The Best Laid Plans...
Lilly sighed heavily and threw the flowers to the ground.
Her plans hadn’t gone exactly the way she intended. The wolf had been the easy part. The spell she had gotten from the old woman in the village had worked exactly as promised. She had stood around in the woods with a basket of raw meat for a few hours before the smell had attracted the large beast. Within minutes he had been hers to control.
They had gone over the plan for three days before they began. She had set off to her Granny’s house with a basket of cookies, and met the wolf on the trail, just like they rehearsed. A single word sent him off to Granny’s cottage. He was supposed to eat her, and Lilly would have been able to take possession of the cottage—the insurance money would have made her comfortable for the rest of her life.
What she hadn’t counted on was Granny. How was she supposed to know that the horny old woman was a cradle-robber and had seduced the woodcutter? No one had told her that he was shacking up with her grandmother!
The wolf had barely escaped alive, and Lilly, who hadn’t even had time to take off her red cloak, had been forced to leave the cookies behind for the two who were now sharing the bed that should, by all rights, have been hers.
The very thought made Lilly shudder.
She sighed and turned to the wolf. “So, tell me more about the three pigs who are building those cute little houses with the great view…”
(c) 2017 - dustygrein
Past
You're more than a mistake.
You are a lesson.
You taught me so much with your ignorance.
You taught me what love is not.
You taught me more about myself.
Before you,
I was sure I'd die unloved
And lonely.
Now,
I know I will find what I need
At the moment I'm meant to.
You can't force these kinds of things.
My Life of Crime
After the late shows let out we always had a rush, and working alone, I scrambled to pump gas and wash windshields. Occasionally someone who'd won at the tables would tip me a couple singles or a five. Except we didn't call them tips, but tokes or comps: "You see that old bat in the pink T-Bird? She toked me five."
There'd be another smaller rush when the dancers, musicians, and stagehands started home. They were nice, but seldom tipped unless I'd done a quick repair or jumped a dead battery.
But it was a decent job for a high-school kid, better than digging ditches or hanging drywall in the heat of the desert day. That was my last summer there, working from midnight 'til 8 AM. During the school term, I'd worked afternoons and evenings, saving for college. I was a good student, but not outstanding, and wasn't sure I'd earn a scholarship.
My Mom lost the ranch a few years back, after Dad died when his pickup rolled off a dirt road, to a couple generations of mounting debt. After paying off the debt, she got almost nothing from the sale and we ended up in Vegas. I never got used to the heat.
I remember riding my motorcycle to work a graveyard shift when the time-and-temperature sign on top of the Sahara Hotel read 11:42PM/102°. Summer days could reach 120° (in the shade) and I preferred the nights. At least you never had to walk out from under the canopy over the gas pumps and feel that sun slamming down on your head, like the door of a trap.
From about 3:00 am 'til dawn was quietest and coolest. Then, above the neon dazzle, the sky lit up and the mountains rose from their pediments, dark purple, then oceanic blue, like a strange new world, before dulling down to their daytime grey and umber. Morning traffic filled the air with dust, that turned to floating gold as the first sun struck through.
That was when Tammy showed up at the station, on foot, mascara running down her cheeks with the tears. She didn't have her bag, which was a bad sign. All the hookers had big shoulderbags, loaded with their essentials.
Tammy was upset: besides crying, she had marks on her brow and cheek and a bruise on her forearm. "My last trick rolled me," she said. "Took my bag. All my cash and keys. My car's in the Caesar's lot. Could you break into it?"
"Can't leave. I'm alone."
"Christ, you gotta. My dog Blackie's locked in the car. Windows are up."
I looked at the white tangle of light edging over the peaks, and felt the first sudden heat on my face. Locked in a car under that sun, a dog would be dead in an hour, tops.
Dreading the consequences, I hung the little sign with the clockface on the inside of the window, shut off the pumps, and locked up. The morning rush was about to start. If the boss came by I'd be in a world of hurt, but not as bad off as Tammy's dog, that was for sure.
I snagged my toolkit and drove her down in the tow truck, so the cops would know we weren't stealing the car. Not that it was worth stealing: it was a baby-blue Mercury Comet with dented hubcaps, grimy from the drive from LA. As I shut off the truck I could hear barking.
