What if a person had never worked in their life? Grandma Shalako's job
was the house, the kitchen, the bedding, the laundry.
Cleaning the bathroom.
She
raised eight squalling kids in a three-bedroom house, and she was a very good
Catholic.
When her youngest, my dad, Big Frank came along she was in her
forties.
He was her little boy, which sort of grated on him. When he told her he
was getting married, she threw her head back and laughed. She thought he must
be joking. He was still flying model airplanes, and going off to Scout
Jamborees, perhaps that was it.
At some point her job was looking after my Uncle Ed, who had taken over
the business when grandpa passed away. This is almost funny. Turning 65, one
day there was a cheque in the mail from the Canada Pension folks. She was afraid
of it. It had to be explained to her. Someone helped her open a bank account,
probably Ed. When she died, every freaking penny of it was still in the bank.
She'd never had a cent of her own, unless she’d won it at cards down at the
Masonic Lodge. I believe she enjoyed taking money off of all the nice Protestant
ladies. Basically, Ed gave her household money and wrote all the checks and
stuff like that.
Born about 1898, Eugenie had a grade six education if that. Coming from
the Hull, Quebec area, her English was very good, yet she still said “Please
pass the pommes de terres,” when she
wanted the mashed potatoes. Hull is just across the river from Ottawa, and even
today, there is still a lot of intercourse between the two cities. The Great Depression
put a lot of people out of work and maybe Sarnia just had better prospects.
I don’t think they were running from the law or anything like that.
Debt, maybe—but not the law.
Taking over the family business at 17 years of age, Uncle Ed had, at
best, a grade nine or ten education. With eight children, one would imagine Eugenie
liked sex—pretty much everybody does, and in the end, she might have gotten a
little tired of it. When grandma died, each of her eight children got a cheque
from the estate for $700.00 or so, and Ed inherited the house and the business.
We can put that down to sweat equity—he’d built the business up to an extent, kept
it going and paid for the house and all other expenses for many years.
Yeah, they’d been paying $25.00 a month in rent for the longest time, so
Ed made the owner an offer and bought the place for three or four grand, which
sounds ludicrous these days, but those were very different times.
Nowadays, the two-income family has become the norm, perhaps even a
necessity. There have always been single parents, in the Depression they
scrabbled for their living as best they could. In a time where women
particularly, didn’t get much higher education, it was a challenge. Also, in
the Depression, there weren’t enough jobs to go around to begin with, and this
probably went double for unskilled women.
Good for delivering tombstones...
My grandfather sold and installed monuments. Tombstones, ladies and
gentlemen, using planks, rollers and brute labour to get them into the back
seat area of a 1928 Hudson. The compressor for sandblasting was a screw-in
fitting which utilized an old Model-T Ford engine, which would somehow keep
running with one cylinder providing pressure for the sandblasting, used to cut
names and dates into the granite slabs. With portability, the date of decease
of a second spouse for example, could be done in situ, that is to say right in the cemetery after the stone had
been erected.
It must have been a wonderful thing, for Uncle Ed to finally get an
actual pickup truck, and a set of chain-falls for the garage where the work was
done. For a young kid, always hungry for money, it was something of a thrill,
to work on a Saturday, putting up a tombstone in a Lambton cemetery, and
earning a whopping five dollars for the trouble.
Ed used to sing, as he drove along.
“Every little
breeze, seems to whisper Louise, the birds and the bees, seem to whisper
Louise—”
The sort of thing you never forget. If you have to have a crazy Uncle,
there’s nice crazy, and then there
are other kinds. Ed was a nice kind of crazy.
There is a kind of heritage there.
Our family has a reputation for hard work and fine Italian craftsmanship—which is pretty good considering we’re just a bunch of Frenchmen, une bande de foutus français.
The
past really is a foreign country, but at least I understand the language.
Female sexual behaviour. Why I hated one teacher more
than any other has always been a good question. In later years, I liked my high
school teachers, at least to some degree. I might have even admired my college
instructors.
We weren’t kids anymore. We were adults, certainly in
college we were there because we wanted to be, and not because someone had
dragged us to school by the ear or the collar or whatever.
It is also true that I quit school at about fifteen
and a half years old, and there was nothing, nothing, this side of heaven or
hell, that could ever make me go back…
We have to understand the time and the place. The
Catholic school board had to follow provincial directives. They brought in
proficiency testing for mathematics and English skills. Somehow it turned out
that I was reading at a first-year university level, which is not bad for a
grade six student. Truth was, that was the top of the scale. It did not go any
higher. The people who designed such tests never even considered the
possibility that even a grade eight kid might achieve such scores, and the math
skills were all right as well—this is the benefit of actually reading the book,
and of course doing the homework, no matter how much kids hate homework.
So, what they did, was to take a handful of Grade Six
and Seven students, and scatter us among a couple of Grade Eight classes for
math and English. And this, of course, is where the bullies enter the picture.
To be called a ‘browner’, or ‘teacher’s pet’, and to be regularly assaulted, by
small groups of males, whether in the school yard or on the way to and from
school, may in some small way help in explaining my sort of difficult attitude
towards certain teachers. All of whom (the bullies, I mean), were bigger, stronger, had more
experience, and operated in groups because a bully is just a coward that is
bigger than you—just one more important lesson on the journey that is life. And they do like an audience, don't they.
While I do owe some debt of gratitude to my
tormentors, who if nothing else taught me not only to fight, or how to fight,
but the value of doing so. Because not to fight was to be destroyed in some
way. Not to fight was to join them, and to become their punching bag, and to
never have a day’s peace for the rest of your life.
When four of the worst offenders borrowed daddy’s car
one night, when one of their older brothers bought them some beer, when some
other friendly neighbourhood character sold them a bag of grass and a few hits
of acid, when the four of them died in an almost predictable flaming car wreck,
I will admit that I thought it served them right.
As for the teacher, that may be another story. The
school board, in their usual heavy-handed but also totally incompetent fashion,
had little choice but to provide some rudiments of ‘sex education’, mandated by the province, and the results were also pretty predictable.
I once brought Miss Hillman, our grade seven teacher,
to tears with a question I asked in front of the class. In fact, she ran crying
from the room, down the hall to the principal’s office, and oddly enough, she
went on to marry our Principal, Mr. G. Boucher. So, in some sense I was the one
that brought them together.
It was a good question, too.
I asked what business a 47 year-old virgin, never
married and presumably a good Catholic, had in teaching sex education.
"What are your qualifactions."
Not very tactful, one must admit. I had also asked
teacher Joe Abela, about sexual intercourse.
“Sir. There is some suggestion that the sexual act can
be pleasurable. Any truth to these rumours, sir.”
“Ah, yes, Louis. Ah, yes, I think I can safely say,
that there is some pleasure involved.”
