Grave Diggers Chapter Five - Mayor Sal

CHAPTER 5 – HOW KEARNY GOT THE SALLY THE MAYOR

"Sal," Vince tells me, "the mayor, has the luxury of living in a town where most people act retarded for fun. Some days I read the paper and think that Sal could actually be the smartest guy in town. One kid put on a football helmet and shot himself in the face with a bottle rocket to impress a girl. She was impressed and now they have five lazy eyed kids. So of course this town has a mayor with downs syndrome."

"Well, I worked with Sally here at Arlington for a few years. With or without downs syndrome he's a genuinely good guy. Every day for lunch break we'd walk to the deli on Midland Avenue. We'd get sandwiches. I'd get a Clinton's iced tea, which back then cost about a quarter. Sally would get a chocolate milkshake or an ice cream cone."

"One day the deli started selling the pick six lottery tickets. So on Friday we'd both get a lottery ticket and pick numbers based on a tombstone birthdays and death days. Well, Sal had seen a tombstone with a misprint, the dates were backwards, so Sal picks that one. Looking back, I should have picked that tombstone too. Not because it was a winner, but that tombstone in particular had sentimental value for me. But if I had picked that one it would have violated my number picking system. I usually picked my lottery numbers based on tombstones that had my initials.

"Anyway, come Monday Sal shows up to work. He doesn't mention anything about anything but all day he has the biggest smile on his face. I knew I didn't win the lottery and it never crossed my mind that he had won either."

"Well, lunchtime comes around. We walk to the deli. We order our food. So he offers to pay for everything. He even asks for an extra ice cream cone for me. 'You don't have to do that' I tell him. 'It's ok' he says. And then the cashier asks for the money and Sally pulls out the lottery ticket. And the cashier says, 'ha ha, very funny. I need money'."

"And Sal says, 'This is money'."

"That's when it dawns on me to take a closer look at the lottery ticket. I ask the cashier to see the Sunday paper. He has a couple copies left, but he tells me I have to pay for the paper if I want to look at it. Fuckin' cheapskate. It's a quarter, can't I just see it for free? So I pay for the paper and check out the numbers. Guess what."

"He won huh," I say.

"What gave it away? Yeah he won. We start dancing right there in the deli, even the cheapskate cashier starts dancing. The Jersey state lottery winner right there. Mrs. Donnelly happens to walk in to the store right then so Sal grabs her and places the sloppiest kiss I ever saw on her face. I've never seen anything like that."

"So Sal doesn't quit, he continues to come to work, I'm still his boss. The richest guy in town; who would have thought? I'd still buy my own lunch every day, but Sally would always buy me an ice cream cone. And we'd still play the lottery on Fridays."

"So, one day we're walking to the deli for lunch and we come across an ice cream truck. Of course Sally flips out cause the ice cream truck offers about twenty different types of ice cream; all kinds of ice cream pictures on the sides of the truck. So Sal goes up to the side window and starts ringing the bell for service. Sally rings the bell quite a few times, kind of obnoxious, but you know, it's Sally whatever. The ice cream truck driver comes to the window and starts yelling at Sal for ringing the bell. Sally tries to apologize and then the truck driver starts making fun of Sal because he 'talked' funny, you know, cause of the having downs. I tell the truck driver to fuck off. Then I grab Sal, who's pretty upset, and take him to the deli. I buy the kid ice cream that day. He cheers up but still can't understand what happened."

"So I say, 'Sally, you should just buy out that company, they only have a few trucks. You could easily afford it. And you'd get to sell ice cream for a living. At the very least you could fire that guy for being such an asshole'. So Sal's eyes light up like a Christmas tree."

"The ice cream owner reluctantly agrees to sell the business to Sal. He tells Sal's lawyer and I that the business is going down the tubes and that he feels bad selling it to a retarded person. Back then the ice cream trucks were owned by Lickity Split. The trucks were in poor condition and you'd often see them abandoned on the side of the road. I tell the owner that Sal's got a luck that none of us can understand."

"'He'll be fine' I say to him."

"A few weeks later Sal is still working at the cemetery. And every day he makes that asshole truck driver come by and give us free ice cream."

"Sal didn't fire the asshole," I ask him.

"Of course not, Sal gave that guy a raise and health insurance. From then on all you heard from that driver was, 'yes sir, no sir. Thank you Mr. Sal' or 'My pleasure Mr. Vince'. Even if Sal didn't win the lottery he'd have been rich cause he has a heart of gold."

"The local paper had come by to do an article on the grave digging millionaire ice cream truck business owner. That article hits the local paper, and then the article hits the national news. People come from all over to eat Sal's Ice Cream. He's got marketing making shirts and hats. Boom Sal makes another small fortune by the end of the year."

"Then Sally meets a girl and gets married. That lady, Mrs. Donnelly, the one he kissed when he found out he won the lottery? Well, she couldn't stop thinking about that kiss, but she was about 20 years older than him, and she was married. But she had a daughter named Ruby. Rubes, it turns out, is a few years younger than Sal and she also happens to have downs syndrome. They get introduced. They hit it off. They get married a shortly after that."

"Well. Mrs. Donnelly's husband, Mr. Donnelly, worked for the Town Hall at the time. He was beginning to express interest in running for Mayor. So Sal, at the urging of Ruby, decides to use his ice cream trucks to advertise Mr. Donnelly's running for mayor, he even puts down most of the money to fund Mr. Donnelly's campaign. The election finally comes and in a landslide victory the winner is announced to be Salvador Wallington."

"Sally?"

"Apparently the voters saw Sal's big head plastered on the side of the ice cream trucks with the message of running for mayor blasting from the speakers. Well the kids buying the ice cream told the parents. Best I can figure it that the parents ignored the kid's chatter, but subconsciously the information must have snuck in. Or maybe the people just love Sal. So the voters go to the booth and write in Sally Wallington."

"Ruby took her love to town hall," I say.

