Lettuce Soup
By M.J. Antoniak
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Lettuce Soup
A Dose of Hope • A Dash of Cure
By M.J. Antoniak
Published by M.J. Antoniak at Smashwords.com
Copyright 2010 by Michael J. Antoniak
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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For Miriam:
A reader for every writer
who left too soon
to read this
****
The book is a satire. If you find offense in any character, depiction or setting, please lighten up. It’s all fiction: any parallels to persons, companies or situations, real or imagined, are purely coincidental.
With sincere appreciation for your time and interest,
M.J. Antoniak
9/09/09
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Part I: Mountain Jam
So, this will change everything?
He paused in the aisle, carefully re-reading the label. The clerk with the double pierced eyebrow and chrome ring through his lower lip assured him was “exactly!” what he needed: Bovine Tracheal Cartilage.
Jack tried not to react to the piercings, or blue streaks in the boy behind the counter’s otherwise orange hair, and had done a pretty good job of it. Now the clerk was putting on the fey, he thought, a further attempt to elicit reaction. Maybe he talked that way all the time. Jack Schlitz didn’t care.
“Lately, my joints have been aching after running and I was wondering if there’s something I could take.....”
Elie— that’s what the rainbow colored badge read— nodded too eagerly and led Jack to the “Mature Remedies” banner at the opposite wall, past shelves loaded with soy and rice crackers, Chinese gin-ZING. Something called “Lady’s Friend.” Children’s vitamins shaped like endangered creatures of the rain forest.
Elie ran a finger back and forth from shelf to shelf beneath the “For Seniors” header, bolder and brighter than the ceiling banner announcing this as the old folks’ section. Jack wondered if he should feel insulted. Three rows down Elie paused and pulled a large blue, black and green bottle, then skimmed the label with a finger done up in black nail polish.
He read aloud, as if by rote “...scientific studies suggest, in their natural form, ingredients such as these could play a supportive role in ensuring normal maintenance of natural systems ....Yeah, this is what you want,” he assured Jack, nodding.
“Elie---is it Elie or EElie?---what’s it supposed to do?” he asked.
“EEE Lie, short for Orenthal,” the clerk exaggerated with a deepened voice, sounding almost authoritative. “For someone active like yourself, this is what many professional athletes use, a well kept secret mind you .... naturally obtained organic compounds to provide much needed nutritional support for your systems.”
He paused, pursed his lips as if searching for the right words, and continued.
“Let me explain. Your body simply can’t get enough of these compounds from a regular diet, even a healthy diet. As part of the aging process we begin to deplete the stores which are with us at birth.”
That much seemed to make sense. “But why tracheal cartilage?” Jack pressed.
“They—cows, BOVINES— are our brothers in the animal kingdom,” Elie explained. “Our bodies, especially the skeletal system, the joint structures, are very similar.”
Really?, Jack wondered but before he could ask tubular bells sounded and Elie looked away to wave at a woman who had just entered the store. Jack glimpsed a hat and bleached white hair. “One of my best customers,” Elie confided quietly. “She’ll try ANYthing!”
Jack took the bottle from his hand, and damned the printing industry conspiracy against those over 40 as he strained to read the label at arm’s length. He could barely make out that there were words there, his arm just wasn’t long enough.
“We’ve got marigold extract for the eyes right here,” Elie informed him, stooping for a golden bottle on a lower shelf.
“Let me start slowly, with this,” Jack cut him off.
Elie nodded, and led back to the counter, pausing along the way for a few words with the woman he addressed as “MezzCherie.” Jack noted thick makeup, heavy eyelashes and a flash of gold. She jumbled a lame purse and Shitsu dog Elie patted and pretended to kiss before turning toward the counter.
“That will be $24.95 for a full months supply!” he smiled, punching the cash register keys.
Pricey Jack thought, hesitating briefly to reach for his wallet.
“And if for any reason you’re not completely satisfied within 30 days, bring it back in for a FULL refund!” Elie assured him.
What the hell, Jack thought, handing over a $20 and a $10. It’s worth a try.
2
I haven’t changed since I’m 19....even if this body suggests otherwise.
Jack argues that point with the mirror, especially on waking, looking across the bedroom past Aggie at the seasoned stranger staring back. There’s a hint of his father in the graying temples, the smile curves, winced eyes and gradual sag hanging from his frame.
The old body aches, especially the left knee on rising, mornings after a run.
Still, he treasures the run enough it’s worth the pain. For a few miles, the jog is a retreat into his own world, a break for meditation on a full menu of worries, respite from the chaos of a house with six kids where the quiet girl he married must raise her voice regularly, shrill even, to maintain order, to keep peace.
It’s a decent life they’ve built together, and except for a few missing pieces– ones money might buy– theirs could be that suburban dream he grew to believe in, reared on a TV diet of Donna Reed, Dick Van Dyke and The Cleavers.
The clock is turning. He studies the red diode face of their digital alarm, then glances to the calendar on the wall, the bank’s yearly giveaway.
Even by generous calculations generous, he’s probably halfway to oblivion, barring any unplanned intervention of fate. Some days he thinks in terms of all he can do with tomorrow; this is one of those “where has the time gone, what have I done?” mornings.
So he’s comfortably preoccupied with the mundane: “I don’t like my job,” he admits in silence.
“It’s not that I don’t like it, really, it’s just that I wish I could do something else… or not have to do anything, really.”
Really.
To get up one morning and not worry anymore: Where will the money will come from? How can we afford it? At least, to give the kids grander options than state college. A car with air conditioning that works. A new roof. The electrical system is aching to be replaced. And what about saving for retirement....
“Re–tie-her-ment, I spoke the word as if a wedding vow,” he sings softly to himself and laughs.
“What’s so funny?” Aggie wants to know, stretching awake, reacting to the slight smile shaping his mouth.
“Planning our retirement,” he announces.
“When can I start packing?” she wants to know.
