“Chewed Up and Spat Back By the Yawning Gods Over Portland”

"Mind the minors, plea-uzzzh!"

Interminable deluge of bacchanal delights as Binksie and myself tut-tut-tuttle our way pedestrially along the high-and-mighty Grand Avenue.  Enjoying the liquid splendor from humble brown paper parcels tucked into unseasonal jackets as we amble along peaceably, exulting in God and Mother Earth and Cthulhu all.

            “Blessed Double Dog Dare debauches, dearest brother Binks!” I exclaim loudly, arm slung around his bulky stumbling shoulder.

            “All too right, most honorable Hoff,” he chides along in good-natured fashion, taking a pronounced tipple from his parceled bottle.  “But-” and he lowers his voice a bit, ever mindful of the nosey ear of the peeping tommy eyes of our general pop.  “But where’re we off to now?  I thought we were bringing the stuff up to King.  We’re headed south.”

            “Right you are, old boy,” I tell him amicably.  And drawing him aside down a knock-turn little backstreet, add in a whisper, “Can’t be too careful, fuzz about and all.  We’ll meander our way as best we can up the byways and side-alleys.”  Because a half-pound of meth is a hell of a thing to carry, plastic-wrapped and duct-taped and sagging weightily within the jacket pocket as it does.  Weighing years’ and yonks’ and lifetimes’ worth of bar-biting brutality, a menstruating mother-down cacophony of malice for honest lot like ourselves.

            But it makes for a troubleless sort of venture, dark and fragrant garden plots overflowing onto crumbling sidewalks and a sky full of stars, though for the most part unseen to the urban eye.  Cool air, distant train… the sort of night such things were made for.  “Because what’s money anyway?” I accidentally ask aloud.

            “An illusion!” Binks pipes in, never missing a beat.  “A reflection of the means of production meant to hamper the proletariat.”  He doesn’t stop with the jargon, “Money is the root of all evil, the great oppressor.  The death of mirth, the sucker of life, the whore of-” and with a mighty – whooph! – Binks stumbles short as I elbow him sharply beneath the ribs.

            “I think I hear something,” I warn him, hearing only the refreshing sounds of nocturnal silence.  An ode to my personal joy, sipping on a waning bottle of cab-sav beneath this celestial bouquet of ours.  “Let us continue on in silence, and take advantage of our surprising element.”  He whispers agreement and we saunter on.  Waning moonlit shadow puppets of monstrous oaks, slender alders.  Fig trees and maples and the occasional elm.  Quietly shifting in the breeze, scarcely heard above the odd hum of a latter-season air condition system or the buzzing power units strung overhead.

            “Would that it would all stop,” I whisper, mostly to myself.  A world without its Electric Giant, a world of worthy equals parleying about after life’s necessities.  Neither trapped nor ensnared by fantasy or whimsy, living for the now, that terrible and awesome nemesis to the future and repressor of our glories past.  Dwelling for the second-by-tick-tock-second, as myself and Binksie here on this darkened avenue.

            “I thought we were walking in silence,” Binks mutters reprovingly, and I remember our pact.  So we walk on in silence, past Weidler and Schuyler and Tillamook- to can’t quite say where, gentleman’s agreements and so forth.  But after a bit of strolling back and forth we finally find the place, an unlit white-sided house hemmed with juniper bushes. 

Ditching our bottles in the gutter we begin our approach up the well-kept walk, when a wild hair grips me.  I grapple Binks’ shoulder.  “What if we awayed with the thing?” I ask him, deadly serious.  More’n a pop for a puff, couple thou lining the pockets minus the odd splurge.  “Hell, we could make off for California.  Buy a plot and start a farm, breed rabbits.”

“What is this, Steinbeck?” Binks spits, face flushed.  “We’ll get nobbled.  These guys’re animals.  Let’s just dump this stuff off and get gone.”

“Sage advice,” I say to my spineless colleague.  But it’s true nonetheless; best to get this burden away and disappear with the dawn.  Besides, what’s money?  We’ll still fork in a few hundred for the trouble.  “After you,” I say, and again the thought creeps up.  Run.  Disappear into the night and head south.  Or hell, north!  Canada!  Health care and Molson’s and poutine and foreign women.

