Under the Popeye Rose

by Corey Deitz

  Under the

  Popeye Rose

  By Corey Deitz

  Text Copyright © 2015 Corey Deitz

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. Printed in the United States of America.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  To Christine

  “Nous aurons tojours Paris!”

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  The Real Popeye Rose

  Author Acknowledgement

  Books by Corey Deitz:

  This book brought to you in part by…

  Chapter 1

  When it comes right down to it, we truly only care about a few things in life: sex, food, money, love, and anything made by Apple. There may be a few additional and incidental attractions along the way. But, in the end when it comes to the summary judgment of how you spent your time here, you will be comforted mostly by the really dumb shit that didn’t cost a dime. Millionaires and paupers alike move past this life and end up with balance sheets that show the same net worth.

  Chances are when you are savoring your last breath, you will remember the things that cost you little or nothing - save for the time you spent experiencing it. You will remember your parents, your children, your first kiss, your best sex, and the day you told your boss to shove it.

  You will remember the ones you love – and the ones that love you.

  Hopefully, the highlights of your time here will bring a smile to your face. Of course, I could be wrong and maybe right before you die your life will play back like a “Fail” compilation on YouTube.

  If so, then that would kind of suck

  The point is you have choices.

  The problem is no choice is assured to be the right one. Every decision you make will slightly alter every other choice. It will drive you crazy if you think about it too long.

  It’s like a video that made the rounds not long ago where a man who had been arrested for some awful crime was taken before a judge and it turned out they had known each other when they were children. They had actually gone to elementary school together and now, years later, they were on opposite sides of the bench. The judge said, “I always wondered what happened to you.”

  The man broke down and began crying. It was a poignant moment demonstrating the pain of bad choices or maybe just bad luck.

  It makes you wonder about the “road map” that we’re given. Is our life solely predicated on our choices, dumb luck, or destiny? Are we in control or is something else?

  Is there rhyme and reason or just randomness and chaos?

  Honestly, I don’t know. Sometimes, it seems like both are working in unison…or fighting against each other.

  But, I do know this:

  Life will kill you, as sure as shit. Living is great until the day you realize you are mortal. Then, everything changes. Maybe it’s one big cosmic setup because the older you get, the smarter you become. But, just as you’re getting everything straight in your head the whole thing comes tumbling down. Your knees start to give out, your pancreas finally throws up the white flag to Diabetes, women get menopause, men get erectile dysfunction, and your brain begins to develop more holes than a spaghetti strainer. Face it: you really are just the Universe’s wind-up toy and you will wind down, eventually.

  You have an expiration date, just like a jug of milk.

  What you have to decide is what kind of life you will live as you do this great dance – and what will you deem important enough to care about in the time you are allotted?

  This brings us to Ford Fallon, a 26-year-old convenience store worker from Kunkle, Ohio. What? You never heard of Kunkle? Well, most folks haven’t. Kunkle is a small, unincorporated town of 250 people located in Northwest corner of the Buckeye State. From Toledo, you would drive west about 65 miles – and you would hit Kunkle – or Kunkle would hit you, sort of like a fuzzy hangover. If you are so unfortunate to live there you might wonder what kind of awful swill did you ingest the night before to wake up to this shit? A little history is required.

  Kunkle is named after the man who first purchased land and settled in the area: Henry Stone Kunkle. After some success finding gold during the 1849 California Gold Rush, Kunkle returned to Ohio and added to a previous land purchase in Williams County. He also married Matilda Jane Baltosser. I’m sure they were a lovely couple and you can just imagine the hot sex between Mr. Kunkle and the former Miss Baltosser. Maybe that’s where the expression “ball tossing the kunkle” comes from. What? You never heard that before? I thought everyone knew that one.

  Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

  Can we be honest? Kunkle is possibly the least coolest name possible for a town anyone could live in. Kunkle sounds like a malady that sprouts up between your toes after your feet have been immersed in swamp water for several hours.

  “Crap! I’ve got kunkle! Do they sell anything over-the-counter that gets rid of this shit?”

  No, they don’t - and Kunkle is hard to get rid of once you have it – or it has you.

  People born in Kunkle leave as soon as they can. Babies have been seen crawling away from town once they realize where they are. Older children stand by the road hoping to be kidnapped since odds are it will still be a better life even if they wind up locked in some wacko’s basement for a few years. If you fail to escape Kunkle by the time you’re a teenager, you begin to lose all hope and your lack of motivation usually ends up in a very late graduation from Kunkle High School, home of “The Fighting Field Mice.” Should you be so unfortunate to still be living in Kunkle by the time you are in your 20s, you will most likely be laboring at a minimum wage job with no prospects, no love life, and no future.

  Now you know everything you need to about Ford Fallon. He was trapped – no imprisoned - in Kunkle working at the Kunkle Kash ‘n Karry convenience store on Route 17 South, the main route which runs through the heart of Kunkle straight to the Kunkle Cemetery. Many nights while tending to Slim Jims and Coke Zeros, Ford thought that might just be a better place to be.

