let Vince Potter in on the plan, but he wanted no

part of it. I think the writing was on the wall

for Robertson with or without us, but at least by

playing an active role in the decline of

something we were given the illusion of power and

control. The real power was in the hands of

Gerald Robertson the Fourth, the owner. We

called him Four. He was the great, great

grandson of an Englishman who had come to this

country knowing only how to carve stone and

worked his ass off to make that skill into

something. The first Gerald’s stone carving

tools were proudly displayed in the office lobby

for all to see. It you had handed them to Four

he wouldn’t have known the business end of them.

His father, Gerald the Third, could not have been

more different. Everyone called him Jerry. He

had overseen the expansion of Robertson into one

of the most successful stone companies in the

Midwest. If there was a large building project

in the area that needed stone, Jerry would get

the call. Even then he would help load a job on

a truck or run a saw when things got really

busy. But Jerry had a stroke and everything went

to hell.


The day after Four put Jerry in the ground he

decided that technology was going to save us all,

even though there was no one that needed saving

at the time. We were going to become the most

technologically sophisticated stone shop in the

Midwest, whether there was a demand for something

like that or not. Four would go to all the trade

shows and come home with the great news that he

had finally found the precise combination of

equipment that was going to turn the company back

on the path to prosperity. Meanwhile, the back

yard of the Works became an expensive graveyard

of outdated and underused stone working

equipment. All the skilled stone workers who had

served so faithfully under Jerry resigned one by

one in disgust. Only Vince Potter remained.

Three generations of building a company were

squandered in just a few years.


After Four spent all the company savings on

worthless equipment, he became brutal in trying

to keep the company alive. The only bills

certain to be paid every month were the taxes,

utilities, and his salary. Everything else was

up for grabs. This included the company’s share

of the health insurance.


Thahn came to Robertson through a state program

that helped companies hire refugees and people

seeking political asylum. After Jerry died and

all the old timers quit, Four used the program as

our number one recruiting tool. We quickly

became an international stone shop. Every

applicant we got was a repressed political

minority, even if it was a Brazilian guy

pretending to be from Venezuela. Most of the men

were so desperate they would tell you anything to

get a job. Some would swear they had ten years

experience in a technologically sophisticated

stone shop and they next day we would discover

they didn’t even know how to read. We started

almost everybody at the beginning. Lesson number

one- this is a piece of stone. It comes out of

the ground. We make things with it.


Despite the setbacks, there were a few who were

productive from the word go. Thahn was one of

them. We taught him how to operate a saw and he

quickly became skilled at it. He showed up every

day on time and cut pieces of limestone with

exacting precision. We loved him for it because

the closer his cuts were to being exact the less

work we had to do to make the pieces ready to

ship.


Thahn’s family had fled from Vietnam a few years

after the war. The communists had held his

father after they had taken over. The men had

come to the door of their house and asked him to

join them for a little reeducation. They said he

would only be gone for ten days, but they held

him for over two years. His ‘Ten Vietnamese

Days’ became a bitter joke among the family.


On the day our sabotage began, Colfax brought

over a piece of stone for me to measure. It was

cut wrong. The day before, I had also gotten a

piece of stone from Thahn that was cut wrong.

This had been occurring on and off for a week,

and we thought gloom and doom. We were sure he

had grown bored and was going to leave us.

Colfax and I walked over to him at the saw.


Thahn was measuring another piece to cut. He had

already cut it once, too long, so he was lining

it up to recut it. We steered him into

the break room and sat him down. He didn’t look

bored at all. He looked lethargic, defeated.

His shoulders slumped down and it seemed like any

minute he would slide right out of the plastic

chair and onto the floor. I got him a glass of

water.

“What’s going on lately buddy?” asked

Colfax. “So many wrong pieces.”

Thahn’s English had improved, but there were

still many things he had no words for. He looked

at us and must have understood that we cared. He

took a deep breath, as if in preparation.

“The baby,” he said and then paused. “The baby

die before time.”

“Your wife was pregnant?” I asked

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell us?”

“It was not time.” I looked at Colfax, who was

stunned. “We were wanting for it to be later to

tell.”

Colfax had a couple of kids. I didn’t have any.

I’d met and fallen in love with a woman, but it

didn’t work out.

“How many months along was she?” asked Colfax.

“I am thinking five.”

“So she miscarried.”

“Yes, mis carry.”

Thahn took out his cigarettes and lit one up. He

took a couple of deep drags, but then set it down

in the ashtray and put his hand over his face.

He began to cry. It was odd to see someone cry

in a stone shop. The place was so damn full of

machismo. I’d seen a guy nearly tear his thumb

off and still not shed a tear. He took the more

manly way out and simply lost consciousness.

Colfax rested a hand on Thahn’s shoulder. Thahn

put his head down on the table for a moment and

breathed as deeply as he could.

“Did she go to the doctor? To get care before

the baby is born?”

“One time. But they say that insurance no pay

and give us bill. And we are thinking maybe no

pay until baby is born.”

Four had not paid the company’s share of the

premiums, even though he had collected the money

from our checks. This had happened before. We

were familiar enough with it to understand that

you could still go to the doctor and they would

still bill the insurance company if you asked

them to. How could Thahn have known this? He

wasn’t the one to rock the boat and ask the

question either.

“I am home and she is…bathroom… and blood.

Ambulance man say baby could be alive…”

Colfax looked over at me again and shook his

head. He sat down next to Thahn to offer

support. Thahn put his head down on his arms and

wept long sobs.

I had to leave before my head exploded with

anger. What little patience I had left for the

Works vanished with that conversation. I went

outside and grabbed a hammer and smashed the

piece of stone Thahn had cut wrong. It broke in

half on the first smack and I attacked the pieces

until they lay scattered across the floor. I

pounded them smaller and smaller until I ran out

of steam.

Vince Potter stood and watched me wreak havoc.

When I was through, I took him into the break

room and we explained everything to him.

