Fiction

 
Photo: D. Waag

The Kneissl Kid:
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The Kneissl Kid - Chapter 4
The ongoing saga of Buck Avery, maybe the best there ever was.
By VICTOR SMITH

November 16th

"Too much noise!" Hedwig yells from the kitchen.

Five minutes ago I informed her that I may not be able to pay the following week's rent for a day or two, and she told me that I can bring my things back and move back in on that particular day. "Mr. Pbrofonski's long-standing policy," she says. So, I'm taking my stuff off the dresser and nightstand, from the pegs along the wall, from the chair and off the floor, and packing them back into my duffel. I haul the duffel down the stairs and drop it off the front of the porch. I go back up, two at a time, my season's pass swinging back and forth at the end of the lanyard around my neck. No problem, I'm thinking; I have a pass, the rest is easy.

I grab my poles, hang my boots around my neck, and shoulder my skis. I turn toward the door, banging ski tips into the wall; removing a cowboy's eye, trailing a curtain from the lone window.

"Too much noise!" Hedwig yells.

I take my last load down the stairs where Hedwig informs me at the bottom that she may not have a room later that week after all. That's okay, I'm thinking, because I definitely won't have any money.

So we bid goodbye. The wrinkled hand that I kissed so elegantly last week now holds a large wooden spoon at the end of an arm akimbo at her side. Her other hand snatches the curtain from my ski tip and returns to the other hip, balancing the menace before me. "You are lucky Mr. Pbrofonski is not here!" she mutters as she turns and closes the door.

I shoulder the duffel, carefully arrange my skis and poles under opposite arms, and straddle the uni. I kick off and I'm free again, totally free and ready for the next day of the rest of my life. I head back down Main Street for the bridge, stashing everything except the uni back underneath before turning around toward Sam's.

Marie slides into the booth, as usual, flipping pages on her order pad in case Sam's looking, but I don't tell her that I am homeless. What good would that do. She's already been sneaking me food for the last couple of days and pretending I've been paying for my coffee. But it's not like we've got the type of chemistry yet that would make her take me in, or anything. Besides, I'll have a place again real soon, as long as I find a job.

Sam ever hire anybody around here? I ask, I may decide to take a position someday, you know.

"Not till the season gets up and running, anyway," she says. "What do you do?"

Now, this stops me cold. I can do a lot of things, but most do not lend themselves to regular paychecks. Mrs. Kiss-ass up the hill apparently won't pay me to teach what I do best, and there aren't any other sure bets except the circus, riding the uni. I may be the best there ever was, and I could definitely get a clown job or something by just pedaling on in, but who wants that? What do I do? Well, let's see...I get fired a lot. I ski. I watch people. I drink beer.

Most anything needs to get done, I say. Cooking, painting, advertising, financial management.

"Coffee to start?" she asks, rolling her eyes.

Sure, I answer, And ask Sam to step over when he's got a minute.

Marie slides out, brushing down the back of her short waitress skirt as she walks quickly toward the kitchen. I am again struck by the way she walks, the swing of her hips below the abrupt indentation of her waist, the tightness of her blouse across the bra strap dividing her receding back. Oh, Marie!

But today it is Sam who walks back bringing my coffee. I am struck by all he has that Marie does not possess: the pigeon-toed waddle, the belly that precedes his presence, the sweat beading up on top of his balding forehead. He slides in without grace.

"Marie says you want to see me?" he announces, without expression.

Yeah, I say, You need a good man around here?

"Got one," he says, poking himself in the chest with his thumb.

I mean someone else so you can, like, relax once in a while, I say, Someone like me. I poke myself in the chest with my own thumb.

Sam smiles and tries to hide it with the back of his hand, turning it into an artificial yawn. I know he's doing this because it's a trick I used to use all the time in high school, like every time I made fake fanny-burp noises when Mr. McKenzie was writing formulas on the board. C'mon, Sam, be a little more subtle if you're going to do things like that.

"Well, now," Sam says, "I could do with a little more help these cold mornings. You have any objection to bartering?"

