The girls were eating waffles. Quincy and the younger cousins had already eaten their breakfast at ten a.m. and were working themselves up to demanding an adult to make them an air fryer tray filled with hot chicken nuggets.
Blessing, Mila and Emery were downstairs at the dining table. It was nearly one o’clock. Lizzie handed John to Mila.
“When I get my license next week,” Mila said. “We are all going to take that self-defense course I was talking about.”
“What?” Blessing said, startled.
“We have to watch out, you know, with those human traffickers.” Mila pushed her plate away, as John’s hands reached out over the pool of syrup.
“How much is it?” Emery asked.
“Two hundred and fifty dollars per block. Of sessions.” Mila said.
“Is it worth it?” Blessing asked.
“Yes, every Saturday.” Mila said. “You have the money, right? I know Emery has the spare change.”
“Yeah,” Blessing said. “I have it.”
“You sure?” Emery asked.
“It’s strange….” Blessing said, thinking of her binder, "My Syndicate."
“What?” Mila asked.
“Someone’s been filling up my savings folder.”
“What?” Emery said.
“The money just appeared one day. Like the drawings.”
“What drawings?” Mila asked.
“How much?” Emery asked.
“Like six hundred dollars. And some change.”
Mila stared at Blessing. “What about the drawings?” she asked.
Gator checked his phone after Tirzah dropped him off at the Holiday Inn in Longmont.
He was looking for a message from Emery. She had said that she was spending New Year’s Eve at her aunt’s house. She hadn’t written to him yet. He went upstairs to shower. He took out a thin manuscript from under his shirt. It had been a surprise to find the manuscript tucked into Lolly’s hat in the hallway. Wherever Lolly had gone in a hurry, he’d left without his cowboy hat.
The top of the manuscript read:
UNCLE JACK AND THE ROCK LIZARD QUEEN/Keith Abbott/1046 Grant Street Longmont CO
Gator didn’t take Lolly’s hat, he just tried it on for fun. Because of his slanted eyes, thin face and brown toned skin, Gator looked like Hollywood's idea of a Mexican felon in Lolly’s cowboy hat. Gator removed the manuscript when no one was looking. Not even Moses saw him steal the manuscript. “Imagine,” Gator said to himself, “keeping a secret from Moses.”
Gator read the manuscript, looking for enlightenment:
Uncle Jack’s wife made lizards out of river rocks. She called herself Selena, The Rock Lizard Queen and said that was her “stage name”, like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. She sure didn’t look like a jungle queen. She was short, chunky and wore Levis and boots, but that didn’t stop her from billing herself The Rock Lizard Queen. Uncle Jack and Selena drove to craft fairs from Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula, selling rock lizards. Actually, Selena did all the dealing. Uncle Jack mostly drank. From his aluminum lawn chair in the back of their van, he’d watch the people and hoist a few beers.
Sometimes the craft shows were not outside, they were in a shopping mall. That’s when Uncle Jack would do his bird calls. The acoustics were better there. “And there’s no competition, either.” That was his one joke. :”Don’t do bird calls outside, too much competition.”
If Selena could get the space, she usually set up her rock lizard display around the mall fountain. The backdrop of water was a selling point for her lizards along with Uncle Jack imitating birds. Selena sold those rock lizards right and left when he did those bird calls.
Before Uncle Jack married Selena, he had a TV repair shop. He had sold that when he married her. “I don’t want to distract me from my young wife.” She was only ten years younger than him.
Anyway, Uncle Jack only did his bird whistles when he had half a load on. Selena had to tick Uncle Jack away in the van, though, if he started making TV noises instead of bird calls. That meant he was in the bag. He imitated a TV set going on the blink. “This is a Tube Zenith.”
People sometimes thought that a Tube Zenith was the name of a bird. Uncle Jack liked that a whole lot, stringing them along and making up fake names. “And this is an old Motorola Squeezix,” as he cut loose with a sound like a siren being fed through a garbage disposal. That was about the only fun Uncle Jack had, besides his beer and Selena.
Their van was converted from Uncle Jack’s TV business. He put a big bubble window on the side. At one of the craft shows Selena persuaded an artist to draw a bunch of lizards around that window. All the lizards’ heads were pointed towards the window, as if they were trying to see in. They drew a lot of comments.
“Sometimes we get so carried away,” Selena used to say, “we forget to draw the curtains and the lizards gather around.” She only said that after the late afternoon crowds thinned out and she’d been helping Uncle Jack with his beer.
During the summer, Uncle Jack and Selena traveled from show to show. In between they camped out by the rivers and Selna got what she needed to make her rock reptiles. She carried her whole kit with her: portable generator,paint, glue, grinders, sanders and polishers.
