Tales of the Madman Underground (22 page)

It beat the hell out of sitting in my room trying to do homework. I covered the half mile to my house in zip flat, and the half mile back in half that because my old painter’s pants were easier to run in.

The job wasn’t bad at all—Browning was old-fashioned and did regular maintenance, the way my Dad had taught me. So all the valves turned easy enough, and there just wasn’t that much trouble getting the old toilet unhooked.

Draining it was gross, of course. But luckily it was up a little above street level, so after I shut off the valves, I just ran a garden hose through the window into the storm drain, siphoned the water out of the tank, the bowl, and the trap, and then cut the toilet free—thirty or forty years of occasionally missing the pot means when it’s time to take it out, the bolts are rusted in real good. But that’s why they call them bolt cutters.

I hauled it out back to dry out in the sun.

Since Browning had all the tools and stuff in good shape and in the right place, it worked the way stuff does in shop class (well, for me or Squid—I’m not vouching for what happens when Paul takes shop), and the new toilet went in like halfway to magic. It even seemed like the flux and solder behaved extra well; those were some of the neatest joints I ever made. Only banged my head a couple times, got a couple little burns, and left some messy gunk on my painter’s pants, but that was why I wore them.

So about the time that I had test flushed it, and was crawling around with the flashlight making sure it was all tight, Browning said his old hands, back, and knees had “about took all they could,” looked my work over, and said it was exactly right. He handed me the twenty and told me he’d do the pickup on the bathroom and he had a cleaning lady that would get it shiny again, “so run home and get into something suitable for Pongo’s Monkey Burger. Casual tonight—don’t go all the way to top hat, white tie, and tails.”

Back home, I shot through the door and up the stairs, left my pants on the floor, and pulled on a clean T-shirt and jeans. I was tired. Toilets are heavy and uncooperative and I’d wrestled two of them into submission. But life wasn’t sucking too bad, right now. I pretty much flew back; Browning was just locking up.

He had an old Cadillac—another ride in a very big car, but a lot less embarrassing than that hearse.

When Michelsen opened Pongo’s, he had dreamed about launching a chain—I knew that the same way everyone did, because Michelsen told us all the time, with this kind of hurt faraway look in his eyes, the same expression (but not as dumb) that Neil had when he talked about how he’d dreamed about playing football for Ohio State. Pongo’s had a fiberglass monkey squatting on the roof, with his ass right over the kitchen. They did make a pretty good hamburger, not as good as Dick Larren at Philbin’s Drug Store, but way better than McDonald’s.

Pongo’s had very corny huge menus with photos of all their food, and cartoons of that same monkey drawn on and around the photos—hanging from the plates, climbing the straws on milk shakes, sitting on a pile of fries, whatever Michelson thought was funny. Darla claimed that “They photographed it the way it comes off the grill. We have people in the kitchen to shake the monkeys off the food before the waitresses bring it out. No shit, I’m not lying. Trust me, that kitchen has a lot more than one monkey-shaker.”

Browning and me took a booth, and he ordered the salad, soup, and black coffee his doctor made him eat, and I ordered my usual double bacon cheese half-pound Pongo Kong burger, large fries, and shake. I held off on onion rings because I was saving room for apple pie and ice cream.

Darla scribbled it down. “You guys behave, I don’t want to have to call the cops.”

Browning stared at her butt as she walked away. “Cute.”

“Very smart.” Mentioning that might make him lose interest before he started talking about her body.

The food came like lightning, and it went into me about that quick, too. While I wolfed, Browning told stories about Lightsburg back in the twenties and the thirties, and a few about my dad—all ones I’d heard before, but I was never going to point that out to Browning, because, well, shit, it was just nice to listen to them. And Darla kept his coffee cup filled, and every time she came by with the pot, he checked out the side view, getting to know more about how big her breasts were than a bra-fitter would.

He rambled on about how the town used to be very up-and-coming and going somewhere, but it just kind of sagged out of all its ambition thanks to Hoover and Roosevelt, and now it had slid so far down that the C&Es had taken over the churches, and Republicans had taken over the city council, and the goddam high school had goddam hippies and goddam niggers in it.

