I'm working on getting a pdf referance up on the blog. Until then its a cut and past affair.
©
Copyright 2008 M.N. Muench. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
First published by Wordclay on
3/22/2008.
Cycles in the Heat
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Tales of the Islands
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M.N.Muench
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events and locations portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual people—living or dead, names, places, or events is purely coincidental. Please be advised that this is a work of adult fiction with content some readers may find offensive.
Contents
Pete’s Pig……………………………………… 1
Henry Ford: Volunteer Extraordinaire……… 17
Sophie…………………………………………. 37
Pushin Bone…………………………………… 51
It’s Just Different……………………………… 65
The Ritual……………………………………… 69
Fuckin Rats!…………………………………… 83
Cycles in the Heat…………………………….. 103
Pete’s Pig
Pete's pig could fetch better than any dog, and didn't get the ball all slimy. I'd sit for hours in the evening glow of sunset under Pete’s giant mango tree tossing the ball for the pig while relaxing in a comfortable old planter's chair and drinking cool beers. It was quiet in Pete’s yard and because it sat on a bit of a high spot it caught the breezes and the mosquitoes were kept down.
One could sit in that yard and watch the sun set in the west, the pinks and blues settling toward purple darkness. They were rare peaceful times; calm moments one does not always find in this corner of the world so often labeled ‘paradise’. The pig sensed that after a while, and it would come and lie by the chair, grunting contentedly, and relaxing in the last light of the day.
Pete had found the piglet on the road and damn near dead. He'd mothered her to health, raised her like a dog, and loved her like a man loves a dog. He even called her Dawg. After he saved Dawg from the road or the more certain Sunday meal, his life had brightened, and he seemed to become a better person for it. He became a bit more outgoing, and his business picked up. He seemed luckier on his night fishing trips and his catches were up. Pete had fought to make it on the island, and despite his obvious attachment to the place he just had not fit in. Having Dawg around seemed to change that a bit. Pete finally became settled and happier with his life on the island.
Dawg grew fast and was hitting one hundred and fifty pounds when we sat there playing fetch. The pig was house broken and was pretty much fed whatever Pete ate himself. She slept at the foot of his bed, and was a better guard than a dog, as she was quick to recognize people and was generally discerning in who she let into the house when Pete was away.
I liked Dawg about as much as I could like a pig and had only one gripe with her. One day I'd left my hat on a chair and she'd taken it and chewed it up before I noticed it was missing. There was nothing left but a bit of the bill when she got done. I told Pete to increase her salt intake and she stopped eating hats.
Pete and I had become drinking buddies. I would come over in the late afternoon with some beers and we'd sit around his yard or house and down a few big brown bottles of the insipid tasting brew that was common on the island. Then, later in the evening when the bars were busy, we'd head down the road and see what was happening.
We did this one or two nights a week for a year or so. It fit my schedule, as I was in the bar a few nights a week, and Pete could only manage three or four nights a week fishing. On a couple of his nights off we’d hook up and talk about the books we passed around a like nuggets of gold.
I liked drinking with Pete because he read a lot and could talk intelligently about what he read. He also had money to pay for his booze. We could go out and I would not find myself carrying him through the rounds.
We could sit there in the bar for hours drinking and talking. The women would come sit with us because we'd buy them sodas and kid with them. We’d dance with them occasionally, joke a lot, and talk to friends we knew; but we were mostly just drinking and talking—long meandering relaxed conversations about books, politics, work or the island; the kind of discussions that two easy drunks can carry long into the night without missing a beat.
At closing time I'd often head home with one of the girls. It was an informal kind of thing, and I often didn’t know who it would be. The women seemed to decide that on their own, and on most occasions I was satisfied to let it go down that way. They were mostly young women who had fled the village, or town girls who could not always go home. I never got too personal about it. I offered them a place to stay and if things worked out, I got laid. It was a comfortable kind of situation.
For Pete it was a different story. The women seemed to like Pete and would kid with him at the bar; they just didn’t want to go home with him. Maybe it was his younger age, or his limited grasp of the island tongue, or just his awkwardness around women. Whatever, Pete couldn't seem to find himself a girlfriend. For some reason it seemed to bother him; perhaps he longed for someone to hold on to when the night demons that plagued us all descended.
