catfish 23

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school," Paul Simon used to sing, and one of the things they used to learn us was how great democracy was.  The people, in their wisdom, because they are very wise, (don't the pols tell us when they are running for something, say how wise The American People are?), always choose the best man. 

Well in high school you have only known like four presidents, so what do you have to judge from?  As you get older and become a dem or a rep, you realize that the people do not always choose the right man, in fact looking back it comes out to like half the time, like the score you get on a true/false test on some subject you know nothing about.  

Also as you get older you read about what goes on in other countries, especially those tin pot countries.  Revolutions, counter revolutions, manning the barricades, busting down the barricades, deaths on both sides.  

And that never happens here.  There's a lot of folding your arms across your chest and smiling smugly if your side wins. a lot of pissing and moaning if your side loses.  But you are never of a mind to man or bust a barricade because there are no barricades, because there will be a fair and clean election in four years.  Well not entirely, there is usually some kind of skullduggery in a close election, but even so, fair and clean enough.

But not anymore.  Here was an election that was not close and there is no evidence that there was any skullduggery involved.  Let me say again NO evidence.  And yet the losing prez called on the mob to storm the capitol and they did, and many of our leaders barely escaped with their lives.  .

You would think that those in the party that weren't with the mob would be standing up and condemning the actions, and trying to rid the party of those lawbreakers. 

But far from it.  Liz Cheney, whose politics I can't say often enough I despise with every fiber of my being, but who actually believes in something, and is willing to take the risk to save her party. now stands at the chopping block.  Two weeks ago it looked like this would be a close fight for the soul of the party, but now it appears that it will not be close at all, and that the party has no soul.

A couple major developments taking place in Catfish's land of milk and honey, and hey, what exactly does ironic mean?

 

Budweiser didn’t smile much, but he had a big grin on his face when he picked me out of the lineup, “Hey Hula Girl, let’s get a move on, a lot of action for you out in Ditch City.”  Ditch City, he’d probably spent the whole weekend thinking that one up.  It was bad enough digging those ditches, but to put up with him too.

 “Fuck you,” I said, shouldn’t have, there were a few snickers still floating around over his Ditch City crack, those guys would laugh at anything, but they all dried up once I said fuck you, and there was dead silence.    

 Budweeser’s face was beet red, and then he was walking right at me.  I was truly fucked.

 “Hey wait a minute!”

 Where did that come from? I was watching Budwieser like you look at a semi coming over the hill in your lane, and then he suddenly veered a little, looking over past me.

 I turned around.  It was Ron.  “I want this guy,” he said, pointing at me.

 “Fuck you Asshole,” came back Budwieser, coming past me towards Ron, passing me, he took a swing.  I dodged it, but I lost my balance and went ass over teakettle.

 “No, fuck you old man,” Ron came back, and that was the deciding factor when they were standing chin to chin.  Budwieser was a burly guy, but he was kind of old, and Ron was a burly guy too, and he was young.

 Still Budweeser took a swing, well he had to I guess, but Ron flipped it away easily and looked like he was going to come home with a good one, but Budwieser stepped away.  “Fine,” he said, “You want him, you can have him, you can have that piece of shit, that fucking hula faggot.”

 He said that backing away, backing past me, where I had not gotten off the ground through this whole thing, and as he passed me I grabbed ahold of his boot and gave it a twist and down he went. 

 Not a lot of guys liked Budweiser, and there was a lot of laughter, but he was up like a snake, and he had grabbed a shovel from somewhere and I closed my eyes ready to meet my maker, but Ron was on him, and it looked like a couple teeth hit the ground right in front of me, maybe it was just spit, I don’t know.

 Anyway that’s how I became a marker.  Pretty sweet job, I have to tell you, carried a clipboard, walked all over the Big Job, guys digging, guys pouring cement, guys putting up steel.  “Hey guys, got the numbers,” I’d ask, and some guy would give them to me, and I’d write them down on the clipboard, and then go on to the next area, and at the end of the day I’d turn it in at the big office.  I guess that’s how they kept track of the work that was going on.

 At the end of my first day as a marker I was out in the parking lot, looking for Ted and the guys for a ride home, and there was a screech behind me, and there was Ron, “Hey hop in,” he said. 

 “Well thanks,” I said, “But I usually ride home with Ted.”

 “I’ll get you back faster,” he said.

 “Well I ought to tell them.”

 “Okay, we’ll just cruise the lot, and then you can tell him.”

 So I hopped in, only instead of cruising the lot he just headed out to the highway.  “What about Ted?” I asked.

 “He’ll figure it out,” he said, and what could I say, the man had saved my life just eight hours ago.

 “Grab us a couple brews,” he said once we were speeding down the highway, motioning to the back seat where there were Budwiesers floating in melted ice in a cooler.

 “Budweiser,” I said, popping a top, “That’s kind of ironic isn’t it?”

 “Say what?”

 “Well Budweiser, that’s what I always called Big Red, and after, you know, this morning, it just seems kind of ironic, that we would be drinking the same kind of beer.”

 “Ironic, huh, what does that mean?”

 And I wasn’t sure, just a word I’d heard a lot. Seems like it kind of meant like a kind of a funny coincidence.  Itch used it a lot, damn that’s where I’d heard it, but I didn’t want to get into that, talking about Itch, so I just said, “Shit, I don’t know,” and he laughed and then so did I.

 He had a fast car and he drove like a maniac, scared me a little, but it was kind of fun too.  He dropped me off at the bunkhouse about half an hour before Ted had ever gotten back there.

 “What are you doing living in a dump like this?” he wanted to know.