Of course sex education was a joke—a Catholic school
board was surely going to skip over contraception, and masturbation, and
abortion, and any number of things. Of course I’d read the book—The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris, where
the reader can find a fairly clinical description of the act of sexual
intercourse, at least among primates. I had read The Happy Hooker,
by Xaviera Hollander, for fuck’s sakes, and of course Dr. David Ruben’s, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about
Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask. This was a big best-seller of the time, and of course my
mother was an inveterate bookworm, and my old man probably read them too.
Why not? I sure did.
When your teacher tells you, “The penis is placed in
the vagina and sperm is released,” you aren’t telling kids anything they don’t
already know. No, we were supposed to be innocents. All you had to do, was to
listen to the talk in the schoolyard, and you would have known better than
that, ladies and gentlemen…
You’re just making fools of yourselves at that point,
and I have always despised stupidity. I despise anyone who wastes my time,
ladies and gentlemen. That one is deeply ingrained in my nature, whatever the
hell that means.
But. It was the sort of thing you really can’t say to
your teacher, or even your parents, for that matter.
This little bit of background may go some way in
explaining what happened next…
It’s not as bad as you may be thinking, in fact, it is
worse.
Funny thing is, I have never been ashamed of it.
I ain’t all that proud of it, either, but it does kind
of make for a good little story.
***
Down in the basement, in the back of my father’s
workshop, there was a small chest of drawers, and in that chest there was a
book.
A small, hardcover book, with a fabric spine and the
rest of it was covered in thin zinc. On the cover, it said, Female Sexual
Behaviour. Opening the book, the inside was cut out—just like in a spy movie.
The outer rim of the pages were glued together. Inside this hollow cavity was a
little clip for a battery. There was a capacitor and an induction coil,
basically just wire wrapped around a piece of metal, which was there more to
hold the shape as much as anything. Attached was a thin strip of spring steel,
with a magnet on one end. On the inside of the front cover was a small steel
plate. When the book was closed, the magnet was stuck to the plate, and the
circuit was dead. When you opened the book, the magnet lifted up, and up, until
the tension on the spring overcame the attraction of the magnet. Fine wires led
from the battery, one to a metal frame or plate glued onto the back cover of
the book. The other wire led to that stainless-steel clip and magnet thing.
When it released, the circuit was closed, and that
spring-loaded contact hit a plate, over and over and over again until some sort
of equilibrium was restored and it would lift off again of its own accord.
The result was maybe ten thousand volts, but also only
about one ten thousandth of an amp, when coursing up through your fingertips,
your hands, all the way up to the shoulders.
As one can imagine, once I’d found a battery and put
it in there, the first thing I did was to open the book and try that thing out…
The only way I can describe the sensation is that it
is a lot like a whole bunch of sledgehammers pounding right up through both
arms, from the inside out if that makes any sense.
And like any kid, of course I had very little choice
but to try that out on my brother, my sister, all of my friends, their brothers
and sisters…everyone who ever opened the book screamed and threw it, and one
learns to duck, to run, but holy crap. That book worked very well.
It strikes me that somebody gave my old man that book.
Some of his friends chipped in and bought it for him. A stag party, a bunch of
young men drinking beer, swapping crude jokes and slapping him on the shoulder.
Oh, and presenting him with that book, after a short
and suitable speech by whoever was going to be the best man at the wedding—and
there’s that rather provocative title, and it’s only natural that a young
fellow looking marriage square in the eye, would have little option but to open
that book and have a look—right.
That’s the way I have it figured, it’s as good an
explanation as any.
***
As for my own little revenge, I have to admit it was
pretty fucking diabolical, ladies and gentlemen.
You see, it went a little something like this…
I took the book to school one day, and resisted the
temptation to try that out on a couple of buddies. No. I had bigger fish to
fry.
It was afternoon, Miss Hillman was up at the front of
the room, blathering on about some fucking shit book. Phoebe was the story of an underage girl, having premarital sex,
andwho got pregnant, and of course the
teacher is reading this aloud, all part of our anti-sexual indoctrination which
passed for sex education in the Catholic system.
I took out the book, head down, and I pretended to
read. Looking up and around, I caught the eye of the guy to my left. I showed
him the title and of course he was interested. Maybe even impressed. I let the
top of the book show over the top of my desk once or twice, still pretending to
read in class—which I was known for. What do you expect, when school is so
unbelievably boring, possibly even irrelevant ladies and gentlemen.
I turned the other way, and showed the title to a girl
in the row to the right.
Right on cue, she giggled and put her hand over her
mouth. Turning back, probably with a sly grin, a quick glance up at the
teacher, I pretended to read some more.
When the bell rang for afternoon recess, I armed that
fucking thing with a nice, fresh battery—I slipped that into the desk, dropped
the top closed, and went outside with the rest of the class.
***
"All right, people. Chapter Nine in the math book--and no bullshit."
After recess, we all come trooping back into the
classroom. The lid of my desk is flipped up. Pens, pencils, textbooks and
exercise books are scattered all around my desk. And there’s that fucking book,
Female Sexual Behaviour, it was open, laying face-down on the floor. I scooped
all that shit back up, put it away. I sat down, all prepared to face whatever
shit was about the hit the fan.
Nothing happened.
After a few minutes, Mr. Burger, a grade six teacher
from down the hall, poked his nose in the door, taking a quick and sweeping
glance across all of us. I wouldn’t say he paid any particular attention to me,
but to do that to me, would be to acknowledge me. I was probably the one guy he didn't look at.
He told us to do
whatever—exercises for chapter nine of the math book or whatever.
“I’m leaving the door open, I’m just down the hall,
and you will be quiet.” He gave us his trade-marked glare and stalked off down
the hall.
I suppose we all kind of looked at each other—and the
clock.
For the most part, people just shrugged, not having
the slightest clue of what was going on, and with a collective sigh, I reckon
we all opened up the math book and had a bash at Chapter Nine
It was no more than a few days later, a Thursday
night. My mother was going out, she was in the bathroom, where as you know,
women spend an inordinate amount of time, and when they come out the place
smells like hair spray, soap, steam in the air, whatever.
Anyhow, there was a knock at the door and I went to
answer it.
To my shock, it was Miss Hillman.
She and my mother were going roller skating. I had no
choice but to let her in, and to tell my mother that she was there, sitting, in
fact, in the armchair in front of the television set.
We didn’t have much to say to one another. I headed
for the bedroom and whatever book I was reading, but a message had been
sent—and received.
What is really bizarre, is that I never heard another
word about it.
One can only speculate as to what they found to talk
about, on their ladies night out…
They had no idea of what to do about me, in fact,
neither of my parents ever mentioned it.
None of my teachers, the principal, no one said one
fucking word about it.
Escape and evasion. People run from the police all the
time. Sometimes they’re on foot, sometimes in a vehicle. I’ve known guys who
made life so hot for themselves in their own home town, in that they have
literally pulled up roots or tent-pegs and moved to another town. Some of them
went out west; where inevitably, almost invariably, they just kept on keeping
on.
