Arts & Crafts

A Disappearing Virtual Fiction (Micro)Chapbook

by Thomas M. McDade

Crafty Raft

Alexis de Tocqueville never visited St Louis, but Charles Dickens showed up and so did I. These two heralded names spurt from the mouths of children who are with their parents on the 630-foot tram ride to the top of the Gateway Arch. No Tocqueville in my resume outside of a vague recall of him and democracy, but I did read Dickens’ Great Expectations in high school. I threw around the Pip name for a while, pip this, and pip that. Oh, I have toked. Kon-Tiki and Huckleberry Finn were the others I conquered. Mark Twain certainly spent some time here, no idea about Thor Heyerdahl. Maybe the watery pages of the second and third inspired me to join the Navy, but they didn’t prompt me to someday visit the piece of the Mississippi waterway here in St Louis. I drive a fuel oil truck. An elderly chatty customer inspired me. She regrets never visiting two of the seven Wonders of the U.S.: The Gateway Arch and Disneyworld. I had no interest in the rodent trap. I plan to gift Milicent Tuttle with a few postcards. The kids - he’s Drew, she’s Quinn - are focused on a marbled notebook page. I figure her age is ten and the boy, eight. Mickey and Minnie watches stand out on their small wrists. They are dressed casually except for his mauve bowtie. Her jumper is subdued madras. The cursive writing is small. Quinn has intricately braided honey-blonde hair. Drew is freckled. His brown locks have a few streaks of red. I wonder about the unisex names. They strike me as precocious the way they annunciate or maybe just well schooled. “The Arch is as high as it is wide,” Quinn says. Their dad, Bruce, has scary tattoos; the largest are three crows with human skull faces. On the back of each hand is a purple star, law and order man or a Cowboys fan? His arms are muscular, and his cheeks are puffy. His cap advertises “Titleist.” I bet he’s able to drive a golf ball into orbit.

“It doesn’t look so to me, Quinny,” he says.

“You are the victim of an optical illusion, trust me, Pop,” says Quinn.

“Shucks, I forgot to pack my tape measure,” kids Drew.

“It is 192.024 meters,” says Pop, with a half-baked Brit accent. He gets three “wows.” I almost join in. The cute, very pregnant wife, Audrey, is busy knitting. The yarns are a couple of shades of blue. Her raven hair is short. She wears a maternity outfit. It’s white with tiny pink tulips scattered all over it.

When we reach the top of Arch, and debark at the Observation Deck, the kids are of course tour guides. “Look, there’s a wedding,” shouts Quinn.

“Will they throw mice?” asks Drew.” Quinn taps on her watch crystal and gives him thumbs down then points out the Old Courthouse where slavery triumphed, she says, which brings Huck and Jim to mind. Audrey asks if the groom is blindfolded. Drew didn’t forget binoculars. He has a small pair. He reports no peepers are hidden. “He can see what he’s getting himself into,” he quips. Pictures of a wedding party are being snapped. The bridesmaids are matched in yellow and gray. The girl reminds her brother that his eyes were yellow when he had jaundice last year. She says hers are gray but she’s lying. They are a pale blue. Quinn tells Mom that they have decided the baby’s name that she suggested is just fine. I imagine the child being born in minutes and named Lewis after explorer Meriwether, or Louisa, hell, Lou fits them all to go with the same gender deal.

“Tommy is a winner,” adds the boy. Audrey looks quickly at me, swallows hard. She’s the one, green eyes. Glancing down I see her fingers are crossed.

We met outside the West Bend Bar, and it was about 9 months ago. I’d noticed her checking me out inside. She sat a couple of captain’s chairs away. I didn’t make a move due to the wedding ring. I figured she was waiting for her hubby, not me. Did these two kids have off-the-street fathers? If so, could this be filed under ultra-Democracy, Alexis?

