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Moses Jones and the Meal Ticket

by James David Patrick

(originally published on Garfield’s Crossing, available in the Garfield’s Crossing Vol. 1 Anthology)

“The best thing anyone ever said to me,” Moses Jones said, “was ‘If you don’t get outta my way, your lips’ll be replaced by the flappin’ sole of my left boot.’ Now this piece of advice left a proper impression and one very important lesson. First, I didn’t know if that old snaggletoothed reprobate was left-footed or if only his left shoe was in need of repair. And second, when someone is bound and determined to remove you from your place, you best stand aside with a wave and a smile. Otherwise, feel free to stay put.” 

The seated crowd of early-evening drinkers, teetotalers and idle sippers paid the bluesman little mind atop his raised platform. They carried on with their conversations, swilling their libations and left the rest to Moses Jones, musician in-residence at Jenny’s Crabshack, a seafood dive that only occasionally served crab, which in itself, Moses noted, was something deeply rooted in the the blues and if a crabshack could write songs, it would write songs about not having any crab. 

The patrons at Jenny’s wanted to let the blues wash over them; they wanted to remember that the blues existed in the same way they kept their grandmother’s Lou Rawls records; they wanted to hear the blues and abandon it at the door on the way out. 

One man, however unfortunate, had been listening. 

“Moses,” the man said, “stick to playing guitar and I’ll stick to drinkin’ this beer, alright?” The man sat front and center – table two – with a woman who whisper-yelled, “Shut up, Bill. Just for once.” 

Moses never failed to indulge a listener. “Why’s that friend? Are you not partial to my interludes?”

“Well, Moses Jones, you see that first part of your ‘lesson’ back there was nothing more than an idle ponderance and the second part is just damn terrible advice. It’s no wonder you’re playing guitar in—“ he paused, glance around at his woman, “where are we again, Debby?”

“Somewhere along the way to Atlanta.”

“If I may,” Moses interrupted. He played three minor chords, one each for “Hamlet of Garfield Crossing, county Walker, state of Georgia, madam.”

“Here,” the man said, dropping a dollar bill in Moses’ tarnished spittoon. “For the information and a little of the guitar plucking. But not for any of those life lessons.”

Moses had inherited the spittoon from his grandfather who’d allegedly run away into the wilderness never to return. Not too far away from here. Nan had been prone to hyperbole and warm whiskey so the facts surrounding Pap’s departure remained hazy. Moses kept the spittoon as a reminder not to run away into the wilderness with those wayward and desperate Appalachia bears and man-eating kudzu vines. 

“Going to Atlanta, folks? Nice town. You from there?”

“Visiting relatives,” Debby said. She was kind eyed. Moses wondered how she wound up on Bill’s arm. 

Atlanta got Moses to thinking again. And when he started thinking, he started talking. “My nan lived in Atlanta for spell,” he said. “Cleaning houses. Here and there.”

Bill tapped a cigarette pack in his palm. “I’ll be back,” he announced and then stepped outside through the back door, not at all interested in Moses Jones’ pending story about his nan, which was a shame because it was worth the wait. 

A brick held the emergency door open for anyone that needed a smoke. Jenny had mounted a sign on the door warning people about the alarm but no alarm was ever installed. But the door did lock from the inside and nobody had a key, which was the reason for the brick during operating hours.

 “Funny story about my nan,” Moses continued. “She once told me that she’d had ‘relations’ with Dizzy Gillespie in the bathroom of a no name café along the Champs Elysées. And here’s the funny part. Because of the way she’d pronounced it, I’d called it the ‘Champs Easily’ until I was 17. Now I ain’t never been to France, but I should have known better. Though I did learn after my nan’s passing – God rest her soul – that Dizzy Gillespie had been in Paris recording Dizzy Digs Paris in 1953, which matched up with the stamp my old nan’s passport. So ain’t that something? One of these days I should visit. I’d like to.”

“That’s something,” Debby added.

Moses noted the lack of irony; sincerity such as Debby’s had become a commodity. 

“Want to see something else?” Moses asked. He thought he had a good eye for people and that this Debby was on the level.

Moses waited a moment to smell the sweet tobacco and then casually, carefully, stood and walked over to the door. While tossing a “Hey,” at Cheri, the waitress with the lazy left eye, Moses nudged the brick back inside with his heel. Moses’ hip wailed where he once took a crowbar over twelve dollars, but every bluesman needs his fuel. “Brick slipped,” he said with a wink. “Don’t mention my assistance.” 

Cheri sighed and carried on. She was probably going to tell Jenny about the brick.

The door shut hard. The evening draft and the sweet tobacco disappeared. Bill rapped against the metal door, but not even Debby jumped to let him back in. Didn’t much look like a man anyone with Debby’s kind eyes would miss. She smiled at Moses Jones. He smiled back.

“I should probably go get him,” 

“Nice meeting you, Debby. Or maybe you prefer Deborah?”

Debby slung the strap of her purse over her head. “I’ve never actually thought about it. I do like the way ‘Deborah’ sounds, but only when you say it, bluesman.” Then she stepped out through the back door, too, where she was met with the voice of an annoyed Bill and the purposeful waving of a detached hand holding a cigarette. At least from Moses’ perspective. Deborah took one final glance over her shoulder. She eased the heavy door closed, and then she was gone.

Moses returned to his chair, picked up his guitar and rested his fingers on the strings, wondering again if that cat gut thing was always an old wives’ tale or if strings were sometimes still made of cat gut. He could never remember how that went down, but he swore his A-string shrieked like a cat when he hit it just so. Moses played a riff. An Albert King go-to he had rattling around in his head. Ring finger. Full-step end. Root repeat. Index for the bend and wobble. No one had taught him to play the guitar; he’d listened to his ma’s records and just picked it up. His dad told him to learn a trade, use his hands. He just wasn’t all that specific. When Moses played, his dad just said, “I was thinking more of carpentry or plumbing.” His ma nodded. He wasn’t discouraged so much as ignored and that was all right. 

A body idled nearby. Standing by the doorway. How long it’d been there, Moses didn’t know, but it was there and so he looked up to take stock of it. First he saw a guitar case. Then he saw a teenager, a toddler really, nothing more than an assemblage of scrawny and awkward pieced together by hormones. He wore a shirt with a little stitched gator, untucked, navy and some cargo shorts with a hole in one of the side pockets. Burnt through maybe, since it looked cauterized and not too scraggly. 

  “Now what do you mean by all this deafening silence?” Moses asked.

“I don’t mean anything by it, sir. I just want to say that I’ve been doing a lot of traveling around this area, and I haven’t ever seen anyone play quite like you.” He paused. “That was King, right? Albert King? Not B.B. of course.”

The youth at least had some real learning behind his clueless exterior. It didn’t make Moses more inclined to talk about other things. Moses just nodded because that was usually more than enough for whatever the occasion. 

Not nearly pacified, the boy parked himself on the riser and extracted a guitar from the case. From his chair atop the riser, Moses had a bird’s eye on the top of this boy’s head. Moses leaned a little further to get an eyeball on the boy’s ability. 

“Would you play that song again?” the boy asked.

Moses obliged. The kid joined in eight beats later, echoing his riff. Moses moved on to a thing he picked up from Stagger in Texarkana. Or maybe it had just been that blind man in Little Rock. Either way. The kid shifted to get a better look at Moses’ fingering and then followed him through. Lagging a bit behind, almost harmonizing.

“That sounds like something from Johnny Moore. A sliding IV6-IV9 chord pattern. Simple, but timeless.” A small crowd had gathered to gawk at the teenager playing a guitar. Turning the riff from Stagger (or the blind man) into something else, taking it down, slowing the pace before bringing it back up. Money appeared in the spittoon; Moses was under no obligation to refuse. He nodded in thanks, but he figured it was back pay anyway for the tips they didn’t give him earlier. The kid slapped his palm across the six strings and silenced his instrument. 

“Don’t let me stop you, son. Moses Jones ain’t got nowhere to be except maybe on break in five-ten minutes.” Moses had counted seven dollars come in since the boy sat down. There weren’t even that many people in this speakeasy, though Moses was never very good with numbers. Probably why he became a bluesman instead of a carpenter or a bank clerk. 

“You are Moses Jones. I read about you in that Rolling Stone article on Stagger Lee Perry.” 

“If you’re my ex-wife’s lawyer or that pimp from Scranton that mistook me for dine-and-dash John Doe, the name’s Frederick Alabaster.”

“It was more of a blurb really, no more than a sentence, but you were definitely mentioned.”

“Much obliged.”

The boy extended his hand. When Moses reciprocated he thought he’d probably about then stop thinking of him as a boy. His fingers dug into Moses’ hand like a waitress stiffed a tip. “William Lancaster, the third.”

“No, no, no, no that won’t due, not for a bluesman.” Moses paused, his hands palm down on his knees. “Truth be told, I don’t know what we’re talking about anymore. Talkin’ bout names, places…” He stared at the floor. “Oh, yes. You asked why a guy like me is holed up in Jenny’s Crab Shack that don’t serve no crabs. Well, I’ve got at least a dozen reasons. It’s a helluva story how I ended up here, but it’s a helluva story how a man’s life takes him anywhere. Take the Old Testament for example.”

“Is that Jenny?” the boy asked, tossing his head toward the arched doorway between the bar and the sincerely decorated blues room. Quite literally a blue-painted room in which Moses played the blues. Jenny stood in the doorway, polishing a glass. 

“That fork-tongued she-devil’s always watching,” Moses said. He smiled broadly. “How you doin’, Jenny?” but Jenny just rolled her eyes. 

Moses promptly picked up his guitar and monkeyed with something that sounded like “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” but that didn’t go anywhere so Moses relaxed his fingers, laid his guitar down in its plush velvet bed, but didn’t shut the case. 

“I heard we found somebody that can actually play a guitar,” Jenny said as she approached the riser. She glanced at the boy. “You doin’ alright, hun?” 

The boy nodded. “Just fine, ma’am.” 

“We’re fine, Miss Lady.” Moses added. “I’m going to take a few minutes to soak, if that’s alright with you.”

Jenny smiled at the boy and returned to the bar.

Moses grabbed the boy’s shoulders and spun him back around. “Bluesman lesson number one. Don’t you dare look the devil in the eye. But don’t you let her know you’re avoiding her neither. Pay attention. This is important because you’re going to meet the devil in a dozen different forms and you got to recognize that devil wherever she or he might be. You say, ‘I’m good, devil woman and don’t you think you can buy my pleasure and patience with your manners and perfume that smells of hollyhocks.’ You never give the devil none of yourself. All that belongs to you is yours.” 

“She seemed nice.”

“That’s what the devil always wants you to think.”

“What?”

“No more questions about women, son. It’s too early for that and I’m hungry. Let’s continue this conversation over a bite.”

Moses beckoned William to follow him and led the boy out the emergency exit. William hesitated at the “Alarm Will Sound” sign but Moses had already pushed open the door. 

