FALL COINAGE

Now that it’s fall and Bryon, my “Honey”, is raking leaves again, I thought you might enjoy this story.  And if you’re a publisher who likes amusing short stories, please contact me.  I have a whole book of them about “Honey” that needs publishing.

KEEP WRITING

            I thought I had quit writing stories about Honey, but he recently smashed through my writer’s block and my Muse told me I should record the incident.  For some reason I need a written reminder of what Honey thinks I need to forget.

            Since Honey and I are now both retired seniors, we eagerly anticipate our monthly cash stipend in the form of pensions.  Most of them arrive at the bank the third business day before the end of the month.  We are both pretty good at budgeting but sometimes there are too many days between one month and the next.  When that happens, I don’t buy apple pie or ice cream for Honey at the grocery store.  But Honey’s plan is probably more practical, him being an engineer.  He saves his coins all month and then the last week before pensions arrive, he rolls his change and takes it to the bank to trade for bills so he has beer money when he goes to sing Karaoke, and that can be five or six nights a week.  Sometimes he just sings and sometimes he actually runs the Karaoke.  Either way, Karaoke is thirsty work, you know.  It requires quenching with pints of beer.

            One morning in November he came downstairs early, wearing jeans, a cowboy shirt with a vest over it, cowboy boots and his cowboy hat.  As I heard him grab his keys from the rack in the kitchen, I asked where he was going because I knew it wasn’t to mount a horse or round-up any cattle.

            “I’m going to the bank to trade my coins for bills,” he said.  He went out the door and I kept reading my newspaper and drinking my coffee.  As it was only 8:30, I thought he might have to wait for the doors to open at the bank.

            An hour later he stomped into the house with wet boots, cursing at something.  Afraid he was going to blame me for withdrawing money from our joint account to buy him a Christmas present, I still asked what was bothering him because I knew that’s what he expected me to do.

            “I lost all my coins!” he said.

            “How could you lose your coins between here and the bank?” I asked.

            “I haven’t been to the bank,” he screamed, as he paced back and forth from the front hallway to the kitchen.

            “Well, what were you doing then?” I asked.

            “I was raking leaves for garbage pick-up tomorrow,” he said.  “And when I got in my truck, I didn’t have any coins!” he railed, as he stomped some more from hallway to kitchen and back again.

            “Oh,” I said.  “Did you check the garbage cans with the leaves?”

            “Of course I did!  I emptied out all the leaves and went through all that wet crap looking for the coins.  No such luck,” he fumed.

            “Have you retraced all your steps outside?” I asked next.

            “Yes,” he sneered.  “I’m not stupid, you know.”

            “Unfortunately, Honey, the paper you rolled the coins in is the same colour as all the dead leaves from the trees.  What you need is a metal detector,” I advised him.

            “You know we don’t have one of those,” he told me.

            “Well, how about my sewing magnet?” I offered, smiling at the thought of him bent over looking for coins with an eighteen inch long magnet I use to pick up sewing pins.

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” he told me.  “I even went around all the lawn with the rake again, moving more leaves to see if I could find the coins.  That was a whole sixty bucks I lost!  The pockets in this vest aren’t very deep, you know.”

            At that point I refrained from discussing his quandary any longer.  And I wasn’t about to go outside looking for his needle in his haystack.  Instead I went out on the back porch and swept up the leaves there and put them into a garbage bag and then I emptied some planters with long dead peppermint and parsley and chives and basil and oregano.  While I was doing that, Honey spent some time out the back looking in more downed leaves.

            I saw him head out the back gate toward the ravine and the creek that passes through our property.  I thought he was going to check that the culvert under the footbridge wasn’t blocked and likely to cause the neighbour’s fear of flooding.  Studiously tending to my own chores, I didn’t say anything.  I finished cleaning up the back porch and then went inside for another coffee.

            A short time later, Honey banged in the front door, stomping his wet feet on the scatter mat, scaring the cat.  “Guess what I found?” he asked triumphantly.

            “You’re coins, I assume.  Where were they?” I asked.

            “I went down to the creek and stood in the middle of it and I saw something glinting, and I found all my coins!  They must have fallen out when I bent over to look at the culvert earlier,” he said, using my clean dish towel to dry his precious coins.

            After he dried all his coins, he had to roll them again with the required number in the required paper for bank acceptance.  He was short two quarters, so he went back to the creek looking for them. Engineers do practice due diligence, you know.  He did find them and then after he changed into dry clothes, he was ready to leave for the bank.

            “So,” I said, “You have enough money now to buy me supper tonight, right?” I asked hopefully.   At the very least, I thought I deserved compensation for listening to him sing the blues at home as well as all his old, sad Karaoke songs down at the restaurant.

            “Forget it,” he said.  So that’s why I decided to write this down, so I can remember what it was he told me to forget.

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By Lisa A. Hatton

           

           

           

           

HIDDEN TRUTH

Sometimes it is very difficult to discern the truth of a situation.

A THOUSAND WORDS

The adage asserts that a picture is worth a thousand words?  I don’t think so.  Not this picture anyhow.  It only shows the man I knew and not the thousand words that tell who he was or what he was or what he did or what happened to him or why he’s no longer in my life.  I have to dredge my memories for those thousand words and I won’t know if the word count is correct until I throw my words on the page.

His name was…..oops!  No, I won’t give his real name.  I’ll call him Semi, because that was what he did.  He was a trucker.  A long distance trucker who drove a semi, all over North America.  I met him because I’d asked to, sort of.  I’d written a lyrical poem about wanting a love who always came to me at journey’s end.  It was my own take on a witch’s spell I’d taken from a book.  How fitting, that Semi came to me at the end of one of his journey’s.  Be careful what you wish for.

We met at a single parents’ dance.  I was on the executive, so there I sat at the entrance table taking admission fees for our coffers; four dollars for members and eight for non-members.  He sauntered in, tall and rugged in his cowboy boots and jeans and shirt and denim jacket.  Towering over me, he smiled and winked and asked my name, as he counted out eight dollars.

I smiled back.  “Lisa,” I said, wondering if he was a good dancer.  When the music started, he came to my table and asked me to dance.  He stayed by my side the rest of the evening, not letting any other dance partner near me.  Between drinks and dances, he told me his story.

“She’s sleeping with her boyfriend, in my own house,” he said about his wife.  “She thinks I should sleep in the basement between runs and still pay the mortgage.”

“Do you have any children?” I asked, since this was a single parents’ dance.

“We have four.  The two oldest daughters were hers before I married her ten years ago.  The youngest boy and girl are ours together.  I love my kids.  They’re all over me when I get home from a run.”

“So if you don’t sleep in the basement, where would you go?” I was foolish enough to ask.  And that was how he ended up at my place two weeks before Christmas.

He moved in and brought his prized stereo, which he immediately hooked up in my living room, replacing mine.  His clothes took half my closet and other possessions filled my storage room.

My children were happy.  Semi became a substitute Dad.  He was a big teddy bear they climbed on and wrestled with.  He took us for a long ride in the tractor of the truck, to look at Christmas lights spread all over the countryside and he showed us how the CB worked.  My children were thrilled, and so was I.  And in bed at night, he and I were lovers.  I felt protected beside him.

“You are the most peaceful person I know,” he told me once.  “I saw that aura around you when I walked into the dance.  And when I entered your home, I could feel that peace that surrounds you and fills these rooms.”

We spent Christmas together, with my relatives.  It was a magical time, briefly.

Then the phone calls started.  I would answer and a teenaged girl would ask, “Is my Dad there?”  That was the oldest step-daughter.

Soon the two younger ones were also calling.  They wanted their father.  That seemed natural to me.  My own son and daughter phoned their Dad whenever they could. But Semi’s younger step-daughter never phoned.  And I didn’t think to question why, until one day his wife called.  My eight year old daughter answered and turned ghostly pale and deathly quiet.  I could hear shrill screaming over the phone and grabbed it from her.

“Where is he?  Tell that bastard he’d better pay me some child support.  If he isn’t out on the road, he’s not making any money.  How dare you sleep with my husband, you stupid bitch?  He’ll pay for leaving me!  Don’t you know he’s a child molester?  I’ve got the police after him and you’d better keep your own kids away from him!”

I dried my daughter’s tears and confronted Semi when he came home.

“Don’t let her get to you.  She’s the biggest liar in the world.  It shouldn’t be a problem.  I’ve just got a job and I’ll be off for L.A. in the morning.”

And just like that, he was gone.  No phone calls.  No letters.  His belongings still at my home.  It was six months before I heard from him.

“I was wondering if you still have my stereo, and other things?” he asked.  “I’m living in Edmonton now and was wondering if I could pick them up on my way through?”

It only took him half an hour to move his things out of my life.  The magic was gone so I was glad his things were, too.  But he did leave me his new phone number.

A month later a detective visited me and asked if I knew where Semi was.  He asked if my children had been molested by him.

“No.  They adored him and if he had touched them I don’t think they would still be asking about him and wanting to see him again,” I said.

“Do you know he sexually abused his younger stepdaughter?  We’re looking for him to charge him.  Do you know where he is?”

My heart wanted to believe in Semi’s innocence, but the mother in me erred on the side of caution.  I surrendered his Edmonton phone number, with trepidation.

Six months later my phone rang.  It was a collect call from Semi at a correctional facility not far away.  I accepted the charges.

“I was convicted of sexual assault on my stepdaughter.  I had no hope of acquittal when she testified in court.  Her mother put her up to it, I’m sure.  I’ll be in here for two years.”

Truth or lies, I’ll never know.  And those are the thousand words the picture never wrote.

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By Lisa A. Hatton

THE DINER IN LANGLEY

Every community should have its own diner.

WHAT IS THIS PLACE?

            It was Friday night, almost, and Ralph was hungry and thirsty and lonely and cantankerous.  He was hungry because he hadn’t eaten anything all day, except for one slice of toast when he got up at six-thirty that morning.  He was thirsty because he wanted a beer or two or three, and the local Legion had closed and he didn’t want to go to the nearby pub for one.  With all the bare floors, clinking glasses and loud sports channels on the televisions and the constant clack of pool cues on balls, a fellow couldn’t hear himself think.  Hard of hearing at seventy-five years of age, his newfangled state-of-the-art hearing aids just made the tumult worse.  He was lonely because his wife had died and he missed her planning everything to do with his meals, like what he ate and where he ate and when he ate.  So bloody right, he was cantankerous as he didn’t know how to fix any of those things!

            After a career in sociology, where he’d only studied human group behaviors and reported on them to various institutions which usually wanted to sell to, manipulate, or exploit that same group, he felt disadvantaged as a single, hungry, thirsty widower.  He didn’t fit into any defined group.  No wife.  No siblings.  No children.  No family.  No Legion.  Then he remembered the restaurant his late friend Paddy had owned.  It was just several blocks down the road and should still be open.  Brogan’s on 56^th was only a diner, an old greasy spoon that had been run by an old Irishman, but he could get a meal and a beer and the walk there and back would do him good.  He could hear his dead wife’s voice in his ear telling him so.

            By the time Ralph arrived at the restaurant, he was even hungrier and thirstier.  Pushing open the door, he was surprised to see some walls had been removed and others painted, and the diner now seemed more open and inviting.  As he approached the cash register, a young woman serving a table waved at him and said to sit wherever he liked.  He chose a booth in the middle of the room and sat looking around.  Old photos, posters and memorabilia splattered the newly painted walls.  Toy cars and knick-knacks claimed all available shelf space.  An old and tired, tall wooden stand with open shelves, now housed the diner’s assortment of coffee mugs, no two the same.  They probably came from the thrift store three doors down.  Then Ralph saw the one new addition to the place.  It was a brand new stage at the back of the room, complete with two steps up, a safety rail, speakers and microphones, and somebody who was singing. 

            “Who owns this place since Paddy died?” he asked the young waitress, who brought him a menu and then the beer he ordered.

            “His daughter, Shannon, is the owner now.  She’s in the kitchen, talking to her husband, Keith.  He’s one of the cooks.  Did you want to talk to her?” she asked.

            “No.  No, I’m good.  I’ll just sip my beer and order some supper and listen,” he said, pointing to the stage, thinking how unusual to have live entertainment in a diner.

            After browsing the home typed menu and placing an order instead for the daily special chalked on a board, he sipped his beer and watched while the diner filled up.  As people came in, they all seemed to know each other, greeting other patrons by name, stopping to chat, giving each other hugs and kisses.  This was not regular behavior in any diner he’d been to before.  Very strange.

            His dinner arrived just as he noticed some man sitting in a booth with a computer in front of him, singing into a microphone and then calling somebody else to sing another song.  The next singer sported a cowboy shirt and cowboy hat and sang “Do You Know You Are My Sunshine?”  When he left the stage he wandered around the whole restaurant with a beer in his hand, talking to people who were sitting, standing, or walking in or leaving.  The next singer up was his own waitress.  After that a woman dressed to the nines and wearing high heels to showcase her long legs, got up to sing.  When she finished, she started clearing tables.  Then a man wearing a kitchen apron came out from the back to sing one song.  Then two ten year old boys got up and sang a rap song that was too loud, too long, and too unintelligible.

Even though he’d eaten and had a beer, Ralph was feeling cranky again.  He stifled his ire, though, when he saw the cowboy put down his beer and aid an elderly lady with a walker to a table and chairs in the middle of the room, the only place she could manage to sit down.  That was also when a young man with dyed black hair in a brush cut, and an open shirt collar with a scarf tied around his neck, got up on the stage and started singing “Love Me Tender”, one of Elvis Presley’s hits.  Ralph remembered dancing with his wife to that song many times through the years.  He coughed, to get rid of the lump in his throat.

Next to hold the microphone was a young woman who sat on a chair with a three year old girl beside her, also holding a microphone.  The two of them sang “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” together and when they were done the three year old continued sucking on her thumb while her mother sang “Hallelujah” like an angel.  She stood up when she finished and her clothes seemed to be splotched in paint, as if she hadn’t changed after work.  The paint on her clothes matched the wall behind her.

Sporting a safety vest like the ones worn in construction, the next singer was a woman probably in her fifties, who belted out her song without holding back.  Then a man about eighty sang a slow, sad song.  Next, a brown skinned woman wearing mukluks sang a rock and roll duet with the cowboy.  When the cowboy finished singing, he brought two glasses of water to two women at another booth.  As he walked by, Ralph waved at him and asked him to sit down and talk to him.

“I think I recognise you,” Ralph said.  “You used to play guitar and sing at the Legion when it was across the street.  Am I right?”

“Oh yes.  Those were good times when we had a jam session happening there every Sunday,” he told Ralph.

“So what is this place?” Ralph asked.  “It doesn’t fit any definition of restaurant or diner that I’ve ever seen.  Everybody seems to know everybody else.  You can’t tell who works here or doesn’t.  The girl I thought was my waitress was up singing and so was the cook.  One customer got up and sang and then started clearing tables.  Beer is available but hardly anyone is drinking alcohol.  Kids are allowed in here but it seems like a nightclub otherwise.  They’ve taken out a big table and people are dancing in the middle of the room.  What is going on?”

The cowboy smiled and said, “Just a minute.  You can ask Shannon, the owner,” as he motioned for someone behind Ralph to come and take his place.

“Oh, hi!  Ralph, isn’t it?  I know you.  You were a friend of my Dad’s.  How are you doing?  Are you enjoying yourself here tonight?” she asked with a radiant smile.

“Shannon, I’m so sorry your Dad passed away.  He was a good man.  But what have you done to this place?  It’s sure not the same as when he ran it.  I’m a sociologist, you know, and this doesn’t fit any scientific or commercial definition of a restaurant!  What is this place?” he asked louder, trying to be heard over two middle aged men holding hands and singing Johnny Cash’s “Jackson”.

“It’s still a restaurant.  We got another business licence to allow entertainment.  And we already had the liquor licence.  So now we have the Karaoke happening two nights a week, and this is one of them.  Isn’t it wonderful?  The place just fills up those two nights,” she told him.

“But it’s still not like any restaurant.  The staff all get up to sing.  Customers clear tables.  Nobody sits still.  People walk around wherever they want, sit wherever they want.  I don’t understand.  What is this place?”

Shannon looked wide-eyed at Ralph and then reached across the table to pat his hand.  “It’s a family restaurant, Ralph.  That’s what it says outside, Brogan’s Diner.  It’s family and friends and the lonely who come to be together and have a bite to eat, and something to drink and maybe sing a song and feel like they belong.  That’s what family is, Ralph, and you’re welcome to join us whenever you want.”

Her name was called over the microphone as she got up from the table and went to sing her own song.  Ralph thought perhaps it was fortunate he had retired.  This place would never have fit into any of his former research.  It certainly wouldn’t have made it onto any high end restaurant list for best food, best service, or best entertainment.  Giving up his quest to define the place in concrete terms, he ordered another beer and wondered if he still had the voice to sing for a crowd.

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By Lisa A. Hatton