Ghost Pain

Randy calls saying he needs help finding his car.

            “The dog too,” he says.  “She’s vanished.”

            It’s early Sunday and I’m cooking eggs.  I’ve gone through an entire carton trying to make three of them turn out over easy.

            “Where are you?” I ask, laying bacon strips over the hot George Foreman Grill.

            “Dunkin’ Donuts,” Randy says.  “Bastards won’t let me use the bathroom.”

            I pour a glass of Bacardi and Diet Coke (0 carbs), the only cocktail I can have on this low-carb regiment.  For beer I’ve been drinking Michelob Ultra (2.6 carbs), which tastes like the bartender pissed in your Heineken.  What’s remarkable is the diet book says all the meat you can eat.  Two nights ago in bed I ate an entire box of hockey puck sausages and still I’m down five pounds in just one week.  The doctor says it’s no good for my cholesterol, but the fact is the sun shines brightest when my pants are loose and I’m getting too old to be moody all the time.

            “Sit tight,” I tell Randy, licking the bacon grease from my fingers. 

“Hurry, Warren.”

            He’s bone thin, Randy.  Some of the guys at the bar call him Olive Oyl.  When I order a basket of fried clams or a pile of onion rings (pre-diet, of course) Randy’ll wrinkle his nose like he smells dog shit.  He says he eats when he’s at home, when no one’s looking.  Me, I’m always hungry. 

We met last summer, the two of us partnering up for The Monkey’s Fist Bluefish Tournament.  He told me he’d make a good teammate because of his insomnia.  “I can fish all night and that’s when the big bastards show up,” he’d said.  I’d just switched bars.  For ten years I drank at The Buoy until the owner decided he wanted to be Pablo Escobar.  When the drug crew started filling Buoy barstools, I took off.  The whole ordeal brought me back forty years when I had to change schools in the middle of fifth grade.  At first I went berserk, but the new school turned out to be much more fun than St. Thomas’s.  Anyway, most of The Buoy regulars went to The Chum, that was the obvious move, but I forged my own path to The Monkey’s Fist.  The Chum serves no food and I’m not one of those drunks who doesn’t eat. 

Like me, Randy’s unemployed, though I volunteer like it’s my job.  Disability pays his rent and bar tabs, his backbone shaped like a S after he plummeted a hundred feet into Boston’s Big Dig construction project a decade ago.  He was at sea level when he fell from his crane and into the earth.  Since the accident he gets what he calls ghost pain.  “Comes on with no warning,” he’ll explain.  “Like getting stabbed in the back.”  When I don’t see Randy at the bar for a few days I know he’s holed up with ghost pain.  He says he can’t even answer the door because he’s flat against the kitchen floor waiting for mercy.  I’d love to know what he’s thinking about when he’s pinned to the linoleum, but I don’t want to bug him, the only pain I know being headaches and heartburn.  Me, I live off a half million dollar inheritance, but I tell all the regulars I made my money in “a lawsuit against my former employer,” though I could say I ran Microsoft or played pro hockey because in bars like these nobody cares anyway.

_______

“Can you buy me a Dunkaccino?” Randy asks. 

A fresh two inch cut runs along his sideburn, his right eyebrow crusty with blood.  Randy’s always bumping into things.  Because of the accident he hobbles around like Igor from Young Frankenstein.  “They say they’ll call the cops if I step inside,” he continues.  “They don’t even care that I bought a box of munchkins there last week.”

“Well you look like hell.  Here,” I say, handing him a clean washcloth from the back seat.  “There’s some wet wipes in the glove too.”  I open the car door.  “You want anything in your Dunkaccino?”

“However those girls make it is fine.”

My God I love the smell of Dunkin’ Donuts.  I tried not to look behind the counter, but now I’m sucked in by the neon green frosting shining atop the key lime pie donuts (39 carbs).  As the young lady rings up the Dunkaccino (35 carbs), I pinch my stomach and remind myself that nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

His hands tremble as he tries to light a cigarette.  Randy’s always shaky before noon.  If he weren’t in such bad shape I’d never let him smoke inside my car, but I know he’s hanging by a thread.  I roll down the windows. 

“Where to, Randy?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” 

Randy claims he’s five years younger than me, which makes him forty-five, but you’d guess sixty-five.  The deep wrinkles in his face look artistically carved.  I’d like to run my fingernail through one of his skin trails, feel how far down those grooves really go.  If I had to gamble, I’d take the under on Randy living another five years.  If he was tubby like me he’d be dead already.  Falling from a crane sure doesn’t help the aging process.  Neither does his smoking.  Randy goes through two, three packs a day.  All that runs through him is liquor and smoke.

“Last I recall I was on route 1A,” he says, exhaling a cloud.  “I think I drove off into the woods near Hamilton.”  Randy blows his nose into the washcloth.  “I remember walking through the trees,” he continues.  “I walked forever.”

