Lone Dog Barking
Couldn't put this book down …
except momentarily to savor its bitter, sweet and ironic slices of life at the raw dawning of the nuclear age.
*
… a wonderful mash of gnarly rough characters that seem, nevertheless, to have an angelic glow.
*
… reminiscent of Kerouac’s On the Road, but set exclusively on Nevada’s own back roads and in virtual ghost towns.
*
… takes us through the bars, whorehouses, broken homes, one isolated tiny town, vast open range, and all the government doublespeak involving above-ground nuclear weapons testing in Nevada during the Cold War era.
*
… brought to mind the tight band of young buddies in the movie Stand by Me.
Lone Dog Barking
based on a true life story
by
Raf Leon Dahlquist
_
Copyright 2012 Raf Leon Dahlquist
Smashwords Edition
License Notes: Thank you for your support and for respecting the hard work of this author. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to other people. Please purchase an additional copy at Smashwords.com for each recipient you would like to gift.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE - Pat O’Neil, aka Lone Dog Barking: in his own words
CHAPTER ONE - We’re on a mission
CHAPTER TWO - Alice, the bull and the cracker-assed gandy dancers
CHAPTER THREE - Pat’s return to town
CHAPTER FOUR - Pat hunts for justice
CHAPTER SIX - Nuclear weapons heat up the Cold War at home
CHAPTER SEVEN - Tribes of one or more
CHAPTER EIGHT - Other powers, other players
CHAPTER NINE - Local effects and the bills come due anyway
CHAPTER TEN - Prayin don’t get it
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Barney’s deal, and Pat’s marathon
CHAPTER TWELVE - Nevada’s flash sunrise
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Barney adjusts to natural causes
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Justice approaches the bar
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The jail cell
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - The Stranger, the trustee and a dead mountain lion
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Hit, run and try talking to the wind
CHAPTER NINETEEN - To be heard, or not to be heard
CHAPTER TWENTY - The Senator from Nevada grooms Pat for trial
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE - What goes to the jury comes back around
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO - Clearing out
IN MEMORIAM - Ramon’s last run
Appendix A: Where it all happened
Appendix B:The first “Rose Petal Pattern”
Appendix C:The actual count - you probably won’t believe it
Appendix D: Atomic Annie at work
Appendix E: Details of Atomic Annie’s coming out “event,” i.e. her dance card
Appendix F: The original Dirty Harry
Appendix G: Bringing the bombs home (to Nevada)
**~~~~**
INTRODUCTION
I want to give Pat O’Neil first crack at telling his story in his own words and way, in the following preface, just as he typed it out for the Parole Board at the Nevada State Penitentiary. Pat stood trial by his small community for his retribution murder of a murderer for an earlier murder.
PREFACE
Pat O’Neil, aka Lone Dog Barking: in his own words
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER ONE
We’re on a mission
Night has come to its darkest.
Ramon sits on a bare and filthy bed atop a black angle iron bed frame. He’s naked except for his briefs. No sheets cover the urine and blood stained mattress. He has a scratchy wool brown army surplus blanket wadded up nearby. Rumpled clothing piles up in the corner of the room. Layers of wallpaper have been torn off a large patch at the back of the bed.
“So, what are you guys up to this early?” asks Ramon.
His older brother, Junior, shushes everyone again.
“Joaquin told us about this bull down at Henderson’s corral,” Gio begins.
Joey and Jimmy interrupt each other. “ ... said to get there early in the morning if we want to watch him do it. That bull, he was sniffin and lickin this cow’s ass, and then his big pink dick comes stickin way outa his belly … and he jumped up on her back standin on his hind legs… humpin and squirtin thick white piss all over…”
“Puta!” Ramon exclaims. “Wish I could go with ya.”
Outside a silent spike flash of light breaks open the darkness, crowding in through the window, flooding Ramon’s bedroom.
Everyone drops to the floor, planning his own escape route.
“The cops!”
The luminosity outside builds to noonday brightness. After several seconds it shudders back down from ultra-blue-white to yellow-orange, red and back to pre-dawn darkness.
It’s not MacEnerny seeking us out with his cop spotlight on his sneaky black ’49 Ford.
Everyone confirms “A-Bomb” aloud in near unison and relief that it wasn’t Mac.
“Jinks! You all owe me a Coke. No backs!” Jimmy blurts.
“Cut it out!” Joey chides. “That’s girl shit anyway.”
“I don’t care. You owe me!” Luna hisses.
In the darkness again, Junior pulls the switch chain on the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a ratty worn electrical cord. “Look here.”
Eyes squint and adjust as the bulb swings wide arcs, animating strange exaggerated shadows of everyone’s body parts on the bedroom walls.
Ramon’s left wrist is hand-cuffed to the metal bedstead.
“Show ‘em what ya got.”
“Nah.”
Junior draws back his fist as if to hit Ramon. “Goddammit, show ‘em!”
Ramon rolls over on his belly for us to see, but he drags his scruffy worn army surplus wool blanket back over himself. Junior tears it away from Ramon. Red, black and blue belt marks and loops cover his shoulders, back and legs. Some marks placed earlier are now turning green, yellow and purple.
“Got the belt for smart mouthin’ Mom.”
We remain silent.
“And some more for going out the window.”
More silence.
“The old man cuffed him to the bed and took to whippin’ him with the vacuum cleaner cord.”
