catfish 10

 Here's a little something to tide you over for the weekend.

Diamond Dan, not sure why we called him that, one of those things you know where you do the opposite because Diamond Dan, you think some flashy guy, rings on his fingers, dressed up wearing a tie with some diamond stick pin in it, maybe a gangster, one of those gentleman gangsters like you see in the movies stepping out in shiny shoes.

And Dan wasn't like that at all, kind of squat, a little fat, never wore anything but baggy pants and a sweatshirt.  Had that gangster thing down a little bit, seemed always to be talking out of the side of his mouth, heavy Chicago accent.

Played for the White Sox, or so his story went.  Well never quite made the team, spent some seasons in the minors, catching, that would fit in with his squat physique, and got invited up to spring training once, but just at the end of it there was a fly ball to right, a man on third and only one out, and a shoestring catch which caught the runner down the line so he had to hustle back to third, but the right fielder was sprawled on the ground so the runner tagged up and made a break for it, but the right fielder bounced right back up and made a perfect throw, one bounce right into the Dan's mitt and he had him dead, turned to see him charging down and braced himself for the collision, but then at the last minute the guy went low all spikes up at Dan who went down to one knee and smacked the tag right into the SOB's groin and he was dead out.  But his spikes had tangled with Dan's shin guards and when he stood up, ball in hand the next thing he knew he was falling over and when he reached for the ankle that had betrayed him his hand came up red with blood.

The end of his career, and the thing was, as Dan liked to tell the story, not only was it a fucking exhibition game but the Sox were behind nine to nothing. 

But there was some kind of settlement, he ended up with some money, which would account for how he was able to afford the rent for that whole floor of the house even though all he did was drive a cab, and then only when he was in the mood.

The reason I say or so his story went, is because sometimes dropping in on him when he didn't see me coming, I would catch him telling some new visitors at the Great Wall that he wrote a sports column for the local newspaper or that he was a math professor at the university.  I never called him on that, because I was pretty much a bullshitter myself, and hey this is America, you can be whoever you want to be.

Come on," he said, and I said "Where?" and he said to the Great Wall, and I said why, and he said to see if he'll sponsor the team, and I said what team and he said the softball team, and I said oh yeah.

And so a few minutes later there was Dan and I walking over to the Great Wall, and Dan he kind of fell silent, an unusual thing for him, normally he talked a blue streak, but he just fell into this silence, his hands parked deep in his pants.  He was kind of nervous I could tell that, even though every now and then he just said, "This'll be great," and maybe the fourth time he said it, he turned to me and said, "Doncha think?"

Hell, what did I think.  Half an hour earlier I had thought it was the dumbest idea in the world, but then I'd had the vision of catching that centerfield ball, the wild crowd, the young girls in their little t shirts and short shorts jumping up and down, so what the hell, "It'll be great," I told Dan.

"You think so?" he asked and I said sure, and then he bumped my shoulder and said, "You do the talking."

Me?  Well it made sense.  Dan, a lot of people thought he was kind of strange.  He was in the Great Wall every night, but he was the kind of guy, well you wouldn’t pick the bar stool next to him unless it was the only open one.  Truth be told, he was kind of boring, all that White Sox talk, and all those stories.  Myself I kind of liked the stories, but only the first time around, and he tended to repeat himself, so you'd be sitting with Dan and having a nice enough conversation, but you'd also be looking around to see who was coming in the door, looking out for better opportunities.

Myself you know I had that gift of gab.  I could kind of tell what people wanted to hear, it was like pushing a button for me, shoot my mouth of and see where it went, I often amazed myself.  Not much of a sell guy though, not the kind of guy to talk somebody into anything, when it came down to brass tacks, I kind of drifted off.

And George, the owner, you know, he was like one of us.  After the dinner rush died down he was down in the bar with us.  He'd plunk down on a stool and tear off that paper hat he wore in the kitchen and pound on the bar, "Hey Eetch," and whatever Itch was doing, he'd drop it right off and there'd be a bottle of Bud in front of him, and then another, and then another.  He got as drunk as the rest of us, usually drunker, and go on about whatever, and by this time none of us would know what he was talking about, and he'd say, "You know what happens when you fuck a Chinaman?"  And everybody around him who knew the drill would say, "He fucks you right back," and he would nod his head sagely.

But then there was George the businessman.  Hell he owned the whole place, the biggest restaurant in campus town.  On weekends it was jammed, tables full of hungry customers, tiny waitresses hauling big oval battleships of dishes, wads of bills plunked down at the cashiers station, cooks, mad Chinamen all of them chopping chopping, smashing food into spinning woks, slamming dishes down, pickup, pickup.  How do you hold that all together?

You have to be a businessman.  And you could see that in him early in the day pacing around, looking at the food being brought in by the trucks, looking at bills through his reading glasses, tapping his fingers on the table tops, walking through his empire, moving a table here, a table there, setting everything up.