He shrugs, walks out of the room and down the stairs, flexing a bicep at the mirror before receding from view. He wanders in on the little guys gathered before the TV, building with Legos. In the kitchen he can tell who’s up and gone by the bowls left on the table, the cereal boxes open on the counter. Rice Krispies. Fruit Loops. Alpha Bits.
He pours two cups of coffee, adds milk to hers, studies out the kitchen window the row of fences stretching down the block. The whole neighborhood is just waking up, except Mr. Bobby Jones. He’s already at work, hoeing dirt in his garden three doors down, in button down short sleeve Oxford shirt, blue shorts and dark socks pulled up to the knees.
Old men don’t give a damn about how they look,” Jack thinks. “Almost there, and I won’t either,” he assures himself.
Sips from his cup, leans back and stretches side to side, starts to squat. “Ouch,” that damn knee again. Tight, grinding sensation deep within.
He takes the bottle of Bovine Blue from the shelf above the sink, uncaps it, struggles with the protective seal and cotton. He smells glue, gooey rubber cement from the red dispensing top. forgotten about since grade school.
Jack spills out two capsules, the recommended dosage, holds them up against the window. Clear caps filled with a barely transparent milky liquid, thick with tiny bubbles, maybe some type of impurities—“cartilage?”— suspended in them.
He downs the two, chased with a gulp of coffee, rolls his knee and savors the grinding sensation.
“We’ll see,” he announces as Aggie enters the kitchen.
3
“See what?” she wants to know, raising the coffee to her lips.
“See how beautiful you are in the morning,” he smiles.
She smirks, smiles too. “More proof the eyes are first thing to go.” They laugh, she reaches across for the uncapped bottle still in his hand.
Aggie strains to read the print. “What’s this?”
“For my joints...they’ve been giving me a lot of trouble lately and Poorah suggested I try this stuff.”
“Poorah?”
“The Indian girl at work, kind of. I‘m not sure really, she dresses like a Hippie, kind of light skinned for an Indian, but she’s Hindu, I know that much.”
“Hindi,” Aggie corrects him.
“You sure?”
She shrugs, sits down at the table still struggling to decipher the label. “What’s in this stuff?”
“Cartilage....from cows,” Jack admits,betraying his own doubts. hint of doubt. “For my joints.”
Aggie raises her eyebrows and nods slowly. “Oh, from cows, I see…O---K!”
“I’ll try it, see what happens...Can’t hurt.”
She raises the uncapped bottle to her nose. “Smells like.....”
“Glue!” he says before she can.
“That’s it,” she agrees. “Isn’t glue cheaper?”
He shrugs his, eases into a chair. They hold hands, share plans for the day. The kids would start demanding any moment. This, an interlude before the storm.
She had to take the little ones to swimming lessons. Back by noon to drive Parker to pick up his car. Emily working her other job today, Beck might work if the weather clears.
“Do you think Miles will look for a job?” Aggie asks.
It’s a sore point with Jack. “I don’t even want to know about it anymore, but I’m losing my patience....”
They sit silent for a moment. An alarm in one of the empty bedrooms starts buzzing. “The party’s over!” Aggie sings. They stand up and hug.
Jack promises to try and take off early but warns he might be home late. He’s working on a new marketing campaign for Capital Screw.
“What more can I say about screws?” he asks aloud. “The market is saturated, and the Chinese are starting to unload their crap. Already it’s taking a toll. Once they start to lowball the price customers don’t care about quality.”
She listens politely, doesn’t know what to say.
“We’ve got to battle that perception, and that’s my job,” he continues. “It pays the bills. What more can I ask?”
She stretches to pat his head, “We’re doing fine. I love you!” Then, in the same breath turns away and shouts “KIIIIDS!!! Time to GET MOVING!!!”
4
The drive to work is only a few miles, yet takes better than half an hour most mornings.
A habit, Jack studies his eyes in the mirror as the car inches along, conversing silently with his soul. Dreams and ambitions. He ponders the passing years suggested in lines, the gray whispers in the eyebrows, at his temples. The brown of his eyes is as much green as brown now, more hazel. Windows into happiness and sadness, hopes and disappointments.
The car is a relic, a black and white 1979 Mustang Laser II. Sides and hood festooned with graphics which seemed cool when new, period lettering he’s certain will one day secure the car’s classic status.
The “ugly Mustang” he calls it, unveiled by Ford as the “New Pony,” more a step down than a break from why previous Mustangs were so desirable. Jack had always wanted a Mustang, bought this for $40 from a reluctant seller moving up to a station wagon, at his wife’s insistence.
The Laser smokes and chugs, the ceiling liner stapled in places, but the car gets there, handles well and the 8-track might work. It’s his car, well worn to fit with the comfort of a favorite shirt. Jack’s not one to be concerned with shiny things, won’t buy what he can’t afford, wonders often how people pay for those new cars rolling by on the avenue.
There’s a lot he would do, were it not for money. More correctly, for the lack of it. Quit this lousy job, for instance. Head of marketing carries a more impressive ring than his reality.
His office: a windowless room, defined by glass dividers, pushed to one side of the administrative “suite,” just off the factory floor where they manufacture screws. The place always reeks of metal and machinery. He’s grown used to the smell, but never the noise. The phone on his desk has an extra long, retractable cord so he can step out the door onto the stairs to the parking lot when the call demands concentration or privacy. An old company, a cordless phone too new a concept.
Head of marketing, Capital Screw.
Screwed you, buddy!, he laments.
The challenge, inspiration to excel escaped long ago. Jack’s no longer sure it’s him or the job to blame. The focus now: improving brand awareness, so clients “think Capital first” when they run low on screws. He’s an unplanned expert on treads and torque, screw heads, and why brass is best for certain applications. His audience: hardware store buyers and suppliers, machine shops and factories of every description.