Henry Ford: Volunteer Extraordinaire
There was a quiet dump on the waterfront that catered to a discrete crowd of professionals and government workers. The Shore Bar wasn't much but it was close to government offices and a great place to sit under the trees on the patio during the day, cooling off with a few gin and tonics.
I was standing at the bar one afternoon and struck up a conversation with a dapper older fellow who said he was a new organization volunteer. So new in fact that he'd just gotten off the bus. When I asked him what he did he said he was an audio-visual expert. After a lot of wandering talk I figured it for a projectionist. OK. The organization brought in all types.
He told me his name was Henry Ford and gave me a wandering and most entertaining account of his trip to the Island. He was an engaging kind of fellow, though I didn't hang with volunteers, particularly new ones, so I slapped him on the back and wished him good luck, figuring never to see him much after that.
However I did see him around and often; mostly in the afternoon drinking dives that came to life after lunch hour and slowly lost their spirit as the after-work crowd stumbled home for dinner. Henry seemed to have a lot of free time to drink, however that was a common enough trait and warranted little notice. Many outlanders made a profession out of hanging in the bars, sipping away their assignments in an inebriated fog.
I didn't realize it at the time, but Henry Ford was a volunteer extraordinaire, a man who excelled in his service, a legend in his own time.
It seems that at the time I was talking with Henry he was scheduled to be introduced to the organization Director and his staff. Henry missed this opportunity in favor of a libation, and failed to fill out some minor administrative forms. He managed to make it back to the hotel for lunch and a drink in the hotel bar, and afterwards was hustled, along with about a half dozen other volunteers, to their new school assignment at the island’s Teachers Training College.
Noting the proximity of the school to an awakening afternoon drinking establishment Henry investigated and availed himself of refreshment; unfortunately he missed the meeting the new volunteers had with the Principal and his staff. He did however make it back for the welcoming ceremonies; and his presence was noted by the training staff which had had their own meeting during the Principal's welcoming. Unfortunately Henry again failed to fill out a few forms for the school.
After the welcoming ceremonies Henry was taken by one of the training staff to see his new assignment in the audio-visual section of the college. The section had one employee, a young man, newly assigned to the job, who it so happened possessed great ability, intellect, and enthusiasm. Henry's meeting with this young fellow was brief, and not unproductive. On inspecting the projectors, which were the core of the section’s operations, it was found that one didn't work. Together they analyzed the problem, and to Henry's pleasure it was the young assistant who discovered that the projector in question had no bulb. And it was the assistant who, after some searching found a replacement.
Sophie
I hadn't been in the Mountain Club ten minutes before the foxiest looking lady in the place came up and sat on my lap.
“Buy me a drink?” she purred into my ear as she wiggled her tight bottom into my crotch.
“Sure thing,” I said running my eyes along her body.
She followed my stare with mock surprise and whispered again. “Do you see anything you like honey?”
“Oh yeah, that I do,” I laughed, “And a few things I find a bit disconcerting.”
“Well?” She answered coyly, missing my meaning.
“Tell you what,” I said with a big smile. “I'll buy you the drink, and you sit over there,” I said pointing to an empty seat at the table.
“I like being close to you!” she pouted. “You're so strong, you can let me sit here can't you?”
“'Afraid not, my little lambkins. You sit in the chair. And there is your drink,” I said as the bar maid placed the drink on the table in front of the empty chair.
“But why can’t I sit here?” she cooed managing to squeeze her hand onto my inner thigh.
“Because I don't let little boys above the age of 6 sit on my lap dear,” I drawled to her.
“You fucking shit!” she snapped.
“Now, now, be a good little boy and sit over there and drink your drink.”
“Bastard!”
“Don't call daddy names or daddy will have to spank you.”
“Ahhh. Would you do that to me? Please?” she cooed.
“Behave yourself and sit over there,” I said firmly patting the seat to my left.
She giggled and got up, sitting down in the chair and crossing her legs so she exposed almost the entire thigh to her crotch. It was disconcerting. She was the best looking girl in the bar.
That was how I met Sophie. She was maybe 14 years old and had just started making appearances in the bars. She was well dressed and well scrubbed and reeked of the innocence of youth, if you could get by the persona. She didn't drink alcohol, and was not unpleasant to have at the table, despite her reliance on a sailor’s vocabulary.