The street lights hummed and flickered, pale and sick, like the smell of the dumpster contributed to their well-being. The air stank of Georgia humidity and festering July garbage.

Moses knocked on the neighbor door, waited, and then knocked again. After a moment, the door opened outward. A man of some anonymous Asian descent stood silent and waiting for an introduction. Moses obliged. “Kid, this is the Shanghai-Man. Shanghai-Man, this is a kid. I call him Shanghai-Man because he doesn’t like the term ‘Chinaman,’ even though he was true and through born in Shanghai.” 

“It’s pretty damn racist out of context,” the Shanghai-Man said, devoid of any accent. “If I’m being honest.”

“It’s true, though.”

Shanghai-Man shrugged. “You come for your soup, Mose? Or just stand next to dumpster and discuss the institutionalized racism inherent to labels based on place of birth?” 

“Two soups. Save the discussion for the off-duty bái jiû.”

Shanghai-Man shut the door and disappeared inside. 

“What’s bái jiû?”

“Chinese rocket fuel. Now, your momma know where you at?” Moses asked the boy. When he didn’t answer immediately, Moses took the conversation elsewhere. “William. Or is it Bill? Oh, it doesn’t much matter, we’ll figure out your blues name. Billy Three Chord. Billy… Bill something… Now as I was saying, I came to Garfield’s Crossing as a result of an unfortunate set of circumstances. And if there’s anything Garfield’s Crossing is known for it’s being the result of an unfortunate conflux of circumstances. But I don’t want to go on and on about all that. You see, when a town prides itself on the itinerancy of a third-tier president, you know there’s an underbelly they’re trying to hide. Something really ugly.”

Two steaming Styrofoam bowls emerged from the metal door in the hands of the Shanghai-Man. Moses raised the bowl to his lips, breathed in the steam and savored. Lemongrass and mint. Cilantro and ginger. He savored this soup the way some men revel in sunrises, fine wines or orgasms, though he wasn’t especially familiar with the first two. 

William did the same. The soup was fine. Delicate even, and momentarily made Moses forget he was standing in a stinking back alleyway meant only for activities that made your senses go dull. Moses began to sing: 

“Blues fall mama’s child

and it tore me all upside down

Travel on, poor Bob

just cain’t turn you ‘round.”

“The blu-u-u-ues

is a low-down shakin’ chill

Throwing back his patchy, balding head, Moses closed his eyes and spoke the words, “Preach ‘em now.” Sweat rolled down his neck, disappearing behind the white shirt collar too big for his neck. And despite the choking heat, the faded black suit jacket remained over his shoulders.

“You ain’t never had ‘em, I

I hope you never will

Well, the blues

is a achin’ old heart disease

Moses rolled his head to the side, hanging it limply near his shoulder. In the same soft speech he said, “Do it, now, Moses Jones. You gon’ do it? Tell me about it,” while tapping his fingers to keep the beat on the guitar that wasn’t there. His face twisted and tightened with each pluck of an invisible string, each movement of his skeletal fingers while the other hand held the soup aloft, spilling none of it.

Let the blues

Is a low-down achin’ heart disease

Like consumption

killin’ by degrees

The bluesman mopped his brow with the back of his hand. “You should have recognized that one, son, since you’re on some kind mission yourself,” Moses said. “Robert Johnson’s got something to say to all of us.” 

“That’s nice, Moses Jones,” the Shanghai-man said. 

Moses paused. “It’s got to be Billy. Lot’s of great bluesman used Billy. Billy Flynn. Billy Williams. Billie Holiday, of course. Billy “Three Chord” Lancaster.”

“I said that was real nice, Moses, the Shanghai-man said again.

“Don’ butter me up so you can ask for one of your Elvis tunes, Shanghai-man.”

“I give you the soup and you play me Elvis.” 

“Tomorrow, Shanghai-Man. Let Elvis rest in peace one more night. And don’t start on that notion of your that Elvis is living in a retirement home in Roswell.”

Moses stared up at the streetlight and the insects swarming in and around its sickly yellow radiance. He noticed that if you watch the bugs long enough, they attacked and returned in intricate and regular patterns, repeating the same hopeless instincts. They returned again and again until, he noticed, they’d find the crack in the casing and fry themselves. Like a moth to a flame, they got what they wanted in the end. 

Moses drained the last of his soup. Handing the bowl back to Shanghai-Man he said, “But then again nobody’s guaranteed tomorrow,” and then tugged on the door. Having forgotten to replace the door brick, the metal slab, of course, didn’t budge. Moses sighed and then started off walking toward the front of the building without a word about it. 

William glanced at the Shanghai-Man, still holding his nearly full bowl of soup.

“Take your time. Finish your soup. He’ll come back,” the restaurateur said.  

“What’s your real name?” William asked.

“Jimmy,” the man said and then they waited silently while the kid sipped his soup. Sickly bells rattled from inside the restaurant. “Customer,” he said, shrugging an apology before disappearing inside. 

William checked his watch.  

The door opened. “As I was taking the long walk around the front of the building,” Moses said, ushering the boy inside, “I remembered a story. It seemed imperative to tell you what you’re getting yourself into. Now, you know I don’t much like talking about myself but this is an imperative matter. This one time, back in Clarksdale, I got replaced by a jukebox. That’s where we’re at in the 21st century. See what I’m saying, Billy “Three Chord” Lancaster? Good. Now let’s have some coffee.”

“I don’t really drink coffee, sir.”

“That’s okay. Who drinks coffee at a bar?”

Moses sat down at a table beneath a dartboard in the darkened rear corner of the blues room. Away from the stage. Away from everyone except a couple of hushed drinkers huddling over whiskey glasses – two women, one with curly red hair the color of fairytale dragons and the other pale and unremarkable. The regulars had cleared out during Moses’s soak.

“You see, nobody sits at this table on account of all the dart holes, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Moses leaned in. “I made them all with a utility knife. We don’t have any darts for the dart board.” He pointed out the preponderance of dart holes in the triple six. “I didn’t do these,” he said. “One guy we had in here carried a case with his own darts.”

Moses let that statement hang there, like a wisp of smoke before continuing.

“So as I was saying I was playing this club in Clarksdale. A regular gig. Steady pay plus tips. Free beer. Then a man by the name of Mr. Punkin shows up claiming to have bought the bar and told me he wanted to replace me with a jukebox. In Clarksdale, the birthplace of the blues, can you believe that? Said it was cheaper and no jukebox ever made his waitresses uncomfortable. Now that was just one occasion mind you and wasn’t none of that my fault. I’d been a fixture in Clarksdale and surrounding environs for years. Started out as a mere boy, not much older than you I wager. Learned from the best right there in that club.”

“Mr. Moses Jones, sir,” the boy said.

“Yessir, Billy ‘Three Chord.’”

“My mom says we have to go. She’s tapping her watch.”

“Go? Go where?” 

“We’re on our way to Pensacola.”

“Well,” Moses said, his gaze drifting off at the warm, happy, welcoming adults standing in the archway. “In that case, I’ll look for your records, William Lancaster the third. Maybe you’ll invite me to play on your record some day. You’ll be my meal ticket during my golden years when my fingers ache from the arthritis. When I’ve got nothing left to offer of myself. When the devil’s finally taken it all.” 

The boy stood and waved and awkwardly turned and joined the family with a mom, a pa, and another sprout that looked a lot like him. The nuclear unit of Lancasters shuffled out the door with angular, long-take glances that suggested they’d taken a pee without buying some fries or a Coke but thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Jones. Is that your name? Moses Jones?”

Moses Jones pronated and found the unremarkable woman addressing him while the girl with the dragon hair giggled and cowered behind her palm. Skunk drunk. Moses confirmed that his name was indeed Moses. The girl seemed to require more conversation so he obliged. “Since you know me. It’s time I knew you. What’s your name? What’s your story?” 

Moses pulled up a chair.

“Tracy. And this is Emily. Just two girls with nowhere better to be at the moment.”

Moses nodded. “Sounds like you’ve got trouble with your men. Or women. I don’t mean to be presumptuous.”

“I was listening to your conversation with the boy,” she continued, “I’m sorry if I was eavesdropping a bit. It’s what I do. I’m not from around here in case you couldn’t tell by my unfamiliar face. I imagine you know just about everyone that comes in this backwoods gin joint.”

“You are a curious bird.”

“Back home they call me nebby. You heard that word? Nebby?”

Moses shook his head and said he hadn’t, but based on their conversation so far, he got the general idea. 

“I heard you saying that thing about being replaced by a jukebox. Emily here was just replaced by her band – part of that guy trouble. Guy falls for girl. Guy invites girl to sing in his band. Girl turns out to be pretty good. Guy throws her out when she decides he’s a no-good scum-sucking bastard cheat screwing her friend Dorothy. But you know that old story.”

Emily nodded along with Tracy’s rendition of her facts. “It’s still pretty raw,” she whispered. 

“So what happened after that rat bastard told you to hitch?” Tracy asked.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear more about that, Miss Tracy, and I really don’t want to tell you all the sordid details, but the man told me that he couldn’t have me in a bar where people wanted to play the jukebox. He said these people,” Moses held his hands aloft like Atlas, “these people here want to listen to Shania Twain when they want to listen to Shania Twain. He said that. He said people don’t want the blues no more. Not regular blues. Just ‘sometimes blues’ he called it. Like they got enough troubles, they don’t need mine on top of it.” Moses lowered his voice, like he was about to tell a dark secret. “And you know what I said to that?”

Tracy said she didn’t and learned further towards Moses across her table to hear that secret. 

“‘Punkin, these people you think you know have blues in their blood. They come from all over the country, all over the world to hear the blues in Clarksdale.’ And then I did something I shouldn’t have done.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him, ‘Punkin, your daddy would whip you for saying something like that’ – you see, I knew his daddy and I knew his daddy was one hell of a bass player in a N’Orleans jazz band called the Big Trouble Bayou Band.” And after I said that he stuck his breadstick finger into my chest and said ‘Ain’t none of your business, bluesman, what my daddy would have done if he were alive.’ ‘God rest his soul,’ I say. But he goes on, ‘He was nothing to me and he was nothing to my mom and I’m going to put a jukebox back here right where you’re standing because don’t nobody need a house bluesman.’ And then he ran his fat fingers through his carroty hair plugs and told me he couldn’t pay me anyway so I might as well just leave. I stayed and finished my set, of course, because that’s what you do. People cared about those three chords whether they say so or not. I’ll never forget that piece of advice. Slide trombone player by the name of Flip Top Willie told me that in Scranton, of course, he didn’t say ‘three chords’ on top of him being a sackbut, but I understood his meaning. He said ‘You’ve got to play the songs, because it’s what you do. And they’re gonna listen, because it’s what they do.’” 

Chin resting on her palm, staring enraptured, Tracy said, “You sure talk a lot for a guy that’s not too anxious to talk about himself.”

“All we can do is keep going.”

Tracy raised her glass. “Here’s to keeping going.”

“I don’t have a glass,” Moses said, tipping a hat that also wasn’t there, “but here’s to it.” Moses pressed his lips together, looked ready to say something that didn’t happen. 