I swallowed really deep. “I really don’t like that word, sir.”

He lowered his voice. “I know I say
goddam
a lot but I didn’t think I said
fuck
—”

“Uh, ‘nigger,’ ” I said. “I don’t like that word. It hurts people, okay? I don’t mind—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sweet sake. You sure
are
Doug Shoemaker’s son.
And
Betty Shoemaker’s.”

“She likes being called Beth, now.”

“Listen, bub, your old man was the best mayor the town ever had, did goddam more for it than any other goddam mayor we ever had, but he sure was a god . . . damn . . .
liberal
. And your mom was always right in there with him, even before he passed, you know, and she got more that way after he died.”

I wanted to say
More what way?
or
How do you know what she was like?
or better yet
Well, if you mean not being a racist asshole then I guess I’m glad they were that way and I hope to fuck it’s hereditary.
Something like that. I wish I’d said it, but I was full as a tick with food he’d bought, and that made me feel like a cowardly shit. But a well-fed, well-paid cowardly shit. Which is the sort of cowardly shit that keeps his mouth shut.

So he kept going. “I mean, do we have free speech in this country or don’t we? I never worried about offending any goddam—” He stared at me like he’d just sat down naked on an electric fence. “Ah, now you’ve made me goddam self-conscious. Okay, I’ll watch how I talk about Neee-groes.” (He put about twenty
e
s into it). “Just promise me you won’t chain yourself to one at the counter here and start singing goddam ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Christ’s sake, the way they brainwash you kids in school nowadays, nobody can talk to you about plain obvious facts anymore.”

I still couldn’t think of anything to say so I just sat there.

He gave me this big melodramatic sigh, like Harry Weaver did when he said he was “mourning the demise of liberty” six times every day in Honors Gov. “I gotta take a leak.”

He stomped off to the men’s room. I sat there hoping I hadn’t given too much offense; I was sure I still had my job. Still, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings any more than I already had, but I was sort-of-okay-friends with both the black kids in the high school and I didn’t want him to say that word where they might hear it, since they knew he was my boss. Shit gets complicated a lot.

I mopped up the last melted goop of ice cream, caramel sauce, and pie crust between the tines of my fork, and licked it.

“I can put some papers on the floor, so you can lick the plate like you do at home.” Darla scooped up the money from the table, setting her hand gently on my shoulder. “Hey, good job with the old bastard,” she whispered. “If he lives to be a thousand or so you might get him civilized.”

“For one horrible second I wished I had Gratz there to explain quote-don’t-call to him.”

“No shit. But thanks for being an influence. He’s always better when you’re here.”

“What’s he do when I’m not?”

“He doesn’t just stare. He says stuff.” She shrugged. “In front of you, it’s just his eyes. Oh god, he’s coming out of the bathroom and I’m bent over. See you in school tomorrow.” She straightened—the uniform skirts Michelson made them wear were short, like 1969 short, and they had to wear heels, too, and you weren’t hired at Pongo’s if you weren’t cute. No doubt Michelson, being a Lightsburg businessman, thought that was a really clever, original idea to improve sales.

Sure enough, when I glanced up at old Browning, he was still tracking Darla’s butt. We got into his car without saying anything, and it was a block before he said, “So what were you chatting to the little blonde cutie about?”

“Oh, just school and stuff.”

“She likes you, Karl, I can tell. You can probably get her, you know.”

“I wasn’t really looking to get anyone.”

“I didn’t mean for a girlfriend, bub. You wouldn’t want a girl like that for a
girlfriend
. I mean she’s not the type to keep her skirt down.”

I thought about asking him if Rose Carson was the type to keep her skirt down, but I was afraid he’d tell me. So instead of being sarcastic, like I wanted to be, I said, “She’s a friend . . . I don’t know, I’m sorry if it seems like I’m really being touchy tonight.”