I'm thinking that this started out with the need for immediate cash, but I can be flexible. Might as well see what he has in mind. What do you have in mind? I ask.

"You come in every morning at 6-6:30 to do the cleaning and set-up before we open. You work for an hour or so and I cook you anything you want for breakfast, within reason anyway," he says, looking me over, probably thinking I'll turn him down flat. But with my belly rumbling like thunder and my wool shirt hanging looser and looser on my shoulders, pride just has to take a back seat to survival for the time being.

Well, Sam...can I call you Sam? I say, I'd be pleased to work for you.

"Good, good," he says, "but call me Jimmy. Sam died four years ago, right after he sold the place to me."

Well, Jesum, I'm thinking. Just change the name. You have to use a dead man's name to bring in business? That's really sick. Just change it. If I owned a p...Ave, Ave? Is this what you really need now? You’d be better of...figure I should just say okay and find out when he wants me to start.

Okay, I say, When do I start?

Jimmy straightens up in the booth and starts his slide to the right. "How about tomorrow morning?" he asks.

Six a.m. sharp! I blurt out, Do I get my own set of keys?

"I'll meet you here in the morning to show you what gets done. We'll talk about that later," he says, bending forward to get some extra inertia for his next attempt to get upright again. He releases a little fanny-burp with the effort and doesn't seem to notice. I wave my menu around behind his back and wink at Marie as he waddles off.

I leave Sam's and look up at the mountain over the roof of the building. I hear the snowguns doing their best to lay down enough cover for the area to open. The distant roar of the guns is reassuring, even if the weather report still calls for dry weather through the end of the month.

I decide to check on my stuff before looking around for more work. I vault the guardrail, stumble a little, and slide under just as a Huntington truck pulls up. I peek around and see two maintenance guys get out. One spits tobacco juice over the guardrail right in my direction before pulling a ladder out of the bed of the truck. In another circumstance I might come out from under the bridge to give him holy heck for such bad manners, but I don't particularly want to get discovered down here before I get a new place to live. And who knows when that will be.

They prop the ladder up on the post holding the big Huntington sign next to the bridge. One asks, "Ray, you wanna hold this thing so's I don't fall off, add another crack to my ass?"

Ray responds, "Fuck you, Jack. I'm the letter man," and spits my way again.

Jack goes up one, two steps, then wiggles the ladder left and right to test it. "You don't wanna hold it, don't hold it," he says. "Just hand me the right letters."

"Hope you know how to spell," says Ray, spitting again, "'Cause I don't."

There are now a dozen phlegmy, brown oysters next to the bridge where I have to climb back up. I am getting really aggravated, but I hold my temper.

"Okay, now," says Jack, "I need a 'O', a 'P', an 'E', a..."

"Slow down, slow down," says Ray, hawking another huge one almost into the creek, "You're getting paid by the hour, what's the goddam rush?"

"We'd be here all day if you were in charge," says Jack. "But I'd still be the one to catch the shit from Barnacre for your stupid-ass spelling."

They grouse back and forth as letters are passed up, some back down. "Just give me the capital letters, you know, the big ones?" says Jack. "Can't even see them little shits from the road."

"Yeah, well, they'll be turning in here tomorrow anyway," says Ray, leaning out and hawking a very runny one right next to my leg. Right next to my leg. This is the last straw. I scrabble out from under the bridge and up the gravelly embankment, carefully avoiding the worst of the disgusting spittle. Jack and Ray watch in astonishment as I tumble headlong over the guardrail, breathing like a she-bear and cursing out French words I didn't even think I knew. Jack slides down all the way from the top of the ladder using only the side rails, anticipating trouble.

What the hell you doing? I ask neither in particular, until I see the lump in Ray's cheek and turn his way. Why you have to spit that foul, fucking shit, 'scuse my French, down at me like that?

Well, they both look like they've just seen a ghost. They must think I'm some kind of troll or something and start backing up toward the truck, leaving the ladder up against the sign.

