Dastardly

by Lorraine Ray

I wake up the next morning. Pounding head and dry tongue. The whole deal. I’ve been in this condition many times. Believe me. But today I’m knowing I’m hundreds of dollars ahead this month, so it’s time to live like there’s no tomorrow, a date when I figure I will find I’m lacking fine Danish ale and money enough to pay for a lot of margaritas. And soon enough I suppose I will be eating my last fancy frozen breakfast burrito which I wish I had this morning, frankly, instead of the soggy piece of bread I find in Rod’s refrigerator and am about to toast. I blunder around in Rod’s kitchen with the bread dangling from one numb hand. But why does Rodney have such a dirty and disgusting toaster? Has he never heard of cleaning the crumbs out of the bottom tray? I yank the crumb tray out of the toaster and carry it to the sink; I don’t dare try to put the crumbs in Rod’s garbage, which is overflowing in a massive pile of filth the likes of which I have not seen in years of seeing messy, fucking apartments. As I shake the tray, a curtain of brown crumbs dump over the porcelain sink and several dirty plates, knives and glasses. I run the water and try to send the crumbs down the drain, but now a glass is a sea of wet crumbs. I dump that out. After crossing the small kitchen again, I shove the crumb tray back in the bottom of the toaster and drop the limp bread in. My thumb plunges the toaster control.

  A trip to Rod’s refrigerator for something to put on the toast results in a small amount of very stinky goat butter. Goat butter! When had Rod developed a taste for that? I test a morsel of it and decide, though it tastes vaguely of cow paddies and soured milk, it will have to do. Rodney has a weird mix of cheap bread and expensive, out-of-date food. Perhaps some of this is the food left from that pretentious lady accountant he’d lived with last summer. If so, this goat butter is very old. I will have to force myself to eat it. The toast pops and I grab it quickly. I smash the entire piece of butter on half the bread and fold it over like a sandwich. On the way out I think better of leaving without saying anything to Rod. I head back toward the bedroom as I finish the toast.

  “I’m leaving for work,” I call.

  “Oh, you still do that?” mutters Rod from his dark bedroom.

  “Very funny. Douchebag. Why don’t you ever dump your fucking garbage?”

  “You do it for me. Goodbye.”

  “Oh sure. Sayonara.”

  I hang over the messy garbage, chewing the nail of my index finger. It shocks me to realize I enjoy that old habit again. Nerves. This Marsha thing and now Rod in the picture has thrown me for a loop. When had they become buddies? And didn’t I introduce them in the first place?

  I glance at the green digits on Rod’s microwave. 8:42. Crap. I need to get my ass to work at the parade museum by nine on Saturday mornings. The parade museum is the crappy job of mine—rodeo museum attendance clerk, one of two with the job, which pays barely above minimum wage. Chump change. That’s all I get for that stinking job of mine which I still can’t afford to quit.

  I ease the overflowing garbage bag out of its plastic bin.

  Out the door of the apartment and down the wooden steps slowly, my clomp, clomp, clomp echoing in the quiet desert January morning. I drop the garbage in the dumpster and find my beaten up, Bondo-smeared Subaru in a state of collapse outside at the curb under a barren black mesquite tree where I left it the day before. Must have some heat this morning. I crank the key and flip the heater switch to high. I let some speeding truck pass and then head for the rising disc of the sun. Past apartments and vast lots of evenly spaced creosote bushes.

  Then the usual assortment of crumbling adobes mixed with fast food joints and derelict shopping centers. I thump the steering wheel with my thumbs. Come on, come on. Slow cars seem to mass in front of me at traffic lights.

  At the rodeo museum, I park where I usually do. At the back of the dirt lot in the far corner. The museum is housed in a large Quonset hut which had been painted tan with watered-down paint that you can see through. All the bolts in the Quonset hut are rusted and the stain runs on the sides of the building in long streaks. There’s very little signage so visitors are few and far between and that’s the way I like it; I use my time at the museum for writing.

