spacious skies - 40. a room for the night

by american joe

part 40 of 40

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good evening. good evening. how can i help you? i would like to rent a room. for how long? i am not sure. i want to pay for one night. all right. how much will it be? can i see some i d first? i don’t have any i d. what do you mean, you don’t have any i d? i can pay a little extra. you mean you are from the bureau or the service. i really don’t have time for this. what might you have time for? if you do not want cash, i might be able to give you something more solid. i am as aware as you are that i am required to report your attempt at bribery. please excuse me while i make the call. hello. i am calling from the hideaway motel on highway 75-j, area 8915. an individual with no i d just came in here and tried to bribe me into renting him a room. i know you want to know about these things. what is your number and name? my number is 785-3297-854-j. my name is daniel boone. and your password? i sing a happy tune. thank you. i am looking you up. i see you are indeed licensed to run the hideaway motel in the location you describe. but your license is up in three months and five days. would you like to take the opportunity to renew it now?’ no thank you. is the individual whom you assert approached you there now? no, he is not. he left as soon as i started calling you. did you follow him to see what direction he was headed? i did not follow him but i could see he turned to the right where the parking lot is. where he went from there i could not see. i felt i had to call you right away. very commendable. wait there, an agent will be out to see you. i am not going anywhere. the end

spacious skies - 39. iggy

by american joe

part 39 of 40

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iggy axman held his phone to his ear. vince gray did not think iggy was actually listening to anything or anybody, but he kept his own counsel. as he had been doing for millions of years. iggy took the phone away from his ear and pointed it at vince. mister blue wants to see you. i work for al hodgkins now. that is neither here nor there. i think it would be a good idea if you saw mister blue. what do you guys think? two hulking figures emerged from the shadows and stood between vince and the sidewalk. mose jones and tank miller. they had worked for all the bosses in the world in their time and had been around the block and knew all the scores and then forgotten them. neither of them talked much. whatever you say, iggy, mose murmured, soft as a butterfly on a deserted beach with the tide gone out. let’s get it over with, vince told iggy. i knew you would be reasonable. the black car was parked on the corner. tank got in the left front seat with iggy beside him. mose motioned to vince to get in behind tank, then got in beside him. the left front seat was pushed so far back to accommodate tank that vince was almost pinned back to his own seat. they moved out. the streets were deserted. they passed the beach, also deserted, and got out on to the mostly abandoned highway that circled the town. nobody spoke. vince thought they might talk about nothing, about the fights or the horses or the ball games, but they did not. he thought they might comment on the fact that he, vince, did not talk or ask questions but they did not do that ether. the black car floated down the highway. next

spacious skies - 38. seersucker

by american joe

part 38 of 40

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you and will evans should get together, buddy barker said with a sad smile. it’s time for a change, vince gray agreed unenthusiastically. al hodgkins does not like that sort of thing, zena parfrey interjected. i guess we better start over from scratch. draw up a plan then, and leave it on my desk in the morning, buddy said to vince. what have i gotten myself into, vince gray wondered. he looked around. will evans. buddy barker, and zena parfrey were acting like nothing had happened. al hodgkins looked down at his knees. george tolliver kept munching on his supersized candy bar, and charlie robinson stared into space in the way that he had. i will catch you guys tomorrow, al hodgkins said, and got up and left. vince gray had put his whole future and all his grand plans to conquer the universe at risk, and nobody even cared. he decided he needed a drink. nodding to the others, he put his coat and hat on and started down the back stairs. he took the back stairs, because he knew iggy axman was still looking for him. when he got outside he remembered that all the bars were closed except from eight to midnight under the new crackdown by the new district attorney, fred o’rourke. shaking his head sadly, he absently walked around to the front of the building instead of continuing down the alleyway to where he could come out on main street. and ran straight into iggy axman. well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise, iggy axman greeted him with a big grin. can i help you, vince gray extemporized. i think we both know the answers to that one, don’t we, iggy axman chuckled unamiably. listen, i got a good thing going. it just came up. just came up in your head. no, al hodgkins has a special job for me. you can call him and ask him. i will do just that, iggy axman sneered, taking his phone out of the breast pocket of his white seersucker suit. next