Chapter 2

Colfax had been an accountant before he

became a stonecutter. He was a prodigy in his

company, with brilliant new ideas and methods for

steering the company finances. But the pace was

too fast for him and he pretty much stopped

sleeping. He had a nervous breakdown and got

fired, or the other way around. He was kind of

vague on the topic. He ended up sitting around

his house getting fat. His wife encouraged him

to get back in the game at a smaller company, but

he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. One day

when he was leafing through the paper looking at

the classifieds he noticed his hands. It's not

that he had never seen them before, he had just

never thought about using them to make a living.

He wasn’t sure what he could do, but he was

excited anyway. He got up and searched the house

for his wife, finding her in the back yard

watering the flowers.

“I want to work with these,” he said, holding out

his hands in front of her like a child showing

his mother something he had just discovered.

She took a good look at him to see if he was

serious.

“Fine,” she said. “Can we just not lose the

house? The kids are too old to be moving them

around.”


He never worked another day in an office.

Colfax came up with the plan to ensure the

collapse of the Works. I won’t pretend to

understand it. He buddied up with the guy Four

brought in to do the accounting and soon he knew

almost everything there was to know about the

financial goings on at the Works. The company

was getting progressively worse. Colfax crunched

a bunch of numbers and came up with a percentage

of pieces that would have to be done wrong in

order for us to bankrupt Four. The accountant

would bounce all these ideas about saving the

company off Colfax, who encouraged him to pursue

only the really bad ones.

On our end it was pretty simple. For each piece

of stone we cut or carved there was a printed

sheet of paper with all the measurements needed

to fabricate the piece correctly. This was

called a ticket. If you change just one of the

crucial numbers on the ticket the piece will be

no good when it goes to the jobsite. The

contractor will be mad, of course, because he’s

been waiting for the pieces to arrive and he’s

under pressure to get the job done. Now he has

to send back the information on which pieces are

done wrong and what changes they need to have

done to them. Which gives us more numbers that

can be manipulated and the inevitable gray areas

that come up in any communication. These were

taken advantage of to produce a little more chaos

and a few more pieces done incorrectly. Which,

in the end, boiled down to there being no profit

on the job. That was our goal. To erase all

profit while making the mistakes appear to be

random human error. We would do this until we

had bankrupted the company.

We made the pieces but we didn’t make the

tickets. We needed one of the draftsmen to help us

out with that. We found our man in Kevin. He was

young, fresh out of technical school. He was

excellent at drafting but his social skills were non-

existent. He was either in awe or scared to death of

the stonecutters. Every time we walked into the

drafting room, he jumped. We told him Gabby, the fat

foreman, was slowing us down. We wanted him to make

us copies of all the tickets so we could plan our days

without him. That way, we told Kevin, we could get

even more done. He thought that was a great plan, and

was amazed we were so loyal that we would work ahead.

We told him not to tell anyone about it, that our

extra work was just our way of saying thanks to Mr.

Robertson. He promised to keep it a secret.

When he gave us the tickets, we would change some

numbers and then distribute them. Then, when the

pieces were cut, we would replace them with the real

tickets Gabby had distributed, with the right numbers

on them. That way, all the mistakes looked like human

error.

We began our plan with hopes for a swift end to the

company. We even began to look for a better job

someplace else for Thahn. But the battle turned out

to be a lot longer than expected. It came with all

the self-doubt of any extended campaign. Four kept

coming up money to fund the company when, according to

Colfax, there shouldn’t have been any more left. He

was astounded. Six months into our sabotage

operation, and countless wrong pieces, the company was

showing no signs of damage at all. We knew Four was

up to something, but we just didn’t know what it was.

We were the ones who began to show the strain as our

plan dragged on and on. Smuggling in bogus tickets

and finding the right moments to switch them was nerve

wracking.

In the break room we had to listen to guys bitch about

Gabby chewing them out for cutting pieces wrong. They

felt certain they had read the ticket right and were

pissed off when he presented them with a ticket that

clearly showed they were in error.

To top it all off, we realized we had grown accustomed

to being together in the shop and enjoyed each other’s

company. Thahn and LeHan had a baby boy the following

year, and he could not have been happier. Vince

Potter was just a few years away from retirement and

there were no other stone shops around he could go

to. Cutting stone had been his entire life. He

didn’t have a wife or family, and was unsure what he

was going to do if he didn’t have a stone shop to go

to every day.

I knew Colfax went through his moments of doubt as

well, remembering the pace of the accounting world to

which he might have to return. He had sudden panic

attacks when he worried about losing his house and

having to move his kids out of their school. He was

deathly afraid of their being traumatized and never

forgiving him for it.

But we kept at it. We knew Four would never change

and this was our only chance at some kind of cosmic

damage control. He still went to all the trade shows,

still bought the latest and greatest equipment, even

as our plan slowly began to work and our checks began

to bounce.

We would just keep making pieces wrong for as long as

it took. And then we would have brought some kind of

justice to bear. It wouldn’t be the clear-cut revenge

we had envisioned in the beginning, but it would be

revenge nonetheless.


Chapter 2

I waited tables on the weekends. There

was a legal settlement against me because of the car

accident and my wages were garnished pretty heavily.

It left me with enough money to pay the rent and buy

groceries, but not much else. I got the job as a

waiter so I could have enough money to learn to fly

airplanes. Also, to try and save a little for an

uncertain future. My Uncle Peter, whom everybody

called Unc, got me the job. He and my father had run

and auto body shop for years and knew just about

everybody in town. When I told him I wanted to get a

second job he called Joe, a friend of his who owned

the restaurant. I’d been to prison and I didn’t even

have a high school diploma, so it wasn’t like I could

just waltz in anywhere, fill out a job application,

and get hired. Unc helped me out with stuff like that

because my parents weren’t around anymore. After I

got in trouble they retired to Arizona and I hadn’t

seen them in years.

Unc wasn’t soft on me. He was the reason I ended up

in prison in the first place. I’d run away and he

spent a lot of time and money to track me down and

make sure I was punished for what I did. It was the

right thing to do. Unc lived in a world where there

weren’t many gray areas. Any action you took was

either right or wrong and you were responsible in the

end. He just wanted me to pay for what I had done,

literally, so that I could prove myself worthy of

rejoining society. That’s the kind of level he worked

on.

