Rabelais High (cont'd 2)

Rabelais High (cont'd 2)

       by King David of the Psalms

In my years I have seen things you, James, would not believe! We were driving through Harlem once, my wife and I, and that was our first visit to New York. My goodness, the expectations that one carries with one into that place! I admit, I anticipated some encounter with hoodlums, someone wielding a switchblade, or at least one assault with a deadly weapon. Nothing of the sort. People at street corners seemed regular enough. Young men and women stood around smoking and talking, the streets seemed to me emptier than Portage Avenue in the middle of the day, and the storefronts indicated the possibility of violence because of the steel bars over all of their windows and doors. Pubs and small cafés sprinkled the street side. Music, distinctly American, drifted from alleys and the open windows of apartments. It was a remarkably warm day for mid November. Nothing out of the ordinary befell me.

       We did have one memorable accident. Busy simply being apprehensive, and then finding that the streets pattern themselves differently than I was used to, we soon found ourselves unsure of the exit onto the Manhattan freeway. We did eventually park the station wagon on a street whose name I cannot for the life of me recall, and I asked a group of loiterers the way. They nodded and smiled, some of them, but I could understand not a word. They pointed to a sign above the sidewalk half a block away. Although I was concerned about leaving Alviera alone there she shushed me and I went. It happened to be a hole-in-the-wall pub. The Little Lorian. I smelled the cigarette smoke and the beer immediately, but I am a man of the Lord and so knew that I was safe. I have always trusted God to lead me through difficulties such as this. I entered, approached the bar, and asked the bartender there if he knew the way that I wished to go. He was about to reply when I noticed him glance behind me to where a group of young men and two women ringed a pool table.

       "Jude, watch the cues there!" he said. He must have been referring to the clattering of a pool cue that fell behind me. This same fellow, this Jude, dressed in black and wearing more jewelry than I am accustomed to in a man, looked at him and then at me and began to walk over to us carrying the said item in his big hand. I shrunk back, expecting the worst, but the bartender introduced him to me.

       "This is a Canadian, Mr. Jingles, a preacher, and he wishes to know the way out of Harlem onto the freeway." Jude shook my hand, with accompanying music from his bracelets and rings, welcomed me to his community and pointed to one of the two young women there.

       "Ask her," he said. "She's the smart one here." I turned to go to her for this advice when Jude asked me if I was a betting man. I answered no, of course. Being a preacher kept me, thankfully, from vices of that sort. He nodded his approval but suggested that I place a small bet on Moonbeam Rider with him. He was, it seems, a broker of horse racing bets. A bookie. I felt constraint more than inclination and without much further remonstrance handed him a Canadian ten dollar bill that he pocketed and said he would send back to me along with anything it made when the race was done. The Preakness, he informed me, was to be run next Tuesday. I left my address on the counter with the keeper and made my way to the side of the black-haired woman sitting at a table with a glass and watching the pool game's progress.

       I was reminded of the red room that Catharine Barkley first disliked and then enjoyed. Winnie drew up a table when she came from changing and asked if I wanted my fortune read. No, I said, slightly red-faced. She reached over and rubbed my hair. I was cute, she said, and cuddly.       
        "Oh, really! Your palm tells me that you're a dingo. You're one of the old-fashioned, crazy, do-dare sort of guys who in another age would have been responsible for the apprehension and ever the demise of criminals such as Billy the Kid." I do have a wild streak in me and I admitted as much to her

       "Show me now," she said. "There's a Nomad's hangout right across the ally from this hotel. You can't miss it. It's got a green door. Go knock and ask them if they have any spare beer." I looked at her as if she were crazy.

       "Good Lord, lady!" I said. The Budweiser tasted fine when I got back from the club, though I must admit that I am not an expert on the fine points of alcoholic beverages. We had two, possible three, apiece, toasting each other for the success of the mission, laughing a little, I admit. I recalled my waiting wife and hurried from there.

       "My God," I said to Winnie. I've got to go. Alvera!" She implored me not to.

       "The USA is a fine place to raise a little hell, " she said. "Or raise a family." This with a slyness about the corners of her mouth that made my knees weak, my legs wobbly and my biceps bulge.

       God loves even the lowly Holstein tired of her hay and sick of her swinging teats.

       When we arrived back in Winnipeg late the next evening I found that I had to shovel the snow from the front sidewalk. The neighbors across the back lane had much more work about it that I. The houses are larger on Cambridge Street. That can be attractive when one is buying or selling, but not at the onset of winter when the first snows hit as if the sky were falling in and nothing, no nothing, feels like it's going right. Give me a smaller rear entry and driveway any day.