The Rung

I used to go to the Hurst Hill Social Club when I was painting houses with Cal Reynolds. He’s been dead for a few years now, yellow jaundice. Cal loved the clam chowder served on Fridays only along with fish and chips, just the second plate for me.  He’d gone to Army boot camp at Fort Dix in Lakehurst, NJ. He liked that connection. He suggested to the owner Dave Hurst that he should hang a big picture of the Hindenburg going down in flames since that occurred in that burg. With a sheet to the wind, Cal would mimic the radio announcer who reported the tragedy, “The Humanity, The Humanity.” Dave got a kick out of Cal, enough to hire us to paint his Colonial near the Greensward Country Club. His fine wife never missed making us lunch. There was a stained glass window in the front door, a peacock. Those old memories returned when I passed the Club on the way to have used tires installed on my ancient Impala at Healy’s Garage. It just happened to be Friday, not the thirteenth like my Goodrich’s thought if they could think but the twelfth. I paid more than I wanted for Michelins that visit. Healy swore they’d come off a Jaguar. I sat in a booth at the HHSC. All the tables were occupied. The menu hadn’t changed. A hurried waitress with a limp, wearing pink-rimmed glasses took my memorial visit order. The pen she used was thick and I could make out “Varicose Vein Center” on it. Three women played cards at a table like one that my parents once owned. They’d called it a bridge table. When folding the legs up under it you could see an illustration of the table set up and nine men standing on it. My mother and father both played bridge. I never got the hang of it. I skipped Fish, War and Slapjack as a kid. My father was in a cribbage league at Sal’s Vets Bar. I never thought to ask them why they never went to a casino to try their luck at the tables. The haddock and fries were delicious. The oil in the fryer must have been fresh. The coleslaw that came with them was not soupy. Two of the women playing cards were smokers but their fumes weren’t a bother even though their shuffling acted a bellows. The one who played the game most ferociously slamming down cards like an evil landlord’s eviction notices owned a hearty laugh that exposed large teeth and her many head gyrations danced her blonde ponytail like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. At the end of the last game that she won, the thin gum chewing gambler, a “Lynn” name patch of her pale blue shirt and short black hair that banged to her brows facing me wrote a check. The empty chair gave me a good view. She held it up high and let it drop. The champ snatched it out of the air, made sure it was signed and shoved it into her bra. Lynn had big brown eyes. I guessed I had more than a few years on her. I remember when I was younger being in a strip poker situation with two women I worked with in a textile factory. We stopped for a drink after working the second shift at Riverside Weaving. Doris, who had a chin dimple, started us rolling. She was sick of being around fabric. She often wanted to strip and throw her clothes off the Elm Street Bridge. We ended up at just-divorced Edith’s apartment because she insisted her flush red living room was the way to go. Doris and I did not argue. Edith’s husband cited bodily assault in the divorce documents. I talked them out of poker into cutting the cards. I couldn’t handle poker even in that dream. I lost “touch” with Doris and Edith after I went on a wine binge and swore off factories. I raised my right hand to a pacing timber wolf at the Dryden Zoo, a year away from being shut down for animal abuse. That’s when I teamed up with Cal Reynolds. I’d been in the Navy for two years. I was a deckhand. I figured the haze; deck and machinery gray I applied made me a natural. The check writing woman shot me more than one glance and I did her the same honor. My face is an attention getter thanks to my days with Cal. One of his forty foot wooden ladders was in bad shape. Halfway up a rung broke and my face met a large splinter that just missed my eye but did nerve damage. The scar left a red sometimes pink scar from under my eye to the corner of my mouth depending on stress. My love life which had never been worth a boast quietly came to an end. The notion of climbing a ladder caused paralysis. Jack let me go. I worked painting foundations for various contractors whose spines had kept them from working that low until mine did the same. I took an upright job washing dishes at a Chinese Restaurant called The Wa Tso Wa.

I took my time hiking back to Healy’s. I chewed the stick of Juicy Fruit Gum the waitress left with the check. It worked. I’d over tipped. My car was in the getaway area. I went into the office and settled up. An oil change was in progress in the second bay when I exited. Lynn was adding the new oil. I moved closer and stared. “Hey, I know you, come over here,” she said. She handed me a Healy’s business card, showed me a phone number on its back. “We have to talk,” she added. There was a grease smudge on her face. She wore an STP cap. She smiled and gave me a wiggling fingers wave goodbye. I felt like a celebrity. I called at seven that night. Lynn picked up on the second ring. “Hi Lynn,” this is. . .”