“Well,” he finally said, “I guess I’ll get back to my set. And don’t you worry. Aren’t none of them happy songs.”

“What you got to be sad about, bluesman?” This time it was the the flame-haired Emily that spoke. She wasn’t terse or seasoned. She was just curious, like here we are sharing this same space, the same air. We’re all talking. We’re all alive. At least that was how Moses read it anyway. Could have just been the drink in her, though, that made her seem so casual despite the heavy inquiry.

Moses thought about his answer for a moment. He didn’t want to seem premature with his answer, but yeah, he had the blues he figured. Before he could speak, however, Emily had another thought.

“Like what are the blues anyway, bluesman? Are you actually, like legit sad?” 

“Well, Miss Emily. I don’t suppose it’s that simple. Being sad or not. I’ve sung a lot of sad songs. Don’t make me sad, though I suppose singing them brings me some of that catharsis. I’ve always liked that word, ‘catharsis.’ Sounds like what it means. Sounds heavy. I’ve sung a few happy songs, too. Don’t mean I’m happy neither. And they too can be cathartic in the right place and time.” He paused, without really coming to any conclusions himself. “I suppose we are what we are when we are. Maybe that’s the blues. Maybe the blues is just the forces beyond our control that drive us from place to place and person to person.”

She nodded. Was she satisfied? Or was she just waiting for more.

“Are you a pious man, Moses Jones?” Emily asked. 

The question stopped Moses. “Ain’t that a $64,000 question,” he said, rubbing his chin with the back of his hand. “If I believe in evil, then I must also believe in good. But I don’t know if the church would call me pious, necessarily.”  

“Why don’t you sing me some more songs and I’ll see if I can’t figure it out,” Emily said. 

“I’ll sing you some songs tonight if you come back tomorrow and sing a couple songs with me. Up there on stage. One might need to be an Elvis song. Too early to tell.”

“She’ll do it,” Tracy said, jumping in before Emily had a chance to disagree.

“Perfect then.” Moses stood and wandered back towards the stage in half-steps. “And now I should get back to singing the blues because talking about the blues is like dancing with the lights off. The blues is about living and breathing.” He wondered what that meant anymore. It was something he said because he believed in it when he was younger. What was living when the world these days seemed so hell bent on extinguishing that fire? Moses pulled his chair back to the front of the stage and picked up his guitar. The strings vibrated beneath his hand, breathing all on their own. His finger rested on that feral A-string. 

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Jenny’s Crab Shack right here in Garfield’s Crossing. Some of you are regulars – I see you back there at the bar, Marcus – but I’d wager that most of you are just passing through. I’m Moses Jones.” Moses paused for the smattering of applause, mostly from Tracy and Emily up front, “And this is Mary,” he continued, holding his guitar up. “We’re going to play you some more sad songs tonight. What do ya’ll say about that?” 

Tracy clapped some more and gave a whistle that sounded more of spittle than whistle. 

“Before I get going, I’d like to share a story my new friend over there, Miss Emily, reminded me of just now.” He paused, lost in his thoughts. When his voice returned it returned an octave lower. “I was walking down a street called Tallahatchie one night looking for Motel 6 and I heard a clap of thunder. I looked around and nowhere in the darkness was a neon sign. Just a cooling breeze chasing away the humidity and a Quick-Stop with a fat woman filling up her Corvair with premium unleaded. 

I stepped lively when the first raindrops hit pavement. I had my guitar case and not much else and while I wasn’t afraid of getting wet myself, Mary, well, she’s not so delighted with the rain. The skies turned from black to grey and then a kind of green that I’d never known. I took my guitar case under my arm and I said, ‘Hold on, Mary, we’ve got to get you home.’ And I took off running and before I knew it was standing under a red motel awning. I pushed through the double doors. I was quite a sight. Wet as a mangy dog, smelled like one too. And do you know what the motel owner says to me? He says, ‘Looks like the devil’s doing his work out there tonight.’ I coughed and I looked at the man in the company-issued shirt behind the desk and I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He said, ‘It was like it just followed you in here. No warning. One minute it’s a regular muggy July evening and the next thing I know you run in carrying that guitar followed by a storm cloud the likes of which I’ve never seen around here. Maybe in Oklahoma, mind you, but not here. That’s twister weather up out of nowhere.’”

Moses cracked the knuckles on his right hand by making a kung fu fist and then releasing his fingers with a harmonic pop pop.

“And then some fellow said to me, ‘It was like the devil was chasing you, son.’ I turned and saw a man sitting in what would pass as that Motel 6 lounge, four chairs and a glass table filled with Cosmopolitans. He was wearing a fedora with a red feather and dark grey woolen suit in weather not unlike this slop we’ve got outside right now.”

A voice from the back of the bar interrupted Moses. “Why don’t you stop talking and play the guitar, bluesman?”

The man leaned on the arched doorframe holding a glass of something clear. Since the drink still contained the small red stirrer, Moses noted he’d ordered a cocktail and expected him to take a sip from said stirrer because who orders a cocktail in a blues bar? The names of songs rattling around in his head came with umbrellas and road trips and trips to free summer amphitheater shows. 

“Is there something you like to hear, friend?” Moses asked, attempting to diffuse the man’s righteous indignation. This was a bar, after all. And in that bar, they served libations that made people louder and more intolerable than they would normally be. Moses always thought about these people and about how unhappy they were with their lives outside the bar, but mostly he was happy the bar didn’t have darts for the dartboard. 

“Why don’t you play us some ‘Rockin’ Chair,’ bluesman. You know how I like that one.” 

Now those words took Moses Jones’ breath and punched it right out of his belly. Nobody requested ‘Rockin’ Chair” but one man. The same man that liked to end every one of his sets with ‘Rockin’ Chair.’

Moses squinted through the haze of the half-full blues bar, shielding the lights with his hand. He focused on the man’s headwear. A Fedora with a red feather. “That you, Stagger?” 

“Play the song, Mose.”

“Damn, fool,” Moses said, smiling, suddenly with the nerves like he’d never known. “I’ll play your song. Damn. Poppin’ up like Betelgeuse after I mention you in my story. Can’t tell me that’s not creepy,” Moses muttered. The bluesman closes his eyes, touched the strings, and began to play.

“All my friends tell me, tell me.

I just waste my tears on you

All my friends tell me, tell me, tell me,

I just waste my tears on you

No, no, no, no, no…

Gonna keep on trying, keep on try, try…

tryin’ to rock these blues away. 

He hadn’t played the song in years, but the words came flooding back. Moses pushed up with his toes and back to his chair, embracing the rhythms of the song. “Rockin’ Chair” was the first song he ever played for a crowd, a crowd of people checking into a Motel 6. Nothing more than a child, playing the songs he knew because of his momma’s records. The song had belonged to John Lee Hooker, but in that moment, in that Motel 6 it belonged to Moses Jones. No two men felt the same way about a song. This one, about a man trying to recover and forget love and carry on with the simple pleasures of breathing and getting out of bed, carried universal. Each man loved differently and each man mourned differently. That was the love. And that was the rock, rock, rock of the John Lee Hooker rockin’ chair.

When he was through with his set of five or six songs, Moses waved Stagger and his sipping cocktail over to his table by the dartboard. 

The two men embraced. They spoke not a word and sat down across from each other. “Stagger” Lee Perry looked like an old man, at least up close and away from the harsh overhead lights. He’d aged well, Moses thought, but better from a distance. Stagger removed his fedora. The grey mingled only around his temples. The hairline holding firm. Only in his eyes did he look weary. Then again, everyone looked weary when you went looking for it. Moses wondered how he looked to Stagger, whether he too looked older, rougher, but that was just the unwelcome vanity of age, the pains of living. 

“What the hell are you drinking, Stagger?” 

“Club soda with a lime. You look good, Mose.”

“Like 1992, Stagger.” 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” he said, “but I couldn’t help myself. You always did talk too damn much.” He started laughing and covered his mouth like he was sorry, but not so sorry he couldn’t laugh. “I don’t know how your landlord feels and didn’t want to get you in trouble none. Say, Mose, how’d you get a steady gig at a crab shack that doesn’t even sell crabs. That’s a new one for me.”

“Landlord’s fine. Never mind her,” he said. “What about you? What you doin’ in Garfield’s Crossing? You swore to me that you’d never set foot in this swamp again.” 

“Headin’ somewhere else.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Hard to get to Florida without seeing the Georgia sights.”

“Shoot, Stagger. The only thing worse than Georgia in July is that gator farm down south. You still trying to play that golf?”

“Nah. Gave that up.”

The two turned inward. Silence. The ice shifted in Stagger’s glass. It had been years, decades even, since Moses and Stagger had last shared the stage in Clarksdale. At one point, Moses Jones had known every story Stagger Lee ever told and vice versa. They’d take a bullet for the other, but they were strangers nonetheless. Stagger was never a sharing man. 

“I haven’t laid eyes on you since—“

“December of 1994. It was hot. Too damn hot for Christmas decorations, but the place had twinkle lights up. We’d been jumping around Mississippi. Looking for a place to hang our hats.”

“I remember that much,” Moses said. 

“The day I took the last train.” Stagger looked away, up toward the dartboard full of false warnings.

“Wasn’t nothing, Stagger.” He paused. “No. That’s a lie. I’m not sure I ever really forgave you for reading the writing on the wall and then keeping it to yourself.”

“It damn well better be a lie. I’ve been sick in my gut thinking about that night. And you’re probably still wondering about a few things. And wasn’t no great plan either.”

“I’m not even going to fake it, Stagger. I called up your sister around that next Christmas to wish her a Merry Merry and she told me where you’d gone. Headed up to Detroit because turned out you were a daddy. And now your son’s a daddy and living up in Dearborn Heights. Nothing to tell. Nothing to apologize for.”

“Sis never said she was talking to you all these years. Gonna have to have a talk with her about that,” he said with no shortage of humility. “What about you? Now I’m the one who’s feeling cheated.”

“I told her not to tell. I told her I didn’t want you to know I was checking up on you. Plus, you know I crushed hard on that girl. Never gave me the time of day unless I was talking about her baby brother Stagger.” Moses’ voice trailed away in the past. “But me? Nah. You don’t want to hear much about that… but so long as you’re asking… after Mississippi, I went to the crossroads after Punkin curbed me. Like I always said I would do.” Moses picked at an etching on the table. P.E. hearted B.C. The center of the heart had been picked away by Moses’ idle fingers. “I was lost. You were the bluesman, Stagger. I was the rhythm. Without you, I knew I didn’t have the stick.” 

Stagger started to interrupt, but Moses wasn’t having it.

“Nah, nah, nah. Don’t pretend otherwise. I know. You took me under and taught me what to do with all those songs I knew. I could play. Oh I could play, but what do you do with any of it. What did I have to offer?”

“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense then. What did you find at the crossroads? Did you find him?” Stagger laughed. He never took that story seriously.