The restaurant was on the opposite side of town from

the Works. It was an old stone barn that had been

converted into a bar and grill and at the time it was

the hippest place in the city. It had that warm and

cozy feeling from the stone and timbers and the old

flags and farm implements on the walls. The chef

bought most of the ingredients locally and made magic

every night. People waited for open tables and raved

about the food. They came back again and again.

To top it all off, the place was haunted. A couple of

drunken Irish laborers had fallen to their deaths when

they tried to ride the length of the place on the

hayfork. They were mischievous ghosts, and there were

no shortage of drinks named after them.

It was a Friday night and we were jam-packed. We had

the fish fry crowd along with the regulars who wanted

to see what the chef had dreamed up for the day.

A middle-aged couple came in and asked for a table.

The host told them it would be about an hour wait.

The woman thought it was too long, but it was her idea

to try out the place instead of their normal Friday

night supper club, so she could hardly back out. At

least that’s what she told me when she came to visit

me in the hospital. They found a place at the bar

where they could pass the time.

The woman was getting on in years but she could still

spruce herself up. At the place they normally went

for fish, on the other side of the city, she still

drew looks from a lot of the guys. She was the only

one of her group who could still respectably get away

with a short skirt after two kids.

She was depressed. Call it mid-life, whatever. She

didn’t think her husband had any passion for her

anymore. She’d been trying to do a few things to get

his attention, but so far nothing had worked. Some

new outfits, some new dishes of her own at home- even

dragging him out to a couple of romantic movies. All

wasted effort. He was busy thinking about anything

but her and she was getting panicky that she might

never get his flame restarted. She thought if they

went to some fresh surroundings he would look around

and see that she was still way above average in the

looks department. He’d once again start to appreciate

her.

But as soon as they walked into the place she realized

what a fool she was to pick a hot spot. Pretty young

women immediately surrounded them. She realized she

was going to spend the whole night watching her

husband check them out. If his flame did restart she

knew it wasn’t going to be because of her. She was

wishing she had stuck to their routine and was trying

to not cry in frustration. She knew if she started to

cry her mascara would run and she would look totally

silly. The younger women hardly wore any makeup these

days- just naturally beautiful. She started to get

paranoid, thinking one minute that everyone was

staring at her in pity and the next that no one even

knew she was there. The hour wait for the table

sounded like an eternity. At the end of the night her

husband would turn to her say he really liked the

place and they should try coming back more often. She

suffered in silence, realizing all they ever did at

their regular supper club was talk to the same damn

people about the same silly things. Even at home they

never talked about anything important anymore.

She had ordered a drink when they sat down and all of

the sudden it was all she could think about. She was

parched. Her throat was tight and starting to burn.

As soon as she got her first drink she was going to

order another one. There was a guy over in the corner

playing piano and singing and all the beautiful young

women were singing along. She was so goddam old she

didn’t recognize a single song. And her husband was

doing nothing to get her that drink.

Ed was bartending that night. He was busy, downright

swamped. Stuart, the part time day bartender, was a

worthless piece of shit who left the bar in total

disarray. He never prepped the bar for the evening

rush even though he had plenty of time and knew Friday

nights were hectic at best, impossible at worst. He

said he was afraid to go in the storeroom alone

because of the ghosts. Ed had heard a lot of bullshit

excuses for laziness in his day, but that one took the

cake. Besides, the ghosts were all right as long as

you weren’t afraid of them. They seemed to sense when

someone was uneasy and play on that. Ed told Stuart

he had to make peace with them

None of that was important at the moment. One of the

beer kegs was empty and the rail whiskey was almost

gone and who knew where it was hidden in the storeroom

this time. And, there were no olives. Ed was about

6’5”, easy 275. He was in college, throwing shot put

for the track team and double majoring in chemistry

and biology. He had a wife at home with morning

sickness. He didn’t have time or energy to waste

picking up after some punk ass part timer. He decided

the next time the bar wasn’t perfectly prepped he was

going to shove Stuart’s gelled up little head into a

blender and not let up until he was just holding neck.

To top it all off he hated Friday nights. This ‘get

em in, feed em, get em out’ mentality appalled him

because he loved to chat with people as much as he

loved to make them their drinks. He didn’t even open

his mouth on Friday nights. And now, of all things,

the other bartender was late for her shift. He had

five drinks going and they were all fucked up. And

the lady who ordered the martini with olives was

trying to stare him down. And you know, sometimes it

was just too goddam bad. He didn’t have olives at the

moment. It wasn’t the end of the world. He speared a

couple of mushrooms on a blue plastic sword and

plopped them in her drink. At best maybe she looked

around and saw that he was really busy and lived with

it. He picked up the drink, hoped for the best, and

walked it over.

I was back in the kitchen. It was a sea of stainless

steel and tile and awesome cooking equipment hanging

everywhere. Even our uniforms were pretty cool, dark,

with a kind of ghost motif floating up through them.

Whoever ordered the fish fry got Cole slaw, French

fries, and rye bread. We prepared it in advance so

all you had to do was write up a ticket and grab for

stuff. Unbeknownst to me, my waiter’s folder- the

mini organizer I carried all my order tickets in- had

wedged its way up to the top of my apron pocket. It

was on the verge of falling out, but since I was

leaning against a table filling bowls of Cole slaw, I

didn’t notice. We were just about out of bowls and

Melissa, the waitress working with me, asked me if I

would run downstairs and get more. We’d been working

together for a couple of years now, and I knew I had

feelings for her. She was beautiful, so I didn’t know

if it was just that or something more. The wait staff

had gone out a couple of times as a group, but other

than that I’d never seen her outside of work. I’d

never been brave enough to ask her out.

I backed up from the table and walked about six steps

before my folder fell from my apron, spilling my

tickets everywhere. On instinct, I bent down to pick

them up. I didn’t look around to see I was kneeling

right in front of the heavy double swing door that

led from the bar area to the kitchen.