spacious skies - 37. the crew

by american joe

part 37 of 40

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vince gray was just a guy. he had big dreams, but really he was just a guy. he was a soldier on a crew with four other guys - will evans, buddy barker, george tolliver, and charlie robinson, and one girl, zena parfrey. they were all just guys, and zena was just a girl - at least to all outward appearances. al hodgkins was the boss of the crew. what he said went. * the crew worked out of a back room on a back street on the outskirts of town. the word “work” might give a wrong impression. mostly they just waited around, because they did not know what they had been hired to do. when the time came, al hodgkins wpuld let them know. meanwhile, they were on call, under the eagle eye of al. they had all been down the road before - maybe charlie robinson not as much as the others - and knew the score. the score was zero to zero. none of them had phones on their persons, and there was no phone in the room - or so they had been told - and supposedly no phones at all in the building. theoretically, none of them even owned phones. if they wanted to call their aunts or mothers in russia or hawaii, they were supposed to use public phones if they could find one - and never talk on those phones about the job, even to say they had so far nothing to do on the job. there was a monitor in the room that played the same four movies over and over again. after the first few days nobody watched them except buddy barker, and he watched them with the sound off. george tolliver and charlie robinson carried on an endless conversation about their all time teams. it had begun the day they were first hired. will evans started it with george and george and charlie had kept it going. who’s on your all time team? my what? your all time team. all time team for what? football, basketball, what? no, no, like the dirty dozen or the magnificent seven, like that. you got to explain it to him, he hasn’t been around. right, see here’s the deal. we got to talking the other night about a team to fight the aliens. aliens? what aliens? when are we going to fight the aliens? i didn’t hear anything about aliens. no, we are just supposing. here, you explain it to him, you can explain it better than me. * al hodgkins tried to engage zena parfrey in conversation, but she did not seem vey interested in anything he had to say. will evans kept his own counsel, occasionally laughing out loud at something in his head. none of the others ever asked him what he was laughing at. vince gray also kept his own counsel, but without ever laughing or even smiling. next

spacious skies - 36. joan

by american joe

part 36 of 40

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a black dog ran down the street under a blue sky. the blue sky was filled with white clouds. a woman in a yellow dress came out of her house. the house was painted white. it had a red roof. the woman was annoyed when she walked around her green lawn and saw the holes in it made by rabbits. her name was joan sanders and she went back inside the house and made herself an ice cold drink. sipping the drink, she remembered the days when she had more to worry about than lawns and rabbits. the black dog ran back up the street. it saw a small rabbit on joan sanders’s lawn and chased it. the rabbit ran away and got under a fence and into a hole in the lawn of the house behind joan sanders’s. joan heard the dog bark when the rabbit disappeared under the fence, but she paid no attention to it and continued sipping her drink. when she finished the drink she debated whether to look up a pest control company online in order to deal with the rabbits, turn on the television and watch the news, or make another drink. the dog, whose name was avenger, sniffed at the fence a few times and then gave it up and went back across joan sanders’s lawn and back on to the street. avenger was, of course, not supposed to be running around loose and up and down streets on his own, but he belonged to a man named ralph richards, who considered himself to be a rebel and an outlaw. nobody told ralph or his dog what to do. they were wild and free. ralph lived on the street parallel to the one joan sanders lived on. ralph and joan had never met and were not aware of each others’ existences. next