"Hey, cool off, man," suggests Ray. "Sorry if I got any on you or anything." He turns and spits to his left, over the other railing this time. "Okay, Billy, you done?"

"Yeah," he says, moving slowly to retrieve the ladder, "close enough." I guess his name must be Billy. They back into the truck and drive off with Ray craning around to look at me.

I look up at the sign and see what they were putting up:
 

Whooo hooo! I hoot, jumping up and down, lurching in circles, my pass flinging this way and that at the end of its lanyard, Whooo hooo!

But now I figure I've been discovered and I'd better do something quick about a new place to live. I don't need Barnacre coming down to take all my stuff, and I sure don't need to talk to Dudley Dooright about it. So I slide back down and quick fill up my duffel with my four blankets and my clothing. I toss my skis and poles out toward the guardrail and grab my boots and the uni. I pull everything up to road level, lean the skis against the guardrail and throw the duffel strap over my shoulder. I retie my inner bootlaces together and hang them around my neck and I pick up my poles. I get positioned behind the uni and get aboard, missing my skis as I try to pick them up. I balance on the uni and then do a circle to approach the skis again. On my second try I scoop them up under my arm without falling and pedal off toward Main Street. I think for a second that I might try stashing my stuff at Andrea's for a day or two. But then I think of the potential consequences and decide to figure this out on my own.

There's nothing in the world quite like riding a unicycle down a street in a little ski town carrying all your earthly belongings with nowhere to go. I would bet my pass and every penny in my pocket that this has never been done before, by anyone, anywhere, ever. Anyway, no one can do it as well as I do because I am maybe the best there ever was. I can pedal, I can balance, I can wink large at the cars, but I just can't figure out what to do next. And I really don't want Dudley Dooright running up on me again right now. So I turn down the first street I come —Street—and pedal three blocks before it dead-ends at the creek.

I stop at the little cul-de-sac and dismount, Buck-style, after dropping my skis carefully onto the grass. I am as alone as I have ever been, except maybe while I was at Marcy State the day before my roommate moved in. If I had a cigarette, I'd be smoking it now. If I had a beer I'd be drinking it now. If I had a home, I wouldn't even be here. One sorry-ass cowboy I am feeling at the moment.

But like everything else in my priceless life, this passes and I set my sights on the important priorities, like the future. I look around the quiet street and notice that the third house from the end has a very convenient-looking shed nestled into the trees at the edge of the back lawn. Too small to live in, but just right for my stuff until I come up with something better. But first, I knock on the front door of the house to be sure nobody is home. My plan is to act real nonchalant and make like an obnoxious religious zealot if someone answers the door. I figure that talking about Jesum and his twelve disciplines, the precious promise of salivation, ought to put most people off and get their minds distracted from what I really intend to do. But no one answers and there's nobody else around on this glorious Friday before opening day. So I gather up my bristling load and trot back to the shed.

The little shed shelters a lawn mower, various garden tools, a charcoal grill, two bicycles, three folding aluminum chairs, and a plastic pail full of children's beach paraphernalia. This says a lot about the family living here, I'm thinking. Most everything is here for winter storage, so I figure that it's a safe bet my stuff won't get discovered any time soon. I begin hiding things here and there until I realize that anyone just walking in would see them anyway. So I leave them in the back corner and head around the front of the house. I scope out the neighborhood, noting that the shed can be reached by scrambling up from the creek if I need to get back in without crossing the lawn, without leaving tracks in the snow that’s sure to come. It's too small to sleep in, but I don't really have that in mind anyway.

It's heavily overcast with a light breeze that feels twice as strong as it really is. I button my trench to the collar and hunch my shoulders as I spin back over to Main to make my rounds of the town's soda and cigarette machines.


She sits down next to me on the stool without seeing anything but my back. She orders a whiskey sour and I recognize the voice immediately. I am in the Troubadour—where the more upscale local residents seem to flock—with its quiet barstools, comfortable lighting, and a bartender wearing a necktie.

