by Joe Schwartz
Joe’s Black T-Shirt
Short Stories About St. Louis
by Joe Schwartz
Copyright © Joe Schwartz, 2009
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be shared, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission by the author.
A Stabco Publication
Cover art by Chris Holden, 2009
All of the stories included in this manuscript are the work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the three women in my life in whose absence this book would fail to exist.
First and foremost, my mother, who taught me that the power in the creative art of storytelling is the suspension of disbelief.
Second, in order only, is my lovely wife, Rhonda. I will be forever indebted to her as she showed me that I was not the horrible son-of-a-bitch I thought.
Third, is my editor and friend, Julie Failla Earhart, my cheerleader and staunchest critic.
To each of you, I say thank-you. I love you, and God bless you for putting up with me.
Joe
Contents
Slow Motion
Good Intentions
Humidity
Ademption
Take It Or Leave It
3 Pigs and A Dog
Father’s Day
Walking Uphill
No More Bets
Free Advice
Blackwater Opera
Family Business
Road to Hell
Dear Reader:
If you are reading this I will presume you to have a disaffected spirit by the very definition that is the stylish, yet dissident black t-shirt. Be it for a band or a high-octane motorsport, it is not clothing as much as a statement of values. Whether it is brand new or thread bare, it represents your deepest, inner reflections. It should act as a warning to the happy, go-lucky set that you can be dangerous if provoked.
These stories are written especially for you. Each one is an effort to tap into that secret psyche that does not conform to society’s rules. Rules that don’t apply to an underclass struggling to survive in that gray area between indigence and working class poor, standards that have become corrupt and inconceivable as our technology begins to exceed our humanity. These stories are not about people with choices as much as they are about people learning to live with the consequences of actions. That’s not to say we move unconsciously, not understanding the eventual outcomes of our self-destructive behavior, it is more about the fact that we simply do not care.
My own life is a collection of black t-shirts. Occasionally, I must weed items that no longer suit my state of mind. Others though, I have had since I was a teen-ager and could shit-can only if it were about to disintegrate. They are the story of my life. The sense of empowerment I receive from one is equal to the disdain of another. They are all precious in my sight. The most significant are those given to me by close friends. I have never received any higher endowment of respect. Likewise, I offer this collection of short stories to you.
All these stories are set in St. Louis, a place that I have loved, hated, reviled, and embraced. In short, it is my home. I have been to many other cities that were flourishing megalopolises. The clean streets, friendly locals, their astonishing monuments and museums, and endless variety of amusements only made me homesick.
St. Louis is a natural landfill of acutely angry people. The town is still a war zone divided by race and money that has hardly changed since I was a boy. Oddly enough, I have grown comfortable within these dire conditions.
I hope that you will see a neighbor, a co-worker, or even yourself in these words. Most important, I hope you will realize that you are not alone. There are other ‘normal people’ with the same inconsolable thoughts of desperation and malice hidden behind the thin veil that is a black t-shirt.
Once you’ve read it, give it to somebody else as a gift validating the adage that it is the thought that counts.
Acrimoniously yours,
Joe
Joe’s Black T-Shirt
Short Stories About St. Louis
Slow Motion
I first decided to kill Edgar last summer.
He had come into all our lives three years ago. There wasn’t anything that odd or outstanding about him I could recall. He was a hard worker who didn’t need much instruction to get a job done. When the supervisor asked what we all thought of bringing him aboard full time, none of us had any reason to balk.
The kind of work I do is grunt labor. Digging holes, mowing grass, painting buildings inside and out. It’s good honest work that doesn’t require brains. It’s harder than hell to get on full time in a unit, and I spent two years in part-time limbo hoping to get my spot. Over the last ten years, I’ve learned the mechanics of small engine repair and mower-blade sharpening and mastered the skill of pulling trailers of any size. Even in my chosen profession they are all things unexpected of a woman. Most of the women hired know they don’t have to take this serious. We work for the city. The local government is as bound as the largest federal entity to ensure a fair and equal workplace. Every shop has a woman, a black, and, occasionally, a cripple. Generally speaking, we’re equally despised.
I refused to be quarantined in the shop while my coworkers, the men, went out to do the real work. Besides, they had to do something with me. After two weeks of leaving me behind, I had reorganized the shop twice and power scrubbed the maintenance yard, removing years of tractor grease and truck oil. That night over a thirty-pack of beer, they decided to give me a real job.
Next morning I sat between the shop steward and the plumber. With every turn the obese plumber’s girth shifted onto me. His smell covered me like a fine mist that I could not ignore or get used to.
It was a short ride, maybe five or six miles, to the job site. A bathroom had become ‘inoperable’ over the winter break.