He didn’t know any of it when he took the job. Smiles to think of how excited he was to learn, that first day at Capital, that the company actually had a couple of accounts in and around Hibbing, Minnesota, including the hardware/appliance store. Went out of his way to visit there on a trip through the Midwest when just learning the business. Came away most impressed it was just like everywhere else, but for the trace of a style of speaking, a distinct inflection, he recognized as more a factor in Bob Dylan’s singing than he’d realized.
“I was so much older then…” he begins.
The job’s secure, as much as one can expect, but no longer fulfilling. But what is certain, but uncertainty?
In the early years the challenge was building the brand, aggressive advertising campaigns for the pages of trade rags, magazines focused on the industry, Modern Fastener and Hardware Buyer Digest. He helped Capital to the top, they ruled their day, production increased, sales soared. Jack the hero got his own office, his office now.
The business is changing. A battle to maintain share, if not volume, in a market defined by foreign competition. And Old Joe Dwinzel is taking the back seat, as he slowly, reluctantly turns over the reigns of Capital Screw to his son, Young Joe.
Young Joe is younger than Jack, not by much, and certainly not heir to his father’s business acumen. For Old Joe, success in business was all about service, earning and keeping the customers’ respect, and thereby loyalty, doing whatever was required.
Young Joe grew up in the business, oblivious to the work. He’s there for the money, more playful than serious about running a company.
When he entered his 30s, his father tired of supporting his irresponsibility. Demanded he get a job. Young Joe came on board as an “executive.” In an early demonstration of his business prowess he suggested to Jack they launch a promotional campaign with the catchy slogan. “Looking for the perfect screw, call Capital”. Printed flyers to that effect and put them up in bathroom stalls during the hardware convention, with the phone number and extension for Capital’s hotel suite.
Old Joe took the first few calls from guys convinced Capital was an unusual girl’s name or a brothel, and nixed the campaign. “What kind of an asshole are you?,” he demanded of his son, after Young Joe proudly claimed complete responsibility for the effort.
After that, Young Joe redirected his meddling to manufacturing, and left marketing to Jack. Young Joe introduced improvements like hair nets for the men on the assembly line, country club guest passes as production incentives, and roller skates for shop foreman. None of his innovations, save the company softball team, had any staying power, and the Capital Clingers were still in search of a winning season.
Jack needs this job, that’s why he’s still there. He and Aggie, they get by, like everyone else. Still, he dreams what it would be like figure out how to spend money, rather than ways to save it. They could enjoy a challenge like that.
He exits the avenue and the Laser rumbles along the cobblestone side streets leading to the building, a block in from the water’s edge. Still early morning enough that crusty fishermen, local loft and tenement dwellers, ply their lines in the fetid river. As he leaps the three steps to the office door he marvels at thoughts of fishing such polluted waters, the quality of the catch.
5
Jack and Aggie married young, happy with that choice. But kids will prove more overwhelming, more trying than any newlyweds might envision.
The mother in her worries about the older boys finding an keeping jobs, what 19 year old Emily does in her hours away from home, whether Parker could get serious about school, and if she is doing enough for the little ones. There’s a seven year gap between Parker and Augie, like having two families. Like “raising your own grandkids” an acquaintance observed, watching her wearied efforts trying to convince the little ones they didn’t need the Happy Meal. “You never eat the damn burger,” Aggie insisted. She was right, once they opened the toy they lost interest in nutrition.
Her practiced priority in life: to stretch each dollar. Food bills alone —four teens— are horrendous: 15 gallons of milk a week, maybe a dozen loaves of bread, for starters. Soon as she enters the door from grocery shopping “The vultures descend.” The kids rifle through the bags in search of a quick fix of carbohydrates. Cookies, donuts, chips, fruit— whatever she planned as snacks for the week, or days, are consumed within the day.
Then the laundry: days of washing and drying without end. The little guys have a habit of trying on clothes and peeling them off, as if changing costumes between acts. A trail of socks, shirts and pants through the house. She never can get them to gather them up, most times she’s too tired to try.
With all this, she feels rightfully defensive whenever someone asks “Don’t you work?” As if she could do more with all this idle time on her hands.
She can’t comprehend anything more important than being there for her own kids. She and Jack decided it was worth any sacrifices to have a mother at home. Her view: her primary responsibility. For now. It may mean endless work without the rewards of career, but, for her, there’s no debate.
Though, at times, she contemplates a walk away from it all. Her fantasy, for she couldn’t leave the kids any more than she could leave Jack. Sorry for him on one level. He never gets past worrying about money, and all they should be putting away.
She knows how hard he works, wishes it easier for him, for them, but life isn’t always fair. She believes that. They are getting by and what more can they ask, really? No matter how much she tries to reassure Jack, he agonizes about all they aren’t doing, now and for their future.
“You’re buying into a myth,” she tells him. “We’ll have enough to worry about tomorrow, when it gets here. Enjoy where we are.”
“Well I guess our kids will have to be our retirement fund,” he’ll jokes when he accepts the futility of worrying, at least in that moment.
“Well, then we’ll end up in the poorhouse,” her practiced refrain.
As much in love as when he finally convinced her in college he really was the one. Best friends, partners for life, married 25 years with a nice, large family.
Aggie is enjoying a good life. Things could be a little easier, but it’s still a good life.
“But if we ever do have money,” she’d tell Jack. “First things I want are a housekeeper and a cook.”
Aggie hates cooking, though she’s quite good at it. Could really use a cook, she’s convinced herself.
That, a housekeeper, and seeing the older kids move out on their own.
Not necessarily in that order.
6
Jack breaks up his day with calls home. To confide in Aggie, discussing unpleasantries they prefer not to explore during hours together. The conversations serve him as reinforcement, acknowledgement he matters when he’s feeling down. He knows he’ll never be as close to the kids as their mother, doesn’t need to. He loves them all, continually worries he’s not doing enough for them.
He turns to Aggie as his foundation, his block of strength.
She can cut to the quick and size things up, separate what matters from what doesn’t. He worries over the long term, while she, remains ever focused on the here and now.