But Binks is already buzzing the bell and the front door swings open, briefly basking the lawn in a column of white light before the pair of us are leeched inside from the darkness without.  The doorman is a big bloke, shaved head and pierced face with enormous empty eyes, like the discs of a ceiling lamp.  Very imposing.  “Goat the stuph?” he asks us in an indeterminate drawl.  I nod, the gether uncomfortable by the size of our host and sudden closeness in-of-doors we find ourselves in.

The Bulk ushers Binks and myself into the living room as I drag out the bindle of mealy white powder from my pocket.  But I nearly drop the bag as I find ourselves surrounded by luminous blue fish tanks on every side.  Stacks of them, gallons and gallons of salt and fresh tanks filled with delicate, multi-colored fish and sea creatures.  “Jesus me,” I exclaim breathlessly.  It’s less like being at the aquarium than a well-stocked pet shop, same unnatural humidity and all.  Very dank.

“You got the stuff?” asks a voice from the hall, and in comes who I take to be the fish-fiend.  Sluggish looking fella with a mop of ruddy blonde hair and acne pocks about his face, looking a bit groggy and stoned for the wear.  “You got it?” he reiterates testily, and I can’t say I care for the way he’s looking down the nose at us.

I hand over the bag, which he gives a cursory glance to before chucking it across to the Bulk by the door.  I wait expectantly, for bills or something.  Cigarettes, wine, anything at this point; I’m starting to get the creeps from this inordinate number of steamy fish tanks.  “Well, if you’ve got our money…” I begin, and the Slug sort of frowns the more deeply.

“Your money?” he asks wearily.  “Your money?  That’s Marestal’s problem.  He’s got your drinking money, not me.”

“Look, Fish Tank,” I start to tell him, torn between a life-ending veil of red and a self-saving interest of getting the hell out.  I start to say, but the Bulk takes a step forward and Binks loses what little pigment he’s got and steps a ways back.  “Look man,” I begin again, lightening my tone.  “Marestal said you’d pay us on delivery. Contractual and all that.”

“Fuck you,” the Slug tells me curtly.  And I wanna brain the churlish monkey, take a bottle and shove it right up his pasty middle-class asshole.  But I haven’t the bottle, and then the Bulk has this look of enraged disgust on his flattened face.

“I don’t think this is dust,” he says to Slug, who yawns angrily at the pair of us.

“Oh?” he purrs, and again I’m wanting out.  Fucking Marestal.  Talk about shoving bottles…  What’s money, anyway?  Bit of fluff and mirrors, light dancing offa the silver platter at the end, little man behind the curtain.  Nothing worth losing the thumbs over, nothing worth getting a nostril split for.  “Let me see that,” and the Bulk forks over the bag and idles taut in front of the exit.  I’m shitting bricks myself, though not quite going the Binksie route with his audible whispers of harried Hail Mary’s, still yet the spineless idolater. 

“Hnmmm,” Slug murmurs.  “No-” and he looks at the pair of us with a positively disdainful hate.  “No, I think this is best taken up with Marestal.  It’s wrapped too well to have anything to do with you two.”  And a burden was altogether dropped, I suppose.  Everything happens so fast:  Binks sighs a praise of relief, Bulk relaxes from the doorframe uneasily, my anus unpuckers as the body realizes it has months yet to go on.  Hunky-dory goodness abounds in the karmic universe, save one altogether nasty chap named Marestal foolishly asleep on the south end of town.  Binks and Bulk and my anus, all harmoniously at ease and relieved.

Then the Slug goes on about no paydays in bum town, or paper rain on a bum parade- I don’t know.  But I hit the plump cocksucker in his pursed mouth as he’s mmm-ing out the um in bum.  Think I split a knuckle in the ensuing bedlam, claptrap fat faggot falling backwards into a toppling tank of tetras, crash-smash double splash in a bacchanal deluge of blood and water as he takes a crimson tumble onto broken glass fragments.  My right fist flaring screaming in a red rocket of flame I biff the bulky bouncer in the eye with my left as I’m pushing past for the door.  He’s stunned, but not particularly worse for the wear.  I’m thinking best make for the nearest dumpster or storm drain for a disappearing act. 