I had two jobs. To go back and forth to the truck for everything and to shovel shit. The plumber took great delight in berating my inexperience. “Jesus wept,” he would say as if divine intervention could help me. “Why don’t ya go bake some cookies, Martha, and leave the real work to the men.” Then he would laugh and send me back to the truck on another fool’s errand. When the back-flow of human waste would inevitably rise, forming an ankle deep black pool of curd-like discharge, I would wade in with my coal shovel, scoop up the watery slop into my wheelbarrow, and dump it out in the woods, downhill behind the cinder-block building. By the end of the day, the problem was diagnosed as a dead possum in the main line. As we rode back to the shop in silence, the plumber’s odor no longer bothered me.
The smell of human waste dogged me for three days after. I lost twelve pounds that week, hardly able to swallow a bite of food. Even my menthol cigarettes did little to disguise the awful taste. The guys all made friendly jokes with me about it until eventually I could laugh too, as if it had happened to someone else.
Then little by little they began to show me different things. Simple things like how to mix oil and gas or how to sharpen the chain saw with a rattail file. Complicated things like making concrete from raw materials or felling a tree safely. It gave me confidence to do these things. It made me a better mother to my two sons and it proved to myself that I could do anything if given the opportunity.
It was all so good until Edgar came around. He was somebody’s brother-in-law, but we did
n’t give that much consideration. If you couldn’t hack the work as a seasonal laborer, you were gone, regardless if you were first cousin to the Pope himself. After you went full time, it was damn near impossible to get fired. Until we offered him the full-timer’s position, he was a model employee.
***
The bing-bong of an electric door chime signaled my entry into the store. Walls of rifles and shotguns stood erect behind the counter with rows of handguns under the glass countertop. The clerk was of indeterminate age, slender with a thick beard. With his coke-bottle thick glasses, his appearance reminded me more of a librarian than an arms dealer.
“Might I help you ma’am,” he drawled in a thick southern accent.
“You might,” I said. “Are you Ricky Larry?”
“Sure ‘nuff,” he said. “’Course most folks don’t usually seem concerned wit’ such.”
“I’m John Roberts.” I said. The name was a code. It had cost me forty dollars in draft beer and a hand job inside the Tinker’s Dam men’s room handicapped stall to get it. Now that I was here, I could only hope my spit-shine hadn’t been in vain.
“Don’t say,” he said. “What can I do for ya’, John?”
He pushed a button under the counter and an electronic lock bolted the front door. Ricky Larry sat a square cardboard container on the counter with the words SMITH & WESSON printed boldly across. Inside was a used .38 caliber, with rust on the barrel and a thick wad of duct tape wrapped around the handle that looked like it would fall apart the first time the hammer dropped.
“What ya’ think?”
“I think,” I said, “that I’ll pass.”
“This here is a right good pistol. Despite the cosmetics.”
I stared at him, not buying his song and dance about how this gun was only used on Sundays by a little old lady to shoot gallery targets.
“You might as well unlock the door,” I said
“Hold your horses. I got another,” he said putting another identical box on the counter. When he lifted the lid, I knew it was exactly what I wanted. A flat black-on-black 9mm Beretta that was no doubt military issue with the markings on the slide and the butt obliterated.
I picked it up and pulled the slide back with ease. The hollow chamber was clean, and the smell of fresh gun oil was overpowering as a barfly’s cheap perfume. The weight was well balanced in my hand. I squeezed the trigger and the slide clamped shut with efficiency.
“How much?”
“That there is a good piece, a bona fide sidearm of the U.S. military. A rare item under such circumstances.”
“How much?” I asked again. If my experience buying used cars was anything akin to this, I knew the more he talked the more it would cost. The trick was getting him to shut up and pin him down to a firm price.
“Well,” he said pondering, trying to accurately gauge my breaking point, “you seem like a nice lady. What ya say, nine hundred?”
“Four hundred,” I immediately countered.
“Now look here,” he said as his tone lost its friendly, country boy appeal, “this ain’t no durn flea market.”
“Seven-fifty,” I said putting my maximum offer on the table.
He combed his beard with his fingers. Eyes that looked too big for his face through the magnification of the lenses stared into mine, trying to determine if I was bluffing.
Through the cloak of thick facial hair, he smiled wide. His teeth were the shade of a Calico cat. “Gawd-dog! Ya drive a hard bargain, lady, but I do believe that’s a fair deal.”
I gave him the money, and he put the gun into a dark blue plastic bag. The weapon’s weight in my purse made me nervous and happy all at once. I held my purse on my lap all the way back home.
The boys were playing video games when I got home. The teenagers needed little from me in the way of survival. After I fixed hamburgers and skillet fries for supper I told them I had a bad headache and was going to bed early. I locked my bedroom door even though there wasn’t a chance I would be disturbed.
My ex loved guns, liquor, and kicking my ass. It was a blessing when the police picked him up driving drunk with a loaded shotgun in the passenger seat. He got five years, and I got a no-fault divorce by a sympathetic judge.
