First Six Pages of ROVER

Started writting this two years ago, off and on. More off than on. Around page 15 or 16 I got stumped big time. Too choppy, and dialog wasnt real. I'm still learning...

     I’m a rover.  Alone.  A king without his country.  Invisible chains wrapped tight around my feet anchored down hard with memories of a better life- not allowing me to roam too far.  Home for me is a basement-scented tent with a river view and a trackside backyard.  The old growth forest, out beyond the tracks, is my neighborhood.  At night the whistle of the passing train, the blast of the barge’s horn, and the lonely howling of the coyote are the sounds of my city.  This is my life- a life of choosing to be set apart and above it all.

Hello.  I’m Sammy.  Of average height, wind-tangled greyish dark hair, and red eyes.  The red eyes are from when I used to cry a lot.  They’re still red, but the scotch took the place of the crying.  So good and smooth, so easy  on the mind.  Easy on the memories, too.  Scotch never freezes in the winter either, something I’m grateful for come Christmas.  This isn’t Arizona.  The bottle so skinny and sexy.  She’s my pocket wife- never leave home without her.  I had a real wife once, but the bridge took her.  Steel green beams rising out of the cold dark water, reaching into the fog of prosperity.  SUVs and Rovers and RVs riding on her potholed deck, going no place.  No place that matters anyway.  People jumping into the better life of the dark moody waters of the filthy river.  Drivers passing them by in their make believe world of toys.

She was a short wife.  Huge on patience.  Cuter than a bug’s ear.  Skin smooth as vanilla ice cream.  A voice found only in paradise, and paradise was wherever she was, my little Mary Ann.  My pie baker, heartbreaker, card player, life maker.  The pressure.  Oh, the pressure.  Yes, that is what ended it. Poisoned through and through,  from her mind to her mouth- movies, sitcoms, newspaper coupons.  The poison led her away from me and into the deep.   

It was a  year ago they found her body bobbing up and down, up over the roller dam.  The locals call the roller dam “the washing machine of death” because of the up and down action of the river water where bodies can never be retrieved until they are completely water saturated and nearly impossible to identify.  Then they float down river, after weeks in the pool of the roller dam.  I claimed the body, there at the morgue in town.  Told the coroner I wanted to bury her out of state, to be near her mother.  I signed the papers and the coroner made sure the body was prepared for the ride.  But I went and dug the grave myself, out past the tracks, out in those woods.  I haven’t been back since.  I couldn’t bear it if her grave had gotten dug up by some jerk animal.  Do I miss her?  Where’s my scotch?  Where’s my Mary?

I’m sitting next to the fire.  Captain Pabst is gone hunting and there's a cold bright moon shining boastfully in the sky.  When I’m alone like this, my thoughts stray backwards to Mary Ann.  She was my hot pistol.  Green eyes of dynamite.  A keg of dripping honey in a forest full of hungry bears.  I was the hungriest.  I was her life.  She was my prize.  And now she’s gone.  I never provided for her anyway.  But life is more than that, isn't it?

Exactly what is life?  The fire is getting much hotter as I move back a foot. Life is fire.  It could consume you- if you let it.  Kid worship.  Hero worship. Spouse worship.  Job worship.  It goes on and on.  Life's little things that people worship.  Empty souls who empty their pocketbooks to go shopping to get some more stuff.  Yes- stuff worship.  So, this is America?  What exactly is her identity?  Where is her soul?  What does she stand for besides getting more stuff?  Woe to the shallow masses who labor in vain.  Whose necks are forever broken- staring down at their smart phones.  Whose mind is forever wasted on frivolous text messages and the wide-screen tvs hanging on the wall waiting their turn to be used by big brother.  Big bro will have an easy time with these bunch of morons.

It’s cold.  I hope Captain Pabst is warm.  He should've stayed home with me, next to the fire.  I miss the ninety degree days of summer.  It’s dead and gone. Hello winter.  In all her beauty, all her splendor- her whiteness.  Her brutality. Her hatefulness.  Her power-hungry winds that keep getting stronger and stronger, her frozen rain that hurts, and her fluffy snow that sucks.  You spirit- draining animal.  May you rot and burn in hell.  Where did I put that bottle?