So how's Mrs. Kistler? I ask, turning her way. Have you finally come down off the mountain to offer me a job?

Mrs. Kistler looks over at me, then down at her name tag, which she begins to unpin from her sweater. She smiles.

"It's Miss Kistler," she says, pocketing the name tag. "Mr. Barnacre insists on the Mrs. so that I don't give men the wrong impression, or so he says."

What kind of impression would that be? I ask, remembering the impression she left me with.

"Oh, that I'm available or something like that," she says. "It's like covering your face over there in Saudi Arabia, or something. He doesn't want young sluts out front in his organization. Making me wear the name tag kind of makes me wonder if he thinks I'm a young slut. I almost forgot to take it off in here. He'd fire me in a heartbeat if he saw me in here with it on."

What's his problem? I ask.

"Born again...and probably again and again after that," she answers. "He thinks he's God's soldier sent to keep this town wrapped up nice and tight with the ribbon of eternal promise."

Oh, I know all about salivation, I say. Live and let live, so long as he doesn't close the bars.

"Would if he could," she says, "except that he's in the ski business and knows better."

Well, I can tell you that up north in the real mountains, at McCauley and Big Tupper where I came up, they all say the ski industry runs on electricity and alcohol, I say, tipping my glass her way in a toast. And I've done my share.

"What," she asks, "the electricity?"

Very, very funny, I say.

You know, you really ought to do something about your bedside manner at work up there, I continue, nodding my head in the general direction of the mountain. Keep putting off people like me and one day, mark my words, one day your business is going right down the toilet.

"Not my business," she replies, sipping her whiskey sour. "I listen to Barnacre, I do the hiring, firing, and front office work. I get paid enough to come in here every once in a while for a quick one while he's not around. Then I go home. Then I go back up there. That's as far as that goes."

Huh, I say, I'd give my left ball to work there teaching.

"Well," she says, "you'd have to give up a lot more than that, like about five inches of hair off your head and face, for example."

Well, that's not happening anytime soon, I say. I got two balls, ‘scuse my French, only one head.

Mrs. Kistler upends the rest of her whiskey sour and turns the stool toward the door. "Time to head on home," she says, yawning. She gets up off the stool and walks across the bar, her stretch pants doing the job, her pumps elevating her heels three-four inches off the floor.

Hey, I yell as she opens the door, Nice shoes. See you tomorrow.

I decide that staying here for the time being is better than being out in the cold, but it costs money every time I come in. I count out another dollar and a quarter of my precious change and signal the bartender. He brings me another Utica Club which I intend to nurse for at least another hour and a quarter or so.

This is a real nice place, I'm thinking; full of decent furniture for a bar, nothing broken, nice lighting, basketry hanging on the walls. Basketry always makes a place look homey and comfortable. And, by Criminy, I'm feeling more comfortable by the minute. I spin the stool around and lean back against the mahogany, surveying the sparse crowd. There are things I definitely need to remember about this place, so I turn back around and reach across the bar for a couple of napkins. I spin back to face the room and pull my girlie pen from my shirt pocket.

Five burly-looking guys come in, attracting immediate attention from the bartender who walks around to the table they have taken next to the jukebox. I can't hear what he's saying, because one of them has wasted a good quarter on some really stupid, loud song about a ribbon tied around some tree in front of somebody's hou...Simmer down, Ave, remember what they say about minding your own busi...never listen to crap like that. And the five guys look like they're arguing with him. Finally he starts walking back, then turns around toward the table, raising a finger. "Just one," is all I hear him say. Jesum, turn it down, I'm thinking.

I ask the bartender what's up over there once he's back and pouring beers. "They're snowmakers going on their night shift at 7, want to get ready early, I guess," he says. "I threw them out two weeks ago, banned them, but, as you can see, they're back. Told them one beer is all they get today. See how they behave, maybe they can earn their way back in."

Why bother, I say. All they have to do is walk down street to the Klondike. They'll serve anybody in that Shit-hole, 'scuse my French.

"Lot of people prefer the atmosphere—and the language—in here," he says, picking up the tray with five beers.