Dickens would have them sidewalk-begging on a rainy night. She was waiting outside the Bend Bar when I left. “Take me to the river, the Ten Mile,” she said, eyes sparkling. The streetlight alerted me that the wedding ring had disappeared and cast a glitter on the jeweled doodad that held her dark black hair in a ponytail. What the hell, I had no commitments. Doreen, the woman I’d been with, won a motorcycle in an American Legion raffle and joined a female gang. I was left in the dust. I learned later that the dust and the bike had come from the maw of a fortune teller who went by Lady Luella, another Lou for Christ’s sake! I’d bought Doreen the winning ticket. I opened the passenger door of my eight-year-old Pontiac and brushed some McDonald’s fries off the passenger seat. My new friend slid in and wrapped herself in her arms. She was wearing a long black skirt, light pink blouse and a maroon shawl. She didn’t bother with the seat belt. I put on a golden oldies station. Del Shannon was singing “Runaway.” After we parked under some pines, I got out and held her door. I realized I’d left the headlights on. I turned to step away. “I’ll do it,” she said.

She took my hand, and we walked to the river. We sat on the cement bank. I heard an owl. I heard a bullfrog. The moon made eerie tree branch shadows in the slowly flowing water. She reached in her purse and pulled out a handful of Popsicle sticks. “Make something,” she said, counting out 15. I did the only thing I ever knew how to do with that timber. I weaved a raft. Were they from actual Popsicles, fudgsicles or ice cream bars or an arts and crafts store? I had one left that I called a paddle. She inspected my work. She took the paddle, inserted it to make a handle of it and demonstrated a fan.

“Cool me off,” she whispered. Was that request misplaced? On a patch of lumpy grass, she lay down, made minimal clothing adjustments and spread her arms as if she were crucified, her legs tucked and parted in a fleshy welcome. I entered Wonderland with crazy thoughts of Father, Son, Holy Ghost, spikes, and hell. Her breath smelled like vinegar. There was no lingering when the weirdness was done. She held the raft to her chest, hurried to the Pontiac and said nothing but an Act of Perfect Contrition and resumed her scrunched pose as far away from me as the door would allow. I remembered the prayer. If death were imminent and no confessor near, you could squeeze through the heavenly gates by saying it. I couldn’t recall if any purgatory time was involved. Before I dropped her off where I’d found her, she freed her hair. She broke down the raft/fan, bound them in the ponytail maker and returned them to her purse. Enough strands fell helter-skelter across her face to make her look like a woman possessed. She wasn’t through with the sticks. She pulled the kindling from her purse with a flourish. She tapped my shoulder with them as if knighting me. I recalled Twain’s conman royalty fake that Huck and Jim rescued.

She offered her hand to shake. I did; a quick squeeze. “Oh, what’s your name,” she asked.

“Tom.”

“Take care, Tommy,” she said.

“And you,” I asked.

“I’m anonymous. Remember me as the stick lady.”

The tram trip return is quiet. Drew, Quinn, and Bruce do some yawning. Audrey and I communicate via eyelid semaphore. Audrey bumps into me when we are exiting. I walk around for a while in a daze, lost in the hordes heading to the Cardinals game. I get lucid in front of a store devoted to left-handed people. Window posters read:

“De Tocqueville And Dickens Were Southpaws.”

“Rheumatism Forced Twain To Join Us.”

“Stan Musial Smote Homers Port Side.”

Righties Quinn and Drew probably knew all this. I wonder if Bruce is impotent or if they’d discovered serial killers in his bloodline. Were the tattoos the monsters manifesting themselves? Had he gotten a vasectomy but wanted a family, didn’t want to adopt? Would her tale of me be treasured between them along with the other two? Did her sperm hunting accounts act as an aphrodisiac for them? How did Audrey know I would be in St. Louis? Is she a friend of Milicent Tuttle? Did she know the biker’s seer Luella?

I pick up some postcards at Walgreen’s; luckily stamps are on sale, too. I stroll to a Luke’s Bar. There is a big Lewis & Clark print, a man poling a keelboat. I order a pitcher of native Bud, sit at a corner table and start my Milicent chore. I sign the first one Hyerdhal, then Twain, Alexis and Dickens; the rest Lewis and Clark. I chose a Suey King House for dinner, but order Chow Mein. I do not use chopsticks. Waiting for my meal, I ponder whether Tommy will be a serious know-all like Quinn or one with a comic side like Drew who might describe the Arch as a giant mouse house entry, the world its wall.