Together they built a life, happy even in their toughest times because each means most to the other. At home, when he looks into her eyes he still sees her youthful beauty, now gracefully matured. That carries him.
He’s sick and frustrated with work, that’s now a regular topic of these workday discussions. Not that he hates the job so much, or that the Dwinzels haven’t been more than fair to him. He’s part of the team, a contributor to their success. But he also feels stuck on the bench with a team mired in old glories, bright days fading with the past.
What he’s detests, really, is this whole notion of marketing. A clever game too pervasive in our lives, he thinks. Capital Screw makes a good product — but that’s not good enough. It has to be packaged and promoted so it’s irresistible to store buyers, the decision makers at the factories, the owner of the corner hardware store.
How can you make a screw exciting?
Like Capital, its customers are squeezed. More than ever, they clamor for lower prices, better margins. Their future and viability depend on it. A noticeable change, an unwelcome shift in the tide none seems strong enough to stand against. Quality, durable goods from a reputable supplier were once primary concerns. Today’s accounts more focused on costs: if they buy in bulk; minimum order; maintaining profitability at competitive rock bottom pricing.
That new mindset — putting profit before service, before the satisfied customer—had first opened the doors to inferior products made in Korea, China, Poland and Romania.
Jack had his own experience with this new breed of screws, caught unprepared one weekend while assembling new bunk beds for the little guys. A pine set, no less, and it shipped without the required screws.
That Saturday afternoon Jack headed to the corner hardware store three blocks over for two dozen three-and a half inch screws. Damn, if the Phillips head didn’t strip as he bore down on them with his cordless screw driver. Should never happen, would never happen with an American product, a Capital screw, Jack thought
The experience inspired the “Never Compromise On Quality: Stay with Capital” campaign. It debuted as the company’s prospects entered the long and gradual decline which continues to this day. At least the campaign was well received.
He and the two Joes spread the “Never Compromise” message at the hardware convention, ran comparisons, gave away hundreds of samples in every size. Buyers all nodded yes, quality does matter, especially in light of such shoddy imports. When it came to orders, though, some took theirs to companies like Ho Fake Hum, an importer/distributor shipping from a residential street in Flushing, NY. Standard Capital Screw of Taiwan, another new competitor
Old Joe talked to lawyers about the suing over that name, then balked at the expense. Now, some who thought they were dealing with made-in-the-U.S. Capital Screw were actually buying from Standard Capital.
That’s another issue Jack hopes to address through marketing. It’s all about marketing, dammit! Combine words, pictures and colors and convince the marketplace they should still buy his brand of screw…or anything really.
“Quality should be enough,” Old Joe insists, and Jack accepts that, in theory. He realizes, too, that to believe that is to invite failure.
“Advertising is all about shaping perceptions,” was all that stuck with him from the overpriced seminar Young Joe insisted they attend to prep the company for the future. Jack was against attending from first mention.
“A litany of windbags,” he told Young Joe when presented with a conference schedule. They were all the founders, directors or someone in “creative” for big agencies and market research companies.
Still, Young Joe planned they attend: the seminar to be held at the conference center of one of the nicer country clubs in the area, and the company would cover all costs.
Reluctantly, Jack went along.
Midway through the second morning session, “The Customer is Always Re-rightable.” Young Joe pulled Jack’s ear toward his cupped hand to whisper, “You were on target, my man, this is all about bullshit......I’m going to hit the tees. Want to join me?”
Jack didn’t like golf, for simple lack of skill, so declined.
“Well do what you want with the day,” Young Joe advised, leaving the seminar folder and papers in his chair. “I’m out of here!”
On the greens Young Joe met Shane Daneen, “concept builder” at an upstart agency, who convinced him Capital Screw could benefit by spending ungodly amounts of money with his company.
“Messaj” built its campaigns in separately billed “phases.” In phase 1 it sent its photographer, who introduced himself as “Aries”, to take conceptual shots for the campaign. He brought two assistants, varied backgrounds and props. They “set up studio” in the middle of the office, and on the factory floor. “For the ambiance” for photos of Capital products “in an environment that would convey their integrity.”
Even before Old Joe gasped at the bill for the day’s shoot, a sizable chunk of the company’s quarterly promotional budget in former years, he decided Messaj wasn’t what Capital needed.
“Yeah, yeah they are very nice,” he told Daneen as he passed round oversized color enlargements from the shoot at the follow -up meeting in Old Joe’s office. “But what the fuck do we need a picture of screw and a lemon for,” he emphasized. “It’s just not....” he searched for the right word, then gave up. “We’re in the hardware business, for Christ sakes, this ain’t a fruit stand!”
Jack laughed, maybe a little too loud, but couldn’t agree more.
7
Running provided Jack an interlude of reflection and quiet self-analysis through a combination of purged energy, exhaustion and exhilaration. A challenge to his limits and endurance, an affirmation of his strength as much as weakness.
Despite his thickset middle, he thought himself proudly fit, except for the damn left knee, an intrusive reminder of mortal frailty. Way back when platform shoes were the rage graceless Jack stumbled while dancing and suffered something frightful to the knee. For years after it could slip out of joint at the slightest misstep, a sudden falter.
On such occasions, in earlier days, a ribbon of something fleshy but tough pushed to the surface. He figured it was cartilage, and could push it around the edge of his knee beneath the skin. By the end of such days the area would be marked with a thumb-sized black and blue mark. That suggested bone might be rubbing bone. A mild pain, it never really bothered him that much. Just a few days of discomfort, then fading from memory just as suddenly as its onset when the knee popped back in place.
Jack had forgotten all about that knee until recently.
He had taken up jogging back in his mid-30s and loved it. It became a passion, and now, weeks when he didn’t do at least three — “Aggie, I’m going out for a run,” — he felt incomplete. He had experimented with running, or jogging, in occasional commitments to fitness when he was much younger, but the arrival of the Walkman, and truly portable music, definitely made this diversion a more appealing escape.