I take some notes on the napkin and fold it, put it back in my pocket. I shake my girlie pen and watch her titties spin around in the snow. Crack me up.

I am beginning to feel like I have enough research and field notes to begin my story. I pat the wad of napkins in my pants pocket and decide that now is the time. Right here, right now. The only way to ever get anything done is to just get it done, as Mom says. My only question is where, maybe how. I stretch and walk to the men's Room, which is identified by a little top hat. The door next to it has a little bonnet. I know, just like everybody else, that I do some of my best thinking on the can. It's always a good place to sit and figure things out quietly and without pressure. So I go in and pick the stall next to the far wall.

Man, I'm thinking, so this is how it starts. My mind's eye flashes forward to a vision of myself sitting in front of a typewriter, at a desk, in front of an open fire, a pipe in my mouth, next to a window, in a beautifully appointed library. But enough of that; I sit where I sit—right here, right now—and today I begin my trip toward that glorious destination. It hits me that the future is about as real as Santy Claus, and the past...well, that's another story entirely. I suddenly see—with all the clarity and focus that only a bathroom stall can provide—that all I really have is right here, right now. It's the only place in life where anything really happens, where you can actually do something; kind of sangwiched in between the things you'd rather forget about and the rest of things that just come out of nowhere. So I take out my girlie pen and begin.

The back of the stall door has only one small area of rather disgusting graffiti, over which I mark a bold "X." I begin above it, indenting the first paragraph of what is sure to become a most sought-after novel some day.

"You all right in there?" I hear the bartender call through the door.

Oh, yeah, I say, I am definitely all right in here. I write for another five or so minutes and decide to pocket the pen for awhile and go back out, let my heart slow down a little and finish my beer.

I hoist myself to standing and pull up my pants. "Fucking pervert," I hear the bartender mutter as I return to the bar where I find that my half-full beer is altogether missing. The bartender gestures toward the door with his eyes and chin.

What? I ask.

"Out," he says. "We generally go home for that kind of thing around here."

Huh? I say.

"Out," he repeats, and I decide not to create a scene, on this day at least. I'll have to come back, though. It's my job.

On the porch, I lean the uni against the wall and take out a clean napkin. With my girlie pen I write a "1" and "Troubadour, door 3," using the porch railing as a desk. This will be my table of contents. I smile, thinking that I'll need a bunch of napkins before I'm through with this particular project.

I am consumed with anticipation, but I have hours before I ski tomorrow. I smile and kiss the pass hanging around my neck, and I decide to check out Momma's to kill some time. I don't know why I haven't been in here yet, it being a bar and all. I walk up the porch steps and almost knock on the front door; it looks so much like a plain old house from the outside. But instead I push it open and find myself in a foyer just like the one at Hedwig's: kitchen down the hall, living room to the right, dining room to the left. Except the living room has a plywood bar set up against the far wall and three tables lined up against the other. There is an old man sitting at one of the stools, bent forward over something, the hunch of his back almost hiding the fact that he has a head. He is the only person in the room.

I leave the uni next to the umbrella stand in the foyer and sit down two stools away from the geezer. I spin around to take a gander. It still looks like someone's living room except for the tables. There are pictures of flowers and a couple of snowy landscapes thumb-tacked up on the walls. There is a portrait of an old man in a three-piece suit and beard, his eyes burning and looking straight at me no matter how I rock from side to side. Just to make sure, I get off the stool and walk across the room where he still stares at me. I walk around to the other corner and he follows me over here with his eyes. Weird. The man at the bar does not move and I wonder if he's dead. There's no mirror behind the bar, just a half-dozen bottles and a row of assorted glasses on a breakfront. There is an old-style refrigerator next to the bar which I figure holds the beer.

There's no bartender anywhere that I can see. I am thirsty and I still have a little change left, so I sit down facing the door and put two fingers in my mouth. My whistle startles the man at the bar, nearly knocking him off the stool. He faces me with a grimace, without a word. I hear footsteps down the hall and, presently, an old lady walks in wiping her hands on her apron.