Sophie worked in a seamstress shop on the airport road. She made her outfits based on pictures she tore out of magazines, and managed to be more 'in style' than any of the women I had known at home. Though I doubt they would have been interested in the mini-skirted low cut affairs that Sophie managed to whip together. They highlighted her ass and her legs, and had that 'Twiggy' cut that was perfect for her. When she made an appearance at the bar it was an event. She drew attention and comment. She was a beautiful young woman and enjoyed the adulation and approval that young women of extraordinary beauty can command.
We became friends of sorts. Sophie never forgave me for my rejection, and always held it out as an insult; one she felt I could and should correct. I saw it otherwise. I would buy her drinks and cokes because she was liked by the other young women in the bar. Having Sophie at the table was a wonderful way to meet women without the dangerous possibilities one could encounter in an island night club.
She caught on quickly and would bring young women to my table to meet me. I'd buy them all sodas. And if I liked a woman, I'd buy Sophie and her friends soda’s all night. Nothing was ever said about this. It went unspoken between us. It was an informal kind of thing that didn't interfere with the talk and the dancing. We were all just having a bit of fun you know.
You can think what you want about this arrangement. For me it was only prudent. An outlander didn't go around asking girls to dance, or talking with them without a bit of risk. The tables were not always clearly delineated and a cousin or brother or even the girl’s lover could just as likely be sitting at the next table. Add this to the fact that alcohol makes many islanders really quite nuts, and you have a dangerous situation; one where I could find myself bloodied very quickly. Sophie helped me avoid these dangers, as much because she understood what I was up against as for the two dollars in drinks I might buy here and her friends to show my appreciation.
In a place like the Mountain Club it was nice to have a well dressed woman around who wasn't shy about showing a bit of leg, or revealing a long stretch soft brown flesh from the back of her shoulders to the small of her back. The fact is, the Island was a very conservative place. It was the rare woman who would dare be so liberated. And Sophie was the true liberated young woman. Because she was basically good and decent, she provoked a pride and a kind of respect from the citizens of the raunchy bars that were tucked away along the town's back streets. People welcomed her presence in the bars and enjoyed it when she chatted or joked with them; and as she wandered the bar like a butterfly many pairs of eyes would follow her.
She reveled in this. It was everything she had dreamed of, I guess. And the appreciation brought on renewed efforts in the seamstress shop and even more stunning outfits. The fame she earned for her wardrobe paid dividends as the town’s more well to do young women came to her for dress designs that they couldn't find elsewhere. Without really trying Sophie became a phenomena of sorts in the small island town. She entered a new stage, a status that few young women like her were granted. She became kind of a town princess of the evening. She found she could enter even the better night spots and was treated with preferential courtesy by most doormen, bouncers and bar tenders.
Pushin Bone
I was standing at the bar down at the Shore one early evening enjoying the sunset and sucking on gin and tonics when I struck up a relaxed conversation with the fellow next to me. David Bonnet I believe he called himself. He was a doctor of some sort, and was doing one of those expert type tours that allows a man to see very little while making a big deal out of it. However he seemed a square kind of fellow, pleasant enough—not a know-it-all like many of the experts who plague the developing world, and he took no credit or blame for the fact that he had scooped a paid vacation. I shouted him a drink as we both hailed from the same home town. He shouted me back. We ended up passing the evening watching the sea change colors as the sun set and trading stories. Here is a tale he related to me that evening.
“We had been sailing through the Hebrides for a month, visiting small island groups and doing research,” David said ruminating on his half full glass. He continued.
I was responsible for the filarial testing program. You know filariasis, that’s elephantitus. Quite common in the Pacific. Prevalent here on the Island actually, and that’s the reason for my visit. It’s passed on by the bite of a mosquito. A nasty disease if left untreated, even when it doesn’t cause the swellings in the arms, legs or lymph nodes. Anyway, when we visited an island village, I would have our translator, a rather wild looking fellow named ‘Joe’, arrange with the headman to have the residents come to the headman’s house in the early morning when I would take blood samples. Just pin pricks to the finger which I would use for slide smears. This was followed in the evening by another set of samples. The goal was to analyze the filarial infection rates in various island groups for variations in infection rates.