  I step out of my car and immediately notice a grubby man stumbling around the back of the lot. I recognize him as a vagrant who enjoys visiting businesses on the street. It’s nine o’clock and the old man has awakened; at least that’s the way I figure it. Several times in the last months I’ve noticed him walking toward the feeding station at St. Augustine Cathedral and I know the man stops in at places occasionally to hassle shopkeepers or wander around their parking lots, or so our fellow businesses tell Chet, the museum’s guard. The old vagrant times his wanderings so that he arrives at St. Augustine at lunch when he eats his peanut butter choke sandwich, and continues walking, scaring people who unwittingly give him money he hasn’t asked for.

  “Good morning,” I call to Chet, as knock on the glass of the museum door. Chet wakes and unlocks the door. “The old guy is out there jerking off near the dumpster again.”

  “Oh, hell,” says the guard.

  “Not asleep again, were we?” I ask.

  “No, resting my eyes.”

  “Well, that same old guy is wandering around the parking lot. Hope he doesn’t take a fall. He’s hella drunk.” I head for my desk at the far end of the entry.

  “Oh no. I hope he doesn’t try to come in. He always tries to come in and he never pays and I hafta argue with him for hours to keep him out,” says Chet. “I don’t know where he came from. He wasn’t here till a month ago. Now he’s here all the damn time. He fell asleep against the fence and I had trouble getting him out of the parking lot before closing last Thursday.”

  “Oh, is that what happens? He never comes in when I’m here. I hope he doesn’t hassle us.” As I said, I never want people to try to view the museum while I’m here because I have editing and writing to do on my vampire stories and I can only do it if the public leaves me alone. Don’t look for me here, is what I want to say to the patrons who show up sporadically and gaze in abject boredom at the collection of wormy carriages the museum curators have parked all over that dark Quonset hut.

  “What story you working on?” asks Chet, stretching and taking another seat next to the desk where I stay. Chet flicks some lint off his uniform pants and yawns.

  “Maybe the story of a poisoned well,” I answer importantly. “Yes, I think that is what is calling out to me today. I was thinking about it on the way over here.”

  “Hmm,” replies Chet. “Poisoned wells…”

  That is, I will write it if I can get into the flow of the words. Yes, my latest story, the one I guess will be about the desert well, has a lot of potential, and as I sit myself at the desk, bring my notebook out of my satchel and arrange everything in front of me in a comfortable fashion, I’m thinking the visitors walking in cannot see me lurking at this desk surrounded by flags on one side, he he, and Chet on the other. Things fucking slow anyway in the old dumb rodeo museum business, not much of a business, and so I will sit with all the carriages going nowhere and do my writing all alone, since I doubt the attendance will pick up at all today and therefore I’ll be free to write on my own. Hallelujah.

  “Are you ready to write? Ready to go at it?” Chet asks. This is a kind of routine that he has with me. Chet as my writing cheerleader, always upbeat and enthused about what I say I’m writing.

  “Well, I admit I’m a bit bothered by something and it might slow me down today. An affair of the heart.” Here I am talking about my feelings again! And now to Chet whom I don’t even know as well as I know Rod. What is going on? And I’m chewing a fingernail again. Dammit. My nails are starting to look as ragged as the hems of a long and sloppy pair of jeans.

  “Oh, anything interesting?”

  “Frightening. No, distressing. I have come to the conclusion that this woman I’ve known for years might be in love with me now.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Eh….well, maybe not. She is overweight. More f
riend material, if you get my drift. I don’t think I want a relationship with her, but she might be obsessed with me, you see. It’s so absurd. I never gave her any reason to hope that we might hook up or anything. At least I don’t think I did.”

  “That’s too bad. Tell her the truth.”

  “I may do that. Last night I told a guy I know about it. He’s friends with both of us and he said I was imagining the whole thing.”

  “Well, that’s good, right? You’re off the hook. He’d know since he’s friends with both of you.”