“Tom Brooks,” She answered. How in the heck did she know my name?

“Lynn, take down this number and call me back. I’m at a phone booth.”

“Aha, Superman himself,” she said, humming the theme from the old TV show.

“I live at 515 Armistice Boulevard, Apt 4.”

It took me three tries to find a parallel parking spot. People thought in terms of compact cars not tanks. I announced myself through the porch intercom, Lynn buzzed me in. She was standing in the door leaning against the jamb. A couple of buttons were open on her white long-sleeved blouse. She wore a short red plaid skirt. Her feet were bare.

“I’ve been waiting to meet you for an eternity. May I give you a hug,” she asked.

“Best question of my day,” I answered. She lodged her chin on my collar bone. She smelled like cinnamon. I felt her ribs.

“Come on in,” she said, leading me by my sweaty hand. There were a couple of framed prints of Tarot cards on the wall. The rug had a tic-tac-toe pattern. We sat on a sofa. She kept hold of my hand.

“Nice place you have,” I said.

“You work at the WTW.”

“Yes, I’m a dishwasher, pearl diver.” She touched one of her ear studs, gold ball bearings.

“I’ve seen you lugging one of those gray tubs high with dirty dishes into the kitchen.”

“I won’t deny it.”

“Work is work,” she said, “at least you don’t get oily like me.” She got up and walked to a bookcase. The big book she returned with had a cover full of flowers.

“Don’t be offended but I’m going to show you flowers and leaves that match your scar.”

What did I ever do to her to deserve this treatment?

“I never made that connection.”

“I’ve been having floral you visions like forever.”

“Why is that,” I asked.

“I lived on the first floor of the house you were painting when the ladder broke.”

“That was one heck of a show, huh?”

“I was four. I was traumatized, maimed.

“I’m sorry.” Was she going to break out in tears? She took a deep breath then stood and walked me over to a small framed something on a wall. It was a 5&7 photo of a figure lying on the ground. Next to it was a wood sliver the gray of Cal’s ladder.

“You,” she said, tapping the glass. This was getting weird. No, it was from the start.

“I’m immortalized in Kodachrome.”

“Reynolds wasn’t bonded. He wasn’t insured. He was a liar. You found that out that hard way. They would have done a better job on your face if he’d had Blue Cross.”

“I’m not losing any sleep over it.”

“It took a while but this Lynn bounced back. Playing cards was my therapy. You know Hoyle.”

“Yes, he is the master card shark.”

“His book was and is my Bible.”

“Guess you had better luck than what I witnessed at the Club.”

“What do you mean?”

“The check you wrote at the Club.” She laughed, wiped a tear from an eye.

“That was the rent for this place. We have a ritual!” I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand.

“I’m Sorry again.” She opened the flower book she’d placed on the coffee table. Many pages were tabbed: Lobelia, Firecracker, Salvia, Celosia, Coleus, and Plantura.

“Which is the best,” she asked.

“Lobelia,” I said and sadly was thinking of a lobotomy.

“Great! Hummingbirds love that one! Has one ever hovered at your face?” She was giddy.

“Pigeons, sparrows, gulls, have nearly beaked me, but none of the hovering kind bothered. A mourning dove bounced off my windshield one windy day.”

“What kind of therapy did you use to get over your scar?”

“None, guess that’s why I’m at Wu Tso Wu. She went into her bedroom and came back with a fedora. She placed the hat five feet past the coffee table then removed two decks of cards from it. She tossed one to me that bounced off my knee.

“I’m no good at any kind of cards, no matter how simple.”

“Think of an old codger passing the time in front of a saloon in Dodge City trying to sail cards into a hat. This chapeau and the cards will do magic, bond us; our safe haven.”

“What’s there to bond?” I was thinking of a house of cards.

“We’re going to be like fish and chips, rice and soy.”

“Why can’t we be just Tom and Lynn?” Punch, came to mind, oil and water too.

“No.” She stood in front of me, held out her arms, palms up.

“Lift my cuffs,” she said sternly.

I did. Slit scars across each wrist lobelia blossom over one, hummingbird over the other.

I retrieved the deck from the floor. My right index fingernail felt as if it were acting on its own slicing the seal that secured the card pack flap.

THOMAS McDADE resides in Fredericksburg, VA. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA and aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). His fiction has most recently appeared in The Story Sanctum.

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