Short fiction | Spinning on a Spike | Thomas M. McDade

Farbspiele, 1952, Ernst Wilhelm Nay

  

At the Columbia Cemetery, not far from the cellar room where I lived, I joined Jay Harkert and his friends after Happy Hour at a Boulder bar called The Sink.  I knew him from my Rhode Island days. I’d caddied for him and his rich father at Wannamoisett Country Club.  Olivia Dracut hung all over Jay.  She was wild, had been arrested for indecent exposure after displaying her breasts on Pearl Street at high noon.  So fit for motherhood those pert misdemeanors, a passing back-hauled infant reached out, mouth cocked at the ready.  Her sorority booted her but the university gave her a fourth chance because of her genius grades and pressure from feminist groups. They rallied around Olivia. No man would have suffered cuffs and jail for that act. She spoke to me just once, asked about my College Boards. When I replied I never took any she rolled her eyes. Jay said he’d seen me with a book, 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary so I might get to them. Thanks pal, and that was that.  H. C. Croft, a beret-wearing math major / jazz drummer who always kept a pair of sticks in his back pocket and Hazel Grift his girlfriend, a bass player in his quartet, usually joined us.  Jay told me Croft once softly drummed Olivia’s bare ass.   According to Jay, Croft was trying to break up with Hazel, but hint after hint flew over her head. The egotistical and ungrateful bastard feared she would harm herself if he were blunt.  Her reddish-brown hair was long and she often pushed it away from covering half her face. Jay said her green eyes were exotic. To me, they were sympathetic and understanding. I thought she’d be a wonder as a doctor of any stripe. Jay believed Olivia’s beauty was high Hollywood; Hazel’s just semi-classic due to her slight overbite and nose that lacked nobility.  Could have fooled me, plain talk was rare. She’d frequently rub an index finger against her thumb like a bow or just pluck the air.  She sat in a yoga pose. Her legs entwined, and favored black clothes. She put her hand on my knee when the others made me disappear over the tests and book. With that crew my audience, I tried acid while sitting against a headstone that belonged to a man named Tom Horn, hanged for murder. He weaved his own noose awaiting execution. I was a Tom also. My trip a spastic trek and they had to hold me down.  I saw no psychedelics. No elm bark breathed. No tree trunks switched to broad neon waterfalls. No short-circuited rainbows either.  No grinning satyrs, nymphs or chuckling mastodons showed up as Jay promised. I was twitching at the end of Tom Horn’s noose. I found myself in Hazel’s strong arms. The jitterbug horror was worth the comfort of her. Such was my love life’s desolation.

          

I shared a bathroom and shower where I lived. Two others lived in the house. One was Link, an engineering student from Idaho.  A slide rule was always hanging off his belt. The other was an artist named Monty who wore a paint-stained smock at all times. The refrigerator currently in Link’s room was on wheels. We took turns by the month hosting it. My hot plate, dining gear and bedding were from the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Jobs were tough to find in Boulder. I had a job bagging groceries at Joyce’s Supermarket. Cecil, the manager, was a prick. “No double bagging unless a customer asks. It’s a good way to waste two-and-a-half-cents per. “Bagging smartly with Christian resolve is the key.”  On my days off, I’d check with the state for newly posted jobs and sporadically work on my vocabulary and read short stories. Browsing library shelves, I discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald. His story “Winter Dreams,” hooked me. Soon I struck it rich. Shepherd’s Gardens was hiring, buck seventy-five an hour, thirty-five cents over Cecil’s place.  I tested the walk from my room, thirty-nine minutes.  The lanky, cigar-smoking son of the owner Jared hired me on the spot likely due to my driver’s license that included dump trucks. I called in “well” at Joyce’s, requested my check be mailed. I picked up a pair of combat boots at an Army / Navy store and a couple of pairs of work gloves.  Jay seemed happy with my job switch.  He’d tried to hide his embarrassment over my bagging gig but it reeked.  I could feel myself slipping out of his context. My performance at the Columbia Cemetery hadn’t helped I guessed.