Binks – goddamn trusty Binks – is putting a boot in to the Slug as I’m rounding the corner, disappearing from view.  “Jesus, Hoff!” he’s shouting.  “Jesus, Hoff, what’d you do!?” as he stamp-stamp-stamples down upon the fallen drug peddler fish-fiend lying amid flopping dying neon tetras.  I’m one-two-three out the door and back into the dry cool air of the Portland night, urban dim-star sky yawning on above me.  With preservation on my mind, a spring in my step, blood oozing from my crippled right and eyes darting for the nearest knock-turn backstreet.  Trees quietly shifting in the impotent breeze, scarcely heard amid the shouts and muffled scuffle from within the white-sided juniper-hemmed house in King.

"For the Birds"

            “This is your stupidest idea yet,” Binks begins and I can already visualize myself putting the boot in to his whiney keister.  I don’t of course, mates and all and besides which I’ve got to maintain my reserve for the passers by.  There’re a couple of khaki-shorted tourists approaching that look like they might drop a dollar or a cigarette or two.

            “Just shaddap and play,” I respond in low tones, thumping out a sharp little number on the bon-go drum I’ve got tucked between my legs.  I’m thinking Charade meets Ginsburg playing Lucien Carr, fast-tempo and exhilarating.  Binks is trying to keep up, strumming out some cool bass lines and beatboxing a bit of fake trumpet à la Hugh Laurie.

            The tourists pass us by with a wide berth, pausing their conversation – their very breathing – and avoiding eye contact as they do so.  “Help the homeless?  Sirs?  Sirs?”  Not even a look as they sashay to the crosswalk and jay across.  I stop my drumming.  “That was awful,” I’m glaring at Binks, who has likewise stopped off on playing and is sipping from his paper sack.

            “How can it be anything else when you can’t hold a beat?” he shoots back all barby.  “Besides, nobody’s going to believe we’re homeless, even with this milk carton banjo and your pathetic coffee can.”

            “Do you know how long it took me to string that carton?”  And I mean, it did take upwards of fifteen, twenty minutes.  It may not be climbing Everest, but time is money.  “And don’t even start on talking beats.  You’ve got the rhythm of a walrus having to, I dunno… play with its cock or something.”  And we bicker on, comfortable enough in the shaded parkway of the eponymously-named Park Avenue.  It’s a hot day, bordering on the muggy if not for the steady breeze bustling through the trees.

            We pause and take thoughtful sips from our respective sacks, grimacing a tisch over the lukewarmy tang of Hurricane backwash infused with a couple nips of gin.  Clearly the band thing isn’t working out, having spent the majority of the day playing without hardly any payoff.  At one point some fresh-mouthed teenager offered us a dollar to stop.  And a couple passing JWs left us copies of their Watchtower periodical, which eventually got picked up by the breeze and left dismally tossed about in the roadside shrubbery.

            “Maybe you’re right, Binksie.  Bohemian folk music is old hat, dime a dozen and all.  We need a new gig, something unique.”

            “Can’t we go scouring for cans again?  That paid off nicely.”

            I shake my head.  “The can bums,” I remind him, men and women of the street who make their dime filling grimy shopping carts with cans they dive through the bins for.  They’re a mean lot, a sort of informal guild that doesn’t take to tin-poaching lightly.  “That one promised to take my thumbs if he ever saw me near another recyclable.”  A weighty threat, nearly always having a can of some sort in hand.  I try holding the bag with just my palm, nearly dropping it.  I’d probably have to switch to bottles, living sans thumbs.

            “How about palmistry?” I suggest.  “Like, fortune-telling!  I learned how to do it once back in college.  We could set up a bench down by the Pearl…”

            “You can read fortunes?” Binks sneers, and once again I’m thinking about thumping him one.

            “Nobody can read fortunes, you nit.  But any dumb shit can read a palm.  You just have to know which lines mean what, and sort of embellish on from there.  Gimme your hand.”  And I take his resisting arm and spread his hand palm-up on the top of my bongo can.  It’s sort of awful, touching Binks’ clammy mitt, vaguely and quite uncomfortably sexual in a way.  But eventually he quits struggling and I get to looking over the lines.