spacious skies - 35. harry

by american joe

part 35 of 40

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joey’s house was at the end of a street that was not a through street. the street sign indicated this by calling it a “private way” though it was not really that, just what had used to be called a “dead end street” many of the houses on the street were empty, and two of them were unattended to and had overgrown lawns. these two houses were sometimes invaded by teenagers for parties, but somebody - not joey - always called the police and the parties were quickly broken up. the house across the street from joey’s - the other one at the end of the street - was occupied by harry harsh, who was a little older than joey and also lived alone. harry’s lawn, unlike joey’s, was filled by a couple of huge trees that almost obscured the house from the view of passersby. harry was not a nice person. he was a very nasty person, one of the worst in the world. one day joey had to leave his car at a garage overnight for repairs. he took the bus home. the bus stop was two blocks from his house and he had to walk from there. twilight was falling as joey approached his house. harry was standing on the sidewalk in front of his own house. he crossed the street and spoke to joey. joey was not particularly thrilled to see harry but responded politely to his greeting. those kids were back in that house tonight, harry said. i called the cops. joey did not know or care which of the two abandoned houses harry was talking about. that was neighborly of you, he said. when they had raccoons in those houses the city came and exterminated them, harry said. yes, i think i remember hearing something about that, joey replied. he hoped his lack of enthusiasm for harry’s conversation and company would communicate itself to harry. they should do the same with those kids, if you ask me, harry said, looking joey straight in the face as he said it that sounds a little extreme, joey said. yeah, it does, doesn’t it, ha ha! i was just kidding, but those kids really are a pain in the posterior. they don’t bother me much, joey said, i can hardly hear them, even when they are partying. yeah well, listen, to change the subject. harry stared intently at joey, though joey could not really see his eyes that clearly in the dark. can i ask you a question? you can ask. i notice your light on late at night, sometimes. you stay up late? where was this going, joey wondered. sometimes, if i get home late. i work different hours. yeah, a lot of people do these days. you watch television when you get home? sometimes. ever see those ads on channel 9 for real live girls? joey was startled by the question. yeah, i think so. i didn’t pay much attention. yeah, right, harry thought. i think you pay a lot of attention, my brother. aloud he said, i thought they were kind of humorous, myself. well, i’ll let you go. you must be tired after a long day at work. yes, i am, joey agreed. when joey closed his front door behind himself, he leaned back against it and literally breathed a sigh of relief. what a creep, he thought. next

spacious skies - 34 . real live

by american joe

part 34 of 40

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joey johnson was the most harmless person in the world. he had a job as a custodian in an office building in a mall on the outskirts of town. he worked odd hours. he lived alone in a house that had been owned by his parents. was, in fact, still owned by his father, who was serving a life sentence for murdering joey’s mother. joey’s father was also suspected of murdering a couple of young women, but had never been tried for those crimes. joey’s father had been an angry man. until the murder of joey’s mother, however, his anger at home had taken the form of constant ranting, not physical violence. he had never struck joey, and joey had never seen his father strike his mother before the murder. joey inherited his docile nature from his mother, and from his father’s mother whom he, joey, had never met or seen a picture of. when joey came home from work at night, if it was not too late, he usually watched television. he did not have cable tv, so he just watched the network stations, and, more often, the local station. the local station had some curious programs, and curious ads, especially late at night. one ad that ran often and that caught joey’s attention was for “real live girls - not inflatable dolls”. joey found the ads confusing - he could not quite make out what they were for. they promised the purchaser a “real live girl” but even joey, innocent as he was, realized that this could not be literally true. the “real live girls” pictured in the ads looked like ordinary women in their early twenties, wearing bikinis and clearly intended for sex - would they also cook and clean house? have day jobs to bring in money? the ads did not say they would not, but it did not seem likely. the ads said they “talked” - but about what? could they talk about politics and the weather and the yankees and the giants or just about sex? did they have to be fed? unlikely. but the ads assured the viewer they were not “not just dolls”. joey decided they must be some kind of robot. in any case, they were way too expensive - more than a car! - even with a “low down payment” and installments. intrigued as he sometimes was when he watched the ads, joey never thought about them during the day. when he was performing his duties as a custodian, he often daydreamed, but about playing for the yankees or the giants or the knicks, or about winning the lottery, or about having a girl friend who would be a gentle soul like his mother and also a sports fan. joey was happy just to be alive and to have a job. next

spacious skies - 33. obsolete

by american joe

part 33 of 40

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when mary lost her job at the insurance agency, she was not able to find another one. the type of job she had - basically filing and data entry - had become almost obsolete. paper files were mostly gone, and the younger women and men hired as sales reps by the agency did their own data entry on the laptops that they carried everywhere, and on their phones. mary registered at a couple of temp agencies. but they did not have a lot of work that she could do. it seemed that such jobs as the agencies got were always assigned to some regulars that had been with the agency for years. what the agencies wanted most of all was dependability - that you show up, rain or shine or snow or transit strike , and whether you were sick or well. mary was not that dependable. a lot of days she just couldn’t get her head together. she had always been that way. she fell in with a bad crowd. some of the same bad crowd she had run with before abby was born and she had taken the nine to five job at the insurance company. a lot of the old gang had disappeared, but there were always some young bums and slackers to take their place. sometimes mary felt bad about falling in with the bad crowd. she was not entirely comfortable with them. the old gang back in the good old days had had a sense of purpose, at least in the endless conversations they had when they were drinking or smoking. but these younger people… all they wanted was to get wasted. and she had to admit they were pretty good at it. once in a while they might bitch about “things” or “life” or even “they”, but if mary tried to bring the conversation around to something more specifically political, they tuned out or laughed at her… next

