Collected Short Stories: Volume V

by Barry Rachin

  “Obviously, there’s something more happening here than birds and social pleasantries,” Gabe replied, ignoring the remark. “We seem to share a certain…”

  “Je ne sais quoi,” she interjected with a sly grin. “Yes, I sensed that from the outset.”

  “But nothing can ever come of it, because you don’t consider men in a romantic sense.”

  “Unfortunately not,” she confirmed, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

  Gabe shrugged. “Feels like a plot straight out of the theater of the absurd,” he countered morosely.

  From the top of the ridge a stocky mulatto leading a Great Dane on a rawhide leash was shambling toward them. The slovenly woman wore a tattered pair of rawhide moccasins, a blouse that resembled a burlap sack and paisley culottes. The woman stopped at a metal post with a rectangular box. From the container she ripped half a dozen navy blue plastic bags, which she jammed into a hip pocket then proceeded on her way.

  Approaching no more than twenty feet from where Gabe was standing next to the blonde, the gawky dog suddenly hunched over and dropped a steamy load of feces directly on the walking path. When the dog was finished, the woman delivered a sharp tug on the leash and the twosome continued on their way. “This is the fourth time I’ve seen her do this.”

  Marie cracked a conspiratorial grin. “You’re keeping track?”

  “Not anymore.” Gabe rose and chased after the light-skinned Negro as she was heading in the direction of a grove of red birch. “Lady, your dog just defecated on the walking path and you didn’t clean the mess.”

  “Oh no, sir,” the woman replied in an affable, syrupy tone. “My dog squatted to pee, that’s all. He never moved his bowels.” She fingered the free litter bags that bulged from her pocket.

  Gabe shook his head emphatically. “Your dog urinated further back up the path. Then he emptied his bowels... a huge mess over by the bench.” He gestured with his eyes to where Marie Brewster was still resting with the Lhasa apso cradled in a forearm.

  “No, you’re mistaken.” The beefy woman wasn’t the least bit intimidated. If anything, she seemed to enjoy the verbal jousting. “It’s those silly lap dogs that cause all the trouble,” she tittered, indicating the actress’ dog, “but I most certainly appreciate your concern.” Pivoting away with a supercilious flourish, the woman meandered off in the direction of a clump of goldenrod in full blossom, leading her gangly dog on the leather leash.

  Gabe rushed wildly ahead, blocking her path. “Go back and pick it up!”

  “What you say?” The light-skinned Negro made a tight fist with her pudgy hand.

  “Pick up your dog crap or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  She began clenching and unclenching the knuckles in a rhythmic gesture. “You’re a goddamn bigot, who don’t especially like us Afro-Americans, so you look for every opportunity to torment my people.”

  He gestured at the steaming pile of excrement - a huge, fetid, freshly-baked turd that stood out in bold relief on the walkway. “You can’t use a wildlife sanctuary as your private toilet.”

  The brawny woman, who ran a solid two hundred-fifty pounds, dropped the leash altogether. Her dog traipsed off sniffing the fragrant wildflowers. Curling both hands into tight fists, she rested them on her ample hips. Puffs of air burst from her nostrils with rhythmic intensity. “And if I don’t pick it up, what you gonna do?”

  Gabe stepped closer. The formidable woman never blinked. “First thing, I’m going to knock you on your derriere. Then I’m gonna drag your worthless carcass over there and reintroduce you to your dog’s artistic handiwork.”

  “You and whose army?” The scenic stretch of countryside bordering the small pond was empty. Not a single creature, animal or otherwise, graced the trail beyond where they stood. Even Marie Brewster along with her finicky pooch had mysteriously disappeared. “It’s you’re move, wiseass.”

  * * * * *

  When he reached home later that afternoon, Gabe put his birding binoculars away and drifted down to the basement. From a pile of white cedar shingles he selected a pair of six-inch shakes. Flicking on the band saw, he listened to the soothing hum of the carbide-tipped, quarter-inch blade. Each Sunday throughout the summer months up until Labor Day, Gabe manned a booth at the local farmers’ market selling homemade birdhouses. It was hobby, something to kill time, and in his wife’s absence, there were far more hours in the day to account for than Gabe cared to consider.