"Grab on to your ass hat cause it gets a little hard to believe here. Sal gets sworn in the day after his marriage was annulled."

"What happened," I ask.

"Ruby, the girl with downs, turns out she was faking."

"How do you fake Downs," I ask.

"She had a big head because she's part Syrian. Her parents just wanted to have access to Sal's money to get Mr. Donnelly in office. That back fired on them. Ruby couldn't keep up the charade anymore or maybe the guilt became too much. She left a note for Sal's lawyer explaining everything. Then she attempts suicide."

"She leapt out of a window," I say.

Vince nods, "It's all true, look up public records in the Kearny Library."

"I believe you man," I tell Vince. "So what happened to Ruby?"

"She's dead."

"Someone finally was able to do it," I ask.

Vince polishes off his O'Douls. "Just kidding, she's alive. She jumped out of the window, landed on her face, She lost all of her teeth and a several IQ points in the process. She suffered mild brain damage. Her parents are stuck taking care of her from now on. They left town, it was quite a disgrace."

"What happened to Sal?"

"So Sal quit working at the cemetery. His last day there we walked to the Midland avenue deli. We each had one last ice cream. We're both a little sad to say the least, but I tell him that he'll always have a job at Arlington should he need one. He gives me a hug and then he gets into his bulletproof car and drives off. I still play bingo with him on occasion."

"You could have called in a favor and had him help you keep your job here."

"I could have. He called me and asked if he could help but I've worked here long enough. I have my retirement money. It's not a lot, but it's enough to keep me happy."

"Did you ever resent the fact that he made all that money while you had to work here?"

"Not at all. He tried to give me money once. I tried to explain to him that I didn't want the money but he didn't quite understand. He thought I didn't want to be his friend. We went back and forth and finally I told him I'd take the money but only as long as I was allowed to invest it back into Arlington cemetery. And so all the money he ever gave me is all out here." Vince waves his finger in a circle above his head. "All the riches are out here, if I should ever need them."

***
We shake hands. "Thanks for coming in," I say.

"Thank you," he says.

I'm seated behind the desk at the caretakers' office. The position was offered to me again, this time with a higher rate of pay. I took it. And now I'm interviewing for the open position I left behind.

"You know this job is pretty tough labor, we come in at five in the morning and we dig. You get an hour for lunch. And then you come back and you dig some more."

"I've worked in a cemetery before."

"Oh yeah," I ask, "Which one?"

"I worked here at Arlington before."

"Oh yeah," I say again. "Well, then you know how it goes."

"I have a good idea," he says.

"Alright then. I'll start you out at 16 dollars an hour for a 90-day probationary period. And then after that you'll get bumped up a few dollars."

"Sounds good to me."

"Well then," I say, "welcome aboard…what was your name again."

"Jake," says Jake.

"Welcome aboard Jake, I'm sure you'll fit right in here," says I.

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Grave Diggers - CH 4 Another Failed Suicide

CHAPTER 4 – ANOTHER FAILED SUICIDE

"So you and your lady broke up?" Vince picks up the conversation exactly where we left off a few days ago.

"Yeah, she asked me how many people I'd slept with. She said she couldn't see a future with someone with my kind of past. And now here we are."

"Kind of a tom cat are you? Thinking with your dick?"

"Not these days. Thinking with my dick was never too bad. Thinking with my heart, that's where the real problems come from. What do you think?"

Vince holds his beer bottle up to eye level and examines the beer remaining in the bottle. "Not much really, sounds like you got a good head on your shoulders."

"I've made so many choices in my life it's hard to know which are right and which are wrong.Time will tell," I say.

"Yup," Vince agrees. "Time always tells. Time keeps no secrets." Vince swats playfully at a stray calico that's been rolling around on the ground in front of him. "Could be worse. I was married for two years back in my twenties. Married for two years, the marriage was annulled because we never consummated the damn thing."

"Two years," I repeat.

"Yup. Sylvia Seabra. She still lives in the area. As far as I know she's still a virgin. She takes care of her sister who's not only paralyzed but also has a drinking problem."

"Seabra? Isn't that the name of the Portuguese supermarket off Schuyler Ave?"

"Yeah, that's her family." Vince throws a small rock, the stray calico darts after it. "The Portuguese have really done something special to this town in the past few years. It's like gentrific—what's that?"

"Gentrification?"

"Yeah, that's it. But it's not it also. I mean the pork chops have really cleaned up this town."

Pork chop is what the Portuguese are affectionately called behind their back.

"They just want a piece of the American dream. They all have a strong work ethic. They have strong family values. So they buy these dilapidated houses that they've worked hard for and they clean them up. It's not like in Brooklyn where the kids with trust funds move in and clean the place up and then sell it to the next kids with trust funds. These houses will be past down to the next generation of chops."

"So how does her paralyzed sister have a drinking problem? Doesn't Sylvia regulate that kind of thing?"

"Well, Sylvia doesn't really have access to the money. Maria, her sister, does, she was the inheritor according to the will. Maria wasn't always a quadriplegic either. You see Maria rolling down the main avenue in her mechanized wheelchair."

"Okay, I think I've seen her. She's the one that has the foam dome hat that always has drinks in the cup holders? I always thought she had soda in those cups."

"Well, several years ago Maria was going through a tough break up and decided she didn't want to live any more. So she leapt from her apartment window to what she thought would be her ultimate demise. She leapt to her ultimate embarrassment instead."

"How's that?"

"Well, she jumped from the second floor. Landed on her head. The worst part was that her ex-boy friend was in the apartment when she jumped. So she goes out the window and then he jumps out the same window to help her. He lands on his feet. A okay."

"What's with people trying to commit suicide by jumping from the second floor of their apartments in this town?"

"Hell if I know." Vince lets out a healthy burp. "Maria is the sole inheritor of the family fortune, so Sylvia really has no legal say in how the money is spent. Besides, Sylvia has a pretty easy ride. All she has to do is watch the big screen and make sure Maria don't swallow her tongue when she gets too drunk."