“My summers are prospecting rocks and selling lizards and getting it on with my cutie here.”
All the circuit riders had stories about Selena saying things like that. Somehow, with an older man like Jack, it was okay. Selena was real out front about sex. Uncle Jack would look down into his beer and smile when she got to going on. He let her do the talking. The other craft show regulars loved it when Selena hinted around like that.
“You heard of pet rocks?” Uncle Jack said to the regulars sometimes. “Well, I’ve got a couple for Selena.”
Sex in the RVs and campers was the in-joke among the folks. If a van was tilted one way or the other, someone’d ask, “Which side of the van do you sleep on, honey? You ought to try the other side, your rig’s getting lopsided.”
When they bedded down for the night, Selena hung a big red OCCUPIED sign over the bumper. She bought it from an antique dealer. The sign was steel and enamel and weighed close to five pounds. When the van swayed, the sign swayed too. “I got it for our honeymoon,” Selena said, “but that’s not over yet.”
Her best business came the first year she was on the tour. That year Pet Rocks were all the craze. She branched out into making rock frogs and lizards. The year after that she did okay, and then the third year the idea was about worn out. Her customers were mostly children. By then Selena and Uncle Jack were regulars on the craft circuit and they knew everybody who worked it west of the Cascades.
I got to know all about them in the third year when things were still going good for Uncle Jack and Selena. They were my neighbours, and lived across the road. In the summer I kept my eye on Uncle Jack and Selena’s house when they were gone. In the winter I heard stories from the circuit regulars who stopped by to keep in touch. While they washed their vans out on the street, they chatted me up with a bunch of Uncle Jack and Selena stories.
The way I ended up on the road with Uncle Jack and Selena started out with money. That fourth summer I wasn’t working because of an injury. Now I was getting along okay, but my disability pay was not that much, I needed some way to sneak a little extra in, and then my painter friend Delancy came over one day. A year earlier I was flush and foolish enough to make a loan to Delancy. Instead of paying it back, he’d drop over to discuss his other debts, just to let me know he was still thinking about my loan.
Delancy looked like the Okies he came from. His folks had migrated up from California to the shipyards in Bremerton during the war. His dad was a welder, and that gave Delancy his start in making stuff. With his tall scrawny build and his shock of red hair, Delancy specialized in pacing around my front room, looking haggard and artistic and in tune with his inner self, of course all the while bitching and moaning about not being able to sell his paintings.
So, to shut him up, I asked him if he had ever tried the local outdoor art shows. I was thinking of Uncle Jack and Selena’s success.
“Gar, I wouldn’t submit to them,” Delancy told me.
“Well, you gallery can only hang your stuff, what?”
“Once every two years,” Delancy said, “but they sell.”
“Sure they do, but you can sell them yourself, can’t you?”
“At those craft fairs? In the malls?”
“How much money do you owe me?”
Delancy did not like to think about that. “Close to, uh…”
“It’s not uh. It’s a thousand,” I said. “And don’t give me that I-am-a-serious-artist-in-tune-with-my-inner-self-not-the-marketplace number. If you sell ten, you’ve made that, right? You could sell the little ones for a hundred, right?”
Delancy looked offended and got some more of my wine, stopping by the picture window. “What am I supposed to do, Gar, get a van and paint a sign on it?” He pointed his long skinny finger toward Uncle Jack’s van across the street. “Delancy, King of the Northwest Sumi? Jesus, Gar, most of the yahoos around here would think Sumi was some kind of Japanese food.”
“Getting off your dead ass in the summer and making a few bucks isn't exactly selling your soul. You know, one thousand, say, is not selling out by any means. And I’d appreciate my money, old buddy.”
“Don’t baby me, man. You ought to stop that patron of the arts crap, Gar. Or take it seriously. Like if you were serious you’d just take out the thousand in trade. I got a new big blue one, of Sumi brush bikers on the highway. Whoosh! All action, motion, blue waves of bikers.
“Where am I going to hang another one of your paintings?"
We hashed over the notion some more. The real reason he didn’t hang his work at these shows was that Delancy hated the idea of submitting his work to what he called “a jury of jerks, artsy-fartsies.”
“Yeah, but what about all this talk about the People, how the Pee-pull would love your work if only the Pee-pull could see it? I don’t think you really believe that Okie proletariat stuff. That’s just good for cadging drinks off the lounge lizards down at the Racoon Tav, right?”
That taunt turned the trick okay, but I was the one who went over to Uncle Jack’s and got the schedules for the upcoming summer fairs. After checking the list over, Delancy submitted his work to the Mercer Island fair first. He sneered about the c=middle class, or the MCers as he called them, getting first crack at his art, but he was pleased when all of it was accepted.