Just about the very same instant Ed arrived with the

woman’s drink. The sight of the mushrooms made her

lose it. She wanted to be calm and quiet, but she

heard herself blurting out “I wanted olives! Its bad

enough I have to wait you can’t even make my goddam

drink right!” Her husband turned to look at her,

shocked. A couple of people near her turned too, but

because of the piano and all the singing she went

unnoticed for the most part. Now she couldn’t help

but tear up. She felt like she just wanted to crawl

away and die. She wiped at her wet eyes, smudging

mascara all the way back to her temple.

Ed heard loud and clear. Bad enough he was working

alone. Now people couldn’t even be civil, let alone

empathetic. “You want olives? I’ll get your fucking

olives.”

He turned and walked the length of the bar in three

strides. He’d completely forgotten about looking

through the port hole window in the door before

swinging it open, just to make sure no one was on the

other side. In his enraged mind he was already trying

to locate the olives in the damn mess they called a

storeroom. His adrenalin was running so fast that

when he got to the door he lifted up his massive leg

and kicked it open with all his might.

I only had four more tickets to pick up. I was

reaching for one that fell near the door when for a

split second I saw my arm fly awkwardly back at me.

The next instant I was unconscious, as the door

slammed against the left side of my face and then into

my chest. My hand was shattered and my face was cut

clean from my hairline to my eyebrow. I broke a

couple ribs from the impact and a couple more as I

bounced down the six cement steps. I landed in a heap

at the bottom and dislocated my shoulder. Ed no more

than had the door open and he was calling 911. I

regained consciousness for about ten seconds and there

was Melissa, standing above me. An angel that smelled

of fried fish and perfume and cigarettes. And then,

it all went black.


Chapter 3

I woke up in the ambulance, but this time

there were no peaceful images. Just two guys hooking

me up to every conceivable thing in their converted

van. They were keeping an eye on my vital signs and

trying to figure out what my broken ribs were doing to

my insides. I was a little panicked until I thought

of Chauncey Stigand, this British soldier who did a

lot of big game hunting in Africa. I had read about

him at the University library where I hung out on

weekends sometimes. One time a rhino caught him and

pretty much ripped off his left breast. As his muscle

was hanging there, he sat down and calmly waited for a

while to see if he was going to spit up blood. If he

had, it meant his lung was punctured and there was no

sense in making a big effort to save him because he

was a dead man. Lucky for him it wasn’t. He lived

through that one, but wasn’t so lucky when the Dinka

tribesmen put a dozen spears through him. I tried to

reach up and touch my lip to see if blood was coming

out of my mouth. One of the guys told me to relax and

pushed my hand back down to my side. We were almost

to the hospital. I could still smell the restaurant,

but now it was all mixed in with medical equipment

smells. It kind of confused me. I was going to ask

the guy a question, but I couldn’t put the words

together. Then, I lost it once again, drifting off.

I didn’t wake up again until I was in a hospital bed.

A nurse in a purple uniform was adjusting a bag

hanging above me. My curtains were drawn back and

outside I saw a med flight helicopter landing.

Several people ran out to it as it touched down. It

looked like they were really excited to get on and

take a ride, like the kids at the county fair. But

they took out a patient and ran inside with him.

The nurse looked down at me and saw I was awake. She

smiled. She tried to speak to me but she was far

away, like she whispered from one end of a tunnel.

She looked over me and spoke to someone on the other

side of the bed. I turned my head and saw Unc,

studying the nurse as she spoke to him. I could hear

him a little better as he responded to her. He talked

so damn loud I probably could have heard him from the

grave. Whatever he was saying didn’t register, and I

drifted off again and slept on and off for a couple of

days. Unc sat next to me most of the time.

My grandparents were odd people who spent a lot more

time worrying about the going’s on at their current

church than they did about the welfare of their ten

children. Unc was the oldest. My father was the

last, the ‘love child’. Although with grandma you’d

have been hard pressed to hear any talk of love that

didn’t begin or end with a reference to our savior

Jesus Christ.

They were great attenders. Grandma drug grandpa to

pretty much every revival in a three state area,

regardless of the cost or time away from their kids.

The whole damn lot fell to Unc to sort out. He ran

the house with a discipline that was quite unusual for

a kid. Nothing was wasted, whether it be words or

money or excess feeling. All my aunts and uncles grew

up and went to college or into the military and

scattered to the far corners of the globe. Grandma

gave all the credit to Jesus. Grandpa had worried

himself into sickness and was long dead. Only Unc, my

dad, and Aunt Elizabeth stayed in the area. Unc never

married. He’d raised an entire family by the time he

was thirty five and it made an odd duck out of him. I

think he equated marriage with more kids, and he

wasn’t interested. Aside from that, he was grumpy and

stubborn and I’m not really sure who would have put up

with him.

Unc worked in an auto body shop as soon as he was able

to get out of the house. He learned everything he

could about cars while helping to support his brothers

and sisters. My grandparents were failed farmers at

best, and couldn’t keep the family afloat without a

lot of help. Grandpa couldn’t keep a regular job

because it interfered with the revival schedule. They

were famous for accepting whatever charity they could,

never missing a free meal for the family at a local

wedding or funeral.

My father was a fast talking businessman from birth.

He talked Unc into forming a partnership and starting

their own body shop. They got the place up and

running then Dad branched off into new cars, real

estate, towing, etc. He was a hell of a businessman.

Unc ran the shop like he had the family, and his

employees were loyal to him because he made sure they

were taken care of. I began working there as soon as

I was old enough to bring the guys tools and sodas.

Dad and Unc were going to groom me to take over the

whole operation, but I messed up and never made it

that far.

Unc never spent a dime. He hunted a lot in the fall,

and had a big garden that kept him occupied the rest

of the year. He invested and made and invested it all

again. Aside from making sure his brothers and

sisters had enough to eat, money never interested Unc.

He was there in the hospital room when I came to once

again. He was fidgeting around as only a once busy

guy could. Hospitals made him nervous too. With all

the illness and accidents that go along with raising

nine kids and running an auto body shop, he’d spent

too much time in hospitals.

He saw I was awake.