The ground shock wave from the nuclear detonation arrives. The small bedroom takes a rattling lurch. Dust shakes down from the ceiling, falling through the glare of the bare light bulb.
Junior turns off the light for fear of discovery.
We feel like sneak-thieves in the night.
Gio carries a handful of well-worn comics which are now banned by the government. Embarrassed, not knowing the right thing to say, he hands this precious stack over to Ramon.
“Here’s those good Tales from the Crypt ones.”
*
These were the best of the best. Scare the crap outa ya for days. Make ya afraid to go to sleep. This special collection of comics for Ramon was selected from our own individually treasured, but now illegal stash.
*
Ramon shines a dimming unsteady flashlight on the comics.
“All right! Great! Cuz I’m gonna be here for a few more days … for my own good,” as he mocks his mother with thick sarcasm. Looking upward, Ramon places the flashlight tight behind his chin. Shining upward, it makes his head glow red like a burning skull from hell.
“Phew! It stinks like shit in here!” whispers Jimmy. He’s slim with a serene Buddha-moon face, straight black hair with a precise military trim.
“So toss the pot, dummy, and quitcher bitchin,” jibes Joey.
Jimmy grabs Ramon’s partially filled coffee can with one hand while holding his nose with the other. He retches several times on the way to the window but manages to toss the contents outside. After placing the emptied can back on the floor, he wipes his hands first on his Levis, and then, on his tee shirt.
“S’matter Jimmy, get some on ya?” asks Joey.
“Fuck you, Joey!” he replies, giving Joey the finger, and starts wiping his hands all over again.
We all grin and shake our heads.
“Jimmy, put the can over here where I can reach it.”
“Oh, sorry.” Using his foot, Jimmy edges the coffee can closer.
In the adjoining bedroom, Ramon’s old man starts coughing.
“Shit! I’m gettin outa here, I got enough trouble at my house. Sure don’t need none at yours, too.” Gio heads for the window. The others exit after him.
“Hey, Junior! Water.”
Junior reaches back to grab Ramon’s empty square glass milk bottle. “Be right back.”
“Thanks.”
Outside Joey scrapes his shoes in the dirt. “Dammit Luna! Look where you throw that shit next time.”
“Fuck you Joey! Look out where you’re stepping.”
The air blast from the A-bomb arrives with a “BaBoom” signature. Everyone ducks their heads in reflex.
“Good one,” mutters Joey as he continues to scrape his shoes in the dirt.
Eager to distance themselves from the Herrera household, Gio and Jimmy head down the alleyway. They wished they didn’t have to leave Ramon behind that morning. But they were real sure they’d done their good deed for that day.
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER TWO
Alice, the bull and the cracker-assed gandy dancers
That magical blue-golden color begins to rise above the horizon in the eastern part of the sky.
Junior gives us a loud, hoarse whisper down the alleyway, “Hey, wait up!”
Junior and Joey catch up and we all lock arms around each other’s shoulders in our buddy line.
*
As we pass behind the Mizpah Hotel, us “tough hombres” sing a new song we recently heard. Joey’s oldest brother Zip knows all the words. We don’t. It doesn’t matter, we sing what we can.
*
Walking down Canal Street
Knocking on every door
Goddam son-of-a-bitch
Couldn’t find a whore.
*
We had no idea then that Canal Street was a boundary to Storeyville, once the legislated red light district of the New Orleans French Quarter prior to World War I.*
We always managed to recall the chorus:
*
It was rough and sore!
Goddam son-of-a-bitch
Never fuck a whore.
*
The boys cross the highway to Henderson’s corral. Lee Henderson also owns the Chevron gas station and the Mizpah Garage on the other side.
Jimmy breaks from the pack, running ahead in his stupid white sneakers.
He scrambles up the wide-swinging corral gate.
“What the hell?”
Junior accuses, “Aww shit, Joey, you lied!”
“Not even one damn animal?” wonders Joey.
“Yeah, but they left all the horseflies here just for us.” Gio waves his hands to chase them away from his face.
“How come they like you so much, Gio?” Jimmy asks.
Joey has the answer. “Cuz he always talks so much shit outa his mouth. That’s why.”
“Get fucked, Joey.”
“Well, Ramon sure ain’t missin’ nothing,” Junior comments, then sarcasm takes over. “He’ll love hearing about this. We come to see the bull fuck the cow, and we see flies. He’ll laugh his ass off.”
“Yeah, tell him we saw flies doing it. That’s real exciting!”
“You dip shit!”
Like vultures warming themselves in the early morning sun, we hang on the fence-gate in silence and boredom.
Clarence Longdon, the old graveyard shift attendant across the street at the Mizpah Garage, notices us. He shouts,“Git down off that gate! Now! You buncha cracker-assed gandy dancers.”
We dismount, cluster, grumble, glance sideways over at Clarence to see if he’ll chase us away altogether. We’re bored. We kick rocks and exhibit that “what’s-there-to-do-now?” restless behavior.
“Maybe they’ll bring in some new ones to watch,” Gio suggests.
“Yeah! Let’s go around to the back side. Ol’ Clancy can’t see us there,” adds Joey.
A few yards down the street Gio indicates a short-cut he knows. Corrugated tin sheet roofing nailed across the narrow gap between the corral’s tack and feed shed and old man Cloke’s blacksmith shop block passage, but Joey pulls open the free side and everyone squeezes through, Jimmy first.