            “See, now this is your life line, by the thumb.  It’s a shrimpy little thing, meaning you’ve got no joie de vivre, no lust for life.  No head line to speak of… actually, maybe your hands are just too doughy.  Probably bloated from all the drink-”

            “Give me that!” he says irritably, pulling back his arm as I’m having a laugh that’s sort of turning to a disquietingly wet cough fit.  “You don’t know what you’re doing.  Besides, that idea’s dumber even than the folk band.  We might just have to get jobs, Hoff.  I know, I know, don’t look at me like that.  I’m just saying that the checks’ll be drying up soon and money doesn’t just come, you know?”

            “Money doesn’t just come,” I agree, “but who’s going to hire the either of us?  Spotty records, at best.  Scant sobriety, at best.  Ours is destined to be the life of the streets, man.  Of freedom!”  And with a sweeping gesture I point out the trees et al above and around us, we masters of the open spaces.  Feeling inspired, I start to tap out a rhythm dedicated to our Mother Nature, evocative of peace and joy and solidarity and-

            “Stop, stop, stop!” Binks stands abruptly, shaking his head and squeezing the bridge of his nose.  He wrests the can from me and throws it into the grass with a soft tum.  “You have no rhythm, you crazy bastard!  Soon to have no money.  No place.  No future!  We’re not characters in a goddamn Kafka novel.”

            “Kerouac,” I correct him.

            “Whatever!  It gets cold at night, Hoff man.  And sometimes it rains.  People aren’t birds; they need apartments and rent money and groceries.  They need something fucking soft to sleep on, something that doesn’t smell like piss.  Because they have pots for that, too.”  He begins to walk off down the Park Avenue, arms out and incredulous like the Monopoly tycoon on a tax day.

            “You’ll be back, Binks!” I call after him.  “It’s written in your life line!”  He shouts back something indefinably obscene as he jays at the cross.  Blinking red hands everywhere, it seems.  I lay back in the grass, cradling my head in my hands and admiring the twisted branching limbs of the oaks stretching out above me, wondering if there’s a science to arboreal palmistry.  Some passing mug flicks a quarter at me as he walks.  “Bless you, sir!” I say after him, not deigning to right myself and fetch it.  After all, it’s only a quarter.

"Mystery of the Untucked Shirttail"

            Binks and I are sitting in at the downtown kinoplex, slurping down two rather large doctored rye Pepsi’s in an attempt to escape the rainy Thursday afternoon.  We’re watching Rise of the Apes, or maybe Final Destination Something.  I’m mostly watching the screen through the darkened lenses of my 3D gimmicks, neither here nor there bogged down by plot.  Just flashes of violence and bursts of sound, ambrosia to the senses.

            Actually, I’m thinking to myself that I’ve gone and stiffened the pop a bit too strongly and am contriving a way to somehow reseparate the two liquids, when there’s a stultifying shout from the back of the theater.  One of those flat “Oh no, they’re dead!” kind of things that really just don’t do for me anymore.  But anyway, there was a shout (“Oh no, they’re deeeaaad!”) and a general uproar as people begin leaving or milling about or venturing towards the three motionless patrons at the back.  After what seems like ages the lights finally kick on and the vest-and-tie-festooned staffers are congregating around the bodies.

            “Yeah, they’re pretty dead looking,” Binks is saying between sips as we slowly rubberneck by.  Very tongue-in-cheek, is Mr. Binks.  But he has a point; three stringy chaps at the back, side by side, grotesque expressions frozen on their faces, heads all lilted to one side or another.  Pretty dead looking.

            “Do you suspect foul play?” I’m asking the fattest, most senior looking staffer.  He just gives me a fuck-off sort of look, and begins sniffing at my drink.  “Someone ought to call the police,” I say to Binks as we shuffle-foot on out into the lobby.  I start to grab at my pockets for the mobile when I realize it’s in the shop.  “Maybe you should call on yours.”

            Binks shakes his head.  “Not on my phone.  I’ve got an interview with the D-H-S coming up and I don’t need to be mixed up with any police.  Anyway, what’s wrong with yours?”

            I’m thinking up a way to explain the shop when some vesty pimply punk touches my arm.  “I’m afraid you guys will have to hold back until the police arrive,” and I’m about to ditch the jumbo gulp and hoof it.  Of course, with murder afoot and all, I suppose it’d be a rash move on my part.  So I stand easily.

            “What, for questioning like?”