This would have predictable results, and in fact, in
order to escape the immediate consequences in British Columbia, for example,
they hopped a bus or even hitch-hiked back home, where at least they had
friends and family. They could rely on a hot meal and a bed for the night…two
or three years have gone by, and for the most part, the cops have forgotten all
about them—however temporary a state of affairs that might be.
However futile it must turn out to be.
And it was only a matter of time before they got
picked up again. Even then, old charges might simply be ignored. The Crown
would have a much better chance of a conviction for something you had just done
the day before—that’s especially true if they caught you with dope, stolen
property, somebody else’s ID or wallet or purse or bank card, whatever…witnesses,
documents, material evidence. Security footage of you wheeling a fridge or
something out of a local department store, with the added touch of stealing one
of their heavy cargo carts as well.
It wasn’t always criminal stuff, although one wonders
why any driver, any motorcycle rider would try and get away from a simple
traffic stop. One must assume drugs, alcohol, perhaps an outstanding warrant.
Perhaps the license is out of date, perhaps they don’t have insurance. No
insurance, that’s a $5,000.00 fine here in Ontario.
Maybe they’re just crazy, in fact some of them
undoubtedly are.
***
One of my buddies and I were just kids, all of sixteen
years old. I had finally gotten my little Austin Mini on the road. I did have a
proper license. I had a proper license plate and I had six months of insurance,
which back then, for a new driver, was about $680.00 for six months. How in the
hell I scraped that much up back then is a good question, but I did have a job,
either at the grain elevators, or mopping floors in a downtown bar at the time.
We were out for a cruise, talking mostly about cars,
girls and cars. More girls…cars, motorbikes. Girls.
I don’t even recall why, or what it was about,
probably chirping the tires or speeding, or going around a corner too fast—but
the cops were on to us. We got into the side streets, bounded by East Street,
Exmouth Street, Indian Road and London Road. It’s a grid, fairly irregular, and
we were zig-zagging. We were on Oxford Street, and we literally saw a cop car
zooming down East Street as we crossed Lincoln Park…it was a dark and overcast
night, late autumn or early winter.
With a 1,000-cc engine and all of 38 horsepower, I
knew I couldn’t exactly outrun them. They were closing in. I kept on going
south, pulling up to a stop sign at the corner of Oxford Street and London
Road.
And it struck me—inspiration struck, ladies and
gentlemen. What I did, was to drive across London Road. I went up (or down),
someone’s driveway. Popping it into second gear, snapping off the headlights,
and I just kept going. The cop must have gone through the intersection, east,
west or south, right. This house had no garage. There were trees and stuff, but
just enough light spilling from the house and the parks department workshop off
to our right about forty metres. This was home territory, after all, and I knew
there was no fence along the back of the yard, either. My biggest worry was
hitting someone out walking the dog—which demonstrates just how reckless I was.
I was probably doing ten, twelve miles per hour, but even so. Even so. So now,
I’m out onto the grass of Germain Park. The little gravel trails of the
botanical gardens and the lights on the edges of the park were the only sources
of illumination. I could at least pick out a few things in the gloom, nowadays,
there’s quite the little forest along in there.
I took the car past the tennis courts…across a strip
of grassy ground and right into the old man’s backyard. My buddy (who shall
remain nameless), hopped out, opened the garage door, and cranking the steering
wheel hard, I pulled into the garage. My buddy closed the door and I shut her down.
We were standing inside the dark interior of the
garage, lights out, all is quiet, the two of us looking out the little
rectangular garage windows…sure enough, right about then a cop car goes zooming
down Bright Street, from west to east, (right to left, from our vantage point).
Opening up the side door, we went to the corner of the house, just in time to
see brake lights flash, and the cop car turned hard right onto Sycamore Street.
I imagine they probably were looking for us. What were
they after? Probably a speeding ticket, improper turn…signal lamp burnt out? We
were not drinking, we were not smoking dope. We weren’t thieves and we weren’t
wanted for anything.
We were just dumb, young, and immature, when you think
about it.
Roaring down East Street...
***
This story is almost funny. It was, strangely enough,
one of those little anecdotes, probably true, where so many years ago, I
originally thought of writing about criminals. It wasn’t going to be about
great bank or train robberies, or a daring art heist, or taking down a casino
or an armored car.
A buddy, whom I can’t even think of a suitable fake
name for, was walking down a street, not exactly downtown, but a few blocks
away. Call it the central city area. A police cruiser drives past him, head-on
sort of thing. A quick glance over the shoulder, and he knows the cop-car has
pulled into a driveway—and now it’s backing out again. And poor old Buddy
Two-Shoes has some paper on him. He’s got a warrant, he’s missed his court
date, he’s in violation of bail or parole, whatever. The conditions of release,
right.
The cop has recognized him on sight, and why
not—they’d been arresting him for years already. All kinds of stuff, over the
years.
He breaks into a run, the cop car has no problem
whatsoever of keeping up with him. The cop was probably on the radio—with one
officer in the cruiser, to stop, park, get out and run is not your best option.
Let the guy run himself out…or let him go to ground
and then just circle with a bit of help from other officers.
And Two-Shoes knows he can’t run forever, he’s looking
from side to side. The blocks are small, and so are the odds, but he’s looking
for a fence he can hop, bounding away like a rabbit through the backyards. It’s
a long shot, but he knows he’s going away for a while, for sure, and he just
doesn’t care. I have no idea as to whether he may have had some incriminating
evidence of anything in particular in his possession. He really didn’t need it,
did he—
And his eyes light up—he has it.
It’s like a miracle.
He sees a house, he knows the people. He turns hard
left, dashes across right in front of the cop car, (who slams on the brakes,
desperately trying not to kill the fucking suspect), up the steps, right into
the front door. He’s like a reindeer, dashing through the snow, and he dashes
right on out again through the back door. And this time, at least for a while,
he’s made his escape.
The cop, right on his heels, in clear pursuit of a
suspect, has also dashed up those front steps and into that front door. Only
difference, on his way through—surely he must have at least glanced into the
kitchen, right? He’s looking for his suspect. He sees some other young man he
knows.
That other guy is at the kitchen table, he’s got
himself a set of triple-beam scales, and he’s cutting up a quarter pound of Mexican
or something into ounces, half-bags and quarters, with all those little
sandwich baggies of pot, all lined up in a row on the kitchen table.
And if the cops can’t take the one, they’re not shy
about taking the other.
It also struck me, in terms of inspiration for this
book, is that it was pretty small-time stuff. It was like The Trailer Park
Boys. I figured out, this one time, The Trailer Park Boys was essentially not
any form of reality. It was satire. It was parody. More than anything, it was
the Three Stooges, on dope, ladies and gentlemen.
It was tragicomedy.
