Louis Shalako: Core Values, Chapter Twenty-Eight. Louis Shalako.

Argh.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The hot dog bandit strikes again…

“Argh.” Bru growled between tightly clenched teeth.

It was his turn to cook.

Bru was a good cook. He prepared healthy, balanced and nutritious meals that were attractive to the eye and not too hard on the palate. Only one problem. Lately, over the past seven or eight years, he was becoming as clumsy as an ox. Did Parkinson’s have some kind of genetic component? The experts said no, although there might be environmental factors.

“Whump. Clunk.”

Cans fell out of the cupboard and onto the counter top, and hence onto his foot, which hurt like hell. Several objects landed on the floor, which was never clean. The dust bunnies under the edge of the cupboard were suddenly revealed as he bent to pick it all up. Charles sometimes growled like a dog, when cooking commenced. Considering that tonight it was that terrible twosome, hot dogs and chili, it shouldn’t be all that complex.

“What’s going on in there?” His pop called from the living room, where Frew Cobbs was all wrought up about how the terrible wild fires in California impacted the illegal aliens getting driver’s licenses and port safety and recalls on dangerous Chinese-built Barbie dolls.

And how that impacted the illegal aliens getting driver’s licenses and Chinese-built unsafe foods, which weren’t picked by illegal immigrants in California, Texas, etc, and therefore was killing American ingenuity. Or so Bru interpreted Cobbs’ rather incoherent message. The man was a one-man band, with one instrument, one song, one note. He had one mode of timing, one key, one pitch. Cobbs was a simple, humble, uncomplicated man, speaking out about the plight of the poor and downtrodden capitalist-aristocrat-pigs of Wall Street.

“A bad business all around.” Cobbs was saying.

“Aw, for fuck’s sakes.” Brubaker howled from the kitchen.

“How many times? How many times?”

Then came the unwelcome creaking of Big Frank’s chair as he got up to go and investigate.

“What’s the problem, son?” He began to elucidate. “Do you want me to chop the onions?”

Wouldn’t want the boy to slice a finger off, eh?

“The hot dog bandit has struck again.” Bru, in a cold fury. “God-damn it all to hell.”

Big Frank was mystified, although Bru knew damned well he had told the old guy about it before. Several times. The man simply couldn’t remember. Leave it at that.

“What?” Frank asked in confusion. “The hot dog bandit?”

“I told you about the hot dog bandit.” I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this again.

He took a deep breath and calmed down.

He thoughtfully pushed a jar of pickles back a couple of inches from the edge of the counter. Big Frank’s belly was hovering just a little too close.

“There’s a guy, probably a white male, who pinches the hot dog buns, and the hamburger buns. Last week, when you said that I handled the bread a little roughly, that was him. This guy thinks he’s intelligent, but he’s not doin’ too good in life. He’s lashing out at a system that he perceives as unjust, due to an inequitable distribution of resources. The individual in question feels an inflated sense of his own importance, and can’t figure out why the world has ignored his brilliance. A marginalized person, maybe a handyman, the kind of guy who wears a ball cap in the shower.”

Frank Brubaker just stood there vacantly staring, with his mouth slightly open.

“This guy could inspire copycats. That’s why I’ve never written a letter to the editor about it. One day he’ll just escalate. Like maybe start taking the lid off the peanut butter jars, poking his finger down through the seal and scooping out a bloody great gob of peanut butter and then standing there, eating it right there in the aisle, stuff like that.”

His old man stared at him like he was mad.

“I’m telling you, this guy is sick.” Bru added in some desperation. “Psychologically, it rings true. The guy probably works on the delivery truck. He works at the grocery store, I don’t know. This happens every week, every fucking week. No one ever does nothing about it. Surely someone else has complained? Argh.”

Finally it all petered out. He just shrugged his shoulders, hanging his head in shame and violation.

“It could be a customer, but people don’t poke holes in the fuckin’ watermelons, right?”

His old man’s tongue was going in and out, in and out, in and out.