            “Yehman.  Would you stand over by the others for a bit?  Until they arrive?”  And he gingerly shoves us over to a corral of irritated, perplexed looking movie patrons standing by the popcorn machine.  What a bunch of whiners, what with their places to go and things to do.  Very me-me-me, missing the forest for the lone pine.  Yet larger things were happening.  For one, the ‘police’ show up almost immediately, suspiciously so.  There are four of them, with three gurneys that they wheel straight off into the theater.  I think ‘police,’ because though they’re all more-or-less lumpy enough and have the blue apparel, there isn’t a badge to be seen between them.  And – yes! – one has his shirttail out, a sign of a rush if there ever was!

            “Do you see that, Binks?”

            “Yeah I told you, they’re dead.”

            “No, not that you half-wit!  I think-” and I lower my voice a bit, aware now that we may be in a dangerous position.  “I think those men are the murderers… did you see the one’s shirttail?  Clearly, they’ve only just put on their disguises.  They’re actually making off with the bodies!”

            I must say, Binks’ face was an irritating pinch throughout the whole explanation, seemingly unable to see the situation for what it is.  “Naw, but-” and he at least lowers his voice a bit as well, “But those are the paramedics.”

            “Paramedics!?” I shout, nearly laughing.  “Paramedics, but they’re dead, Binks.  They’re dead!”  And I may have blown our cover completely, as now the small crowd we find ourselves in is beginning to forget their schedules and alibis and are instead watching us intently.  I pull Binks to one side and resume the whisper, “I think some of them might be in on it.  The mafia has a very wide net to cast.”

            “Mafia?  Where are you getting all of this?”  And I dare say I see the glimmer of doubt in his eye, perhaps even suspicion.  His game is up.

            “I always knew you were a rat,” I sneer as I take a step back.  “Never getting into trouble, now I begin to see the strings that work the marionette.”

            “But,” and I must have riled him because Binks is starting to stammer, to go on the defensive.  “But you’ve always been the one getting into trouble!”  He’s looking back to his cronies now, possibly for support; nobody steps forward and his guard is down.

            “You’re goddamn right,” I say, seizing the opportunity and taking him roughly by his collar.  My drink may have gotten a bit spilt in the scuffle, but I’m sure I had the murderers' inside man.  I might’ve beaten it out of him, too, if the cock-up police hadn’t arrived to shake things up.  “Confess, damn you!” I'm shouting at him, and one of the officers has me going to ground despite my best struggles.  Being a bit bigger than I am Binks is putting up a more solid fight, despite being a mafioso thug (or maybe because of it).  Even gets a proper punch in before the cowards triple-team him into submission.

            “Thattaboy, Binksie,” I mumble into the shoddy theater lobby carpet as the cuffs come on behind me.  “Work those strings…”

"Bread Basking"

            So there I stand, shaking my head at the paltry assortment of comestible sadness scantily cladding my cupboards.  Two tins of tomato paste (Hunt’s, not even Contadina), a half-jar of banana peppers, a can and a half of coffee, a bag of dried beans, and two lukewarm cans of Pabst still hooked at the ring.  There’s flour in the counter bin, maybe some sugar.  The fridge might have some mustard and a bottle of pomegranate juice, and most definitely a half-case of Steel Reserve.  I’ve got nothing.  Nothing but coffee and malted beverage, and a stomach that’s beginning to grumble.

            I rummage out a pad from the junk drawer.  From the Mind of Hoff, lovingly printed at the header.  I pull a pen from my pocket and start scrawling like, outpouring a deluge of thoughts and staples and whimsy.  Onions, big meaty yellow sweet and sharp Vidalias, a half dozen at least.  And eggs!  An eighteen pack of AA super-grade eggiweggs, sizzled up in butter with bacon on the side.  Shredded cheddar, sour cream, two-percent milk- scratch that, whole milk, goddamned buttermilk!  Orange juice, Texas Toast, vanilla extract, fakey never-go-bad syrup… and that’s just breakfast!

            I’m having to pull up another sheet:  vine-ripened tomatoes, twenty pounds of spaghetti, butcher-fresh sagey sausage, non-virgin olive oil, machine-rolled Totino snackems, split peas, ham hocks, Progresso soups, chicken wings, Sweet Baby Ray’s, a goddamn ribeye… I’m chuckling to myself, the thought of all this food is making me so happy.  In reality once I get to the store I know what it’ll be; a case of Ramen and another can of coffee, but a man can dare to dream.