***
Just a couple more little quickies here, this chapter
is already long enough.
McNuggets was pounding on my back door one morning,
pretty early. Unlocking the door, he was all out of breath. He’d run all the
way across Germain Park. Pushing past me into my so-called basement apartment,
he told me the cops were after him, but he didn’t think they were right on his
heels. I locked it up right quick on hearing that.
Studying the park out of the bathroom window, looking
out the kitchen window and the front window, bedroom windows on the east side, all
that sort of thing, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
And, in a short time, we were back downstairs, rolling
up a joint, where he told me the story.
It seems he’d gone to his girlfriend’s place. Only
problem, he was under some sort of court order, a peace bond, whatever. Someone
who must have known all about it must have seen him, and of course the cops
turn up in no time at all. The next bit is a little fuzzy on the details, but
it was a townhouse complex. Somehow he evaded the cop at the front door and the
cop at the back door. Somehow, he got over a six-foot chain-link wire fence, and
down into the ditch. Get this. It was the ditch along the 402 Highway, and even
then there were the noise barriers all along that stretch. There are only so
many ways to get out of there.
The cops were all over the place, and there he was,
laying in the ditch, vehicles smashing by at a hundred-plus kilometres per hour.
He’s wet, cold, miserable, mosquitos gnawing at him. And of course he knows
he’s going in the bucket if he gets caught. From that area, once the heat died
down a little bit—and it would have taken at least some time—he made his way
along the off-ramp, across a major street, in through the subdivision, and by
this time it is literally daylight. He runs across the park and finds his way
to my back door.
He hung around for most of the day. My old man came
home from work, in his usual style, and hopped in the shower. I brought the car
up to the back door. McNuggets got in the wheel-well of the passenger side. I
think I put a blanket over him, nothing suspicious about that, right, and I
took him to a place in the north end, a nice neighbourhood. He couldn’t go
home. Couldn’t go back to the lady friend’s place. Couldn’t stay at my place. He
made a few calls, but no one was picking up. Ah, but his brother-in-law and
sister had a different last name. Blood is thicker than water, or so they say. The
cops aren’t going to get too many clues from the phone-book, right. Also, a few
days later, he could call the lady.
Is the car still there. That would be good to know. This
was about the time he moved to another town—after a quick stop at the folk’s
place to grab a toothbrush and a razor and a few little things. I reckon he’d
park a couple of blocks away and hoof it, late at night, for that one last
visit home for quite a while.
***
Fuck, how dumb does it get around here, anyways...
This last one is a dumb one. Buddy’s brother, let’s
call him Zoom. The family lived just up the street. I grew up with them guys. One
day, he’s home, mommy and daddy are working of course. What with being a
habitual thief, and a real creep besides, Zoom steps out the back gate and
grabs himself a few free tomatoes from the community garden right there beside
the fire hall. Somebody, possibly even one of the firemen themselves, phones it
in. Maybe they knew him from somewhere…maybe they knew all about him. Maybe
even a little too much about him.
Maybe someone had boosted a really nice car stereo,
right out of the back parking lot…and in broad daylight, too.
Anyhow, at least one cop car comes rolling on in, and
Zoom makes a fucking run for it.
Somehow, Zoom ends up in my garage. Our garage. My old
man’s garage. Ten houses or so up the street.
My old man somehow saw him run in through the
backyard, into the garage, closing the door as quick as a wink and then,
basically, just keeping quiet. The old man watched out the bathroom window,
sure enough, cops on foot, going along, looking for their tomato thief…
My old man told me all about it, later on.
According to him, after a while, he went out, opened
up the door, and asked Zoom how he was doing.
“I’m doing very well, Mr. Shalako,” Zoom says.
My old man, he says, ‘oh, that’s good to hear’—and
then he closed the door again and left Zoom in there for a while.
My old man said he still had the bag of tomatoes.
As for a nice, toasted tomato sandwich, that would
have to wait.
I have to admit, my old man was pretty cool sometimes.
All the names in this story have been changed, to
protect the guilty as well as the innocent. These are real people, many of whom
have been apprehended, for one thing or another, and, over the course of time, been charged, convicted,
sentenced and incarcerated, presumably paying some penalty for their crimes. In
those cases, they have paid their debt to society, which of course leaves out
the fact that they really only got popped for about one in a thousand of their
petty little crimes—and some not so petty.
People also have the right to forget, and to be
forgotten. We also have the right to forgive, to forget, and maybe move forward
and make something more positive out of the shambles of our lives. The statute
of limitations has run out long ago, and some of us, at least, finally did grow
up.
So much for the disclaimer.
***
McNuggets was a thief, a con-man, and a fraud artist.
Like many a fraud, he was personable enough. Good looks, a good brain, a bit of
charm was very useful in his line of work.
Poor old McNuggets was on the prowl one day, whether
on foot or on a bicycle is unknown. One of his little specialties was theft
from automobiles. Back in the day, not every vehicle had an onboard security
system. A bent coat hanger was enough to enter most locked vehicles. Some of
these guys had plenty of practice. In the occasional case, where a vehicle had
an alarm system, when the blaring horn went off, thieves either grabbed what
they could—what they could see, or they would just take off at a dead run, or,
as often as not, grab the bike and try and cover as much ground as possible. A
wallet sitting in the console, or a woman who leaves her purse in the car while
she just ran into the store for a minute, were bread and butter to these guys.
On this particular occasion, McNuggets found a set of keys
laying on the ground, behind a commercial building. Someone had dropped their
keys. A fairly bright guy, McNuggets stopped and picked them up. Two keys were
from a Ford automobile, there were house and other keys on there as well. With
a bit of traffic coming and going, McNuggets pocketed the keys and kept going. Back
then, he would have been thinking about breaking and entering as much as
anything else. The problem with the house would be to find out where it was.
The problem with a business, would be to unlock and then kill the alarm within
a very short time-frame. I’m sure he would have thought all of that. Yes,
McNuggets had a very good, if slightly-criminal, brain.
He came back later, possibly even days later. It was
dark this time, not broad daylight.
And there it sat.
This was a medium blue, Ford Taurus station wagon, off
the street, behind the building, and it was locked. He could see boxes in the
back of the vehicle, which had the rear seat folded flat. Script on the sides
of the boxes said Filter Queen and McNuggets had hit the jackpot; if only he
had a plan. One, very expensive vacuum-cleaner would be a pretty good score.
Sure enough, one key fit the lock. If he had a bike, he might have just
abandoned it, (it would likely be a stolen bike anyways), but he was most likely on foot—he had a set of car keys after
all.
He wasn’t really known as a car thief, and one wonders
if he even had any contacts for the disposal of such a vehicle, probably not in
my opinion. He would have gone straight there. Otherwise, one has to hide a
stolen car, and you really can’t do that at your folk’s house. So, knowing the
salesman or manager must be in the building, he hops in, fires her up and gets
the machine out of there with a minimum of fuss and bother.