“Yeah.” He drove another block in silence before he said, “Seems to me like people weren’t so touchy in the old days, but you know what? I think we were. There were people that would get all bent out of shape over a few hells or goddams, or wouldn’t buy anything Jap-made because their brother got killed on Iwo Jima, or wouldn’t listen to a radio station if it played nig-Negro music. Even when I was your age a lot of guys were goddam Boy Scouts who would have said ‘Would you talk about your sister that way?’ ”

 

 

Browning wasn’t the first pushy old fart to tell me that Darla was obviously a slut, and liked me, and I could fuck her if I tried. Hell, Mom had seen Darla and me having a pizza together in Pietro’s—it was right after Darla’s little brother Logan got taken away for good, after that time she told the cops she was going to blind him with Drano and they had to kick down the bathroom door to get him.

She was going through that hating-herself thing where she’d burn herself with cigarettes and cut bits of skin off, so I hung around till she promised me she wouldn’t, which took till like three fucking thirty. (She lied anyway—her arms were all nicked the next time I saw her.)

When I got home, I barely got in the front door before Mom was trying to pump me for details. “How far did you get that little whore to go? You got it dipped yet, Karl?”

She was real drunk, kind of spinning around the living room in her big hippie skirt and singing “Karl got it di-ipped” over and over, that real annoying little kid melody that they use for calling each other sissies and stuff.

Then she knocked over the lamp by the front door, the one Dad and her had bought together one night when they were both pretty drunk. (If you’d seen this lamp, you’d know
how
drunk.) So she knocked it down and smashed glass everywhere, and cried about that and had to be comforted, and finally went back in her bedroom to sleep. I was up till like five cleaning up the broken glass.

This had been a lamp that improved the living room when it left, but I still had to replace it. I didn’t want to have to walk across the living room in the dark every night and then have to check my shoes for catshit. So I had to buy a much nicer lamp than the one she broke or I’d never hear the end of it, and that wasn’t cheap, I can tell you that.

I still got some fun out of the whole situation though. The next night, before I had time to get her another lamp, she was coming in wearing her Go-Get-Laids, and slipped on a pile of catshit, and landed on it butt first and got it all over the ass of her gypsy skirt. When she turned on the light, the guy she was with saw that big smelly brown smear on her skirt and got all sick and went home, instead of spending the night.

She was mad at the cats, screaming and swinging at them with the broom. I think that might have been when Softandgentle got her limp. The cats all ended up yowling and cowering under the furniture. After some more screaming, and breaking another lamp that I also had to replace, she got all blubbery, and started to beg her precious kitties to come out and comfort her. They, of course, stayed right where they were, especially since she still had that broom.

When I got in from McDonald’s, I opened the door to the sight of my mother, sobbing, in front of the couch, on her knees with her face down by the floor, in her Go-Get-Laids and flappy-frilly blouse, cottage-cheesy white and lumpy old butt sticking halfway out of her panties way up in the air. She was still holding that broom, upright in front of her, and pleading with the pileup of cats under the couch; “Mommy’s sorry, angels, Mommy’s so sorry.”

Those cats were not having any of it.

I made her set the broom down, and sit at a kitchen chair, and drink some chamomile tea, to which I added a healthy wallop of gin from my private stash behind the dryer. “They’re right, this chamomile really does help someone sleep,” I told her.

But nothing was going to stop her from telling me the whole story; it sounded like she wanted to make sure I didn’t believe the cats. She put a lot of sobs into it so it took longer. This guy was a really special one, and she loved that skirt, which she had had to throw away. (Later on, I washed it for her—it was just catshit, it came out—and she started wearing it again as soon as she forgot.)

And what if the cats never forgave her?

I let her hang on me and cry a little, then sent her to take a shower. The cats felt safe once the bathroom door closed, and they were all over me, rubbing and begging for attention. So I set out some food to calm them down, and they were pretty much the same as always the next morning.

How good a son am I? I even refrained from laughing till I heard the shower running.

Then I laughed like a crazy bastard, sitting on that filthy floor, cats crawling all over me, bumping me with their heads and kneading with their paws.

“Beth’s sorry, preciouses, Bethie is, please come out.”
O Mighty Couch, I Bring You the Broom of Righteousness, Yield Up Your Cats.