Each behind the other we move forward single file toward St. Patrick street, an unpaved alleyway on which are located the town’s two remaining whorehouses, the Nugget Bar and Taxscine’s cathouse.
At the open end of this narrow passageway a skinny dog sniffs the early morning air, growls showing his teeth, then bolts, running away.
Jimmy, fearful of dogs, hesitates, but is shoved forward.
He glances down for a second, screams, turns and claws his way back past everyone. “Lemme outa here!”
Despite the scarce light, we can see a woman on her back, her clothing torn and scattered.
Then Gio recognizes her.
“It’s Alice!” comes out of his mouth in some senseless way. But that wasn’t Alice, not the Alice he knew when she was alive!
Everyone stampedes back to where they started, and out onto the highway.
Joey yells to Clarence, “Call the cops! Call the sheriff!”
*
Gio had seen lots of dead people before. As an altar boy he’d served mass at their funerals. They weren’t like Alice, all messed up, bloody and naked. He knew Alice personally!
*
With the sun up now, it’s warmer, but Gio shivers and he can’t stop.
A calm, steady, golden contrail unfolds in a precise straight line following an air sampler jet headed into the western early morning sky. It has collected some of the mushroom cloud above the test site off to the east of us, where a short time earlier that morning “the sun came up fast.”
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER THREE
Pat’s return to town
We insist that Clarence go in the passageway to see for himself if he doesn’t believe us.
“No way, I ain’t goin’ anywheres near it!”
He knows we aren’t just kid-fooling around. We know he just doesn’t want to see Alice dead.
One of those 18-wheelers from Hawthorne to the west with the High Explosives signs on the trailer slows and stops near us. Pat O’Neil gets out the passenger side.
“Thanks for the lift. And stay lucky with your rig, buddy!”
“Yeah, hope everything here in town is OK for ya.”
Pat slams the passenger door shut.
The driver releases the air brakes with a hiss, and begins winding up through the gears as he pulls away.
Exhausted and bleary eyed after his overnight run on foot back to town, and after a day digging coffin-sized assessment holes for Barney, Pat asks, “What’s going on here?”
No one answers. They just glance around at each other.
Silence.
Joey bends the corrugated roofing sheet back and holds it for Pat to enter. When he gets back in the passageway far enough to see, Pat removes his hat, drops to his knees, bends over, not wanting to know, but knowing, and brushes away the remaining trash covering her.
“Awww! Alice. Alice!”
He cradles her broken head, then asks, “Who done this to ya! Alice? Huh?”
Pat caresses her blood-caked hair.
“Aww, baby.”
Pat crumples over her. In silence his shoulders wrack. A groaning, growling sound of despair, anger and abandon roll out from Pat, resonating in the dim confines of the narrow passageway. It rises to the wail of a lost child.
We all turn away from the entrance, giving Pat his privacy with Alice. We never saw a man cry before. Not like that!
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER FOUR
Pat hunts for justice
A small knot of us guys, odd gawkers, Inez and Taxscine gather on unpaved St. Patrick Street in front of the Nugget Bar. Police, sheriff, and the hearse from Logan’s funeral home are working at their jobs. Irma Reischke photographs the scene. Bob and Minette Crandall take notes.
It was just like in the True Crime Magazine at the barber shop.
Taxscine, in her robe, restrains Pat, pleading with him.
“There’s nuthin you can do now, Pat.”
She grabs his arm as they lift Alice’s body onto the dolly and into Logan’s hearse.
“You can’t go along!”
He pulls away.
In the tussle, Taxscine’s robe falls open. Us guys get a full flash of her naked flesh, so different from the way Alice looked. Alive!
Speaking in a calm low voice, Deputy Clyde Newman restrains Pat from the hearse.
Taxscine re-drapes her robe.
“They’ll clean her up nice, Pat. Then you can see her again.”
The hearse pulls away.
Pat turns back to Taxscine. “Where’s Barney?”
“Come on Pat, you look awful tired. Get yourself a nice hot shower at my place. The girls’ll fix you some breakfast.”
She tugs at him in a gentle coaxing way.
“I need to get my money, my car …” Pat starts to turn away.
“Pat, look at your hands! You at least gotta wash ‘em.”
He looks at his empty blood marked hands, “I was gonna bring her some flowers this morning.”
Taxscine grabs his arm. “Well, don’t go lookin’ for ‘im! He’s been in a terrible foul mood.”
Pat pulls away.
“Wait up a second!”
She digs in her robe pocket, grabs his left wrist, turns it palm upward and clinks several silver dollars into Pat’s upturned hand.
“Pat! You get yourself a good breakfast under your ribs.”
“Thank you ma’am, I will.”
Pat tips his hat politely, and heads up town.
We tracked after Pat, holding back a good distance because nobody ever went looking for Barney. We always looked out for Barney getting anywhere near us.
*
Two pickup trucks are parked on Main Street in front of the Pastime Club, including the red ’48 Ford that passed by Pat without stopping last night on the dirt road coming from the Reese River Reservation. A Shoshone woman waits in the other pickup while the kids amuse themselves nearby, swinging on the hitching posts, and clambering in and out of the bed of the truck.
Pat sticks his head inside, looking around, and then pushes through the paddle doors into the dim interior. The pool table is empty. Jay Howard, the bartender, greets him.
“Hi ya, Pat! Come on in.”
Pat approaches the bar. The braves check him out. He ain’t one a them. He gets the cold shoulder. They turn away.