“Fuck.” Said Bru in sheer disgust. “There was this guy, years ago. He got a thing for the hydro company. He was going around with a hammer and banging nails into hydro poles. They put him away for a while.”

His father’s tongue went in and out, in and out, his breath went, hyou, hyou, hyou…

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Muttered Bru.

Big Frank began to clear his throat, a horrendous sound that went on for half a minute.

“But that won’t cause a short circuit or an electrical outage.” He pointed out.

“Try telling that to the cops. Or the loonie guy.”

His old man turned and went out without another word. Bru preferred the Vonder Bred Bunz from a local variety store. They were bigger, fresher, and denser bread, not all air inside. Since the old man’s diabetes had set in, they always ate brown bread. White bread was a kind of treat for Bru, and some ignorant little prick had just spoiled it.

“Ah, hell. It’s mind over matter. If I don’t mind, it don’t fuckin’ matter.” Fucking prick…

A bowl of hot chili and a trio of barbecued hot dogs soon restored his equilibrium, all washed down with diet, no-name ginger ale. A little watery, but you could get three two-litre bottles for two bucks when it was on sale. There was no danger of it becoming addictive.

***

"Chuck! Are you down there???"

“Tell me about the lost cabin.” Chuck began, with his pop sitting beside him.

They didn’t smoke upstairs for some reason. He once asked the old man about that.

“It saves on the re-painting.”

Unbelievable.

Frank Brubaker hadn’t painted anything inside that house for over thirty-five years.

His old man had quit smoking after his third heart attack and seemed resolved to bum them from Bru for the rest of his life. He chipped in with a ten-dollar bill often enough. Bru couldn’t complain about the money. It was the routine that drove one mad. You could set your watch by the old man coming home from his walk. Then he would stand at the top of the stairs, and call out as if into a great, vast void, a fucking cavern.

“Chuck. Are you down there?”

Where the fuck else would he be?

Chuck’s bedroom was their smoking room, another sore point.

“What lost cabin?” Asked Big Frank, puffing on a Player’s Smooth.

“Remember? You told me about a lost cabin up by the Scout camp, on the other side of the river.”

The piece of land in question fronted on Lake Kandechio to the north, the right bank of the Shashawanaga Cut on the west, and The Pines Provincial Park on the east. The Scout camp was behind it on the south-south west side. The river went winding along from east to west, issuing from The Pines and draining into The Cut, which was a by-pass, a flood-prevention canal intersecting the river.

“Ah. Some of the older scouts told us about it. We swam the river and went looking for it, but we never found it,” said Frank. “It was supposedly left there by a French fur trapper or someone. They said it was all big, rough-hewn old timbers, rotting into the ground.”

The old man went into a time-trip for a moment.

“Back then the scouts were all seventeen or eighteen years old. Not like the little puddle-jumpers they have now. There was a story in a book, about some guy who survived the Battle of the River Raisin. But who knows where he ended up.”

Chuck was familiar with the story. The battle was just south of Detroit. A group of widowed native women, their own men-folk killed in the battle, had nursed the wounded white soldier back to health. According to the author, they loaded him up on a travois and then carted him off into the wilderness. It was as likely an explanation as any other. A kind of shotgun wedding, he surmised.

“Vikings seem unlikely.” Noted the son.

“There’s some mail for you.” So advised Big Frank.

“What the hell’s all this?” Then recognition dawned.

He gingerly picked it up and took it into his little office area. They had either sent all his stuff back to him or…holy shit. A copy of a local quarterly, a cheque for fifty bucks and an invitation to their Christmas party.

It was the first story Brubaker had ever sold. The first money he had ever made from his writing since November 1984. What was the world coming to? Still, it felt pretty good. Another envelope, and this one was ominously from the local ODSP office. But it was for the Yule Glow, which meant it would be about the fourteenth year in a row so far for a food hamper.

Insofar as certain OPP officers and remarks about beer stores and canoeing went, man does not live by canned goods and dried-up, day-old bread alone.

At least that’s the way Chuck saw things.

Fuck you, you stupid cocksuckers…

“This is no social crisis…just another tricky day for you.” So sang the man on the radio.