I would then compare the filarial counts in the blood in the morning and afternoon. I was also getting data infection rates based on age and sex variations. It was interesting work actually. I spent a lot of time on shore while also managing to get back to the ship for some lab work and a good sleep in the afternoon. We were getting some excellent results, though I was finding it a problem in convincing the islanders to return for the evening sample. One pin prick seemed to be enough for them. I don’t think it was the pain. It was just the idea of have a white man taking their blood and doing strange things with it.
Well, we’d developed a small payment scheme and in the evening everyone returning for the test was given a hard candy. Candy was a bit rare at the time in these islands, but not unknown, and it turned out to be a great hit at almost all our stops. It seemed to overcome the idea of me doing some evil with a bit of their blood anyway.
One early evening, in the only village on a small out of the way island, I went to get the second samples. It was going well, when I began to realize that only women and children were showing up for the test. There was not one adult male in the bunch. By six, my usual quitting time, not a man had come to the headman’s hut. The headman was a nice old guy with the unlikely name of House, and even he had failed to show up. I asked his wife where he was and she just stared at me, shook her head, and scurried out of the hut. This was the last day of our stay on this particular island, and I needed the evening smears to form a complete test. I was used to missing a few people, however I could not let a complete section of the population just get away from me as it would put a big void in my data. So I decided I would do what ever was needed to get the men’s samples, or at least a good percentage of them.
I looked around outside for Joe, hoping to get the run down from somebody on where the men had gone. It was, however, his habit to look for a nice local girl in the evenings, and given that there were no brothers or fathers about, let alone husbands, it seemed obvious that Joe had found himself a comfortable place for his night’s entertainment.
I’d learned a bit of the local pidgin and managed to ask one old lady where the men had gone. She threw me a sharp look, shook her head and commenced to chattering a harsh stream of pidgin that was quite much for me, but she made it clear that men were again ‘pushin bone’.
The villagers had been kind and helpful during our days on the island and I saw no reason to fear this ‘pushin bone’, whatever it might be. So I asked the old matron where the ‘pushin’ was going on, and if she would take me there. She cackled through a gapped toothed grin and said it was too far for her walk in the dark of night but she had a young one around who would lead me there.
I was packing up my things as she went out of the hut and began screaming loudly into the darkness. Moments later a boy about twelve years old appeared at the edges of the lantern light. The old lady laid down a command, and the boy seemed none to happy about it and shook his head and shuffled his feet while he stared at the ground. The old one cuffed him on the side of the head hard enough to draw a howl, and then she said something low and terrible to him. I’m not quite sure what she said though I knew it was something I would not want said to me. Finally the boy approached me hesitantly and made it very clear that this was duty he was none to happy about, and that he was undertaking only out of fear for the old lady, who sat there her almost toothless smile letting him know he had no choice in the matter.
It’s Just Different
My friend Jimmy and I had been wreck diving all day and had pulled into a small village to get a few beers for the long trip back across the lagoon. While we were buying the beers we met a few guys who claimed to be photographers for National Geographic. They had come out to the far side of the atoll to do whatever it is those guys get paid for, and typically, they had managed to miss the last boat back to the main island. They asked us for a ride back to town.
“Sure,” said Jim, “Fill up this gas can, and get a case of cold ones, a pack of cigs, a few tins of that canned meat, and a few loaves of bread while you are at it.” They looked at him momentarily before realizing he was dealing not asking.
Jim and I were already trashed. The three bottles of air each of us had done made us a bit giddy, and we hadn’t eaten all day. These two clowns were a great catch. We figured on being fed and totally zonked by the time we made town.
It took an a few hours to cross the lagoon in our boat so we had time to sit back and kill the case. We drank and they talked. It was the kind of bull shit chatter that know-it-alls lay on the local outlanders. However, they were interesting in their own way and seemed to want to know a bit more detail about the group than most. The conversation drifted from diving and photography to the islands and the people. They found our answers confusing I guess, and we found ourselves responding to a lot of their questions with the phrase ‘It’s just different here.” It was, but the differences were not always apparent or understood, particularly for people who brushed fast through the island like these two yoyo’s.