          

I worked with three other laborers. Seth was basketball player tall, long hippie blond hair. He faked a British accent and believed LSD would bring on peace and love worldwide. A religious experience he’d say, like LDS. From my view, he was pushing a false religion. He often talked of its power to enhance sex. He’d had two university cheerleaders at once in a shower that reminded him of a phone booth. He felt like a reckless Clark Kent.  He was probably full of shit but a good soul nonetheless. We’d often race digging up and bagging trees for delivery and planting. I was happy that I beat him half the time. I was nearly 6 feet but weighed just 145 lbs. No matter how quick, we never outdid Jared who liked to demonstrate to show us our place.  His mother referred to us as “the girls.” Larry, a ski bum whose VW van broke down worked with us for a week or so but he had a horticulture degree and ended up inside selling. Seth and I agreed that he probably had some tales that would make us stand up and take serious notice.  Harold, a lazy lout friend of the family who was slow motion slowed, wore a major league umpire’s cap.  That was his goal in life. I doubted calling barroom-league softball strikes would get him there. His shiny right hand thumbnail was the result of a manicure and a tribute to his gesture for calling a batter or baserunner out. He smoked the same brand of cigars as the boss. He’d been a rodeo clown. He claimed his first wife was a beauty queen. He married plain second time around.  He was an ordained clergy ministering to a congregation of fifty-nine.  I thought he was a lying ass but he was not good of soul like Seth who called him Rev and asked for blessings. All he received were dirty looks.  Seth confided to me that he meant Rev for revolting.  He imagined Harold showing up with a blazing shotgun someday. I loved driving the dump truck even with useless Harold squeezed in the cab.  We’d often go up into the foothills to plant trees and that struck me as weird since there were already so many there.  Hey, we landscaped the Olympic Ski Coach’s house.  Seth and I went up alone times Harold called in sick or did errands for the old witch. We created several Japanese gardens, not much to it, rocks, gravel and junipers, basic recycling fountains. The first project, Seth talked about making gin from juniper berries. He pulled two airport bottles of Gordon’s to toast the thought.  That wasn’t the only high involved when working with Seth. I parked the truck off road about halfway down. We walked to a spot under a misshaped fir tree with a low hanging branch.  I’d hiked there, great view of the University and its red tiled roofs.  Seth put on his gloves, stood on a bench-like rock and did 25 pull-ups. I managed 15. He lit a joint and we shared. It was a thousand times better than acid. I couldn’t wait to jot down my first pot experience in the pocket notebook I’d bought to record interesting things, actually kind of a mini-diary. I was yet to find the stomach to spell out the LSD misfortune. I stared off into the quilt of spruce, pine and aspens. Seth called me Silencio.

          

End of May saw a new hire, a Mexican who looked my 21 years. A rugged man, his wide brimmed hat carried a bright blue feather in the band and he walked on sandals.  Seth said his shirt was a guayabera.  He drove an old Chevy, ’50 or ’51 copper colored. Watering the half-acre of potted roses was his job.  He never took breaks with us when we were in off the road.

I’d wandered among his charges, reading tags, recording names in a small pad: Lucky Lady, Tropicana, Apricot Nectar, Golden Slippers and many more. Nice place to visit but his work would bore the hell out of me. Freddy never paid any attention to me no matter how close I walked.

Once while trudging home I’d met Hazel.  She was happy to see me or acted so. Her hair was up I admired her slender neck daintily graced with wispy ringlets. I wished she’d hug me but I guess that was fragile territory for both of us.  Her arm and shoulder touches were welcome. She took me to a dormitory dining hall where she knew the student worker checking IDs. The food was great and she rustled up a bag of fruit and cookies for me to take. She discussed movies with her friends, Alfie and Georgie Girl. They sure dragged that Alfie gent across the coals. Hazel had rearranged music from the hit soundtrack for Croft.  I didn’t want to be conspicuous so I held off logging in the two movie titles and other tidbits in my notebook. Of course, I didn’t have much to say but that changed when she asked about my job. She was very interested in the Japanese gardens. I mentioned the spot where I smoked pot with Seth.  She knew it, had written a jazzy piece she called “Flatiron Flight.” I had to stifle romantic thoughts. She was miles out of my league. I hoped creepy Croft would let her down softly or well . . . not at all. I saw her perform with Croft’s quartet, “Croft Craft.” Hazel was one with her bass, eyes closed, quarter smile, she seemed to be thousand miles away and more, visiting constellations. Croft invited a black woman in the audience to sing. I didn’t get the song title of the song but I held onto a couple of lines: “A tiny spark will remain, yeah / And sparks turn into flames.”  I saw Hazel a twice from a distance on College Hill, in a big hurry.  Jay drove by while I was waiting for a light to change. His wave was weak. He was disappearing and so was I.