"Yeah, but why doesn't Sylvia try to have the court award her power of attorney? If Maria is disabled wouldn't that make sense?"

"That would never pass. The mayor of this town wouldn't stand for it. He takes a special protection on the handicapped. He's half retarded himself."

"Most politicians are," I say.

"No, there's a reason why most of the kids in this town have lazy eyes. The mayor is legitimately half retarded."

"What?"

"Yes. He worked here with me back when no one wanted a downy working for them. Mayor Sal has downs."

Vince pours the rest of the bottle down his throat and then tells me about how Sal became mayor of a town called Kearny.

***

Terry swings by my place. He brought his new BMW. Business has been going well for him. He used the money he made renting suits for the homecoming to make a few investments. Those investments paid off and suddenly he's one of the richest people in town.

"C'mon man," he yells while knocking on the front door. "Jake is in the car waiting. The motor is running."

I open up the front door and Terry looks me over. I have a thrift store suit on. "That's what you're wearing," he asks, "I told you I could have loaned you a suit man."

"That's ok," I tell him.

"Eh, this is important, I guess you'll do fine." Terry wants us to meet a few of his friends in the city. "Jake didn't want to borrow one of my suits either."

"I can't wear one of those man," I tell him.

"You know how many kids got laid at homecoming because they were wearing one of my suits?"

"That's just ghoulish man."

"I don't sell dead people suits anymore."

We get in the car. Jake is wearing one of those fake tuxedo shirts and a pair of slacks. He's as nicely dressed as I'd expect anyone using a knife to clean the dirt from under his fingernails. We drive to the city.

"Yeah," Terry says, "business is good. It's only a matter of time before I have more money than the mayor. I may even run for mayor in the next election. Why not?"

"Yeah, let's feed bacon to a pig while we're at it," I say.

Jake laughs. Terry flips me off.

"You know how the mayor got his wealth," I ask Terry.

"Probably from those Fat Sal ice cream trucks he owns? The trucks that play the theme from M*A*S*H as they drive down the street? The mayor's probably uses them to deal drugs. If we can get him busted then I'd be the richest person in town."

"You don't know the half of it my friend," I tell Terry.

"Yeah, I heard something about mayor Sal," Jake says from the front seat; he's still fiddling with the knife.

"Quit fucking with that knife, you're going to cut up my new seats man," Terry yells at Jake.

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Grave diggers CH 3 - The Beaver Incident

CHAPTER THREE – THE BEAVER INCIDENT

A couple of months later I'm the only one remaining from the original group of gravediggers. Jake was fired after being arrested for selling baking powder to an undercover cop. He'd been a few days from being able to sell plasma and needed some money quick. Jake didn't really serve time but he was put on probation and forced to serve community service. I saw Jake once a week at Reily's bar. We'd play darts or watch a band play.

Terry had quit the cemetery because Tanya and him had opened up a suit rental store. The store opened up just in time for Kearny High School's homecoming. He told Jake and I that we'd always have a job waiting should we need one.

I'd been offered the caretaker position for Arlington cemetery but I'd passed on it. My girlfriend had left me because I couldn't satisfy her. I'd come home at 2 PM and she'd get off work at 7 PM to find me passed out from booze or exhaustion. Well, there was more to it that that.

Vince came by Arlington Cemetery at least twice a week. "Keeps me out of the house," he'd say. We'd sit on a couple of lawn chairs he brought and we'd split a few drinks. He'd bring a sixer of O'Douls. He'd drink two over the course of the lunch break. With a wink he'd tell me he didn't want to get drunk and leave the rest for me.

After the my lunch break was over he'd make the rounds to check on any remaining cats, most of the cats had been taken in by animal control after CNN had done a report about cats being abandoned at cemeteries and had used Arlington as the example.

"What's the good word boss," I ask Vinnie.

"I shit and bleed from the same hole kiddo. You guys going to have a bar b q anytime soon."

We share a laugh while vince sits down.

Bar b q'ing at the cemetery is now a finable offense according to town hall.

"Yeah," I say smiling. "The only cooking going on around here is at the crematorium." I slap myself on the forehead, a mosquito, one of the few remaining this time of year. "You know man, I feel really bad about all that happened."

"The first person I ever buried was the lady that played Mrs. Crabtree on the Lil' Rascals. I was star struck. Be damned if I can remember her name now. I knew I'd found my calling as a gravedigger. So after about three years of digging I get offered the caretaker position after the old caretaker was fired during the beaver incident."

"This sounds interesting," I say. Vince nods. A car drives by blasting reggaeton music.

"The beaver incident goes way back," Vince continues. "The caretaker, Mr. Murphy, wasn't too happy with the amount of money he was making watching the cemetery. He heard through the grapevine that a beaver farmer two towns over was thinking about getting out of the business."

"Beaver farmer?"

"Well, not so much a farmer as pest control. If you had a beaver problem you'd get this guy to come in a clean it up. He'd raise them and make stuff out of the pelts. I'm not really sure what he did."

I pop open an O'Douls and offer one to him. Vince shakes his head, "I'm already nice and buzzed."

I put the bottle to my lips as Vince continues.

"So at first he, the beaver farmer, did it to help out but then people started expecting him to take care of the problem. And soon it just became too much of a problem for him. For some reason or another he didn't want to kill them anymore. And he couldn't just let them go again."

"Well back then the cemetery wasn't as full as it is now. A lot of this land was still covered with trees and there was a pond in the south east area, plus you got the Hudson about a mile away," Vince says while pointing in the general direction. "So Mr. Murphy tells the beaver farmer that he could dump the excess beavers off on the cemetery grounds, for a small fee that is. What's the worst that could happen right?"

"Right."

A nice breeze blows by and a few hairs from Vince's comb over float about his head. He licks his hand and rubs it over the top of his head.