“Know where you are kid?”

“Ho…”

I tried to speak but I couldn’t get the word to form.

He went outside and got the nurse to bring in some

water. I drank it and she asked how I was feeling.

She ran down the list of my injuries for me after I

told her where I hurt. “You want a pain shot?” she

asked.

“Yes please.”

“It’s right in your IV. Just press the button when

you feel you need it.”


My hand felt like it had been run over. Every breath

brought sharp biting pain to my chest.

“They didn’t know a couple of times kid. Thought

maybe one of those ribs stuck right into ya. And

maybe your brain had gotten messed up. I called your

dad, but he ain’t comin. Wouldn’t let me talk to your

mom neither. Who knows what he told her. Blood don’t

matter you know. You can be my blood and still be

rotten. You all have a way of proving that.”

“Glad to be alive Unc.”

“Yeah, I’m glad you made it through. I called up Joe

right away and told him that he was a rotten piece of

shit for having a door like that. You know he already

changed it. Knocked out that damn stone he was so

proud of. Now he’s got the in and out doors separate

and a big window in each one. Too late for you

though.”

I took another drink of water but didn’t say

anything. It hurt too damn much to talk.

“Jees, the way they lined up to visit you’d think you

were on your death bed like Gramps. Except people

actually came to tell you goodbye. Damn, that still

breaks me up remembering. I don’t care what you think

of a guy in life. If he’s dying, don’t you owe it to

him to stop and say goodbye? It ain’t like he’s not

about to get punished shortly for the stuff he did in

his life. But to be dying and everybody knows it and

nobody comes. I never left his side all the way until

the end and nobody came. And he was in pain too. It

woulda helped, some visitors. Ease his mind. Listen

kid, I don’t care. That’s just plain rotten.”

I looked around the room. It was large and I was the

only patient in it. The nurses had even taken the

time to display some cards and flowers that I had

gotten. There was a nice big TV and everything, even

a private bath.

“Unc. How’d I get this room?”


“Listen, I got the room. You ain’t never shared a

room before. No sense in starting now.”

I had shared a cell when I was in prison, but he never

brought that up anymore. I was the kid who was

supposed to go on to college and then come back and

run the company. To him it was like I was kind of

still that kid. He’d blanked out a lot of minor

details like the fact I never went to college and he

sold the business when my father and mother moved to

Arizona.

I couldn’t tell if it was the drugs or just the way my

head was working after the collision with the door,

but his picking up the tab for the room really hit

me. I felt like crying, but I did my best not to

since crying wasn’t an acceptable thing for a man to

do in Unc’s world.

“Thanks Unc,” was all I could manage to say. I gave

myself another pain shot. It helped, but the level of

the world got strange. I felt like the bed was tipped

on its side and I was sliding out. I grabbed on tight

to the metal rail and drifted off into my drug-induced

sleep. It was the first time I could remember going

to sleep in a hospital bed since the car accident. I

dreamt about the accident a lot. All of the dreams

were about corners that came up too fast and when I

woke up my mouth tasted like dead leaves and dirt.

Chapter 4

Melissa visited me the next day. I knew I was

in love with her from the moment she stood above my

damaged frame. My head was really cloudy from the

trauma and the pain meds, but it was clear to me now

what I felt for her. I hadn’t felt this way for

anyone since Unc had brought me back from England

years earlier. There were lots of strings attached to

feeling like this and I was confused about it.

Melissa was in school, finishing her master’s degree

in art history. Tall, thin, brown hair and silver

eyes. Comfortable in her second hand clothes and

college town surroundings. She was originally from

some fancy place out east somewhere.

She brought me a card and some flowers and wore a wry

kind of smile when she walked in.

“I know, I know,” she said as she held up the flowers

for both of us to examine. “Don’t let them erode you

fragile male self confidence. They’re really for the

room anyway.”

She set them down in the middle of the table opposite

my bed and arranged them so they stood just right.

Then she walked over to the bed and gave me a kiss on

the cheek. I had a huge chunk of my hair shaved off

where they gave me stitches on my forehead. I must

have looked like the victim of a drunken barber.

She sat down in the chair next to me and brought out

some books from her duffel bag.

“I don’t know if you read much, but you’ll need

something to do for a while.” She set the books down

on the bedside table. There were a couple of thick

novels and some poetry. She didn’t specify any order

for the books. “Just don’t sit around and watch TV.

Pretty soon you’ll be like those dorks at the student

union obsessed with their soap operas. It’s beyond

pathetic.”

I adjusted myself up in bed and winced from the pain,

which hit me unexpectedly hard. I saw stars. Melissa

jumped up from her chair and helped me get

comfortable. We moved my pillows around until I was

in a tolerable position, with my club hand wedged

between the metal rail and my knee. She sat on the

edge of the bed and took a soft hold on my good hand.

“We really thought you were gone. After a minute you

were lying there, completely still. Everybody was

afraid to move you- we thought you might fall apart or

something, I don’t know. None of us had every seen

anybody really hurt before. It was pathetic. Nobody

even thought to go out in the dining room to see if

there was a doctor or nurse in the place. How

ridiculous all of us.”

She looked stressed remembering it. We sat silent for

a moment, surrounded by my tubes and wires and

readouts.

“Unc said they weren’t really sure if I was going to

make it when they got me here,” I told her. They

couldn’t tell if my ribs were stuck in me.”

“Unc. Was that they old man who made us all leave?”

“Did he do that? Yeah, that’s him. He can be a

little protective. I’m his only family around here

anymore and he’s used to taking care of people.”

“Where are your parents?” she asked and then

backpedaled. “You know, I’m sorry. That’s really

none of my business.”

She looked at me more closely for the first time. I

was intimidated by the brightness of her eyes. She

squinted them together tightly, did a double take, and

laughed.

“When I close my eyes like this, you look like a man

in sections," she said. "You’ve become a Picasso.”

“I take it that’s not good.”

“Good or bad is irrelevant. The point is not to be a

Picasso forever. One needs to regain wholeness at

some point. Or you become a Munch.”