          

Seth told me about a place called the Huddle that sold a meal card for thirty-dollars; walk through the cafeteria line once per punch, as much as you can fit on a plate plus a salad and dessert. I bought one.  The place had an upstairs for concerts. A sign outside advertised an appearance by Odetta, a folksinger.  The cashier was reading a paperback novel that looked sci-fi, The Year of the Angry Rabbit. The song playing when he punched my card for the first time was “For What it’s Worth.”  I chose pot roast, boiled potatoes and green beans mixed with almonds.  Catalina dressing was available, my favorite.  A large moist slice of carrot cake was delicious.  On the wall near where I sat aCasablanca movie poster hung. 

          

Things changed at Shepherd’s Gardens when Freddy quit. The old witch was doing the watering until they hired someone else. I often chuckled to myself at the sight of her lugging the bucket.  They terminated Seth. I figured Harold instigated it somehow.  The new laborer was an old friend of Harold’s. Jimmy was a bird of the same crappy feather.  He could drive a dump truck so no more of that joy. I kept my mind occupied worrying about Hazel. On a Thursday evening roaming Pearl Street window-shopping, I was shocked to see Seth going into Walt & Hank’s Tavern with Olivia. He towered over her. Croft was with the woman who condemned the Alfie character to no end in the dorm dining room.  Would Jay and Hazel end up together?

          

The next day I went out on a job with the useless duo to plant crabapple trees in The Arapaho National Bank parking lot gravel islands. I swore I wouldn’t rat them out if they bought a couple of cans of beer to have with their lunches.  There was no offer to pick one up for me.  Returning, they plopped down on curbing. They talked about a bronc rider they’d grown up with and a bank robber who robbed this very bank and peepshows on Larimer Street in Denver. I thought they’d never get back to work. The second day stag movie talk dominated their conversation.  The third they solved Vietnam. Seth and I would have knocked the lot off in a day. No riot act when we returned. They praised each other to the hilt when the witch was in earshot. She didn’t like how Jimmy parked the dump truck but asked me, not him, to move it. My backing over a fertilizer spreader might have been halfway on purpose.  Jared came running out of the shop.  His three-year-old kid would have seen the damned thing.  The witch said “Mary Joe” should take over the roses.  Harold made a big umpire show of calling me out.  An hour left on the shift, the witch told me to go home. I’d need the rest for my new “position.”  They got a laugh out of that. I’d had it, never felt so lonely in my life.  

          

The last joint I bought from Seth in my jacket, I headed up to my observation post to tell the sunset my troubles.  Some tire tracks from the Shepherd’s dump truck, me at the wheel, remained. As I made the turn toward the rock, Hazel stepped off it.  I slipped running to her.  I grabbed her legs. She slumped over my shoulder as I made my way onto the rock. I maneuvered my hand to her neck to remove the noose. I sat her down, hugged her. She was coughing and sobbing. I was trembling. The city of Boulder might have heard my pile driving heart. My Tom Horn experience crossed my mind. She clung to me as if I were a second choice vehicle to flee to the other side.  What do you say to someone who just attempted suicide and you were the one who interfered?  I asked her if she could spin her bass in its spike the way I’d seen jazz musicians do on TV. “Like a top,” she said, hoarsely.  Holding hands, we shared my weed with the drooping sun.

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