“Beer?”
“Yeah.” Pat nods.
“Lucky Lager, right?”
“Yeah.”
Jay draws, and scoops foam off the top as he fills the glass.
“Seen Barney?”
“Not yet.”
Jay pushes the glass to Pat.
“I seen Alice …”
“Yeah? And …?”
Pat begins to speak, but stops, chokes up, speechless.
“What about her?” Jay asks.
Pat chugs his beer, claps down the empty glass, and slaps his quarter on the bar beside it. Startled, the braves turn to look.
“Hey! Slow down there, buddy. What’s eatin on ya?”
“Gotta go.”
Pat exits to Main Street and heads up toward the Tonopah Club. He sees Tom McCulloch, a tall distinguished man dressed in a fine-thread tan silk suit. He’s being ushered out of the Rex Bar by George Boscovitch, the bartender, who hands Tom his hat in a firm but deferential way.
“Tom, ya gotta go home now. Ethel’ll be worrying about ya.
Tom protests, turns, and tries to go back inside. His slurred southern drawl drips indignation.
“Waall, ahh ain’ readdy et!”
Boscovitch spins Tom back around to exit.
“I can’t let ya back in Tom … the other customers … you know.”
Boscovitch points Tom in the direction of home.
Tom has shit his pants. It runs down over the heels of his brown wing-tip shoes onto the sidewalk.
As Pat approaches, Boscovitch returns to the Rex Bar entrance. Both shake their heads at this situation. Dirty Shirt George, the swamper, cleans the trail of shit tracks with a mop and bucket.
One of the Indian kids has followed Pat up the street. He shouts to a passerby, “Look out! Don’t step in it.”
Alarmed, Tom weaves. Pat grabs Tom’s arm to keep him from falling.
“Need a hand, Tom?”
Indignant, Tom yanks his arm away, swinging as if swatting at bothersome flies. “Lemme ah..lone. Don toush me ya hafff-breed!”
Pat backs away, but implores, “Tom! Lissen ta me! Someone killed Alice.”
Tom’s vision spins and his head gyrates.
“Tom! You know. My Alice.”
“At whore? Good ridd…ance!”
Tom loses his balance, catches himself against the wall of the building and slides down to the sidewalk.
“Ahh ain goin home. Jus nee d’lil nap.
Tom curls into a fetal position. More Indian kids come up the street from their Pastime Club hangout to gawk at these town people.
One of the boys asks, “Is he dead?”
Pat replies, “Naw, but when he wakes up, he’ll wish he was.”
Tom pisses his pants. It runs in a narrow stream across the sloped sidewalk to the gutter.
“Look!” They all giggle, hands over their mouths, pointing.
A young Shoshone girl watches, fascinated. A shudder passes over her. Unself-conscious, she clasps her crotch with both hands, as if to prevent such loss of control from happening to her too.
A tourist woman asks, “Who is that?” Her male companion drags her away without waiting for an answer.
One of the older Indian boys mocks Tom and calls out in answer, “Here in Tonopah Mr. Tom is the Justice of the PEEEeeeece,” as he points to the urine trail running across the sidewalk into the street.
Us guys arrive at Tom’s nap site. The sun has reached the south side of the street.
Joey pulls Tom’s squashed hat from underneath him and covers Tom’s face with his it.
“Leave him alone now,” Joey admonishes, waving the younger kids away, adding, “Keep your hands out of his pockets, too.”
*
Then, we realize we’ve lost track of Pat. He’s nowhere in sight. Not in the Tonopah Club Casino, bar or restaurant. We cross the street to the Mizpah Hotel and casino. Not there either. We should have guessed right away. The pool room in the back!
A game of pool was Barney’s last grip on sanity. It galled him that Taxscine wouldn’t allow a pool table in her “house.” To her, pool was a distraction from the main event. Playing pool was like jacking off. She’d rather have her patrons paying to have their balls fondled while in the sack with her girls, rather than smacking balls around on a pool table with wooden sticks.
*
As we approach the pool room, ready to bolt and scatter at any moment to avoid Barney, we can hear Pat, but not make out his words.
“Shhhh, dammit!” Junior warns.
“Shut up yourself,” hisses Joey.
We crouch low at the wide doorway. Pat has caught up with Barney. It’s just the two of them. Barney argues at Pat, pokes him on his chest with his cue stick, leaving blue chalk marks on Pat’s dusty and sweat-stained white shirt.
“I ain’t payin ya, asshole!”
As Barney punctuates his statement, Pat bats the cue stick away again.
“Ya just tole me ya left, didn’t finish the damn job. I ain’t payin ya.”
Pat stays calm and speaks in a low insistent voice. “Ya never come back. Like ya said ya would. No food. No water. What’d ya expect …”
Barney interrupts in a mocking tone, “Injuns don’t need no food, no water.”
Pat remains calm, “I had ta hoof it back on my own.”
Barney makes a “boohoo” crybaby face at Pat.
Now, Pat’s temper cracks.
“Forty fuckin miles, Barney! Where were ya? Jackin off somewhere? Or were ya whackin poor Alice on ‘er head!?”
Pat’s comment about Alice ignites fury in Barney. He swaps ends of the cue stick, using it like a ball bat to the side of Pat’s head, dropping him to the floor, dazed. Barney delivers a vicious kicking to Pat’s mouth and chest. Within seconds Barney’s breathing is heavy and labored.