Moses leaned back in his chair and considered what he’d found. He’d never actually asked himself. Not really. Course, what he knew about that day now wasn’t what he knew then.

“If Robert Johnson found the devil and sold him his soul for his ability to play guitar, then the devil was full up of souls because Robert Johnson’s nourished him good. I stood at that intersection for an afternoon in that beating sun. 

“I took turns at each corner. Standing around and kicking pebbles until sometime around seven. I saw this big black car coming way off in the distance and I thought to myself that the devil sure was minding the speed limit. When the car finally caught up, I saw the car wasn’t even black. It was something of a navy blue. Real pleasant looking. And the devil wasn’t the devil, just a family from Texas looking for the highway. They asked if I needed a lift. Nice folks. Rode me into Georgia. Bought me a meal, and I gave them all the money I had in the world to help pay for their gas. Wasn’t much, mind you, but it was something. The tips from my last few gigs.”

“So you’ve still got your soul,” Stagger said. “That’s fine.”

“But the devil’s still watchin’.” Moses pointed to the dart board and the corroded triple six segment. It’s not that he didn’t show. He was there all along. He’s always been there. Clarksdale. Rosedale. Garfield’s Crossing. Here in Jenny’s Crab Shack. Even up there in Philadelphia. At night I yell at the devil in my sleep. I say, ‘Devil, you come out and you tell me what you want from me!’ but the devil don’t show. And my woman she rolls me over onto my other side because that calms me down. Sometimes sings me a lullaby.”

She sings, ‘I gave my love a cherry that had no stone. I gave my love a chicken that had no bone. I told my love a story that had no end.’ There’s more but that’s all I remember.”

“That’s lovely.”

“It is. She’s a lovely girl. Better to me than anyone in this world, but that’s the trouble.” 

The two old friends talked a bit more. Stagger talked about being a daddy and going back home to Detroit, how he felt like he was living in the ghost of his own home, a once vibrant community where soul had a home. “And the soul’s all but gone now,” he said, “but there’s still Greek pizza.” 

Moses nodded, but he didn’t really understand because he’d never really gone home or had Greek pizza. Home was too scary a thought after so many years away. How could he ever go back north? They went on to talk about the blues, new artists they liked, old ones that had passed. They raised a glass to the late John Lee Hooker. And then the two friends departed. Stagger excusing himself because he had a long day on the road tomorrow and because his wife was waiting for him back at the motel and probably worried he got lost. 

“Good seeing you, Mose,” he said. “Keep in touch this time, huh?”

“You keep in touch. I get Christmas cards from Jolene.”

Jenny’s had mostly cleared out except for a few bleary-eyed stragglers at the bar. Tracy and Emily, whoever they were, had gone without so much as a tap on the shoulder. He wouldn’t see them again. Not tomorrow. Not any other day. Waitresses wiped down the tables. Moses returned to the stage and packed up Mary. “Wasn’t much of a night,” he said to her, “but it was another one.” He cleared the tips out of the spittoon. A note had been paper-clipped to a five-dollar bill. “Tomorrow—sing a happy song for me,” it read. Signed, “Miss Emily.” 

Moses put the fiver and the note in his wallet along with the other 37 in cash. The lights shut down with a mechanical bang. The absence of the buzzing ballasts resonated more loudly. He sat there, staring into the darkness with his guitar lying across his lap. Moses ran his finger over the rips and tears in the case. One gash from a knife fight he stumbled into. Another when a guy tried to take the case while he was busking in Jackson. He’d caught him a couple blocks later, tripped him into a pile of garbage cans and got one night in the hole for assault. Moses’ eyes began to adjust. He kept searching the dark corners, the silhouettes of the waitresses counting their tips and talking about their after-hour plans at the bar. The barman wiping down the wood with his can of polish, tuning his instrument in his own way. A shadow approached, slowly, like that black sedan, miles off. The bluesman awaited his final call. 

“You know I’m not really the devil,” the shadow said. “You best know that by now, but I’m not so sure, because you keep saying it to anyone that’ll listen.” 

“Jenny, my love, out of obligation to the trade of the blues, you are indeed the devil. You’re my boss. You’re my woman. If he’s anywhere, the devil’s in your hips and in your eyes. He’s in that wrinkle at the bottom of your chin. And he’s most definitely in the freckle just below–”

“So who was that man you were talking with for the last couple hours?” She interrupted. “I can’t get you to talk to me longer than it takes to sing one of your songs.”

“That’s nothing but the past, but as long as you’re asking that was the man they call Stagger. And once upon a time he called me his ‘meal ticket.’ Up until he decided I wasn’t. Said I could mint him money if we stuck together… he said this to me in an old ratty motel in the middle of a rainstorm. The old bluesman and the kid with the fresh riff. But then he took off, chasing something else.” 

“Did you?”

“What?”

“Mint him money? And if so, how come you ain’t doing the same for me?”

“I bought him breakfast once, but you wouldn’t be much interested in hearing about the night Stagger and I got drunk and ended up in Missoula with four undersized Large-mouth bass in the trunk and a Montana Fish and Game warden on our tail.”

“You can tell me while we fall asleep.”

“Woman, you never stay awake long enough for the twist. You never know how my stories end.”

“Moses Jones. None of your stories have an ending.” 

“This one might. You never know.” 

Categories
Publications

The Superb: Part 1

by James David Patrick

(a version of this was originally published on Garfield’s Crossing)

Stash rolled the stolen Chevy Nova off the edge of the forgotten state highway and cut the engine in the shadows of the “Welcome to Garfield’s Crossing” sign. He cut the engine and wondered why—even in the shade—he could still feel the sun’s rays boring into his eye sockets.

After taking a long overdue piss among the waist-high weeds and wondering which of them would leave a rash in an uncomfortable place, he zipped and returned to his car to study his map, which he laid out across the hood of the car. He waited for the paper to ignite.

Nothing.

He’d passed nothing on the northern side of this town for at least 40 miles. Rednecks and tractors. Rednecks on tractors. He hadn’t yet seen a tractor on a redneck, but he welcomed the potential. The need for sleep had begun to erode the stores of adrenaline somewhere in the Carolinas. Nothing but folksy small towns. They made him uncomfortable. Always wanting to know the outsider – not because they were friendly or showering him with that legendary southern hospitality. Far from it. They don’t know you; they don’t trust you. A guy, looking like Stash, secondhand military jacket with a pack of cigarettes sticking out of his pocket, shaggy hair. They’d want to know him for nothing longer than the unfortunate moment it took to usher him back on his way out of town. He’d seen the look as he pumped gas, as he grabbed a burger, as he passed slowly through town, minding each speed limit sign and subtracting five from each.

This town didn’t even look like it wanted to be found. In fact, he didn’t see a gas station or even a convenience store – just more road. His map supported this observation. He finally spotted the pinhead dot labeled Garfield’s Crossing. The distance between here and anywhere else was far enough that he didn’t even need to consult to map’s key to know he was fucked.

After a shake and a zip, he lit a cigarette and took in the landlocked, stagnant country air filtered through menthol stench. The prior owner of this blue Chevy Nova loved cats and smoked menthols. So he smoked the menthol and watched as the tchotchke feline on the dashboard bobbed its head idly and in perpetuity. He’d boosted it somewhere back in West Virginia and swapped the hot plate for something more upstanding. While he didn’t have a Georgia plate in his collection, he had one from Mississippi and figured it would have to do. In many ways he was right back where he started. West Virginia. Georgia. Two-horse mountain towns. In his experience they were all the same. Only the accents changed.

He sat himself down on the hood to finish his cigarette. He’d put some distance between his immediate problems and his future problems, but in that horrible moment it occurred to him that he could be calling Garfield’s Crossing home for the foreseeable future. If the town couldn’t locate itself, where better to disappear? The thought filled him with equal measures disgust and hope. He pulled his drab, green military-style jacket closer around his body, fingering the envelope in his pocket, which he did every fifteen or twenty minutes. Just to make sure it was still there. Just to make sure he still had something to live for.

Garfield’s Crossing. Named after a president nobody remembers and barely happened. 20th president of the United States. Assassinated in office on March 4th, 1881 (or was it the 6th?) after serving only six months and change. Garfield wasn’t even from Georgia. He was an Ohio man and fought as a general in the Union Army and Georgia would have most definitely voted for the Democratic opponent, Hancock, if memory serves. Yes, his name was definitely something something Hancock. Stash just remembered these things, and not being able to remember Hancock’s first name irritated him. He had an affinity for facts even if he didn’t know what to do with them besides answer questions on TV quiz shows. Things just stuck in there and he couldn’t get them out.

A wheezy cacophonous rumble increased in volume and agitation. He glanced behind him. A blue pickup with rusted out wheel beds and a rope tying the grill into place. It’s like he’d stepped inside a Flannery O’Connor short story. And now this Samaritan would pull up next to him and ask him if he needed any assistance as if driven by good intentions instead of xenophobia.

“Good morning, sir. Are you in distress?” the driver bellowed over the truck’s clatter. The exhaust fumes were overwhelming.

Stash pasted on his ten-dollar smile and turned toward the man. Nothing more than a boy, hardly a man at all. The early morning sun caused a glare on the driver’s Pomade slicked hair, and the cantankerous truck gave enough fumes so that his eyes watered over, choking out the haze.

“Good morning! I decided to stop and enjoy the sunrise just up over that ridge there.” Stash pointed off into the distance and the boy glanced, like he’d never bothered to acknowledge the ebb and flow of days, the sun and the moon. Sunrise. Sunset.

“Why I suppose it is a wonderful morning for a smoke. Mind if I bum? I’m fresh out and my daddy says I ain’t old enough so I can’t have none of his.”

Stash eased off the hood of the car. He rapped the pack across his palm and up popped a single cigarette. The driver reached across the seats and snared it through the open window.

“Menthol,” he said, a little taken a back. “Well, alright. I only ever heard of these.”

Stash bit his tongue and reinforced his smile.

“The name’s Earl,” the driver said, as he brushed back a single, loose strand of hair that had, against all odds, popped out of place. “Of Earl and Son Towing, but we do a little bit of paint and bodywork on the side.” Earl lit the cigarette with the plug from the truck, inhaling the cigarette to life. The vehicle rumbled and kicked. Earl wiggled the gearshift in and out of Neutral like a jockey whipping a horse.

“Your daddy’s name is Earl and your name is Earl,” Stash said.

“Even my sister’s name is Earl, but we call her Imogene because she just likes the name Imogene.”

“Imogene didn’t get a say in the whole Earl and Son bit?”

Earl laughed a little. “You definitely ain’t from around here are you? That Earl in the name is my pap and the Son is my pa.”

There it was. The prodding you ain’t from around here line. Stash shook his head, tossed the smoke and stubbed the cigarette out with the heel of his boot. “Nah, son, I ain’t from around here. I would appreciate a nudge in the direction of a pay phone and a warm breakfast, however.”

“I know just what you need. Head on over to May Belle’s. I believe her phone’s working again after Big Jim went a quick round with it. He was having an argument with his Mrs. and—”

“The phone saw the worst of it.”