spacious skies - 32. mary jones

by american joe

part 32 of 40

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abby’s mom, mary jones, had been married four times the last time abby checked, but never to abby’s father. she always kept what she called her real name, mary jones. because that’s who i am. she would say, as if somebody was arguing with her, although nobody ever did. mary claimed to not be sure who abby’s father was. it was definitely one of two guys, she told abby, but they were both jerks. that is all you have to know. whichever one it was, he was just some jerk. when abby’s second grade teacher, grace emerson, asked abby what her daddy was, she replied, just some jerk. grace thought that was hilarious, and repeated it to the other teachers. they all thought it was pretty funny, except for tony derrick, one of the two male teachers in the elementary school. tony had been attracted to grace, and sometimes thought of trying to be more friendly with her, but he thought this comment showed her true nature, and he was disillusioned. tony became abby’s third grade teacher, and he was reminded of the incident almost eevery time he looked at abby. he wondered what kind of mother would tell her child such a thing. but mary never came to the parent-teacher meetings. when asked to describe herself, mary would say i’m a fighter for justice. or sometimes just, i’m a person who hates injustice. i only have one thing to say to you, she told abby more than once. just one. always be for the underdog. always. that is what my mother taught me and that is all you have to know. find out who the underdog is, and be for them. mary would tell stories about her own childhood in which her mother and grandmother would take her to demonstrations and political rallies, but the stories never made much sense or seemed very interesting to abby - stuff that happened thirty years ago! - and as she grew up she learned to tune them out, and then mary stopped telling them. when abby was in middle school, mary lost her job at an insurance agency where she had worked for twelve years, and she was very bitter about it. i sold out! she would complain to abby, who only wanted to be left alone to do her homework. i sold out to the man, and what good did it do me? i never should have betrayed my heritage, - the revolution! this was the first abby had heard of mary actually being “in “ the revolution instead of just hearing stories about it from mary's mother and grandmother. it kept you alive for twelve years, didn’t it? abby asked. listen to that! listen to that? from a twelve year old! what are you, a professor of economics at oxford or m i t? when i was your age i wanted to burn the world to the ground! abby just wanted to do her homework. next

spacious skies - 31. abby's mom

by american joe

part 31 of 40

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the reason for this particular call, uncle terence replied, is that your mother is in jail. is that all? you called just to tell me that? i hope she doesn’t expect me to bail her out. there is no bail, uncle terence said. oh. so it must be really serious this time, huh? has she been arrested for murder? she has been arrested in connection with an investigation into a murder. i always knew it would come to this. well, you know what? i don’t care. i don’t want to be dragged into it, and i don’t see how i can be. abby could hear uncle terence sigh on the other end of the connection. all right, abby, if that is the way you feel, that is the way you feel. it was my idea to call you, your mother thought you might take this attitude. and she was right. was there anything else, uncle terence? don’t you want to know the details of what happened? not particularly. it might make the national news. well then, i will see it on the national news. all right, abby, then there is nothing else. i am sorry that it has come to this. good-bye, uncle terence. goodbye, abby. have a nice evening. abby put her phone down on the counter beside her small fries. what a bummer! maybe, she thought, i should have asked him for the details. because dave would probably want to know them. she would tell dave all about the call when he showed up. none of the four members of the gang had any secrets from the others. abby wondered if her mother had indeed made the national news to the extent that cnn or fox would have a story online. but she was hungry, and decided to check when she finished her sandwich. but before she finished the sandwich dave appeared. dave had purchased his usual - the same as abby’s, but with spicier fries - and put it on the table and sat down. you look a little upset, he said to abby. anything wrong? abby told dave all about uncle terence’s call. dave knew that abby did not regard her mother, or anything about her, as a fit subject for humor, so he just said , i don’t know, if it was me, i might have asked for a little more details. he said it might make the national news? i do not think uncle terence has that clear an idea as to what might make the national news. dave shrugged. even so - you never know. if she does make the national news, i am sure i will see it. let’s change the subject. all right, then. i have a question for you, maybe you can help me out. let me guess - it is about your sociology paper. what else? they both laughed. of all the things they had to study, they hated sociology the most. but abby was happy to talk about sociology, if it took her mind off her mom. next