"So the beavers ripped the shit out of the ground. Beavers like to dig. The entire grounds were covered with tiny holes. And then people started seeing beavers running across the cemetery carrying large wooden crosses."

"Wooden crosses?"

"Yeah, temporary grave markers were made of wood then because the war was going on and all metal was being directed at the Germans and cement was being used on battleship hulls or something. So the beavers started stealing the wood crosses. Someone finally puts two and two together. The beaver farmer rats out the caretaker. Mr. Murphy gets into a fight with the cops when they come to talk to him. He shoves a cop, and the cop sticks his foot into a beaver hole and breaks his ankle. Boom, he's fired, arrested. I get the job."

Vince puts the brown bottle to his lips for a moment.

I shake my head a bit. "Is that why the little league baseball team is called the Beavers?"

"Actually no. The team is called The Beavers because they are sponsored by Collette's Pink Beaver Strip Club. And Abagail's Bailbonds."

"Oh yeah, Abagail's is located on Kearny Ave near Harrison right?"

"No, that's Abby's bail bonds, different place."

"Speaking of bail bonds, have you seen Jake recently," I ask.

"Yeah, he comes by the house a few days a week."

"That's nice of him," I say.

"It's part of his community service."

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Grave Diggers ch 1/2

CHAPTER ONE

We're up to our asses in sweat. Hot mid-june bog ass sweat. We've dug six feet and we got six more to dig. I always heard that when they buried you they only put you six feet under, it's more like nine or twelve feet.

"It's roughly 12 feet." Terry tells me. "Six feet is too shallow and the lots here are hilly."

I'd been working as a grave digger for a few weeks; sixteen bucks an hour. In this town there are more people underground than above it. You just have to work in a cemetery to see that.

The position opened up after Mikey, my girlfriends sister's ex-boyfriend quit.

Mike had to put an 8-year-old in the ground. There was a mishap. The casket fell open and the kid fell into the hole.

Terry told me the story the first day I started digging.

***

"So I'm in the hole trying to fish this kid out. I'm yelling for Mikey - 'help me get this kid out of the hole!' I look up. He takes one look at me with the kid in my arms and he backs off. Doesn't say a word. 'where you going' i yell at him. Nothing. Then I hear his car start and drive off. What a fucking professional. I'm there trying to give this kid a goddamned decent burial. I gotta piggy back the kid out of the grave to get him back in the casket. By the time I get out of the hole I'm covered in eye shadow and make-up. Yeah, you heard me. The 8-year-old-kid had a will that stipulated he be buried in flashy make up or some shit. What fuckin' 8-year-old has a goddamned will? What fuckin' 8-year-old boy wears make up? Apparently he lived with his mother and 3 sisters. Eh. I got home that night and my wife sees me covered in the kid's make-up. Of course she throws a fuckin' shit fit. 'who were you with? were you with Melissa again? I'll cut your balls off!' Fuckin' had a time of it trying to explain to her what happened. What a hot mess that was. So I get out of the hole. I place the kid in the casket, run my comb through his hair, fix his tie. He looks like a million bucks." Terry pulls out a comb and rakes his hair with it a few times and then says, "how do I look?"

"Like a million bucks," I told him.

***

So Mike quit right there. No two weeks. Then I hear there's an opening at Arlington cemetery. Sixteen dollars an hour? My ears perked up and here I am.

We get to work at 5 AM. We dig. Dig some more. We take lunch at 9 AM. After lunch we dig a little more. The whole crew is about 5 deep. There's Terry, Jake, Raphael, Me and Vince.

Vince is the caretaker. He's about 71 years young and his office smells like cat piss. Probably because he takes care of all the strays that live in the cemetery. There's a shit load of cats here. People like to abandon their cat's at the cemetery because there's no traffic here, it's a safe place to leave the ones you love.

Nine AM comes around and we take our lunch. I live a few blocks from the cemetery so Jake and I walk back to my place to grab a couple of sandwiches and have a few beers. I never use to drink before noon but when your muscles are screaming for mercy by 8 AM I don't see why I shouldn't. The work is tough. I figured we'd use the crane to dig the holes, easy as pie, but the lots are so close together that nine times out of ten you got to use the shovel.

Jake is one of those 21-year-olds that's been around, seen a ton of shit, but he doesn't really know what it all means yet. His parents are divorced. He's been in A.A. and rehab. He spent one summer salmon fishing and made 30 grand. He saw someone die when he was 10-years-old. That someone was his friend Chris. Chris ran out into the street to grab a bouncing basketball. BAAM! Drunk driver turned his friend into street meat road kill.

"His head cracked open," Jake tells me in between bites of his bologna sandwich. "It looked like a watermelon filled with lasagna had splattered all over the street." He takes another bite. "It was about 30 degrees outside that day so when his head cracked open and his brains spilled out steam came off of them. I only saw it for a moment before my mom grabbed me and put her hand over my face. If that car hadn't hit him when he was chasing that basketball it would have been a hell of a rebound. Of course the street was out-of-bounds, but I would have let him have that one."

"Christ," I say. I take a bite of my pimento cheese sandwich.

We drank two beers that lunch break then walked back to the holes.

"I got a question," I tell Jake on our walk back.

"What's that?"

"When Mike quit...didn't they lower that kid into the ground at the funeral? How did the kid fall in the grave if he should have already been in the ground?"

"Well. Terry has a thing for buried treasure, so to speak. He likes to check out the caskets for any keepsakes that might have been placed during the wake...see where I'm going with this?"

"I got you."

"I turn my head the other way when he does it. I don't really care. I'm just here to make a few bucks and get out of this town. He can do what he wants. A few weeks back we had a guy in a box. He'd been dead for about a week before anyone found him. He bloated up in the summer heat. Terry opened up the casket and found the guy had popped open like an over-microwaved kielbasa. Terry went home early that day, said his stomach was 'bothering' him."

Jake opens the cemetery gate, I walk in first. "Raphael is the one you got to watch out for though."