His problems were not over. He only has so much time.
He grabs one vacuum cleaner, an upright or something fairly light and portable,
parking on a side-street, half a block or more away, and he sells it to a buddy
for a hundred bucks and a gram of coke. Or whatever. When he comes out, there’s
no one around and the car is still sitting there. And in a move of sheer,
fucking brilliance, he takes it to the Bluewater Health parking lot. He pulls
up to the drop-bar, pushes the button, and gets a little ticket to put on the
dashboard of the vehicle. The bar raises, and he drives on in. He locks her up,
takes the keys and walks away.
Once he has a little time to think about it, he gets
spooked—he’s done time before, and this is grand theft auto. And he never goes
back. What he did do, which is typical for these guys, was to tell someone
about it. That’s a funny thing about cocaine—a couple little tokes on the crack
pipe and you’re paranoid as all fucking hell.
***
So, this is where I come in. Swimmy, calls me up. We
hung out back then. Swimmy had a good source of red and black Lebanese hash. We
went back years.
And he had this idea. What he did not have was a car.
You can probably see where this is going. All I had to do was to pick him up
and drive him. Let him out, where he is just one of many people, coming and going
from the hospital. Right during visiting hours, right? He opens the Ford with a
coat hanger, grabs a vacuum, locks her up again, chucks it into the trunk, very
large and capacious, of my old man’s Volvo. Off we go to sell the vacuum to his
brother-in-law or somebody. Swimmy had clearly been doing a bit of fast-talking
of his own. With free parking for two hours, it didn’t cost me a cent to go in,
park, wait three minutes. You could unlock the trunk but leave it closed.
Swimmy was quick, I will give him that. Back in a jiffy. I take a quick look and head for the
exit. No one gave us a second glance, but then everyone has their own problems.
Bad as that sounds, even stupid, really, we actually went
back two or three times. There were a hell of a lot of vacuum cleaners in that
Taurus. My mother had one of the floor type models, (some of those guys had
some high-pressure sales tactics), and while it had a lifetime warranty, the
price of a Filter Queen was astronomical.
One day the Taurus was gone, and the party was over.
And that, was the great Filter Queen caper of
somewhere in the late eighties or early nineties.
***
One of the issues with smoking pot back then, was that
you had to go to a criminal to get it. Some of those guys worked harder at not
working than they ever did at working at anything useful, or anything that
might represent something with a future. Some of them were real wheelers and
dealers.
McNuggets, oddly enough, had a trade, one which he’d
learned in jail. It took some time to learn that you simply cannot maintain a
household on the proceeds of petty crime. Some of them guys never learned it,
and some of them are either dead, missing, or doing hard time for something
somewhere. They didn't know when to quit. They just kept getting in, deeper and deeper...
That’s their problem, as far as I am concerned.
Interestingly, more than one of them eventually realized
that you could just leave the $28.97 in cash in a wallet or purse. Why not take
an exclusive credit card, American Express, Diner’s Club or something, one the
victim did not use every day? And what about this tiny slip of paper, with four
digits written on it, and gee, I wonder if that isn’t the PIN number for this
here debit card. You don’t have to go into the bank, just find a bank machine
and give it a try. With the cash still there, folks might not know they’d been
had for days—and by then, it would be too late.
...just a bug on the wall, sometimes...
This is when guys like McNuggets learned to dress well
but casual, shave, be polite, say yes, sir, no, sir, and thank you, Ma’am. This
is when they learned to lease a car with one stolen credit card and then head
two or three hundred kilometres up the road and do some real shopping with a
handful, literally a handful, of stolen credit cards under different names.
Back then you had to sign a slip. Human nature being what it is, retail staff
virtually never looked at the signature. A sale is a sale, as the salesmen say.
It was no skin off their nose.
What with food, booze, cocaine, pot, anything they
wanted, really, I reckon McNuggets and one or two others (there is nothing like
teamwork, eh), burned through several hundred thousand dollars in a year. Sheer
madness, when you realize all the money that went through their hands and yet
they never had a fucking thing to show for it. It was a little too easy come,
and a little too easy, go. They’d make the most amazing score, two days later,
they didn’t have a pot to piss in.
And it was only a matter of time, before there came
the knock at the door and sure enough, they’re looking at another bit of time
in the county bucket, or a provincial or federal prison.
To be a bug on the wall, and to just listen to the
conversation was interesting as all hell, possibly even educational.
That’s not to say that I have an excuse, because I
don’t. I was just young, ladies and gentlemen. And maybe just a little bit
desperate.
For someone who wanted to write, even back then, it
really was fascinating.
Stolen image, which is par for the course around here...
Louis Shalako
Don't fall asleep. My buddy's dad had the '66 Cadillac, with the four
doors and the 512 cubic inch engine up front. Bob borrowed it one night, we
grabbed a six-pack of Brador or something. A malt liquor, 6.6 % alcohol, which
was more than sufficient for a couple of sixteen, seventeen year-olds. We
headed out of town, on paved roads all the way, which was better than giving it
a wash when we got home. Fifty cents is fifty cents, after all. At some point, Bob let me drive it. Coming home, we
headed north out of Wallaceburg, eleven o'clock at night, on Kimball Road.
That's 80 kilometres per hour these days...I took her up. I took her up
all right, she's floating along like a cloud, with that soft suspension and the
long wheelbase. I had her at a hundred and ten miles per hour when poor old Bob
woke up on the passenger side, so I had to let off and bring it on into town at
a more reasonable speed. I kind of feel sorry for Bob—even more so for his dad,
who had to pay the bill, but within a very short time, a day or two later, the
thing was knocking and sputtering. I don't know if we burnt a valve or spun a
bearing, but that was pretty much it for what had once been a pretty nice car.
Fuck, I wanted to drive Formula One, something awful it seems looking
back. Which would almost be safer on some level, much more professional than a
couple of kids in daddy's car...some of us were just plain dangerous. Quite
frankly, it affected my judgement sometimes.
***
Okay, let’s say we were thinking of writing our
criminal memoirs. One, you’re talking about your friends here, and two, now you
got to think up a whole bunch of fake names…for people who were often known by
nicknames and various handles to begin with. Some of those names are pretty
colourful. It’s not like they read books anyways. And I can use a fake name of
my own. And where would I start? At the beginning I suppose.
***
My first scam was the old Puss ‘N Boots free roll of
film scam. This was a popular brand of tinned cat food at the time, late
sixties, early seventies at the latest. If you cut on the dotted line, and
peeled off the paper label, there was a coupon. You filled that in, mailed it
to the company, and you would receive a free roll of colour film in the format
of your choice, whether it be 120, 126 cartridge, or 35-mm format. Limit one
per family or household, and of course here is where the scam comes in. I sent
in at least three coupons, also borrowing stamps and envelopes from my mother’s
stash. Stamps cost money you know. There comes a time when they go to pay the
bills and there are no envelopes, no stamps and of course they sort of wonder
where all that went. Right up until the point when you, a nine or ten year-old
kid; gets a mysterious package in the mail and you sort of come home from
school one day to find they simply could not help themselves, but had no choice
but to open up that fucking package…and now they’re starting to catch on.