“Injun … if I wasn’t … in such a good mood today … yer head’d be lookin …jus like ol punkin-head barber Bob’s!”
We are frozen in place with fear, like rabbits in the brush.
Pat groans. Blood runs out his mouth and ear.
Nonchalant, Barney places the cue back in the rack, tosses some paper money on Pat.
As he turns to the exit, Barney spots us as we bolt, and laughs at our terror as we scramble in all directions. We reassemble at Charlie Stewart’s Shine Parlor just up the street from the Mizpah Hotel.
Charlie’s narrow little store is jammed in right next to the Butler Theatre, which has no restroom. His place did. That helped drive traffic into Charlie’s.
It was a particular convenience store. Theatre goers could get their shoes shined, buy candy, cigars and cigarettes. “Ask-for” under-the-counter items, like Benzedrine inhalers or rubbers, were discreetly sold one at a time or in bulk. Along the wall, beginning at the entrance, stretched a row of slot machines. Nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar, dollar. Only Doc Joy played the dollar machine, sometimes for hours.
Charlie was a Negro, as they were respectfully called in those days, up in age with some white hair. He always wore a cap with a green plastic see-through visor and always had a cigar, which he regularly re-lit. We watched in fascination to see him pull another kitchen match from his pocket, hold it in one hand while striking the tip on fire with his thumbnail.
We troop in single file through the narrow front of the store past the slots. Jimmy, in the lead, cases slot machines, wipes coin trays and pulls handles, checking for “holders.”
Charlie growls, “Git yer punk hands off them slots!”
Paying no real attention, us guys charge onward to the back, where older guys in their late teens play cards, sometimes poker or usually, pan.
Bug-eyed to tell our story, but knowing not to interrupt hands of cards, we hold back as best we can.
But Jimmy explodes, “Barney just killed Pat O’Neil!”
Not even looking up from his cards, Ernie Longdon sneers, “Oh, bullshit!”
“Blood come out of his mouth and ear.”
Joey’s older brother, George, asks, “Where?”
“The Mizpah pool room,” answers Joey.
Charlie’s place empties in seconds.
*
Joey points to the spot where Pat was moments ago.
“Look there. Blood. See it?”
“He was right there!”
“We saw Barney do it.”
“The whole thing.”
“Honest to God!”
“Barney got really pissed when Pat accused him of jacking off and killing Alice.”
George catches Joey and pounds him on his shoulder again and again.
“Owww! Quit. Stop. I’ll tell mom! Please! George!”
The rest of us scatter under the glare of resentful looks from those whose game we had interrupted with our “news bulletin.”
*
Pat showed up at Alice’s funeral.
It paid to know all the Latin responses. Gio served as altar boy that day, but there was no mass for Alice, just the interment. Gio and Joey got out of school anyway.
Inez, Barbara Graham, Taxscine, Billie and Jackie cluster together. Pat stands at the foot of the coffin. At the head of the coffin, Father Paul Meineke, S.J. reads from a book with torn paper markers in it.
He has chosen Bryant’s Thanatopsis.
… She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
*
Was he talking about Alice? And Pat? These words float over our heads like puffy clouds. We hear the words, but they don’t seem to connect together.
Bored, Joey twirls the censor with the burning charcoal, while Gio swings the holy water bucket. Meineke pauses to chastise his two inattentive acolytes with a pointing finger, a glare, and then continues, gesturing toward the casket.
*
… When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart…
*
With broad gestures, Father Mieneke dips the klepsidra in the holy water and sprinkles it on the coffin and on those present too.
Gio’d never seen him do that before! You know, get it on the people. It made him feel relieved, because according to his readings of Tales from the Crypt, if Taxscine and the other people there were really bad, and were friends with the devil, they would have caught on fire from the holy water.
Mieneke shovels tiny spoonfuls of incense gobs into the censor as Joey holds it open for him. He waves it back and forth and circles the coffin from head to toe. Copious clouds of fragrant white frankincense smoke billow skyward into the deep blue above. Finally, reading again from his book, he concludes his selection.
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings …
*
Father Meineke motions to the grave diggers to lower the casket into the ground.
Gio notices Pat turn away, and thinks he’s leaving, but when he goes over to him he discovers that Pat’s just being private about wiping away some tears.
“Sorry, Pat. I didn’t know you liked her so much.”
“I didn’t know I liked her so much either … ‘till she was gone from me.”
Pat ruffles Gio’s hair.
“Don’t go an tell you saw me cryin. OK?”
*
The usual suspects were grilled, but they all had alibis. Alice’s killing came to nothing. No justice. To most folks, she was just another cheap whore.
Gio never saw or even heard about Pat for a long time after that. He quit coming into town from Big Smoky Valley.
But Gio didn’t forget about when he first got to know him at Taxscine’s cathouse. That day sure did stick in his mind. He saved his ass from Barney!
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER FIVE
Months earlier
Gio takes off his shoe to show Antonio, the old barrel-chested, leather-aproned Italian shoemaker. He looks at it, nodding and over-appraising the worn shoe in his animated way.
“How much to fix it?”
“Botha them, eh?”
“Yeah. Both, I guess.”
Gio takes off his other shoe.
“Fulla sole. New heela. Tapsa?”
“No taps.”
“Twoa fity.”
Gio shakes his head, grimaces, ponders.
“Looka kid. Don’ta wasta you money.”