Raphael is in his mid 30's and lives in his parents basement. He has a pony tail. He whistles while he works.

"What's up with Raphael?"

"He cuts of the hands and feet of the corpses."

"What the fuck? Is that some sort of Portuguese thing?"

"He's into that D and D shit, it's his imagination. He cuts the hands and feet off and then places them back where they belong. He says it's to prevent the zombie uprising."

We stop walking. I stare at Jake for a moment. Jake stares at me. He doesn't blink.

"He figures if he cuts the hands and feet off the dead won't be able to attack the humans when they come back to life."

"Ok sure, why the fuck not right," I say. "Isn't there something less gruesome he could do? Why doesn't he just bury them with roller skates on? If they do come back to life then they probably won't be able to get around in those things. Most movie zombies have a hard enough time walking."

"Dude, that's dumb, financially speaking that is, you know how much that many roller skates would cost? And what if they're not like movie zombies and they're good at roller skating? Then you just gave them a form transportation. We'd be fucked." Jake hocks up a nice sized wad of mucus and spits it out. "And it could be worse."

"Oh yeah?" I'm sensing a pattern here.

"Yeah, Valentine, the guy that worked here a few months ago was a bit more strange."

"What'd he do? Stab 'em in the heart with a wooden stake to prevent a vampire uprising?"

"No man. Valentine jerked off on the corpses." Jake puts his hand over his eyes and surveys the cemetery. "Valentine got fired though."

"Oh yeah? No shit?"

"Yeah, he came in late too many times. I'm glad they fired him, he always spoke in third person. It was weird."

I nod.

"Shit man," Jake says to me. "I gotta wait three more days to donate plasma. Any way I can borrow a couple of bucks for food?"

"Sure," I tell him. I pull out my wallet and hand him a ten dollar bill. I look at my fingers. No matter how much I wash my hands I'm always have dirt under my nails.

We get back to the holes. Terry is sitting under a tree. He's asleep. Raphael is walking around in slow motion, doing what appears to be yoga or thai chi. Jake's smoking a cigarette. There's more dead people in this town than living. You just have to look around to see that.

CHAPTER TWO

A few months later I'm still working the graveyard. Burying the dead for a living. I've seen a few of the corpses. Many of them are dressed to the nines. The dead dress better than I ever have, well, unless I had to go to court or something. One of the bodies that came in was about my build. Terry asked me a few days later, "Do you need a new suit? I got one about your build. You look like a 38 regular."

I passed on that one.
"Your funeral man," He told me, "be good for a hot date or a job interview."

"Maybe I could be buried in it." I told him.

Terry asked Jake and I to keep an eye out for any suits coming in that might fit his 5'5'' frame.

Raphael had been fired. No call no show. But that makes sense, you only get one call from jail anyway.

Somehow the local news got a hold of some information that many of the hands and feet of corpses at Arlington were being severed for reasons unknown. Next thing you know several major news networks are flying overhead in helicopters.

Many of the bodies were exhumed. Roughly 45 bodies had had their hands and feet severed. Valentine also made the news that week. Authorities found a few of corpses had semen stains on their clothing.

It didn't help that the day the media swarmed Arlington Cemetery was also the same day we had decided to have a bar-b-que at the graveyard for lunch.

Jake and I had modified a shopping cart and made it into a grill on wheels which we had dubbed "the hobo-b-q". We walked it down to the cemetery along with chicken quarters and kielbasas and corn on the cob. There was a funeral happening on the grounds and we didn't want to appear insensitive so we wheeled the grill to a secluded area. The food had just finished cooking and Terry was opening up the potato salad when we heard he pulsing sound of a helicopter.

"That helicopter sounds close," Jake noted. I bit off a mouthful of leg quarter and turned around just in time to have a microphone shoved in my face by a FOX NEWS reporter. In the confusion the hobo-b-q fell over and started a small fire. The small fire became a big deal when a hidden stash of pot plants started smoking. Apparently kids from Kearny High School had decided to grow marijuana in the secluded spot because it was poorly maintained and they figured no one would find it. One of the kids had left her high school ID at the sight.

Not the brightest kids in the country. This town has the highest per capita of people with lazy eyes.

Many of the people at the scene suffered contact highs.

Raphael was arrested on camera. Vince pretended his hearing aid had stopped working and started talking about his cats to the reporters. Jake and Terry and I were questioned by police. Then the reporters questioned us. Afterwards we all had catering to cure us of the munchies.

"So this is a Taylor Ham Sandwich?" One of the reporters asked Jake.

"Yeah, you gotta have that with a Clinton's Iced Tea," Jake told her, "but you got to drink it with a straw man!"

Terry had run home and put on a new suit for the interviews. I recognized the suit from a few weeks before. The suit looked better on Terry than it had on the other guy.

Terry had gotten a new girlfriend too.

The night the news report aired he went to Reilly's bar and made them switch the channel to CNN so everyone could see his big national TV debut. Tanya had been very impressed by his TV appearance. "You look so handsome in that suit," she told him, then she bought him beers until he could hardly stand. They cabbed back to his house that night. She complained her back hurt so he let her sleep on the bed while he took the couch. She moved in a few days later (which was convenient cause she had just been kicked out of her ex-boyfriends house).

The police couldn't find any evidence that we had played a part in any of Raphael's activities. And when they found his collection of zombie fetish videos and D and D gear in his parents basement they realized he must have acted alone. Raphael was awaiting trial. Valentine had tried to commit suicide when the police came knocking on his door. The police heard him say, "you'll never take Valentine alive." Then he swan-dived from the top floor of his apartment complex. That might sound impressive, but he lived in a two-story apartment complex. He sprained his ankle and laid on the ground writhing in pain and yelling, "Valentine hurt his ankle. Valentine hurts!" All the while the police laughed at him from the second floor window. Some might say that Valentines downfall was that he didn't fall down far enough. Some might say that his downfall was that he jerked off on corpses. Some might say...