Then they get two or three more, but by now they know
it’s just a roll of film, and oh, yes, you’ve borrowed dad’s Baby Brownie from
the 1950s and also, your brother and sister and the kid next door and the
family down the street and your buddy Willy three blocks away are getting free
rolls of film in the mail, and while mom and dad are sort of appalled at the
thought of all those rolls of film, and firecrackers, and model planes and
rockets and small explosions going off in the backyard, they are also sort of
marvelling at your enterprise and quite frankly, your imagination. This is what
you get for having a cat, and of course they have to eat pretty regular and
stuff like that.
The cat, I mean—
Also, you want to be a photographer someday and you
can always take over camera duties on Christmas day, right. As I recall, that
was the year my folks made the serious tactical and strategic error of giving
me a cheap-ass Kodak Instamatic 126-cartridge camera, complete with a couple
more fucking packs of film and those all-important flash bulbs. Which you can
short out with a bit of metal across the electrodes, or even just use an empty
camera to send short, brilliant light signals across Germain Park in the middle
of the night, (when you really should have been in bed or doing your homework);
assuming one of your friends’ parents have been thoughtful enough to give them
such a camera for Christmas as well…
Right?
**
So there you are, ladies and gentlemen, when sometime
later, (after all of this logical progression of events), ah, you find yourself
laying on a sheet of plywood, up in the rafters of my old man’s garage, sheets
we picked up out of a local park, after some guy got drunk, stole a Datsun
240-Z and took it through Germain Park, yet forgetting the sort of green
plywood enclosure for lacrosse of all things, smashing through it and tossing
bits and pieces all over, and trying to get a good picture as your buddy snipes
at plastic ship models with a .177 calibre pellet rifle. Someday, I will tell
you all about filling them up with fireworks, solid stuff from model rocket
engines, Christmas bulbs with gasoline and firing pins and the powder from
dismantled shotgun shells and how, ah…Bob, (not his real name), lit that up,
and how the battleship Yamato went up
with a series of big bangs as we sort of sheltered in my 1969 Austin Mini,
which I bought for $50.00, dragging it up and out from the weeds behind H &
S Sports Cars, which was on the corner of Ontario Street and Russell, (I
think). My old man and I dragged it home on the end of a rope, one end of which
was attached to his old Volvo and the other end attached to me and that Mini. I
was only fifteen, and I suppose we putted along about twenty miles an hour on
back streets…The Hood, the Bismarck and the Rodney didn’t fare much better, looking back through the mists of
time. I’ve been towed once or twice since then, to be honest with you. I
remember, we opened up the garage door and this big black cloud came out.
He (Willy, not his real name), once shot some Chinese
girl in a plastic raincoat, right in the ass with that thing. The range was
short, and we figured it went right through the raincoat. She swatted at her
ass and turned to look, right. The front room in his folks’ place had these
really old-fashioned windows, where there were three holes drilled along the
bottom for ventilation, and a hinged wooden bar you lifted to let a little air
in. There wasn’t even a fucking screen. He fired the shot, and dropped the
stick, and we crouched there, giggling like schoolboys, which we were at the
time.
I swear to God, that place must have been built by a
Newfie.
Willy blew me up one day. He called, and he said,
‘come on over’. He was out in the garage, one of our hangouts. Yes, back then,
you weren’t nothing if you didn’t have a garage to hang out in. I get off my
bike, and he’s watching, literally timing it from the time of his call. He hits
a little switch, a little electrical model rocket engine igniter goes off, and
about three rocket engines, all taken apart and just powder and blocks of
propellant, goes off right between my feet, right in front of the side door of
his garage. I was wearing shorts, I had a few singed leg hairs but nothing real
serious. You know me: I had to phone my brother straight away. I told him to
get on over to Willy’s place.
I couldn’t really talk on the phone, but there was
something he just had to see.
After
a solid eight hours in the sack, I moseyed around, lazed in the shower, shaved
up as best I could, and futzed around in general. Being away from our normal
base, there were few routine chores. Basically we were just killing time.
Reluctantly,
I toyed with some food, but sooner or later I had to get back to work. I have
to admit to a kind of bone-weary fatigue, though.
About
six o’clock, the bunch of us rendezvoused in the empty hangar reserved for our
briefings. It was our office and command facility here at St. Omer aerodrome.
Minimalist,
to say the least.
“Have
a coffee, sir?” Jaeckl offered, reaching for the cups lined up by the urn.
I
nodded.
“Major
Dawley, bring us up to speed, please?” I asked.
The
assembly quieted down a little, although they were pretty subdued to begin
with.
Everyone
was dead tired by this time, after working on the AEG’s all night long.
Poor
guys could barely think straight.
“All
righty, then. Gentlemen, listen up please.” He began, standing by the
blackboard.
“So
far, the two Handley-Pages are in running condition, and Pete is working on the
AEG’s.”
“So.
Last night was a bit of a non-starter, but Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker decided to
drop his bomb over the North Sea, rather than try to land with it. But that’s
good, actually, as we have now confirmed that the dropping mechanism works just
fine, if nothing else.”
“We
enjoyed the flight, burned off fuel, and just cruised around in general.” I
reported, and the boys all nodded and smiled.
“We
had a blast.” Bernie, eyes all bloodshot.
He
looked kind of hung-over.
“Pete
thinks he has the problem cured, and assures us the Handley-Page airplanes are
top-notch.” The Major continued. “Referring to the AEG’s, we just don’t know
yet. But it is still early. The basic plan is to try again. We take off at the
same time, and proceed to the target with as many planes as we have. The
weather is good for tonight, as far as we can safely predict.”
Down
south, there was a chance of thundershowers.
‘If
possible these should be avoided.’
Agents
were again waiting at our jump point in Switzerland. The men checked their
notes from the previous day and made new ones. I prayed that something would go
wrong. I was hoping to get caught, but so far no one had even inquired as to
our business here at St. Omer.
“When
you take off, circle for height, but no more than half an hour. Then steer an
initial course of one-hundred-eighty degrees for one hour, then turn to
one-hundred-twenty degrees and look for the markers. Keep your route
description handy. Land at field ‘B’ and refuel. This is a long trip. At Nancy,
turn to approximately eighty-seven degrees, fly to the town of Strasbourg. From
there, a course of approximately forty-three degrees takes you more or less to
Baden-Baden.”
“The
sketches you have are fairly good. In the final analysis, use your own
judgment. If necessary, jettison the bomb over enemy territory, and return to
field, ‘B.’”