The conversation finally drifted to women. At first the questions were general. What did we think of the women? Did we ‘date’ any of them? What did the local ladies think of us? Jim and I laid down a line of bull avoiding the specifics while remaining fairly honest about the fact that we were not really starving for sex.
‘I haven’t seen a good looking woman since I got hear,” said the more talkative clown.
“What do you mean?” I said, somewhat offended. “I think it really depends on your definition of good looking.”
The Ritual
I was sitting in the organization office drinking a five cent coke trying to figure a way out of going back to the dusty cubicle I called an office when out of the Director's suite stumbled the most forlorn fellow I had seen in months. He shuffled sadly across the floor and sat opposite me on the long ‘U’ shaped bench of the alcove in the outer office. He dropped down onto the seat still hanging his head and let a out a heavy sigh.
“Howzit it goin?” I said, knowing that it couldn't be to good, and wondering if his hard luck story would bring me a few laughs.
“Oh hi,” he said in a melodramatic kind of way. “OK, I guess,” he added. “I'm going home,” he continued hopefully.
“Home?” I said. “Heading back to the big Amerika, Hey? Well congratulations. Wish I could say the same.” I didn't entertain any thought of leaving, though it sounded good, so I said it. I got up, went over and got two bottles from the coke machine, opened them and came back and handed him one as I took a big gulp of the other. It was a gamble but I figured his story might be worth five cents.
“Gee thanks,” he said, as he took a quick drink and grimaced. “Boy, things are really different here,” he continued, “I usually only drink Pepsi, but they don't even have Pepsi here! And this isn't even real Coke!”
“Yeah man it’s a different world out here!” I said looking at him amazed and a bit disgusted. “Lots of essential things are just not to be found. Make any man want to head back, I guess. How long you been around?”
“Since yesterday!” he said sounding like that made him an old timer.
“Really! Must be something big to send you back now.”
“Yes. It is,” he said firmly. He looked out the window and seemed to be fading off into oblivion.
Now this was not a unique occurrence. Lots of off-kilter clowns would arrive on the shores of the Island with their heads full of disorienting stuff, and reality would visit them very quickly. It was often the dirt or the perceived poverty, or the disease, or just the sum of it all steamed in the heat of the tropical sauna of daily life. That they were often encouraged to come despite their obvious flaws was a testament to the incompetence of the organization’s administrators.
Right then I wasn’t interested in the politics of it; I was bored and didn’t want to go back to work. I saw the opportunity of passing time hearing the schmucks excuses and I wasn’t going to let him get by with just telling me it was something big. I wanted to know the terrible secrets that he could only now face after a few hours in the country he had come to help. I wanted a good laugh. So I sat down next to him, shook my head, and commenced to tell him how bad it was getting for me at work, how the buses didn’t run on time, and how I was always sick. It was quickly obvious he wasn’t impressed with my problems, and it seemed he might be a bit put off with the lingering smell of mildew and dirt that stuck like aftershave to my person. I could see him edging away from me in obvious distaste in spite of my coke offering still in his hand. To get his attention I propped my foot on the low table and began to pick at an open coral cut sore on my left ankle that had for weeks been going from yellow to green and back to yellow again. I dabbed at the pussy edges of it with a stained rag I carried for the purpose. He edged a bit farther away but couldn’t keep his eyes off the pustulant sore.
Fuckin Rats!
It was an intensive language training session. A trip to the village for a week of language review and classes. For me it was a chance to get out of the town and away from the bar scene; a time to dry out and regain my bearings. I needed an escape valve and this looked like it might do the trick. I also wanted to learn more of the language so I when some asshole began insulting me through smiling lips I would know it and be able to better avoid the fist that was sure to follow when he didn’t think I was looking. The training wouldn’t teach me when to duck but it would give me greater depth in an understanding of the total language, a bit of survival training one might say.
Uafako, the last village in the Falalua district, was many hours from the town on a rickety bus along roads that eventually even the islanders called bad; narrow brown ribbons winding along vertical green cliff sides. At times the tire ruts were so deep and the grass and vegetation between them so high that the road simply blended into the side of the cliff; and often no road was even visible a few hundred feet ahead of the bus.