So, come May, the two of us loaded up my pickup and drove to the Mercer Island crafts exhibit. Uncle Jack and Selena were already set up and they’d saved a space for us next to the lizard van. Delancy was hungover, but it only took a few sales before he got antsy about the money and demanded his share.
“What share?”
“Gar, I’m not going to stand here and watch these polyester bushwatypes pick my art because it matches their divan, screw that.” He put out his hand. “Gimme.”
I was not about to play gimme with Delancy, so we haggled. A deal was worked out where we shared the take, that day, but from then on it was twenty-eighty until my thousand bucks was paid off. That was the last I saw of Delancy at any of those fairs. He was satisfied wth bragging down at teh Racoon Tav all summer about how his work was infiltrating the middle-class. But this was how I got to travel with Uncle Jack and Selena during the summer. I always parked next to them and all those rumors of their routines turned out to be true. A pair of comedians, Uncle Jack and Selena were.
Everything went along good until August. That was when they started having their troubles. I first got wind of it when we were up by Everett. I was parked next to Uncle Jack’s van as usual. Business had not been good for them, but they did not seem to mind that much. The company was why they went to the events. A little jealousy flared up when Delancy’s paintings really began to sell around Seattle.
“That’s the fourth one today, isn’t it?” Selena said after the customer left. “Gar, you sure are hitting the jackpot.”
“Fifth.”
“Just for those black and blue smears.” Selena peered at the paintings. “Well, I guess if people see what they are, they’re welcome to buy them.”
“Nothing fancy, They’re landscapes,” I explained. “Hills, valleys, trees and rocks.”
“Gar, you know what’s gonna happen? Pretty soon all you big fancy artists are going to drive us little folks out of business.”
“Tell that to Delancy. I’m no artist. I’m just drawing down my disability and collecting on an old loan on the side. No other way I’m going to get that money back from him.”
“Yeah, but all those people like Delancy are taking the fun out of things. Making us obsolete. More and more youngsters like us are leaving the tour. Getting forced out.”
I said that I hadn’t been around long enough, so I’d have to take her word for it, but I saw that was a possibility. All those housewives with degrees in fine arts were moving in, along with marginally successful artists like Delancy. I’d heard rumors of fights among the selection committees, heavy politics. But that didn’t turn out to be what was really bothering Selena. Uncle Jack came right out with what the real problem was one afternoon when Selena went over to watch the puppet show across the parking lot. He was having another beer when he brought the subject up.
“Gar, does it ever feel bad when it goes?”
“What goes?”
“You know,” Uncle Jack prompted me with a downward hand motion.
I looked at where Uncle Jack was looking to see if I could get a clue. “How do you mean?”
Uncle Jack was looking down at his beer can. “When it. goes. “ He crossed his legs and looked up at me. “When it comes out.”
“I’m sort of in the dark,” I said. Uncle Jack seemed to be thinking that our conversation had been going on for a while, but he often talked that way in the afternoons.
UncleJack moved the beer can off his crotch and with his left hand he made shoofly motions at himself. “When it goes.”
“It doesn’t feel good?”
“Not any more.” He took a drink of beer. “Selena wants me to see a doctor.”
Later, when we were camped out that night over in the county park by the Skagit River, I walked out to gather some firewood with Selena. When we were out of range of Uncle Jack, I asked her about it.
She was blunt, as usual. “I don’t want him to do something that doesn't feel good. He’s been complaining now for some time.”
“He should see someone.”
“That’s what I said.”
We both looked at Uncle Jack. He was drinking a beer beside the campfire, sitting there patient and kind of hopeful like an old dog. He seemed to be getting ready to submit to something, just staring down into his beer can.
“He doesn’t like doctors,” Selena said.
“Who does?”
“But I’ve been missing my good thing,” Selena said. She didn’t say anything more so we cracked off some limbs from a dead pine tree and started back.
After we dropped the firewood just outside the circle of the light from the campfire, she moved over to Uncle Jack and patted his head. “Maybe we won’t have to get a new set of springs for the van,” she joked.
The next night we were down south at the art fair in Bellevue. Uncle Jack went out to a urologist around the corner from the shopping center. When he came back, he talked to Selena some. Then they asked me to take over their table while they were gone. I said sure and they left in a taxi. They didn’t say where they were going. I guessed tests. I sold a couple of frogs. When they didn’t come back by nine that night, I boxed up their rocks and put them in their van and locked it up.
Must have been after ten when they returned. They were both looped. I heard them struggling with the boxes in the van, getting them out of the aisle. I hadn’t known where to stow them in their truck.