He bought an early Toshiba version of a “headphone cassette player,” found it the perfect complement to running. Pop in a cassette and take in the tunes while pounding the pavement, trying to keep step with the beat, all over town.
He added a belt pack, and tapes of all his old favorites, then better headphones. Each cassette served as the ritual clock for his runs: a full album on cassette, running somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes. Tried making his own 45-minute cassettes of favorite songs, popular artists, but 45 minutes was just too much run time.
Then he discovered the perfect music for jogging. A late blooming interest in the blues pointed him back to the Mississippi Delta, and then to the great blues guitarists of rock and roll. His explorations took him from Robert Johnson to Howlin’ Wolf with Hubert Sumlin to Muddy Waters and the early Stones, then to Hendrix to Clapton to Derek and the Dominoes with Duane Allman, then to the Allman Brothers.
He’d sampled the Allman’s Live at the Fillmore East album when it came out in the early 1970s, but didn’t hear anything there, or listen closely enough, to consider buying it, nor the follow-up Eat A Peach.
But then he was two tapes short on his “12 free for the price of one” offer from the cassette club and ordered Eat a Peach, as a double selection, to round out his choices. After he’d played most of the other tapes, he noticed one entire side of one cassette in the Peach set was made up of something called “Mountain Jam.” Jack assumed that referenced an extended jam with the period band Mountain, and guitar player Leslie West.
What he heard though, was profoundly different: a prolonged musical meditation on the melody from “There is a Mountain,” a Sixties hit for Donovan Leitch, and its Zen refrain: “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”
For Jack, the instrumental track was sublime, the perfect song for running, for any extended activity, for deep thoughts, for aimless mental wandering. He tried explaining all he heard in “Mountain Jam” to a disinterested Aggie: “A symphony, damn near that good.”
More than half an hour long, this piece was so perfectly timed for his runs that the cassette became as much a part of his running gear as shorts and shoes.
He reckoned it had carried him through thousands of miles so he knew every note, every beat, every solo and flourish on the guitars. Listening to it, he felt lifted to some higher plane, where he could switch his body to automatic pilot, lose himself in a sonic celebration of life as his feet carried him over the terrain. If there could be such a thing as a running mantra this was his, a mood and mind altering focus of musical light.
“This is what music should do.” He’d meditated on that during many runs. Carry you, inspire your best to push further, harder, test your limits and then float you back down.
When he wasn’t running, and played “Mountain Jam” at work or home, the familiarity of the music excited the runner’s high. He could focus more clearly, think deeper, and rid his head of the emotions, angst or anxiety cluttering his day.
And, he was deeply focused in the drum solo of Mountain Jam when that damn Shitsu with its jeweled collar, dragging a pink leash, darted across the running track in the park, forcing Jack to dart right, stumble on a rock just there, and twist and reawaken the pain hibernating in his left knee.
It had been years since he knew that ache. Every run since was an exercise in agony, a forced effort at ignoring what his body was trying to convince him: that he and it were getting old, and it commanded more respect now, and maybe he should see a doctor about that knee.
But Jack clung to denial, he could live with the pain, he’d done it before. And, it opened another dimension to the running, not necessarily pleasurable, but another challenge to his endurance.
“Just doesn’t make sense, Jack,” Aggie admonished him when he tried to rationalize why he wouldn’t do get a doctor’s opinion.
Nevertheless, the running high wasn’t the same anymore. He had to force himself to stay focused on the music, he didn't cover as much distance over the course of the song, and he couldn’t even think about running two days in a row without inviting significant pain.
He also started to limp about slightly at times, especially humid mornings after a run. Now Aggie urged him to see a doctor, even checked on available appointments.
”It’s just a sprain,” he insisted. “If it doesn't go away in a couple of weeks I’ll make a visit.” But it didn’t, and he didn’t.
Then one day at work he knocked his pencil holder, a Father’s Day gift from Emily, off his desk. He squatted to retrieve it but had trouble straightening his leg to get back up off the floor.
Poorah saw him struggling, heard the dull crack as he pulled up on the desk and rolled his knee back and forth to try and reset the cartilage.
“Jack, you should be taking supplements for your leg,” she suggested, but he had no idea what she was talking about.
8
Poorah works in accounting, she is the accountant. Her office, no more than a desk, sits just outside Jack’s glass enclosure, pushed against the wall by a window overlooking the production line on the factory floor.
“Your joints need special support, just like the rest of your body,” she assured him as he rolled the knee. “The modern diet, the Western diet, doesn’t provide many of the nutrients we need, especially as we age, because the body is no longer able to process food as efficiently.”
Jack listened with polite disinterest while she reached into a drawer for the collection of bottles stored there. He had often wondered what those odd shaped containers with colorful labels contained, and why she kept so many. “Getting your fill of M&Ms?,” he had joked once, her mouth a handful of pills, chased by a glass of water.
“You’d do well to take some yourself,” she suggested.
Until now, with his ever aching knee, he hadn’t cared to learn why.
Poorah spoke with a trace of an accent in her flow of words. The first generation offspring of Indian parents, her father ran a newsstand and her mother worked as a librarian. At home they spoke the old tongue, but Poorah was 100 percent American.
In fact, she sometimes reminded Jack of a late summer flower child, dressed in paisley and bell bottoms. Other days, unexpectedly, she’d show up for work in a sari, a jewel set in her forehead. Young Joe had problems with that at first, he mistrusted foreigners.
“She does good work,” his father assured him. “And as long as she’s doing her job well I don’t care what she wears.”
She did better than well. Poorah, in fact, had recovered a considerable sum for Capital Screw once she took over the books and pursued all the lapsed accounts.
Mr. Quinton, the former bookkeeper, had been a boyhood mentor of Old Joe, kept on staff well into his late 80s, long after the first hints of dementia appeared. They were significant: he had starting asking, repeatedly, how to spell the company name, and wondered aloud why there were so many people on the shop floor, often and without prompting, “What in God’s glory are they doing to the Promised Land?”
