The Resisting Winter (A Novel and Parody)
The Resisting Winter
Here is a semi romantic, humorous Novel and Burlesque, by Poet and author Dennis L. Siluk, in honor of an era that never did pass; he says: “We’re still waiting… from the ‘60s! “
The Council of the Continental University, Los Andes University, the UNCP University, the Journalist Professional Association and Cultural Center of Peru congratulates and recognizes
Three time, Poet Laureate,
Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
The Resisting Winter
(A Novel and Burlesque)
Copyright © 2009 by Dennis L. Siluk
Front drawing, by the Author
Back Photo of the Author, 1981, photo taken during an interview
In St. Paul, Minnesota
Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone,
Of a temple once complete.
C.P. Cranch.
Contents
Opening stanza from a poem
By C.P. Cranch.
Part One
Cornfield Laughter
Part Two
The Resisting Winter
Part Three
November Slush
Part Four
Man Differs
Part Five
A Era that never did pass
End Poem:
By Shannon O’Day “Woman”
Author’s Final Note to the Reader
Author’s Index of Books
(Notes on Making of the book)
Cornfield Laughter
Part one
Chapter One
Shannon O’Day stood looking into a big foundry type window in St. Paul, Minnesota, it was 1966. Winter would soon be here. Near Shannon, standing at the parallel window, a few feet apart, was Poggi. Could it be that what this poet guy once had said, “When winter leaves, spring is next in line?” would not this be the full truth this year. Poggi Ingway wondered. Shannon O’Day, an obese man with a small rounded head, short. Both stood there and looking at the fully operational foundry in motion. A frost covered the ground, and there were full storage bins alongside the foundry, items to be shipped soon. Before the great snowstorms of Minnesota came. The foundry workers would have to break open those bins, haul down those piles of casings to the Great Northern Railroad Station, load them on the flat-cars to take them away, to the automobile factories. Poggi Ingway looked throw the window as a cold wind blew past his face and chin, and neck, and when he breathed outward, his breath looked like he was smoking, the weather was so chilled he could almost make smoke rings, and on the outside of the window he made little circles. Poggi thought of San Francisco. Perchance it was the busyness of the workers that brought back such recollections of the untiring ‘City by the Bay’ he often thought of it, where he had spent sometime years ago. That one year being the happiest in his life. That was all history now; that and most everything else.
Shannon O’Day had married five times, had five wives, four ex wives that is, and one present wife; as he looked into the window, standing in the wet grass, fat and short, trying to raise himself higher by standing on the toes of his shoes, and rigid with his own flabbiness, he thought of all five of them. One lived in Fargo, another in Fergus Falls, the third, and forth in Minneapolis, and the fifth, the present one, in St. Paul. He had not seen four of them since the previous winter. He looked into the big foundry window, staring as if in a trance, and thought what summer would mean. And how he loved the cornfields outside of town, the yellow cornfields and getting drunk with his friends and his forth wife; he was always very happy when he and his forth ex wife were intoxicated in those fields. They would listen to the trains go by, and walk among the stocks of corn; they’d lay down by one another drunk and would watch the stars appear. They would find their way back to the farm, a friend’s farm, and sit under the oak tree, in a little rut, overlooking the barn and drink, still listening to the trains in the far-off distance, on those iron tracks racing by. They’d drink all night. Often in the summer when all the yellow corn was high, they’d drink for three days straight, and just laugh as if they were crazy. They felt it did them good; made them both burly, happy, like to like, as the old saying goes.
Shannon O’Day had a daughter by his forth wife, whom he teasingly called, Cantina O’Day, her real name was Catherine O’Day.
One morning, when Shannon after they had both drank the night to oblivion, passing out under the oak tree, he looked about for his old lady, they had been drinking three nights, and days, this was the forth day. When he came to, he didn’t know where she had gone, disappeared to, everything was blurry eyed? He walked about in circles, heard the train in the distance; looked into the yellow cornfields. He tried walking through them, calling her name, ‘Gertrude!’ The cornstalks were stiff; he couldn’t find her, she up and disappeared, just like that. He knew she had taken the last bottle of homemade wine; it wasn’t there, unless he drank it and threw it into the cornfields when he was drunk before he passed out. He went back to walking around the barn, and the main farmhouse. Then he started walking into town, trying to hitch a ride, trying to figure out what happened to her, she must had gotten up and found a ride home. Finally he came to the city limits, passed old Washington High School. There was nothing elaborate about it, not like the schools and buildings he had heard Poggi talk about that were in San Francisco. No, he had never been to San Francisco himself. It was not like him, he preferred the small Midwestern town, and the yellow cornfields. That was his friend Poggi Ingway.
Poggi Ingway looked deeper into the window. Soon the horn would sound, and the second shift would start, and the first shift would take their showers, and head on home, they had three shifts. He pushed up the windowpane, just a morsel, and he could feel the warm air melting his chilled face. A cold breeze was blowing on the back of his neck; a numbing wind-chill. The cold wind came through the window, and a few workers looked towards Poggi from within the foundry. He saw the working men cleaning up their areas, as the new shift stepped in to take over. Most of them were Irish, German, or Scandinavian.
The supervisor was a tall, stringy like man. He had once lived in Wabasha Minnesota, a small town seventy-five miles south of St. Paul.
The supervisor put his fist in his mouth to moisten it and held it up in the air. He looked at the window Poggi was looking through, felt the cool breeze on his fist. He shook his shoulders unrepentantly and frowned at the men, a little too harsh perhaps.
“Fine,” he said, grumpily, adding, “the first shift was lazy…boys; let’s show them how real men work!”
Everything went silent for the moment. The foundry men put on their helmets, and some had masks, and gloves. The men next walked to their positions, as if they were trained seals, talking to one another, muttering this and that, a few came out of the washrooms and jumped up by the molds to where molten metal would be poured into.
Outside the window, came sounds of men laughing.
Chapter Two
Shannon O’Day, stood on the sidewalk, by Washington High school looking towards the kids rushing through the doors, not to be late for classes. A mist had been in the air, hard to see anything completely. It had been falling all morning. A car rode by slowly, observed Shannon just staring towards the school and kids. Shannon saw the man stare but didn’t pay much attention to him, he was really nobody to him. Then he walked on down Rice Street.
Shannon kept turning his head to his right as he walked, noticing the activity in the big windows of the school, lights being turned on; inside kids would soon be getting instructions from their teachers, writing down things, learning things; here he understood, was the place the kids would get their knowledge to go onto better things later on in life. It was a time when Minnesota, if not the whole country was concerned about higher education. His daughter, Cantina, who he paid out a hefty $175, 00-dollars for a new dress, shoes, and sweater was on the second floor, her homeroom, about to go to her algebra class. Shannon was proud of her. He was too old to go back and learn, but day in and day out, and during the nights, Cantina would study. She was a learner, that girl, she lived with his brother for the most part, Shannon was known to drink too much, and everyone, it mattered to, thought it better to leave it that way.
Shannon went down to Albemarle Street, where he lived, it was a big two story house, with five bedrooms, it never really mattered to Shannon’s old lady, his wife, but it did to him.
“Shannon,” his old lady would say to him when they first met, and started drinking, “any place will do. All I really want is a warm fireplace to keep the cold out, and tight windows to keep the heat in, with heavy window weights.”
Shannon never did take that statement seriously. Now as he walked down the street in the wee hours of the morning, through the mist and fog, and saw car lights reaching only several feet in front of him, he got a glimpse of the chimney of his home, he felt glad that he had not taken her seriously. It was better he was coming home to a big house, nice and warm, than a little one, he had lots of room to pace back and forth in. He, Shannon was not the sort of fellow who liked a garage for a house.
He opened the screened in door, walked onto the porch, and then the wooden door, and on into the hallway, and to the third door, that led into his living room. He tried to remember that that fellow he met in West Fargo had written, that poet guy, he used to recite it: “There are many paths that lead to Rome, somewhat and somewhat and something more—there’s no place like home.” He could not remember the exact words, but he taught Cantina to sing, “Home sweet home,” that was when she was six-years old. He told his little daughter back then, he could be a song writer, and then laughed, saying “If they can sell that Elvis stuff, why not mine!” If he had had a chance to do such a thing, he might have. Anyhow, he would tickle Cantina until she’d sing it with him, and he figured, this evening maybe he could talk her into singing it with him again, if she didn’t go right home to his brother’s house, she often stopped to visit him before she did.
He was thinking about perhaps stopping his drinking; it was robbing him of his energy, ambition, but he loved it so. Getting drunk in the cornfields among those tall yellow stocks and singing and the train whizzing by, and the crows flying overhead, was better than anything he could think of, no one had ever offered him anything better anyhow, that is, nothing better that could replace his drinking, not even Elvis or the Beatles could have offered him a better life than those cornfields did. So he didn’t like seeing summer leave, and winter come, and when it came he hopped it would dissipate quickly.
When he got really drunk, it all smelled, and felt, so lovely, the wet grass and weeds, dray cornstalks, the mud, the dirt, everything, anything, he drank in those cornfields until the last day of fall per near. Drinking had done all that. It was perhaps not right, but he didn’t have San Francisco, like Poggi to remember, or a guitar like Elvis, or a dog to keep him company.
Shannon walked through the doorway, into the living room, “Gertrude!” he yelled, “it’s me, your husband, I’m home.”
She didn’t answer. Maybe, she really wanted a small house after all, he thought; this place was pretty big, pretty hard to clean. You never can tell with women, plus he could feel a draft coming through the window on the side of the house in the living room. His amigo, Manuel Garcia, had just such a place for sale; he was retiring from the foundry. He had told him once, a year or two ago, if he knew of anyone looking for a small house, the size of a large garage. Poggi had told him all the houses in San Francisco were expensive, if he would move out there he’d have to buy a small house. Only the rich could afford a house like he had in Minnesota, out in Frisco, as he often called the city by the bay. After the Korean War, things changed, houses doubled in price.
“Gertrude!” he called out again, “Gertrude!” No one responded. There was no one in the house, he stood stone-still, in his round obesity, in his own abandoned house, then come the sharpness of the Shannon ears, and he could always hear the most quiet of whispers, but he heard naught.
•
Inside the House
Perhaps it is the dark side of me that I have chosen to introduce vices for the characters, into this work. But I wanted normal human reactions, but believe me they all come under the heading of human weaknesses or bad habits, but I have kept them clear of what might produce, extended evil.
Shannon looked across the table where his wife had been working on a puzzle, the Cathedral in Jackson Square in New Orleans, it was half completed, evidently she had been smoking a cigarette which had been half put out in a nearby ashtray on the table, and there were ashes on the rug he noticed, she must had flicked them, purposely. “I say, she couldn’t use an ashtray?” He looked around to see if anything else was out of place, or disturbed. “No,” he said. He took out a heavy looking steak from the refrigerator, cut off the fat along the sides with a butcher’s knife, sat at the kitchen table as the steak fried, looking across the table into the dinning room where the puzzle was, saw the framed picture of his wife.
“What a pity,” he murmured… “Thanks for leaving me a steak, awfully decent of you!”
He didn’t know if he was joking or angry, Shannon looked at his hands, wrinkled up around the knuckles, fingers, the thumb. He grabbed a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator, gave the top of the bottle a twist, a twirl. “Isn’t she a fool?” He remarked, bringing the bottle next to his mouth drinking it half empty. Found a towel, and wiped the bottle dry, the wine had spilt all over it. Then he held the bottle up with one hand “I like to drink!” He shouted. He sat there staring at the bottle, “This is good wine,” he muttered, “Here’s to you...!”
Then he finished off the bottle, in toast-drinking, “Don’t mix emotions up with wine, you lose the taste,” he told himself.
“I could write a book on wine,” he told the bottle, “all I want out of life is to enjoy it. Let’s finish you off!” he said, but it was already empty, and he turned to look at that steak, “let’s enjoy you then,” he told the steak.
Shannon could be charming sober, a little nutty drunk, he pulled off his shirt, and pulled up his undershirt, he was hot from the wine, the stove, the heat from the kitchen window, the sun seeping through, and the space heater running full blast, his chest was white as a ghost, a big stomach, muscles bulged under the light from the kitchen window, and around his fat. Under the line where his ribs ended was a deep white welt, with ridges, a bullet wound. He touched it, along side that, was a bayoneted scar. He looked at it, goggle-eyed, “I say, you fellows are still there.”
The bayonet had gone clear through. He then tucked in his shirt.