Vince wasn't fired. He was, however, forced into early retirement. He was given 3 months to retire. One month went by. Then another. Now he has one month left to work and just a little longer to live.

Shit gets a little weird from here.


keep up.

to be continued

6:54 PM - 2 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Oldie but goodie

2:48 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Last day in town.

bye bye austin.

i'm at jabber talky tonight at EGO's on south congress.  7-9 pm. come out and at least grab a beer and shoot the shit.  i wont see you for a while.

lucas

11:05 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

ON codependency

My last blog about the war in Iraq wasn't a political blog, it was just about how the war reminds me too much of being stuck in a shitty relationship.  I see too many unhappy people out there that don't know how to say goodbye and start over.

There are a few kinds of relationships.  There's the good relationship, the kind that's so effortless that it's worth the effort.

There's the relationship of convenience.  The kind that starts off great, hot sex, intellectual stimulation, whatever, and then after a while those things wear off... but you can't break up because you have to wait for the lease to end. Or you have to wait for the kid to get old enough to run away.

Or  you co-own a dog.

Whatever, you stay together because it's easier than falling apart.

Then there's the codependent relationship.

You see a homeless man on the streets. That's a guy that ended up on the streets probably because of an addiction to heroin, or crack, or some kind of drug.  He's the kind of guy that has an odd number of fingernails, he's swallowed a few of his teeth. He has a pillow that has a tail and is named Rex or Templeton. 

That's what codependency does to you. 

He's ended up on the street to pursue the love of his life. He knows a level of commitment that most people will never know. UNLESS maybe you've been married for 30 or 40 years.

And if you have been married for 30 years that's probably what you look like on the inside.

Gnarled,  dirty, empty shell of a human that you use to be.  The only difference is that he looks like that on the inside and on the outside.  You at least have a that apathetic suburban house to hide in.

You see the homeless man on the street begging for change and you might say, "Oh, how pathetic!"

But he's going out of his way to be closer to his love. When's the last time your significant other  bought you flowers? Or said, "you look beautiful!"

"Oh, it's so pathetic how that homeless man eats out of the dumpster!"
That's codependency.

How is that any more pathetic than me calling a girl 30 times in a hour, leaving message after message, saying "c'mon i just want to talk to you for 3 minutes. one thing, we'll talk about one thing...ok, you're probably in the shower, i'll call you back in a few minutes!"

She never answers my calls.

But if she did answer and she told me, "you know, i'll talk to you if you eat out of a dumpster!"

I'd kick every homeless man out of the way just trying to find a half-eaten used condom covered grilled cheese just to talk to her again.

you'll find parts of you that you never knew you had.

good luck.

Currently listening : Crosses EP By Jose Gonzales Release date: 2006-04-17

11:05 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

America DeLarge - iraq and america

Thoughts.
Jesus couldn't even save himself, so what do you want from me?

well, do you think jesus ever acted holier than thou when he healed the lepers and talked to the whores?

probably not.

I'm against the Iraq war. not for a political reason but because it reflects my own life too much.

iraq is like that girl you fucked in high school, you did it well, you did your job, it was good.

but you never called her back, and you knew that, in the back of your mind, you knew that might come back to haunt you...

and then your 10 year high school reunion comes about and you don't know if you want to go, but everyone is like, "c'mon man, you gotta go, you have to go."

and you see her, she's there, a few drinks

and you're like, "round two?"

and you do it, you try to be safe about it but the condom breaks,
and next thing you know it's 5 years later and you live in a shitty place and you cant leave,

and she's draining all of your resources, and you can't leave cause you wonder what everyone else will say about you,

and all the other countries are like, "what are you up to tonight?"

and you're like, "i gotta hang out with iraq."

and they're like, "faggot! we're going to the bar to get a round of public health care!"

and you're stuck.
you can't go out,
it's a guy thing.
she'll be the death of you.

12:52 AM - 1 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Eric and I

For a while my friend Eric and I were on this odd pattern where when it was good for one of us it was good for both of us. And then one of us would make a bad decision, usually me, and then shit would go bad for both of us.

Like in ET.

He'd drink. I'd get drunk.

Like in ET. 

I'd wake up the next morning covered in mud and smell like flowers. He'd have a cheeseburger in one hand telling me he had found me in a drainage pipe on the side of the road.

Like In ET.

ET wasn't homesick. He was just detoxing.

"Wait, why do you have a hamburger?"

"I got hungry when I was looking for you," he'd say.

I'd be in a shitty mood all night at the bars and Eric would try to cheer me up.  Then we'd walk back to his car and I'd say "OUCH"

Just like in ET.

But I'd say ouch because I sat on a shard of glass that had been his window up until a little while ago. Bye Bye car radio. And then I'd have to cheer him up.

But how do you cheer someone up who's saying, "why do i keep trying?"
When that question is as mind boggling as 'what happens to you when you die'.

I don't know, bro.
People always seem happier on TV. 
maybe we should work on a show.
two guys, one dream.
we can't even have a whole dream.

And we'd joke about our last meal would be a bullet. We'd talk to each other on the phone at three in the morning and he'd hum the theme from MASH to me. Soothing lyrics. Suicide is painless.

Oh how we'd laugh at it all. 

And I'd fill notebook after notebook with self-fulfilling cliches.  And he'd go home and fill his computer screen with jokes. I'd get to be on television and he'd win a contest.

And we'd meet up tomorrow and do it all over again.
And it's gotten better, this life.
Or maybe eating shit is just an acquired taste.

9:15 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

page 35

"What's wrong with your face holmes?"
He's being playful.

"I burned it."

I can see aggression behind the playfulness.

"On what?" He asks, "Alley boy cock and balls? You got to watch where you put those sweet lips of yours."

"You know, I got a sister you might like to date, we can call it even. She's a beautiful person."

He knows I'm being sarcastic.

"Keep the love fest away from me bro."
He's still pointing the gun at my face.
His sister is driving the car.