“I plan on it. At some point I want to grow old

enough that the wrinkles will cover my scars.”

“Then you’ll look like Picasso as an old man. Reality

mirroring art will become reality mirroring the

creator.”

“Whatever I can do to help it along.”

My food tray arrived but I wasn’t hungry, so I let

Melissa eat whatever she wanted. We talked about her

thesis, which she was on the verge of finishing. It

was about art from some period in England when there

were consumed by good and evil. It didn’t make much

sense to me. I had lived in London for years, but I

didn’t tell her. That would have taken more

explaining than I had energy for at the moment. She

had to go teach a class, so she packed up her duffel.

“You know,” she said as she stood in the

doorway, “when you were lying there and I ran down the

stairs you thought I was an angel. Do you remember?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“You were so earnest about it. You really thought I

was an angel. Rest well, I’ll come back again.”




Chapter 5

The doctors worried about me, so they kept me there.

They stood at my bed and talked about head trauma and

the risk of collapsing lungs. The operation to repair

my hand had been quite delicate and they were worried

about the healing process. If I got an infection or

bumped it against something, it was possible I would

not gain full use of it anymore. It didn’t really

matter to me. I’d never carve stone again in this

lifetime. Even with two perfectly good hands the

constant vibration of hammer and chisel is tough.

With a hand as badly damaged as mine, impossible.

Unc came to see me every morning. He grilled the

doctors to make sure I was getting the best care

possible. He would bring me carryout from the

restaurant he ate at every day. His own kitchen was

immaculate and he kept it that way by hardly ever

using it. He was a perfectly good cook, even in a

time when cooking was considered a womanly thing.

With nine other mouths to feed, he had to learn to be

a good cook.


But why cook for just yourself? He liked to eat out

where they knew him as a regular. His favorite place

was a café in the little village near his house. The

village was being swallowed up rapidly by the

development of the city and even Unc’s farm was now

surrounded by tracts of houses. I’m sure the city

would have taken his land for development if it had

been somebody else. But Unc had so many favors owed

him by members of the municipal leadership it was

safer for their personal reputations to just let him

live the rest of his life there. When you tow cars

and can keep your mouth shut about what you see,

you’re a valuable man.

Sometimes Melissa would visit in the afternoon and

bring me more books. She showed me pictures of the

art she was studying too. The paintings were kind of

weird with lots of snakes and apples and regret.

She’d try and explain it all to me, and I think it

helped her to understand better. She told me more

about herself too. Her Connecticut upbringing and how

when she told her parents she was going to study in

the Midwest they laughed and asked her questions as if

she were going to study in central Africa.

I didn’t offer up too much about my past. I knew she

had to be curious, but luckily the conversation never

went in that direction.


Colfax wandered in on the next Saturday, flowers and

card in.

“Don’t get any ideas chief, the wife sent these.”

“Already learned,” I told him, “they’re for the room.”

“Yup.”

He sat them on the table next to the flowers Melissa

had brought. He walked over to the window and looked

out at the helipad.

“Four is really pissed off that you had a second job.

For some reason that SOB thinks we should show

absolute loyalty to his cause. If he only knew, huh.”

“No kidding.”

“He asks my why on earth you didn’t just work overtime

at the shop. So I tell him when your check is no good

it doesn’t matter if the number is bigger. Damn if he

didn’t think that was funny one bit. So how are ya?”

“Too sore.” I said. My club hand rested against the

metal pole on the bed, the way Melissa and I had

positioned it the first time she came to visit. It

was the most comfortable there. Colfax wasn’t shy

about it.

“Let’s unwrap that baby and have a look.”

“I’m done Colfax, no need to ooh and ahh over it.”

“Come on. I didn’t come here to gossip like church

maids. Besides, it’ll give the nurses something to do

when they have to wrap it back up.”

I hadn’t seen my hand. I listened to the doctor

explain in great detail what damage had been done and

how they had tried to fix it, but I hadn’t the guts to

look at it when the nurses changed the wrapping.

I held it up and undid the hook that kept the bandage

wrapped tight. Colfax helped me unravel it. I felt

oddly removed from the whole scene, as if we were

looking at somebody else’s injury. My head was goofy

a lot like that since the accident, but I didn’t want

to tell the doctors. They might keep me forever,

running test after test until I died of old age.

My thumb was exposed, unharmed, but after that every

turn of the wrap revealed another injury. There were

stitches running up the side of three fingers and

metal pins sticking out the points. My whole hand was

black and blue and there was some dried blood on it.

I didn’t recognize it as my own.

Colfax gently lifted it up and looked at it more

closely. He frowned.

“Yeah, no kidding. You’re done.”

“Four can be pissed, but it doesn’t matter. Even if I

get back the motion those fingers will never hold a

chisel again day after day. Time to move on to

something else.”

“No, no, no. We’ve got a role for you to play. This

minor setback doesn’t mean we’re done.”

The nurse came back in. “Had to show it off, did ya?”

“Yeah, the tubes and wires weren’t enough to convince

him I got hurt.”

She left to get a fresh bandage.

“Come talk to me when you get out.”

I promised I would.

Chapter 6

When none of the doctor’s doomsday prophecies


for my body came true they finally let me out. Unc

gave me a ride back to my apartment. It was a gloomy,

early fall day and the sky was spitting rain

sideways. After making sure I had my key he dropped

me off outside the subdivided house. He never came in

to see the place. It pissed him off his own brother

let his kid live poor while he lived in some kind of a

stucco mansion in the desert. Unc had seen pictures

of my mom and dad’s house and I guess it was pretty

nice.

That wasn’t the reality of the situation, but Unc saw

it that way. And when he sized something up there was

no sense in trying to convince him otherwise.

I lived in a working class neighborhood on the east

side of the city. I rented part of a farmhouse that

was the first home in the neighborhood. It had long

been subdivided into three units and I had half of

what used to be the ground floor. The rent was cheap

because the landlord was kind of out of it. He bought

the place when it was a fading Victorian beauty that

needed a little TLC to bring it back to its full

glory. Instead, he took out every bit of style the

place had. That which he couldn’t drywall or panel

over he left, much to his dismay. His name was Mel

Beecher and he was an architectural integrity serial

killer. Mel owned four or five other houses he’d

butchered in the same way. Even from my limited

knowledge of architecture it was clear the house had

been a real gem.