Chapter Three
Shannon left Minnesota. He was through with that city. What could St. Paul do for him that another city couldn’t do, and perhaps do better? He figured, no big deal, simple as baking a pie. You work hard; drink hard all your life and this is where you end up, his wife disappearing, leaving him. His bank account was emptied out, she took it all. Nothing left, not a dime. He hitchhiked to Erie, Pennsylvania, checked the city out, right to the edge, or from the edge, of Lake Erie. Erie might do big things for him. Any dupe could see that. He would buy a building in the heart of the city, near the college district. He’d buy the building at a low price, and then rent out the rooms to the students. Let them pay the mortgage for him. He had learned a thing or two now.
He walked around the city, it was cold, he picked up a half dead rat, put it in his pocket, to keep his hands warm, he had no gloves. The wind coming off the lake made the city even colder than usual. The rat was half frozen, but now was moving about, returning to life, but it nestled close to his warm body, and peeked his head out now and then, his head being the size of Shannon’s fist, it seemed as if it was grateful.
“Poor little fellow,” Shannon said.
A flood of tears dribbled down his cheek.
“That there wind, it’s goin’ to kill us,” he said aloud, as if the rat was his new amigo.
As twilight turned into night, the wind off Lake Erie picked up. Shannon sitting on a bench, noticed two large yellow eyes coming at him as it started to snow, he looked closer, it was fog lights from a snow truck, getting ready for a storm. Shannon leaned back against the wooden bench rested his back as the truck rode by. What is it that that writer said? “All for one and one for all,” but what if it is just one, and no one else, no others? Shannon thought on that quotation, as the truck rode by a second time, as the light snow drifted down, in the arc-light darkness. He could hear the engine of the truck purr, as it hit slush, and it splashed on him. He saw the driver raise the front of his pickup, with its shovel at its end, lowering the shovel thereafter, somewhat. He even had goggles on, as if he was waiting for a Minnesota snow storm any minute, and here he was in Erie. He noticed he had his hand on the throttle trying to get his vehicle to have the engine purr more rapidly, smoothly. Shannon thought of what some Minnesota writer once said, “Here today, something, and something, and somewhat—then gone tomorrow.” That was when he buried his mother in Oakland Cemetery. As a kid he used to jump that same high spiked iron fence and with his girlfriends, and guy friends, sit on a few graves and get nasty drunk. Those moments were mostly dim and blank for him now, as if a dark angel was covering his memory banks. That is when he was fifteen-years old. On Sundays he’d go down to St. Louis Church and go through all the motions most of the adults did, to satisfy his soul, and those looking at him, and the priest, and in case God was watching, and his mother, then that night go get drunk again. He never was satisfied with all the hypocrites at church. They are strange people, those pretending Christians he’d tell himself.
Shannon sat back again against the wooden bench (he had moved forward some), saw that truck again go by for the third time, and now a few more cars, they didn’t sound like the trains he was used to, while drinking in the cornfields of Minnesota. All the cars were hitting the slush purposely so it would reach him on the bench. The windshield wipers were on most of the cars that passed. They seemed to be going as much in one direction as the other, driving slower as first light was breaking.
As morning broke, the cars now looked like a long train, and the snow storm had started, he thought of how he was an expert at hitching a ride all the way to Erie, a first time experience really, but he felt like Jack Kerouac.
The long string of cars passed Shannon as if on parade, or a funeral: who were in those cars: old ladies going to take their children to school, middle-aged men going to work, young ladies on their way to college classrooms, fathers, mothers and grandparents. Who exactly were they. Were they pure American stock, Europeans, the old warn out stock like him. Shannon wondered.
The last car he saw was a police car with a red light on—flashing, he watched it racing down the street, and disappearing into heavier traffic. The snowflakes were getting bigger, wider, fatter, thicker, and the wind was picking up. The rat quivered inside his coat pocket. Perhaps if he found a job he might even be able to go to work this afternoon or evening. The rat quivered again, it was no longer as feeble as it was previously. Shannon put his hand into his pocket onto it, to settle it down a little, the rat was calmed. Shannon walked further down the sidewalk.
After all he did not need to stay in Erie; there were other places he could go. He remembered a critic once said, “The world is my city,” if he could not find a job here, he could head on to New York, or even Washington D.C., or down South, perhaps to New Orleans. He remembered when he was a boy running around the backyard barefoot, his feet would get numb, just like they were getting now, but as a boy it was from running on the rocks and rough terrain, now they were getting frozen from the ice-slush, and winter chill. His mother loved to have a bright lit up Christmas tree each year, once he’d plug in the electric end of the cord, into the socket, her eyes would light up with the tree.
“This snow storm is like Minnesota.” He told his mother as he walked silently down the street, as if she was by his side; she had died some years back. “Look at those beautiful lights, Shannon,” his mother would say, “someday you’ll be rich and famous, you mark my words,” and her voice was like a symphony orchestra.
Shannon had cared for his mother the last several years of her life, she lived with him and his wife. She’d be wrapped in a jacket in a chair in the dinning room, bobbing back and forth on those thin like, tin wobbly legs, fall to sleep: he often wondered how she ever kept her balance, didn’t fall off that lean legged chair, and break her hip or neck or leg, God-forbid: for sure her guardian angel was nearby; he finally bought her a sofa chair, and that was it, she almost lived in it. She had made a great impression on him.
Shannon came to a stop light, it flashed green, he waited, it flashed red, he waited, it flashed yellow, he moved across the street, yellow reminded him of the cornfields of Minnesota, and he started laughing.
“Walk on the green not the yellow!” yelled a police man at Shannon.
For sure, there was money to be made in Erie, if you looked in the right places. He, Shannon, now understood the ways of the world a little more, in his own mind he was certain he could live in this city and do well.
He looked in an animal store window, saw a large cage, one for a rabbit, or small dog, he stopped and stared at it, “Ah, what a beautiful home for you Mr. Rat, I’m sure you’d like it,” Shannon said victoriously looking down at the rat as it peeked its head out of his pocket, talking to the rat as if it understood. The rat quivered, happily now. The snow storm was starting to pick up, drifting across the streets, the wind picking it up and throwing the light flakes of snow into his face. Shannon’s ears were getting numb, his feet had been numb for a while now, far-off he could hear the thumping of a train on its tracks.
The Resisting Winter
Part Two
Chapter Four
Where was Shannon headed? Walking aimlessly down a sidewalk in Erie, in the brisk morning in the beginning of a snowstorm, he had become perplexed. He had started out for Erie, after finding his wife had abandoned him, and his home, and therefore felt it was no longer a home, yes a house, but not a home, not any longer. Why had Gertrude left? He, Shannon, couldn’t tell you if he wanted to. And for the most part, I doubt he cared all that much, although she was a good drinking partner. She had left, and that was old news now. “Don’t look back,” that was his quote to himself today. He was now standing ankle deep in slush, in front of a bus station. On the station it read in big fat letters:
“Greyhound!”
There were stacks of fish piled high in containers lying open for folks to examine one from the other: mostly dead but some still had a tinge of life in them, and wobbled about, all big-eyed fish, with their flipper-tails hanging over the tubs they were in. The market area was on a kind of platform; Shannon read the sign near the Greyhound symbol, “Fish Market!” It was more like a small open market, not big at all, just lots of fish, smelly, unsmiling big-eyed fish, and several folks standing—a few sitting on stools behind, or near their storage bins and tables full of fish: weighing them, gutting them and trying to make them look pretty.
A woman was behind one of the counters, cutting open a fish, other fish tapping on the containers with the last of their will. She looked at Shannon looking. Could she be looking for a fish sales person? Something told Shannon he could be one. He stepped forward, leaped up onto the platform, out of the slush (of ice and water) and approached the woman behind the counter. He noticed she worked quickly. She had long stringy hair, little beady eyes, entrenched into deep sockets, and a high forehead, receding hairline, little ears, about five-foot five, overweight, like him, but thirty-years younger. Her hands were too white for the rest of her body, as if they had lost circulation from all the cold, and fish cutting.
“Are you a fish cutter?” asked Shannon.
“Yes, sir,” said the woman “I’m a good one too.”
“That’s great!”
This woman eye-balled Shannon skeptically, perhaps thinking, what’s he up to with such a stupid question, of course she’s a fish cutter.
“Is it difficult to be a fish cutter?” Shannon asked. He didn’t want to ask her for a job outright, he wanted to be a little smoother about it, more polite.
The woman looked at him inquisitively.
“What’s up mister” she asked, “are you some quack?”
“Absolutely not,” Shannon said. “I don’t even know what a quack is?”
“Well, fine,” said the lady, “but if that is a rat looking out of your coat pocket, you’re a quack!”
“Rat?” asked Shannon, “What rat?”
“That rat that is peeking out of your coat pocket…” Shannon didn’t know what to say. What kind of woman was this, I mean, she spotted everything, and did she go in for detective work or what? Are fish cutters like detectives? He wanted the job but did he have to explain his whole life to her?
“I left St. Paul, my wife left me…” he started out to say, “I passed Washington High School, on my way home—“
“I know a gal in Minnesota,” the woman fish cutter said, “maybe you know her. Claudia Kline?”
It was useless he told himself to continue on this way, he’d tell her just the main facts, cut the story to a few paragraphs. It was getting too cold to stand there and go on and on and on, and then only to find out she didn’t need an assistant, at least it appeared she didn’t need one. He looked at the fish; they were everywhere, on the counter, over the counter on the floor, piles of fish everywhere, stiff and cold looking fish, like him. Perhaps they, like all those folks he saw in the cars driving by had places to go also, and then all of a sudden, woops, they became trapped, and now were being cut open, and she was worried about the rat.
He noticed cats were sneaking about.
“My wife up and disappeared on me yesterday, unexpectedly,” he told her with a grin (repeating himself).
“No wonder she left you, so would I, if you came home with a rat in your coat pocket.” She told him.
“I need a job,” Shannon commented. There was a silent moment now, a moment of terror in his eyes, and empathy had set into hers, upright. They never really hit it off, he knew that. He figured it was a dead moment, and all was lost. There was no use in pleading, she saw the rat, and she was still trying to figure out, what kind of man carries a rat around in his coat pocket.
“There’s the Greyhound bus station, go get on a bus, and go home, I can tell you aren’t like that Jack guy who rode all over the country, and wrote a book about it, the beatnik guy! You know who I’m talking about.” said the woman, “I’ll even buy you the ticket!”
“Thank you,” he said. He turned and walked into the slush, deserting Erie, walking over to the bus station, she had given him fifty-dollars. Luckily, that was less than the cost of the ticket, plus a few extra dollars to boot; perhaps he could get a breakfast along the way. He had sold his house just before he took off to Erie, but the lawyers had put all the money into a bank account for him, he didn’t even know what bank. Why had he even left St. Paul? What was he trying to do anyhow?
Coming down the street towards him were five Mexicans, they checked him out, he put on a mean looking face, like Humphrey Bogart in, “To Have and Have Not (the movie),” so they’d not think twice about robbing him, they didn’t smile, just stared, unchanging faces, blank faces; he knew what was on their minds, but they dare not stop, and they didn’t. Their faces never changed from one step to the next. They went to the fish platform, to the counter where the woman was.
The bright morning Minnesota sun woke Shannon up; hours on the bus, near winter he pulled the blinds down on the side against the sun, the chilled window felt refreshing. He could smell the dirt, and odor of the cornfields. He had taken a jug of wine with him on the bus, it only cost a dollar (Ripple), he had gotten drunk during the night, had a hard time finding his ticket, incase someone wanted to recheck them. It was clear the change of the countryside as the bus came down out of the Great Lakes region. It was a rough ride, that of which he could remember, but he told himself: beggars can’t be choosers.
Chapter Five
The next day, Shannon O’ Day stood in the center of the downtown bus station in St. Paul, Minnesota; he had arrived early in the morning. There was a café and barbershop and shoeshine stand in the station, all on one side. A janitor was mopping the floor; other men just sitting around smoking, some sneaking a quick drink from a bottle of wine hidden inside their coats, mostly homeless folk.
Smoke circled the station; about fifty people on hard looking plastic chairs sat admiring the graffiti on the walls, reflections of the bathroom walls. Should he, Shannon stick around, warm up, or go to the bank get his money out, and find a hotel? After all, he sold his house, had $8,000-dollars in the bank, he just needed to call up his lawyer to find out which one, which bank, and have him call the bank to release the funds. He could do and go, and see whatever he wanted to then. He looked around once again, hesitantly. He was old, very old, maybe sixty-five or seventy.