On the way to drop the mail Milicent’s mementos, I put my hands in my jacket pockets. In the starboard one, I discover the batch of fifteen that had served as an in-the-pinch-sword. Immersed in another fog, I rush to the Mighty Miss. A riverboat is preparing to depart. I sit in the sand, free the Popsicle gear. I rebuild the raft and almost launch it with a silly vision of retrieving it from the Ten Mile someday. I break it down then think better and reassemble. What harm can it do? The ponytail gizmo will be my St. Louis souvenir, a dashboard charm. Maybe next oil delivery at Milicent’s house, I’ll fake finding it in her driveway and gauge her reaction when I ask if it’s hers.

Maybe it’s Audrey’s religious antics that cause me to suddenly view the River as a holy water font. I dip my fingers and cross myself before crashing a figment of Moet bubbly on it. The good ship Crafty. I poorly mimic a ship’s horn signaling underway.

A passing foot cop gives me a $20 ticket for littering. Now that’s a pip!

Geroge Gale’s Name

Tall and slim George Gale retired at sixty-four after driving a forklift at the Roosevelt Cable Company for twenty-nine years. He has a full head of hair and a stubby mustache. He’d never taken a sick day. Some years he used half of his two-week vacation to work for a painter named Lassiter. George has a pretty good nest egg. Built, he’s whispered, from an enterprise on the partly sunny side of shady.

He fishes year-round, ice in Maine and deep-sea on a charter out of Newport. Lassiter used to stop at the Stampede Lounge after work. George enjoyed a Ballantine Ale or two and shot a couple of games of pool. Lassiter played 801 (part of his SSN) if it was Tuesday, daily numbers runner Mauricio’s weekly stop. The owner’s wife, Trish, called the runner Tuesday’s child: “Fair of Grace.” He’d throw her a kiss. Trish knew Mauricio was good for business. She hoped and prayed the vice squad would never pull a raid while he was there.

Was that weekday the second or the third? Either way it figured in George’s life because Hurricane Carol chose it to strike New England. A girl in his first-grade class named Jane wrangled a way to taunt him. “You ain’t a hurricane, Miss Gale.” The wind reference was bad enough. The female part was a kick in the nuts.

When George wasn’t off fishing on a Tuesday, he’d stop at the Stampede despite blowhards Carol and Jane. Lassiter’s 801 would pop to mind, but he always backed off thinking it might be unethical. George had but one racetrack experience under his belt, a bus trip to Rockingham Park, an Elk’s Club outing. He’d bet the number one post every race and never cashed a ticket. He decided to try his luck again with the numbers guy who’d take horse bets too while at his station, where a piece of the bar lifted to get in or out unless you wanted to duck under. George tried some reverse tinkering by chasing good fortune via his name. The filly was Windmill Magic. The payoff was fifty-bucks even. After that he checked entries in the Boston Record for horse handles that involved air currents. Luckily, he knew that Zephyr and Favonius were eligible from solving crossword puzzles or he would have missed a couple of beautiful pari-mutuels. He never looked at the sports page entries other than Tuesday. He’d heard a guy, praising Alcoholics Anonymous, misquote one of the sayings, “Keep it simple stupid,” before slugging down three shots of rum. George wasn’t stupid or a simpleton, but he kept it.

The success with his method had Mauricio scratching his curly head. He asked George what code to link with his bets. “I’ve been using “G” but if you want to change it to “Genius,” okay.” He didn’t waste a smile.

“Just my initials,” George suggested.

“They are?”

“’G.G.’ My last name is Gale.”

“Hey, that’s old slang for horses, ‘Gee-Gees’.”

“Maybe I’ll win two grand someday,” joked George.

“Have mercy! Anyone ever called you Windy, playing with your last name?” he asked. A snarl tried to whip across George’s face, but he fought it. “Not yet.”

“It wouldn’t fit you, being such a quiet chap.”

“George liked being a chap. He’d been an MP in Germany and was proud that he’d never clubbed the head of an unruly drunk. He regularly frequented a whorehouse and favored a British woman named Fern who once said to him, “You’re no common bloke. You are a King, George. He often dreamed about her and swore if he ever met a woman who looked like her, he’d marry in a Berlin minute. George was wed for fourteen months. Angie left him for a Greyhound bus driver, divorced through the mail, seventy-five bucks. The last he’d heard she was in Washington State. They owned an apple farm, two children.

