Spectral Love Finds David No-Ears

Stop, Look, and Listen.  Death owns this right of way.  Photo by [Maris].

Tennessee Ernie Dietz sat by his small campfire, scraping the dregs of his hobo lasagna from the bottom of his favorite bean can/sauce pan/sauté pan/storage tin/urinal.  He stared at the flames as they danced and hissed.  An exceptionally disheveled hobo emerged from the woods, shuffled up to the fireside, and grinned madly at Ernie.

"Jeepers, mister - you scared me half to death!  Say... David?  David No-Ears?  Is that you?"

"Well, sure it's me, pal."  The man's face was encrusted in dirt so thick and chunky, it might as well have been a western omelet.  He doffed his raggedy, poorly-knitted lint cap, revealing his bald head and noticeable lack of ears.  The open holes looked rather like scars, and as such were best hidden away under a hat.  To be fair, he had ears.  He could hear as well as anybody; he simply didn't have the external cartilage that makes up what most people envision when they think of ears.  But "David No-External-Cartilage-Only-Ear-Canal-Holes" was way too long for a hobo moniker.

   

"I'll be damned - it is you!  What you been up to, David?"

"No good.  I can promise you that.  Just got back from pickin' cranberries, up north.  Been hoofin' and ridin' southbound for weeks, chasin' what's left of the sun.  And get this - I'm in love!"

"No foolin'?  In love?  You?" Tennessee Ernie had a reputation on the rails as being gullible, and he was making a concerted effort to be more skeptical.  "I don't believe it," he added.

"Hand to God," David No-Ears affirmed.  "Mind if I share your fire?"

"Have a seat, friend.  My fire is your fire.  Got a few beans here, somewhere..."  Hoboes never asked, "are you hungry?"  Hunger was always assumed.  They just offered. 

 

"I'm much obliged, Ernie.  No beans for me, thanks.  Just want to warm up for a bit and get back on the road.  Got to get to Little Rock to see my girl."

"What girl?  Who?  And no offense, but... how?"

"I'm tellin' you, Ernie.  It's the genuine article.  I love this woman, and I'm gonna marry her.  I met her in New England, a month ago.  I hopped a New Haven freight outside of Providence, and there she was, curled up sound-asleep in an empty cattle car."

Tennessee Ernie wrinkled his nose and chortled.  "Cattle car, huh?  Romantic.  Must have been love at first sight."

"Laugh all you want, bub.  You know me.  I barely believed in love, let alone love at first sight - until I saw this gal.  I dropped everything I was carrying, and of course the clatter woke her right up.  She jumped up and hissed at me and waved a stick and gave me a profound death stare, but I just stood there smiling at her.  She had skin that looked like it might never have seen the sun, or a hard day, or a speck of grime.  Her eyes were like a child's - twinkling like diamonds in the snow - yet it seemed she might have been looking right through me."  No-Ears sighed happily and rubbed his hands in the warmth of the fire.

"Yeah, yeah.  Get to the good part, you old tramp.  I'm tired."

"If you mean for me to talk about her figure, I won't.  She may be a hobo, but she's a lady, and I ain't here to talk about her poetic caboose, or her pinup-girl legs, or her perfect bosom, which might have been sculpted out of marshmallow by Alexandros of Antioch himself.  I could tell you that she sings like an angel, kisses like the devil's daughter, and seems to scarcely touch the ground as she glides from place to place.  She emits her own light.  She's cool to the touch, and no one gives her any guff.  She's gonna be my wife, I'm tellin' you.  Since I met her, the sun rises and sets on her.  I can't think of beans or cops or dogs or lint or anything - only her.  She is the reason for every beat of my heart, these days.  I get younger, just thinking about her.  I have to meet her old man and all that, and then she'll be mine."

"Gee, David," Ernie said, "that's swell.  I'm happy for you.  Congratulations."

"Thank you very much.  And thanks for the fire.  You're a good man."  David No-Ears rose to his feet and extended a grateful hand.  "I should be on my way."

"Not at all.  Help each other - whenever and wherever - right?  Say, if you don't mind my asking, what's your dream girl's name?"