spacious skies - 30. the four o's

by american joe

part 30 of 40

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abby baker, billy cash, cheryl ducroy, and dave elwood met in preschool and remained close friends. as time went by they became increasingly inseparable. they called themselves “the four o’s”. most people who knew them, if they thought about it at all, assumed that that was short for “the four amigos”. but it was actually short for “the four ordinaries”. as abby, billy, cheryl, and dave had grown up, they realized that everyone in the world - at least everybody they knew - wanted to be rich and famous, to be great artists, to change and conquer the world, or any combination of these things. and not only did they want to be these things themselves, their parents wanted them to be these things also, and strongly encouraged them and spared no expense in encouraging them. the secret dream of the four o’s was just to be ordinary folks, to have steady jobs, pay their taxes, and raise families. the dream began to unravel rather quickly on an unseasonably warm winter day in their senior year at state college. abby was meeting dave at the gang’s favorite spot - a mcdonalds just off campus, frequented mostly by the local townspeople and not students. the other two were in class. abby arrived first and ordered her usual - a crispy chicken sandwich, a small fries, and a large diet coke. as she was putting the order down on the table - a table beside the window that members of the gang always took if it was available - her phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. who can that be, she wondered. she took the phone out of her pocket and the caller i d said - brown, terence. uncle terence? why would he be calling her? it could not be anything good. she answered it. hello, uncle terence? yes, abby, this is uncle terence, whom you have not seen in eleven years, since you and your mom spent a month in my cabin in the mountains, where i have lived as a hermit for thirty-three years, as i do not approve of so many aspects of modern civiliziation. well, that is all well and good, uncle terence, abby replied, but, what, if you do not mind my asking, is the reason for this particular call? next

spacious skies - 29 . danielle

by american joe

part 29 of 40

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danielle dobbins, the chief diversity officer at the branch of the morningside bank , never let herself get upset by events, and took things one at a time. she prided herself on never checking her e-mails or texts before arriving at work in the morning. it helped that she knew that jennifer jefferson, her immediate superior at the regional office, never sent messages before, she, jennifer, arrived at her own desk around nine o’clock. if there were a real emergency danielle figured that jennifer would call her directly no matter what the time, even if she were asleep. but what could be an emergency or have any urgency in diversity? that was one of the reasons danielle appreciated being in diversity. nothing ever had to be done right away if not sooner as it might if a loan or other money transaction was involved, as it had been almost every day or night when danielle had, as she told her husband jim, “ actually had to work for a living”. so when danielle finished her latte and bagel with cream cheese and checked her cc’d copy of the email from the regional office to the personnel department to cut the staff at the branch by two persons, and requesting her input as to the best persons to be dispatched, she was in no hurry to reply. she knew exactly who she was going to recommend - bill smith and henry brown. but there was no point in rushing things. better to make it look like she was putting in time carefully considering the matter. and not giving regional the idea that she could get things done in three seconds because she had nothing to do. in the deeper part of her brain danielle knew that regional knew how much she had to do, because it was they who gave her things to do in the first place. she could find things in the media about the culture war and threats to diversity which presumably called for her attention, but what did they amount to ? regional, above regional central, and above central home office, could read the same things and more on their media input, and would let danielle know if they needed her to do anything. danielle decided it would be best to actually write reports about bill smith and henry brown. next