George kept a small spiral pad in a pocket of the field jacket he loved. A tailor sewed two pen places. One was for a Scripto Mechanical Pencil. The second was for a slim pack of replenishment lead. George wrote down names of people and places he wanted to remember. There were movie and TV stars along with everyday folks. He knew it was a silly practice. If he ended up with the dementia his mother suffered for three years before she died the data would be hieroglyphics. He slated both the woman and her pre-school child who were at the Stampede on Tuesdays for pad inclusion. She gave the kid sips of her beer to wash down his potato chips. She smoked one Salem cigarette. When she finished, the boy played with the filter tip, stuck it in a nostril then ear before trying to flick it into a pool table pocket. George watched them in the bar mirror.

There were two booths: one was occupied by back editions of the Daily Racing Form. Well, one horse “historian” could scrunch in. The odd couple sat in the other nest. She spent a quarter for pool, per visit. Was she training the boy to be a pool hustler? George overheard Bobby, the afternoon bartender, name them Connie and Chad and add that she’d been granted visitation rights just once a week. That was the craziest arrangement George had ever heard. Mom and the kid hung around for a couple of hours. After pool, Chad sometimes occupied himself pushing buttons on the jukebox that hadn’t sung in years. He tapped her nose as if she were a song, and one spring day she sang “Yellow Rose of Texas,” and pretty damned good. Chad blew across her beer bottle top for his part. Her shoulder length hair was blonde. George recorded their names carefully in print and cursive.

Mauricio was the reason she picked the Stampede. She bet numbers for that day and through to the next visit. “Horoscope hints litter my path today. Save me Scorpio,” She’d cry walking over to him. George heard talk of a gambler who used Bible chapter and verse digits to summon luck.

Jack Malloy, who was collecting Workingman’s Comp, hollered “Lost and found department,” after he’d sunk a double bank side shot to win five bucks. What he’d discovered was a book Chad left behind that seemed to George too advanced for his age, Tom Sawyer. Roger Chapel the cabbie thumbed through it and told of many words and sentences underlined. He took charge of Tom and when he returned it, he told Connie that a Brown University professor who was in a rush left Shakespeare folios in his taxi’s backseat. “I got a twenty-dollar tip.”

“A shake of the hand is all I’m offering,” said Connie. Chad called him “a scholar and a gentleman” and had him autograph Twain’s book. Roger rated her paw squeeze as lethal.

George remembered a book report in Junior High. He’d read every word, didn’t fake off the dust jacket or the comic book. He’d found himself recalling Tom’s fence scam when laying on white paint that Lassiter had watered down until it was close to water. George caught an eight-pound catfish one winter in Maine, probably a shadow of the Mississippi kind. He’d visited Twain’s house in Hartford on an overnight class trip.

The boy owned a pocket computer. He came up with numbers he said were the amounts he hoped she’d win, once 238,855. She knew from a radio talk show that was the count of miles to the sun. He knew it too, got up and kissed her on the cheek. She’d cast an occasional eye on the TV close to the ceiling just past where George sat.

Chad would join her tackling quiz show questions. They were loud and didn’t miss many. She locked the two lunar trios into her betting string. She’d scored with the first one twice, but the second never came close. Chad could name all the planets and Latin names of bugs. Out of the blue, he’d recite the alphabet backwards. He was sickly thin. He kept his Celtics jacket zipped up even when temp was pushing ninety and the A/C was out of order. Connie shed her gray blouse until Bobby dragged a large floor fan out of the backroom that used to be a lounge where George danced with Angie to the music of the Ronnie Hall Quartet. Connie’s bra was skimpy. George concluded her breasts were as ideal as Lady Fern’s. A palm tree tattoo graced her shoulder. George watched the fan breeze play with her hair until she took some kind of clip from her purse to tie it up. George almost inched around to enjoy the beautiful view but stuck with the mirror. She slipped into her blouse but didn’t button up. Rick Walsh, the resident daredevil, (widely known for devouring a large jar of pickled onions on a bet) walked over to the oscillating fan and halted the blades with his hand without losing a drop of blood. Chad hid his eyes. George had seen Rick’s act before, but not at a fully occupied bar and all were yakking like they were collectively nicknamed Windy, refugees from Chicago. Chad’s nose was pug and freckled. His hair was on the way to match British Invasion Rockers. Connie sometimes took out a comb and parted it down the middle. He cooperated.