"What's wrong," I ask.

"A beautiful person? That always means that she teaches yoga and makes bookshelves and is ugly."

"I've never seen her make a bookshelf in my life."

We drive on for a while.
My lady problems have taken a backseat to my current problems.
I'm in the back seat. Jorge is in the front pointing the gun at me. 

He winks at me every once in a while.  His sister is probably still wet from me fucking her a few hours ago.  She wouldn't admit it. Not now.

Later. Her first word might have been mom. Her last word might be uncle. Or papi.

I start another conversation, "I breast fed till I was 8 years old."

Jorge grimaces. "You need to find God bro. Find Him quick cause we're sending you to hell."

"I was molested by a priest at a gathering at my parents house.  I went from God fearing to priest fearing. Seems like that's what they wanted. They get a little to big for their britches. Literally. And all the Jesus groupies in the world rattle on and on about finding salvation in the church."

We're driving on a bridge now.

"The priest made me put make up on.  My parents drank and danced to Elton John.  It's funny though. I can listen to Elton John ok these days, I just can't be around my parents."

"Shut up idiota."

"Stay clean, do the right thing."

I bite my tongue.

Literally.  I taste the blood. I pretend to sneeze. A glob of blood hits the floor.  Maybe the cops will find that. Maybe they won't. 

Maybe they'll find me.

Jorge winks at me.

I wink back.

11:07 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

that lady that attempted suicide

Apparently there's not enough liquid in the world to put out the fires those memories create. 

We come across a bustling Reilly's bar in which the festivities for the evening have spilled out onto the sidewalk. Erin recognizes someone out front so we stop and go in. 

-=-=-

    Art, one of Erin's high school acquaintances, pulls out a 20 dollar bill, "you want another one."  He asks.

    I hold the bottle up to the light and look at the shallow bit of foam remaining. "Yeah sure," I tell him. Perfect timing I think.
 
    The bartender hands us the beers and Art hands her the 20. "Keep it," he says, "I'm feeling generous."  He tipped her enough to get me to work for the week.

    "I'm feeling poor I say." I slam the beer.

Sean, another of Erins buds, comes over to us. He motions to the bartender, "three Yuengling's" he mouths. (yuengling is the lonestar beer of kearny town)

"What are you guys up to tonight," he asks loudly over the jukebox.

"We just got pizza and stopped in to see who was here," I tell him.

"It's a good night.  You smell like garlic," he yells.

"I have garlic biscuits in my jacket pockets."

He laughs and the bartender hands us our beers. 

We cheers.

Sean leans in and tells us that he has a possible mushroom connection but it would be a bit pricey. 

Erin shows Sean her new camera.

I get a phone call and walk outside to answer it.  It's my friend Rebecca.

I get off the phone and find Sean smoking a few feet from me. 

He begins telling me about the woman standing across the street—he explains why she's wearing a neck brace.

 "I was telling Erin about that lady," he says with a jersey accent jockeying every word. "She tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the top floor of that building."

He points to a two story tall building, the second floor is a terrifying 10 feet above sidewalk. I look back at the lady with her neckbrace on.

She flips us off.

    "Fuckin' moron," he says in her direction. "—she'd been threatening to do it for a few days.  She shoulda at least have climbed up to the roof of the building and jumped. She took a header out the window and landed on her face.  She's ok though. It happened a year ago but you'll still see her walking around Kearny Ave widdat neck brace on."

    "That's funny," I say.  "Her downfall was that she didn't fall down far enough."

    "Yup. Fuckin' weirdo," he says and flicks his cigarette out to the street.

    Erin walks out of the bar and stares at the building across the street for a moment before breaking into laughter.  "That's the window she jumped out of," she snorts and then laughs even harder. 

Sean and I join in with the laughter. 

From across the street the woman with the neck brace flips us off again. 

The three of us laugh harder like the drunken children we are.  We're laughing at someone that attempted suicide--that's an okay thing to do in Kearny—it's still better than half the shit on television anyway. Jersey is a joke to most of the country.  Jersey is a story with a few laughs along the way.

=-=-=

I tell Erin I'll see her back at the house.

I bike home. I never know how drunk I am until I get on a bike. I fly down the hill to our house, my jacket flutters behind me in the wind.

 I get home and pull a beer out of the fridge.  I lay down on the bed, it's covered with dog hair. I drink this beer slower.  Then I pass out.

 I wake up at three AM.  Fellon and Gayson are looking over photos on her Mac Book.  There's no beer left in the fridge but there's some coke in his pocket.

    "You got home early tonight," Fellon tells me.

    "Yeah, I had one of those moments at the bar where my thoughts came out to haunt me. I couldn't handle the atmosphere." 

    "I was going to hang out with you guys, but that bar depresses me," fellon says without looking up.

    "You don't have to go to a bar to be depressed," I tell her. "I like drinking at home, it's cheaper anyway."

Gayson hands me a key of coke and spills it on my leg in the process.  Fellon chastises him like a puppy.

    I take the bag and the key and inhale. 

My friend once accused me of wanting be unhappy. I often ask myself what can I write about if I'm happy? A well paying job? A woman to hold me while I sleep? If I'm happy then the problems are beyond me at that point. Maybe that's ok though, maybe it's time to broaden my horizons and write about something a little more worthwhile.

=-=-=

her attempted suicide definitely played to the back of the room that night.

10:00 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

dang me

It's going to be a long day, we won't remember much of it. Writing with a drinker's memory allows me to not so much write with artistic license but with more of a fill in the blanks as best you can.

The time is three in the afternoon and Erin and I plan on going a full 12 rounds with the box of wine that rests on a pantry shelf in the house.

we started buying the boxed wine when we realized you could get 5 liters for 10 dollars at the portuguese supermarket down the street.  it's hell of a headache the next day but worth it.

erin told me that could tell it was bad wine by the tears.

i told her, "you can also tell it's bad wine because it comes in a box."