"It's Jane.  Itinerant Jane."

Tennessee Ernie Dietz swallowed hard, and what little color his face had possessed to this point utterly vanished.  "Itinerant Jane?"

"Yep."

"Blonde?  Western Pennsylvania accent?  Loves pierogi, and sandals?"

"That's her."

"And you met her when?"

"About four weeks ago, in Rhode Island," David said.  "Why?"

Ernie put his hand on David's shoulder - a rare gesture, for a hobo.  "I don't know how to say this, brother, so I'll just say it.  Itinerant Jane died over a year ago.  She got shot by a hunter, walking the tracks between Syracuse and Buffalo.  It was an accident."

"What the hell are you talkin' about?  You bent or something?  I spent a week with her, before she went on home - ahead of me - to break the news to her folks.  I'm on my way there, now.  You must be thinkin' of someone else."

Ernie shook his head sadly.  "Maybe you're thinkin' of someone else, friend, but I was there, not thirty minutes after the accident.  I watched Itinerant Jane die.  I don't know what to tell you.  I'm sorry.  Your fiance is a . . ."

David No-Ears waved a dismissive hand at his hobo friend, and laughed as nonchalantly as he could, but as his time with Jane replayed quickly in his mind, a sickening, sinking feeling took hold of his stomach, and refused to relinquish its warm black grip.

"Super," he said eventually.  He left the campsite, not spooked, not haunted, but utterly and completely defeated.  

Okay, here we go.  Instead of the insanity of this year's National Novel Writing Month, I'm going to attempt to complete National Blog Post Month, cranking out a little bit of drivel every day for all of November.  Yes, I am a glutton for punishment.  Anyway, the little bit of drivel through which you have just finished slogging was inspired by the STUDIO 30-PLUS prompts "best hidden away" and "scar," from NOT JUST ANOTHER MOTHER BLOGGER, whose material lives up to her blog's title.  29 more posts to go.  Come with me, won't you?

13 Sure-fire Bad Luck Generators

Don't look at your bride before the wedding; it's bad luck.  This, we know, is a silly rule.  Why?  Is it because there's no such thing as bad luck?  Maybe, but I'm not here to debate the existence or non-existence of luck.  I'm just saying - how will you recognize your bride when you see her, if you've not seen her before the wedding?  When else would you have seen her?  See?  Not such a very practical rule, is it?

Bored yet?  Me, too!  Here are thirteen more ways to invite bad luck into your life, some of which you may not have heard before:

1.  Saying "good luck" to a performer who is about to go onstage is bad luck.  Apparently, if you really care about him, and honestly wish him good luck, you are supposed to recommend that he fracture at least one bone in his leg.  This is because there is nothing that can be performed on a stage that can't be improved with crutches.

2.  The 13th floor of a building, especially a hotel, is unlucky.  This is believed widely enough that many buildings simply do not have a floor numbered 13.  Well, as the late, great Mitch Hedberg said, "You people on the 14th floor know what floor you're really on!"

3.  The old black cat crossing your path myth.  Yeah, I grew up with a certifiably insane black cat constantly crossing my path, and I haven't had any bad... heyyyyy... wait a minute... Dammit, Daiquiri!!  (The cat's name was Daiquiri, for some reason)

4.  Using CGI to recreate a character who was originally - and magically - brought to life as a real, live Muppet is just begging for bad luck.  Those who do this will find their dreams in this life and the next (if there was one - there isn't, though) positively infested with something called "Jar-Jar Binks."  So just don't, okay?

5.  Never, ever, cross the streams.  It's not just bad luck, it's probably copyrighted, and you might get sued.

6.  Buying a car on a Thursday has long been considered a certain path to a bad ownership experience.  There's actually a perfectly logical explanation for this one, which is that car salesmen have long believed that it is bad luck to sell a car on a Thursday.

7.  For soldiers around the world, lighting three (or, presumably, more) cigarettes with one match is supposed to be bad luck, on account of the cumulative time it takes to do so - time enough for a sniper to draw a bead on you.  This one's probably moot, now, thanks to cigarette lighters and the modern, smoke-free battlefield.