I took the apartment for two reasons. First, the

outside of the house reminded me of my time living in

London. The brick was the exact same color of all the

houses in my neighborhood over there. Second, it had

a gorgeous carved marble fireplace. The man who

created it must have been at the height of his skill.

It was a white marble with green accents and the

entire surround was carved in a nature theme. The

curves in it were elegant and if you looked at them

long enough the flowers really seemed to be

blossoming. I could sit and look at it for hours and

the next day find some small detail I hadn’t noticed

before. The fireplace still worked too. Mel had

never blocked it up. It had probably never occurred

to him that anyone would want to sit and watch a

fire. Mel wasn’t into that.

The rest of the apartment contained as much cheap

plastic crap as he could cram into it. I didn’t

really care. The place I stayed at in London was so

fantastic I was doomed to second best no matter where

I lived. Marjorie Powell, my landlady, was from

another time. Not literally, like we were born again

or anything. She just lived like a Victorian in the

latter part of the twentieth century. Whatever chaos

had come into being since the death of Victoria never

got past her brick walls. Small detail, mind you,

that the walls were put up right after WWII.

The hospital had given me a little bag to take home.

I had my get-well cards and my medications tucked

inside, including tons of painkillers. I still hurt

like hell, especially my ribs. But I didn’t like

taking the pain pills because they made my head feel

even foggier than it did from the collision with the

door. I took just enough of them to take the edge off

the pain. The nurses kept the flowers and passed them

around.

I’d been gone for a while, but nothing had changed.

My upstairs neighbor threw away the little food in the

fridge that was going to go rotten. I never had much

of an appetite, so I didn’t keep food around. I ate

my lunch and we ate as we worked at the restaurant.

That was about all.

I was just about to light a fire when Unc called.

“Hey, I just remembered. It’s your birthday.”

“No Unc, not til Friday. It’s only Wednesday.”

“No, no, no. You remember. They only run it on

Wednesday and Saturday, so it’ll have to be today. I

don’t believe in belated luck. O’s at ten.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be there.”

O’s was an Irish bar downtown that had been named O’

something’s at one point or another. During the

Vietnam War protests the students set a car on fire

right below the sign. The only part of the name that

didn’t get burned was the O. Shortly afterward the

owner sold out to a couple of Greek brothers. Nobody

really cared what the original name was, so it was

just called O’s. The bar’s main claim to fame was the

front picture window, which had survived since the

turn of the century construction of the building. The

window had a bunch of stained glass four leaf clovers

on it and the brothers guarded it like the sacred

shrine it was. The Irish on the police force used to

watch over it during street filling events, but they

had dwindled to the point where the brothers were the

only ones who cared that the window survived. They

stood on the sidewalk in front of it with baseball

bats whenever they felt it was necessary.

I showered. It was tricky with my smashed up shoulder

and hand, but I managed. They gave me a contraption

to put over my hand so I didn’t bump the pins in my

fingers. I chucked it as soon as I left the

hospital. It didn’t matter to me how my fingers

healed. I figured whatever job I was going to get now

wasn’t going to need a delicate touch. I wasn’t

supposed to get the stitches in my face wet, but I

didn’t care. I stood under the shower for a long

time, relieved to finally get the restaurant grease

off me after all those days.

I’d promised Melissa I would call her so she could

take me out for a post hospital celebration. It

wasn’t the perfect first date, Unc and Melissa and me,

but it was what we had. I didn’t get out too often.

I figured I’d get out even less now that I was about

to be unemployed. I called her and she said she’d

meet us there. I told her the reason would be self-

explanatory.


I took the bus downtown because my bike was still at

the restaurant. I couldn’t have ridden it anyway. I

knew people who could ride one handed, but I wasn’t

one of them. My hand started to hurt with every beat

of my heart, so I took one of the painkillers. My

head was still feeling strange. Couple that with the

medication, I wouldn’t have been very safe on a bike

anyway.

Unc was there when I arrived. O’s was labeled a dive

bar, but really it was just beautifully built in the

first place and had never been updated. It didn’t get

cleaned very often either. The whole place had

yellowed, inside and out. The clear part of the front

window was permanently brown from years of cigarette

smoke. The clovers had gone from a bright Kelly green

to a dark forest green.

I walked in and said hello to the brothers and a few

other people in the bar. Except for his café, this

was the only place Unc and I ever went to. He parked

his Cadillac in front and none of the cops ever gave

him a ticket. When he got out of hand every now and

then the brothers were patient and never roughed him

up. They would calm him down and get a cab and then

pull his Caddy around back for the night.

O’s was an easy place to blend in. My blood pressure

dropped just by walking in the place. After my years

of hiding out in London, a place like O’s was a real

treasure.

Unc was on his barstool, glass of scotch in hand.

Next to him was a neatly stacked pile of five hundred

lottery tickets. My birthday present.

“Get him one of these,” Unc said, holding up his drink.

“Unc, I’m on this pain medication and I’m probably not

supposed to drink. As a matter of fact, I’m sure of

it.”

“Bah, its your birthday.”

There was no sense arguing. Not one of the nine

younger siblings had ever won an argument. Even if he

was mellowing a little in his old age, I didn’t think

I was going to be the first.

I sat down and drank. There wasn’t a whole lot to say.

“Your dad call?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Son of a bitch. I told him to call. Bet your mom

don’t even know.”

My mom was a sweet person who never challenged my

dad. He didn’t beat her into submission or anything.

It was just the way she’d been raised. Her parents

were quite old when she was born and raised her in a

house that ignored the reality of the outside world.

They taught her that the wife never questioned the

husband. They probably tried to teach her the sun

revolves around the earth too. I didn’t understand why

she couldn’t change with the times and it really

pissed me off. But that was how she lived, and I

certainly couldn’t change it.

“I think she tried to call a few times on my

birthday,” I told Unc.