  However, working at the Kunkel Kash ‘n Karry was the only job in town that offered any future, as bleak as it might be. Sure, it was minimum wage but it was known far and wide that former resident, Calvin Jarvis, worked his way all the way up to Store Manager over an 8-year period until he was suddenly courted and hired away by a traveling carnival that came through town one spring. The carnie who hired him said Calvin was a natural! True to his word, within months Cal was barking in front of his own “knock down the milk cartons” game.

  Calvin Jarvis was the kind of self-starter everyone in Kunkle looked up to.

  Meanwhile, while waiting for his big break, Ford fretted the arrival of each hour he spent behind the counter at The KKK (as some of the local folks liked to call it). The KKK was a magnet for a never ending stream of the worst dreck an unincorporated town could cobble together on a daily basis and Ford was required to greet each one with a smile and listen to them bitch about the crappy selection and ridiculously h
igh prices. The only thing worse than working at the Kunkle Kash ‘n Karry was working the third shift at the KKK, which Ford did. Traffic was moderate until 1 a.m. when the bars let out. Then, the town drunks and punks would all come by for a fix of pre-prepared cheeseburgers that had been sitting in the refrigerated case for days or cake snacks with names you never heard of like “Choco Bites” and “Creamy Bits.”

  “What the fuck is this?” asked a nameless customer waving a package in front of Ford’s face.

  “Beefy Bunce,” replied Ford. “It’s part meat and part cake. Bunce cake, I think.”

  “Why would anyone eat this?” said the customer.

  “Because they’re drunk and dateless or high and hungry,” shot back Ford in a monotone and bored manner.

  The customer stood silent for a moment looking at the Beefy Bunce. Ford couldn’t help but be disgusted by the incongruous mixture of cake and meat. Plus, it was the worst marketing he had ever seen. Each package had a picture of Marie Antoinette with the slogan, “Let Them Eat Cake and Meat,” – an obvious play on words often attributed to the beheaded Queen of France.

  He wondered what kind of a moron would invent such an awful snack food. Then, just as quickly realized whoever that moron was, he was also probably rich as shit because the Kunkel Kash ‘n Karry sold a lot of Beefy Bunce.

  “You just need a great idea,” Ford thought to himself, “or sometimes just a really stupid one.”

  He wondered how the world could buy into such a dumb-ass product.

  “Okay. I’ll take two,” announced the customer.

  “That’s how,” he answered himself.

  He handed Ford a $20 dollar bill.

  “Motherfucker,” thought Ford to himself. “Why do these assholes always hand me a Goddamn $20 dollar bill to pay for $1.89 worth of crap? Judging from his breath, it’s a miracle he has any big bills left in his wallet. Someday, when I’m rich, I’ll piss $20 dollar bills.”

  Of course, that day was not here yet so, there was nothing to do except take the $20 and make the change. Ford had developed a working theory about $20 dollar bills one night while staring at the price of individually packaged sour pickles. He decided it was karma that a store with such high prices would attract big bills for such diddly, small purchases. And even if paying with a $20 was not deliberate, it was equitable. If a convenience store insisted on stealing from people through blackmail prices, it was only fair that the victims pay their ransom with annoying currency that required a lot of change. He speculated that if the Kunkle Kash ‘n Karry lowered all its prices by 30%, he would probably never see another $20 dollar bill again.

  It was just a gut feeling.

  And what about individually packaged sour pickles? Who thought that would be a great item for a snack? Ford conducted his own poll over several years and not one person admitted to ever buying one. Not one. What a stupid fucking idea. Not like Beefy Bunce. He sold plenty of that crap.

  Ford handed the customer back his change.

  “Do you want a bag for that?” he asked.

  “Uh…no. I’m good,” replied the customer.

  “Have a nice morning,” said Ford.

  The customer, who was now showing further signs of inebriation, just nodded his head, turned toward the door, and shuffled out. Every 8-hour shift was like this, day in and day out. Some customers routinely came in at the same time and purchased the same thing, like coffee and a pastry. They probably had jobs. The rest were stumbling through the early hours of the morning trying to satisfy an empty place in their stomach or their heart.

  Then there were the travelers. Every once-in-a-while someone would walk through the entrance looking for a rest room, a fill-up, and a snack. The travelers were the only people who spiced up Ford’s otherwise mediocre moments. They had to lead better lives if only for the fact that they didn’t live in Kunkle and were only passing through it to get to a better place. To Ford, travelers were harbingers of hope. They were the only reminder during his monotonous, nightly ritual that suggested life might be better somewhere else. Little did he know that a traveler this very evening would change his, forever.

  As the inebriated customer with the Beefy Bunce exited the store, a traveler walked inside to pay for some gas he had just put into his car.

  “Pump 2 mate,” said the man in an Australian accent.

  “That’ll be $37 dollars,” instructed Ford.

  “Finally,” Ford thought to himself, “Someone interesting. Something different.”