I’m thinking of going to BirdLand for a drink and a nap.  BirdLand is an old man pee in your pants bar down on Division Street.  My warming center.  Dick Worthalot is the dive’s owner, who is never there, and probably doesn't realize he owns it.  I arrive after a thirty minute walk.  As I push the door open, the old familiar smell of urine visits my nose.  Ahh...I take my seat at the far end of the bar and order a Bloody Mary.  Heavy on the black pepper and Worcestershire Sauce and light on the Mexican pepper crap.  It’s always dark in here and it’s a good place to rest your head on the bar for a quick nap.  As long as there is a drink in front of you, the bartender lets you nap.  Up in the air I hear the tv, its reruns of All in the Family, and that's how I feel- I'm home and Edith is my bartender.  The next thing I see the lights are on and man it’s bright. “Sammy, you're on,” Edith says.

I grab my bar towel and go to work.  You won't believe how sticky this bar gets, like I’m cleaning a candy shop.  So, this is my life cleaning the bar for twenty bucks a night and getting to go upstairs and sleep when I'm done. Sometimes I let Captain Pabst inside with me.  I miss that guy.  Wonder where he is?

The sun is up and I am too. Leaving the bar, Captain Pabst joins me.  It’s minus 12.  We cross the street and I go into Meatballs to grab a slab of salmon  and a pound of chicken breast for my cat.  Ed wraps them separate in brown paper.  Ed is a nice guy who has a heart for downtrodden animals.  Instead of throwing about-to-be expired meat away, he gives it to me to feed my friend. The Captain follows me back to the rear entrance to the bar.  I let us in and we go upstairs to eat.  It’s cold outside, isn’t it my friend?  He rubs up against me and starts to purr.

I’m looking at the frozen street through my window and see a yellow cat walking on the sidewalk, hungry and alone.  I look at the Captain and he seems to say “go down and get him.”  I obey.  His name is now Winston and in months to come we are the trifecta of the streets- me, Captain Pabst, and Mr. Winston.  We’re so lucky to have each other.  A blast of mean air flows through the window and hits my chest.  The cats are sniffing one another and finishing the fish I gave them.  I’m thinking of better days to come. Will I ever find another Mary Ann?  If I do, will she kill herself too?

I grab my bottle and start to drink.  It settles in my stomach like a firebomb. Soon I forget about Mary Ann and dream of summer tomatoes instead.  How could anything grow in this frozen world?  How could the warm summer winds ever find us again?  The cold has power.  Muscle.  So strong and so long. Months and months and months of frozen crap in the streets.  Can't even kick nothing with your feet- for they don't move.  The winter has a hold on them. When I was a kid I loved winter.  I was well provided for.  When you’re poor, winter is not your friend. When you're poor, you have cats as friends.  Winston jumps on my lap and Pabst is washing himself getting ready for his nap.  I’m drunk again.

The day flips into night.  I get ready for a night of urine smells at the bar.  The place is full, so I grab a corner table and read a four-day-old newspaper.  Feeling trapped.  Miss my camp.  Hate this being cramped in a bar for the only reason of survival.  I hate everyone.  They smell worse than me. They talk about nothing.  They care about crap.  I unfold the paper and rest my head on my arms, waiting to go to work.  She’s  beautiful.  Slender and friendly with a big red top.  Shaking me and saying my name over and over again. “Sammy, wake up!  Edith wants you to clean her bar.”

The prettiest redhead I’ve ever seen.  I’ll name her Cigarette.  Slender and sexy and smoking hot.  I wonder where she’s from?  What the heck she’s  doing in BirdLand?  What?  Did she buy the place or something?  Edith comes over to me and hands me my bucket of hot water and an old bar towel.  “Sammy, this is my niece from Ohio; she’s my ride tonight till my car gets worked on.  Do you fix cars Sammy?”  No, I don't.  Maybe Sammy, you should learn a trade or something, Edith spouts off.  Cigarette smiles at me as they both turn around to leave.  What a babe- I thought.  The next night, I enter the bar from my no- heat-upstairs apartment.  Looking around at the w****s and stupid men, spotting the only open table, I grab it.  As I’m about to sit, Cigarette comes over and says, “No, not for you, Sammy.  I’m meeting my ex any minute.  It’s my payday.”  Oh, I see- I said.  So,  following my feet to the nearest wall, I lean on it.  Keeping in mind I want to see this ex and see if there’s a flicker of romance left between the two.  Not that I care anyway.  Who can deal with a chick when you’re Sammy living hand to mouth in a frozen camp and just too p***y when it’s cold and hangs at a place called BirdLand?