When he is gone, left this world forever, he knew men would never write books about him (of course he didn’t know me at the time), not like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was born in St. Paul, and everyone in the Midwest knows about Scott. This was the new young generation all about nobody and everybody; like Andy Warhol once said, and Shannon paraphrased him: everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, somewhere along life’s line.
Shannon had called his lawyer, his money was in the 1st National Bank, a big gray building in the middle of town, he was up near “Mickey’s Diner” he didn’t like that big ugly grey building, the tallest in the city, the bank was alright, just the building. Shannon looked about again, with his big fat ugly heavy and lumpy old body in the middle of the bus station, folding and refolding his handkerchief, and pushing the rat’s head back so folks would not think he was a wacko, or goofball, he took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead, he still had a bit of red to his hair, it was thinning though, curled around the ears, and coming out of his ears and nose, around his dull bluish eyes, those long eyebrows he could almost lick them with his tongue.
He had a few tears running down his cheek, as if he was lost, in his own old spirit, not knowing what now to do with his life, he tells the rat to simply stay put. The tears run down and his pocket handkerchief and his shaking hands wipe his tears.
Heavy, oh so heavy, his feet felt, the numbness had left. He made a path to the doors of the station, a kid was running with a ball shouting, “Look, look, I can…” then he saw the rat’s head and was about to say “Rat!” Shannon knew this beyond a doubt, and he tripped the six-year old, and whispered, “Shut your fat little mouth, you little rug-rat!” And the little boy looked up at him terry-eyed, forgetting the rat, and yelled, “He tripped me…!” It really didn’t matter to Shannon; it was really an inviting prospect to skedaddle on down to the bank, and draw his money out. Somehow it wasn’t what he wanted to do right away, but better now than never. He wanted to eat; he had three dollars on him, enough for a good breakfast at Mickey’s Diner, but the bank now seemed to occupy his thoughts.
Shannon turned his back on the bus station and headed on down the street to the bank, in this quiet and conservative, near frozen little city in the Midwest, walked down the cemented sidewalks, looking in the stores, as they changed the cloths on the manikins, from fall to winter designs. Car horns honking, people talking about a war in Asia, a dinky little nowhere country called Vietnam. Shannon had said aloud as folks walked by, “Now another little dirty war by our so called patriotic elected.”
He saw the bank, thought about General MacArthur, who had given a speech a few years back at West Point, 1962, he was the head of the American Forces in the Pacific during World War II, and had a final campaign in Korea that lead to clashes with President Harry S. Truman. If he had his way, he’d had ended the war that was starting in Vietnam in a flash, one big bomb, that would do it, not all these little firecrackers, and don’t worry about China, we had a few leftover for them. He had been a soldier in WWI, a rebel kind of. There I sat in the ditch, waited for the Germans, that doesn’t matter anymore though, new wars, there are new wars for the new generations; something to pass the hours away, so we create new wars. And it’s always America who has to come running to the rescue for Europe, the thankless contentment, haven’t they figured it out yet: countries that are not ready, or prepared to defend their wealth, are simply targets for those that are.
His hands where nervous and trembling now; alas, “Here I am at this big ugly building.” With those nervous and uncertain hands he opened up the heavy doors, concealed his rat by pushing his head back into his deep coat pocket.
There were many large square pillars in the bank, he looked at them. Then at the teller counter, he motioned to one of the tellers that was counting money, she looked at him, bowed her head acknowledging he was there, and continued the count. ´She remained him of Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive. He told himself: that is the risk you have to take coming to these big ugly buildings, hurry up, wait. He clapped his hands, his long fat fingers, in the bank. The teller looked his way, facing him more now, gave him a sign, with her big bulging eyes and eyebrows that went upwards, making her forehead seem smaller:
“The Patient man gets what he wants!”
He was hungry, wanted to go back near the bus stop, to Mickey’s Diner, and have that $3.00 breakfast. He then gave her a sign, with his lips:
“Patience is not my virtue!”
Ah, those old timers before him, were sure wise fellows, they built such big banks, with lots of money in them, if only they had some imagination, other than making them look like matchboxes. They never had to advertise much, didn’t see it on the television anyhow, people just automatically gave them their money. They told them on paper signs, “We are the best, number One,” then put a big one on top of their bank, and they were really number ten when they started out, and people believed they were number one, and left the other banks for theirs. He knew how it worked. He looked at the clock above the head of the woman counting the money—the one he now called Olive—it was 11:00 a.m., nearly lunch time. He saw a sign now, it read, “Be Patient!” This wasn’t Mickey’s Diner he told himself; this was someone who had his money, telling him to be patient.
“I wonder,” asked Shannon to a young lady standing behind him, “is this a bank or a waiting room at a hospital?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the young woman, “this is a bank of course, “it is the First Bank, number one!”
“Thank you miss,” said Shannon. He folded his hands and waited. “I would like to have $8,000-dollars of my money out of the bank,” said Shannon to the teller woman.
She called his lawyer, and he assured her, this was Mr. O’Day, and he had placed his money in the bank for safe keeping. She then gave him his money.
“Is that all sir, she said?” And he stood there thinking. “Please move sir, there is a lady behind you waiting.”
“Why don’t you give her the sign that means patience, like you did me?”
He opened his coat pocket, and out popped the rat’s head, placed the rat on the counter, gently. The rat windswept his fur and shook himself, as if to stretch from being cooped up in a small area too long, it was as if it even tried to be tidy about it.
The lady behind him moved rapidly away from him, and the teller, grabbed a pen and tried to push it back, away from her so it didn’t jump towards her. “Isn’t he a manly fury little fellow?” he remarked. “Incidentally,” he asked, almost embarrassed, “next time give money bands around the bills, so they don’t flop all over the place.”
“Bands?” said the woman, “for your money.”
The teller shoved the rat back with her pen a second time, like a wicket witch, and quickly stepped backwards and to the side, to where she felt safer. Shannon had a warm glow on his face and a big shinny smile.
“He’s not a noisy rat, just a happy one,” Shannon mention in passing starting to move away from the counter, as the bank teller threw her arms in the air, yelled in a hysteric voice to her boss: “A rat! Rat, a live rat in the house, I mean bank!” At that juncture, Mr. O’Day walked quickly out of the bank: behind him, voices crying, along his path: “A live rat, a live rat…rat…rat!”
When he got outside, he was tucking his money in his left pocket and in the right the rat.
Chapter Six
“How old is the rat?” asked the waitress at Mickey’s Diner, after delivering Shannon his long awaited breakfast.
“How would I know,” Shannon said. “I just met him yesterday. My wife left me a few days ago to boot.”
“You poor old man,” the waitress said. She poured some steaming hot coffee in his coffee cup, refilling it. Shannon put his finger in it to test its temperature, how hot it was. “We were out drinking that evening, or was it morning, I can’t remember, and I heard the train near the cornfields. I passed out, and when I woke up she was gone, just like that.”
“Maybe she’s trying to get a hold of you right now?”
“Give me the pepper please,” asked Shannon, “now what were you saying?”
“Nothing, just eat old man,” she commented, and walked away.
“I’m a High School graduate,” he told the waitress as she walked away.
“So what,” said the waitress, “eat up, shut up and get out of here, and take the ugly rat with yaw.”
His mind was now drifting, and the rat was hanging its head out of his pocket. He knew the rat was hungry, it looked faint. And perhaps this cold air was too much for it.
“I say,” he said to the rat, handing him a piece of bacon, “I bet you could eat this whole breakfast by yourself.”
The waitress came up now with a large order of potatoes, fried crisp.
“Here,” she said, “for the rat, I hate to see anyone, or thing, go hungry.”
The rat was now nibbling at its food, in the booth area, on the bench like seats, happily, rising up his head looking at his new friend.
“He does that to thank me,” he explained to the waitress.
“They are delicious potatoes, fine, too.” She commented. Shannon grabbed some with his finger tips, the rat almost bit them, and sure enough, they tasted delicious, and so with a nod of his head he agreed.
After eating all those potatoes, the rat was reenergized, as if his head was clear, and eyes could now refocus.
What was this decomposing language the waitress was talking about; his wife might be looking for him, now that he had $8000-dollars in his pocket. If she found him, he had a big surprise for her—nothing; he had nothing for her, her cut was out of the bank. He wasn’t a man to be taken lightly, or made a fool out of: he once heard the saying, ‘Monkey see, monkey do,” and he was doing just that, as far as he was considered, she burned the bridge she crossed.
After finishing his breakfast and the rat his potatoes, the rat had fallen to sleep.
“When he gets tired of sleeping,” remarked the waitress, “best you get on out of here.”
“Sure,” said Shannon.
“Where is your home?” asked the waitress.
“It used to be on Albemarle Street, down Rice Street, past NSP (Northern States Power).” The old man said, with a smile a bit sadly.
Strange man, thought the waitress.
“I was not always a waitress you know,” she commented.
“I’m sure you weren’t.”
“Plus, I also got a High School Diploma, went to Central High School, then Harding High School.” The waitress started to go on and on, about her life. “Do you find my life interesting?” she asked the old man, adding, “if you write a book someday, don’t use my name, ok?”
“Sure, dear,” said Shannon, “If that’s the way you want it.” Then he was quiet, “Incidentally,” he said “mind if I get some more bacon?”
“It’s the best in the Midwest,” the waitress said with a smiled, her face, pale and red, sweaty with patchy rawness from the wind, “You look like that lady from ‘King Kong,’ you know Fay Wray?”
“She was an interesting woman, I met her once, and did you really want more bacon?”
“Yes,” Shannon answered simply.
“And lay off that rat,” said the waitress, Shannon was tickling it.
“Tell me more of your life story,” said Shannon.
“I once found myself in San Francisco, back in the early 40s,” she began, “I was always excited about wanting to see the Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps that is why I ended up there.”
“Go on,” rambled Shannon.
“Like the rat when I got there I remember being really tired, and must had fallen soundly to sleep. When I woke up I was in bed with a man. My mother had disappeared.”
“Who was the man?” asked Shannon.
“A soldier on leave, from WWII…can’t remember his name.”
“Just call him, Igor,” suggested Shannon.
“Yes, that sounds pretty close to his real name,” she said.
“I went downstairs to the lobby to check with the bellboys, and the register, because I though I came with my mother, but it read his name, and mine, and the bellboys all said, the soldier and I were one. It all of course was a surprise to me. I remember then calling up my mother and she said, ‘Where the heck have you been, after the bus accident, you were missing,’ and I told her I wake up in Frisco of all places, everybody calls it Frisco you know. I found out I had been gone two weeks. Amnesia for two whole weeks; can you beat that. How do you like my story?”
“Go on, it’s a killer, said Shannon.
“Amnesia, that is what I had, walking around in a state of amnesia for two whole weeks, I wake up, that’s it, and then I went to see the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“What about the soldier boy?”
“Igor, he gave me a one-hundred dollar bill, told me to go back home, he’d write me, but he never did of course. And I bought my ticket and came back here, and I’ve been a waitress ever since.”
“It’s good to get such things off your mind,” said Shannon.
“Yes,” said the waitress, wrinkles around her eyes, especially pronounced when she smiled. They reminded the old man of the trenches he lived in during WWI.
“You look better now,” said the old man.
“Honestly?” she asked.
“Cross my heart hope to die,” and he had his toes crossed, because he knew he was lying.
Shannon went outside of the diner, an old diner car from a retired train, made into a café.
“You come back again,” yelled the waitress, “but don’t bring that rat with you please!”
“Yes,” said the old man, looking up at the ugly bulky bank, with the number one on top of it. Was it true, it was the number one bank in St. Paul; he’d had liked to have known the truth?
The rat’s head was also looking up at the big one, grimy like, almost emulating Shannon.
November Slush
Part Three
Chapter Seven
Shannon O’Day was seeking out work. He was a man who used his hands more than his mind in such matters. He went back to the foundry, Malibu Iron, over on the eastside of town. He looked through the window, it was inviting, all those people running to and fro to get this and that done. True, it was a dirty, messy job, all foundries are, but they paid well. Men running around naked after being washed up in the showers, and putting on long underwear, so the winds of Minnesota would not freeze them, or get frostbite.
Inside the foundry doors, Shannon beckoned to a woman in the office, “I say do you have a supervisor?”
“Can I help you, sir?” asked the woman.
“What do you think I just said, where is the boss man, do you have a boss man?” Shannon knew the foundries and factories quite well, like the palm of his hand, he worked in enough of them. He was on his guard, they were not going to fool him one iota. He waited by the office door. He read a sign a little ways down the isle:
“Foreman, knock before entering!”