Details,
details, so many details, but it allowed time to think and study the map.
The
beauty lies in the details.
We
heard engines fire up outside, and a ragged cheer.
Rumble,
rumble, rumble…they kept going. One of the AEG’s. Two foreign engines were
running.
We
looked at each other, many with eyebrows raised.
Someone
knocked eagerly at the door. It opened with a thud as Taffy lurched in, wearing
an expectant and happy grin.
He
was just about to speak, when the engine notes went flat, first one, then the
other.
He
stood there shaking his head.
Finally,
he came out with it.
“Whale…oil…beef…hooked.”
He said, or something like that, then turned and in a dejected fashion began to
shuffle off to the door.
“Aw,
Pete.” He muttered as the door slammed behind him.
A
few grimaces, a few grins.
“Sounds
like he’s getting closer.” Said Major Dawley, a little tongue in cheek jab at
yours truly.
Jaeckl
wouldn’t let it get out of hand. He was just screwing with us.
The
teletype machine clattered. Dawley and Hastings, who was also there to help
out, consulted. They muttered between themselves while we waited.
“Doesn’t
look good.” Hastings said, beckoning me over.
And
there you have it. We had to stand them down again. The effing weather had
socked in the southern end of our course for a day at least. More like three or
four, judging by the maps and the data provided. Privately, I was relieved.
Those AEG’s flew in here. Those motors just had to run, sooner or later. Good
old Howard-Smythe had sent my coded telegram right on schedule. And he had been
bribed to forget well.
“Why
not do a big beer run?” I suggested. “It might be good navigation practice.”
“The
weather down south looks bad for three for four days.” Put in Dawley.
The
boys sat around scratching their heads.
“All
right, take the damned bombs off the Handley-Pages.” I ordered to a few muffled
groans and gripes.
It
would be a dry run to Farnborough, perhaps even with two AEG’s…as we heard them
up and roar again…maybe Pete was learning his trade, finally, and the two
bombers of Trenchard’s.
“Why
don’t we just lock up here and take the whole damned crew?” Queried Hastings.
“You
could send half of them on a pass, for a day or two.”
I
told you Hastings was smart. We made our way across the pavement to the line-up
of aircraft, all four with little clumps of men working on them.
“Good
idea. But first we have to get there.” I acknowledged. “Let’s have a look at
these ruddy Hun bombers.”
Tipping
the wink to Jaeckl, he went to the rear of the cockpit and sat there looking
innocent.
“Try
her out.” I suggested to poor old Pete, and gave it a big whack on the cowling
beside the firewall with the flat of my hand.
Pete
stood there, looking apprehensive, but the plane’s twin engines fired right up
this time. Pete looked fit to be tied. He was one stressed-out individual.
He
just about died when I made the other plane start up, too. Poor Pete. I’ll
never forget it. He was groaning, and cursing, and pulling clumps of his
thinning blonde hair right out of his head.
“Well,
that makes two AEGS and two H-P’s.” Jaeckl joked. “For now, anyways.”
“Put
a bomb on mine.” I noted for Jaeckl’s benefit, as he moved away. “I want to try
something.”
His
eyebrows rose, but he just saluted.
“I
want to find out if we can land safely with a bomb on, at night. Those things
are expensive, and the Ministry wants to know.”
It was
our excuse for being experimental, after all.
This AEG bomber is now in a museum in Canada.
“Who
will I be riding with?” He asked over his shoulder. “Someone else, hopefully?”
So
Bert Hall flew one AEG, Owens flew another. Dexter flew the other Handley-Page,
and mine was the second, number, ‘oh-twenty-one.’ Soon we were over the
channel.
Because
of the relative lack of experience we all had, except Bert, the officers were
scattered amongst four planes, and the ground crew was divided into two groups.
Some were going on leave in Paris, no hardship for them, and the rest were
flying with us.
My
plane had a somewhat smaller crew because of the big bomb in the belly. I must
say, it was an impressive sight, with the two Fritzie planes up front and down
below, with Dexter in, ‘oh-nineteen,’ and myself in, ‘oh-twenty-one,’ up top.
At
this time of night, it was safer to fly southwest down the Channel, then
approach from the south. Bert’s navigation was impeccable. He might have done
this sort of thing before. A smuggler’s route.
We
landed at Farnborough in the middle of the night, but a quick radio call ahead
by Dawley made certain of our welcome. They even used the beer trucks to help
light up the fricking runway. That Dawley, he was always coming up with a new
twist.
I
guess it goes without saying that I didn’t pooch the landing.
And
then, a batch of mechanics were sent on leave, to take effect the minute our
wheels cleared ground. We left the AEG’s in England, so I sent Owens and Dexter
on leave as well.
We
kept exactly two mechanics, (not Pete,) and landed back at St. Omer about nine
o’clock in the morning. All we had to do was unload, and have a nap, and think
up our next stunt.
It’s
too bad, really. I wouldn’t have minded a crack at old Kaiser Willy, and no
doubt Bert would have bombed the War Office, Winnie’s place, or even Windsor
Castle.
‘If
the price was right.’
We
had the motive, we had the intent, we had the means. We simply didn’t get the
opportunity. Timing is everything, eh?
It
might have done some good, to let the gentry know they can be held accountable.
***
She said yes.
While
home in London, Jennifer had agreed to marry me. But I don’t want to get into
the mushy stuff too deeply, for this is my future wife after all. For that
reason, I have deliberately not fantasized, nor mentally soliloquized about
her.
Hopefully
the reader will just accept this. It was déjà vu and surreal at the same time.
Sitting
there, back inside our old command tent, flushed with the vacation, I spent
some time reading all the reports of the last week’s activities. The boys were
doing very well, with only two minor casualties.
The
Rittmeester Gunter von Fluebl, and Oberstleutnant Heinz Smiltz, ‘bit the dust.’
Thirteen
enemy planes shot down. And two minor aces. Simply awesome.
About
then the witch doctor, the head-shrinker, Doctor Scolz came in. It was his last
day with us. He appeared to be very drunk. Not a happy drunk, either. The surly
kind.
“So,
I’ll say goodbye then.” I murmured, still reading.
He
stood in front of the desk. He saluted, and clicked his heels. Very formal. He
rocked back and forth ever so slightly. A veritable stew of breath came out of
him, and wafted its way across. The doctor had been drinking heavily for some
days now.
Over
the last two or three weeks, the poor fellow had taken to talking to himself.
Beginning to lose the personal grooming. Perhaps we’d been a too little hard on
him.
“Incidentally,
I have just turned in all your psychological assessments.” He said with a
certain relish.
He
seemed to expect some kind of response.
“That’s
okay Doc. We all have our little role to play. By any chance do I fit the
profile of an asshole?” And I just kept on reading.