  With the aid of a miter gauge, he squared shingles and, placing a triangular, cardboard template over a slab of knotty pine, traced outlines of the front and back of the dwelling. The birdhouse would resemble a rustic A-frame with a hardwood dowel for a perch centered directly below an opening just large enough to accommodate a full-grown sparrow or chickadee.

  At the four-inch belt sander, Gabe cleaned up the ragged teeth marks left from the band saw. Spreading a row of finished nails on the work bench, he reached for a small tap hammer and began assembling the miniature structure. The process was fairly straightforward. Over the past year he had assembled a hundred similar projects. Measure, cut, join – after so many years, he could accomplish the tasks with his eyes closed.

  The showdown with the mulatto ended badly. From the outset, Gabe was bluffing, trying to intimidate the woman into cleaning up her dog’s mess. But the slatternly shrew would have none of it. For her, a violent confrontation represented little more than cheap entertainment, a blood sport. But there were no fisticuffs, no physical confrontation. In the end, Gabe stood by impotently as she meandered away, grinning triumphantly, her long-legged pet bringing up the rear.

  When the birdhouse was finished, he went back upstairs and located a raggedy pair of boxer shorts in his bedroom cabinet. Back in the basement he ripped the underwear into narrow strips, tossing the elastic waistband into the trash. Dipping a patch of cloth into a metal container, he slathered a thick coating of tung oil on the cedar and watched with mute satisfaction as the wood darkened and the chocolaty knots stood out in bold relief. The tung oil with its glossy, amber hues would seal the surface grain, protecting the fragile structure from the elements once placed out of doors.

  That the pudgy blonde, who visited the bird sanctuary earlier in the morning - was it nothing more than a meaningless coincidence or wink from the cosmos? “A middle-aged widower and a loquacious lesbian,” Gabe muttered under his breath. “What a hoot!”

  The shock of hearing his own voice gave the middle-aged man a start. Since losing his wife, the house, which at times felt more like a mausoleum, remained morbidly quiet. In the evening, television and radio did little to fill the void.

  He rinsed the oily rag with water, a precautionary gesture, and then took the bird house, which was almost dry and placed it on a shelf along with a dozen similar offerings. The front and back panels were decorated with an array of semi-gloss earth colors, the roof peaks capped with a V-shaped wedge of copper. An added bonus, the decorative metal helped keep the interior dry.

  Gabe turned off the lights and went back upstairs, where he lingered under a hot shower and, without pulling back the sheets, lay down on the bed. It had been a bizarre, unsettling day. The gay actress with the mystical mindset was preempted by the pugnacious mulatto and her goofy dog. Gabe’s attempt to face the brown-skinned woman down failed miserably. Dealing with humanity was habitually a messy affair, not nearly as manageable as woodworking or bird watching.

  Gabe’s wife, Jenifer, had been a devout Catholic. From the outset, he experienced no fondness for organized religion but tagged along every Sunday morning for thirty-two years. He never took communion or attended holy days of obligation, and when she died, he never set foot in a place of worship. A Baltimore oriole flitting capriciously through the treetops at the Oak Knoll bird sanctuary was far more appealing than all the church’s liturgy or flamboyant ritual.

  Gabe blinked and crooked his neck to the side. A fly was buzzing back and forth near the Venetian blinds.
He would have to kill the bug before settling down to bed or the bothersome pest would keep him awake half the night. On the night table was a slender book of poems. Grabbing the volume, he read a verse at random.

  ‘The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you;

  Don’t go back to sleep.

  You must ask for what you really want;

  Don’t go back to sleep.

  People are going back and forth

  Across the doorsill

  Where the two worlds touch.

  The door is round and open.

  Don’t go back to sleep.’

  The poem, one of Jenifer’s favorites, was by the Persian mystic, Rumi.

  Gabe returned the book to the nightstand alongside a picture of the twosome in happier times. Whether it was a week in Bermuda or a trip to the local library, they had always functioned as a unit. In the spring he dug the holes in the back garden for her prize dahlias and in the fall unearthed the bulbs and stored them away in a darkened niche next the furnace. Jenifer occasionally accompanied him on his bird watching expeditions.

