THOMAS MICHAEL MCDADE | The unscheduled visit | Fiction
The storm the radio reported was an hour away had no ears. The front of Lee Morton’s new grey thrift store big pocketed cargo pants was sopping wet. The blue windbreaker an ancient Christmas gift was in the same boat. A tan snap-brimmed number was the topper. He took shelter at Crane’s: an everything under the sun for the DIY type big-box store to treat the aisles to the sloppy rhythm of his trusty old hiking half-boots, different laces, flat and round, tan and brown. A customer with a little shaved headed kid had a tall flat-faced dog that looked more suited for attack than emotional support and assistance. It took a leap at Lee. Two hands were required to rein it in. The bald son or whatever he was could have ridden Rover. He probably was bald because of lice, was too spry to be a cancer victim. Either way, good luck kid.
Lee gazed at his hands. They always turned bright red, while walking, pink at the end. Sometimes perfect circles like they were drawn with a grammar school pencil box compass. “I am the captain of my soul,” he said to himself. He often mouthed that line. He’d memorized the “Invictus” poem in the sixth grade but the years chipped away all of it except the last words, letter by letter it seemed. He’d visited libraries with the intention of getting a copy but always got lost in a National Geographic.
He tried to identify the elevator songs piped into Crane’s but rarely succeeded. Occasionally he picked out a Sinatra, “Summer Wind” the most familiar to him, blew up a memory of a woman who loved seashells and the night skies. After the second time Lee showed up tipsy for a date, she predicted he would end up a wino spending nights blind to the sky wonders under highway underpasses. She gave him a sand dollar for luck that he cherished. He hummed along professionally, he thought. Some resident sparrows were of the same mind the way they chirped. Once he’d saw a green and yellow parakeet. Oh yes, he did develop a fondness for wine coolers.
Associates frequently asked Lee if he needed help. He assured them he was fine and finally told a bear of a man carrying a pipe wrench in each hand, one red, one blue who sported a long beard, wild and grey that he was just doing his daily walk roofed away from the rain. “Business is so slow, I reckon I’m doing the same,” said the grizzly, smiling.
The best lit aisle Lee called sparkle lane, boxes of nuts, bolts (hex, flange, and wing), washers, cabinet knobs and drill bits he placed palms down on all of them as if a kid figuring the quantity of jelly beans in a contest jar or a faith healer performing the laying on. Hell yeah, stars! Shelves and bins retrieved memories of his checkered work history, house painting, roofing, paving, insulating, storm windows, gutters and landscaping.
He watched a forklift take down a bundle of sheetrock. He’d once had a day job taping that stuff, tougher than it looked.
He got no return request from the owner who spoke with a British accent. He served tea and crumpets on breaks, instant coffee. Lee had driven a lift on a warehouse gig, hard rubber tires, not air like Crane’s and he’d wished he could get off the loading dock to tip over a car or two, at least fork them. A kid who lived in Lee’s federal housing block managed to get a bulldozer going and mangled five cars in a factory parking lot. Before Lee would replace an acetylene tank, he cradled it like a baby and wondered how much altitude would be necessary to explode it like a depth charge. He could find no roof access.
At the Sanborn Wire Factory, third shift. He was dropping uppers and every time he delivered a reel of wire on the Hi-Lift he’d named Invictus to an extruder, the poor operator would have to listen to his screaming life story and lies about all the countries he’d visited. Lee made them grateful for their deafening machine noise. Amphetamines would kill Lee’s aged ass now. His vocal cords were frayed. They needed Colombian dark roast to jangle up a “good morning.”
Lee walked quickly past workers altering glass, metal and wood for customers. The screeching and gnawing could turn an eardrum into an orchestra bass drum. He was at the “What was that?” stage of his listening life. He paused at the chainsaws, one of the scariest of tools he thought. A local guy, just twenty-three bled to death when links found his thigh. A hack saw for Lee and he’d excelled.
He’d witnessed her stepping quickly from Luke Wyse’s Pawn also.
The three balls on Luke’s sign were gold decorating the mane of a rocking horse. Both were among his stops but he never staked them out to try to positively I.D. her. What the hell for? Lee Morton, citizen cop. He chuckled. Today she wore a pink ball cap that was the color of Pepto Bismol, jeans, a blue shirt and a camouflage vest. The logo on the hat looked like a cop’s badge. A long blonde braid snaked out through the opening over the sizing strap. Her bag reminded Lee of a mail carrier’s. It was that big but canvas not leather. A braided cord over her neck secured it. Lee could see himself tripping a punk who knocked her down while snatching it then going to her aid. She always smiled at him and Lee wished the clipboard was for a survey and she chose him to interview. That would beat any Sanborn pill moments and after wanting to compare life notes over java somewhere, a no substance fix.
Lee had been a deckhand on a Minesweeper, USS Ramply, AM-38. His honorable discharge pin was on the heart side of his windbreaker. Maybe her father was once a gob and he reminded her of him and she’d tell him so. It struck him that the braid bag strap was like fancywork decorating the Ramply quarterdeck for some high-ranking officer’s visit.
That was like a brass ring on a whacky merry ground that went every which way but in circles. He named her after the shell struck gal, Vera. Lee was happy he’d applied Polident earlier so there’d be no ticking sound effects. Luckily, he’d shaved for the first time in five days. He glanced at his hands and they were clear of the glow. Lee imagined the tint had transferred to her hat. The back of his right paw suddenly itched but not as badly as when he’d rubbed poison ivy on his hands to get some time off from school. Calamine lotion thick as gloves and when it was good and dry, he’d slowly watch cracks form as if he were a horror show mummy returning from the dead.
When a bolt of lightning backed by deafening thunder attacked Crane’s the lights died a flickering death. Lee heard the attack dog howl. It probably leaped at him hoping to get his stomach scratched. The forklift driver, backing up with a load of plywood panicked, and swung the wheel like he’d seen a moose in his headlight. His silver hardhat popped off and did three bounces on the concrete before spinning to stop. Vera dropped her bottle of water. It rolled away. In the dim emergency lighting, it looked like ounces of a softly flowing stream. When the lift load was about to topple, Lee leaped, grabbed Vera’s bag strap.
A couple of board corners caught the back of her leg but he’d gotten her clear of death’s door. She swung both arms around him and clung like a lover. She reached into one of his cargo pockets. She flung the nuts and bolts away then yanked a battery powered drill from her bag and heaved it into the big box fake night. A sparrow tried to board it.
“Are you all right?” Vera asked.
“I think my arm’s broken.”
“My hip’s in a bad way,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I should have been quicker.” said Lee.
“Don’t be, you were spectacular. We’re rich, Frank.
Thomas Michael McDade is an 80-year-old resident of Fredericksburg, VA, formerly CT and RI. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. He served two hitches in the U.S. Navy, ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Virginia Beach, VA and aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and The USS Miller (DE/FF 1091) He has been published in all fifty states and D.C. He is the author of three chapbooks: E Pluribus Aluminum, Liquid Paper Press, Austin, TX, Our Wounds, Pitchfork Press, also Austin and Thrill and Swill, Kendra Steiner Editions, San Antonio, TX. A novella titled Zippos by the Score was published by miniMag Magazine Anthology, Henrico, VA.