It was already warm— the sun promised our daily whipping. She went over and started trying to comfort her dog— Blackie— through the window while he yammered. I flexed the spring-steel jimmy and slid it between the glass and the rubber gasket, hooked the button, and bingo! I opened the door, feeling strong, brave, true— all the good stuff.
Blackie jumped out and she caught him up as he licked her face, taking off the streaked mascara. Ugh, I thought. It was already hot in the car, so I cranked down the windows and poured water on my bandanna and handed to her.
"Put this over his head— cool down his brain. Or put it on his belly— that works, too."
He was panting, but didn't look heatsick. "I think he's okay," she said, pouring some water into his bowl as he lapped it up.
"Could you drive me to my room so I can get my spare keys?"
"Like to, but I'd get fired. But I'll get the car started so you can drive." Another little device from my kit, plink-twist, and the engine sputtered into life. "I need this back. And your car needs a tune-up. Bring it in, okay?"
"Jeez, thanks. I owe you. Really— I won't forget."
How many times had I heard that? On the Strip, people were always promising something or other. But I liked Tammy. She was pretty and seemed soft, for a hooker: not physically, but in her way of looking at me and talking. Some people can have hard lives without being hard, suffer bad luck without becoming bad. We'd talked a bit, when she stopped for gas. She'd tried to give me her cards, but I wouldn't take them.
"I don't do that," I said, and she took the cards back and rather than cuss me out, like most hookers would have done, she said she understood.
It was common practice for gas pump jockeys to get questions from the customers: "Where can a guy find some fun in this place?"
"Here's a number you can call."
Your initials on a card would get you a five or a ten, your toke, your juice, when the girls or their pimps made the rounds at the end of the month. I had school friends who started with small rackets early on, and were involved in heavy lifting by their senior year, and it scared me. Vegas seemed like a big, shiny trap, and I didn't want to get caught.
I watched her pull out of the lot onto Vegas Boulevard and then climbed back into the truck and drove to the station. There were cars lined up at the pumps, honking. An emergency call, I explained, twenty or thirty times. By the time I got off, at 8:00, I was soaked in sweat. It felt good to hop on my motorcycle and run up the gears, roaring onto I-15, making my own breeze.
By my last year working nights on the Strip, I was in some ways tough. I could sort the tourists—players and gawkers— from the locals: food service folks, housekeepers, cocktail waitresses and bartenders, dealers, stagehands, performers, hustlers, pimps, and petty crooks. I could spot a punk casing the station, planning to rob the till, and I had a routine. There was a huge chrome wrench, a one-and-a-half-inch box/open end, that was long as my forearm and heavy as a Viking sword. I'd carry it out under the canopy fluorescents and flip it, up with my right hand, spinning as it chopped the light into warnings, and catch it with my left. Flip it up, catch it behind my back, and then stare the punk down. I'd never been robbed or even threatened.
In other ways, I was way too innocent to be there, in the bright-lit jungle, among the beasts of prey.
I didn't have much social life. Didn't go out for sports or go to dances, or go cruising on weekend nights, like my classmates did. I missed the ranch so badly it ached. I went to school, studied, worked, and slept. I also did most of the cooking and nearly all the housework, because my Mom, who'd been a staunch, dedicated ranch woman until I was in my early teens, had pretty much fallen apart.
She missed my Dad more than she could stand. She managed a bingo parlor, hated it. Hated the old, weird people who doted on bingo, and came home from her shift sick and coughing from the cigarette smoke. I'd cook her something from my limited repertoire—fried eggs, bacon, potatoes, frozen fish sticks, hamburgers, canned corn or peas, a basic salad— and she'd hole up in her room with the TV and vodka tonics. She'd taped aluminum foil over the windows so she could sleep days. Even in summer, when I'd have to sleep in the afternoon, I could never bring myself to do that: wrap myself like a TV dinner, shutting out the light.
She pushed me hard to get out of Vegas and go to college. But I worried about what might happen to her when I was gone. Remembering the days when she taught me to ride and fix fence and recognize when a cow was sick or about to calve, I knew how sad she felt to be trapped in her present life.
Knowing her, knowing that, gave me a tenderness towards women in general.
When I went on a rare date and got excited and the girl said I was hurting her, I stopped. I dreamed and lusted and was terrified by it. It got to the point where I was almost afraid to kiss anyone. So by my senior summer, I was still a virgin, which was not a word that guys used back then. Girls were virgins.
