Southside of Paradise - Chapter 16

Chapter 16 - La Dolce Vita

 "This right here is living the dream," Dean slurred, eyes wide open with a beer bottle in one hand and the fingers of his other hand squeezing a joint. He was sitting in lawn chair in the shade of some trees that grew close to the edge of the slow flowing water of the St. Francis River. Dean's blue jeans were rolled up to the knees, and his bare feet were half in and half out of the cold water. There were four empty brown beer bottles stuck into the sand beside his chair. The dappled sunlight fought its way through the leaves and branches to paint the whole landing in alternating splotches of light and shadow.

     I was standing in the shallows with my pole in my hand scanning the glistening waters for my float. I could see the eddies beneath roiling the waters on the surface.  I turned and looked at Dean. He had taken his t-shirt off even though there was a slight breeze rustling through the trees that made it a little nippy in the shade. 

    The spot where we were fishing was private property and was owned by one Joao Sousa Lopes, a Portuguese dairy owner and farmer. Fat Joe, as everybody knew him, had been a friend and longtime poker companion of Dean's dad. Their relationship was deeper than an ordinary friendship, and they often took trips to play cards in casinos all across the United States. Jack often told us about the time when they were younger that the two of them had spent a week of gambling and chasing tail in Havana.

      Fat Joe considered Dean as family and told us we could fish there anytime we wanted.  He had been out washing his Cadillac that morning when we drove by the dirt path on the east of his large house. He was holding a water hose in one hand and a big fat Cuban cigar in the other. He was bare chested and was wearing only sunglasses,  a thick gold necklace, a pair of white Bermuda shorts, and pair of rubber boots that came to his knees. He beckoned us over, so Dean backed up a bit and pulled into the wide driveway of Casa de Fruit Loops  as Joe himself called it in reference to all the crazy people who lived there. I knew both of his twins Carmela and Junior, and when Joe drew a circle in the air by his temple, he was being more truthful than funny.

      "Damn, Dean! What timing you got. I been out here dying of thirst, and here you come out of nowhere to rescue me." He turned the hose off, sat it down and came to the passenger's side of the car. When he saw me, he reached across Dean to shake my hand, "Hey, Danny, how's your folks?"

       I answered politely while Dean was popping the cap off of a beer he had fished out of the our big blue ice-chest in the back seat. "Here ya go, Joe. Although you the only man I know who could be dying of thirst with a water hose in their hand."

       Joe laughed, "It's a different kind of thirst, Dean. You know that. I gotta send Marie to the store later. We were cooking out last night and drank everything I had in the fridge. That dumb ass Mel Brown puked all over the side of my car, so I gotta get up and wash it."  He drained the bottle with one huge gulp, " He burped loudly and laughed, "Damn, that was good. Hand me another one before you go, and I'll get you back later." As  Dean fished around for another beer, Joe added, " Dean, I can't tell you how much I miss not having Jack here last night. First time in a long time." Joe was one tough old dude, but I saw the tears well up in his eyes as he ran through a thousand memories of his friend in the space of a few seconds.

      Dean handed him the beer through the window, but couldn't say nothing but, "Don't worry about the beer, Joe. Next time call me, and I'll run it out here so Marie don't gotta drive."

      Joe took the beer and reached in and grabbed Dean by the head and shook it, "You boys go have some fun! Catch some fish while you at it." He waved, and we waved back before resuming our journey to the river.

      I  cast my lure eastward to the center of water where it made a slow turn at the bend. I would then watched it drift slowly with the current to the west. The spot where we were fishing was about about twenty-five miles north of Concord. It was actually about two miles north of Hartford which made it a bit of a risk for us to be here. The upper crust of the Hartford guys our age didn't like us anymore than Mickey's crowd did. Their girls did, but they didn't.  The fishing spot was actually only a mile or two west of the sandy beach area where most of them hung out.

       I finally reeled in my line and went and sat down in a lawn chair next to Dean. I picked up our beer bottles and put them in the white plastic bucket we had brought to put the fishes that we abducted in. It was really the bucket we brought for the bottles and cans as Dean and I either one couldn't catch a goldfish in a half empty bowl of water

        I started to tell him something but noticed he was sleeping. I could tell that it was probably the first real rest he had in quite a while as his face was relaxed, and he was making gurgling noises as he breathed. I had known him so long that I knew the eddies that circled beneath the surface of his own surface waters, and they were gone for a bit.

       I knew his anxieties because they were reflections of my own. In the first place, he was more worried about Mickey and the two idiots  than I was. Dean wasn't afraid of confrontation; he just didn't want to be caught by surprise. I knew he was also worried  a lot about what was going to happen now that his dad was gone.