  “Yes and no. He seems to be attracted to her himself. That’s what I’m thinking. And he said she was looking hot to him.”

  “Better yet.”

  “Yes. Do you still think I’d better tell this woman? That I’m not attracted?”

  “Er, that’s kinda tough. Ah, maybe not. I told a chick I wasn’t into her once and she threw a plate of Thai food on me. If you do tell her, you’ll feel better, even with Thai food on your lap. But this other guy might move in on her, and she might drop you and you won’t need to tell her, so, all in all, I’d say sit on the information for the moment. Now, you ready to write?”

  “Yes, well, but what if I know the other guy is a worse character than me. I mean I know he won’t be good for her. And her daughter. She has a daughter. She’s nice. I should tell her he’s no good, right?”

  “Ah, that’s a little different, but I still wouldn’t tell her. Nobody wants to hear that some dude would be bad for them. Shit like that doesn’t go over well. This other guy might cure her of her crush on you. So you shouldn’t do anything, even if he’s bad.”

  “I’m not agreeing there, Chet. You see, I don’t trust him. I don’t want her with him. It would be terrible for the kid. I babysit the kid, he doesn’t.”

  “Is she attracted to him?”

  “She isn’t. She doesn’t care for him. Right now she’s attracted to me.”

  “I think I’m confused. Anyway, I’m not any help. Are you ready to write, though?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say grimly.

  “Good.”

  “I’ll take a break at about ten and make some Mexican coffee in the microwave with the package I’ve got left. Today I think I’ll be free with my writing and let it come as it will, willy nilly, so to speak. Nothing’s gonna hold me back. I feel kind of freed up, but I shouldn’t have gone drinking with that buddy of mine last night. I think it didn’t help me. I got that romance stuff on my brain, you know?”

  “Sure, but now you talked to me and it’s gonna be better. How’s this story go?”

  “Well, um, the scene I’m gonna open with is a group of people, um, from the past walking in the desert after being robbed.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think it’s gonna be a stagecoach robbery.”

  “Okay.”

  “They’re headed for a lonely desert well, and I’ll write that they know where the well is because…”

  “Maybe it’s marked on a map!” Chet suggests.

  “Yes, shit. Great idea, Chet. I’ll jot that down in the margin. And they plan a way to get there traveling at night, resting in the day. Their thinking is that the well will give them clean water and save their miserable hides and they walk and crawl dramatically across the page, ha ha, across the desert at the very painful end of their allotted time on earth and their allotted time in my story, journeying to this well that is going to save them, and that promises to revive them, but the thing is…the well is…well, the well is….um… poisoned! Shazam!”

  Chet’s eyes, which had been drooping as I nattered on, widen and he flinches a little at the shazam.

  “It seems,” I say, “some unknown evil somebody poisoned the well with a carcass of something. Maybe a dead mule, a mule deer, deer, no…someone, a human body, ugh. They pull up part of a body, in the bottom of the pail. It can’t be a big part because…”

  “It wouldn’t fit in the pail,” Chet says. “If it was a leg, it wouldn’t fit!” Chet logics out the plot defects for me and grows excited. The slightest use of his imagination causes him immeasurable joy; I stifle a smile. This guard’s innocent pleasure amuses me. He’s kinda sweet. I humor him by letting him think up things which are obvious for my stories.

  “Exactly. So it has to be a human body part a drippy hand, kinda greenish-gray and stinky! Or maybe a foot. Kinda fits with them walking, see? Why did an evil person do it? I mean poison the well. And the answer is: to kill people for corpses. But why? For fun, for evil, what?”

  Chet’s eyes were getting big listening to my poisoned well story. “I’ll leave you to figure that out. Save that coffee packet. I’ll get you something. I’m moseying over to Hungry Hannah’s after I check around the perimeter a coupla times.”

  “Pan dulce and a cup of Mexican coffee then,” I reply. “Very considerate of you to offer me a snack.”