"i think maybe they should include a toy in the box of wine.  cracker jacks and cereal, why not boxed wine toys?"

"you haven't showered today have you?"

"i have, i just look like a dirt bag most days."

"help me take the recycling out before we get too pissed and forget to do it again."

we have 4 large trash cans filled with empty bottles and cans and wine boxes. it's a months worth of drinking. we keep forgetting to take the cans to the curb.

drinkers make great recyclers.  the responsible ones that is.

=-=-=

There's an alley just behind our house that dead ends at a chain link fence.

That fence separates Karen and I from Felipe, the 13-year-old neighbor kid from Brazil. 

I tell Felipe, "there are two animals I'd really like to have.  I'd like a raccoon.  They have those tiny hands, they can eat like humans.  I'd feed it sandwiches all day long just to watch it eat." 

Felipe nods and I take a bite of pizza. "I'd like a chimpanzee too.  But they're always wearing diapers so I figure they're like babies.  I don't want a baby.  So if you see me walking down the street with a monkey, just know that in my heart I really wanted a raccoon."

Felipe tells us, "Ok, it was nice talking to you guys I have to go inside now."

Karen and I are oblivious to how we must look standing in an alley talking to a 13 year old.

later we broke into an abandoned house and then broke into a junkyard.  i stole a blue mask from a car that was unlocked.

"dang me, they ought to take a rope and hang me."

we still haven't gotten around to starting that cult we talked about.

7:57 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

ok with my decay

i got an email and it asked if i wanted a bigger smile.
no that's ok.

i walked on and said to a friend,
 "i think god gave you two feet so you could shoot one
and put the other in your mouth."

and two hands,
one to pat yourself on the back
and the other to fuck yourself with.

and two nostrils,


and the other
to make sure that
your shit does in fact smell like
roses.

9:53 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

beer

i'm drinking a warm beer right now,

it's not the first warm beer i've had,

tonight.

i guess i prefer cold beers.
but not as much as i prefer knowing that i have a few warm beers in the house.

i went to my apartment,
the one i kind of have.
on anderson lane,


about a year ago i placed a few belongings in there. and then i moved out to live with my parents so I could see this other girl.

i went back tonight to grab things that have been missing from my life for the past year,
she wasn't there,
the ex,

she'll probably be married by the end of the year.
i hope,

of all the people in my life i've known her the longest,
but i feel like the part of me she knew she put up with
it
because she felt like if she stuck around long enough
it might change,

isn't that love,
hoping to change someone?
everything that was wrong with that relationship
was highlighted by how much every thing was right
with the one I left her for,

a year has passed.
in another year i'll probably have better opinions about
everything that has happened.

but

i guess what i'm trying to say is that
i could  use a lonestar beer
and
a taylor ham sandwich,

i'm working on convincing someone
of that right now.

10:53 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Sounding bored

"tomorrow it'll be better. i got this new thing i'm working on and i'm finally starting to figure it out.  i don't need him/her anymore, i've got this new person in my life.  i got a car and now i'm free. i can go wherever i want! "

funny how capitalism is the best slave owner on the planet. the illusion of freedom.
slavery is freedom, yeah, i've read 1984.

"tomorrow will be different. i finally figured it out."

"luckily for me i got it figured out and i'm able to forget about him/her!  i don't need them.  "

this world sucks don't it?  i mean, what can i do to make it better?

drink?

heh, sure!

i went to the green mesquite restaurant tonight, on south manchaca.

they had thousands of different beer bottles on the wall. the owner is a collector apparently. but that's only cause the bottle are all different. i could have 1000 budwiser cans on the wall and i'm just a heavy drinker. but if the name 'budwiser' was written in antartic (whatever the fuck language that is) i'd be a collector.

=-=-=

a year+ ago i left my girlfriend of 7+ years for someone else.  that didn't work out.

right? big surprise there.

but that someone else has become a central figure in my philosophies and decision making skills. and i thank her for that.

yeah, her.
I'm not gay.

so. when i met this girl i met someone who noticed the ins and outs of my personality and she made me feel valid. 

so you post a blog. what does it mean?  what good are my thoughts? are they worth reading. 

well, this girl was my biggest fan and she gave me the confidence to be me, but she couldn't quite commit all the way so i lost a lot of confidence too.  like, if she couldn't commit to me, someone who claimed to love me and i felt like she got me but not commit to me, then what good am i to anyone else when the one person that does all that can't even stand by me?

now she's just latching on to the emotional bare minimum to make it to a place where she can finally figure shit out.

we can't all be me can we? 
so, i can't blame her.
no one should judge her.



i've learned a lot since then, i'm a better person, i don't need this or that....blah blah blah.

when you speak, do you have a sounding board or a person that completely gets you? do you speak just to hear your voice, or do you look for that person that rubs your back at night and listens to your nubile concerns, even if they know that tomorrow you'll have a whole new set of philosophical ailments?

i think i'm in a transition phase.  i had someone that made me feel completely worthwhile, lost that person, went off on my own and developed a million valid and worthless opinions.

i don't know which ones mean anything, well, i have an idea.

i do know that i've learned more from losing than having.

and then.

it was me,
that made me worthwhile.

and now there's a girl with bangs.
(well, not "and now" but more like, it's been a while since i had this feeling, and now i have this feeling again, the last thing you expect to feel, when you're numb, is something")

but she'll be leaving soon.
and i'll miss her.
and she'll miss me,
but that's life.
and i'm not an anchor anyway.
i'd beg her to stay
but i the best pictures in life
are the ones that can't be replicated.

i'm going to put as many smiles on her face
while i can, and when i'm reflecting on my death bed
i'll think that i treated her right and that'll
put a smile on my face.

i wish i could have consistency. something that i could rest my weary shit filled head on for a while, but i've learned that the only way to make those around you happy is to be content with your shit filled head and let it all happen.

until then, i'll feel warm when listening to

"Today I finally got it figured out. Tomorrow will be different."

9:15 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment