The morning’s Leave it to Beaver was very sad and very boring. Finally, to get things going, Decker dropped to his knees and did his best imitation of Janis Joplin unleashing a gut-wrenching primal scream.
He crawled around the cabin, moving on his stomach, slithering across the smooth wooden floor—a phony Black Mamba in search of its prey—silently creeping around the couch and under an end table into a dark corner where he came nose to nose with a large, lonely cardboard box, one of the two or three he had never bothered to unpack. This particular box challenged his curiosity. He scratched his head and tried to remember what was inside, but his concentration was twisted, his memory was on forty-five second delay.
Truth is, Decker felt there should be room for his forgetfulness. After a long strained airplane ride over the Pacific, he had found no one at his parents’ house. Feeling their absence to be convenient, he quickly spurred himself into action, first renting a car, then running an important errand (namely, stopping by to visit a marginal acquaintance known to vend quality weed in quantities). Then, after hastily packing and nearly clearing out his closet by frantically throwing everything into boxes, he had headed to the Island.
On the way, the car gave up several times, overheating and quitting for no apparent reason, leaving Decker cold, tired and shaken on a deserted dark highway in the early morning, kicking the tires, cursing the withered car and longing for a single moment of peace and decency. Eventually, the engine would cool sufficiently to allow him to move on farther north, perhaps ten or twenty miles before it would again overheat, forcing him off to another solitary section of the road’s shoulder to repeat the maladjusted pitiful scene; kicking, swearing and maligning the day he was awarded the gracious gift of liberty and life.
But now, sitting on the floor of the TV room he had different problems. He was now face to face with a cardboard box that he was afraid to open. He was hesitant, but he did not know why. Finally, forcing the courage to pull back the flaps and start digging, he found: a deck of cards bundled tightly with a rubber band, a high school year book, the biographies of Babe Ruth and James Dean, a worn pair of rubber cleats, one red bandanna, a dart board, a white Good News Bible, and a Reggie Jackson model glove with a baseball sitting squarely in the pocket. He quit digging.
He sat in a trance, snapping the ball into the glove, the reddish leather still moist and smooth. He pounded the ball into the pocket again and again, gleefully, fanatically. He jumped up, went outside to the road and tossed the ball high in the direction of the thick, white, full cumulus clouds hanging in the pale blue sky.
Basket-catch, after basket-catch, strolling underneath the ball, he savored the feeling of the ball firmly landing in the pocket of the soft leather. Near the crest of the hill, he missed his first behind-the-back attempt, and the ball took off down the slope, gaining speed, skipping along the eroded asphalt, rolling into town, with Decker in frantic pursuit.
By the time he caught up to the ball it was taking a breather, sitting in the gutter in front of Frank’s Liquors. Decker sat down next to his new best friend, both happy to be free and outside on such a beautiful sunny day when life was like a basketball game with no time clock and no need to score.
A beefed-up ’64 Dodge Dart rumbled by, the driver a seventeen-year-old wannabe hoodlum with an obvious libido problem. His noisy car was followed by a noisy garbage truck heading out of town, which expelled a thick, black cloud of smoke just above Lenny’s head.
Decker coughed and screamed. “You motherfucker, I’m already high, I don’t need your help.” He stood and violently shook his fist, but quickly ceased once he realized the big Mexican driving the truck might not get the joke.
The door to Iggy’s was open. Decker walked across the street and went inside to see a good-sized day crowd with most of the barstools taken. He squeezed in between Bob the pipefitter and Foster, who sat straight and rigid, his eyes closed behind his glasses.
“Beer here,” Decker yelled, setting his ball and glove at his feet.
“Hold on will ya.” Iggy was involved in a heated game of liar’s dice and was having a heck of a time trying to keep up with the game while having to pour drinks or draw beers between hands.
Bob the pipefitter was just over fifty, he had thick bushy black eyebrows and a square Popeye-like jaw. He was talking to Cliff, a skinny Okie concrete worker with a weathered face and about six teeth.
“Now that we got that dope-fiend, hippie boy and his lesbian wife in the White House there’s no telling what’s gonna happen.” Bob shook his head. “These stupid intellectual liberal bastards are wrong about everything. Boy, they really piss me off.”
Still waiting for his beer, Decker considered interrupting Bob with a heartfelt speech about Watergate, Irangate and General Noriega’s good conduct medal from the DEA. He thought he might fill him in on some of the true stories of fake patriots ripping off the Defense Department for decades, the proven fallacy of the domino theory, the crazed irrationality of nuclear proliferation, capitalism’s dreadful effect on the environment, and whatever other good progressive crap came to mind, but since Lenny felt politics held a value and a validity about equal to the sport of pro wrestling he held back. Instead, he walked over to the jukebox and contributed fifty cents.
Amazon link to OTB: On the Beach