8.  It's bad luck to put a hat on a bed.  There are two orange floppy hats at home who will wholeheartedly attest to this.  And don't even get me started on the red hats with the curly W.  --sigh--  Yes, it's a baseball thing.  Just go to the next one.

9.  Leaving a house through a door other than the one through which you entered is considered bad luck.  Anyone who was born by C-Section care to corroborate?  What kind of luck have you had?  Bad, I bet.

10.  It's very bad luck to say the word "pig" when fishing at sea.  It's not so helpful when you're fishing for compliments, either.

11.  It's bad luck to let milk boil over.  Not really, but it's messy, and it stinks, so, yeah.  Bad luck.  Don't do it.

12.  Want a lifetime of misfortune?  No?  Then whatever you do, don't try to race a pair of pelicans down Route A1A on your bicycle in Juno Beach, Florida.  The pelicans will always win, and there's an excellent chance that you will be hit by a car.

13.  It is a well-known fact that googling things that are supposed to be bad luck in order to find out whether they're really bad luck... is bad luck.  Please, don't be a hero.  It's just not worth it.
 

You're gonna lose...

This too was prompted by my friends at STUDIO 30-PLUS, only this time it was my own post (the next one on this very blog, if you keep scrolling and/or clicking) that provided the phrase, "Supposed to be bad luck."  So, yeah.  Yay, me!

Silence Echoes: The World According To Giant Bat Wings Roland

...Drive!

I opened my notebook and cleared my throat.  "Giant Bat Wings Roland," I began.

She immediately raised a hand.  "Stop."

"Already?"

"Yes.  If I can guess in three tries how Roland got that stupid name, can we skip this, and watch 'Family Guy?'"  She didn't so much want to watch the show; she wanted to fall asleep to it.

I acquiesced.  

She looked at the ceiling for a moment.  "He had some kind of deformity that his fellow hoboes said looked like giant bat wings?"

"Nope," I said.

"Okay - hold on.  I know whatever it is has to be weird.  He wore a pair of fake giant bat wings?"

I made a show of checking my notes.  "No.  Strike two..."

"Ugh.  Alright, um... Oh!  I know - he actually had wings - and not just deformed arms or something."

"Seriously?  No.  Geez.  He just always carried a pair of ordinary bat's wings with him - wings that he described as 'giant,' although they were not.  At all."

She scowled at me.  "Of course.  How could I not have guessed.  It's so obvious."

"Roland was orphaned when he was ten, and-"

"Oh, here we go again," she groaned.  "What manner of freaky death befell his poor parents?"

"I have no idea how they died.  Not much is known about him at all.  I just have some quotes, translated from the hobo signs he left scrawled on track-side sheds and telegraph poles between Pittsburgh and Altoona in the 1930s."

"Those squiggly lines and triangles and stick figures?  How much story can be conveyed that way?" she asked.

"More than you might think.  Here's what I have, in no particular order...

My brother Walt is an engineer.  Hasn't spoken to me since we were small boys.  But he always slows his train when he sees me walking, so I can hop aboard and ride a while.

I know his signature pull on the whistle cord, and can hear him for miles.

One night, I walked the Pennsylvania just east of Horseshoe Curve, and I heard the silence, and I knew.

Silence echoes, though only hoboes can hear it.  The sound of that whistle never came.  The silence echoed off the hills, down to where I walked.  It was the end of Walt.  The next morning, I came upon the mangled steel. 

No one talks to hoboes, around a wreck.  Supposed to be bad luck.  They didn't need to say it.  I said a prayer and kept on walking.

The world was mine, anyway.  Walt knew nothing of my freedom."   

She shook her head, as if trying to dislodge water from her ears, then kissed me, and rolled over.  "Nice one, sweetie.  Good night."


Shockingly, this post was prompted by my friends at Studio 30 Plus, using "here we go again," from this fine blog post, and "weird," from this one.  Stop by either of these bloggy places, and you won't be disappointed.



 

Hither, Dither, and Yawn

Can you see where the weekends are?