Or, like the girls I met at work, hookers. My last year at high school I knew way more hookers than I did cheerleaders. But I was cautious, maybe frightened by the hookers (who knew things about sex I could only imagine) while I lusted after the cheerleaders, and what they represented, not just sex but respectability and status and. . . America, dammit.
But America had some drawbacks. Johnson was bearing down in Vietnam and the coffins were coming back to haunt us. The hero of our block, Larson, went over there and got killed right away. At his funeral the casket was closed and the word was that there was barely enough left to identify. It hurt all of us. His dad grabbed a bottle and never let go. We'd hear yelling and things breaking over there. We never called the cops, but someone did. A year on his parents divorced. The next summer, I saw his kid sister Dar, who'd been one my my first crushes, out on the Strip with a short, fat guy: hooking.
Night is when things happen out there, and they did. A carful of drunks sheered off a signpost, pulling into the station, and poked a hole in their radiator. I called the cops. One of the guys threatened me and I showed him the wrench and made them get back in their steaming car and wait. They said they'd be back to teach me a lesson, and I hoped they'd reconsider when they got sober.
An old guy who drove a pearl-white T-Bird and dressed in womens' clothes tried to pick me up. I turned him down, as gently as I could, and he pounded the dash of his car and then started crying. After five minutes that seemed like forever, I pulled a bunch of blue windshield wipes out of the dispenser and tapped on his window. He took the towels, cleaned himself up, and drove off before it registered with me that he hadn't paid for his gas. I wrote it on my charge sheet, swearing under my breath.
A really drunk woman barfed and passed out in the restroom and her husband was too drunk to retrieve her, let alone drive, so I had to call the cops a second time that week.
By Friday I'd forgotten about Tammy and her dog, when the ratty blue Comet rolled up to the pump about half-past midnight, with Blackie doing flips on the passenger seat. She rolled down the window and he stuck his head out and licked my hand.
"You're his hero," she said. "Mine, too."
I blushed, and went for the gas cap. "Fill it?"
"Yeah. I've got a proposition for you," she said. "Not that."
"So— what?" Working nights out there had given me a healthy suspicion. Quite a few of the guys I worked with had gotten into trouble in various ways.
"Could you, like, take care of Blackie tonight? I've got a dog chain and a bowl for water. His blankie. You can tie him behind that wall out back and just check on him every once in a while."
"I don't know. The boss is on the warpath about. . . you know." A couple guys on swing shift had been trading batteries and tires to hookers in return for professional services. One guy's wife had stormed in demanding his paycheck and the boss had to show her his charge sheet: sets of tires, batteries, shocks, tanks of gas. He actually owed for the month.
Tammy got an upset-girl expression. "I can't leave him in my room— he chewed the drapes last time. And I'm scared to leave him in the car. After. . ."
Should I wait for the tears?
"Okay. But let's not make it a habit. Check?"
She gave me a kiss on the cheek. She smelled clean. I wondered how long she could hold onto that.
Blackie barked the first few times I checked on him, then settled down and snoozed on his folded blanket. At dawn there were crickets in his water dish, so I refilled it. Tammy showed up about six-thirty and loaded him into the car. She said thanks, no kiss, and in a businesslike way pulled a twenty from her bag.
"Half a night's wages," I said. "Too much."
"Not compared to what I make," she said.
Saturday she came by again, and Blackie camped under the stars. You could actually see stars from the shadow behind the wall, which blacked out the leaping neon glare of the casinos. I collected another twenty. Easier, the second time. Tammy drove up from LA to hook each weekend, renting a motel room and making more than she did in a week at her straight job, some drab office gig.
Next Friday she brought another LA girl along, Ginger, a tall redhead who said she worked as a receptionist for Universal Studios, with Sport, a terrier-looking frazzle of grey hair. Snarly. I tied him far enough from Blackie that they wouldn't get into a fight. When I checked on him, he growled, but was no trouble, really. Forty bucks, Saturday morning. Same again Sunday.
Damn! I had a racket.
It started out as a favor, but as word got around other working girls begged me to babysit their dogs, and I found it hard to turn them down. The gas station was set back from the street, with the huge parking lot for Caesar's Palace on the south and a vacant patch of desert on the north. Out back, to the west, it was dark and empty with the roar of I-15 a quarter-mile or so away. I cleared away the heaps of tumbleweed and windblown trash behind the pierced block wall, to make room. If a dog barked too much or tried to start a fight, that was it. I wouldn't take them again. I cleaned up all the dog crap before I went off shift. I couldn't risk complaints.