The day before she disappeared, she unfolded a sheet of paper and spent close to a half hour drawing with a thick carpenter pencil. The kid tapped on George’s back and presented him with a drawing of himself staring from the mirror. She’d tightened up his face and neck, darkened his hair and thickened his mustache. The other side of the sheet was a Belen’s Market sale flyer. The folds made him look like a finished child’s square piece puzzle. George said thanks and the boy saluted. George gingerly pocketed Connie’s art. Yes, it was art and her last Stampede Lounge act. Mother and child disappeared. No one knew where she went or, for that matter, where she came from. It was known she arrived and departed in a taxi. She didn’t have to call, the pickup was prearranged. Roger’s taxi connections were of no help. Wild speculations followed. She was a stripper, porn actress, spy, assassin, drug addict or pusher. She’d kidnapped the kid for God’s sake. George took comfort in having a link to her in his pocket. He had his own ideas and they were as nuts as the rest, a TV or movie honcho working on a new series or flick. Placing a bet on Savage Wind he quizzed Mauricio about Connie. “Gone with the Wind, GG,” he said.

“How much does she owe you?”

“Fifty.”

George took the five tens from the Windmill Magic win from an inside zippered pocket and handed them over. “You’re a good man, George Gale. You saved both her and me some trouble.” George walked back to his seat, feeling very old and again pictured himself in a nursing home, the drawing in hand and his image of her in his head in and out of cigarette smoke as if from a genie’s lamp, or fumes from dying embers in a haunted house, wind softly playing the chimney top, proving a picture is worth a thousand words.

Cabbie Roger Chapel was frequently unnerved by the ticking of his meter, as if it was a countdown to news his autograph had topped many signature dotted lines on bad checks or Mark Twain forbid, or a life insurance policy.

The Source and Eternity

I’m retired and have many minutes to murder. I often browse books at thrift shops mostly on Social Security check day, trying to find a novel that’s not too musty. I always check for first editions. Once I thought I had a winner, From Here to Eternity. An antiquarian bookman gave me 22 reasons why it was not. I didn’t trust the five bucks he offered. I’ll find another opinion. I’ve read it twice and no sneezes involved. One day I was amazed to find a yearbook, The Source, from my high school. I was 500 miles away. I graduated eleven years later. It was in pretty rough shape, some pages missing and odor of decay. Why hadn’t the volume landed in the dumpster? Maybe a sentimental worker kept it alive or maybe the owner was a P.T. Barnum Sucker Born fan. It wasn’t priced. I considered lifting it. I found a London Fog raincoat at St. Vincent de Paul’s with altered inside pockets. The Source would have fit in either one, but I was interrupted by the guy manning the register. I went to the counter. His fingernails were dirty. He had a bloody dab of toilet paper over a high cheek shaving cut. There were a couple of cigars in his green flannel shirt pocket.

“You in it,” he asked.

“No, but the same high school, I was eleven years later.”

“This is quite a coincidence. It belonged to my uncle who died last week. He was a sailor stationed on the USS Ramply (DD-810). One shore leave he visited a place that rhymes with a word gobs love to use for cussing. A shipmate lived there. He had a sizzling date with a gal who was in those pages. I say “was” because he cut her picture out to keep in his wallet. She’s buried with him. I overheard his play-by-play of that hay romp for my dad. He wagged a limp hand like folks do when awe struck.

“Pawtuxet,” I said to the wiseass. It was on the third page of the book.

“I was right,” he shouted. “I win and you win, ten bucks and it’s yours.”

I didn’t want to quibble with this jerk. I paid. I had to include all my change except for a penny to make the cut.