            I know there’s a Safeway across the river by the Binks’ but I’m hoping for something closer by, something I need only heft a few blocks for the haul.  I can think of a few bars and like, but I honestly can’t say I’ve ever looked about for grocery stores.  I pull up the Google Earth on the desktop and begin searching.  What luck!  Shopping cart icons everywhere, it seems.  And a Safeway only three or four blocks southeast of me.  With a jump and a skip I’ve got my wallet and my list and I’m headed out the door, wondering as I go whether I should nip off a Steel into a Nalgene for the walk.  Naw, I’m telling myself after a bit of thought.  It doesn’t do to drink when there’s food afoot.  A couple sips and a body loses the hunger, that drive that makes us all human.

            So I’m out the door and into the aggressive hello of the sun’s rays.  It is a bright, obnoxiously beautiful day, balmy and just a bit breezy.  To my liking, so far as sunny days go.  I’m walking east through the neighborhood, a downright bounce in my step as I go.  Thinking about food - Food! - real food, with the heat and grime of real cooking.  Real chopping, real mincing, real preheating and temping and scouring.  Reality, sustenance for the life and mind like.  Only a stone’s throw from growing it all yourself, but I’m not sure yet how to apply for a community plot.  Not quite sure how I’d fit in with the garden set, either.  Trés gentrifique, them.

            But the neighborhood’s pleasantly quiet the day, just another Sunday in Godless Portland.  A time to rest and reflect, to revel in goodliness and peace and such.  A time to grocery shop.  I reach my street and start heading down, noticing an easy chair on the pavement that might do nicely in the apartment.  High backed and cultured, a beigey ‘sitting room’ sort of affair.  First things first, though, and after a few more blocks than I’d expected I’m at the crossroads, mildly perplexed at the rubbled lot before me.  I’m looking to the street signs and yes, this is indeed the proper spot.

            Proper spot too late, apparently.  Safeway gone and relegated to a lot, paving the way for a new strip outlet sometime next spring.  Hum, I’m thinking to myself, wondering where next on my little adventure.  There’s nothing but cafes and shops to my right, so I continue eastward on Hawthorne towards nowhere in particular, sun hovering above me.  Real LBJ, the sun today.  The back of my neck is already starting to get sticky damp, my mouth dry to taste.  Perhaps a Nalgene would’ve been a good call, and I’m wondering if I really need any food at all.  A couple malts, maybe an impromptu soup with the beans and tomato paste…
            Treasonous thoughts, I’m telling myself as I see ahead a sign that reads MARKET across the street.  My hopes aren’t up though; it could just as easily be a sign that says LAUNDROMAT or MOTEL or any other number of shoddy inner-city semi-conveniences.  My guess is that they won’t even have a produce section or cold untinned meat, like the dozens of fucking Plaid Pantries masquerading as grocery stores.  Gas stations without the pumps, more like.

            I cross on over, fears turning to reasonable doubts turning to unlikely hopes to the contrary.  It’s no different than any number of liquor shops, and as I go in I see the chip aisle, the condom section, magazines, and three walls of cooler doors filled with beer and booze and energy drinks.

            “Hey!” the clerk greets me warmly with a pleasant, nondescript sort of accent.  “Wonderful day, no?”  I greet him back; it is, in fact, a wonderful day.  With a heavy tread I saunter the two aisles, looking for any mislaid eighteen-count cartons of eggs, or bacon, or even a bundle of asparagus.  Nothing except for Vienna Sausages and Doritos, and the cold case beckoning me thither with its soft iridescent blue glow.  And after talking to the clerk I suppose I’d feel bad not buying anything.  I peruse the walls, gravitating towards the singles.  With a sigh I grab a giant Fosters and a large Guinness, and a bag of wasabi peas that catches my eye towards the counter.

            “I.D. please?” clerky asks me as he rings my tawdry groceries through.  “These good?” he asks of the peas.

            “Oh yeah, I love’m,” I say.  “Would you happen to know of any grocery stores nearby?” I ask with vain hope.

            “Sorry man, I don’t know.  It’s my first day, you know?”