Across the street I watch the fishermen emerge from the harbor.  There must be a dozen of them.  They walk single file, their trail leading up Main Street towards The Barnacle.  Cigarettes dangle from their worn fingers.  A few of them are my age.  After a hard night’s work, the older guys struggle to put one boot in front of the other.  Unlike them, I don’t really earn my drinks.  Like hearing about Randy’s ghost pain, the sight of these men brings me shame. 

“Chance was in the back seat,” Randy says.  “I don’t know if I left her in the car or brought her with me.”  Randy sniffles and wipes his eyes.  “She could’ve grown wings and flown off for all I know.” 

Not many sights bother me more than seeing a grown man cry.  It really makes my foundation crumble.  “Put this in your coffee,” I say, handing Randy a pint of Bacardi.  “You’re in no shape to be sober.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve gone car hunting.  Six months ago we found his vehicle parked at his ex-wife’s house and I mean at the house.  The bumper was pressed right up against Denise’s bedroom.  Had the house not been made of brick, Randy would have plowed right over the poor woman.  Me, I don’t drive drunk.  Not drunk-drunk, not like Randy. 

“This is it for me,” Randy announces, sipping his spiked Dunkaccino.

“Dogs find their way home,” I tell him.

“I’m done,” he says.

I pull out of Dunkin’ Donuts and head for the highway.  I turn on my XM radio and search for a song to calm Randy down.  The truth is I hate when people dump on themselves.  I can’t stand being part of their pity party.  Last thing I need is to be dragged into someone else’s bummer.

Randy throws his cigarette out the window.  “Some people are going to wake up regular today,” he says, lighting a fresh one. 

“Finish your coffee, Randy.”
            “Others are going to wake up crazy.”

We merge onto 128 south and I decide on channel 4, music from the forties.  Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Tommy Dorsey.  Those people could really sing.  Can you imagine being their child and hearing those lullabies in your crib every night?  I can’t even get through a minute of Nat King Kole’s “More” without getting choked up.  Back then they really worshipped the singing voice. 

I get off at Beverly.  On the right we pass a bar I hit now and then.  Best chicken wings on the North Shore, but the damn starch is a no-no on this diet.  They have decent chowder too, though it’d be near impossible to eat around those scrumptious potatoes.  Reaching into the console, I stuff four sticks of gum into my mouth. 

“Anything look familiar?” I ask.

“All of it.”

“You want me to stop?”

“Nah,” Randy says, “where I went is deeper.”

The busy street soon turns into country road.  I point out a pack of wild turkeys sauntering along the shoulder, but Randy doesn’t seem to notice.  We drive through Hamilton where a thick Sunday newspaper sits at the end of every driveway.  Here the pools aren’t above ground like in Gloucester.

“You think these people ever lose their cars?”

“Sure they do,” I say, braking for the crosswalk.  Two elderly women hold hands as they baby-step across the street.  One of them smiles at us. 

“Nah,” Randy says, “they don’t lose their cars in Hamilton.”

I’d like to tell Randy that they suffer too, that there’s really no difference between us and them, but I don’t know how to explain to a man like him that pain is relative, how people here also wake up and say this is it for me, I’m done.  He doesn’t know I grew up in a place like Hamilton, that I went to school with all these people.  Randy doesn’t realize that I could’ve been inside one of these houses, that we could be driving by me right this second.

“Stop here!” Randy shouts.

I pull over into the Ipswich countryside.  Randy chugs the rest of his coffee, then steps out of the car and into a puddle. 

“Is this it?” I call.

He walks towards the tree line, sniffing the air like a dog.  I turn off the car. 

“Where you going, Randy?”

He sticks his head into the brush, his shoulders and arms.  All I can see are the backs of his skinny legs.  Then he’s gone.

I reach for the pint of rum and swallow the rest down.  I’m getting real sick of this candy.  What I want is Jack Daniels.  God I miss that burn.  Being alone in the car on a Sunday morning it’s easy to miss what’s gone, like fried oysters with tartar sauce, pizza from Captain Vito’s.  I swear I’d relapse with a loaf of Wonder bread right now if it meant I wouldn’t have to miss that little Irish girl, if I didn’t have to remember her apartment in San Francisco, how the snails from the Marina inched their way up the hill and into her courtyard.  Twenty years ago two roads diverged in the wood and I said to hell with either one.  What I took was a detour.  There’s so much about that life I don’t miss, so much I know I just couldn’t stand, but after two decades it’s getting harder to name what was so bad.  Only remembering the good is my ghost pain.

Out of the woods two deer dart across the highway.  I wonder if Randy scared them off, his clumsy feet tripping right over their vegetation beds.  When I listen for him all I hear are the birds.  Part of me hopes he doesn’t find his car because I don’t think I can stomach driving back to Gloucester alone.  Mostly I hope he’s not hanging from a tree limb. 