  A marginal hypochondriac, the standing joke was that Gabe would predecease his wife and, in her twilight years, Jenifer would be left to fend for herself. If a rear brake light on their Honda CRV burnt out, there would be no indulgent life partner, to remove the mounting screws, pull the plastic housing away from the sedan’s back panel and replace the bulb. For a five-minute job the garage would grab twenty bucks plus parts. That was Gabe’s biggest fear. But fate had a different agenda in store. It was a blessing of sorts. Where Jenifer was now, burnt out brake lights were a non-issue. No such earthly nuisances applied.

  In happier times, Gabe built his birdhouses. Jenifer canned fruits and vegetables. One day she put up a batch of applesauce. While the fruit was reducing on the stove, Gabe sampled a spoonful. “What’s in it?

  “A little of this, a little of that.”

  He swallowed a second helping of the concoction. “Could you be a bit more specific?”

  She lowered a half-dozen jars into a cauldron of boiling water and watched as air bubbles escaped from the lids creating the vacuum. “Fresh-squeezed lemons, a cup of raisins, cinnamon and a pinch of cardamom.”

  “You could sell this by the bucket-load at the farmer’s market,” Gabe insisted.

  “Hadn’t considered it.”

  “All you need is a gimmick… some advantage to give you a leg up on the competition.” Drumming his fingers on the counter, Gabe allowed his thoughts to percolate and congeal into a plan of action. “Maybe you offer free samples in miniature pastry cups.”

  Jenifer dipped a pinkie finger in the pot then lowered the digit in her mouth. “No one flavor overpowers the others,” she said with smug satisfaction. “Each remains distinct in its own right.”

  A month later at the farmer’s market, Jenifer sold out her entire stash of homemade applesauce by noontime and, for what was left of the day, sat alongside Gabe while he hawked his birdhouses. In their later years, Gabe’s wife used to quip, “I’m gonna sell the goddamn house and pull a Lao Tzu. The term was code for disengaging from society and vanishing into the boondocks of northern Maine or some rural, hardscrabble Vermont village with a population of less than a hundred inhabitants, including chicken, sheep and cattle. They would live off their pensions and what crops they could grow on a few acres of granite-strewn, New England soil.

  Gabe found an intricately detailed plan for a chicken coop in a holistic, back-to-nature magazine. The structure ran twenty feet with a corrugated metal roof and hinged door. He printed out the plans with accompanying three-color photos and studied the woodworking joinery for hours on end. Yes, he could manage the outer run enclosed with lengths of chicken wire stapled to pressure-treated two-by-threes and all the structural details.

  A separate, interior shelter situated several feet off the ground offered cozy protection from predators and harsh, wintry weather. The two crates, where the hens laid their eggs, were easily accessible from a rear window with a sturdy latch, so eggs could be collected effortlessly without ever setting foot in the coop. Gabe and his wife would have a surplus of fresh eggs all year round and what they didn’t need, they could sell, barter or share with neighbors.

  That was the original plan.

  But then, Jenifer dropped dead and the Mathew’s second act fizzled. Gabe tried to conjure up an image of ‘pulling a Lao Tzu’ without his gentle soul mate, but, something essential had dried up and blown away in the ephemeral wind. Without Jenifer, the metaphysical adventure was dead in the water, little more than a cruel parody of their original pipedream. He tried to imagine himself on a farm – alone, unencumbered, spiritually rejuvenated, self-reliant, fully-realized, in failing health, suffering a terminal case of existential ennui, or, worse yet, presenile dementia – no, it didn’t work anymore. With her spunky determination, brash pronouncements and brazen willfulness, Jenifer was the trailblazer. Quietly and innocuously, Gabe manned the passenger seat. He seldom if ever led the way.

  People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. Gabe threw the book of Persian poetry aside and rolled over on his stomach. Five minutes later he was sound asleep.

  * * * * *

  A week later when he visited the bird sanctuary, Marie Brewster, was sitting on the bench, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “How did you make out with the mulatto and her Great Dane?”