Heck with this noise, he told himself, I’ll go right to the foreman, and he walked down the isle, and saw the door was slightly opened, knocked on it, then walked in.
“Can’t you read the sign,” said a voice behind a desk.
“It said Knock, and I did,” said Shannon, standing in front of the Foreman’s desk. Outside in the isle, he could hear the workmen going back and forth, humming, and talking, and whistling, and cussing.
He was a little man, but well-built, with broad shoulders and big hands, and a harsh face.
“So what can I do for yaw, as if I don’t know?”
“What you do best, hire and fire, today it is hire me, and I can do anything these young whippersnappers can do, and do it better, faster.”
“So you want a job, do you, all right, I got one for you.” Said the foreman, “we’ll put you up by the burner, and you can pour the metal into the molds: how’s that?”
“Just dandy,” said Shannon.
“Poggi, come over here,” he called to a middle aged man, tall and healthy looking, and when Poggi got to the foreman, he looked Shannon up and down.
“I’m a German,” said the Foreman, “do you mind working for a German boss?”
“One kraut’s just as good as the next, or bad, I’ve got nothing against them, we kicked their butts twice, and they are slow learners, that’s all I know, why do you ask?”
“Well that’s honest and good talk, I see you’re Irish, and I don’t have a thing against you potato pickers over there in Ireland either, as long as you do your work here.”
The man called Poggi Ingway, just kept looking and staring at Shannon, as the Foreman stepped aside for a moment to talk to one of the workers.
“Glad to meet you Poggi,” said Shannon. He was looking at his chunkiness, he was as round as he was tall, but solid in the right places.
“We don’t usually see your sort around here,” he said.
“Your Foreman’s the first German I ever met, I didn’t shoot,” said Shannon.
“Oh, he’s really just a good ole American boy, his father came from Austria, and his mother from Germany, but he was born here in St. Paul, and at the end of WWII, he had a tragedy, and I suppose you could call it his nightmare,” Poggi said, as he showed him around the foundry, the Foreman still talking to the worker.
“Were you in the war too?” he asked Shannon.
“Yup, the First Great War, I was in France, in those trenches.”
“I bet that was quite an occurrence,” said Poggi.
“It was cold and wet, men peeing in their pants, and waste piled high as horses, rats all over, it was nasty, but they died brave, awkward, wall-eyed, then one day they just up and stopped the killing, as if they lost the goat, and didn’t want to lose the rope, but they did, the Germans lost it all in WWII.” Then he remembered his rat, he left it in his apartment, forgot to leave out some food for it. “We were all misfits back then, not like the Army nowadays.”
“Aren’t you kind of old to be working?” he asked.
Shannon didn’t answer.
“Don’t take anything out with you, they check you naked after you take a shower, and if they find anything in your locker, or on your person, or in your cloths, it’s curtains, finished for you here.”
“I suppose many men get fired because of that?”
“No,” said Poggi, “not many try, or are so foolish to attempt it.”
“My wife left me,” said Shannon to Poggi.
“Well, I’d not worry about that anymore, it looks like you still got some getup and go, a good job, a place to rest your head, and perhaps a dog or two, right? And finding a good or bad female is no harder than finding a good or bad steakhouse.”
“Yup, I suppose so, everything but the dog, I got a rat.”
“I wouldn’t say that too loud Shannon, people might think you’re wacko.”
“I heard someone once say, ‘No wife is better than having the wrong wife’ something like that.”
“I heard something different, ‘If there are no good wives to pick from, any wife is better than no wife at all,’ but I’d not look forward to that.”
“You listen up Poggi, a piece of advice for you; you’re much younger than me. Get yourself a fat ugly wife, and you’ll be happy all the days of your life. Or some South American gal, they like to take care of their husbands.”
“Shannon,” said Poggi, “it sounds like you know a thing or two, I’m glad we’ve met, and we’ll be working together.”
Poggi put Shannon to work right away, putting him on the second shift, from 4:00 p.m., until midnight; introduced Shannon to most of the workers.
He worked next to Poggi for the following months, shifting iron weights onto molds, holding them steady as the molten metal was poured into them, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was pouring molten metal into the molds, and it seemed Poggi and Shannon got along quite well, working side by side.
•
The Foreman’s Nightmare
Believe it or not, I have no intentions to vilify poor Mr. Schultz, and I have tried to use utmost care in his tragic circumstance, for there is nothing new under the sun; but perhaps had he not had bad habits, this scarce action produced, would not have come about. Who or what do we blame, God?
It was back in 1945, twenty-six years ago, at the end of the Second World War, he, Hans Schultz was drunk, and so was his wife, Marylou, celebrating the end of the war, he took out a package of cigarettes, fumbled with his matches, he had two left in the little box, and he bent over to shelter the flame, with his hands blocking the breeze coming off the Mississippi River, they were walking alongside the edge of the High Bridge, the sides made of wood and iron framed, built in the late 1880s.
Marylou, had taken one of the cigarettes out of his package, he lit his cigarette, leaned against the wooden railing of the bridge, she did likewise, he put his cigarette in his mouth, and lit the second match, with intentions to light her cigarette, she had long hair, she coughed, leaned forward, her hair caught on fire, she fell backwards as Hans tried to put out the fire, pushing her backwards more, unintentionally hard against the railing, the fire was put out, but unexpectedly, his weight hitting her’s was too much for the old wooden railing, and in the late coolness of the night, she dropped to her death, deep into the rivers current, never to be found.
It was a nightmare, and always the same one for him.
He quite smoking that very day, desperation came and left a dark weariness in his soul! Work, work, it was the simplest solution, his eternal medicine, to block those ongoing nightmares. Sometimes he got too tired to sleep, “Things like that sometimes happen,” said the priest, at his local church, what more can you say to a grieving man, except you know where I’ll be if you need a listener.
Chapter Eight
The first day, lead into 364-more days, endless hours to Shannon O’Day, shifting iron weights, and pouring molten metal, and looking at naked men, washing and cleaning, and often bringing his pet rat in, and keeping him in his lunch bucket in the dressing room, and eating lunch alone in that very room, concealed him a few times in his pants pocket, and everyone wondered what he had in that pocket, it bulged so heavily, and wiggled. Poggi had told him: bringing the rat was not the wisest of decisions, but he missed his pet ever so much, even though it made Poggi uncomfortable.
Oh, Shannon was happy he was working, but it took much of his time. Now the week was finished, it was Friday night. And Shannon was on his way to the diner to see Maribel, his new girlfriend; he was spending a lot of time at the diner, socializing with new friends. Her story had kind of bothered him, so he asked Poggi about San Francisco, he knew he had been there. He got him drunk and then got him to talk, drew out some information. He was pretty wise in knowing when and how to get a man drunk then ask the right questions.
After they got drunk, Shannon and Poggi went out to Como Park, by the lake, sat in the car, watched twilight move into place, the lake was starting to freeze up, some kids were ice skating on it, “No reason to rush the relationship with Maribel,” Poggi told him. “All things come in good time, all things come to those who have patience,” said Poggi.
Shannon looked at him mysteriously. Who was Poggi anyhow, I mean, he was no middle aged Plato, just a foundry worker, with a lot of advise to an old man, who was getting older by the day, and perhaps a little undernourished with sex, and missing his cornfields, and the sounds of the trains. Of course Poggi, who had no girlfriends couldn’t understand his needs, isn’t that how it always is, a one way street, on a two way highway, and one driver don’t have a license because he never drove before. He never lived through a war, had four marriages, a kid in high school, living with his brother. Shannon O’Day, opened his car door, the air was cold, “Plato, get out of my car, go tell your bean head girlfriends to wait for their next fix with sex, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.” And then he put the car in gear and took off. Shannon didn’t know Poggi didn’t have any girlfriends, he just assumed he did.
“Good evening,” he said to Maribel, at the diner.
“It’s nice to see you this evening; I’ll get off in an hour.” She told Shannon.
“He sat down at the counter, had a cup of coffee, started reading the St. Paul Pioneer Press, he often read it, liked the paper. Poggi’s comments stirred inside of him.
“I’ve been thinking all day long,” he told Maribel as she walked by—he looked at the other folks in the diner, a few young folks with girlfriends, an old man falling to sleep in his eggs and toast, a woman staring at his rat peeking at her, “hurry up,” he added.
“How cute,” she commented, “a blue ribbon around Rata’s neck. And then she smiled at Rata, the official name Shannon had given him, in lack of a better one that came to mind.
He grabbed Maribel by the skirt, but with dignity, she turned around sharply, “Yes, yes, Shannon what is it?”
“You are my old lady, right?” he said. Tears came down her eyes, “Of course dear,” she responded, “why?”
He hesitated, she said, “You are my old man, correct?” and he nodded his head up and down, giving the yes signal.
“Now what is the matter?” she asked sternly.
Shannon said the word in a whisper, “I’m…you know what, let’s get married, the sooner the better?” He knew he couldn’t keep it any longer a secret; it was what he wanted to say for a while now.
“If we get married, are you going to take Rata every place we go?” she asked (the rat looked at her unhappily, and then at Shannon).
“No, not every place, we’ll look for a Mrs. Rata for him,” and they started laughing, laughing so hard it reminded him how he used to laugh in the cornfields, unabated, with his ex-wife, drunk as a skunk, his long gone, disappearing now ex-wife.
So off they went to make plans. Shannon grabbing his paper, folding it and putting it in his back pant’s pocket.
“I really like that paper, I’ve not read it all the way through yet!” he told Maribel.
She had buttoned her coat up, carried her apron in her hands to wash later on.
“Here, put my hat on, you’ll get a cold,” said Shannon to Maribel.
“No, I don’t like hats, I’m fifty-seven years old, never wore a hat, and it isn’t goin’ to start with you either.”
“It’s your wedding gift,” said Shannon.
“Oh,” commented Maribel, “that’s different,” and she took the hat and put it on her head, and smiled.
Chapter Nine
It was early in the morning of the next day they got married, Shannon O’Day, and his waitress, Maribel O’Day, were one like two peas in a pod. They walked into the diner as man and wife, said hello to Old Josh Jeremy Brown, the Negro cook, he liked playing the banjo when no one was around, he liked his wine also, a bottle hidden here and there, he was about the same age as Shannon, between 65 and 70, not even Shannon knew his correct age, he guessed it at 68. No spring chicken. There was also, the young fancy looking waitress, who wore yellow like Maribel, her name was Annabelle Henry, and the young man who was always sitting at the end of the counter with his guitar, thinking one day he’d be another Elvis, or Rick Nelson, or Johnny Cash, he’d join in playing and singing with Old Josh Jeremy Brown, normally around 3:00 a.m., when it was quiet at the eatery, after the drunks came in for a Porterhouse steak, or early morning breakfast, and staggered back out of the diner trying to find their way back home.
The old black cook asked Maribel, “Youall wants some breakfast, lunch or whatever?” he came up from Alabama back in the early 50s, so he still had some of the southern drawl in him left.
“I’m not going to feed that Rata, of yours,” said Annabelle, with a disgusted look on her face. It was warm inside and Shannon and his new wife sat in a booth, put in a dime for a song on the little booth jukebox, it was Rick Nelson singing “Lonesome Town,” and it brought a tear to Maribel’s eyes.
“I love that song so very much,” said Maribel, “you got that pint of whiskey? Pour some in my coffee before Annabelle comes back.” She told her husband. She liked to drink, not quite as much as Shannon but nearly as much, and Shannon was wondering if she’d like to get drunk in the yellow cornfields, like he and his ex used to do, but he’d not tell her yet—there is a time for everything under the sun, that was one of his many one-liners.
He, Shannon, picked up the Minneapolis Star, newspaper, read the front page, then looked at Maribel, said, “Yes, we are man and wife now, it feels good, and I want to get good and drunk to my heart’s content.”
“We don’t need to say that so loud, dear, we just do it, everyone around here has three ears, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, dear,” Shannon agreed.
“Would you like a breakfast or a Porterhouse steak dear?” Maribel asked her husband.
“I’ll just take a warm bowel of tomato soup with crackers,” Shannon told his wife.
Annabelle Henry, the young waitress, placed the soup and crackers on his table, as she laid the plate down she saw the head of the rat, her hand almost touched him, he was so far out of Shannon’s pocket.
“Really, do you got to carry that beast around wherever you go?” she remarked to Shannon.