Before, after cleaning the service bays and the restrooms, I'd lolled between cars, passing the night hours with made-up games. The big neon signs for the hotels cycled up and down, and I'd try to keep count of the nearest two: Caesar's and the Dunes. Now, instead of counting, I'd go out to check on the dogs.
Weeknights, I might have two or three dogs out back, pets of the local girls. Weekends, there were more: ten or twelve, at the height of the season. I made about forty bucks a shift in wages and commissions, and a few hundred dogsitting. Some weeks I banked five or six hundred.
Pretty soon, I had enough for tuition and living expenses for a year, then two. I was acutely aware that the money I was banking had been earned through prostitution, which was a criminal offense in Clark County. But since when had dog-sitting been a crime? It seemed to me that I was doing something good, keeping the dogs, who were by any reckoning innocent, safe and fairly happy. What their owners were up to was not my lookout.
I never knew who tipped off the boss. When he busted me, at 3:15 AM on a Sunday morning, there were eight dogs tied out there. One hundred and sixty dollars worth. He pulled in, got out of his car, and walked out back, just like that. No questions.
He came back and said that it had to stop.
When I explained how it got started, he raised an eyebrow. "I know about Harry and the other guys, loading up their charge sheets, stealing from the till. One reason I trust you here alone is you don't do that."
I offered him a cut. Vig. Juice. Vegas runs on juice. Caesar's Shell Doggie Parking: a business opportunity. Bad move: he gave me a disappointed glance and shrugged it off.
"When you're here, you work for me. And I'm not in the business of providing an open-air kennel for ladies of the evening. Understood?"
He was a Mormon and didn't use words like hooker or pimp.
"Sure. Got it. I'm really sorry." I said, even though I wasn't.
He went out back again and leaned over the wall to look at the dogs. They woke up and peered at him and didn't bark, bless their hearts. I joined him.
"I've got nothing against the poor dogs. You've been really good at your job and I'm not firing you. But— no more dogs."
He patted my shoulder and drove off—a decent guy— to catch a few more hours of sleep, have breakfast, and then go to church, I guess: a normal life. God, I envied that.
The office was locked at night, so I went into the stockroom and leaned on the sink and cried, quietly, watching my tears make wiggly tracks toward the drain. Then the bell dinged as a car pulled up to the pumps. I doused my face and dried myself with blue paper towels before going out.
"Evening, sir. Fill it up? Super? Check the oil?" The blue towel squeaked on the windshield as I polished it, lifting the wipers one by one.
Then I stood in the burnt-smelling night air and counted the ups and downs of the neon signs, into the hundreds before I lost track. The streets were almost empty but the signs stayed on until sunup. It was crazy.
Meanwhile, the mountains loomed out of the dark like watching faces, ragged, harsh, perfect: everything the signs were not.
All the dogs were asleep, just before dawn, when the blue Comet rolled in.
Acknowledge
"Pain demands to be felt." I always liked that line from The Fault in Our Stars. I'd take it even one step more and say that pain demands to be acknowledged. I'm an unfortunate expert on grief. Not something to brag about. My dad died when I was 27, my mom when I was 32. Five months after her death, I went to four more funerals for a student of mine, my niece who committed suicide, a colleague, and my friend's stillborn son.
What I learned from this deluge of pain and overwhelming grief is it must be acknowledged, not swept under the rug of Hallmark phrases because we don't know what to say. Grief sucks. Most people vacillate between a stone cold numbness that allows you to function in the early days to crying over a tea cup you made for Mother's Day. Each day is never the same, even years later the pain is still carried, a heaviness in the heart that you learn to bear but sometimes overwhelms you with its weight.
Now for the phrases that made me want to punch someone right in the face even if they meant well were the "your mother is watching over you from heaven." I bit my tongue to not respond, "Thanks a lot, but I'd rather she was here playing with my son and spending time with me. So piss off." Or the "Your dad's in a better place." Yep, we'll I'm not. I'm in hell having to remind myself I can't call him when I learn some new scandal in history or take my sons to visit him in Britain. He may be debating the Trump presidency with God but he's not here with me. Or "She's in the arms of Jesus." I'm a Christian, and I get the sentiment, but I wanted to scream, "My arms are empty, please acknowledge that fact."