All of a sudden he’s at the window.  Leaves stick to his sweater, his grey bangs damp with sweat.  He smells like a mulch pile.  When I turn on the car, Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” plays from the radio.

“Well?”

“Take me to Salem,” he says.

“You think you were all the way down there last night?”

 “It’s Salem or a dirt bed.”

“Did you find the car?”

He grabs my arm and squeezes.  I’m not sure Randy’s ever touched me before.  I don’t even remember us shaking hands.  He may be skinny like a girl, but he’s bull strong.  I can feel it in his fingertips. 

“You sure about this?” I ask.

He closes his eyes and nods.

Salem’s where Randy got sober a few years back, where he learned not to drink.  He told me all about it the night I met him.  “An hour after I got my one-year AA chip,” he’d said, “an hour after hugging a bunch of dudes, an hour after giving the most touching speech you’d ever heard, I had a glass of Tullamore Dew in my hand.  I swear only a drunk would celebrate a year of sobriety by getting shitcanned.”

We drive down 1A in silence.  I turn off the radio because channel 4 is featuring a whole hour on Vera Lynn.  I adore Vera, but listening to her croon doesn’t mix well with the mood in the car. 

 “Randy, you’re panicking is all,” I say, patting his knee.  “Look, the Sox are on today.  You hold out a few more hours and we can watch the game at the Monkey’s Fist.”

“I can’t do this tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to go crazy again.”

“Yes I do,” he says, flicking his cigarette out the window.  “I always have to do something.”

“What about Chance?”
            “You said dogs find their way home.  I’ll have to believe that for now.”

I bet we’d have this sorted if we were in Gloucester, but here in the middle of nowhere I have no anchor.  Here I’m driving on ice.

 “It’s funny,” Randy says.  “The good dry out places are always hidden away.  Rehabs should be like public monuments, wide-open for everyone to see.  Build them right on Main Street, right between Blockbuster and Dominos.  Tell everyone the truth for once.”

“Salem’s not hidden away.”

“I said the good ones, the kind that cost twenty grand.”

If I had to go I’d be at one of those, the kind that serves up Beef Wellington and back rubs.  “I guess the idea is to get away,” I tell Randy.  “To take cover.” 

“But you can’t stay away forever,” he says.  “That’s the whole problem.”

I pull into the large office park by the Salem causeway.  A group of tourists board a whale watch boat across the way. 

“You can come in with me, Warren,” Randy says after I unlock his door.

“I have to get back,” I say.  “A van full of Meals-on-Wheels won’t get delivered if I’m down here.”

He steps out of the car.  “They’ll have donuts inside, Warren,” he says.  “The good kind too.”

I turn my attention to the whale boat, wishing I was going out with them even though I get sea sick just standing on a dock.  Part of me says I should go inside with Randy, but the rest, the part that I am, says scram.

            “Call me when you want to come home,” I finally say, but Randy’s already gone,

his scrawny ass in my rearview mirror.

Back in Ipswich I try and locate Randy’s trail through the woods.  I spend an hour

working through trees and have nothing to show for it but pricker scratches and horse fly

bites.  I can’t see what Randy saw. 

When I stop by his ex-wife’s house to tell her he’s in Salem, Randy’s green

Pontiac Grand Am is parked neatly by the wood pile.  As I approach the porch, Chance

dashes out the door with her tail wagging.

“What’s this?” I say, petting Chance’s head.

            “You tell me,” Denise says, removing her pruning gloves.  Her arms are red and rashy.  She’s prettier than I remember, though I only saw her for a second the first time  Randy lost his car.  “I woke up to Chance scratching at the door at 3:00 AM,” she continues.  “I guess Randy leashed her around the door handle.  When I called his phone, I heard it ringing in his car.  I thought I’d find him inside sleeping, but there was no one.  You and I should really exchange numbers.”

“I took him to Salem,” I say.

            “I know.  He called about a half hour ago telling me he saw the ghost of John F. Kennedy in the woods this morning.”

            “I stayed in the car,” I say.  “I don’t know what he saw.”

            “He said JFK told him all about his own ghost pain, how his back was even worse than Randy’s.”  She unfastens her gardening knee pads and sets them by her gloves.  “He wasn’t always a wet brain you know.  Falling into the earth really did a number on him.  Sometimes I think he’d have been okay if he tumbled off a roof or a ladder, if he didn’t drop below sea level.”  Chance picks up a muddy tennis ball and dumps it by Denise’s feet; she kicks it toward her tomato plants.  “Anyway,” she says, “he’s in the right place now I guess.  You want to come in for coffee or a Cinnabon?”

I’m sure If Denise knew about my diet she wouldn’t be offering me the mother of all carb bombs, but she is, and I answer, “I’d love to.”

Chance chases down the ball and drops it at my feet.  As I pick it up she stands on her hind legs, nosing for what I’ve got.  The dog went through it all with Randy last night, but unlike the rest of us she doesn’t wonder what comes next.