“That’s right—now don’t you mind Miss May Belle. She’s a character alright, but she’s mostly harmless. Mostly. Took Big Jim out and beat him for what he did to her phone, though.”

“And where might I find this ‘Miss May Belle’s’ with her telephone and warm breakfast and questionable character?” he interrupted, before the character witnessing spun out of control.

Earl gestured at nothing in particular with his cigarette. “Just head straight on into town. You can’t miss it.”

Stash shot a glance down the empty road.

“Alright,” he said.

The driver tipped a hat that doesn’t there. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Mister. I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said and shot him a grin that suggested he noticed more than he let on.

“Hancock,” Stash said.

Earl nodded. The rust blue Ford belched cancer, lurched into first gear and jumped back onto the road.

Stash slid back into the seat of his Nova and exhaled. What was he even doing here? He was told to drive south until he found it. He interpreted his directions as drive south until the winds stopped talking and he’d escaped the death that hunted him at home. This one job wouldn’t redeem him. For however long it took he’d be looking over his shoulder waiting for two in the back of the head and a shallow grave.

Stash turned the key in the ignition.

He tossed the menthols into the middle of the road and aimed to crush them with his tires. Stash glanced into the rear-view mirror to check on his success, but the cigarettes sat unharmed on the shoulder of the road.

Damn. Winfred Scott Hancock – that’s it. They called him The Superb. The Superb! He slammed his hands on the steering wheel. Once upon a time nicknames supposed excellence or largess, hyperbole. These days you became synonymous with the first time you got pinched. Stash had a dimebag on him during a routine traffic stop. Cokie, an eight ball. BJ—well, let’s just say he found himself in the position of needing some quick cash and leave it at that.

Earl the Third needed a good eye check or a head examination. After more than a mile of nothing, Stash finally parked along the quiet main drag and surveyed the names on buildings. The only thing open in those early hours just after sunup was a diner, but the sign didn’t read Miss May Belle’s, it read only “Diner” in all capital neon block letters. After determining he could indeed miss Miss May Belle’s he wandered inside assuming that whomever ran the DINER could serve an egg over easy and toast.

“Three eggs over easy. Rye toast. Coffee,” he said to the waitress before she had a chance to hand over the laminated menu.

“Good morning, sir,” the woman said. An elegant plumpness suited her carriage and complete disregard for the words approximating an order that had already come from his mouth. There was no need for conversation. “Would you like to try one of our specials,” she continued. “We have—”

“Three eggs. Over easy. Rye. Coffee.”

“Sausage-hash cass. Cheesy sausage cass. Sausage and crescent cass. Sausage and grits cass.”

“Cass?”

“Yes, sir. Casseroles. You look like a sausage and crescent man. You look hungry. I bet you are.”

 “Your specials are all casseroles?”

“That’s right. Fresh out of the oven. Just like my momma used to make.”

“Three eggs. Over easy. Rye. Coffee. Thank you.”

She scribbled on her pad and punctuated it with a quick tap of her pen, which she then tossed behind her year. “Crescent and rye!” she hollered. An unseen cook called back “Sludge and Curl. Coming right up.” She looked down at Stash with a smile, “If you need anything else, my name’s Miss May Belle – just give me a holler.”

When she returned a moment later, she slapped the plate on the table and poured him a cup of coffee. The plate contained a gelatinous block, one piece of rye toast and a sprig of parsley garnish. May Belle smiled. Dimples became craters. “I’ll come back to check on ya.”

 “Do you have a pay phone?”

May Belle nodded and pointed to a cubby at the back of the restaurant. “Won’t dial none, so you’ll have to call the operator because the only button that works is the ‘Oh.’”

“Much obliged,” Stash said, betraying almost none of his frustration. He left his plate and wandered through the tables and around a wall of booths to the back. Everyone in the place looked sad, tired or sad and tired. Three old men sat together in a booth, each silently reading a different section of the paper and drinking coffee.

He picked up the phone and listened to the dial tone while he fished in his pockets for a dime. Nothing but small change. He heard the voice of a woman. Low and steady, almost a whisper, but something about this woman suggested she wasn’t capable of hushed tones. “Pop, you can’t go on like this anymore. Nobody’s going to movies. And you don’t have any movies the people want to see.”

“I’ve got movies, darling, and the whole world wants to see them.”

“Just because you got movies from Italy don’t mean the whole world wants to see them. Not even the Italians wanted them – that’s why they sent them to you is what I believe. Why they never asked for them back, anyway. And for godsakes, Pop you’ve got to start putting your money in a bank.”

“You said yourself nobody comes to my movies. Nowhere could be safer than the place where nobody goes guarded by a senile old man with an antique musket.”

Stash made a show of fishing around in his pockets some more without luck. He turned around and smiled awkwardly at the woman. The words caught in his throat and before he could them out, she asked, “Do you need something or you just like eavesdropping on personal conversations?”

She had short brown hair, cropped above the shoulder and pinned up with a bobby. She held her hand gently against her cheek, unconsciously guarding what looked like a scar just below her eye. Part of it cascaded out from behind her fingers, a river delta carved by someone else’s madness.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” he finally said, putting on his finest folksy smile. “I seem to be out of calling coins. Do you happen to have one?”

“I’m out,” she said, gesturing towards the waitress. “I don’t carry change. Get some change from May Belle.”

“I’ve got some,” the old man said and fished around in his pocket. Stash’s gaze remained fixed on the woman.

“Do I know you?” he asked her. “Because it seems like you’re flexing some awful familiar disgust, like I’ve wronged you in a past life.”

 “Mister—I have no doubt in my mind that I have never met you. In this or any other life. I just don’t know you and I don’t like the look of men I don’t know.”

“Here it is!” the old man blurted out, having found the quarter in his bottomless pockets.

Stash held out his hand; the man placed a large, red button in his palm. He glanced from the button to the man and back to the button and after a prolonged moment of contemplation, Stash decided the old man really did believe he’d handed him a quarter. He held the button up. “Thanks,” he said, and then returned to his seat. He heard the old man giggle like a schoolchild from across the room.

“Do you think he noticed I gave him a button?”

“Pop,” the woman scolded. “He was being kind. He thinks you’re a loony.”

May Belle appeared and began cleaning away Stash’s plates.

“I haven’t started eating this yet.”

“You had time for fraternizing with Pop so I assumed you’d had time to eat.”

“Put it down, May Belle. I haven’t eaten in two days and I don’t even care if I did order three eggs over easy and rye toast – but I’m damn sure going to eat this block of egg now that you’ve given it to me.”

He stabbed the egg with his fork – even though May Belle held it a foot over the table – and shoved a hunk in his mouth. May Belle withdrew, returning the plate to the table. “This ain’t half bad May Belle,” he said through some partially chewed egg block.

“I know,” was all she said in return.

Stash took some time to finish his plate and drink his black coffee. Pop and the woman left; the door chimes jingled. After May Belle cleared away the dishes, he got another pour of coffee. Truth was he didn’t know the woman, but he needed her to remember him, however this was about to go down. He didn’t want to make trouble, but sometimes jobs required trouble. He needed to escape and if it meant trouble he’d open the door willingly. Most importantly, he had to keep Xavier away from Garfield’s Crossing. Xavier brought more than trouble. Xavier left the kinds of scars that didn’t heal. In order for that to happen he had to keep the boss happy without giving up his location, not yet. Not until the deal had been done.

“Closing time,” May Belle said. “Coffee’s gone. Everyone else is gone, too, because there’s no more coffee.”

“What time is it?”

“How many times do I have to tell you that there’s no coffee. No coffee means no people. No people means May Belle’s is closed.”

“That’s an awfully peculiar means of doing business, May Belle.”

“Seems right by me.”

“Say, May Belle, I’m looking for something to do this afternoon. Something like a movie? Maybe a bowling alley? Something inside and cool because I’m already sick of this heat.”

“You blind and stupid?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The theater is next door. Don’t know what Pop’s runnin’ this week because nobody goes unless they’re showing one of those Jerry Lewis pictures. The ones with Dean Martin. Whole town turns out for Jerry and Dino.”

He didn’t think it possible, but this town had turned out worse than expected.

Stash tossed down a five-dollar tip and exited May Belles. As soon as he was out the door, May Belle locked the door and pulled down the shades. The neon “Open” sign fizzled and then extinguished. The hum remained. He looked up. Right next door – a marquee for Pop’s theater. Stash crossed the street to get a better look at the place. He wasn’t much for theater shopping, nor did he expect to be in the market, but fate has a way turning that on its head.

The building couldn’t have been build after the 1920’s. The marquee remained in perfect condition. The black letters read “Fellini’s Casanova 1 4 7.” The sign above the marquee said only “Theater.” No name.  Stash checked his watch. He had a little time to kill so he walked back to the Nova, and put up the sun shade he’d found in the back seat.  Not even noon and the sweat had already begun pooling at the base of his back. His mind lingered on the woman from the diner, presumably Pop’s daughter – but when everyone called a man “Pop” that could muddy the more obvious familial lines. He checked beneath the seat for his gun. Having found the still cold steel where he’d left it, he threw his seat back into full recline and closed his eyes – just for a minute.

Stash awoke in a violent sweat. The cracks he’d left in the Nova’s window insufficient. He’d dreamt of being found, of being tossed into a kiln and becoming a part of a large ceramic flower vase, in which one of the Brothers’ wives would put her daily red roses. In the moment of waking he’d felt disoriented, out-of-body, but the reality of the stifling car had explained away nightmare. He rolled his body out of the car and even though the outside temperature had to be near 90’s it felt breezy, almost refreshing.

Pop sat inside the ticket window in a yellow-piped red velvet jacket and a bellboy cap, next to him a wheel of tickets. While Pop’s dedication should have been impressive, the frayed clothes and attachment to the past looked desperate. And yet Stash couldn’t help but admire the man’s persistence. The town demanded Marin and Lewis and he gave them Italian art films, specifically Casanova directed by Federico Fellini. His most recent film. Donald Sutherland and Tina Aumont. Nino Rota score. Nominated for a couple of awards. He couldn’t remember which ones. Nor had he seen it, but that’s beside the point of knowing things.

“One, please,” he said to Pop, whose eyes lit up with uncertain recognition. Pop tore the little red ticket and pushed half through the arched opening in the glass. “You—did you ever make your phone call?”

“I opted against it. At least for now.”

“The best calls are sometimes the ones we don’t make.”

“I’m not sure that’s the takeaway there, Pop.”

“Are you a Fellini fan?”

“I saw Cabiria a few years ago,” he said. “I’m not sure it was my thing.”

“There’s a little bit of Cabiria Ceccarelli in all of us. Dare I suggest that maybe Le notti di Cabiria hit a little too close to home. I don’t know much about you, but you look like a man in search of something, perhaps a little betrayed.”

“That’s enough out of you, Pop.”

“I see these things. I’m a keen observer of the human condition,” he said with a laugh. “That’s the movies and this theater has been in the family as long as it’s stood. My grandfather always said you have to play what the people need to see and not what they want.”