Hither I come, returning to my cyber home, undoubtedly looking as dusty and bedraggled as I feel.  Over 27 July days (nights, mostly), I churned out 50,980 words for National Novel Writing Month - Summer Camp Edition.  I hear you - and the answer is yes.  Something is very much wrong with me.  I enjoy the pressure that these novel writing months put on me.  I'm quite comfortable being wordy.  Obviously.  And wordy I was, including 12,000 words during the final weekend.

So.  Over the past eleven days, I haven't written a word, and I haven't looked at what I wrote in July.  "Undead Drunk" is like a strange dream I had - full of booze and sex and snark - and a few zombies.  I've rested.  I've relaxed.  I've watched a lot of baseball.  I'm watching baseball right now.

But here's the thing:  What I should be doing, as always, is something else.  I now have SEVEN first-draft novels, and a couple of them might actually have potential.  I should be doing rewrites and edits, and reading "Getting Published - For Dummies."  Failing that, I should be writing something else - something new, something that, if not marketable, is at least a worthwhile exercise.  Failing that, I should be reading any of the half-dozen books in my to-read pile.  I should be finding a Jayson Werth garden gnome on eBay for my brother, who got to the Nats game too not-early-enough, on Tuesday, and missed out.  I should be working on my legal defense strategy for any of the myriad of lawsuits pending against me over that TV pilot I supposedly stole from Patton Oswalt and George Barry.  I should be trying on shorts.  I should be having someone take a look at that bullet wound.  It only grazed me, but it's awfully angry-looking - I'm worried that it might be infected.  Of course, I should also be shopping for new carpeting.  It's been over two weeks since the neighbors' washing machine flooded *our* dining room, and we ripped out the carpet in a fit of pique (And because we knew it was the only way to get us to replace the stuff.  We've been talking about it for a couple of years, now.), and there it sits.  Stupid concrete slab ghetto townhouse.  I should be figuring out what I want to do with this blog.  The Hobo Posts probably deserve their own blog, but that just sounds like work.  I suppose I could also be reading all my wonderful bloggy friends' stuff, and leaving them warm, supportive, and constructive feedback.  I should be emailing my handful of wayward friends.  I should be sleeping, perhaps.  [Baseball is over.  Stuff happened - what can I say?]

But I'm not.  Instead, I am dithering.  I think about all of the above and so much more.  And I think and think and think, and I come up with all manner of brilliant solutions to it.  It's like My Lost Revelation - gone before I can act.  It's not simple procrastination, though.  You ditherers know what I mean.  It's all there, but for the actual action.  Thinking about stuff is SO much easier than doing stuff.

Summer will end, and I'll not have even reread last year's novel - the one with potential - let alone edited, punched up, rewritten, fixed, sold, or otherwise pushed it toward publication.

Summer will end, and this wound will still be oozing, the legal team will have fired ME, and the garden gnomes will be gone.

Summer will end, and the house will still be in dire need of paint, carpeting, and if I'm being honest, cleaning.

Summer will end, and I'll not have reestablished connection with my very few friends, nor will I have rejoined the blogosphere - or even my teensy corner thereof.

yawn.

Summer will end, and that thumping in the closet will persist.  The thing that's not a bunny living under the shed will have had babies, and because I work at HSUS, there'll be nothing I can do about them.  So much for cutting the grass, I guess.  The Nats will have found a way to lose the NL East, but the O's will have clinched the AL East, and that will just have to do.  The 'Skins will have won all four of their preseason games, setting us up for the disappointment of another 10+ loss regular season, full of hypocritical bitching about the team's stupid name.  Yes - it's the 1890s N-word for native Americans.  If every non-native person who claims to be offended by it gave a dollar to a native American Nation tomorrow, we'd have the wealthiest indigenous population on the planet - but hypocrisy, as we know, is the greatest luxury.  Just ask the Disposable Heroes of Hip-hoprisy.

((YAWN))

Anyway.  Summer will end, and that's a shame.  But that's the great thing about not doing what you should be doing.  Fall will come, and all those things will be there, patiently waiting for you.  Well, my gunshot wound might not be patient, exactly, but still.  It will be there.  And if we still don't have carpeting, yet, then we can store perishables on the cold concrete floor, and save all kinds of money by unplugging the fridge.