“Let’s hear it Ricky!” Shannon shouted, and now he was playing another of Rick Nelson’s songs, it sounded like “Be-Bop Baby,” and was not paying Annabelle any attention.
“What does he call his rat?” Annabelle, asked Maribel.
“Rata, a simple name,” remarked Maribel.
“Why not something with a little pizzazz to it, like Picasso, or Dali or Elvis Junior?”
“Or why not Annabelle?” said Maribel.
“Because it’s a male,” remarked Annabelle.
“How would you know?”
“Because Shannon refers to the creature like it’s a male.”
“I don’t think Shannon even knows if it is a he or she,” said Maribel.
“I think we got to go, talk to you another time, Annabelle, Shannon’s little beast is getting hungry, and he has to be fed.”
The black cook, Josh, started laughing, he heard everything, and he was sitting at the end of the counter, having his lunch.
“What’s so funny?” asked Annabelle, to Old Josh.
“Rata,” he said, “Rata! Rata! What a name.”
Then she said, “Josh, Josh!” (mockingly), as her voice was rising, “please Josh talk to Shannon about getting rid of that rat!”
There was no answer just the sound of him eating and breathing. He was a man content to leave well enough alone.
Chapter Ten
Shannon’s life seemed to take on a new dimension, working at the foundry now on the morning shift, attending to a new wife, and Rata, his pet rat. Not much time for reading the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper, not much time to read anything, not even politics, or war, he liked reading about war, especially the new war in Vietnam, and that fellow called Ho Chi Minh skinny as a bean pole, but he thought he was smart as a whip. I mean, here was a guy washing dishes in Paris one day, and now ruled a jungle and its countrymen, like trained rodents, what more could you ask for in life. He fought the French, the Japanese, and now the Americans. If anything he was a ‘go getter.’ The Vietnamese were a strange people indeed, he concluded. Maybe someday someone will write a book about him and his exploits in the trenches of France during WWI, like Hemingway did about the first war, in ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and Faulkner did in ‘The Fable,’ and that German guy did with “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Oh well, that’s how it was now, not much time for debating things out. She took on a husband, and he took on a wife, but now the trick was, and she was thinking this, it was written all over her face, anyone could tell she was thinking, “Can I hold onto him now, keep him for my own!” Oh yes, she, Maribel, was wondering this indeed.
Mr. Shannon O’Day, formerly a retired old man, who got drunk weekly in the cornfields of Minnesota, in the summers, springs and falls, now the husband to Maribel Adams, now Maribel O’Day, was working in a foundry, had a good income. But the real reason she was questioning her get up and go, her womanhood, was because Annabelle Henry, was making eyes at him, at her man, her man and husband, she had her own intentions and she was not telling anyone verbally of them, but women can tell such things. And every time Maribel looked into the mirror, she saw Annabelle laughing. This was not good for her morale. The question had come to mind, ‘Could Maribel quit her job, after so many years?’ I mean Annabelle even flirted with Rata occasionally, to appease and get closer to Shannon.
She couldn’t iron those wrinkles out, she knew that, and she couldn’t break mirror after mirror, so for the mean time she simply had to live with the awful thought ‘could she or couldn’t she hold on to her man, her husband?’ Every night at the diner, when Maribel would look at Annabelle, a knot came into her stomach, made her feel oozy. She knew Annabelle had a blueprint on Shannon O’Day, yes him, him, the very him, she married, Shannon.
As far as Maribel figured it, Annabelle was no more than a whore, yes, and a cagey one at that. Couldn’t she find her own boyfriend? She was twenty-seven years old, trying to come between husband and wife that was a whore to Maribel, a cagey one. Be that as it may, Shannon was fascinated by Annabelle giving him the time of day, an old yank like him, never got such devoted attention from such a young shapely pretty girl. She was some southern gal from North Carolina, came up with old Josh, got off the same train, must have met on the same train, and they both got a job at the same diner, at the same time. Maribel admitted to herself, that was mysterious, maybe they had something going, maybe the same game. The only thing that mattered now was finding out the truth, and seeking out her intentions. She had to hang onto her treasure, her man, her husband. Make him want to stay no matter what. When summer came around, perchance the cornfields would do it. He always talked about drinking in the cornfields with his ex-wife, another whore in the eyes of Maribel. She looked into the mirror in the bathroom at the café, another wrinkle appeared.
The cold was starting to freeze up the streets solid, they crack and have to be mended in spring, as usual, as the silent snows drifted lightly down, oh, she, Maribel, dreaded winter, hold it back, tell it to wait. At first the snows seemed to be natural, and then a burden, as Maribel trekked to work each day. Neither she nor her husband, Shannon, drove a car, too expensive, and Shannon feared he was too slow to react nowadays. It was turning out to be a slushy November, and Shannon was still her man, her only man, the man of all men. She even brought him the St. Paul Pioneer Press paper home every night, after work, some customer would normally leave one on the counter, and that made Shannon happy.
Chapter Eleven
Winter was coming. Winter was in the atmosphere.
(Author’s Note. –This is the same day on which the story began, back on the first page, where Shannon and Poggi were looking into the window at the foundry.)
A chill was in the air, men were busy as bees, Poggi was by one window and Shannon by the another, “Are you going to go into work?” asked Poggi.
“Are you still mad at me for kicking you out of my car?” Shannon, asked—his rat moaning from his pocket, perhaps too cramped.
“No, I’m not mad,” said Poggi, “how are you and Maribel doing?”
“I think she doesn’t feel she can hold me, and is like a hawk, always by my side, she wants to take Rata if we separate I think!” said Shannon.
He, Poggi touched Shannon’s shoulder. It was a sign that he understood, life had its ups and downs. “There’s more fish in the Sea,” said Poggi.
“Yaw, my mother used to say that, did you know her?” asked Shannon.
“No, of course not, it’s just one of those old sayings, you know, like that Chinaman used to say, Confucius, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ something like that, and so and so and on and on…you know what I mean.”
Then the wind started to blow, a chilled wind, and then a warm wind, and the weather didn’t seem like it knew what it wanted to do, slush and mush, and ice mud, all over the place, grim pushed into more grim making it thicker grim, what little snow was on the ground looked horribly dirty, Shannon’s shoes among them. Then he noticed Maribel coming down the street, she was faint in the distance, but he could tell by her walk, that it was her, she had that wiggle. She hoped he would be glad to see her, she hadn’t been sure all night, since she got off work, and he was sleeping on the coach, and he had not come to pick her up.
Shannon was stirred up by her constantly becoming his shadow, or so it seemed. She now was waving hello at him, a half block away. Poggi still looking in the window, “I think I’m going to work, see you in there,” he said and took off before Shannon’s wife arrived; Maribel coming nearer.
“Good morning, dear,” said Maribel, “are you going into work, or what?”
“Hello Miracle,” Shannon answered. He sat down on the iron rounded fence that was below the windows. She looked at him, tired and with more wrinkles. He could afford to be any-which-way he wanted to be to her but was polite, “What brings you all the way over here dear?” In a way, his wife leaving him, and his trip to Erie had hardened him. His look at her was more eclipsed. More darkened had he shown more than his profile: his mind was near the same.
“Would you like me to buy you a paper?” she asked.
“How about us going down to the diner, forgetting work today?” he suggested.
“Ok,” she said reluctantly, and then with tears from her eyes, she said, “If only I could quit that job, you’d have no reason to go there and see her…!” said Maribel. She wiped her cheek with her sleeve, “I’ll carry Rata, if you want me to,” she suggested.
Maribel hadn’t been out all morning she was hungry, but was afraid to let Shannon know, then that would give him a good excuse to stay longer at the diner, and that was to the contrary of what she wanted.
They caught a bus down Seventh Street, to the diner, never once holding hands, as if they had been married for fifty-years. Shannon kept a sharp eye on Rata, thinking Maribel might try to grab him out of jealousy and runaway with him.
Many folks now knew of Shannon and his pet Rata, they were becoming a team, well known and well liked among his crowd.
As they got off of the bus, they stepped into a pile of slush, ankle deep, ice and mud and just old fashion sludge, Minnesota slush, that has a sting to it, a cold numbing like sting, then onto the narrow sidewalk, up a few steps into the eatery.
Perchance, it was the way Shannon walked ahead of her, or too far behind her, or a distance to her side, whatever it was, it told Maribel, she had too many wrinkles, she was soon to be history, replaced in the life of Shannon O’Day, god forbid, she conjured up in her mind.
Once in the diner, Annabelle looked at Shannon, they gave each other a smile, and that did it, she knew now, her days were numbered with this man she called her husband. Even Old Josh, who was cooking, saw them catch each other’s eye, or perhaps it was all in her brain, and she imagined it, but truth be told, you could not have convinced Maribel to the opposite.
A Note for the Reader, not the printer or publisher: if there are misspelling in this book, or typo errors, it shouldn’t make an elephant’s difference in the long run, every author has them, especially in their first editions, to include Hemingway, and Faulkner, two Nobel Prizes winners for literature, and we can put Fitzgerald into this category, the one who wrote the 20th Century’s greatest novel, “The Great Gatsby” but be assured, the author did not make the error (s), it was either the printer, or the publisher, too many times, it comes back to the author as a lacking to his structure, or impatience to edit his work, when in reality, it is the indolence of the printer, or publisher; enough said on this matter, back to the story.
(If the reader is somewhat confused where we are at in the story, don’t be, let me explain, and get you out of the trip. We are at the beginning of the story, remember, when Shannon and Poggi were looking inside the window of the foundry. With all the busy people running to and fro; and now, being at this juncture, we see Maribel is unsure of her womanhood to keep her husband happy; she’s a little fearful she might lose the old goat to Annabelle, and Shannon is on guard as to protect Rata, incase Annabelle tries to kidnap him, or her. To be frank, if not down right honest, I’m not sure how she can really keep him, she is like his shadow, and most folks don’t like looking at their shadows, but we shall see, as they say: reader beware. On the other hand, we want the reader to like Poggi, and Shannon, that is why they made up, and we do not want to have women hating Shannon because he is paying a little more interest into the life of a young Annabelle, and so forth and so on. So we will try to make everything come out smooth, to the best of my ability anyhow. Would it be any relief to the reader, to inform him or her, I get a number of these anecdotes from a number of my experiences mixed up into one, I do not think that is a violation of the story, we also owe much to the imagination. In any case, we will now go and see what is happening with the characters I’ve just mentioned. As the story opens, he never did go into that founder that day, he went to the diner.
Be assured, it is not easy to write backwards, and front wards, and somehow end up in the proper middle, while at the end of the story, or close to it. If you have criticism or advice, send it to me we can talk it over. Now if you, my dear readers are ready, and can give an understanding ear, or eye in this case, we are at the diner, and Old Josh has just checked things out, what will take place now, I really don’t know, if indeed the reader was here s/he could help me, and my wife is at the doctors, so I got to put it together by my lonesome.)
Man Differs from What Appears
Part Four
Chapter Twelve
Poggi Ingway, got off early, as did most everyone else at the foundry, a snow storm had come, everyone had expected it, winter was here and down the street he walked to catch the bus on Seventh Street, to the diner. The owner of the foundry let everyone go early, lest he be responsible for all the accidents that might occur in the parking lot, and on the way home. He was a smart man, the foundry owner, and wise enough to know, libel can sit on any rich man’s door step, and the longer it sits there, right or wrong, people look, give him bad looks, and that goes into the courtroom also.
Once in the café, Annabelle tried to charm him, but he was not all that interested in her or any female at the moment. Poggi was worried for the most part, something deep on his mind, even when he was at the tobacco store, a few young girls checked him out, he never gave them a second look. He had never been married, and didn’t care to be someone else’s meal ticket, or sugar daddy, not at forty-nine years old anyways.
So the interest for women was kind of out of him, but he still had the love for dogs. He left the diner walked up Wabasha Street, his legs strained from the slippery sidewalks and the snow and sleet coming down upon him, finally winter had come, and ‘Indian Summer’ was long, and now long gone. He looked into the side windows of the stores, the movie theaters, looked at his aging face, pulled out a stick of gum from his shirt pocket, took the wrapper off, and stuck it in his mouth.
He saw a dog running across the street, he stopped and stared at it, the dog stopped also, stared back at him, then showed its teeth, as Poggi came nearer; then Poggi put his hand out to the dog, head jerked back, away, but Poggi moved nearer yet, his tail started to move about, is this all he needed, love, after all, Poggi was lonely too.