 “Well it’s cheap, and, you know, there’s my buddies.”

 “Some buddies,” he said, “leaving you to dig ditches for Big Red.”

 Kind of a slam on Ted who had gotten me out to the Big Job in the first place.  I felt like I ought to defend him a little, “Well, it’s not like any of them are big shots.”

 “You got that right,” he said.  “How about if I pick you up here tomorrow at seven?”

 Shit, Ted and the guys left at 6:30, that would give me another half hour of sleep.  “Sure,” I answered.

 Ted and the guys wouldn’t be back for another half hour, the couches all yawned at me, especially the sweet red one, ready to embrace me.  But you know, I wasn’t tired at all.  Hell I hadn’t lifted a shovel all day, and you know I didn’t want to face Ted and the guys, they’d probably be pissed because they would have been waiting for me and I never showed.  The best thing to do was head out to the Great Wall.  I hadn’t been there on a weekday night since I’d started out on the Big Job, probably be interesting to see what was going on there on a Monday night.

 Not that interesting it turned out.  I have to say I half expected that the crowd would be a little revved up to see Catfish show up on a weekday night, but the place was half empty. Nobody much to talk to.  Itch was there behind the bar.  “How were those mussels?” he wanted to know, sliding my beer across the bar to me.

 “What mussels?” I asked.

 “Why at La Trattoria,” he answered, “You mean you went there with the lovely Gina, and didn’t have the mussels?”

 And you know he was just so Itch saying that that I just had to ask, “Would that be ironic   ?”

 “Huh?” and he drew back a little which drew me forward a little.

 “Well you know me and Gina out for a fancy dinner, fancy place. Big bucks menu, waiters in suits,  chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like icebergs, and I smelled the cork just right, and didn’t drink out of the finger bowl, and rounded third at Gina’s and almost scored, and yet didn’t have the mussels, would that be ironic?”

 “You didn’t score?”

 “Would that be ironic?”

 “Not scoring?”

 “No, not having the mussels.”

 “I don’t know, I suppose so.  You didn’t score?”

 Damn, I should have left that last part out.  “Almost did,” I said.

 “Almost?  You’ve been hanging out with her for, more than a month.  I have to say I’m shocked.  Doesn’t sound like the Catfish we used to know.”

 Have to say it didn’t.  “Well she’s a challenge,” I said.

 “A challenge, huh?  Well that sounds a little more like the old Catfish.  Hey we’re all rooting for you.”

 “All of you?” I wanted to know, “Are you all rooting for me?”

 “But of course we are.  You’re our champion, why wouldn’t we be?”

 “It was the all part I was wondering about.”

 “What do you mean by that?  Do you think somebody isn’t rooting?”

 “Never figured you for an opera fan, Itch.”

 “Can’t say that I am.”

 “Well you sure knew a lot about that El Bohemia last Friday.”

  “Well it’s a famous opera, everybody knows about La Boheme.”

 La Boheme, damn.  “I don’t.”

 “Well Catfish, you know, you’re more of a…” and he kind of trailed off.

 “A hillbilly?” I supplied.

 “No, no, not at all.  It’s just that you don’t go in for that, you know, fancy ass crap.”

 True enough I didn’t, but the way he said it, like he was trying to come up with a dumbass comment that he thought I would appreciate pissed me off, and I just popped off with the first thing that popped into my mind.  “You know she talks about you.”

 “Gina?” he asked, so I knew then that we both knew what we were talking about.

 “She feels sorry for you.”

 “Really?” he asked like how about that, but also like it didn’t mean anything to him, but I could tell it did.

 “Oh she thinks you’re a clever guy,” and I said this in kind of a mean way, but I could see that he perked up a little at this, he liked to think of himself as a smart guy, liked to think that others saw him as a smart guy.  “But she thinks you’re cold, man, and then I added, “cold as ice.”

 He looked a little shocked at that, surprising because he never showed much emotion, I almost felt bad about it, but hey, a guy has to defend his interests.  He faded away to get some beers at the other end of the bar and never drifted back.  Still I felt like I had fucked up a little because now he knew that Gina was thinking about him.

 Not much going on at the bar after that, hung around for a couple quick ones after that, just to get a good buzz to take me back to the bunkhouse to share those late beer call beers with my buddies.

 “So where the fuck were you?” Ted wanted to know before I’d even reached into the crumbled twelve pack on the frontroom rug. 

 “Huh?” I answered closing in on one of the last beers hiding in the cardboard.

 “Where the fuck were you?  We waited like half an hour on you.”

 “Oh, I got a ride.”

 “Well why didn’t you tell us you were getting a ride?”

 “I wanted to tell you.  I was going to tell you, but Ron just drove out of the lot,” and I said Ron kind of soft, kind of mumbled it.

 “Who?”

 “Ron?”

 They were no fans of Ron, I knew, because of that Tammy black eye thing, and okay he was kind of a bully at the big job, if you were somebody lower than him he kind of treated you like shit, I knew that.

 “Well he got me this new job,” I said by way of explanation, “I’m a markup guy now.”

 “Well ain’t you something.”

 “Shit, that Big Red guy was killing me, you guys know that.”

 Ted didn’t say anything, didn’t like the way he was looking at me, and the other guys either.

 “It’s not like any of you guys did anything to get me out of that Goddamn ditch.”

 And they hadn’t and they knew it.  I popped the top.

 As I was lifting it up to my mouth, Ted raised his beer too.  “To Ron,” he said, “and his new asshole buddy.”

 “Fuck you,” I answered, and took a big long drink.

 Not much conversation after that.