Eddie’s Shorts
Volume 2:
67 Feet in the Air
Drain Bamage
By M. Edward McNally
Copyright 2011 M. Edward McNally
Welcome back my friends to the short story collection that never ends. Well, not as long as I can still “read” my ancient scribblings off 3.5” disks from the era of Flannel and Fewer Cell Phones.
Once again, a pair of shorts from that earlier epoch, which hopefully you got for free (trying to make it that way all over). I put these two together in one volume as both hearken to several summers I spent in and around Minneapolis, “Back In The Day.” Yes, it is possible to love that town, and detest the Vikings. Go Bears.
Thanks much for reading, hope you are amused, and I remain as ever M. Edward McNally, author of the Musket & Magic fantasy series called the Norothian Cycle. Book Uno is “The Sable City” and if you think you might be interested, you can find it at the same virtual place you found this.
Ever Outward,
Ed
67 Feet in the Air
The Fifteenth of May is a hell of a day to look at. One of those big, sprawling blue Minnesota masterpieces when the sky looks like the domed ceiling of some ancient church. Clouds are only occasional white streaks, meticulously painted. The day is clean and vast and wide open: The kind of big day just begging to be filled up with big things, but of course it won't be. The big things happen on the smallest days, the days that are only gigantic in memory. The big days never live up to expectation, and that is the best thing about them.
Nine years ago on May 15th, it was raining in Monte Sereno, California. Everything was gray and hooded. Cramped. Small.
The guy they call Luke Maxwell is under the big sky on a slanted roof, reclining with his bare feet set against the top of an open skylight. Cut-off shorts and sunglasses, with a T-shirt spread on the roof under his back. His stereo sings the sounds of the Cranberries up through the skylight, and all around him blocks of long two-story apartment buildings stretch towards the deep cut of the river, across which the towers of Minneapolis stand out sharply against the clean sky. Luke has himself convinced that he is lizard-on-a-sunny-rock happy, and he doesn't care that today is the Fifteenth of May at all.
The streets around the apartments are much quieter now that the U. is out for the summer, but there is still a fair amount of traffic buzzing around down on the ground. While Luke is considering the wind (and possibly running up a bow kite or just a windsock on a couple dozen yards of nylon), the noise of one particular auto approaching along the block separates itself from the others in his ears. It sounds like nails rattling around in a coffee can.
Luke pushes himself up onto his elbows and twitches the sunglasses down his nose. Over them he sees a familiar rust-brown Dodge turn into the apartment parking lot without a signal. The car goes out of Luke's sight to the back of the building, but he hears a pistol shot of a backfire as it is parked. He grins and lies back down to wait.
After a few minutes he thinks he hears a knock from below, but over the stereo he can't be sure. Jewely has a key anyway. Sure enough, after another moment he hears the name Luke being called in the apartment, and then the stereo is turned down.
"Topside, honey," Luke says towards the skylight. There is a settling-spring whine from the bed under the skylight, followed by the appearance of the back of Jewely Letourneau's close-cropped head between Luke's feet, sticking out through the opening in the roof.
"Behind you," Luke says, and when Jewely turns around he starts to wiggle his toes, which are right in front of her face. He stops when he gets a look at her. Jewely's eyes are dark and her face pale under her tan, making the silver stud on the left side of her nose stand out. She is pinching her bottom lip in her teeth, and Luke sits up.
"Hey, you okay?" he asks, leaning forward and putting a hand on Jewely's shoulder. She gives a short nod and tries for a smile that only twitches one side of her mouth.
"Oh, I'm fine," she says, sounding slightly angry with herself, slightly embarrassed. "I just, saw something..." she sighs. "Something shitty on the way over here."
"Why don't I come back in, huh?" Luke says. Jewely nods and moves out of the skylight. Luke drops his shirt through to the bed then turns around and lowers himself down. He's a bit concerned, but not displeased with the distraction. Worrying about whatever is bothering Jewely is something of a relief to thinking about the day.
Jewely has stepped off the bed and gone to the recliner by the wall. Luke's room is in the attic level of the apartment building and has a vaguely barn-ish look to it - much longer than wide, with the ceiling slanted along the roof line so that you can only stand up straight without braining yourself away from the front wall. Jewely ducks her head and flops into the chair under a huge concert poster from Luke's summer working stage crew at Kansas City's Kemper Arena. Similar posters cover that wall, on the others hang some small kites - a couple Malays, one replica of a Maori bird.
Jewely sags back into the chair and keeps her lip pinched. Luke sits down across from her on the corner of the bed and says nothing. Jewely glances at him and gives another short, self-conscious, smile.
"It's dumb, really," she says. "Not like it has a thing to do with me or anything, just...." again trailing off in a sigh.
Luke reaches down and hooks a hand under her feet. He lifts them unresisting to the corner of the bed between his legs. Jewely is wearing a pair of battered Docs with no socks, and Luke rubs at her ankles firmly with his thumbs, pushing the fine chain on her right ankle gently out of the way. Jewely has very nice legs presently displayed by khaki shorts, but Luke concentrates on keeping his eyes on hers. She relaxes as he rubs.
