tomeubanks.com

                           Reveal
                                    by Dan McGinley

He sat in the small room with another hangover and looked out one of two windows, hearing Narragansett Bay as a backdrop to other thoughts, with early morning surf breaking on rocks just out of sight.

The night went well down in the bars and there was only one small fight he had to contend with, but there were no punches and rugby players hired from the university pushed two drunks out separate doors to maybe settle things elsewhere. 

They pulled in a lot of bucks, so the bar owner set them up after hours, Ryan sitting down quiet as always until booze loosened tongues, Smitty wanting to know more about the D’ Dario fight, until Ryan relented, telling them how the cut wouldn’t close and Lonnie argued with the ref not to stop it but they stopped it anyway, Ryan way ahead on points, but there was too much blood.  A promising welter weight had died weeks before, so the media was up-in-arms and refs pulled the plug when bleeding started. 

 “And you quit the ring,” said Smitty.  “Walked away just like that.”

Ryan nodded because why waste words when a nod will do?  Why open your mouth about things they should know, when a deft motion will put it all away and to rest?  It was a lousy head butt and nothing to talk about.  D’ Dario had been hurt and desperate. Now it was all gone and he didn’t want to talk about it.  Just ancient history.

“Your hands were fast,” Smitty said, watching his head bouncer like a prize bull.  “Lightening fast.”

Ryan shot his drink while Cheri lined up another round, and she saw him quiet and too serious there, getting a nod from Smitty to just hand over a fresh bottle.  Hand him a brand new bottle to take upstairs and medicate, as Ryan called it.  Medicate with soundless sleep until the quiet day, tomorrow being Sunday.

Ryan ambled off as their small bar manager told Smitty he was giving away the good stuff, Smitty coming back with, “Ryan brings more customers in here than your goddamn dollar drink night,“ driving home the man’s popularity and draw from fight crowds in Providence and even New York, who would come on vacation and see the great undefeated boxer who walked away without a word, first time he was cheated on a major bout.

“That stuff is killing him,” Cheri said.  “Worse than all those stupid punches.” 

Smitty was not a cruel man and considered her words carefully, roiling surf out back talking for them now through big wall windows, the distant Point Judith lighthouse blinking in time to mark interior silence.

“See the Cambodian tonight?” he asked.

Cheri shrugged.  “Half the time you wouldn’t see him anyway, buried in the crowd.”

“Next time you catch his ear, send him up the steps,” meaning Smitty’s office, which shared the same hall as Ryan’s room. 

Cheri kind of smiled, because she knew how Smitty really cared, not wanting to use Ryan up like some kind of circus draw, knowing the brooding fighter would listen to that little Cambodian, who was the only person their head bouncer liked.

Ryan respected Smitty as his boss and landlord, but honored the Cambodian as some kind of close friend.  Smitty would use it to help get through that thick Irish skull.  The drinking had to stop and other things, like some kind of job other than living off old winnings.  The winnings would only deplete, and the booze would finish him in a classic, tragic sense that everyone knew about fighters.

But that was all last night as the weekend stumbled slowly into Sunday and now everything was quiet again.  Ryan sat before the window and thought maybe he should run a few miles, but the booze had taken him down hard and his other thoughts were of a toasted egg sandwich at the Captain’s Nest, to watch tourists and meet Sam (Samgang) for a run at the bluefish, if they were biting.

Was Sam in the bar last night?  He tried to think, but his mind wouldn’t work that way anymore, and he focused on the short squabble from last night, no punches there and the rugby players did their job.  No court to be coached for by Smitty on what to say when questioned.  No problems to go over.

Was Sam in the bar last night?  He tried to remember but couldn’t.

Was there a squabble?

Yes.  No problem though.  Way over capacity like every weekend, but no unwanted attention.

The surf sounded good, and he prepared to take a shower down the hall, but somehow got confused by a small television.

                                                    * * *

                                              Spirit Princess           

He ran on the beach road later and stopped suddenly, losing his stomach there with people in the distance, to remember that he had taken whiskey into early morning hours and wasn’t supposed to run.

He was on his knees for a few minutes and shaking badly, hating every second, because it was like getting knocked down and he had never been down, so the anger started and brought a few moments of clarity.

He remembered Sam and went back to shower, to try for the Captain’s Nest.

He told himself to check the time because time got away so much these days.  He got back and showered before he remembered the time, and saw that it was almost ten o’clock now. 

Sam would still be there if he hurried, but not too fast.  His driver’s license had been pulled and driving the big old Electra was a risk, so he had to be very careful, keeping eyes out for the occasional Statey or local cop, although local officers owed him for protecting one of their carousing wives on a busy night, and they would go easy.

She was drunk and squatting in the reeds to piss out back with a group of men starting to show interest, Smitty pointing this out from his office window to Ryan, who was immediately recognized as he approached, the fighter keeping his back to the officer’s wife as she finished and zipped-up, stumbling into the club for another go, but with a ride home at the end of it all from one of the rugby kids.

Now Ryan drove carefully out to the crossover, down long, smooth blacktop to where tourist traffic was snarled along the Sound, but he knew a back lot and parked between two old pickups, his expired license plate facing to hide from cruising police.

He walked quickly to the Nest and up old wooden steps, smelling salt air and feeling a breeze sting tired eyes, a turn of the stomach there where he waited things out and continued, into the dark bar restaurant with fried bacon in his nose and shadows before eyes could adjust.

He looked and looked again, circling slowly as the place quieted down, people watching, but no Cambodian as he circled again, the cook coming out with his dirty bib and greasy hair combed over, watching Ryan with the other people but back behind the counter, next to a small woman whose name Ryan tried but couldn’t remember.

“Have you checked behind Champlain’s?” the cook asked, Ryan stopping as people watched this exchange.

Ryan shook his head no.

“I think he came in for you earlier, and went fishing.”

“No,” the woman said.

The cook looked at her.  “No?”

“Oh,” she said, thinking.  “Maybe . . . the door was moving but nobody was there.  He looks quick like that and poof, he’s gone.  So maybe.”

The cook looked at her another few seconds and turned to Ryan, then shrugged.

Ryan nodded and left as someone said, “I told you he lives around here,” meaning Ryan but he was gone then, down the stairs and toward the Block Island Ferry, over to Champlain’s where he went around back and saw a small man dressed in black crouched next to a squid bucket, working the bay with a salt water rig, another setup on the ground waiting for Ryan.

Ryan went over to cast the baited hook and Sam turned, watching his big friend closely.

“Nothing bad last night,” Sam said.  “Just the one.”

Ryan nodded yes, watching the line Sam had rigged for him.

“Smitty comped you another bottle.”

Ryan worked his weighted line off the bottom as Sam turned back to the bay with a sigh. “Did you find sleep?’

Ryan nodded.

“How do you feel now?”

Ryan shrugged.

A seagull screamed high above the squid bucket, and Sam looked up.

“That is the ghost of Botum.  She was a child princess.”

Ryan looked up at the soaring princess.

“They tortured and raped her in my village, after we fled.  They took her as slave labor, but Botum chewed her wrist and died.”

Ryan reached down and grabbed a squid, then threw it out and up in a long arcing flight, where the seagull could intercept before it hit the water.

Sam nodded as if convinced of something, and reeled his weighted line off the ocean floor.  “I need to meet some friends over dinner tonight, in Boston.  The restaurant owner will fill our plates and refuse to take any money.  Can you come with me?”

Ryan nodded, watching the princess eat on a nearby dock, ripping the squid to pieces.

“There will be a Kung Fu demonstration later over on Kneeland Street.  Are you interested?”

Ryan shrugged.

They worked the lines for a while and Sam turned to his friend again, watching him closely.

“I notice something going on with you lately, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Ryan shrugged.

“You don’t talk much anymore.”

Ryan watched the princess coming back for more, so he threw a squid and appreciated the talents of one who could perform aerial demonstrations.

“What goes on here now?” Sam asked, tapping his head.  “What thoughts are flying around like our princess?”

Ryan looked at his friend and shrugged.  “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“They fly around and don’t stay still long.  Sometimes they disappear.”

The seagull landed and started shredding again.  There were no others in sight, and this convinced Sam that the bird was indeed Princess Botum.

“Eventually everything disappears.”

Ryan nodded.  “Time is a thief.”

Sam looked at his friend with a new perspective and nodded.

To be continued...

Dan McGinley was first published in 1990 while living above a seaside club called The Bon Vue Inn, where he worked five nights a week punching drunks and cleaning-up the result.  Bored with high society, he started slipping humorous short stories and articles under an office door of the Great Swamp Gazette, a magazine of art and literature at the University of Rhode Island, where he graduated in 1996, after being elected the Gazette’s Managing Editor for four consecutive years and  freelancing for the Providence Sunday Journal, Narragansett Times, and Westerly Sun.  Sabotage Press published two small books in 1992: Buddha at the Track and Trail of the Screaming Blue Fetus.  He also won two Nancy Potter Short Story awards, but since the name “Nancy Potter” draws big blank stares, forget about it.  More recently, his works have won, placed, and shown fourteen times in “America’s Funniest Humor!” contest, at HumorPress.com.  The Dog was at the Keg Again is a collection of HumorPress award pieces, and available at Amazon Kindle right about . . . NOW!  He lives with two Asian wolves and a neurotic Jack Russell in The Quiet Corner of northeastern Connecticut, from where he writes his popular blog at www.danmcginleyhumor.com.