Hauling Alcohol

Hauling Alcohol

       Doug Diddly Doug

Normally, the shipment would have arrived at Emerson Customs at about three o’clock, been checked through by three-thirty, and gotten to Grand Forks two hours later. Here it would be stored in a Seagrams warehouse in the industrial area near the bus depot and the train yard along with a thousand other truckloads of whiskey. Distribution to parts of the USA occurred physically from this warehouse but the paperwork was done in more sumptuous offices downtown near the good restaurants and hotels.

       The absence of truckload Reimer Express 4DA2002 was first noticed by warehouse maintenance personel. A truck was supposed to arrive at a certain hour in the afternoon, and his job, Ronnie’s job, was to have the doorway area empty, for when it honked it had to be admitted immediately. That was the policy. The doorway  must not have in it boxes, flats, machinery such as the forklift, nor the personal effects of workers. The forklift must stand ready to receive, unload and deliver barrels of whiskey to their designated storage compartments in the various corners of the building, but it must under no circumstances interfere with the truck’s arrival and entrance.

       Ronnie had done his job. The floor stood ready and clear. The clearance papers were in a folder under his arm. The shelves for receipt of the barrels had been checked and approved. The only thing left was the arrival of the truck. It did not arrive at five-thirty. Ronnie wished to be home for supper at six. It did not arrive at six. Nor was it there at six-thirty. By now Ronnie had gone from expecting some sort of mechanical problem to suspecting foul play. Suddenly, he knew what he needed to do. He walked to the red phone by the office door, a phone to be used only in emergencies, and pressed the button that would alert the Seagrams manager.

       The manager arrived within fifteen minutes. Ronnie and he conferred. The manager called customs. They confirmed within a few minutes that the three-thirty had not been through. Customs notified the RCMP. They sent out a cruiser from the Emerson and one from the Winnipeg detachments. Local constabulary in Altona, Gretna, Morris, St. Jean and St. Agathe, as well as Steinbach, Winkler, Morden, Horndean, Plum Cooley, Vita, Letellier, and Portage la Prairie were also requested to assist in what was increasingly beginning to look like a crime.

       Laurence Dyck was the driver of the truck. He had been hired by Seagrams to do some roofing on one of their storage facilities at their distillery near Gimli. Roofing there, he had noticed that trucks were often driven by a single male without a guard or second driver. He also noticed that the destination for the shipments was always Grand Forks, and that shipments left daily at a predictable time. Laurence’s father was a prankster. His brothers were practical jokers, too. Rural by nature, laconic by habit, friends with animals and their habitats, enjoyers of beer and whiskey, they all, the Dycks, felt that the government took too much from ordinary people such as themselves. Any chance to make a bit on the side, or to keep a bit of the government’s share for themselves, was felt to be an opportunity richly deserved.

       Thus it was that Laurence waited at the rear of the semi for the driver to approach. He had with him a potato sack and a rope. When the short, small fellow rounded the corner of the trailer, Laurence stepped up behind him and put the bag over his head and shoulders. He held him and whispered in his ear that if he shouted he would be severely injured by the hammer his “friend” had at the ready. The man did not struggle. He stood quietly while Laurence talked to his friend who was not there, and also while Laurence tied the ropes that bound him and the duck tape over his mouth. Laurence opened the cargo doors of another semi nearby, put the unfortunate inside, told him to remain quiet and no harm would come to him, and then drove off.

       Laurence took the perimeter around Winnipeg, drove past St. Agathe and St. Jean, through Morris and past Letellier, then turned the rig off the highway and headed east toward the bush land in the direction of Vita. He drove fifteen miles to a farm yard he owned, a stretch of non arable scrub and poplar where he raised cattle. On it he had twenty-seven old semi trailers purchased to store feed and straw. These did in place of a barn. He had acquired them over the years as cheaply as he could. Now he added a twenty-eighth and piled straw bales over it with his farm tractor. This took an hour. By six o-clock he had the Seagrams tractor near Gimli. He walked back to the roofing job, got in his car because it was quitting time, and drove home. Over the next week he finished the roof and left the Seagrams yard for good.