Antonio points to the Santa Rosa brand boots on the top shelf, takes them down and puts them in Gio’s hands while beaming with pride in his product.
“How much?”
“Twenty bucksa to you! Lasta you a lifeatime, boy.”
He pumps up his biceps to illustrate strength and lasting power.
Gio hands them back to the shoemaker.
“Aw, I can’t afford those. Can’t even afford to fix my old shoes. Can’t you just glue something over the holes for me? A patch, like on a tire?”
“Sorry, ita won’ta worka. No more than a day. Maybe.”
*
Sunday finds Gio preparing to serve mass at St. Patrick’s. He spots a small pile of prayer books with red covers torn away from the bound text. No one watches, so he removes his shoes, traces around them on two covers, then cuts out inserts with his pocketknife, placing them red side down in his shoes.
Gio dons a red cassock, goes out to light the large Easter Lenten candle and the candles on the altar, and returns to precede Father Meineke out from the sacristy into the sanctuary. They stand at the steps to the altar.
The glittering gold and silver monstrance, looking like a sun with its little glass door in the center, is on display on the altar for all to see, ready to receive the Eucharist for worship. Mieneke’s white satin chasuble embroidered in red, green, gold and silver threads are magnificent, glittering with reflected light. Every slightest movement turns a brilliant new array of facets to view.
The mass begins in splendor. Mieneke and Gio pray aloud in Latin as they cross themselves. “In nomini patris et filii et spiritus sanctus.”
Mounting the steps to the altar, Mieneke prays. “Introibo ad altari Dei.”
“Ad deum que laetificat juventatutam meum.” (To God, who giveth joy to my youth.)
Gio kneels on the first step of the altar. Now, instead of tattered dirty socks, the red hymnal covers showing through Gio’s worn soles match his red cassock.
Joey points this out to Jimmy in the pew next to him.
“Hot foot.”
“Yeah, been to hell, and got ‘em burned!” suggests Jimmy.
They snicker and laugh, shaking their heads. The widow, Agnes, in the pew behind them, slaps both boys on their heads.
*
With the mass over, Father Meineke, deliberate in the ritual, removes vestments with care and folds them with precision.
Gio rips off his red cassock, throws it in the back of the closet, and dashes for the door.
“Slow down, son.”
He does, but only to the door. Already outside, he hears Father Meineke. “I know where you’re going, Gio.”
Gio dashes through the crowd leaving noon mass.
*
He never confessed it even once, but Taxscine’s cathouse was where Gio first met up with Pat O’Neil, a real decent guy.
Gio runs two blocks from the church, past the telephone office and the bank building to the Mizpah Hotel corner at the center of town, where a Greyhound bus parks, idling. The driver thumps down separate bundles of the Reno Evening Gazette and the Las Vegas Sun.
The bellhop and greeter, Mizpah George, pops the bundle string with his pocket knife, and slaps a stack of four each into Gio’s arms as he races past.
“I owe ya, George.”
“Yep, sure enough, Mista Gio. Soon enough”
Gio sprints down Main Street, but stops, turns and goes back to check in the window of Antonio’s shoe repair store. The boots he’s saving his money for are still there on the top shelf.
Without turning to look, Gio darts out between parked cars. With no stoplight in town, an 18-wheeler coasts in near silence down the slope of Main Street, which also serves as Highway 6 and 95. It misses Gio by inches.
Reacting too late, the driver slams on his brakes. Tires bounce, screech and smoke as he honks his horn staccato in anger. He yells out the window, looking back at Gio, who charges onward.
“Next time you’re dead! You idiot!”
The 18-wheeler bearing the large sign EXPLOSIVES crosses the centerline of Main Street, almost clipping an oncoming car in front of the Pastime Club. This time it’s the trucker who gets the honking from the driver he almost broadsided.
Gio arrives at the Nugget Bar whorehouse behind Henderson’s corral. He flings open the screen door, catches it on rebound, careful to close it on his way in to keep it from slamming.
Alice, in a gauzy black negligee, paints her toenails dark red. She smiles at Gio in her sweet way, placing her hand under his chin, elevating his gaze to hers, not allowing it to drift elsewhere on her person where it craves to go.
“You’re too young to be looking anywhere else but in my eyes.”
She pushes a silver half-dollar across the table with her pinky finger. Gio places her usual Reno Evening Gazette on the very spot she indicates and picks up his first earnings of the day.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Larry, the john from the Atomic Energy Commission, reaches for her copy of the newspaper.
“That’s mine!” Alice growls. “Get your own!”
Inez, the madam, a plump middle-aged woman from the mining district of Montana, who can still turn a few tricks of her own scolds her. “Alice! Quit your talking like that now! You sound like you’re getting on the rag again. So soon, too.”
“Here you go, kid,” offers Larry as he flips a dime to Gio. He snags it out of thin air.
Barbara Graham, the long-haired brunette who’s still in her nurse’s whites from the Nye County Hospital, notices Larry’s slim contribution and his Sunday paper fat expectation.
“You cheap son-of-a-bitch! It’s four bits in here!”
Inez looks up from her copy of True Crime Magazine. “Goddammit! I’m gonna throw both a yer asses outa here in a minute!”
Larry digs for more, and flips Gio a 50-cent piece. It disappears into Gio’s pocket in one smooth motion.
“Reno? Or Vegas?”
“Vegas.”
Gio hands him his paper. “Thanks, mister.” Turning to Barbara, “Special thanks, ma’am.”