Poggi started walking up towards Cathedral Hill, where his apartment was, once on the hill, he turned to the left, to a row of old large brick buildings, they all looked the same, rosy looking brick used for building apartment houses at the turn of the century, they also build a number of churches in the city with those stones. On his right was the dog, a mutt, now looking back down the hill, the snow was coming and you could not see the diner any longer; strange but a wonderful thing that this dog showed up all of a sudden, who walked beside him. A kindred spirit almost.
Poggi looked long and hard down the hill, he knew Shannon and Maribel, along with many of the foundry workers would drink long and hard during the snow storm, they needed an excuse to stay until closing up the bars, and this was a good one. Shannon was happy though, he just didn’t like a pest for a wife, more of a sidekick would do. To the far left of Poggi’s apartment were those high towers, over by where Shannon lived, where they produced Robin Hood Floor, he wondered if their boss let the employees go home early. They’d most likely close down the schools tomorrow, if the storm was all night long. The Mississippi River was not far from the diner, and that was starting to harden like ice bricks.
He looked at his little mutt, would it ever be able to tell him a thing or two, perhaps not, but he might be good silent company. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care, he just let the mutt follow him into his apartment, fed it some chicken bones, and christened him: “The Mutt!”
The snow and darkness crept in slowly that night, and the Mutt, fell to sleep by the space heater in the living room, and so did Poggi, a pipe in his hands still lit, lightly, a book called, “Men Without Women,” on his lap, by Hemingway, and the dog snoring, some place in no man’s land. Had Shannon walked into his apartment as often he did, or climb through the window, if he didn’t leave his door open, he’d have thought they were two dead ducks.
He was dreaming, had rapid-eye movement, perhaps of his younger days in San Francisco, or Shannon’s true or untrue stories he often told to anyone who would listen, about his time in France, during the Great War, WWI. He told Poggi he was in an Ordnance Company, one time, and another time infantry, maybe he was both.
“Listen,” said Poggi to the Mutt, telling him about his time in San Francisco, working for Lilly Ann, a dress designing outfit, in late 1949, and early 1950. He had to think about it, he had almost forgotten that time. His hands still holding his pipe, the dog sleepy eyed, looking up at his new master.
He rubbed his face to wake up more. “I never liked football, or baseball, or the Army, or war, no rough-housing it for me doggie, I liked pleasant things, not too stimulating, that’s old Shannon’s game.” Although Poggi was talking aloud to the dog, he was thinking of San Francisco, but couldn’t put his finger on any one thing. It was difficult to remember, that was seventeen-years ago or so. Shannon’s Army episodes were different; once he told his stories, you could kind of ride them, talk about them, make them more interesting or dull depending on his mood. The war made a lot of people rich, and a lot of poor people dead.
He had once been told by Shannon, he had killed seven men, and he couldn’t believe it didn’t bother him. And Shannon had said, “It doesn’t bother three percent of the population to kill,” and Poggi asked, “How did you come up with that figure?” and Shannon said in so many words: there was a survey taken, and people asked him after the war, did it bother him to kill the people he killed during his war time, and he said no, not one bit. And they told him, ‘You are one of the three percent…”
Shannon had told him, “The first one you kill, you wonder if you really did kill him, you function as you’ve always have, but it gives you a fascination, I never felt any different than before, I was always scared, but not really scared enough to hide, just scared enough to laugh about it. The second person I killed, it seemed to be less potent than the first. Then it became like throwing darts, no big thing. At the same time I never lost my equilibrium, mentally, spiritually or physically. ”
The Mutt had fallen to sleep again, and Poggi gave him some more chicken, this time, a leg with skin on it. When the dog smelled the chicken by his nose, he woke up, “Well,” said Poggi, “how did you like my story?” and put the chicken leg by the dog’s nose. The dog barked, I guess that was his thank you.
“You’re welcome,” said Poggi.
Then Poggi carefully repacked his pipe, lit it, and leaned back in the sofa chair, puffing away.
As it darkened outside, Poggi started to fall back to sleep, the snow on the windows were turning into ice, the blaze inside the space heater was pushing out red, blue and orange flames, sparks, the cracking of the wood of the old house sounded as if it was yawning. It didn’t seem to make a difference to Poggi that he did not want a woman, didn’t want to take the time and effort to court one, although there remained a question in his mind on the matter, it was not all that important, he liked his dog, like Shannon at the end of all things, liked his Rata, and even perhaps more than the rat, he liked those cornfields.
Chapter Thirteen
In the morning, Saturday, the snow outside was three feet deep. Everything frozen; Poggi and his dog, Mutt walked silently down towards the river, they met Shannon and his rat, Rata, and his wife Maribel, and the three walked together, stepping through thin films of ice, into pools of water, and slipping here and there, and lifting their feet up to take another step, the river was frozen from one end across to the other, the Robert Street Bridge, was car to car, going a mile an hour, everyone trying to get to work.
“I see you got a wiggly little dog there,” Shannon stated to Poggi, “it brightens up your composure some,” Shannon’s rat peeking out at the dog, the dog showing his teeth, and Rata hissing.
Along the wintry streets they strolled.
“Suppose old Josh has any boiled eggs at the diner?” asked Poggi.
“No, you got to go to a bar for that.”
“Just a suggestion,” said Poggi.
“Come on, let’s keep going.”
“How was Erie?” said Poggi, in lack of anything else to say, and to continue a conversation. Shannon did a double-take on Poggi.
“Well if it’s of any real interest, it’s a strange city.”
Poggi was making a fuss over his dog’s feet getting cold, then noticed in a taxi that rode by, Jake was in it, it passed them heading down towards the diner. Along the way, many trees that had long been part of the landscape were being uprooted to make way for wider streets, and a throughway across the city via bridges. There were broken walls, of old houses and apartment buildings that were being torn down, now rubble just waiting to be hauled away. Behind them was the St. Paul Cathedral and the white marble State Capitol, the two structures were high against the sky as if ready to block the sun, and leave the trees and all, turn into shadows.
“Want to play some pool?” Shannon asked Poggi.
“Where?” He asked.
“Down on Seventh and Jackson, no…no, down at Forth Street and Jackson,” replied Shannon.
The snow was hard, frozen hard like Teflon, or hard plastic. Maribel walked in-between both of the men; down a main street then over to a side street and then back onto a main street which was Jackson Street.
Poggi opened the door to the bar for the other two, and they all walked inside, there were three pool tables at the end of the bar to the left side. It was dark along the bar counter, but all lit up, over the pool tables. Poggi followed Shannon. No one was playing, it was early morning, and the usual drunks were at the bar, but no one playing pool.
Along side of the pool table were spittoons. The bar was an old type of a bar, it had a mildew smell in it, a reeking beer smell, but it was warm, very warm.
Maribel noticed a newspaper on a chair, she picked it up, in case Shannon wanted to read it. Poggi’s dog sat quietly next to Maribel who sat down on the chair that the paper was on. Three drunks stood leaning on the bar, with their elbows, the bartender snapped his finger at the old waitress, “See what they’re drinking,” he said.
“Where’s the eight-ball?” yelled Shannon to the bartender.
“It should be there unless someone done took it on home thinkin’ it waz…well forget it, ef-in it aint there, then it is jes’ rotten luck.”
“Let’s just sit at the table over there and have a drink,” said Shannon; Poggi answered, “Sure enough.”
“I’ll go check an’ see if the other tables have an eight ball, mister!” said the bartender apologetically.
The waitress was as slow as molasses, so Shannon got up and went up to the bar to get the drinks, “Give it to me,” he said to the waitress, she had three beers on a tray.
“Fine,” she said, the rat’s head stuck out, “A rat!” she screamed, and the bartender came running, “What?”
“He has a rat in his pocket,” she remarked. And the tall burly black bartender broke into a chuckle.
“Just what are you laughing about,” asked the waitress.
The Negro bartender broke into a high-pitched unforgettable laugh.
“I knows it waz a rat, but I says no, cant be so, but it sure is, what’s it name?”
“Rata,” yelled Maribel.
“Very interesin’” said the Blackman, “he git a fat head he does, yessum, he sure do!” staring at the rat.
“Youall wants a beef jerky to feed that thing,” and he started laughing with that high-pitched unforgettable laugh again, and Shannon laughed, and Maribel laughed, everyone laughed but the waitress.
“It’s damn daring of you to bring a live rat in here mister,” said the Negro.
“It’s nothing,” Shannon told the Black man, “you’d do the same if he were your pet, right?” and the big burly black Negro just broke out again into his high-pitched unforgettable laughter, “I reckon so!” he commented, “But I don’t think Ms Hathaway understands your decent concern for the pet, youall better finish up your beer and head on out of her before my boss comes in and fires me on the spot.”
As Shannon and Poggi were finishing up their drinks, the middle aged tall burly Negro now behind the bar, broke out in dark laughter, uncontrollable laughter, “Dog me, if I aint seen it all now,” he said aloud. Then he calmed down, wiped the tears from his face, and sweat from his brow, he had laughed so hard he had a coughing spell, “You is one heck of an eccentric dude,” he told Shannon.
“And you are one good hearted chap, if I don’t say, and I do say.” said Shannon.
“I’m sorry boys,” said the waitress, “I just can’t see anything funny in this,” and she shook her head back and forth. But of course, it would not have been so funny, had she accepted the situation as normal, she created the black laughter and all the other laughter in part.
Then all of a sudden the doors to the bar opened, and two thugs, with black masks over their faces, woolen type ski masks, both with shotguns, gripped tightly, said ((looking at Shannon and Poggi, then towards the bar) (Poggi grabbed his stomach)),
“You all get quietly on the floor, cover your heads with your hands; I’m not going to tell you twice.”
The three bums at the counter bar got down on their stomachs, covered their heads, like Shannon, Poggi and Maribel did, and one of the robbers stood in a corner of the bar to watch over everything. And the other one said, “Open the safe Nigger, or I’ll shoot your black head off your neck!”
Shannon couldn’t help it, he started laughing. Poggi looked at him, saw the laughing white face of Shannon, and started laughing also, “What’s in the cellar, I know you folks got one here,” he asked the bartender, after taking $300-dollars from the safe, hoping to acquired more. The other robber, brought his shotgun to the edge of Poggi’s neck, “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Him,” he said, pointing a finger at Shannon.
“And so Mister, you tell me what’s so funny?” now talking to Shannon.
There was a sound of sirens coming closer and closer, “Forget the cellar, just grab a bottle of whiskey and let’s get out of here,” yelled the robber that had his shotgun pointed at Poggi.
Author’s Note to the Reader
In case it may be of some interest to the reader, after my wife came back from the doctor’s today, concerned about osteoporosis, I was glad to state I had worked out what I needed to work out in the story, writing the middle part of the book, that was in the beginning of the book, now bringing it into the middle of the book, still sitting at my computer the same way she had left me, hours and hours ago. She, Rosa commented, “Oh, like that movie we saw “Seven Pounds?” which I never thought of during my writing periods on this book. I commented, “I guess so,” trying to figure out how “Seven Pounds” went. Then I lost my concentration, and went to eat dinner, noodles with red sauce and cheese, and grapefruit juice. Then came back to the computer to write this, and therefore wrote this note for the reader, thinking all the time, I got to get back to where I left off, which was with Poggi and his dog falling to sleep, somewhere back younger. But she was surprised I could write such a trying, if not complex, recoiling scene.
P.S. — It is now that I am going to try and draw everything into one big conglomerate, making this a worthwhile read from page one to the very end. I’m sure you are saying the same thing, “Please do it!” As you may already know, most of all my characters are drawn from real people I’ve known; as an editor once said, “Dennis, he always puts himself into his stories,” how right he is, that being Ben Szumskyi, from Australia. The author, personally only comes into the story in these little notes, so I figured, Mr. or Mrs. Reader, believe me, this is meant in the best of spirits, and friendship, that you have a good story from beginning to end, only that, in this case, putting the beginning in the middle, and the middle in the beginning, took place before I could do anything about it, but it worked out ok. As a matter of fact, I may never try it again.
A Era
That never did pass
Part Five
Chapter Fourteen
Poggi Ingway, was walking downtown, St. Paul, along the riverfront, it was Christmas Eve, there was still a little light out, it was a cold, cold night. His dog was with him, and he looked at all the artificial Christmas dressing ornaments throughout the city.
Where he could go, what could he do, what was left in life for him: his dog, his apartment, his job, his only friend, true friend, Shannon? He looked down at the icy cold river, said to his dog, “Mutt, where should we go?”