That night, after eleven or so, Uncle Jack climbed out of the van and did an imitation of a radio slipping in and out of tune. He stood out there in the moonlight and whistled and babbled and carried on so he damn near woke up the whole camp. Then Selena persuaded him to come to bed.
Since I was parked across from them, I happened to see Selena later that night when I was making a comfort call. I didn’t have a camper, only a shell on my truck so I had to use the portable johnnies. She was sitting on the bumper looking up at the moon and drinking a beer. When I came back, she was gone. I didn’t think about it then, but that was the last time I saw that big red enamel sign on their back bumper.
The end of the summer season shows came next and Uncle Jack and Selena were at all of them, but the sign never came back. About then I began to park around other painters since I noticed that the crowds seemed to shop by aisles. Delancy’s stuff looked even better next to some of the other painters. Nothing to say, really since it was only business, but I did feel uncomfortable enough to take the work to a few fairs across the Cascades where Uncle Jack and Selena never went, just so I could come back and establish a new pattern of parking.
When I got back for the Snohomish show, I noticed Uncle Jack was off the sauce. “Yes,” Selena told everyone, “these older men got to get on the wagon now and then.”
Without a beer in his hand, Uncle Jack didn’t seem to be the same. And during the mall shows that autumn he never cut loose once with his bird calls.
That winter was a rainy one. Delancy came over with his usual cabin fever plans to change his life and the whole world along with it.
“I’m doing tom 4x6ers, for the twenty-five dollar to fifty-nine and ninety-nine cent trade.”
“Delancy, you can mock all you want,” I told him, “but you are no longer in debt. And you have been known since this summer to bring over your own wine. Now that’s an improvement in your spiritual life, I’d say. Plus I understand you have credit now at the Racoon Tav and I’m happy to hear that. Delancy, pour me some more of your Blue Nun, buddy.”
“Who is mocking who? You see, Gar, what my successful summer means…is that the People know what is good,, not those critics and galleries. I’m thinking of making some racks for the outside of the truck so I can display them better.”
“Whoa, don’t make them for my camper. I never said that I would go on tour again.”
“Well, Gar, I’m thinking of going myself.”
“Oh, upset with my salesmanship? Well, here’s a thought. Your public may not want to meet you,” I said. “They prefer dead artists, you know.”
“Yeah, but I ain’t dead, not by a long shot.”
“Well , they don’t know that.”
“Why would they think I kicked the bucket?”
“That’s what I told them.”
“You told them I was dead?” Delancy was furious. “That’s it, Gar, you double crossing bastard, I’m buying a van.”
“Going to take the matter into your own hands?”
“That’s right,” Delancy said. He walked across the room and took another drink of his Blue Nun. “And if I buy it, I won’t even have to spraypaint the damn thing.”
“Spraypaint what damn thing?”
“Your neighbor’s van.”
“How do you know they’re selling it?”
“Answered the ad.” Delancy walked to the front door and opened it. “Let’s go over and have a look. Now, Gar, I’m not saying you didn’t do a good job this summer, but think about having a rack on one side and an ad on the other side of the van. See? It’d say: OWN A DELANCY ORIGINAL. I thought about it. So when I saw your neighbor’s ad, I gave them a ring. Only had no idea it was them.”
“How long ago was that?”
“September.”
“What the hell are they going to do?”
Delancy shrugged and opened the front door for me. We walked across the street and up Uncle Jack’s drive. Delancy reached over Uncle Jack’s fence and unlatched the gate.
“I told them I’d have to have clean sides, if I was to buy it. That’s why I stopped by today. See if they did it.”
I walked in after Delancy. “Did what?”
“Primer it. Primer over that junk on the sides. If they did that, I said I’d buy it.”
Delancy walked over to the concrete slab where the van was parked. He pointed up at the bubble window. A few strips of masking tape fluttered from the chrome trim around the window. Selena’s lizards were gone. All around the bubble was only a cloud of black paint.
‘What did they say they were going to do?”
“Hell, pet rocks,” Delancy said. “Pet rocks went out three years ago.”
When Gator finished reading the sixteen page manuscript he went downstairs to have breakfast. Kim was on duty and made him a white egg omelet. Then he decided to take a nap. He checked his phone again before crawling into bed. He now believed that Keith Kumasen Abbott and Moses were not one and the same person and he wasn’t sure that they had a lot in common. Except death. Writers certainly got a better rap post mortum, after all he had just read the Undiscovered Keith Kumasen Abbott. Gator closed his eyes, picturing rocks with happy faces drawn on them.
Housekeeping discovered him at three p.m.
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