  The traveler handed him two $20 dollar bills. Ford made the change and gave it back to the man. The Australian extended his right arm to take it and as he did, Ford noticed a curious tattoo on the traveler’s skin. It was the head of Popeye the Sailor Man framed in front of a bouquet of roses.

  “That’s interesting,” remarked Ford as he nodded his head toward the ink.

  “You’re right about that. It’s the Popeye Rose. I spotted it when I was visiting Paris on bizzo,” replied the traveler.

  “Bizzo?” asked Ford.

  “Business. Sorry,” said the traveler apologetic. “That’s how you say business where I come from.”

  The Australian smiled while Ford raised his eyebrows to acknowledge the explanation. After a moment, the traveler continued.

  It’s a bit of street art really. I happen to see it when I was on bizzo – uh business – in Paris. I really liked it so I took a photo and showed it to a tattoo artist.”

  “I like it,” added Ford.

  “Yeah,” smiled the Australian. “I’ve got the photo of it on my mobile.”

  With that, the traveler pulled out his phone and tapped it a couple times, swiped it several more times, and then handed it to Ford. There it was, alright: the Popeye Rose - painted on a canvas consisting of the bare stone blocks of an aged building and centered between a doorway and the second story window above it. This was no ordinary graffiti. It was whimsical yet, one could see an artist had labored long over the dark blue roses and shaded face of Popeye. Below the street art was a street sign that said Rue Montorgueil.

  “Why would somebody paint this,” questioned Ford.

  “Why not, mate?” replied the traveler. “It’s Paris. No one needs permission to be an artist, to express themselves, to just live the way they want to. The painter likes Popeye and dark blue roses. No further explanation needed.”

  “I never heard of blue roses,” said Ford.

  “They don’t exist in nature, mate,” replied the man. “But, artists still like to paint them and florists still like to use blue dye to make ‘em. Don’t we always want something we can’t have?”

  “Yeah, I guess we do,” agreed Ford.

  “What about the people who own the building? You think they got pissed?” asked Ford.

  “Why? Because a famous street artist chose their building as a canvas? Hardly,” assured the Australian. “Rue Montorgueil is an odd bird, really. A lot of tourists, a lot of locals, cheese shops, bakeries, all that street art. Get up in the morning, buy some pastry from the boulangerie, and find yourself a cup of espresso. Sit down at a sidewalk cafe, eat your breakfast and watch Paris open up and come alive. Nothin’ better, mate.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” said Ford. “Maybe one day I’ll get there.”

  “No worries, mate. Sure you will. If you want to, that is. Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

  “I guess,” replied Ford somewhat sheepishly.

  But, the clerk knew he was just agreeing with an improbability. He was going nowhere fast. He barely had money to buy a bottle of Perrier, never mind a plane ticket to Paris or anywhere else outside of Kunkle.

  No money.

  No credit cards.

  No future.

  “Fucking Kunkle,” he thought to himself.

  The Aussie picked up his bag and smiled.

  “Well, good luck to you,” said the traveler as he walked to the doors and exited.

  Ford’s eyes were transfixed on the man with the tattoo o
f the Popeye Rose. He watched as the traveler opened the door to his SUV and slid into the driver’s side. In a moment, the engine started and the vehicle pulled away and back onto the roadway. Ford watched the car’s taillights as they got smaller and smaller, eventually vanishing into the night. Ford continued to stare where the car had been. He was lost in thought and revisiting in his mind the image of the Popeye Rose tattoo.

  There are moments in life that just knock you back - in a good way. It is different for everyone and who is to say why something in particular wrestles away your imagination? Somewhere, recessed deeply in every person’s DNA, is a strand of code that lies dormant, sometimes forever. It is only in certain moments – by fate or accident – that this buried code is awakened and activated. All it takes is the right stimulus. Maybe it’s an image, a sound, an event, the timbre of a particular person’s voice, a trauma, or even a dream. It could be anything. Whatever triggers that singularly specific strand of genetic code, once it happens you know deep inside that a particular and spectacular connection has been made.

  Such was the moment Ford laid his eyes on the Popeye Rose. That morning the Kunkle Kash ‘n Karry shift change could not come quick enough. Finally, at 6 a.m. his relief walked in.

  “Hey,” said the ginger-haired employee as he grabbed a Beefy Bunce from a display and headed to the coffee machine to pour a cup.

  “Is this stuff fresh?” he asked. “When did you make this pot?”

  “It’s like an hour old,” replied Ford.

  He was staring at his co-worker’s choice of nourishment.

  “How can you eat that shit,” he said, nodding to the packaged hybrid of meat and cake which the ginger was now opening.

  “Protein and carbohydrates,” he replied. “Breakfast of Champions.”

  “Says who?” asked Ford.

  “Don’t you remember that famous skateboard guy did a commercial for it?” reminded the ginger.

  “That wasn’t real. That was a ‘Funny or Die’ video,” said Ford. “He was making fun of that shit. Nobody eats that shit.”