  “Okay. Which pan?”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re all good. Maybe the horn one is best.”

  “Okay, horn it is.” Chet strolls out and leans back in to add. “The old coot is still there. He’s pawing around in our dumpster. Should I talk to him?”

  “No, doesn’t look like we’re getting any customers. He won’t bother anyone today. There’s nothing in the dumpster that can hurt him, is there?”

  Chet shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. He lets the door close behind him.

  Now, how were they robbed? How? Well, I don’t have to explain it. Boy, it’s weird to hear my voice echoing in this dark museum. All the carriages just sitting around listening to me. My audience. Well, I can leave the robbery business mysterious, yeah, the back story of the robbery is left in the background. So they drink the water and they find all these body parts in the bottom of the pail and they know—with horror—that the well water is poisoned and they sicken. Vomiting will kill them. That’s because they’ve had no fluids for hours before they arrived at the well. I need to jot that down. Vomiting is their death. Yeah, so good. The one hope they have is the water…and it’s rotten. Rotten water. How does rotten water taste? Can you taste if water is rotten?

  I think I should google that. If a well has gone bad? Shit, that is something I have to know to make this thing realistic. If they can taste it right away, well, they would stop drinking and spit it out, but they still would die of thirst so I get what I want for the story, death eventually, and if they can’t taste it right away I still get what I want because they keep drinking and die immediately. Hey, maybe they get rescued and they drink poisoned well water so they keel over. Oh, the irony of it. Maybe that is a little too ironic, though. Well, yes and no. I think I’ll write it both ways and do my best work and at the end see which I like better. At that point, one of the endings probably will appeal to me more than the other, and that will make it easier to choose. To try to make the decision now without sufficient information would be silly. I love the way it’s like an open-ended world when I write. I become the ruler of a universe I create and I put the ending I want on my stories.

  So, to work! I write alone in the museum.

  The door opens. Fuck! Ten measly minutes alone! The first patron shows up, damn them. The curiously stinky, dried-up old specimen, who I’d seen in the parking lot, appears at the glass of the museum door and shuffles in. Heaven help me.

  “Howdy,” says the coot. “Can I see this here museum?”

  “Sure—” I begin.

  The door opens again and Chet walks in. “Sorry, Vig. He got past me. Here’s your stuff.” He leaves me a Mexican roll and coffee in a Styrofoam cup. And speaking to the old man, “Listen, sir, you can’t come in without paying. I explained that before. This guy is busy, too.” Chet is always there to defend my writing, bless him.

  This old dude, this old-time weather-beaten grizzly-bearded resident of the creosote flats, a friend to every friendly Western hobo, who has shambled up South 6th Avenue, a fake leg in urine-soaked jeans swinging at his side, interests me for his potential as a story
source. It won’t hurt to have the old fool as an ally, will it?

  “I’ll put the money in the till, Chet. He’s okay for today.”

  “Okay, you’re in charge,” says Chet, returning to patrol the parking lot.

  “Thanks, friend!” says the old man to me. “I won’t forget this kindness. You’re a real nice fellow. I’m Oliver. Oliver Jones.” The old man sticks out his grimy hand in the general direction of me, still seated at my desk.

  “My name is Marc Viglietti, but everyone calls me Vig. Glad to meet you, Oliver. Go on in. I’ll put the money in the till for you.”

  I know Chet says Oliver gives different shopkeepers a big pain in the ass several times a week as some sort of mission from one old nutcase to any person he happens upon. It’s because they’re tight-asses. I don’t know why the old coot wants to see the dilapidated carriages and tack, but I figure he ought to be able to if he wants to. What’s a few dollars lost now that I have Marsha’s money? Oh, that makes me feel like crap.