spacious skies - 28. a great game

by american joe

part 28 of 40

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henry texted back - that was a great game. that was a great game! two months earlier bill and henry had gotten together in the shadows behind henry’s house. henry’s wife had gone to visit her mother in columbus ohio, and bill’s wife was working late so they took this opportunity to get together, man to man. bill had been worried that the bank might be monitoring their texts and e-mails , and he thought it might be a good idea to have a code word or phrase that they could use to warn each other if they had some solid or scary evidence that this was happening. henry thought that the bank would not be bothered with monitoring two such harmless and inconsequential entities as themselves, but he went along with bill’s suggestions as he almost always did as bill was a much worse person than himself and therefore, as in most cases of this kind, had a stronger personality. the phrase they decided on was - that was a great game, and here was henry - the skeptical one - warning bill that he thought something was up! bill texted back - yes, it was a great game. sorry, old buddy, but something has just come up and i got to go home. catch you later. without looking over at henry - which was easy enough to do, because henry and bill hardly ever looked at each other during working hours except when they were dealing with bank business which of course they had not been doing much of lately - bill got up and oh so casually sauntered over to the desk of daphne, the branch manager. a family emergency has come up, bill lied shamelessly, and i have to go home. daphne looked up at bill with her blue eyes as clear as the skies over pitcairn island. that is all right, bill, she replied guilelessly, i am well aware of the fact that you have not taken any personal time off this fiscal year. and with that, daohne turned her attention back to her laptop and bill was free to walk out of the bank and on to the street. and where from there? bill knew that he would never return to the bank, and he felt a tsunami of adrenaline surge through his soul. next

spacious skies - 27. bill and henry

by american joe

part 27 of 40

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albert jones was not a bad person. but his neighbor bill smith was. the country was being torn apart. back in the dark ages al and bill had gotten along all right and their wives said hello to each other at mcdonalds and when they were out running. but everything comes to an end. a fire was slowly smoldering in bill’s brain. it only needed some gasoline to get it going real good. bill had a friend named henry brown at the branch of the morningside bank where he worked. bill and henry did not have much to do at the bank and it was only a matter of time - a few months at most - before they were terminated. they did not call attention to each other by speaking to each other out loud in the human voices they had been born with. so they spent their days texting and e-mailing to each other, mostly about sports. henry gradually inserted politics into the conversation. bill had always been bored with politics, even though he was a natural born bad person. and bill’s genetic inclination was to take things one day at a time, and not worry about the dread future looming up in front of him. when he would have to be supported by his wife, who did not really like him much and might very well leave him and not support him. there was an epidemic sweeping across the land of men losing their jobs and not being supported by their wives who never really liked them that much and had only married them because the obsolete patriarchal culture had taught people that marriage was necessary to hold the social fabric together. a hotshot lawyer from chicago named chuck dobbs had made billions by advertising online and urging men to claim alimony from these high and mighty wives. millions of men took advantage of mr dobbs’s services but there were still millions, like bill and henry, who were old school and resisted this proceeding as unmanly under the old tarnished code of patriarchy. so - one sunny morning, with the specter of disaster hanging over their heads, bill texted henry as to his thoughts about the cardinals’ loss to the cubs the previous evening. next

spacious skies - 26. dawes

by american joe

part 26 of 40

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joe and officer mudlark watched as officer toots knocked on the door of the gray house with red trim. the door opened immediately, quicker than it had when joe knocked earlier. the same surly individual opened the door. hello, toots said, i am with animal services, and i wonder if you know anything - about that dog? i don’t know nothing about that dog, or any other dog. i never seen it before, like i told the other guy. my name is officer toots. lou toots. what’s yours? my name is charles g dawes, not that it’s any of your goddamned business. what do you want to know my name for? i’m a citizen and i know my rights. no need to get upset, mr dawes, i just thought that maybe you might remember something and want to contact us. no way! well, in that case, i won’t trouble you further. have a nice day, sir. charles g dawes slammed the door in toots’s face. toots walked back to where joe and officer mudlark were standing. he doesn’t know anything, he told mudlark. she nodded. all right. can i go now? joe asked. mudlark raised her eyebrows. go? you want to go? don’t you want to see how this turns out? turns out? i thought someone would just come and take the poor dog away. or that you would. well, if you are in such a hurry to leave, we won’t keep you. but we might have some questions for you later. about what? joe thought. aloud, he said, do you want my address, phone number? don’t worry, mudlark said, we can find you. toots and mudlark watched joe walk away. you notice how he said, the poor dog? mudlark asked. like he’s this real sympathetic character? * charles g dawes watched toots and mudlark put the dog in their vehicle and drive away. sons of bitches, he thought, nosey interfering sons of bitches, treading on a man’s privacy. don’t tread on me! he said aloud. dawes talked to himself aloud a lot. he went back downstairs to his basement. next