“Again, I’m not sure that’s the takeaway of running a business.”

“It was something like that anyway.”

“It doesn’t sound like your daughter wants you to keep this up.”

“Oh, Sylvia? Sylvia doesn’t care a wit about this place. She wants to leave town. Always has, ever since she was a wee girl. Thought this was a two-bit piece of redneck heaven but I kept telling her that we can make a difference, we can make this town something special. Name me one other place in the entire South that’s playing Fellini or Michelangelo Antonioni!” he said before sending himself into a coughing fit, the mere thought of Antonioni’s Red Desert causing apoplexy.

Stash had spent some time in Atlanta and figured that at the very least they’d care to exhibit European art films, but point made and taken, and he didn’t feel like arguing semantics with Pop. Instead Stash just thanked him for the ticket and wandered in through the formerly glorious and velvety lobby. Once plush and blood red, the carpet showed through to bare spots. The draperies along the walls, similarly red, had faded into a Texarkana pink, bleached of their prominence and covered in years of neglect. But the smell, my God, the smell was enough to send a man back to his misspent teenage years. Popcorn and the sneaky smells of mildew that become one with the cavernous dark.

Behind the concession counter stood a boy, no more than sixteen. Old enough to dishevel, pretend he didn’t bathe and purposefully distress the lick of blond hair. He too wore the red jacket with the yellow piping and cap, albeit far more begrudgingly than pop who suggested a pajama level of comfort in his. The suit propped the boy up, all angles and awkward, as he leaned against the counter and doodled away on a sketchpad.

“What say you about serving me up a popcorn and a Coke?”

The boy went rigid before pocketing the phone. “Of course, sir.”

Sir. Pop had at least taught him some manners.

Popcorn and Coke in hand, Stash wandered back through the swinging double doors into the musty darkness of the grand old movie house. A couple of seniors sat at the end of the back row, a cane leaning on the wall behind them. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Stash noted the threadbare carpeting, broken seats without armrests, and a small brown bird flying from wall sconce to wall sconce, never satisfied with his viewing angle.

Stash assumed a seat in the fifth row, second from the end with a clear view of the exit through emergency doors in the front right of the building. He’d learned to always have an escape plan. Some lessons require seventeen stitches.

The lights dimmed. The projector whirred to life behind him. Stash glanced back to see Pop leering through the small window next to the lance of flickering images. The sound popped and crackled through the speakers. A 1960’s era call to the concession stand backed by a brassy marching band flourish.

“Yum yum it’s time for a tasty snack!” A bag of popcorn doused itself in butter, a hot dog performed flips for a bun in some kind of food service mating ritual. Ice cream bars danced across the screen like majorettes. The echoes from a drive-in movie Stash snuck into as a kid flooded back. He never had money of his own, but he and Jimmy could always push in through a loose piece of fencing along the wooded end of the parking lot. They’d hang out at the concession stand, like they had other places to go, cars with families, cars with girlfriends if they only knew how to drive. He would return to those days in a heartbeat if he could.

The title “Il Casanova di Federico Fellini” advanced aggressively to the center of the screen. A Venice street scene, a religious rally of some notoriety. Some blue guy slides down a rope into the water. Harlequins and religious rituals and Donald Sutherland as the world’s greatest lover. Fantastical indeed. Stash hoped Pop wouldn’t mind if he took in only ten or fifteen minutes of this before again dozing off. His earlier rest had been fitful. There wasn’t anyone around to concern about his snoring at least. No offense, Federico, but it’s been a long goddamn few days.

Stash started awake when the end of the film unspooled and thwack thwack thwacked until Pop began the respooling process. The lights did not come on. In that moment he felt very conscious of the gun he’d left beneath the seat of his car and decidedly not tucked into the back of his jeans.

“I was beginning to think we’d be here through another screening,” the all-too-familiar voice marbled through the darkness. “And honestly that was fucking terrible.”

“Not a Fellini fan, Xavier?” Stash said, trying against all his instincts to sound like him being here in Garfield’s Crossing was all part of the plan. Well, it was. It just wasn’t part of his plan, if such a thing had even occurred to him in any formal context.

Xavier shifted his reed-like body in the seat. “Movies are an opiate for sheep. Sheep that can’t get from Point A to Point B without anesthesia.”

He said these words with an air of pride, like he’d just started a chapter on a biography in defense of Mussolini and couldn’t help but champion the dictator’s worst ideas. Full name: Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. His signature looked like an EKG readout and he stood only 66 and a half inches tall – only a half inch taller than Napoleon, though Stash always presumed the half inch to be a fabrication, a personal assertion of physical dominance over the diminutive Frenchman.

“You said you’d call, Stash.”

“What’s your excuse?”

“So you roll into town in a hot Chevy Nova and what, you decide to catch a movie?”

“A boosted Nova’s still better than that Oldsmobile fatback of yours.”

“You want to be a nobody you drive the most nobody car on the planet,” he said, an edge suddenly present in his voice. Xavier, despite his everyman camouflage, remained quick to temper when anyone poked him about his shitty car. He changed direction. “I don’t need to tell you what’s at stake.”

Stash didn’t need to listen to the laundry list again. The bottom line – if he didn’t come up with a soft target, an easy mark, quick cash strike to repay his debts to the Brothers, he’d be erased, and the world wouldn’t miss him because the world didn’t know he existed. A blight, a speck, a wart. He didn’t forget details. Unfortunately, neither would the Brothers, and sitting behind him was their sniveling lap dog to remind him.

“I’m not the bad guy here, pigeon. You’re the bad guy in this particular story. The way I see it and the way the Brothers see it, your lips slipped and now we’re out 300.”

There was no use arguing because the truth meant nothing. The truth had been erased the minute Jimmy put his nose where it didn’t belong. Stash couldn’t help but think that in a Hollywood movie it would have been a girl that had gotten him into so much trouble. A femme fatale or a vamp, the boss’ woman, looking for another angle. That would have made a more interesting story. And then the idea struck him, an open-handed slap across the cheek for sneaking around on Lana Turner with Lizabeth Scott. The Hollywood version sounded so much better than rotating on the spit because Jimmy tried to get out.

“There’s a clunker of a safe in the projection booth. I don’t know how much inside, but it’s at least a start. An old Brain, easy to crack. I could do it in my sleep.”

“Now you’re starting to talk straight, Stash. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“The plan?”

 “Just a banana split followed by a speedy divorce.”

“Speak English, Stash.”

“Crack the safe. Take the money. Leave town. You get yours. The Brothers get theirs. I get another chance.”

Stash didn’t have a plan, but he had the next best thing. Hope drives a desperate man further than fear, further than Xavier with the 9mm he hid underneath the back of his shirt. Down here in backwoods Georgia no one would miss the man passing through on his way to somewhere else.  They wouldn’t miss him when they found his stolen Chevy Nova and they definitely wouldn’t bother to unravel the mystery behind a body found by teenagers dicking around in the woods.

Stash had told Xavier to meet him behind the theater on the other side of the emergency exit forty minutes after the last showing of Casanova. He’d have opened the safe – a safe he’d identified to Xavier as a turn handle from W.E. Brain and Co. of Birmingham – and pilfer the “independently wealthy” theater owner’s hard-earned life savings, which he refused to keep in a financial institution. He’d learned about this job in the diner as he idled at the pay phone. The only truth to be found in the whole conversation. Xavier raised a skeptical eyebrow, but the draw of a potential life savings stored in a creaky old safe tickled the hardened man’s only weak underbelly. Money, but not just any money – cash. Untraceable cash he’d pocket for himself after eliminating Stash. He’d report back to the Brothers about Stash’s wrong turn at Garfield’s Crossing, how he’d tried to disappear into the foothills. And he’d been dealt with accordingly. None of the risk, but all of the reward. Ghosts don’t stay ghosts by taking unnecessary risks. Stash gave Xavier a risk-free pension plan.

The only question in Stash’s mind was how much (or little) Xavier trusted him. He would believe Stash’s story because greedy men always believed in outcomes that most benefitted them, but just because he was blinded by potential didn’t mean he was dense. He had to count on Xavier’s greed to overcome his devotion to the Brothers. If he thought he could take all the money for himself he wouldn’t call in and report Stash’s location until after the job. In the meantime, he’d be watching Stash every second from the moment he left this theater until the moment he returned this evening – but that was the key. He couldn’t leave the theater. Although this meant he wouldn’t have the gun he left beneath the seat of the Nova and that was less than ideal.

Stash found an old receipt for a Kit Kat and an Atlantic Monthly in his wallet from somewhere in North Carolina. He borrowed a pen from the kid at the concessions counter and scribbled “meet me in the projection booth at 6:15.”  To the note he taped the red button Pop had given him at breakfast.

“Give this to Pop when he comes down.”

The kid stared at him blankly.

“Everything’s a hustle these days, isn’t it? What’s your name, kid?”

The flop-haired teenager responded, “Call me Cubby.”

“Cubby? What the fuck—whatever. Cubby,” he said again, handing the kid a crisp ten, “make sure Pop gets this or I’ll kill you. I really will.” The ice in the words caused Cubby to sit up and shift uncomfortably in his chair. Until that moment, Stash figured, Cubby had never had skin in the game. He had skin in the game today. The real world dented Cubby’s backwoods Babylon.

 “One more thing—”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need to use your phone.”

“Phone’s in the booth and the office.”

“That won’t do, Cubby.”

“Pay phone outside the men’s room.”

Stash hesitated for a moment. “Cubby, I’m going to need you to give me a dime to call for a tow.”

“Car trouble?”

“Sure,” he said.

As Stash waited in the darkness of the projection room, he went over the plan again and again. He’d picked the lock with a simple flick of a hairpin and settled into a folding chair behind the swing of the door.

These were the facts: Xavier would keep the front of the theater and Stash’s car in front of him at all times. There would be no disappearing into the Georgia backwoods. He had to push those idle Thoreau dreams into the back of his mind. The Brothers and their lapdog would not give up until he repaid his supposed debt. If he didn’t compensate, he’d be eliminated. When he did compensate, he likely knew too much anyway. These facts didn’t paint a rosy picture for Stash’s future. 

But he had some suppositions that might possibly play out in his favor. He supposed that Xavier thought himself one step ahead. And as long as Stash played the dim card he had the upper hand. But one more thing had to fall into line. Pop. And he had no reason to believe that it would. Just a hunch.

A key jostled in the lock and the door swung open. A hand started toward the light switch.

“Touch that light and we’re both dead,” Stash said.

“You could give an old man a heart attack.”

“That would also be detrimental to both of us, Pop.”

Neither man spoke for a long moment. Only a car driving along the main strip interrupted the silence.

“You should probably shut the door because I have a business proposition that I think you’re going to want to hear.”

“You’ve been talking to Sylvia haven’t you? How am I going to do business with the lights off? I can’t even tell if you’re looking me in the eye when you’re talking to me.”