Crossing himself, Gio rushes out the door. It slams. Larry starts to get up, but sets back down. “That little shit just skinned me four bits and a dime, all for a damn nickel newspaper that ain’t worth two cents!”
Barbara Graham exclaims, “Well, don’t that just make you the high-roller here in town!”
“That’s it!” Inez claps her True Crime Magazine down on the bar. “Git to yer crib, you little snot! An cool off yer hot temper.”
“Fine with me. You can fuck this high-roller yourself … when he gets his hands outa his pockets and quits playin with himself.”
Barbara jams the brush lid on her nail polish bottle and flounces out of the room to the back.
*
Gio makes his way up unpaved St. Patrick Street a few doors to Taxscine’s cathouse. He pushes through the large wooden double doors. Cautious about letting the doors close behind himself, he surveys the dark interior while his eyes adapt from the bright noonday sun. The smell of stale Lucky Lager beer and Midnight in Paris perfume, mixed in with long-dead cigar smoke, permeates the dim atmosphere. Gio approaches Taxscine directly, and she takes her regular two copies.
“Right, Vegas and Reno.”
She’s careful to place a silver dollar in his well-trained, outstretched and upturned left palm. Just so. Just right. Receiving that silver dollar was always like Holy Communion at the whorehouse.
“You haven’t been taking any paper money, have you?”
“No ma’am! Just like you told me. Only if it’s a silver certificate. I check ‘em first for sure.”
“Good boy.”
“Thank you, Miss Orneales.”
Hamburn, the boss of the Atomic Energy Commission guys, sits at a table with Billie. He waves Gio over for his paper. He offers only two bits. Gio refuses. Hamburn grabs Gio by his wrist and draws him up close into that awful bad breath zone.
Gio pulls away, turning his head, gasping for air.
“Listen kid, you want more money? A lot of money? Hell, I’ll pay your way … free! In the room with this girl, Billie, if you let me watch.”
Billie giggles, “Oh, Hank!”
“I ain’t doin it for ya.”
“Five whole dollars for a straight leg jump with Billie here! You sure?”
Taxscine overhears Hamburn.
“Don’t you be talking to him like that! Shame on you.”
Gio continues struggling to free himself of Hamburn’s grip.
“And don’t you be grabbin him like that either.”
Gio yanks his arm free and heads over to the darkest corner where Pat O’Neil and Mr. Fackler sit. Pat holds his hands up in mock surrender.
“Broke, kid. I’m tryin ta get Fackler here to gimme some work.”
He turns to Fackler. “You might need a paper, right?”
Gio moves in closer, but he spots Barney coming through the doorway from the back rooms.
“Oh, shit!”
Gio scrambles toward the exit. Barney kicks a chair out of his way, trips on a table leg. Drinks clatter and spill.
“You callin me shit? You little dick-wad!”
Barney traps Gio in the doors that open inward. He kicks Gio again and again while jamming the doors closed on Gio’s legs, arms and fingers.
“I tol ya not ta let these little shits in here pimpin newspapers, goddammit!”
Taxscine screams back at Barney. “Stop it! Stop it. Stop that, Barney. Cut it out! Now. Right now!”
Pat gets between Barney and Gio, who has managed to hang on to his papers and change. Gio stumbles out the door, but trips, tumbling out onto the dirt street.
Pat blocks Barney from pursuit. Barney gestures at Gio with his index finger as if it were a knife. “I’ll cut yer little nuts off if I see you in here again!”
Gio’s papers are ripped and scattered. He searches in the dirt for spilled coins, cursing through his angry tears. “You prick! You rotten fucker!”
Taxscine has started to drag Barney back inside, but he hears Gio cussing at him.
“And I’ll cut your damn tongue out, too.” Laughing at his own imagery, he returns inside.
Pat goes to Gio and examines him. “Got some gravel rash there, buddy.”
Pat dusts him off.
“I seen you around before. What’s yer name?”
“Gio.”
“Oh yeah. You live way out on the west end. Right?”
Gio nods, wiping away the last tears.
Pat spots a half-dollar piece in the dirt. Points. “Lookit. Lemme help ya here.”
They both seek coins in the dirt, and attempt to shuffle papers back together.
“That fucker’s crazy. He woulda killed me.”
“Gonna tell yer old man?”
Gio stands up straight. “I ain’t crazy! He’d whip me all the way home and some more for being anywhere near a cathouse.”
Pat nods. Adjusts his hat. Gets a faraway look on his face.
“Yeah.”
Long silence.
“I run away on account of a whippin.”
“How old were you?”
“Old as you, maybe, ten. I ain’t sure. I never knew my real birthday.”
“How come?”
“Never knew my parents, or their names. Just they was Cherokee. Pat O’Neil sure ain’t my real name.”
“What is it? The real one I mean.”
“I never knew. The padre at the orphanage give it to me. Said it’d be easier to farm me out to the Irish.”
“You run away just on account of a whipping?”
Pat’s reluctant to answer.
“Nooo. Never mind now.”
Pat looks away. Disengages.
“How come then?”
Silence.
“How come?”
Pat grimaces, hesitates. Hauls in a deep breath.
“Old man Murphy wouldn’t lissen ta me. He hit me an took off his belt to whip me, an en he killed my dog for protectin me. That’s when I run away.”
“Rotten bastard!”
“I never went back.”
“Back to where?”