       Needless to say, Laurence did not tell his brothers, father, uncles--nor any of the women he had accompany him to his farm—about the whiskey or the recent addition to his trailers. That would have been a huge mistake. He did, however, always serve himself, and now and then others of his guests, very fine and old whiskey as frequently as he wished to.     

Hello

Hello

      

       By D. R. D. R. D. R. Rei

when the phone rings in your car

and you think you should respond

remember God is watching you

and giving you the nod

the world’s a terrible place they say

in the new Church of God

but that’s no reason to resist

the urge to drop your wad

Ricky Ritlen took his pills dutifully and went to school as usual on the day his father disappeared. When he got home from Sisbro High, his family was in an uproar. Sister Widget, brother Donna, stepson Stanley, nephew Paula, niece Gordon, grandmother Neddie, grandfather Gibraltar, uncle Danna, auntie Art, brother Wendy, sister Jamie, brother Zelda, sister Jonnie, brother Samantha, sister Arbuckle, and mother Terry jumbled into each other in their rush to be orderly.

       “Hello!” Ricky said when he entered the door. No one answered, so he called out again, louder. Then he got inside and found out the truth.

       “Your father’s disappeared!” his mother, Terry, said, not crying, but looking distraught. “Who will take care of us now!” She was addressing the oldest of them. In Spain at this time of the year it would have been a cold day in hell if the flowers were not blooming yet and the trees blossoming in the orchard. Here, in Barry, Ontario, snow still clung to the north side of things and not a dandelion had dared. In Broccolicilona they’d had a flower business and prospered, even father doing some of the work. Here things were tighter and money was scarce.

       “He’s probably at Chips,” Ricky said, automatic in his assumption that a beer might not have been the last thing on his father’s mind. In June, Ricky had twice been asked to fetch him from Chips, and get him home before mother Terry had to come herself. Each month, once, he got inside a pub with the express duty of extracting his dad. Chips, Drink-up’s, Billy Joe’s, Warmer By the Sea’s and a few other haunts made up the sum of those establishments where father tended to spend afternoons.

       “Okay,” he said, and left for Chips. He hurried. He got there quickly. He stepped in the door.

       “Hello,” the barman said to Ricky. “No minors!” But Ricky ignored him. He walked about the room looking at the tables in the near dark. The barman followed him, talking to him, warning him, and he spoke more sharply suddenly when he realized that Ricky was not listening. He shouted and then took Ricky by the arm.

       “Hello!” Ricky said and stomped hard on the barman’s toes with his heavy boots. The barman bent over at the waist and Ricky kneed him in the face and broke his nose. He had learned that move from brother Wyona.

       “Into the nose!” his brother had instructed him. When that worthy straightened up and held his nose in his hand, Ricky let him have it in the groin, just as hard as he could with his leather boot. The barman bent over again.

       “Then when he goes down to hold himself, slap him two or three times really hard, around the ears and the nose,” Wyona had taught him. “It’s not to hurt him, but to release your own need to humiliate him. Slap him so he knows you were displeased at his behavior and considered it an insult.” And that is what he did. Ricky slapped him once on each ear, and then again with the back of his hand across the nose. With that he walked around the bar one more time and, not seeing his father, he headed home. Father would return all right. He always did, to their despair. Whatever. It was all good. Hello! Anyway, who cared. Lotsa luck. See you next spring. Bien venu. Pack it in. Good riddance. He would come home, already. When he did get home, everyone had forgotten and gone about their business. Ricky sat down to supper and then got out Our Universe: Black Holes and Us. Stephen Hawkings. He read until his mother lit the candles and then went to sleep. His eyesight kept him from reading after daylight ended.

Bill Pratt His Partner

Bill Pratt His Partner

      

       Douglas “Big Nuggets” Reimoski

Bill Pratt slept till nearly nine the next morning and then got up suddenly and, after a pause, let out a whoop to wake the dead. He ran outside to the edge of the house to make sure and there it was. The bucket stood beside the porch and inside was half a quart of gold nuggets taken yesterday, in a single day, from the bed of claim 493, Grizzly Creek. The account of his find I will tell you shortly. First, however, it is fitting to watch the affects that came over him and moved him from place to place on his property. He peed beside the can. Then he ran inside, for it was cold, and threw on his wool long johns, and over these a shirt, pants and sweater, all in haste, the latter on backwards. Next, he barged out the door and ran down to the sluice box fifty yards away. There it stood, on the bank of the Grizzly, sand still in its tines, and at least three nuggets worth hundreds of dollars each gleaming out of the silt.