“You think?”

“Yeah, you know every now and then I would get a phone

call and no one would say anything, but they wouldn’t

hang up either. I got a feeling maybe she was just

checking, saying Happy Birthday in her own way. So I

told whoever it was on the line how I was doing and

what was going on in my life. Don’t know if it was

her.”

“Maybe it was her.”

"Yeah, I don't know."

We sat together in silence and drank after that.

There wouldn’t be much to say until ten thirty two

when the lottery numbers were announced. About ten

twenty five Unc would tell one of the brothers to turn

the TV station for him. Most of the time it was on

some kind of sports channel and people got damn mad

when the game they were watching was suddenly flipped

over to the end of the news broadcast. Of course,

those people hadn’t slipped a little something extra

to the brothers when they ordered their first drink.

Unc demanded total silence from the crowd so he could

hear the lottery numbers read off as well as see them

on the screen. Of course, this led to some pretty

nasty scenes, especially the year he interrupted the

overtime football game. A group of college guys

turned the place upside down. We missed the lottery

entirely and who knows how much Unc paid the brothers

to fix the damage. Or where in the hell the lottery

tickets ended up. Thank god nobody came up with a

winning ticket. Unc would have hunted that person

down to the end of the earth just to reclaim the money

that was rightfully mine.

About ten fifteen I told Unc I’d invited Melissa. The

painkillers and scotch were interacting strangely

inside my damaged head, and I didn’t feel like myself.

“Melissa. She the one who brought you flowers? The

waitress?”

“Yeah, she’s the one.”

“Seemed nice. Pretty smart to be hanging out with the

likes of you.”

“What kind of shit is that? I tried to attract the

dumb fat ones but the bus didn’t go out to the trailer

park.”

“Always a smart ass, ain’t ya. Just cuz somebody

lives in a trailer don’t mean they’re dumb.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

"Damn straight I'm right. Smart ass."

We drifted back into silence.

Melissa showed up on time. Thankfully, the bar was

pretty quiet. Unc introduced himself again, even

though they’d met at the hospital. Melissa sat down

next to us and ordered a glass of wine. She had a

present for me and was about to get it out of the bag

when the lottery came on.

Unc stood up and raised both of his arms. “Everybody

quiet!”

The five people or so in the bar looked at him

strangely and then obeyed more out of curiosity than

anything else. When you’re a student and an older

person tells you to do something, the natural instinct

is to obey.

Unc’s pen and paper were ready. The first numbered

ball rose up in the tube and the finger with the

perfectly polished fingernail was seen rolling the

number into view. The black 15 stood in stark

contrast to the white ball. Unc wrote down that

number, as well as the next five and then quickly

double and triple checked before they went to a

commercial. Then, as the brother changed the TV back

to the sports station, Unc thanked everyone for their

cooperation and bought them all a drink.

He turned back to us. “Happy Birthday Tim!”

He raised his glass. Melissa and I raised ours and

she echoed the sentiment. We all drank. Unc divided

the lottery stack into three and we began to check our

tickets against the numbers he’d written down. A

basketball game played silently above our heads once

again, and someone played an entire Van Morrison album

on the jukebox.

We checked them all once and then Unc made us check

them through a second time.

The painkillers must have been wearing off because I

was getting that warm and comfortable feeling from the

scotch. My head still felt like someone had taken it

off and put it back on cockeyed.

A few of the tickets matched some numbers and we won

about fifty bucks. Unc gave me a fifty and gave the

loser tickets to one of the brothers, who threw them

away behind the bar.

“When are you gonna break down and just give me the

five hundred instead. It’s my gift. Don’t I get to

say if I’d like a cake and some cash?”

“Did that girl get a say when you got in that car?

Just think what the payoff would do for her. Haven’t

you learned a damn thing?”

I had no reply. Thankfully, Melissa didn’t ask any

questions.

We drank the whole night. With her next to me, I felt

more awake than I had in a really long time. Even the

carefree way she leaned against the bar caught my

eye. She’d never been to O’s before. As the night

progressed she looked around and talked about the

decoration inside the building and what it was trying

to copy and why. A dive bar had never been more

interesting. The brothers stood with us and listened

to her talk. They bought us drink after drink just to

hear Melissa expound a little more on the artistic

theme of travel inherent in the riverboat mural

painted on the ceiling of the dining room.

As we stood and talked I realized this was the closest

I’d come to feeling like a family in a really long

time. It was like we had all gathered together after

a long separation to once again enjoy each other’s

company. The bar closed way too quickly for me.

We helped Unc into a cab. He’d behaved himself, but

drank way too much to drive home. One of the brothers

got in the Caddy and drove it around the back once

again.

Melissa and I stood in front of the bar, both still

warm from the glow of the liquor. I could feel the

pain in my hand start to rear up, but it would have

been rock star like of me to take a painkiller

now. “Walk you home?” I asked.

“Sure.”

The night was crystal clear and there was a chill in

the air. My steps had begun to feel like each

required a great effort. I didn’t try to hold her

hand or put my arm around her or anything like that.

I was feeling drunk and kind of goofy and I didn’t

want to come off like some horny, crippled guy on the

make. After the warmth of the bar, the cold air felt

hostile and lonely.

She lived about ten blocks away on the top floor of an

apartment complex. We walked together in near silence

and stood at the entrance when we arrived. As I

reached out my hand she leaned in and kissed me on the

cheek, and then she was gone. Walking back downtown

to catch my bus, the streets were still full.

Boisterous students, middle-aged drunks, and a few

people out walking their dogs in the middle of the

night. I stood at the bus stop with a group of

students, all of us headed out of downtown to where we

could afford the rent. When the bus came I had to sit

way in the back.

The house was quiet when I got home and I slipped in

without making any noise. When I crawled into bed I

took out one of the books Melissa had given me. It

had a bunch of crazy sculptures in it that looked like

nothing I had ever seen before. Feeling pretty sober,

I took one pain pill and drifted off into my drugged

sleep. This time, my nightmares were full of smashing

cars and dead babies. Everything was a strange and

exaggerated shape.