When he started hoarding, and hiding, all types of writing instruments in the office, and forgetting where he put them, Old Joe decided reluctantly he had to let him go.
After his retirement, when they finally opened the books, there were a few surprising entries: “margarine margarine Margarita” was the sole entry for one week; another page was filled line after line with “The Rocket’s red glare” on several more a neat but struggled attempt to print the alphabet in large and small block letters, and numbers one through 10, as if in grade school. After these discoveries, they weren’t that surprised to find no record of some orders and accounts dating back a full year or so.
But Poorah came on board and painstakingly matched factory production and shipments with previous orders, account names and addresses. She identified and collected more than $85,000 in bills past due, and thereby secured her place at Capital. As far as Old Joe was concerned, she could come in late, leave early and do pretty much as she wished, as long as her work got done.
And in this moment, she had assumed the role of amateur medical practitioner, advising Jack on his ailment. “The joints of the knees, especially, need support, as over time the cartilage and ligaments wear down, like a sponge,” she explained.
“Of course the secret to better health is to supplement your diet with the nutrients it requires, but isn’t getting from what you eat. The body is a wonderful machine,” she continued, “and with the right nutritional support it can heal and rebuild itself. But we can’t get that from our regular diet, and without them,” she laughed, “We suffer things like sore knees, weaker vision, and just feelings of general malaise.”
She struck a chord. General Malaise, Jack thought. There are times I know him all too well!
“So what do you take?” he wanted to know.
Poorah motioned him over to her desk as she retrieved several bottles. “You start with a good multi-vitamin, all natural ingredients,” she said handing him a bottle filled with speckled tablets large enough to gag a dog.
“This I take for clear thinking, this supports my circulatory system, our river of life,” she continued, handing him more bottles. “Echinacea strengthens my immune system---I've not had a cold in three years since I started taking it--- and the probiotic ensures there is plenty of flora at work to properly digest my food.”
Jack fumbled with five bottles. “And what’s Rosemary for,” he asked, nodding toward the sixth.
Poorah blushed, vaguely. “For feminine health, that special time.”
Jack was trying to read the labels when Poorah took them back. “I’ve not had any problems with my joints yet, so I am not sure what you should take,” she advised him. “But they are very knowledgeable at the store where I do my shopping, Rainbow Bridge. And they have an excellent natural food section as well.”
Jack nodded, wondering to himself what qualified as “natural food.”
9
And so, on her advice, that’s how he found his way into Rainbow Bridge.
Jack swung open the glass doors, welcoming this reason to experiment with alternative medicine as he’d lost all trust in doctors. A few years back, nervous a wart on his chest might be a melanoma, he’d gone to the doctor thinking the worst.
Meeting Dr. Beres did not exactly instill confidence in any cure he might suggest. Just over five feet tall, he weighed about 350 pounds and entered the examining room short of breath after the 30 step hike from his desk. In fact, his body continued moving for a few seconds after he had stopped.
“It’s nothing,” the doctor dismissed Jack’s fears, flicking at the fleshy spot as if were a tick. “But your blood pressure, that could be a problem,” he wheezed.
Beres advised he start taking a new hypertension drug just released. “I’ve read the clinicals and it looks very promising for people like you,” he assured Jack, handing him a months worth of samples, 15 green unlabeled boxes with two tablets each.
One pill in the morning, as directed, damn near knocked him out. So Jack started taking them before bedtime, and slept as if in a coma.
On the follow-up visit, Jack remarked how sluggish he felt. “We’re gettin’ your blood pressure under control,” Beres told him, silencing his concerns with a wave of his fleshy hand. “Let’s up the dosage and see how you feel in a month,” he suggested. This time he provided Jack with a week’s worth of samples and a prescription for the rest.
At that point, Jack still carried unbridled confidence in the medical profession. He did as told, even if he had reservations about Beres’ commitment to his own physical condition. Over the next few weeks he started feeling more and more tired, all the time. Any attempt at physical activity, especially running, sapped his diminishing energy. He’d always had a pulse in the low 50s since taking up running. When he clocked it one evening at home it pumped a weak 42 beats per minute.
“You don’t look well,” Aggie told him the following Saturday morning after half an hour of trimming hedges. “You’d better sit down.”
Jack sank horrified into a lawn chair as sensations of pressure gripped his chest, like he’d set a bag of sand there. He rested quietly until the feeling subsided. ”Just a little gas,” he reassured himself. Then the following night, after dinner the pressure came on again without warning, while watching TV.
This time there was a sharp pain, as if his heart were held in a clenched fist. “Aggie, something’s wrong,” he called to her, suddenly confronting mortality. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
He panicked, she didn’t and directed Miles to drive him to the emergency room.
“Preliminary tests show enzymes indicating your heart is having a bit of a hard time,”the doctor on duty advised, adding he should spend the night in intensive care.“They are low, but you could still die,” he advised Jack, smirking.
Jack missed the joke, felt tears well in his eyes. I love my wife and kids, he thought. We have so many plans. He looked up at the monitor next to the bed to see his pulse rate, now hovering in the mid-30s.
“Could this have anything to do with the blood pressure pills I’m on,” he wanted to know.
He posed that question repeatedly over the next week, to the physician in ICU, the floor doctor who made the rounds in the morning, several attending nurses and again after his release to Dr. Beres in a phone call. He finally posed it to the cardiologist who administered a stress test, and turned the machine off once it was obvious that Jack’s heart wasn’t going to cave in.
“Sometimes these things happen out of nowhere....continue with your medication.” was the general consensus, finally reinforced by the cardiologist.
Jack politely thanked the doctor for his advice, hurried out the medical building into the bright day.
“Fuck this, fuck them,” he thought tearing off the sensors still pasted to his chest. Back at the house he angrily tossed the remainder of his blood pressure prescription, $78 worth, into the trash.
The sluggishness he’d felt disappeared in a few days, and in the seven years since his “incident” he’d experienced no problems.