            “Not a worry, thanks.”  He hands me my bag and card and receipt and I’m back out the door into the soul-crushing sunshine.  It's deleriating, sweltering, demoralizing.
             I'm wondering where I should go from here, and as if to answer my thoughts some white-hatted shite riding shotgun in a passing pickup suddenly shouts out at me, "GO HOME, FAGGOT!!"  So with a shrug I head west.  Homeward bound and less the hungry than for the thirst.

"Tuesday Most Glourious"

Binks and myself are milling about by the stop 2-6-4-2 on the Hawthorne over-underpass, drinking Old German pounders from the bag.  Exulting life, I suppose, soaking in the resplendence of God’s own day, that most glourious of Tues-days.  The government and church establishment perhaps haven’t officially recognized it as a holiday, our Tuesday, but I rest assured that they someday will.  

How could they not?  Ineffable solar rays, a moocow lowing of the tugs and boats on the river just ahead, scritching birds, droning cars, sweeping breeze!  Truly a day to be out and about and headed downtown to extend one’s snap account.  “Isn’t it great?” I’m shouting to Binks as a bus rolls by.

            “No, I think we missed our bus,” he’s saying dismally, off on a different tangent altogether.

            “Damn your balls, man!  Can’t you see it’s a wonderful day?  Heavens above and beyond,” and I take another surreptitious slurp from my bag, enjoying a lukewarm pizzy mouthful of stale wash as I scope out the number on the disappearing bus.  “Nah, you fool, it’s not ours!  See, we’ve got a few minutes yet before ours comes along.”

            “Right-right, then!” he chimes in, brightening up immediately as he tips and drains his can back.  “Well, I’m dry” he shrugs, tossing bag and can back over the side, into the weedy concertinaed-off lot below.

            “Littering wag,” I’m muttering after him as my eye follows the thing’s descent, impact, and insignificance among forgotten cars and racks of canoes tangled in tall grass.  And suddenly I’m putting it all together, scanning the lightposts above for camera boxes.  “Ye gods, Binks!  We ought to take a canoe,” and already I’ve got my unsteady eye on a shoddy kelly green thing in the corner, built for two and a case and easy enough to lift.  One that nobody’d miss, I’m thinking.

            “What, down the river?  Are there paddles?  What about our food stamps?”

            “Don’t bring me down with details, dammit!  We can use those planks as paddles, the river’ll be our starboard and the breeze our compass!  We can head downtown another day this week.”  And already I’m leading the way down the concrete stairway, Binks tittering on behind me.

            “You’re crazy, Hoff.  Goddamn crazy,” he’s admonishing me, nigh-on complimentary.  “We just take this thing north, to the ocean?  And what then?  How’ll we get back?”

            “Details again, you little squint.  You can’t nitpick inspiration on days like this.”  We’re on the ground now, rubbley litter-strewn stretch of disused earth.  I’m looking about for weaknesses in the fencing, but it’s all razor-tipped and padded off from the general pop, tight and proper.  “Well ass,” I’m cursing at the thing, foiled before we could make good on our venture.  “Maybe there’ll be a bedroll along the river or under an overpass or something.”

            “What, you’ll ruin somebody’s bedroll now?  That’s all some’ve got, you crazy bastard.”

            “Fine, fine,” I’m conceding.  Binks has a point, even if he is a complaining little weed.  “We’ll look for something though.” 

From above comes the hiss of what is most likely our bus.  “Shit, shit!” Binks is shouting angrily, running pell-mell for the staircase.  “Dammit, wait!!”  It’s a funny sight, watching him scramble up those stairs.  Binks can really leg it if he wants, despite being a dumpy cuss.  The bus hisses on though, grunting its way back into traffic towards the bridge.  “I missed it, you shit!” Binks is calling from twenty, thirty feet up.

“Why don’t you throw a can at me?” I’m laughing back at him, still looking about for a way through the wire.  Perhaps I could crawl under and push the canoe over…  “Hey Binks, I’ve got a plan!  Binks!  Binks?”  But he is gone, probably crossing the bridge on foot in a huff.  Shame, really though.  The canoe might take a crack if there isn’t somebody on the other side to catch it.

I leave off toward the esplanade and the river with a shrug.  It is a glorious day, not one to be wasted on scurrilous details.  I tip back my Old German and drain out the very last and plunk it softly into the yard.  These are the gifts one mustn’t prod too roughly in the teeth; this sun, these birds, this traffic thundering onward overhead, completely oblivious to the wonderful world below it.