Well, the dog didn’t know anymore than Poggi knew. And clearly, walking had tired him out some. He looked about, knew many of these people were out of work, yet buying this and that. Going on and on and on and on with life, as usual. He knew about this part of life, it went on, and on and on, nowhere is where it ended up. Every place he looked was the old same damn place he had been a thousand times before, he was either leaving or returning, to these same old places, places he just left. That was life.
“Mutt,” he said “this is what my friend Shannon fought the war for, yes indeed for folks like me, and dogs like you, so we could walk one day down this riverfront, and look at the cold, cold river.” The arc lights then went on, he looked at them, thinking and wondering, and contemplating.
He looked and looked and didn’t know what to say, perhaps because there was nothing to say.
“Speak dog speak,” he said, “What would you have me do?”
Poggi was tired, the holidays made him sad, and more tired, so tired, yet he picked up Mutt, held him in his arms tightly, looking over the railing down onto the river.
There was a lot of trouble going on in the country, the blacks were protesting; a war in Vietnam was building up, and draftees were burning their draft cards; hippies all over the place smoking pot; where was it all leading to? A rhetorical question perhaps, but was it all worthwhile?
He wished he wrote poetry, like that fellow poet who lived in Minnesota, Robert Bly, maybe then he’d not be so sad. A happy poem, one on nature, might cheer him up. He knew Bly liked the cornfields just like Shannon, although Shannon used them for his hideaway. San Francisco, ah yes, good old Frisco, there was still San Francisco, that would be nice to go visit again. Why not? Poggi kept striding on along the railing of the bridge, dog in hand, his mind racing. Then he turned about and walked up to the eatery.
Author’s Note to Reader
It was at this point, or a little earlier, reader, that Rosa, my wife asked me for the 4th time, “Are you finished with that story yet?” Wanting to read it, since I’ve been on it from morning to night like white on rice; yesterday we had company, someone who came over and wanted to meet me, I just had a conference on a book I did on Juan Parra del Riego (a poet, who has been dead now some 80-years), and so I gave her an autograph picture, and she was delighted. But the point I want to make is this: that when one is writing a book or short story, or even a poem, these things happen, although they do not show up in the story. Disruptions can cause the writer to drop everything, and attend to other businesses, then come back. So if this part is not as interesting as the rest that is perhaps why. But it is the risk one has to take, breaking for a moment. Mark Twain had his little hut to run to when writing, a little ways away from his house, and Hemingway, in Cuba, a little apartment, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom is from my home town, of St. Paul, hid himself in his room, up around Summit Street. Me, I’m to the contrary, I’m almost in the middle of the house, no place to hide, no place to run to.
P.S. –To the Reader (last chapters)
As we go into these last chapters, and if it doesn’t seem to be so bad, and it fits with the rest of the book, and if you got a laugh or two out of it, well then, your money was well spent, if indeed you purchased it. Go tell your friends to buy a book or two; I got to eat just like you and them.
Chapter Fifteen
Inside the diner, it was near midnight, January, 31, New Years Eve, and the New Year was but an hour away. Poggi sat up on a bench by the counter, talking to Old Josh, the black cook, silently and quickly through the door came Maribel, Shannon was with Annabelle, sitting in a booth at the far end of the diner. The young guitar player, that usually sat at the opposite end of the counter, saw Maribel before she got through the doors, and yelled, “Don’t look, she’s naked!”
A customer yelled, “Get her out of here!” She was forcibly ejected, then everyone heard her trashing through the trash cans along side of the diner, pushing them over, she was drunk, and Shannon was sober with Annabelle. Poggi looked at Shannon, and then outside at his wife, and at his dog, quietly by his side, the other ten customers were faint and shaken somewhat. The guitar boy started playing his Rick Nelson tunes.
“Good god,” said Josh directing his statement to Shannon, “Can’t you afford to cloths her?” And everyone started laughing. There was a note of terror in his eyes: as if a battle was about to start a war, he blanked it out.
Poggi was no longer listening to Josh and the police had taken Maribel away in a squad car. Something happened to Poggi just then, he said to Josh, “I was going to kill myself a week ago, something snapped inside of me, I felt lost, like Maribel I suppose, like Shannon who needs Annabelle now, like Annabelle who needs to capture another woman’s man, are we all on a road to self-destruction?”
“I don’t know, Poggi, I jes’ goin’ on a cookin’ likes I always does,” said Josh. And he walked behind the counter to make a hamburger, he was used to the simple life, simple ways, all this was too complex for him, or perhaps too silly.
Poggi got thinking about his time in San Francisco, when he met a redheaded girl, she was a movie star he had convinced himself, he never really knew for sure, so she looked anyhow, and he fell madly in love with her, they went up onto a hill, laid together, and he fell to sleep and when he woke up she had disappeared, and he got Poison Oak from laying in the grass and weeds, and it lasted for two weeks, he had it on his face, his lips, everywhere, folks thought he had syphilis, he had to hide in a hotel room. He could never find that girl again, and somehow he could never replace her. Today, he saw a woman in the raw, a glimpse of her anyhow, somehow he felt he had lost a lot of beauty in-between then and now. Things were going to change.
Poggi looked about, everyone was talking, talking, talking, or listening, and the boy in the corner was playing his Ricky Nelson songs “Traveling Man,” quietly, and the cook was making a hamburger, and he knew now, Maribel couldn’t hang onto Shannon, and in the long run, Shannon would not be able to hang onto Annabelle, but isn’t that the way it always is, one loves more than the other, and who knows what follows.
Suddenly, he turned around on his stool, and before midnight, walked out of the diner, up the street with Mutt, and figured it would be a nice long wet leisurely walk, and by the time he’d get home, he’d be hungry, and Mutt would be hungry, and the house would be cold, and when he turned on the space heater, it would warm his bones, and that would be better than all the yelling and jumping up and down at the diner, to celebrate the new year, on planet earth.
Chapter Sixteen
A few more people left the diner, Shannon and Annabelle, remained seated, talking, drinking; he knew it was over for him and Maribel, there was only five of them now, plus the cook. Those six looked at one another, talked amongst each other, drank from hidden bottles of vodka, and rum, and whisky, hidden behind closed jackets, and coats.
Maribel was actually dropped off at her house, the police felt sorry for her, and she made no pretense, thinking she could hold onto Shannon any longer. She steadied her shaking body, turned up the heat, and put some cloths on.
She wrote on a letter, “Shannon Dear,” her hand shivering, “I will be at the St. Paul Hotel, if you want me to come home, call me please, if not, I’m going to San Francisco.”
Shannon looked out the back of the window of the café.
“Won’t you come home with me, Shannon?” said Annabelle.
“Yes,” he said, “I don’t really give a damn, but I will, why not!”
Annabelle dropped her head, “Oh Shannon,” she said, knowing she had her answer, she had won him, won him over his wife. It was over for Maribel, she was crying in her hotel room.
Annabelle sat up, she had a request, she was going to ask for something, only one thing, he might refuse her, but she was now willing to take that chance.
“Shannon,” she said in a soft and soothing voice.
“What is it?” Shannon asked, he saw intent on her face and that disturbed him.
“Will you get rid of that rat and can we go to Paris, or San Francisco, or maybe South America, you have that $8000-dollars yet, don’t you?”
“Sure I got it,” said Shannon.
“Thank you,” she said politely to Shannon.
The rat must have sensed something, and jumped out of Shannon’s pocket, and ran off, down into the cellar of the diner and disappeared. It seemed to him, he had just lost a great friend.
“Are you sorry the rat took off?” asked Annabelle.
“It doesn’t matter.” He said.
“Well, what the heck, let’s go to my place,” said Annabelle.
“That’s not my idea of a good time,” said Shannon, “but I guess it will do.”
“We’ll make love!” she commented.
“Don’t bother; I’m satisfied with it or without it,” said Shannon.
Her eyes lit up, not knowing what to say; her body was normally her weapon to all her victories. “I really love you Shannon,” she said sincerely.
“Will you get drunk with me in the cornfields in the summer?” he asked.
She repeated the phrase to him: I love you, I really love you, I do, I do, I love you, I really, truly love you. But somehow that didn’t hit home with him. It was a little fake, hollow, like an empty can of beans.
Into his mind he saw the cornfields, and his old wife, the one he really loved, thought he loved, the one that silently left him. She loved him, she was his woman. They drank together in the cornfields, like alligators swim together in the swamps.
He knew, somehow he knew, Maribel, and even Annabelle would never be enough. But they were enough for the moment. He would always stray away, he knew this; he simply loved those cornfields.
•
Josh, Zam-Zam and Jake
(On the Third Shift)
Affectation, can often be like confrontation, a good thing if handled properly, for those who are affected, it perhaps steams from hypocrisy, or deceit, or even vanity, but it becomes less a burden, less awkward, when one works on who he really is, than on whom he’d like to be …
“Why don’ you get married?” said Annabelle, to Old Josh.
“I want to lead my own life,” he commented.
“Well, then you should get out of this diner businesses, it puts you in a stupor!”
“No. I have it here the way I like it.” He told her.
“I say, don’t be obstinate, look how smoky and noisy and crowded it is in here, people can hardly move, the music is loud the moment people open the door on this third shift.”
“Funny, I don’t hear a thing,” then turned up his hearing aid, “yup, it sure is loud,” and walked away.
Someone had put several coins in the jukebox, and a small black boy was tap-dancing to the music, in the middle of the diner for loose change.
“I like him,” said Annabelle, “what’s his name Josh?”
“Zam-Zam, that’s what they call him anyhow; he comes in every so often a damn good dancer too.”
“I like him,” said Annabelle.
“Yaw, I’m kind of fond of him myself.”
Young Jake Harding was sitting in the back as usually of the counter, alongside it, his guitar leaning against the diner wall, he shrugged his shoulders at the disturbance, it was 3:00 a.m., normally the time he got to sing his Rick Nelson songs, and he wanted to sing “It’s late,” he had practiced it all day. He’d go home when the first shift came on typically. But this evening Zam-Zam had broken his concentration, made it miserable for him to remain in his normal sedate constancy, his friendly mood was changed. Josh had noticed that.
“What’s the matter?” asked Josh.
“I don’t know. I just feel terrible.”
Zam-Zam started to collect his loose change from his hat he had placed on the floor, looked at Jake, and Josh, Josh was hoping he’d not continue, repeat the previous nightmare, that caused Jake to shift into a dark mood.
“Want to go?” asked Josh.
“Let’s go,” replied Jake.
“Alright,” said Josh.
“I’ll go change, down stairs in the dressing room, be back in a minute.”
“Alright.”
“Where you going?” asked Annabelle to Josh.
“Downstairs to change my cloths, I’m taking Jake home,”
She nodded her head. “You mean he can find his way home at daybreak, but not at night?” she questioned Josh, adding, “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
“The streets are safer in the morning than at night,” responded Josh. She kissed him on the cheek, “I suppose you’re right.”
“Ready?” said Josh to Jake.
“Well, maybe…I’ll be here tomorrow night Annabelle, and so goodnight, sorry about having to have Josh take me home, wish I wasn’t blind, then I’d not be a burden on anyone.”
Chapter Seventeen
It is summer now in Minnesota, and the cornfields are high, and the trains are whizzing by the farmyards just outside of the city. Maribel is in San Francisco, she is dating someone. Poggi is walking with his dog along side of the Mississippi River. Old Josh is cooking at the diner. Jake is waiting in his small apartment for the taxi, practicing “It’s Late,” to play in the evening, at the diner. Zam-Zam, is someplace in the city tap-dancing, for loose change. Mr. Schultz, the foreman at the foundry, has been put on some medication for depression, he is working less hours now. The black bartender, we never did find out his name, last time I heard was laughing so hard, he ended up with a hernia, and is laughing about that in the hospital (it’s hard to change I suppose). The folks who own the farm I never did get around to, and to be quite honest, it’s better left that way. Shannon O’Day, has just stripped off his cloths, he’s in the cornfields, looking up at the crows, and he’s got a bottle of red wine, a six pack of beer, and a bottle of rum, he can hear the train coming. He kicks off his shoes, Annabelle, is there by his side, they went to Paris, and she looks as happy as a china rose in full blossom, they have been staying out there everyday, sometimes morning until nightfall, until the moon lights up, drinking away, she cast-off her garments, both feeling free as birds, and the old man, now her companion, and his new sidekick (he told himself he didn’t need a wife anymore, a sidekick was better), examines the bottles, each other and the sky. She’s now a snappy dresser, times have changed. A rat just ran by, it stopped took a long look, and then a train of little rats joined the big rat, and ran deep into the cornfields, “I think that was Rata,” said Shannon, to Annabelle, and they started laughing, and laughing, until they had to hold their bellies. As they lay back, the air seemed to soften the mood. Shannon gets an urge, the warm air is blowing all around them, her lips are moist. Shannon knew what he wanted all along and he got it.