He believed those credentialed quacks would have killed him if he continued following their advice, and vowed never turn to a physician again unless the pain he experienced was so severe he couldn’t endure it.
His knee had almost brought him to that point, but not yet, making him a willing candidate for “alternative medicine.”
So, he felt a bit elated when he finally walked out of Rainbow Bridge, his bottle of Bovine Blue bovine tracheal cartilage in the rainbow colored bag, confident and conceited he’d finally taken charge of his health.
And that, just like Poorah and this Eeelie advised, given the right nutrients for nutritional support, the body would heal itself of anything — even his ailing knee.
10
“So is it working?” Aggie wanted to know.
“What?”
“Your stuff....cow something or other?”
Jack leaned against the kitchen doorway, wiped the beaded sweat from his forehead. “Seems to be.” He rolled his leg. “Feels a lot better today.”
He’d been taking his capsules three days now, and apart from the discomforting after-taste, believed he’d made the smart choice. Jack sensed more bounce in his step, more grace in his knee, running and walking. “Feels like it’s already making some difference….actually it does.”
Aggie barely nodded, more concerned with pouring syrup over the frozen waffles the little guys wanted for breakfast. Only 8:30 Saturday morning, they’d already covered the floor with Legos and moved on to their GameBoys. “I wonder when I get weekends off,” she thought aloud.
“How about today,” Jack offered. “I’ll watch the kids, you take the day, do whatever you want.”
Aggie smirked as she brushed past him with two plates. “Uh huh.”
For her, Saturdays meant more than the usual chaos. All six kids to barrel through the house, individually and in groups, rifling through the cabinets in search of something to eat, then making personal contributions to the laundry and dish piles sure to grow each hour.
Jack might try reading now that he’d had his run, but he was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on anything. Recurring worries over his career, personal and professional shortcomings and failures, overtook his idle moments. No matter how often he pondered underachievement, the growing dissatisfaction with his job and place in the grand universe, he never seemed to tire of those thoughts.
“It’s just man-o-pause,” Aggie re-assured him when he shared his anxiety. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
But he couldn’t, and he did. All he wanted from life now was to be comfortable, neither rich nor poor but relieved of the worry that goes with taking care of a family, keeping a house, and keeping pace with the bills. In such moments, life’s indifference to his ambitions overwhelmed him. As often as it did, he would lapse into momentary funks of self-doubt and hyper-critical self-analysis.
“I’ve come up with catchy slogans to sell screws, that’s the sum total of my contribution to mankind,” he acknowledged in darker moments.
Jack convinced himself it would be easier to accommodate an ignoble position in life with money. Had he acquired wealth, he would soon retire, at least partially, allowing him and Aggie the freedom to travel and indulge their children in ways impossible now. “It’s nice to dream,” he resigned himself.
Inevitably, preoccupation with the non-state of their financial security pointed Jack to the whole mortality issue, and questions of “Why am I here?” and “What should I have done by now?” He studied the lines in his hands, and ran his fingers through the coarse grey now well established on his temples. “Secure in middle age,” he mumbled.
With luck, and the good grace of God, he was only half way through his time. But what if he wasn’t lucky? A sense of unfocused urgency flickered within, of the need to do something else, something more than he was doing.
He realized, too, money could slay these beasts, and easily alter such aspirations.
11
A run is a wonderful interlude. This morning Jack savors each step. He glides along, pretending to play the drum solo in “Mountain Jam” as he paces himself up the long hill by the golf course. Knee never felt better, and after only two weeks of Bovine Blue.
The rain begins, a light drizzle. Then, gradually picking up the pace. He tastes the warm summer drops trickling down his face, listens to his feet splashing the wet pavement, watches his veil of a shadow twist with each step, almost in beat to the music.
He wishes to share this moment with Aggie, wishes she’d find as much fulfillment in running. Give her credit, she had tried. If only for his sake, she had made the effort.
“Jack, you want to know how I like to spend my free time,” she finally told him, out of breath, after her second brief jog with him around the lake. “Locked in a room, in absolute silence with the lights out and NO CHILDREN!”
The work and struggle, certainly not why they married. Who can anticipate all tomorrow holds? Both accept their life, its trials and glories, as product of decisions they made, together. Jack couldn’t fault their choices.
Loves her madly, yet believing he’s let her down somewhere along the way here. Their life could be hard, hers harder. He loves and appreciates that. Wishes to make it easier, show her how much it means to him.
Does his best, yet still feels inadequate, the pang of always falling short. In his heart, an abiding sense of failure, no mastered of the money game. In the world in which they struggled and strived nothing else seemed to matter but money.
Such are his thoughts as enters the long stretch, the final leg of the run leading back toward home. Perfectly timed to Mountain Jam. Guitars surge, Duane and Dicky play off each other. Where does such music come from?, he wonders.
Piques his runner’s high,euphoric, wants to do something great that day, confident things work out for the best, always will. The music climbs toward crescendo, pushes his fastest as the Allmans glide down off the peak. The bass thumps, he runs harder as as fast as he could as the guitar players trade final licks.
Done. Exhilarated. Duane announces the band.
Fulfilled and confident, primed for anything.
“This is what running is all about”, he pants, clicks off the cassette player and started the walk toward home.
I need more time to think, he thinks as he crosses Parsons.
“We can do better,” he announces to no one there.
12
“Well, are they working?,” Aggie wants to know the following Sunday morning as Jack retrieves the bottle of Bovine Blue, spills the day’s dose into his hand.
Poorah had put the question to him Friday, too. He’d been more confident then. They seemed to be working, his leg felt...livelier. After last night’s run, beginning to have his doubts. A reminder of old pain is back, sharp ache along the contour of his knee and just above it. As if pressed in a vise.
“Seems to be,” he answers. tossing them into his mouth, gulping water from a Tweetie Bird spill-proof cup. “But I’ll have to give it a little more time,” he adds, betraying some uncertainty.