  I take a look at the back of the old man as he walks away toward the carriages. The lights of the museum, on motion detection, spring to life as Oliver blunders forward into the hall. Saggy, baggy old jeans with a shot-out seat. Holy Hell. There is so much mud at the bottom of his bell-bottom jeans I’m surprised he isn’t sprouting a garden there. He sure doesn’t look rich, looks like a crazy nut. But maybe you can’t tell about money with old nutty guys. No point in jumping to bad conclusions. Maybe he happens to have a hundred Indian head gold coins stuffed in a tin can in his sock drawer. And the contents of that sock drawer might land in my hands if the old guy decides to gift me with them. The gold, not the socks. I hope Oliver doesn’t have relatives because I don’t like the thought of robbing kids of their inheritance. But he might have some great assets and no heirs or he just might want to be my patron. You can’t tell with these old poopy pants dudes. I worry about being an old poopy pants dude someday. Without heirs? Maybe so. That is a depressing thought.

  Perhaps Oliver had made a fortune when he was a young man, but now he doesn’t like to live like it? Think of Howard Hughes, I’ve heard about him. Now Hughes didn’t strike a fine figure in his old age, did he? Long finger nails. Matted hair. Pissing into jars and filling a room with them. Maybe this nut is like that, in which case it might do me some good to get to know the old codger, if there’s a chance he’ll give me some of his fortune. This is how I’m thinking. Very cagey. Looking to get something off him, but sympathetic a little bit too. And interested in his stories. His stories might be valuable.

  After old poopy pants comes in, a serious young man arrives! Crap! He is the type who likes history and wants to know actual shit about the carriages. Double crap! I feel despondent at his arrival, because right away the visitor wants to talk and doesn’t approve of me working there. I’m not very knowledgeable about carriages. Anyway, this serious guy is asking me some questions about the Maximillian coach and I try to bullshit him a bit.

  “Is this coach of Maximillian’s a type of barouche?” asks the serious dude.

  “Yes, that is, no. It is on the card in front and the way to tell is um, well, the card explains.”

  The serious dude glares at me. “Is there anyone here who knows about antique vehicles?”

  “I’m too busy to help you,” I reply.

  The man sighs loudly. “I want to have a friend of mine who is an expert on old carriages come and take a look at it, but he doesn’t get off till five every day.”

  “The museum closes at three,” I say happily.

  “What time do you open in the morning?”

  “Nine. Tuesday through Saturday.”

  “Oh,” says the man vaguely. “No Sundays.”

  That discouraged the pest!

  “No Sunday hours. Why don’t you take a picture and send it to him?” I suggest.

  “I’d like him to see it in person.”

  “Maybe he’ll get a day off?”

  I give him the bum’s rush so I can get back to work on my poison story about the well. I know if I tried I could remember something about barouches, but I don’t even want to make an effort with that guy. The dude can come by some day with his expert friend, anyway. Finally the intense young man leaves and I have a chance to read my work aloud in the old empty Quonset hut. That is, after poopy-pants, Oliver Jones, leaves too.

  “Won’t forget you for being so kind to me,” says Oliver, limping out. Looks like he has a fake leg.

  “Okay, old timer,” I say. “Come back another day.”

  “Well, thanks! Thank you for the offer.”

  I begin wasting time on my phone instead of writing new scenes or description for my poisoned well tale. Hmmm…old postcard someone posted on a blog…shows that a sand souvenir is a horned toad. Heloderma horridum. Gila monster. I like the horridum part. Smells bad. Looks like a beef tamale vomited up. With a deep sea turtle head. Orange and black beaded coat. Grooved teeth ready to inject poison into something that blunders almost inside its mouth. Fat sluggish lizard. In legend it is a thirty foot long monster demolishing adobes, mad about rains in Arizona, heading for Mexico where it is warmer. Hundreds of them on the move. All souls perish. God, wouldn’t that be fun to write?

  I will make a note of it. “A sort of 1960s horror movie with goofy characters and a giant Gila monster.” I write that in my little notebook of story snippets.

  The only thing I like about my job is I can hide out at my desk at work for a very long time and write and write and write…