Poor
guy didn’t laugh. He just turned and headed for the door. Don’t go away mad,
Doc…just go away. I didn’t laugh either. But that was about as close to an
apology as he was ever going to get.
As
the flap of the tent swished closed behind his sorry ass, Howard-Smythe turned
aside from the tele-printer machine.
“You
would have to be some kind of anal retentive to want his job.” He allowed.
In
some way this put the final polish on what had been, from the onset, a pretty
bad scene.
***
One
fine day it was all over. We stood there, unable to comprehend, or to believe.
We muttered, and loitered. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day. An armistice.
It
was unbelievable.
Why?
I
mean, why stop now?
Yet
it is in writing. We have it in writing. It’s an order. Hard to believe.
Accepting it is difficult. The sense of relief…overwhelming…a curiously subdued
bunch of guys.
It
was surreal.
The
land is oddly silent. The air is strangely clear. The sound of the guns peter
away, down to nothing.
“Well,
I’ll be damned.” Said Andrew, who only yesterday was totally flushed with the
pride of a double victory.
“I
honestly didn’t think I would live to see it.” I admonished the boys nearest.
“I just stopped thinking about it.”
Now
my knees, my whole body went slack. All I wanted to do was to sit down. Those
guys broke out a bottle, and music began to play.
My
thoughts were haunted with a vision of Jennifer, pale and ghostly, hanging in
the sky. All I had to do was to go home…it was over. It was all over with—and I
lived.
I
lived. I lived.
Holy,
Jesus Fucking Christ…I lived.
***
He let him live...
For
some reason, I wanted one last flight. Just one. It didn’t seem fair, to have
such a beautiful plane. I had spent weeks tuning it. Many hours of hard work
went into all the little tweaks, and for what? It was all so useless.
I
experienced a moment of real anger, a kind of narcissistic rage, thinking about
that.
Our
orders were to stand down and preserve our machines for later analysis.
It
was time to get ready for the next war.
So I
took off alone, and headed for the Western Front. It was about ten-thirty or
twenty to eleven or so. I took it up sunwards, climbing through 10,500 feet,
and then opened up the throttle. Just to see what she could do. My SE was
holding at about a hundred and sixty-five at 10,500 feet…beautiful. Just
beautiful. Just think of what we could have done, given a little more time.
That’s
when I saw him, off to the south and about 2,000 feet higher.
The
black nose, the familiar wings. A Fokker D-VII. They don’t give those out to
just anybody. He saw me. I could tell because he re-aligned the plane.
My
guns were already cocked.
The
clock said, ‘five to eleven,’ and I grinned in ferocious, blood-thirsty mirth.
“I’ll
be fucking damned.” I oathed in fury. “I know thee, sir…”
For
the rest of the quote the reader will have to consult Shakespeare’s, ‘King
Lear.’
It’s
pretty offensive.
I
must say I was impressed.
Something
about a, ‘son of a mongrel bitch,’ as I recall, but he was diving onto me and
all there was to do was line up the sights, a little in front of old Herman,
and let him have a burst right in the kisser.
Hah.
Gotcha, you motherfucker.
He
flew right into that one.
“Who
the hell do you fucking think you’re dealing with here?” I bellowed as he went
by.
He
pulled right, and I pulled right, and we entered the good old, ‘kurvenkampf,’ as taught by von
Richtofen, and Boelcke, and a hundred dead men before and since.
Herman
Goering shot down Duzek, Elmer Duzek, only three weeks before. Did Elmer want
to be the last man to die? One of the last? Only another three weeks, and he
would have made it. He had a mother and a sister.
The
red and black D-VII suddenly reversed his turn, but of course I anticipated
this move, having seen it before. Pulled the throttle back to about half.
Patience is a virtue, and I knew he would dive below me…sure enough, and I
flipped over, following him down to the clouds…the clouds were about 8,000 feet
and I figured he’d go east. No, he’ll go south, sunwards, and sure enough there
he was.
Pulling
out now, he pulls up and over, and now I turned and fishtailed to keep him in
front of my guns…and still he was out of range. His loop did him no good. But
he’s out of range.
He
must recognize me as well. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
eleventh month.
Eleven
o’clock, and yet neither one of us can break off safely. Who knows what his
intentions are now? I wasn’t too sure what mine were. But I was open to
suggestion.
We
made a head-on pass. A little burst of smoke from his guns was enough to
confirm his intentions, as my own finger gently squeezed the trigger. Through
the smoke and vibration, I’m sure I got hits…and got hit…something thwacked
through some part of my airframe.
He
made a couple of strange moves, and I just watched him.
I
had all day.
The
sun behind me, lots of fuel.
We’re
all alone up here, buddy…and it suddenly clicked in.
He
was no longer trying to shoot me down, but only trying to avoid my guns.
Now
I get it. This calls for…a snap roll.
Fuck.
Sure enough, he does a snap roll too.
And
then he looks over, as if to say, ‘Big deal.’
Suddenly
he was edging up beside my plane. Waving, both hands in the air, he points and
shrugs.
Face
impassive, it is the bland-looking, fat-faced man. Not wearing a face mask, he
gave me a big, happy smile. All I could do was to show him the big thumbs-up.
He
saluted, and bowed his head.
His
guns were jammed. I fired a short burst, because mine weren’t.
And
again, he shrugged. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he began to turn off to the
east.
I
watched the tail end of that plane, for a long, long time, let me tell you.
I
don’t know why. There is no rhyme or reason for it.
Decided
to let the cocksucker live.
It
was eleven minutes and eleven seconds past eleven, and I don’t get paid for
this.
So I
turned it for home.
I
let him live.
My
thought was, “Enough, already, Herman.”
What
do I care if the man’s a transvestite? Lord knows, we shot down enough of his
goofy little buddies.
Epilogue
A Splendid Wedding
Standing
there blinking in the sun, on the steps of the church. People took pictures and
threw rice. A gaggle of Jennifer’s girlfriends waved and cried, and carried on
something awful.
Her
mom cried.
Her
dad beamed and called me, ‘son.’
He
slipped me an envelope absolutely jammed with cash, when no one was looking.
Jolly
nice of him.
We
got in the back of a big car and someone drove us away, a young male relative
of my wife’s.
Jennifer’s
folks, Mr. and Mrs. Bolteman, threw us an absolutely splendid wedding.
After
demobilization things flashed by in a blur.
I
was in a profound state of shock for a long time, but I remember little
snatches of it.
We
found ourselves on the fantail of a ship.
Standing
there, with my wife, my love and my life, we watched the green hills of England
receding over the horizon.
I
was afraid my legs would begin shaking.
Entwined
with each other, we kissed long and deep. I squeezed her. I didn’t want to let
go.
“Well,
old girl.” I murmured, face buried in her hair. “What do you think?”
“It
will be fine.” She told me dreamily. “As long as we have each other.”
I
just kept my face in her hair and bawled my eyes out.
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