The view was tremendous, the blue ocean presented itself in a wonderful array of scenes and the sky was just as blue and the greens of the vegetation were rich and soothing. Despite the beauty the rough road was doing me in and my asshole was burning from recurrent thuds to the hard wood bus seats. I occupied my hung over brain with inane imaginings of how I might survive when the bus rolled off the road and over some cliff.
We bounced and jogged farther and farther into the bush, the tiny hamlets swirling by like the quarter twists on a kaleidoscope; always different yet never really changing. Flecks of village life burned into my brain like shooting sparks from a brilliant fire: A young girl, a faded lavalava around her waist, a stained shirt too large for her body, with two buckets of water balanced on a pole over her should as she walked slowly down a narrow path leading from a waterfall; naked young boys scampering crablike over the rocks of a half dry stream bed, laughing, smiling and waving at the bus as they scream ‘Eat shit white guy!’ The road making a big curve around a small fale occupied by a lone gray old man who sits motionless, staring blankly back at me; a hard curve on the shore road revealing a small bay with palm trees arching over high black lava rocks, the blue waves breaking hard in fans of white and powder blue; and there were the endless knife like thrusts to my asshole as the bus hit bone jarring bumps that I could not anticipate. It was a glorious day and I looked forward to the bus careening over a cliff.
Finally the road deteriorated into little more than a two rough uneven foot paths; and as we rounded a sharp curve on an eight hundred foot cliff, we spotted Uafako, The last village, the end of the road lay like a vision of polynesian perfection on the shore of a large bay that glistened with blues and greens and all the colors of the pacific that have no name. The reefs were awash in aqua and white lace fans of a gentle ocean swell, and the cliffs of the valley were covered in a shawl of verdant green vegetation. The valley’s streams had two sources. The first a tiny waterfall that fell from a cliff of awesome height close by the village; the second lay unseen at the farthest reaches of a narrow valley that twisted snake like into the cloud shrouded forests of the interior. The village a line of regal old fales with a few well built tin roofed homes thrown in.
The bus made its way slowly down the cliff negotiating endless winding turns and hairpin switch backs as it descended toward the village. By the time the bus rolled along the last quarter mile of white sand road it seemed the entire village had come out to witness our arrival. After the welcoming formalities the village elders divided up the volunteers like a prize fish among the chiefs; and naturally I found myself in the asshole. The sun was flickering through the highest trees along the western ridge of the valley and racing toward the horizon as we were distributed among the families of the village. Each family being rewarded according to its status with a volunteer a bounty. Being more than vaguely familiar with the rules of the game I hung back and let them divide the fat white virgins as they saw fit; and I enjoyed it for its simplicity. It was a small village and we of the organization were not numerous. The distribution went quickly through the gamut, from fat blond virgin to fat dark haired virgin, to pretty young couple, to young blond virgin boy, and finally, looking uneasily over their shoulders at the not so young, scruffy and likely to be a problem, white derelict classification, the village chiefs responsible for such things hustled another clown and me through the evening’s golden glimmer, down a mud path, across a crude log bridge over a narrow stream, and through a marshy mosquito infested acre of swamp to the windward side of the bay where a few of the village’s less fortunate had evidently lived for generations.
I found myself reward to a blind man and his family. A small proud poverty stricken group of assorted clan members. The most able bodied of the family, seemingly having fled to town or some foreign destination and leaving those who remained to fend for themselves. They were good people, I could tell just by their quiet graciousness and the fact that they made no big deal out of my arrival.
Cycles in the Heat
It was often my custom to take a bit of a drink in the late morning. I always found the Shore Bar a quiet and out of the way sanctuary in the late morning hours. I could sit there in the peacefulness of the day on the large veranda that opened out onto the harbor and watch the waves scatter the sun’s light across the blue waters of the bay, the light breezes causing the palm fronds to sing that pacific siren’s song.
Years into my stay but in the early part of my expatriate contracts, whenever I took this particular morning break, I was witness to a strange ritual performed by an old outlander who had been on the Island longer that I cared to contemplate.
At exactly 10:30 he'd shuffle slowly into the bar, using two canes, teetering on each step, unsteady in spite of the extra support. He’d stop occasionally to rest, craning his fleshy neck around a bit to take in the scene, his glassy eyes occasionally resting on some object or face. He’d stand there his print aloha shirt hanging large on him like a bright carapace. I often had the feeling the old man had metamorphosed in the night and I was watching the island’s ill-formed analog of the Galapagos tortoise, or a giant mutated and palsied fiddler crab. Watching him was an amusement, and allowed me the opportunity to divert my mind from my own dark contemplations.