“Oklahoma. Colorado, Utah.”
I kept on goin. Beggin, stealin, workin till I got here to Big Smoky Valley an settled in.”
“How old were ya when you got here?”
“Maybe twenty.”
“Weren’t ya lonely? No family around?”
“Yeah. Some. But when the war started, Uncle Sam made me his nephew, you know.”
“You were a soldier?”
“Yeah. Got a Purple Heart medal, too.”
“You shot Nazis?”
“No, Japs.”
Their dialog continued out into the Pacific War.
Gio remains fascinated by Pat’s story about running away at age ten, and asks about it again.
“Tell me about your dog. I got one too.”
Pat recounts the story.
*
It was 4th of July 1917, on a farm near Woodward, Oklahoma, just ten years after admission to the union as a state.
Old man Murphy rides up. He’s been in town. The horse is winded and frothing. He dismounts, unsteady, drunk and wild-eyed.
The barn has been reduced to mere smoldering embers.
Three Murphy boys, “Irish triplets,” all point at young Pat.
“He done it, daddy.”
“He done it.”
“The injun nigger done it.”
Pat begs to be heard. “No sir! I didn’t. Wait! Let me tell you …”
Old man Murphy knocks young Pat to the ground, and takes off his belt to whip the boy. The horse rears in fear of being hit. Pat pleads frantically to be heard. “Please sir! Let me tell you …”
As Murphy swings his belt on Pat, Rex, a yellow mutt with a curled bushy tail, snarls and snaps his teeth at Murphy, getting hold of his pants cuff and tripping him.
Murphy gets to his knee, and calls Rex to come to him.
The dog, sheepish for having snapped at Murphy only a moment ago, crawls to Murphy on his belly, head down, ears laid back, submissive.
Murphy grabs Rex by the scruff of his neck, picks up a brick with his free hand. He smashes the dog’s head again and again. Brains, blood and an eyeball are mixed in a pulp. Limbs twitch and quiver.
The Murphy boys cross themselves, stunned, mumbling repeatedly, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”
Young Pat runs away into the darkness and the cover of a cornfield, sobbing and cursing. He hears old man Murphy on his horse blindly crashing through the field looking for him.
“God damn you to hell, Murphy! Burn forever, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Pat continues running, hiding and running when anyone comes into his sight.
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER SIX
Nuclear weapons heat up the Cold War at home
Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site
Event Grable 25 May 1953, Upshot-Knothole series AKA Atomic Annie
*
From her hillside location above the dry lakebed, Atomic Annie fires her special 11-inch diameter, 4.5 foot long shell toward Frenchman Flats for the very first time. The suspense mounts as the shell follows its perfect parabolic trajectory.
Will it work? A string of tracer rockets mark vertical lines from the ground, hoping to record blast effects.
The answer comes as a blinding 15 kiloton flash, equivalent in power to the Hiroshima bomb, followed by the ground shock wave, and finally, the air blast wave.
The brilliant, brownish-red and purple fireball rises from its detonation elevation above ground, taking the shape of a mushroom cloud as it rushes toward the stratosphere, sucking tens of thousands of tons of dirt and incinerated debris through its poisonous stem upward into its burning, multicolored, roiling inferno.
A microphone left open in the excitement picks up military observers in their little-boys-with-big-firecrackers celebration.
“Holy Christ!”
“Wait till them Commie bastards get a load of this!”
“They’ll be shittin their pants in Moscow now!”
“That ain’t nuthin. Wait till you see the barbecue we just cooked up for ‘ol uncle Joe Stalin himself.”
“Yeah. He’ll be lickin them bushy whiskers a his.”
“Come on. Let’s get out there!”
While the cloud continues to rise higher into the stratosphere and begins to drift sideways from ground zero, men in full-cover white jump suits taped at ankles and wrists, with gloves, head covers and gas masks, move in a tight cluster with their Geiger and scintillation counters.
One of the men with a pole pokes at a still-living, squealing, chain-tethered pig blackened on one side with third degree burns from today’s special “event.” Other squealing pigs, their burned skin shedding like torn rags, are thrown onto trucks.
*
- and the Rose Petal Patterns
*
Six Atomic Energy Commission monitors, all dressed in gray uniforms, meet in Hank Hamburn’s room in Tonopah at the Mizpah Hotel.
Hamburn, about 40, sports his radiation exposure film badge clipped to his shirt pocket, an array of pencils in the other pocket, a log-log duo-trig slide rule at his belt, and a pair of round wire-rim glasses that look like he got them army surplus in Japan.
Everyone present has his radiation monitor film badge in place.
“OK, listen up here.” They settle in for their briefing. “The winds aloft guys are saying it looks good for tomorrow morning early.”
He holds up a grid map with a large curved apostrophe shaded in. The dot overlays the nuclear weapons test site near Mercury, Nevada.
“Typical rose petal pattern you’ve all seen before. It should lay that fallout down in a 5 to 10 mile wide track crossing Highway 6 about 30-40 miles north of here.”
Hamburn puts the map down on the table and waits for everyone’s attention.
“As usual, you are to get ground level confirmation of aerial reconnaissance and tracking. But, keep in mind, this one could run about 50-100 rad.”
The group explodes with excitement.
“Whee-hah!”
“Jesus!”
“Holy shit!”
“Hang on. Hang on there! There’s more.”
After they settle down again, Hamburn lowers his voice and continues in a tone of confidential secrecy.