The Cornfields, Woods
And Meadows
The corn had mature and beyond the cornfields there were pasturelands full of poppies. Everything had a green or yellowish tint to it, and the few trees that were around the farmhouse were blossoming also, the stream was cool and fresh that ran by the farm and across the meadows into some wooded hills, way off with a cluster of pines, beech and oak, leading deeper into the woods like an avenue. The sun felt hot and sandy on Shannon’s body, he placed his straw hat over his eyes to keep the sun’s light out. Then he leaned upward and forward, as if out of intuition.
“Come on” said Shannon, “what’s on your mine?” Annabelle seemed almost shy.
“I’m awfully glad I’ve met you,” she said “Maribel and others talked about you so much at the diner. It was nice in Paris, and people were so cheerful, Americans we met anyhow, and I liked our cozy little room. That’s all, I’m just happy, and I think I wanted to tell you, and wasn’t sure how or when.”
Shannon made no remark about it being a very good time in Paris. It seemed as if he was going to say something then forgot what he was going to say. His eyes were peaceful and dim, content, like iron church bells at rest.
It was hot but the cornfields were cooler, fresh and had a mid-morning smell, and it was all so very pleasant laying there on an Indian Blanket, feeling the breeze, as the sun baked its yellow color deeper into the cornstalks.
Had it been up to Shannon, he never would have left those fields in the first place, never wanted to leave them now, and he knew there were only so many summers left.
•
Annabelle’s Advise
The only source around pretense is truth!
Shannon looked up in the sky, his young little mistress looked at him, “What is life all about?” she asked Shannon.
“How would I know,” he said. “I just know everyone is trying to be respectable, while they pick your pocket.”
He knew she could not learn it in the cornfields with him, no more than a matador can learn how to fight bulls, watching television, or reading a book, you had to engage yourself into whatever part of life you wanted.
“Yes, dear, I’ve been around, too much, way too much, drink your wine and beer and be content!” said Shannon, adding after a pause, “this is some really dull talk.”
“How about some of that rum?” asked Annabelle?
“Yaw, give me the bottle,” and she handed it to him, and he drank some straight from the bottle.
“Ok, ok I’ll brighten your future up for you,” he noticed her glass was empty, and filled it half way with rum, “just lie quiet and I’ll think up something rotten, better for you to hear that side of life.”
“Yes. Didn’t I ask you so? I’m ready for the big rotten world, yes, bring it on.” She pulled out a cigarette pack, offered Shannon one, he declined.
“I know things change, and I do not care. It’s been changed for me many times. Let it all change again, and it will. I’ll be gone before you, and you’ll change too, before the end of the world comes. Those long gravel paths I used to walk as a kid, are still around will be when I’m long gone, it makes no difference: I’ve seen it come and go, things that you know, don’t know; I learned I can’t save the world, so let those who can do it. If you get the chance to see it, do it, while it’s still whole. The thing I told my daughter to do was simple: work and learn, make it easy on yourself, you’ll live longer. We all have a story for a book, but we are more than a book.”
“What are you doing there,” asked Annabelle, he was scribbling something down on an old envelope, with a pencil.
“Just a poem,” and then he fell backwards, and passed out.
The Envelope:
Woman
By Shannon O’Day
She’s the spider not the fly—
She has the cat’s eye, not I—
She’s like a serpent in the night,
Beware, beware of her plight!
She’s the Snyder not the fly
something, something…
(not I)!
No: 2580 (3-24-2009)
The End
Author’s Final Note to the Reader
All right, the story has come to an end and life will go on from here, it always does, doesn’t it. It took me all of three days to write the outline (12-hours per day), all day long, and most of the night, to the wee hours of the morning, 3:00 a.m., and a total of six days to edit and revise it, sum total, nine days. But do you ever wonder what is truth and where is it in a story, and what is fiction, or where is it, and what parts are purely imaginations, and so forth and so on. So it was worth the effort, and now let me clear up for the curious reader a few of these points.
Mickey’s Diner is a real location, and the author has been there many times, especially with his wife and mother, the story puts it about in its proper location, it has been there since the 1930s, still is, it is a landmark.
The author also has owned a house on Albemarle Street, and NSP is where the author puts it also. The author did go to Erie, and lives in St. Paul, among other places. He did work in 1966, at Malibu Iron, and the job he described he did do, the shifting of the iron weights that is, as a youth, back in 1966, the time this story actually takes place.
The robbery was an experience the author had while in Minnesota, as well as acquiring Poison Oak, in San Francisco, and meeting the movie star type woman with the red hair.
The rat, it was kind of a pest more than a pet he had in Lima, Peru, in his garden, somehow he got into the story, he’d actually peek his head out of his hole in the mornings and look at the author, unafraid, and his wife, Rosa, poisoned the poor little fellow (should we call Animal Right’s on her?).
He has walked through some cornfields, and fell to sleep once in a carrot field of all places, and when he was a youth, he lived near the train tracks, and he’d hear the train in the evenings and mornings, and so when he wrote this story, he could hear of course those trains as clear as Elvis’s “Hound Dog.”
He was married a few times, and so Shannon has a little of the author in him, in all directions you might say: does he not?
The author did attend Washington High School, graduate class of 1965. And he has been to many fish markets, from Seattle to Germany, and even in Peru, but never did he find one in Erie, sorry about that.
And this amnesia thing came to his attention when he was in his counseling career, in the 1990s, while working for a Federal Agency. Besides all that, such cases were part of his studies, and felt it fitting to add to the story; in one original case, a man did end up in Germany, not knowing how he got there, from the United States. So he figured what the heck, it fits well into his parody of sorts.
If anyone was a drunk in his lifetime, it was the author, he was a professional drunk, in that, amateurs get sick, and he never did. He started drinking at fifteen, stopped at thirty-six, as of this writing, he has been sober for twenty-five years, and he gives that to the glory of God.
He lived in San Francisco, back in 1968-69, likewise. And he once had a friend, Mike Rossert, whom he used to scale the second story building knock on his window, and be let in by Mike, and they’d go about their way, like Shannon often did with Poggi.
The author puts in a scene with Poggi and the dog, and Poggi with a pipe, a reflection of the author’s days living with his grandfather.
The author mentions, Fay Wray, perhaps because he once met her, and he loves the movie, “King Kong,” the original.
There was a man the author knew in Alabama, back in 1977. He stopped drinking when he was forty, he said it was the worse thing he ever did, but he had to keep a job, and pay the rent on his house, and when he turned 62-years old, after his kids grew up and moved out, and he got his pension, and SSAN, at which time he started back up drinking, his wife left him then. The truth being, he waited for twenty years to drink again, that was always on his mind, like Shannon’s Cornfield you might say, and I suppose Shannon’s wife, who was his drinking companion, did not want to return to that life, whose to say. On the other hand, perhaps like the author’s friend’s wife back in 1977, once he started back up drinking, she flew the coop for the same reason. In any case, he returned to drinking as if he never had stopped, and died four years thereafter.
And to be quite honest, the author had a great time writing this story, so he hopes you will like it, buy many of his books; he gets only 20%, per book, and after 7% taxes, it comes to 13% per book which is hardly enough to buy one of those breakfasts at Mickey’s Diner.
†
Note (on making of the book): Story and outline written out on the: 17-19 of March (3-days or 36-hours), 2009; on the 20th, the book was edited, and slightly revised in spots; written in Lima, Peru; Between 21 & 25, corrections were made (spelling, etc), and three descriptive parts added groom 16, 500 words to over 21,000-words (the three parts being about 1500-words). The picture used for the front cover, was drawn by the author on 3-8-3009. The book started out as a short story, then turned into a novelette, and then a novel, as far as length is concerned, Content, it was that of a parody, and remains to a certain degree that; the overall theme, remaining the same, contentment; although there is more than one theme in the book. The poem was written upon getting up in the morning, on 3-24-2009, but had been thinking about the book, and wrote the poem specifically for Shannon O’Day’s last words. Some dialogue, and light description (perhaps 100-words), was added to Chapter 13 on 3-24-2009.; sum total words for the book, 21, 313.
Books by the Author
Out of Print
The Other Door, Volume I [1981] (poetry)
The Tale of Willie the Humpback Whale [1982]
The Tale of Freddy the Foolish Frog (1982)
The Tale of Teddy and His Magical Plant (1983)
The Tale of The Little Rose’s Smile (1983)
The Tale of Alex’s Mysterious Pot (1984)
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985] (for teachers, of Minnesota Schools)
Presently In Print
The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon (2002) Visions
Angelic Renegades & Raphaim Giants (2002) Visions
Tales of the Tiamat [trilogy]
Tiamat, Mother of Demon I (2002)
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II (2002)
Revenge of the Tiamat III (2002)
Every day’s Adventure (2002) Pot Luck
Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib (2002) Opinion
The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:
A Path to Sobriety (2002)
A Path to Relapse Prevention (2003)
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery (2004)
Autobiographical
A Romance in Augsburg I “2003)
Romancing San Francisco II (2003)
Where the Birds Don’t Sing III (2003)
Stay Down, Old Abram IV (2004)
Chasing the Sun [Travels of D.L Siluk] (2002)
Romance and Tragedy:
The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury 1199 AD (2002) Novelette
Perhaps it’s Love (Minnesota to Seattle) 2004 Novel
Cold Kindness (Dieburg, Germany) 2005 Novelette
The Suspense short stories, Novels and Novelettes:
Death on Demand [Seven Suspenseful Short Stories] 2003 Vol: I
Dracula’s Ghost [And other Peculiar stories] 2003 Vol: II
The Jumping Serpents of Bosnia (suspenseful short stories) 2008 Vol: III
In My Time (Short suspense and Dramatic Stories) Vol IV
The Mumbler [psychological] 2003 (Novel)
After Eve [a prehistoric adventure] (2004) Novel
Mantic ore: Day of the Beast ((2002)( Novelette)) supernatural
The Poetry of D.L. Siluk:
The Other Door (Poems- Volume I, 1981)
Willie the Humpback Whale (poetic tale)
(1982; 1983, 2008, four printings (in Spanish & English
Sirens [Poems-Volume II, 2003]
The Macabre Poems [Poems-Volume III, 2004]
Last autumn and Winter [Minnesota poems, 2006]
Spell of the Andes [2005]
Peruvian Poems [2005]
Poetic Images out of Peru [And other poems, 2006]
The Magic of the Avelinos (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, book One; 2006)
The Road to Unishcoto (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, Book Two, 2007)
The Poetry of Stone Forest (Cerro de Pasco, 2007)
The Windmills (Poetry of Jan Parra del Riego) 2009
Men with Torrent Women (Gripping Short Stories) 2010
The Resisting Winter (A Novel and burlesque) 2009
Back of Book
Says the author, “Here is a semi romantic, humorous novel; reflecting the times of the ‘60s!” It is a satire on the ‘human race,’ with style, substance, and a great narration.
The story is of the intersecting lives of a number of characters, in particular, two: Shannon O’Day, a retired worker of foundries and factories in the Midwest; and Poggi Ingway, past-middle age, working at the foundry. It is 1966. Both are searching for contentment in life. Shannon thought he had it, until his wife left. Poggi seems to have left it in San Francisco, in an afternoon affair. For that matter, all the characters in the story are seeking in one way or the other, that same ingredient, contentment.
Poggi about to commit suicide hesitates after he sees everyone at the diner at the same impasse.
The story ends as all the characters are drawn together, a glimpse of their lives are given to the reader, all find their compensation, to include the promiscuous young Annabelle and her co-worker Maribel, once infatuated with Shannon. And Old Josh the Black Cook from Alabama, who prefers life to roll undisrupted. It is almost saddening to sense the story nearing it end.
This is Dennis’ 40th book, 12th in Poetry, and first novel he considers a burlesque of sorts, on the human race, its funny bone side. He lives in Peru and Minnesota with his wife Rosa, and is finishing up a book of short biographical stories. He has a worldwide audience.
Labels: Los Andes University, The Council of the Continental University, the Journalist Professional Association and Cultural Center of Peru congratulates and recognizes, the UNCP University
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 10:12 PM
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