((YAWN))

And there it is.  The second ((YAWN)).  I think it's time to tell you about another outrageously weird hobo, before you become as bored with all of this as I am.  Next time, that is - assuming that I'm not busy pitching "Undead Drunk" or "Falling Off The Universe" or "Buck Mope Catches The Westbound" to a big-time agent, somewhere...

Thanks for bearing with me, whilst I work this out...

Naturally, this post was prompted by my friends at Studio 30 Plus.  This week, our writing prompt, "Summer will end" came from a haiku by Laura at Bird Of The Forest. 

Catching Up With Fonzie - Crime & Punishment

"That's it?"  The Union Pacific detective asked, looking not at his suspect, but at the two-way mirror on the back wall of the interrogation room.  He knew that behind the glass, the Oklahoma City cops were shaking their heads.

"That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it, copper."  Fonzie, a six-year veteran of the grinding, often brutal hobo life, had been in trouble before.  His smile spoke of relief, as if he'd confessed everything.

He had not.  Not nearly.

His confession had covered only the petty crime committed that morning - his attempted theft of a woman's purse at Union Station.

"Buddy, we got all night.  I already told you the purse snatching ain't your biggest problem.  So, before we go any further... Arturo Hebert Fonzarillo--"

"Call me Fonzie," the hobo said smugly.

The policeman cleared his throat.  "Arturo Hebert Fonzarillo, you are hereby charged with the murders of Estelle Jane and Frank Joseph Fonzarillo.  You have the right to remain silent--"

"What??"  Fonzie slammed his handcuffed fists on the ancient wooden desk, and began to lunge from his chair, before several officers rushed into the room and encouraged him to reconsider.  "My parents?  What's wrong with you, bub?  My parents died six years ago."

"Yes - the day you disappeared, Mr. Fonzarillo," the lead interrogator said flatly.  "The day you murdered them.  Now, you pays your money and you takes your choice, see..."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"What he's trying to say, Fonzie, is you did the crime, so now you're gonna do the time.  I'd say about twenty-five to life."

Six hours later...

"You know what, coppers?"  Fonzie sighed, exhausted.  "I know I didn't kill my folks.  God knows I didn't do it, and I'm pretty sure you fellas know I didn't do it.  But, you know what?  Write up a confession, and I'll sign it.  Whatever you say - I did it.  I drowned my dear old mama in the lobster tank in our restaurant.  I knocked my pop unconscious with the pizza paddle from the kitchen, then burned him in the oven.  Done and done.  Where do I sign?"

The detectives stared at each other for a moment, then at Fonzie.  "We'll get that typed up in just a minute, Fonz.  But we been here for hours - with you proclaiming your innocence up one side and down the other.  What gives?"

The weary hobo sighed heavily.  "Like I said, God and me - we know I didn't do it.  But there ain't a judge or jury that's gonna believe me.  So, the way I see it, I already been punished to hell and back, over the past six years.  You say I'll get twenty-five to life in the clink.  About now, that sounds like a step up.  A cot, a shower, food that don't have bugs in it, vaccinations, a roof over my head and no more running - I'll take it.  Where do I sign?"

  

This time, I combined the STUDIO 30-PLUS prompt "he'd confessed everything" from Kirsten A. Piccini's "Man on a Mission," with the LIGHT & SHADE CHALLENGE prompt "You pays your money and you takes your choice," and the name Fonzie, from John Hodgman's list of 700 hobo names.

So.  Did he do it?

Pantless, Sockless, Shoeless Buster Bareass - On Loss

In my quest to tell the stories of John Hodgman's 700 HOBOES, I have often struggled to find any useful information at all, beyond a name.  Many of these people are nothing more than ghosts.  Interviews of actual hoboes have been helpful, but short of that rare face-to-face meeting, I have found that the best window into the forgotten lives of America's legions of train-riding wanderers is found in the letters a few of them left behind.  