"Who's the asshole?" she growls, looking in, seeing only the two of us.

Don't know, haven't seen him lately, I reply, figuring she probably knows the geezer, may even be her husband, for all I know. Buck, Buck Avery, I say.

She walks around the end of the short bar and stands there looking at me. Seems like that's what a lot of people do the first time they meet me. I take the initiative and ask for a beer. She walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out a Budweiser.

Got anything else? I ask.

"No," she says. "Want it or not?"

Sure, I say. It's not beer, but it's not bad.

"Two," she says, setting it in front of me.

No, thanks, I say, or at least I'll finish this one first. I smile at the quality of the joke she walked into on that one.

"Two dollars," she clarifies, holding out her hand, palm up.

I reach in my pocket and pull out a handful of change and the dollar bill I just won by showing a drunk snowmaker in the Troubadour parking lot that I can ride the uni with my eyes closed. He didn't want to pay up at first, but he was pretty impressed and I guess he decided it was more important to honor his bet than to have somebody like me following him all over town. I slide out the larger coins first, working down toward the nickels, counting by fives. She moves to take the dollar, but I stop her in mid-reach, having counted far enough to realize I probably have change for the beer. I slide the pile of coins her way and pocket the bill. She huffs and corrals the coins, sliding the pile toward the edge of the bar. She opens a beat-up metal cash box and begins segregating the coins, shaking her head.

Hey, it's money, I say, taking a tug at the bottle of Bud, wincing. So, where's the jukebox? I ask.

"You want music, go down street to the Troubadour," she says, wiping the bar with a dishrag. The old man sits, hunched and speechless.

Been there, I say. It kind of sucks in there, ‘scuse my French. You got a men's room?

She points to the hall with her dishrag. "Second door," she says. "Open the window, use the spray."

It's a cold bathroom, with nothing to identify it gender-wise. The window is already open, giving the feeling it stays that way all winter. The walls are papered in a geometric zigzag pattern that makes my vision flip back and forth uncomfortably. No place to write, I'm thinking. So I trickle, flush, fanny-burp, and follow up with the can of Glade just to see how well it works.

As I sit back at the little bar to nurse my watery beer, it hits me that everything I've done today, everywhere I've been, has been to avoid the fact that I have absolutely no place to sleep now that I've been evicted from under the bridge. It's getting dark and I need to deal with this aspect of my life sooner or later, the sooner the better. I also need to think about my dwindling finances and the fact that I will need more food than Sam's big breakfast once I start burning it off on the trails tomorrow morning.

I thank Momma for the beer and her hospitality. I salute the inert form two stools down the line and wave to the nosy guy in the picture. I grab my uni and head out the door and down the steps to the street. I straddle it and begin pedaling back toward Treman Street to sit down and figure things out. I see lights on in the house, so I ride to the cul-de-sac and take the path between two houses leading down to the creek. Carrying the uni makes it that much harder to walk along the creekbank, but I'm certainly not leaving it out by the street somewhere. I skirt the back of a well-kept yard and climb back up right behind the shed. It's tough scrambling up a steep bank like this, and I really must be a sight to behold in the dark, where I can't see what my feet are doing. But it's dark and no one can see me any better than I see myself, so I slip inside and close the door.

The smell of uninterrupted cold creeps up my nostrils while my eyes adjust to the dark. I decide, through process of elimination, that this looks more and more like a bedroom to me, for tonight at least. I rummage in the dark and locate my four blankets which I arrange on a selection of cardboard someone has conveniently left stacked against a side wall. I button my trench to the throat and use rubber bands to cinch up the cuffs of my shirt and pants. I pull my watch cap down low and curl up under the blankets. I can't stretch out, but this "ain't the fucking Moulin Rouge," as Marie would say. With this thought I begin to get aroused, but I know that, under the circumstances, it's too cold to address that particular issue right here, right now.


Tune in next time as The Kneissl Kid actually goes skiing. Huntington Pass may never be the same.


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