“The light stays off.” He paused. “My name is Alexander Adam Cole and I’ve never given my full name to anyone. There’s someone outside this theater that wants me dead and plans to steal the money in your safe. I think I can stop him from doing both but I need your help.”

“You’re in debt.”

“Someone decided that I owe them a debt.”

“Gangsters?”

“We’ll call them vertically integrated.”

“This is straight out of a Jean-Pierre Melville film. There’s a bad guy – that’s you – you’re the anti-hero in this production. You’ve done wrong, but you maybe regret or maybe you just came into the wrong business. Then there’s the real bad guys. The villains.”

“If you’ve got this all figured out—how do you fit in?”

“I’m the trusted friend with a hazy backstory who may or may not be helping you pull a heist on the really bad guys.” Pop’s enthusiasm escalated the more he forced himself into 1950’s French crime films, but Stash wasn’t about to dampen the enthusiasm, he needed Pop whether he was fully in touch with reality or not. “But what’s the score?”

“That depends on what’s inside your safe.”

Pop’s rat-a-tat-tat ceased at the mention of his safe.

“We’re going to need a different mark. No way around that.”

“Why’s that, Pop?”

“There’s no money in that safe, that’s for true.”

“Don’t hold out on me, Pop. I need to know what we’re working with.”

 “Son, I’ve got nothing of – what would the kids say? – ‘street value’ in that safe.”

“Pop.”

“I spent everything on film prints. My ‘safe’ is a cooler filled with vintage Nitrate film prints.”

“So you don’t have safe.”

“If you’d turned on the lights you’d have seen for yourself!”

Stash felt the floor fall out from beneath him. Nitrate film. Used for most every film print before 1952. In 1952 Kodak began converting the Nitrate prints to acetate or safety prints due to the hazardous flammability of the stock. Last year both the George Eastman House and the United States National Archives had their films spontaneously ignite. Pop’s life savings could go up in flames at any moment.  

“Okay. Okay. We can work around this,” Stash said finally, if anything to reassure himself that he could think of a way out of this mess. “Pop—what would you say if I told you that I can front the money to refurbish this theater to its original state? All new carpets. All new seats.”

“I’d say, ‘Don’t tell Sylvia.’”

“Do you trust me?”

“I like the cut of your jaw, Alexander Adam Cole. A little Alain Delon. A little Klaus Kinski minus the sociopathy. What I’m saying is that I trust you, but I’m not sure I have an option. When you become embroiled in these cons, you’ve got to hope that you stay on the right side of their relatively morality.”

Stash fingered the envelope in his jacket pocket one more time before standing, removing the jacket and laying the jacket over a table filled with fragments of film and splicing tools. Stash sat back down in his chair, and the two men sat in comfortable silence, listening to the other breathe.

“Pop—what happens at the end of that Melville film?”

“What happens at the end of Le Doulos?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Everyone dies.”

“Blaze of glory?”

“Somewhere between blaze of glory and quiet dignity.”

“That’s unfortunate for us—hang on,” Stash said. “I’ve got a terrible idea… and this will sound absolutely crazy, but do you have any decomposing prints?”

“What can you possibly know about film decomposition? You know—never mind. I don’t need to know anything else. This is a terrible idea.”

“Unfortunately. It’s my only one.”

“And unfortunately… or fortunately in this instance… I do actually have a print of Angel and the Badman that needs to be put out of its misery. I store it in a water barrel in the basement. I haven’t been able to bring myself to burn it.”

“1947. John Wayne, Gail Russell. Directed by James Edward Grant.”

“You know your movies, Alexander.”

“I just remember things.”

Stash made his way through the dark and empty theater, a few wayward popcorn pieces crunching beneath his boot. The last of the 7pm crowd had long escaped the clutches of Fellini’s Casanova and headed out into the Garfield’s Crossing nightlife—which apparently offered more for the fun-seeking partygoer than Stash had assumed. As they left through the lobby, the distant sounds of blues music and discordant merrymaking could be heard from a nearby bar. It had been the first happiness he’d heard since arriving in this sweltering hole. Maybe he’d been too quick to judge this town and with its curious moniker and attraction to an assassinated president. Hancock’s Folly would have been a more appropriate name. Literally anything would have been a better name for a Georgia town than Garfield’s Crossing.

His hand clutched the strap on Pop’s weighty, canvas shoulder bag that must have approached 40 lbs., careful not to jostle the contents too much – at least not before it was necessary. So he didn’t have cash. He didn’t even have the safe to crack that he promised Xavier. He didn’t have a gun. If this were to be his last night on Earth, it could have been worse. He’d felt at least a taste of freedom as he lost himself momentarily to the dreams of cinema. Partial ownership of a movie theater had not been something he’d ever imagined – but in the last few hours the thought had kept him going. This crazy old man and his European art cinema had given him a reason to try. He hoped for his sake – and Pop’s he could make these dreams a reality.

Stash kicked open the exit door. He heard nothing but an old moaning bluesman and the distant frogs. He stepped outside and felt the muzzle against the back of his head.

“I was beginning to worry,” Xavier said. “I was beginning to think you fell asleep in there and weren’t ever going to come out. You wouldn’t hide from me would you, Rapunzel.”

“I’m definitely sure the reference you intended to make was ‘Rumpelstiltskin.’”

The gun pushed further into his skull. “Fuck you is what I meant to say, smart ass. Now hand over the bag and step away from the door. You’re going to come with me so we can make this deal civilized.”

“There’s at least 80 thousand, maybe more than 100 in there. That’s got to buy me some time with the Brothers.”

“I said step away from the door, Stash, or should I just collect payment in full right here?”

Stash took another step and the steel door slammed behind him. Another nudge from the pistol and he found himself descending the steps, one hand on the rusty metal railing and the other stabilizing the shoulder strap. One step at a time. He could feel heat building in the backpack, but he needed to put that out of his head. When Stash reached the front of the theater, he saw the Nova right where he’d left it, parked diagonally along the main street in front of May Belle’s.

“Take the car keys out of your pocket slowly. Hold them up in your hand where I can see ‘em. You’re going to get in the front seat. Once you’re in the front seat, hand over the bag of money and drive north out of town. I’ll tell you when to stop. I’ll tell you when to talk.”

“What happened to your car, X?”

“Some fuckshit named Earl towed it because I was in a two-hour zone.”

“You’ve got to pay attention to those signs.”

The butt of the gun slammed into the back of Stash’s head. The white flash of pain. The dim blackness of main street on a Thursday returned to focus. A flicker of movement in front of the movie theater as they approached.

“I told you not to talk,” Xavier said. “So, shut your mouth.”

The pump of a shotgun. The lurch of a silhouette onto the sidewalk from beneath the illuminated marquee – much too nimble for Pop – the lights casting the man in shadow and without further ado, one blast—followed by another. The blast knocked Stash backward to the ground. Pain radiated out from his chest, a kick to the heart. He’d rolled down onto his side. Had his back hit first? Had the jar broken? He couldn’t remember, but it would be over much sooner if it had. Jesus how it hurt. He’d almost forgotten that whether the jar broke or not the chemical reaction on his back would continue to fester. A return gunshot, the glass of the poster case shattered and rained down on top of him. Xavier ripped the keys from his Stash’s quaking fingers. Another gun shot. The sound of more glass. Xavier ripped the bag over Stash’s head. 

Stash clutched his chest; he felt the blood. What the hell had hit him? Pop had promised blanks. What the hell had gone wrong? Who had shot him?

The Nova roared. The 275 horses, 4-barrel quadrajet carburetor with four-speed Saginaw transmission sounded much better than it actually drove. Jesus—he couldn’t even keep the facts at bay as he lay here – what – dying? Bleeding out on a goddamn sidewalk, double-crossed by an old man who found himself roleplaying his favorite French crime movies.

Another volley from the shotgun disintegrated the Nova’s rear window. It swerved to avoid an oncoming car before steering back into the right lane. Just as the car barreled through the stop light it veered off the road, striking a telephone pole. The interior of the cab ignited; flames poured out of the shattered back window. Xavier screamed, threw open the driver’s door as the hand of fire reached out and grabbed him, pressing him to the ground. The man flailed and rolled on the pavement for just a moment before the screaming stopped. Fire engulfed the body, the funeral pyre giving off enough heat that Stash felt it where he’d collapsed on the sidewalk some thirty or forty yards away.

Stash looked up at the silhouette standing over him, still backlit by the blinding marquee.

“Wow—it looks like you did shatter the jar when you fell. Lucky for you he was quick on the getaway or you’d have been the toast.” It was a woman’s voice. And though he’d known the gunman had been too spry for old Pops, he still expected his fragile old drawl. “Are you ready to get up, or are you going to roll around in that broken glass some more?”

“Sylvia? Where’s Pop?”

“Did you really think that when Pop came looking for a steel wool and vinegar, I wasn’t going to ask a few questions? That was pretty ingenious creating a Nitrate bomb. Had that all gone to plan, the guy would have been miles away before that thing created enough heat to ignite the film. Had it all gone to plan.”

Although the sirens had finally ceased outside, the flashing lights indicated that the last of the incident had not yet been cleaned up outside. Sylvia had given Stash tweezers, gauze and antibiotic ointment to take care of his own wounds because, as she claimed, she wasn’t “the mothering type.”

“Jesus—with what did you shoot me from that hand cannon? And do you have anything stronger than herbal tea?” Stash pulled another shard of glass from his forearm. He’d already pulled a dozen shallowly-embedded pieces of glass and shrapnel from his chest and arms. He couldn’t stand the site of blood, but a doctor right now was out of the question, like Xavier he had to disappear.

Sylvia poured herself a cup of chamomile, placed one opposite Stash and sat down at the table. “You’ll want to blow on that,” she said before taking a long, loud sip of her steaming beverage. “Pop’s on the wagon again. Nothing but tea and Diet Dr. Pepper. The sparsely attired kitchenette attached to Pop’s apartment above the theater boasted the essentials but nothing more. A working stove, a kettle, running water and a takeout rotisserie chicken in the small refrigerator.

“How’d you know what to do that with that bomb jar?”

“High school chemistry. I remember things like how to create an exothermic reaction from common household goods. I just never expected Dr. Marklevitch’s lessons to save my life even though he always said you never know when a chemical reaction could save your life.

“By torching a man and his Nova, knocking out telephone communications and—”

“Since that’s what needed to happen, yes.”

“You’re lucky Pop likes you. I don’t like you. I wanted him to let you die out there tonight because you and that guy – you’re both the kind of lowlifes we’ve been trying to keep out of this town. We’ve seen too much of this as it is. If we let you go on your way, we’d never see either of you ever again. And now? Well, I certainly don’t know.” Another sip. “And I know you don’t know, so I’m not sure where that leaves any of us.”

“If Pop sticks to the story, we’ll all be fine.”

“Fine—sure. But from what?”

“Who or what are you afraid of?”

Stash couldn’t answer her. Not now. Maybe never. He picked up his tweezers again and prodded the wound on his chest. “I swear there’s something still in here.”