      We had a long conversation one night about that very subject. It was the only time I ever saw him cry. We were sitting on a white concrete structure with a water gate where the canal water on one side of a ditch channeled beneath the road to the ditch on the other side. The sun was setting and the dying light of the dusk, normally the best light of day, was silvering the edges of things, the water, the red painted wheel handle of the water gate, and shadows of the canal banks.

    The sky in the west was  layered with shades of red, eggshell pink, and soft blue and yellow so perfect that  even the best painters could never hope to capture them. Dean was drunk as all get out and was all slumped over as he confessed while slurring, "I know he wasn't much as father's genally go. Nevuh played catch with me. Nevuh went to single one of my ball games." He ticked off both points with his fingers, "Too busy playing cards;  but, all in all, it fit me fine.  I'm going to miss him coming home lit, laughing,  throwing his money on the table and crushing out that last cigarette." Dean  paused a bit then waved to himself, "Night, Dean."

      Most of all, I knew he was mainly afraid of two other things. The first was the future. All my talk about the changes that were coming had him spooked. The future scared me too; that was why I always brought it up, but if I was expecting that Dean was ready to give me some support or an idea or two, I was gravely disappointed. 

      The thing that really frightened him the most was Jill Booth. He knew she was both a beauty and a prize. He knew that he desired her too. He was terrified of what would happened if I won her heart. That, in a nutshell,  was the Big Medusa of all his thinking. It froze him because he didn't know what to do about her, and how whatever happened would invariably force change upon him.

      I knew that too. To me, however,  she was a reason, no, the reason to change. She was the damsel chained to a rock who needed me to do more than what was expected. There were dragons galore to be slain in the challenge and huge obstacles to surmount, and I was riddled with as much doubt as any young man could possibly ever be, but because of all the reading I had done in mythology, I knew that I could die just as easily of rot and regret  on the south side of Concord as I could in trying to dowse the fire of an overgrown lizard with bad breath.

       And I was now worried about if she even needed me. It had been over a week since we had talked, and she might have found out that it was her own fool self who kept chaining herself to the rock. I had meant to call her that morning, but Dean had kept insisting that we go fishing, and it looked like he really needed a day off from worrying. He had also had me more than half convinced that it was her job to call. I mean reluctant heroes don't usually go around soliciting work.

      "Danny?" I looked over and Dean was awake again and fishing for matches to relight the joint in his hand.

      "What?"

      " Did it evah cross ya mind. That you and me kind of like ole Huckleberry and Tom Sawyer."

       I laughed at first and kept laughing for a minute, "You know. I have thought that very thing a time or two, and it was always when we were out  here fishing."

       Dean took a long hit off the joint and offered it to me, but I declined. He sat up straighter in his chair, "Then why the hell didn't ya mention it to me? I might have liked to know that shit."

      " Well, I was afraid I would come out the worse for it."

      "You come out the worse? Tom was the smart one."

       " But Huck had the cleanest heart. He just always thought that he was doing the wrong thing because society had him all screwed up in knots. He always followed his heart and did what he thought was right."

        "And Tom?" he asked genuinely curious.

        " Tom had some book learning and some social skills, but it made him bossier to be around, and he was always trying to please his own fool self with his thinking instead of keeping things simple."

        "Now that ya mention it, that sounds just the fuck like you," He pointed his finger at me and laughed like a deranged monkey. The laughing and the smoke caused him to start choking. 

         I reached down and handed him his beer. "That's what you get for being an idyit!"

       "Now, there you go again, Tom." he managed to choke out the words, "Always trying to please ya fool self." He coughed  two more times, "Your words, not mine."

       "This is why I don't tell you shit." He finally quit coughing and took another drink of beer, so I continued, "Tom had his share of issues too, so you can't rightly blame him for being mean and cruel, but he still don't come out lookin all that shiny at the end of the book. But you know what confuses me about it all?"

          Dean didn't say anything, but his eyes said he was listening.

        " Mark Twain had more in common with Tom than with Huckleberry. It's like he was saying that reading and writing well kind of makes you a little bit rotten on the inside."

          "I couldn't said that shit better myself. Ya see, I had reached my own understanding of the matter and was working up the nerve to tell ya."

           I picked a bottle out of the white bucket and tossed it at him purposefully missing.

           He made a big deal of dodging the bottle,  and then jumped up and started yelling, " My heart is fucking cleaner than Danny Wilson's! Woo Hoo! My heart is fucking cleaner than Danny Wilson's! He said so himself!"

           And at that exact same moment, I swear to God,  Mickey, Rigo, No Neck, and three bikini clad cuties from Hartford came floating around the river bend on six big inner tubes. I stood there dumfounded; It was like Mickey and I were attached by some hidden strings.

           Dean and I were both stunned by the audacity of the universe, but Dean recovered first and started running around shouting maniacally, "Aunt Polly! Aunt Polly! Aunt Polly!" I could see that his response confused the hell out of the floaters."

             "Shut up, dummy," I blurted at him, "That's my line!"