The following letter was found in 1949 in the woods near the Louisville and Nashville tracks, twenty-two miles southwest of Mobile, Alabama.  It was in a glass bottle, clutched in the skeletal remains of a long-dead man - presumably its author - next to a shallow grave marked only with a number of small rocks arranged on the ground in the shape of a cross.  Local authorities had the remains exhumed, and they were able to determine that it was a woman, estimated to have died at least fifteen years prior, probably in her mid-twenties and eight-to-ten weeks pregnant when she perished.  Nearly all of her bones had been broken.

My Dearest Eleanor,

I will try to be brief. I know you hate when I ramble.  I hope I needn't remind you that I view our time together as nothing short of a miracle, but in case you forgot, there it is.  I never believed in soul mates before you stumbled so drunk and pretty into my campfire.  Enough said, I'm sure.

It has been five years, but the only difference between how I feel now and how I felt when it happened is that now, I'm older and more tired.  They said time would heal me.  It hasn't.  They said I could take comfort in knowing that you and the baby are at peace.  I cannot.  And Lord knows I have tried.  They even said I would love again, the fools.  I have not.  I will not.  I cannot.  I love you, and that is all.

I tried to convince myself that it wasn't my fault, that if you couldn't hear the train over the storm, there was no way you could have heard my voice.  I don't know.  I said nothing.  I just stood there, paralyzed and stupid in my disbelief of my own eyes, and it was over.  You were gone.  Our life, ended in a horrible blink.  No, I will not forgive myself this loss.  We knew plenty of losses before this one - my pants and shoes, my watch, your scarves and the photograph of the two of us with the sideshow madam in Cincinnati.  Even the fingers I lost to frostbite were nothing.  I am empty, I am dead, I am lost.

I still wake at night and speak to you, as if you are beside me.  I dream of our baby, always a girl, and she looks just like you.  Every day, I tell you I'm sorry, over and over.  I have returned here twice a year - on your birthday, and on our anniversary, to bring you flowers that I paid for myself. 

And now I think I've cried enough, trying to reach you, and to be where you are.  There was frost all the way down near Pascagoula last night, and it feels just as cold, tonight.  I'll sit with you, sweet Eleanor, and drink all this hobo wine, and I'll pass out, and freeze right to death, right to you.  And we will be happy - you, me and the baby.  I hope you haven't met someone new, where you are.  That would be awkward.  Anyway, if that's the case, I'll have only myself to blame, for not doing this sooner.

I'm sure when they find me, they'll say, "Oh, this poor bum - he had nothing of his own," but I know better.  I'm not a bum.  I am a hobo, and I had everything.  I had you.

With all of me,
Buster

P.S. I didn't freeze to death, and I have a splitting headache.  I'll try again tonight.

This post was written in response to another Studio Thirty Plus writing prompt.  This time, the phrase (He had nothing of his own) comes from one of my own posts, last week's little ditty about Packrat Red And His Cart o' Sad Crap.

Packrat Red and his Cart o' Sad Crap

She should have seen it coming.  

Red Barrett had for eight long years endured a loveless shotgun marriage to the daughter of a Pennsylvania steel baron.  She was a domineering daddy's girl, and from day one, she made no attempt to hide her disdain for Red.  On good days, she ignored him, but often she was openly hostile.  After a few years, he had stopped fighting, quit defending himself against her insults, and no longer believed that happiness was a possibility for him.

He trudged along the streets of Allentown, surviving as best he could the soul-crushing employment his father-in-law had arranged for him.  By day, he peddled toiletries and tools from a heavy, wobbly-wheeled cart.  By night, he suffered the slings and arrows of his wretched wife.

Until.

Until the onset of the Great Depression.  It didn't ruin him; he had nothing of his own.  What it did was put stories about hoboes in the newspaper.  Before he took his melancholy out the back door, hit the road as Packrat Red and made a life of challenging but happy wandering, he left his wife a note.

"Lynnette - I don't love you.  You don't love me.  If I die tomorrow, walking free the rails to Reading, it will be a far better fate than another hour of life in this house.  You may keep the filthy cart."

It's good to be back!  This little warmup was written in response to the STUDIO 30 PLUS prompt "He took his melancholy out the back door," from Katy Brandes' ON THE CUSP OF SPRING.