  “Not so well,” Gabe settled down next to her. A black-capped chickadee was flitting through the branches of a spruce tree twenty feet away. “I threatened to beat her up if she didn’t clean up the mess, but she was only too happy to pick a fight.”

  “Actually, as I recall,” the blonde corrected, “it was you who picked the fight.”

  Gabe shrugged and his features dissolved in a self-effacing grin. Marie, who was staring absentmindedly at a wilted dandelion that had gone to seed, reached down. She plucked the slender stem and puffed lightly at the weed, sending a profusion of feathery filaments to scatter in the summery air. “Are you familiar with the Myth of Sisyphus?”

  “The Greek king cursed to spend eternity rolling a huge stone up the side of a mountain.”

  “When I was a sophomore in high school and realized that I had a penchant for full-figured women, I went and told my family.”

  “And how did that work out?”

  “There was shock at first, but eventually my parents were accepting. Within a month my dark secret was common knowledge. Everyone learned about my ‘situation’ – neighbors, nieces, in-laws, Aunt Tillie from Cincinnati… even the freakin’ mailman.” “Problem is,” Marie continued, “just like Sisyphus, each time I meet someone new the process of “coming out’, emerging from the figurative closet repeats again and again and again.”

  “Never thought of it that way,” Gabe muttered. On a cone flower a short distance away a ruby-throated hummingbird was drawing nectar from the flower. He recognized it as a male, because females of the species possessed no telltale, scarlet markings.

  Having drunk his full, the humming bird flitted off to another clump of colorful vegetation. In the far distance a group of birdwatchers crested a hill. A short distance behind them, the mulatto and her gangly dog brought up the rear. Marie grabbed his hand and gave the fingers a gentle squeeze. “Would you like to go out on a date?”

  Gabe blinked violently. “But I thought –”

  “No, not with me.” Marie gestured waving fitfully with her plump, pale hands. “My best friend from the theater group… her husband was a bastard, a regular lothario. They’re divorced five years now.”

  Gabe was feeling light headed, his thought processes thick as molasses. “What’s your friend like?”

  “Rather exotic-looking… with a decidedly dark complexion.”

  Gabe watched as his nemesis crested the last hillock, heading in the direction of the bench. “How dark?”

  “Parivash is of Persian descent.” Releasing his hand, Marie swive
led to face him. “You see, it’s like this. My friend lives on a two-acre spread up in Chepachet. Shortly after her children grew up and moved away, the good-for-nothing husband ran off.”

  “Chepachet… that’s farm country.”

  “Yes… well the husband fashioned himself a gentleman farmer, until he lost interest in both the livestock and marriage.” The woman’s indignation was palpable. “Last winter when the barn roof caved in, Parivash had to get rid of the animals.” A week later following a blizzard, a pack of coyote broke into the chicken coop, which was also in shambles, and left a trail of feathers and bloody entrails scattered across snow in the front yard.”

  “Chickens,” Gabe repeated with a sharp intake of breath. “What sort does she have?”

  “A handful of Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks and Leghorns.”

  Sporting a petulant sneer, the mulatto shambled past the bench. Fifty feet further down the path, as if on choreographed cue, the huge dog pulled up short and emptied his bowels. The stout woman waited patiently for the dog to finish his business before continuing on her way.

  “In answer to your earlier question,” Gabe picked up the thread of their previous conversation, “about the Persian woman whose personal life and farm are falling to pieces…”

  back to Table of Contents

  The Third Fairy Tale

  Ned Scoletti rose early, well before dawn, to catch the seven a.m. bus streaking up the coastal highway. With the cloying scent of orange blossoms snaking through the countryside, his mother was probably only just crawling out of bed, utterly clueless to the fact that Ned was on a Greyhound bus hurtling north. Final destination: Spaulding, Massachusetts. Two days. That’s how long it would take to get from Fort Pierce, Florida to New England. By late afternoon, his parents would realize the boy was missing, but it would be too late. The bus would be far up the coast near Saint Augustine or even Jacksonville just shy of the Georgia line.

  A large black woman wedged her ample rump into the seat next to him and began nibbling on a bunch of red grapes. The woman thrust a fistful of fruit at Ned, but he only smiled and shook his head. “Where’re you headed?”