Sylvia sighed and put the mug down on the table with some force, short of a slam, but the kind of placement used to let someone else know they’re mad as hell, but they’re probably going to continue to take it.

“Give me these,” she said, ripping the tweezers out of his ineffective hand. “This is what Pop told me. Correct me where I stray.” For the first time their eyes met. Stash felt a toxic attraction, just as he had earlier in the diner, that was definitely not returned. It caused her to pause, and that at least was something more than indifference. “This other bigger asshole will be found dead with your gun and the car that you stole, you’ll also be presumed dead.”

“I’m hoping.”

“I’m not finished,” she said and pointedly dug deeper. “As compensation for his assistance and his indefinite safe-haven in the form of this theater you’ve promised money to completely renovate Pop’s theater. And here’s where I’m immensely skeptical. People run for many different reasons. My ex-husband was a runner. He was a different kind of runner from you, unless I’m completely mistaken. The sight of blood makes you squirmy.”

Sylvia pulled the tweezers out clutching a piece of glass the size of a dime and dropped it onto the ashtray along with the rest. 

“Which means you ran because of money.” She sensed Stash’s need to talk but pre-empted anything he might want to say in his defense. “And if you ran because of money it’s not likely that you’ve got the money to pay anyone the sum required to completely renovate this money pit.”

“Can I talk now?”

“Oh, by all means. I’m just dying to hear how you’re not full of shit and just trying to save your skin.”

“I am not blameless, but I believe that man should be able to pay debts when they’re owed and keep what’s his when it’s not.”

Stash leaned forward over the table. He the bandages tug at his frayed skin. He winced and brought the hot tea up to his lips. He swallowed and felt the hot liquid rolling down his throat and into his stomach. He’d burned his tongue. She’d warned her, but he almost welcomed this pain. The pain of being alive and still a stubborn kid from the wrong side of Massachusetts. Even though he’d come out a little beaten and none of this had gone the way he’d hoped when he’d rolled into town, he couldn’t help but think he’d won by losing. Sure, he was still alive, but at what cost? Hancock. Good goddamn, he was Winfred Scott Hancock. Even though he’d lost the election, he wouldn’t be assassinated because he wouldn’t be president. If this had gone to plan, he’d still be on the run, but now he had a chance to start over again. 

“That’s it? That’s what you have to say for yourself?”

Stash shrugged and let all left unsaid hover in the air between them.

It was in that silence that Pop pushed open the door, his wide eyes greeting first his daughter with a ferociously, if largely unrequited hug, before turning toward Stash, losing none of the warmth in the transition. “Alexander,” he said, “I’m so glad you’re okay. I heard Sylvia let loose with that volley and I thought she’d gone overboard – captain of the rifle team. GC High, class of 1962 – I’ll have you know.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be,” Sylvia added under her breath.

“The jacket I left in your projection booth contains and envelope with 250,000 dollars in traveler’s checks—are you sure you don’t have a bottle of whisky or something around here? Anything?” Stash went around opening cabinets and drawers with no success. “Pop, I know you’re holding out on me. I want to make a toast. To us. To you. I know you don’t really know me and the trust thing is more or less just blind faith—

“Alright. I’ll toast. Enough,” Sylvia said. She opened the cabinet beneath the sink and reached in behind a few cans of Drano and a box of steel wool pads. Pulling out a half-finished bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon. In another moment, Pop procured two glasses. Sylvia had poured a shot in each.

“Sometimes I crash here.  What about you, Pop?” she asked.

Pop lifted Sylvia’s mug of tea.

Stash and Sylvia lifted their glasses of bourbon.

“I won’t believe it until I see it, but let’s celebrate despite ourselves,” she said.

“I’ve always wanted to redo the marquee. No great theater ever bore the name ‘Pop’s Theatre’ atop its grand visage.”

“So, what should it be called, Pop?”

Stash cleared his throat. “I hope I’m not being too bold, but I think I have the perfect name,” he said.

Categories
Cinema Only on DVD

The Final Frontier of Physical Media

originally published on Inside the Envelope

Continued from Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8

Disney shocked the world – okay, maybe not the world, but at least the author of this column – when they announced real, honest to god, physical media Blu-ray and 4K releases of the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, WandaVision, and Loki. This marks the first time that any of the platform’s content will be making its way to a retail disc. Coming on the (relative) heels of the 2020 announcement that they would cease to release their live action films on 4K (with exceptions for Star Wars, Marvel, and James Cameron), this is surprising news, but maybe it shouldn’t have been.

As I said in an old Only on DVD column, “DVD is dead. Long live DVD.” We’re currently living in a world that is at once trying to kill physical media and milk it for everything that it’s worth. Some market reports have suggested that physical media sales are up 10% so far in 2023. Without a multi-year trend, that’s little more than an encouraging statistic – but we can’t hang any hats on it because we also just learned this month that the once largest business-to-business home entertainment distributor will cease to ship discs once their inventory has been depleted. The Ingram CEO cites increasing overhead with diminishing returns as the reason for Ingram’s exit from the business. I’m not sure what this really means for the consumer since rental chains had already ceased to exist, big-box stores hardly stock any physical media, and we already purchase most of our DVDs directly from niche distributors and – let’s be honest – Amazon. 

While I’m encouraged that Disney hasn’t totally abandoned the consumer, the announcement of three of their flagship properties (all Star Wars and Marvel) doesn’t exactly fill me with hope for more. What about the 76 movies and TV series that disappeared from Disney+ and Hulu in May? (I wasn’t finished with The World According to Jeff Goldblum, you heartless bastards.) The only thing we can do with any kind of purpose is support physical media with our dollars. That’s the language these companies speak. All we know for sure is that if there’s money to be made these companies are going to find it.

They don’t really care about the consumer. If they did, we’d see a lot more physical media available for people who can’t or won’t subscribe to the streaming channel.

They don’t care about the creatives producing content for their streaming services. If they did, we’d see a lot more physical media available at the request of the creators who fear that their work will be deleted from existence without warning due to those pesky residuals. That said, fallout from the WGA/SAG-AFTRA will ultimately change how the companies do business with their talent – and it might lead to an even more rigorous culling of streaming content. 

Of course, Disney isn’t the only company under siege from a vocal, critical minority. Director Michael Flanagan has taken to the social media airwaves to publicly praise those enterprising individuals that have pirated his unreleased-on-DVD Netflix series as “noble archivists.” Without physical media releases, he notes, his work could disappear without a trace. Flanagan had been a mainstay on Netflix with The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald’s Game, and Midnight Mass. Only The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor have received physical media releases – because they were co-produced by Paramount, which retained home video rights. At one point Netflix promised to follow through on releases for his work, but ultimately failed to do so, explaining that it just wasn’t a “priority.” This conversation with Netflix, in part, caused him and his production partner Trevor Macy to move their new projects to Amazon Studios.

Will Amazon release Flanagans’ series? We are, after all, still waiting on a release of the platform’s most popular series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The grass is always greener.

Michael Flanagan’s not wrong. There is a preservational aspect to home media that most people just aren’t talking about. And they’re not talking about it because, as a collective, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the things we love will always be available at the click of a button. And it’s just not true. I talked to a film preservationist to confirm my suspicions that studios aren’t likely taking the precautions necessary to preserve digital content.

But let’s get back to that “always available” issue because there’s an aspect of this issue that I’ve never really talked about. Consumer burnout. 

My dad called me the other day because he wanted to watch the Sony Pictures Classics movie The Phantom of the Open (2021). He, like many of us, subscribes to a healthy number of streaming services and assumed it had to be available somewhere on one of them. He didn’t want to rent it because he’s already paid a considerable sum for Peacock, Netflix, Paramount, Prime Video, etc. on top of his regular cable bill. I tried to run through the standard explanation about the way streaming services license movies for exhibition, but stopped myself because maybe he had a point. How much are we expected to pay to watch what we want when we want it? At what point does this model collapse because it’s just too difficult or too expensive for the average viewer to manage?

As a result of having researched the streaming business model for this series of columns for DVD Netflix, I’m fully aware of the methodology. I’m also fully aware that my own viewing habits require me to track down movies I know with 100% certainty are not available to stream. I’m an outlier. The average consumer doesn’t just shrug when faced with a $4 rental charge on top of the $50+ they’ve already shelled out for a handful of services. It’s all currently unsustainable. Some of these services will begin to disappear, taking their content along with them. 

When DVD Netflix began shipping envelopes in the late 1990s it felt like we had the world at our fingertips. If it was available on disc, we could probably rent it for a relatively low monthly fee. Corner mom and pop video stops were still hanging on, Blockbuster (*spits*), and DVD-by-mail supplied anything we could possibly want. During these halcyon days, I remember thinking that that was the best of all possible worlds. Laserdiscs had improved upon VHS by giving us improved picture and sound with the correct cinematic aspect ratios. DVDs made that hobby affordable and improved the image even further (even though the compression ruined the laserdisc sound mixes). We even had entire runs of classic TV series in a package the size of a Tolstoy novel. Movies we’d never had the chance to see – or see correctly. (Had we really seen Lawrence of Arabia if we’d only seen it on a 4:3 Full Frame VHS tape?)

Still, we wanted more. Over the next two decades, the “more” we wanted resulted in the surrendering of control – the control we’d gained in the VHS wars over the content we owned and watched – returned to the production companies and media conglomerates. They’re once again working to control what you watch, how you watch it, and when you watch it. Ideally supplanting everything with cheap, disposable content that’s really just pretty okay and probably written by AI. 

They would like nothing more than to eliminate the home video distribution of movies and TV series. With that in mind, do you know why Disney released The Mandalorian on 4K and Blu-ray? Obviously, money. They haven’t totally taken that control back – not yet – and not as long as we continue to make the case for physical media. Not as long as the Michael Flanagans of the world – successful streaming filmmakers – stand up to take back control over their art. Disney recognizes that there’s still money in disc-based entertainment. If we continue to support content that can be owned and never adulterated, we can curate our own content libraries. We still hold the control.

This is the last month of DVD Netflix [author’s note: this was published in September of 2023]. I’m sad because I won’t get any more little red envelopes. I’m sad because this is my last column for “Inside the Envelope.” I will continue to write about movies and physical media elsewhere, but this particular gig felt important because you, the reader, cared as much as I do. Most importantly, the DVD Netflix employees cared as much as we all did. It was an absolute pleasure working with them and for you, bolstering your queues and making sure you never ran out of enthusiasm for the envelopes in your mailbox.

This final ‘Only on DVD’ column serves as a so long for now, but not a farewell forever. The spirit of our relationship continues as long as you continue to seek out new-to-you movies and pass along recommendations to your friends and family. Keep forcing companies like Disney and Netflix to acknowledge that there’s money to be found in the hills of DVD distribution. Let them continue to pretend that they’re doing it for the fans (because it makes them feel good). Each disc you buy or rent is a small act of film conservation.

Keep them all circulating.

It might be a little harder without DVD Netflix, but we survived pan-and-scan so we can do anything. Godspeed, weary moviewatcher.