Here comes the dick.  He grabs her by the waist and plants a kiss on her mouth.  Cigarette seemed to enjoy this, so I look for a seat at the bar.  Get me a Bloody Mary with extra black pepper and no Mexican heat.  I fiddle with my coins till they add up to the cost of my drink.  “Enjoy,” says the Edith.  I’m not tired as I drink my drink.  Thinking now about Mary and how we met.  In front of the jail, when I got released for not paying my traffic ticket.  She was standing by the old willow tree, just a smilin’ at me.  As I walked towards her, she put out her pretty little hand and said to me, “I saw you on tv last month shouting at the judge!  Saying to myself, I’ve got to meet this man who has no fear of authority.”  Well, here I am ma’am.  “Glad to meet you, I’m Mary Ann.”  So it went.  She fell for me in an instant and we were married in no time flat.

Edith, get me a Blue Ribbon.  Beer is free for me, as long as I clean that night.  We had a nice thirteen years.  She was a sturdy worker with a good job and I was her complainer in chief.  Every little job was a deathnail to me.  I hated to work.  Saw nothing of value in it.  Detested my co workers and hated my bosses.  Society was passing me by.  No it wasn't.  I was flying high past all that crap.  I knew I was right and they were wrong.  A job to me didn't mean survival.  It meant purchasing more crap that I didn't need or want.  Mary Ann was trouble.  She spent money like a democrat on speed.  Faster she made it, faster it was gone.  She had no sense I tell ya. Living for the moment and the “high” of buying.  America ruined her.  She was a shell of a woman.  No insight.  No guts.  Not a thinker like me.  Sure, you say, Sammy had a lot of time to think in between jobs and all.  That's not the point.  I was smart not to provide a living for her.  Look where it got her.  All the living she provided for us- she wound up dead by her own doing.  Working for a living leads to dying- and dying I want no part of- unless I do the killing.

Cigarette comes to the bar and orders a tray of drinks to be brought over to her table.  She was stoned.  You could see the drunkenness all over her face. Well, this is payday, her day to pay.  I could kill for a date with that thing.  But is it worth it?  Like Mary, Cigarette is ruined.  Cigarette is a bridge girl, I see it.  A good jumper, I tell ya!  The day she wakes up from fairyland will be her last.  I’m not in the mood to dig another grave.  I’m going upstairs to my cats. “I’ll be down later to clean, Edith.”

Once I’m in the cold dark quietness of my room I ponder about life a little. Well, not my life- everyone else's.  Downstairs where you find happiness in bourbon.  Happiness in beer and song.  Happiness in peeing your very own pants ‘cause the restroom is too far away.  Drunken thunder from those who lost their lives to BirdLand’s cheap drink.  The thrills of success found every minute from newfound pocket change in the pants of a drunk.  The drinking drunk- where every day is sleep and every night is the same.  Empty bottles on the floor, sitting on sticky stools ordering the same drinks from the same stingy bartender.  The Bartender- a friend of the drunk and an enemy at closing time.  Keep them rollin’ barkeep.  A little splash here and there makes them happy.  Happy is knowing you have enough change for one more drink.  One more night.  One more cheap thrill will set you right.

Oh, Sammy, I say to myself- you were them after Mary died.  Sure I was.  But then something happened.  I found my drum and it beats to my tune of life.  Sammy is always right about something and this something is life.  Why drink with others when you can drink alone?  Never buy booze from an Asian. They're not generous.  They have cash registers for souls.  Always have enough left over for the next morning and always pet your cat- my simple life rules.  Easy to follow and always no regret.

Three hours till cleaning time.  I’m going to take a nap.  Dreams come easy to me.  Like a seed planted in the spring, growing into full maturity in the summer, harvested in the fall, and dead by winter.  I hate winter.  It’s a false season and shouldn't be on the calendar.  Winter should be erased from all human history.  It’s from Satan and he laughs at my pain.  My dreams have a beginning and an end.  I remember them all.  But like winter, they die and I have no more till spring arrives.  It’s going to be a cold nap without any, but that’s ok.  I’m tired.