He belches, quietly. One thing for sure: the pills foul taste in mouth and stomach. Reminds him of a pair of imported chukka boots he once owned. Smelled awful, like dog hide. Jack entertains concerns a secret ingredient in Bovine Blue might be canine tracheal cartilage.
As bad as the taste, the gas which follows is downright noxious, like road kill. Accepts it as a late onset effect of Bovine Blue he tactfully will not discuss.
Sunday morning, quiet time. The kids sleep late, the only late day of the week, Church not until 11. Aggie takes the kids Jack has a Sunday run or reads the paper. A sore point: she wants him to play lead in their children's’ spiritual development.
“Who says I have to worship there,” argues Jack. Can’t fathom gathering with backbiting hypocrites for an hour each week to praise the same God always there, everywhere. “I can pray while I run,” he reasons.
So early Sunday morning was completely their time, in that short interval between rising and the scatter of the first footsteps, to sit relaxed and enjoy each other’s company without purpose or worry. They spoke of the kids, their own friends and families, the quality of the blooms on this year’s roses, their plans for the summer, the morning headlines.
“If we had just a little more money, it would be so much easier,” Jack thinks aloud. “I mean not a lot, just enough so we don’t worry about anything anymore.”
“That would be nice,” Aggie agrees. “Could you imagine what it would be like to win the lottery,” she asks, glancing up from the paper’s feature on the latest Powerball winner. $180 million.
“I’d buy all the kids a new car, a house in the country, and just do something nice for all the people who’ve been nice to me down through the years.” Aggie’s dreams.
Jack’s secret ambition to somehow make the world a better place. “I’d like to be in a position to help some people who could use it, but not anyone who asks for help,” he confides. “The people who ask for help don’t need it.”
A strongly held personal belief, a lesson from experience. Any time Jack and Aggie tried to help those who announced themselves in desperate need, it backfired. They’d added a small second mortgage to spare Jack’s cousin Jake the shame of bankruptcy. Once on his feet he bought a new Cadillac before thought of repayment entered his mind. “But Jack, the bank’s on my back with this car loan,” Jake explained when Jack brought up the debt.
Earlier in their marriage, in their days of “enlightened poverty” as Jack defines them, they’d taken in another couple who’d been evicted from their apartment for not paying rent. Six weeks later, Jack himself threw the couple and belongings from their living room, finally tiring of their discourses on the evils of capitalism, and the husband’s complaints about an undiagnosed back injury, whenever the conversation turned to employment..
“Wouldn’t it be great to win, and have all that money,” Aggie repeats, bringing Jack’s train of thought back to Sunday morning and the latest Powerball jackpot.
Talk of the lottery inevitably invites discussion of Clint, and his tale of woe. Jack knew Clint through work, he was the head of shipping. A nice guy, reliable and hard working, quiet until he got to know you. He, too, always struggling to make ends meet for a large family.
His mother-in-law won the lottery a few years back, an outrageous amount like $10 million, and called Clint’s wife to tell her they would never have to worry about money again. The next morning she changed her mind, gave it all to her son, her only child with her second husband, a conniving divorce lawyer. Clint’s wife, and Clint’s wife’s sister, both with kids, got nothing. The little prick kept it all for himself. “The girls have husbands to take care of them,” was the lawyer’s judicious reasoning.
“What kind of mother could do that to her kids?” Aggie always wonders, as their dialogue on Clint’s predicament, and how they would have handled it, winds down.
“Yeah but what about the brother,” Jack shoots back. “What kind of selfish bastard wouldn’t even think of doing something for his own flesh and blood?”
Jack dwells on that. “When our turn comes, we’ll show them how it’s done,” he assures her, laughing. Starts to rise, winces at the all too familiar pain in his leg.
13
Work without meaning.
Jack explores that sentiment while contemplating the latest twist in his career at Capital Screw.
Young Joe enthused to all what he’d read about the “killing” being made by small business owners who had taken their companies public, and relentlessly argued with his father they follow that lead with Capital. Old Joe deemed such a move both improbable and impractical, yet gave half-hearted approval to investigate that option.He welcomed any diversion which might occupy his son a while, and keep his hands off the business.
The seeds for an initial public offering were sown by one of Young Joe’s golf buddies, Harry Jello, a friend since fruitless semesters shared at college. Neither earned a degree, nor a full year’s worth of credits. They’d kept in touch through the years and varied attempts at careers.
Harry’s new calling was as a consultant to Capital Screw, though it wasn’t readily apparent where his expertise lay. Regardless, Young Joe put him on retainer for the planned public offering he expected would secure his personal fortune from the family business.
Harry Jello, well named. Jack’s initial impression on their first meeting. Twice as round as he was tall, and he was well over six foot. Either Harry favored tight clothes, or had outgrown his wardrobe. His shirts and pants tautly stretched around his girth, emphasizing both poor taste and poor physique. To crown the look, what little hair remained on his broad, pale dome sat patted down and twirled forward toward his brow for maximum coverage. He was balding, near bald, and though the world knew it Harry Jello was not yet ready to admit it.
Harry’s formal introduction: a meeting, a “seminar” he called it, for all four administrative employees of Capital Screw. With drama and flourish, like a captain at the helm of some magnificent craft, in practiced poise, he posed before the whiteboard, directing all eyes to the profundities of his illegible scrawl in black, red and green marker.
Sweating profusely despite limited exertion, he outlined for what it could mean for Capital Screw to go public, and the steps to realize that goal. He peppered his presentation with the kind of insights one could garner from the dust jackets of the latest business books: “Our paradigm of opportunity…. a moved my cheese mentality…turn those no’s into yes.”
Harry gripped the podium and stabbed at the air to make his point. “Perception is the most important ingredient in the process, and we must shape perceptions by marketing our assets like gorillas. Before we can take Capital public we must step up our image building efforts so Capital is a household name, with a valuable catch-et,” Jello intoned, leaning way forward so each could feel the warmth of his foul breath.