“Let me show you something,” he said before bagging my purchase. He opened the yearbook and pointed out a woman. I didn’t think any choice of his was worth reaching for my glasses, so she was blurred. “I bet you this one is tall,” he said.

“Volleyball” was one of her activities. I sure would have dug spiking her!” He laughed like he’d said something hilarious and quotable. If I didn’t have a bad hip and shoulder, I would have snagged one of his eyeballs with the corner of The Source. As I turned to leave, a woman walked in. She looked like she was about to deliver a baby at any moment. Her black coat was missing two buttons, and her brown hair was held in check by a couple of barrettes. Her eyes were burning with hate and her face was blotchy. Her arms were folded. She sneered at the wiseass as if he’d done it and ran. The register drawer flew open, five or six twenties. I hung around for five or so minutes. “Here you go, Maureen,” he said, handing the money to her. She pulled up a load of phlegm, unloaded on a row of cheap encyclopedias, shot a middle finger, and exited.

“I should have her arrested,” said the sleazy proprietor.

She was propped against a telephone pole when I left.

“Hey Pops, rub out that bastard and you can be the baby’s Godfather.” She let out a Looney laugh. Nice turn of phrase I said to myself.

That evening in my room, I sat in my squeaky recliner and sipped a Red Zinger that a friend told me was the most relaxing of the herbal teas, while reading my fine thrift store find, miraculously healthy sinuses the entire hour. I recognized a handful of people from the Federal Housing Project where I grew up but just one woman, Sheryl O’Connor. She lived directly across from me. I remembered her as tall, hair often in a ponytail. I don’t know if the ‘tall’ was just me being small, but I’ll peg her height at six feet for nostalgia’s sake. One Halloween, she answered the door when I was trick or treating. I wore a garrison hat from my father’s Army hitch. His knapsack and canteen completed my “costume.” I learned later in life that the troops called those lids “pisscutters.” Sheryl saluted me, dropped a Three Musketeers Bar in my sack then reached into her pocket and gave me a dime. I saluted. She broke out a smile. The activities under her photo marked her athletic: volleyball, swimming, and track. Holy shit, she was the scumbag’s choice. Sheryl was wearing a string of pearls, and her hair was beauty salon wavy. There’s not enough smile to reveal her teeth. Her lower lip is full.

Two newspaper scraps were included. The larger piece might have been crumpled and then put between pages on second thought to smooth out: a photo of a prizefighter, Mickey Burns. The second piece was a two-sentence marriage intention. He was listed as a bartender, she a typist. I recalled my father talking about him, strictly a four-round club fighter, prone to beatings, win or lose. A third insert was a Kodak snapshot of him riding a horse. Our Project was near a racetrack, likely a morning workout rider. He would have had to do miraculous dieting to get down from his fighting weight to jockey pounds.

I imagined her stopping by the bar to watch Friday night fights and the first Saturday in May, the Kentucky Derby with him. And she’s the only woman on the barroom softball team. He’s proud. At work her fingers are rhythmic as hoofbeats and she jabs out the names of all the boxers who pummeled her mate into a dive bar life. I was so happy with the sad way I rigged their lives that I called my thoughts a short story. I carefully wrote it out in block letters on the blank backs of Jehovah’s Witness tracts that someone often slipped under my door. I’d read some J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut stories over and over to get the hang of it.

The Local Senior Center offers writing workshops. I’ve been to a couple. Overeducated know-it-alls lead the pack. Free coffee and donuts were a benefit. I didn’t own the London Fog with roomy inside pockets. I’d have to be careful to keep jelly donuts from soiling the inside pocket knockoff trench.

There were a couple of reactions to my story before I whipped out Sheryl’s photo I’d slipped from the yearbook and into a plastic wallet sleeve. A woman wearing a black beret poised her hands in prayer. All I could figure was inspiration from the Witness tracts. A newcomer, a rangy long-necked fellow with thinning blond hair turned eternity pale, looked stunned. I probably did also as I read the tattoo display across his right-hand knuckles: P-O-P-S.

Photo of Thomas M. McDade

BIO: Thomas M. McDade is a 79 year old resident of Fredericksburg, VA, formerly CT and RI. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA and aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). His fiction has most recently appeared in The Paradox Literary Magazine.