His brother came by and collected his few belongings. He left behind anything he knew he couldn’t sell for beer money or trade for truck parts. Had he bothered to open the ladies shoebox at the bottom of the closet he would’ve been happier than a sissy with a new dick.
I pulled out the pink and white box and set it on the bed next to me. Its lid off, I suddenly felt a bit perverse. Bright red shotgun shells and long silver rifle cartridges lay in a disorganized puzzle but among the chaos was a neat three-by-six rack of gold bullets ready for use. I took one out and examined it. The acronym ‘9MM’ was clearly stamped into the flat, circular base.
I discharged the empty magazine from the gun and re-loaded it full back into the gun’s handle. The change was significant. A surge of potency overcame me as I swung the loaded barrel towards the mirror and faced myself. I remembered why in the hell I was doing all this and the thrill evaporated. Edgar.
There was no doubt as to his stealing. The police found our chop saw at First Star Pawn with the ID tag still attached. Posthole diggers, the tamper, and a gas-powered hedge trimmer all suddenly disappeared in conjunction with Edgar getting keys to the shop.
One morning after all the trucks mysteriously wouldn’t start, it became clear all the gas had been siphoned. Edgar called in sick that morning and the following day. He had swallowed more than he had stole and had the balls to claim he had the flu although it was the middle of August. It wasn’t any skin off our noses though. We figured that given enough rope, it was only a matter of time before he hung himself.
With Edgar though, it was always something. Maybe half your lunch came up missing or your new work gloves that you bought last weekend were nowhere to be found. It made us mad as hell, but we let it go. Sometimes we would get even by deliberately putting him on the trash run in the rain or lending him out to other units in the area for general labor. More often than not, though, he couldn’t or wouldn’t apply but the most minimal effort. After six months, his reputation preceded him and no other unit except ours would tolerate him. Most days we left him on shop duty where he either watched TV or slept. As long as he didn’t bother us, didn’t interfere, we were willing to accept it.
That is until Big Mike, the finest heavy equipment operator I had ever known, accused him of stealing a bottle of cologne from his locker. We could all smell the expensive scent on Edgar, but he firmly wouldn’t give in. When Big Mike took hold of him by the collar and drug him like a dog outside, we silently followed. There on Edgar’s truck seat, you could plainly see the clear bottle we all recognized as Big Mike’s, yet he would not confess. First he said he found it. Then he said it was always there. Finally he told Big Mike he could kiss his ass. The accumulation of lie upon lies compounded into a boiling frustration with which we were all too familiar. Big Mike did what we all had wanted to do many times and punched the little weasel square in the nose. Blood gushed out and stained his shirt. Without a word, Edgar got in his truck and peeled rubber out of the lot.
Half an hour later, celebrating over beers, Edgar’s battered pick-up returned accompanied by a police cruiser. Big Mike was arrested, charged with assault and hauled off. A week later the charges were dropped on the stipulation Big Mike immediately resign his position. That’s when we quit talking to Edgar. You would think such a collective cold shoulder would shame a man into quitting but not him. He seemed even happier.
The winter passed without many incidents. Occasionally he would come in reeking of the disputed cologne trying to taunt us somehow into another altercation. None of us dared. We all had families and there wasn’t a one of us who could replace this kind of money. We were trapped, waiting on the elusive golden rule of eighty. That was when your age plus the time on the job equaled eighty years. If you could ma
ke it, sixty percent of your paycheck was yours for the next twenty years, no questions asked. We were in effect marking time and trying to make it as pleasant as possible.
When spring came, we were all eager to escape the drudgery of the shop. With the April showers and the May flowers came the community service workers. Generally, college kids caught driving drunk or smoking pot or both. I was always glad to see them. Most were polite, called me ma’am until I told them otherwise, and were damn good workers. In my entire career, I never saw one two seasons in a row.
It was a rainy morning when Cindy showed up on our door, soaked to the bone, wearing a black tank top tucked into Daisy Duke shorts, and paper-thin thongs. She couldn’t have been less ready for a hard day’s work if she were nude. Our supervisor was a born-again believer who didn’t have a judgmental bone in his body. He decided that she could work until lunch with Edgar at the shop. Certainly she could sweep and mop. Edgar, in a rare display of conscientiousness, assured him ‘the young lady would not be shown any special privileges.’ The matter settled we walked single file out the door.
When we pulled back into the yard for lunch, the rain had turned into a mist that was cool to the skin but left you dry. Rainbows shimmered in the oil slicks and made the charcoal asphalt beautiful. Cindy looked like she had been crying. I sat down next to her with my paper sack lunch, asked her if she wanted half of my pb & j but she shook her head no. Edgar sat on a bucket in the corner with that smile of his on full blast, staring at her.