My best friend told me she didn't have any good words. She just helped me with settling the estate and letting me cry or talk about memories when I needed it. Others told me how much it must suck and let me rant and rave when the feelings overwhelmed me. My husband held me, a lot. Sometimes hugs and silence were the best. Just feeling someone hold onto me when I felt insubstantial because those who knew me best were gone.
Sorry for a long prose. Hope this helps. My heart goes out to her. It's going to be a roller coaster for a while. Which also leads me to the "never tell someone you should be over it now even years afterwards. Or it gets better. It does not. It just becomes something you learn to live with. St. Peter's thorn in the flesh. It will always be there. Think about it. Your mom is your whole world, the person who carried you and nursed you, and raised you. No one loves you like a mom. Rip someone that special from the world and there is going to be a monumental hole. If we didn't love them so much, it would be easier. Grief grows incrementally with how big a part of your life that person was.
How a Mom Gets Nothing Done, But Gets Everything Done
I wanted coffee.
So I decided to make a cup of coffee.
I use the pour over kind, don't ask me why,
and not the machine, but it was dirty at the bottom of a full sink.
And the dishwasher was full of clean dishes that needed emptied
before the dirty ones could go in.
So that I could put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher,
and reach the pour over coffee maker,
down at the bottom of a dirty sink,
so I could make a cup of coffee.
I took the clean dishes out of the dishwasher one by one, and started to put them away.
but then I heard my Facebook messaging notification ding.
Oh I wonder what that could say?
It was a family who was coming today to get my son's old bassinet
He had never even slept in it, but I was still sad,
but they were giving me twenty dollars, so I was glad.
Back to the kitchen sink.
Emptying the clean dishes one by one.
Soon I would surely be done.
"Mom! The baby needs a diaper change!" my middle son shouts.
I continue emptying the dishes, hoping he would leave me be.
"Mom! He stinks! He's right next to me!"
Sigh. I'll just change him real quick, and it'll be done in no time.
Maybe instead of coffee, I should just skip to the glass of wine.
Back to the kitchen sink.
Emptying the clean dishes one by one.
Soon I would surely be done.
Oh, no. What if the family who is coming to get the bassinet can't find us? I thought, worriedly. I better send them more info in a hurry!
Back to the computer, where I also noticed I had an email.
Oh my goodness, I began to wail.
It was an important email from my sons' teacher who was assessing their homeschool portfolios and needed photos of them doing science projects, on field trips, and more.
Oh, my brain began to roar.
I spent the next fifteen minutes gathering up photos to send.
Oh, this was never going to end.
Back to the kitchen sink.
Emptying the clean dishes one by one.
Soon I would surely be done.
The clean dishes were put away
So I filled the dishwasher with the dirty ones
Soon I would surely be done.
At last, the dishes were nice and clean
And the pour over coffee maker no longer at the bottom of the sink.
The water was heating up in the tea kettle.
And my nerves began to settle.
Finally, coffee aroma filled the room
and flowers all around me started to bloom
A symphony began to sing
and no more facebook notifications pinged and dinged
I held the hot mug in my hands
and did a little inner dance
I gobbled down the liquid fast.
Coffee at last.
I hate you, clown.
Your playful sobriquet,
impish theatrical mischief
but I see you clown.
Lampooning around,
hiding homicidal tendencies.
Red-nosed-
"from boozing," my brother jokes.
You should be getting boo-ed!
I see you clown.
Approaching me, six foot one
to my four foot nine.
Wide brim pants and floppy shoes,
the bane of my coulrophobia.
Don't you dare come near me!
Your painted on red smile cracks
at the corners of your mouth.
Beads of sweat polka dot above your brow.
Are you nervous, clown?
Are you scared like me, clown?
My apprehension clusters up,
"No, I do not want to smell your flower!"
My small bunched up fist
connects beneath your white triangular eye.
Surprise mirrors us far too long.
My mothers muffled voice,
my fathers grasp upon my neck,
all I can think is-
"Holy heck!" My brothers cheer
mimics my very thought.
I see you clown.
And you see me.
My first trip to the circus at nine years old.
© June 7, 2017. Meg.