       “Eureka! Eureka!” Bill shouted at the top of his lungs. He jumped up and down, smacking the top of his head with the flat of his hand each time. He squatted and stood up, leapt sideways a good six feet and then back again to his original spot. He sniffed the air but stopped that before anything registered and instead bent double and tried to smell his crotch. Of this he got a whiff since he had not showered in months. Now he felt his teeth with both hands and next jumped again into the air and then ran backwards toward the cabin. Inside, he got his shovel and pick and raced out to the creek where he leapt into yesterday’s hole and, shoulder deep, shoveled out a mass more of sand onto the bank above. Then, unable immediately to get out, the declivity now seven feet deep, he clawed at the bank and cursed and roared and talked about getting a g-damned ladder built. He rose out of the pit after a while and then shoveled sand into the sluice box. He opened a small gate that carried water to the box and let it flow according to calculations made by dint of much experience. It flowed down the tines. Five minutes later the sand was gone and there it lay. Gold! Nineteen nuggets of varying weights, one the size of half his big toe!

       “Eureka! Eureka!” he shouted, and brought the precious metal to the coffee can beside his porch. He went inside and put coffee on, added wood to the stove and got it roaring. Next he cut raccoon meat off its carcass and laid it in cold grease in the fry pan. He took hard tack and bit off a piece, then ran outside to the hole and leapt back into it. He had forgotten his shovel and was forced to claw for a while to get back up onto the bank. Having seized the shovel, he flung himself back into the hole and sent scoops of sand out of it at a great rate. Soon tired, he attempted to climb out again but could not. He wore himself thin with cursing and then rested. Ten minutes later, with random yells and swearings and babblings about building a ladder, Bill hauled himself over the lip of his excavation. He filled the sluice, poured in water and, as before, to his insane delight and vocalizations, found nuggets there. This time, twenty-four of both big and small sizes, one as big as the knob of his tea kettle.

       “Eureka! Eureka!” Bill shouted and carried these new discoveries to the can. Bill Pratt knew then without a doubt, as sure as the time he’d shat himself halfway to the outhouse, that accident had intercepted history. He’d struck it rich!

       Bill haled from Turbulent, Nebraska, in the Duck Swamp region in the eastern part of the state. He had always been a good farmer, one who lived mostly off of the produce he grew. Frugal to a fault, niggardly in his contribution of money to those who requested it of him, and quite a careful spender to boot, when he joined his friends at a café and they all had coffee and pie, he would eat slowly and drink his two cups in such a manner, for one reason or another, that the rest would be finished first and waiting for him. This way it often happened that one of them, impatient finally, would pay the tab. His friends, of course, knew his habit and thought he would never change. They said as much.

       First thing Bill did when he had the can full, and another half full, after a week, during which time he did eventually remember to build a ladder, was pack up and get on the trail for Whitehorse. From there he mailed each of his old friends a package containing enough gold to provide them every one an early retirement. Two months later, he himself arrived home. From that day forward he insisted on paying for all the coffee and pie they ordered at the café. He often thought of the half can of gold he’d left standing beside the porch when he’d abandoned his claim. He never returned to it. It rattled around in his mind till he died at the venerable age of one hundred and seven.

Yen For Cars

Yen For Cars

       By Douglas Carthorse

                        o to be in Tokyo

                        moment of the groundswell

                        brought waves of smoke

                        fraught with effluent

                        those stacks so close

                        to that most private place

                        that humber’s not

Yitsi Yashumi paid for the vehicle in full. He drove it out of the parking lot and into the street. At the first turnpike half a mile further he took the left-hand exit and sped up to eighty kilometers. The speed sign recommended forty. He wished to put the car to its limits, to swing sharply and cleanly through the sweep and feel its handleability. As the curve progressed it tightened, and still Yitsi kept his foot on the accelerator. Rain had wet the pavement and without warning the wheels let go and he slid into the curb. The bounce and bump told Yitsi, after a few seconds of disbelief, that his new belonging had been badly damaged. He would not be able to drive away unscathed. He shook his head and sat there. Then he got out and looked. The front wheel was bent in a painful way. Yitsi got in again and drove backwards. The car balked but went. It went forwards, too, with the same reluctance. He drove this way the half mile back to the automobile center. They looked at him and at his car with amazement.