He was always accompanied by the same good looking young island woman, who walked a respectful step or two behind him, carrying a giant woven basket and watching his every move with care, ready to give an unwanted but necessary steadying hand.
He'd make his way to the same table in the corner collapsing into the chair, trembling, and catching his breath, while the girl ordered drinks and prepared a tray. It was always the same; two fresh bar towels, six cloth napkins, two clean glasses, two 24 oz. Stienlagers, and two double shots of bar whiskey, neat. She'd bring back the tray filled with supplies, bottles and glasses, arranging them in just such a way on the table, as he was very particular how he drank.
Then she'd walk back to the bar with the empty tray, flashing me a coy smile, maybe a bit of leg and swinging her ass nicely. She was hot.
The old man would sit there shaking up a storm staring at the drinks. Every time I saw him in the mornings he had those shakes. They seemed to start at his feet, and work themselves up his legs, causing his body to vibrate and spasm. His arms would shudder uncontrollably. His fingers each dancing to their own separate rhythm. I could tell he hated it; hated the shuffling, the shakes; most of all he hated not being able to get a glass of whiskey to his lips. He’d sit there staring at the glass of amber liquid as if it were the holy grail. In his case perhaps it was; though in those first moments of his late morning bar ritual it was lost beyond the horizon of his radically trembling fingers. It was amusing to see him suffer so.
The young woman would come back to the table and he'd accuse her of being slow, or of trying to torment him. It was the glasses of booze sitting on the tray that had him edgy and tormented. No doubt there.
She'd smile, in her graceful kind of way, and say no, she wasn't trying to be mean to him. And she'd soothe him, like a mother would a colicky baby and tie a fresh towel around his neck like a bib. Then she'd take a glass of whisky and slowly move it toward his shaky face. And in his frustration he'd often cry and whine, wanting to get the liquid inside him, the shakes making it almost impossible to get it between his lips. And she'd be lucky to get the contents of even a half a shot into his mouth, the rest dribbling down his face and onto the towel. He hated it. I always thought he'd do better with a funnel; it would have given her a greater margin of error.
Wiping his face softly with the towel she'd pick up the other whisky. The remnants of the first shot would be working on him by then, he'd still be trembling, though done whimpering, and maybe feeling good enough to complain softly about how slow she was, or scold her for spilling so much. The second glass was always a bit easier, a bit less spilled, and more into his mouth. Having those two shots he would be looking better. The alcoholic deep redness of ruptured capillaries of his nose and cheeks now offset by the flushing of his skin in celebration of the drink. It was as if his crab like body had been dumped into a tub of boiling water and risen refreshed.
Then she'd pour two glasses of beer, one for herself, which she never drank, and one for him. By this time he could usually grab the glass with an uncertain claw, though he could not really get it to his mouth. She'd hold his appendage steady and guide it toward his face. The glass would touch his wet loose lips with dribbles of yellow liquid slipping from the corners of his mouth and down his chin. Then she’d pat his chin with the other towel, wiping away his drooling. It went on like that until by the end of the second bottle when he could pretty much drink by himself. The giant land tortoise would shed its shell and he’d flower into a cranky old bastard who would complain loudly to the young woman, the bar girls, and anyone else who would give him an ear. He’d sit there in his corner of the bar, bitching and talking endlessly, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his sharp edged chatter disturbing the blissful quiet of the harbor morning.
I was no critic of a liquid lunch, or breakfast, for that matter, however he made a mockery of it. No class. Just had to pour the stuff down to get the engine running. And his wretchedness pervaded the bar, ruining even the brightest crispest of mornings. I'd usually leave before the scene played itself out; slipping the girl a smile and a nod as I fled.
About the Author
M.N. Muench served more than three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the pacific in the 1970’s and remained in country as an expatriate contract employee for an additional three years. He returned to Hawaii where he obtained a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics. He then founded and managed a successful software development firm. He is now retired and spends his time writing, ultra running, and volunteering and working at a local hospice. He can be contacted at mmuench01 at gmail.com