       “What happened?” a salesman said. He wore a grey suit and an out-there tie. His shoes were polished and of a burgundy color. His greying hair had not one strand out of place. Yitsi was bald. Tall, thin, hairless, and with running shoes that needed to be replaced. He always felt conspicuous on the transit bus with these on. When he got to his place of work he switched to loafers immediately.

       “It had rained on the turnpike and I took it a bit fast and slid into the curb,” he pleaded. He cajoled, whined, winced, boasted, whispered, kept silence, assumed authority, intoned indifference, and called for cheap repair in that single sentence. He stood looking at the damage in contrition and his stance asked for understanding, nurture, good-will, conciliation, cooperation, charity and brotherhood.

       “That will cost two, three thousand dollars to repair,” the salesman said after a minute’s reflection. He nodded towards Yitsi, took a step away from him and regarded him with candid coolness.

       “And that’s a lot of money,” the salesman added. He chided, spat, withdrew, hurt, expectorated, was snide, washed his hands of the whole affair, invited new expenditure, and tossed Yitsi on a pile with this one statement. Another customer entered, and then another, and a third. The salesman took a small step away from Yitsi and turned towards the new clients. Two other salesmen, who had been observing the discussion from a small distance, moved over toward them as well.

       Yitsi waited a long while before addressing the salesman again. The salesman had not seen him sidling up. The sound of Yitsi’s approach told the him that Yitsi was hopeful, wished for service, expected temporary ignoring, need wise advice, cared for others, grew up respecting the activities of all individuals, had engagements pressing, would not call his girlfriend tonight, tended postponing bowel movements, had never shouted out obscenities, frequented dollar ninety-eight breakfasts weekends, and lived in Transcona.

       “What if I don’t want the car anymore?” Yitsi said. The saleman did not answer him. His silence told Yitsi a great deal. It refused to hear, broke wind, spent time alone on a beach, hated people, required preening, used the bathroom more often than normal, and likened humans to cattle.

       “Would you take it back?”Yitsi inquired. His question spoke of unrequited love, wild rides on rollercoasters, unbridled longing, rebuffed paramours, hours waiting for a phone call, laughing out suddenly in a silent movie theatre, working more hours with less pay, waiting for the neighbor’s Doberman to leave the front so he could retrieve the morning paper, and having his wife abandon him with the children for good on Christmas Eve.  

       “Yes,” the salesman said, indicating by tone numerical calculation, extra sales figures for his personal quota, the placid study of a sucker, three suits to bring to the cleaner’s, a stop at the wine shop on the way home, business connections, and travel to some place warmer.

       “We could take it back, but you know the car is not new now. The moment you drive it off the lot you lose two thousand. The accident adds another two or three thousand for labor and parts. The depreciation because of the accident is another four thousand. That’s nine thousand. You could get back fourteen. We’ll do it for you as a favor. You’ll have to sign a waiver. I’ll go get it. But, let’s hurry it up, shall we?” He walked to an office and came back with some papers. Yitsi looked at him, looked at the papers, looked at the salesmen waiting by the parts counter, looked at the customers examining the green and blue sports vans in the showroom, and then wrote down his name.

       “At least you didn’t have to pay in yen,” the salesman said. He showed his sense of finance with these words. He indicated his understanding of foreign peoples, his take on purchasing and earning, his view of the human soul, a sense of separateness from the discoveries all people make frequently in their waking hours and the desire to have the deal done with and out of the way.

       Yitsi stood at the bus stop for thirty minutes. He took the bus home the ten miles to Transcona. He walked up to his apartment and looked out over the train tracks, almost empty of movement or boxcars. Feeling quaint, faint, sweaty, tired, alone, cold, needful, sleepy, wrung out, wide, tall, thin, flexible, barefoot, uncentered, shod, bendable, rigid, and certain, he spoke finally.

       “At least I didn’t have to pay in yen.” He closed the curtain and turned his face into the room.