"Over on 2nd," she says, "right in the turn lane, somebody went over a Canadian Goose."
Luke stops rubbing. "Drove over?"
"Yeah." Jewely frowns, wrinkling her forehead. She crosses her arms. "It looked like somebody dropped a birthday cake, or something. Only with feathers."
"Ugh." Luke says. It seems like the geese are always trooping around by the roads, going from one of the vaunted 10,000 Minnesota lakes to the next, even this close to the Cities. Why the fat gray-and-black fowl walk when they could fly, Luke has never understood. Jewely continues.
"And the other one - there was two but only the one got hit I guess - the husband or wife or whatever, was just standing there on the curb, looking at the mess. Not honking or anything, just standing there looking, while more cars went over it."
"Christ." Luke says. And he means it. His hands are still on Jewely's ankles, but he's not rubbing anymore, just holding on. Something about 'Beware the Ides of May.'
Jewely looks at him statue-still on the edge of the bed, and she forces a smile.
"So how's your day going?"
Luke looks at her and snorts, then starts rubbing at her ankles again.
"Well just fine, till you showed up and depressed the hell out of me."
Jewely's false smile becomes a more genuine smirk. "That's what I'm here for," she says. Then she takes her feet off the bed and sits up straight, leaning forward on the chair. Luke's hands slide up her legs, and he keeps rubbing, now with his fingers in the angles behind her knees.
"Look, maybe it was a really nasty goose," Jewely says. "Always pimp-slapping the other ones around. Maybe the one looking was doing a big goose jig, on the inside."
"Those Canadians are cagey with their feelings," Luke agrees.
Jewely Letourneau grins. "Not so much the French-Canadians." She leans further forward and gives Luke a long kiss, then leans back smiling widely.
"You still depres
sed?"
"A little," Luke says. "I think I'm in need of a strong, life-affirming act." He moves one hand further along, now pushing the pads of his fingers in slow circles just under the edge of Jewely's shorts.
Jewely raises an eyebrow. She has been talking about getting one pierced, and Luke's not sure just what he thinks of that idea, is not sure if at this point he is supposed to have an opinion on what Jewely does to her body. After all, his experience with relationships is largely with the more transitory type. Has been for the last nine years now.
"Dead geese make you horny?" Jewely asks. "You know, I think that says something fairly disturbing about you as a human being."
"You started it," Luke says, leaning back onto the bed. He tugs at her legs only lightly, but Jewely goes along as if he were pulling hard.
And Luke manages to keep March 15th out of his mind for an unhurried hour.
Nine years ago the streets were wet. Slick. John and Luke had owned their silly little Mopeds, a red one and a black one, for more than a year, and ridden them all over Monte Sereno without once thinking of fixing something that didn't seem broke. Fifteen-year-olds don't know from rubber-wear on tires. From hydroplaning.
"What?" Luke says. He has been staring up through the skylight at the square of smooth blue above the bed. He turns his head to Jewely next to him.
"I said I just remembered why I came over here in the first place."
"This wasn't it?" Luke asks. He puts one hand against her hip under the sheets.
"No, I would have been here earlier if I knew you were going to be frisky." Jewely pats his hand. She would pat his hip in return, but she is on Luke’s left side and knows he is sensitive about that one. It carries scars, lots of them. Torn asphalt marks from a childhood accident.
"Actually I just came over now on the Kaiser's orders."
Luke rolls his eyes, the same way she rolls hers when she is explaining to someone for the fourth time that her name is not "Julie." It's "Jewel-y."
"He still wants you to go fight today," she adds.
"I know, he used up like the whole tape on my machine last night," Luke says, then starts speaking in a reasonable facsimile of Denny Kaisershot's drone:
"Yes, hello there, Lucas? I was...wondering...if you had given any further...consideration, to the...possibility...vis a vis, pertaining to, regarding..."
"Ugh, don't do that!" Jewely pokes at Luke with an elbow. "It's like I'm in bed with somebody else all of sudden."
"We can't have that," Luke says.
Jewely gives his hand one more pat then slides to the edge of the bed and sits up. She starts separating the ball of her clothes on the floor.
"So you going down there?" Jewely asks, flapping out her shirt and looking towards the floor. It occurs to Luke that it probably wouldn't hurt to run a broom around up here, and he thinks: Jeeze, she's becoming my conscience.
"Down where?" Luke asks. He turns back to the skylight as a big crow flaps silently past.
"Eagan," Jewely says.
Luke looks at her back as Jewely replaces her bra. She is surprisingly strong through the shoulders, slight but wiry. Like the horizontal spar of a good Nagasaki.
"Eagan down by Burnsville? Why the hell are they way out there? What's wrong with Riverside?"
Jewely shrugs, and Luke again admires the play of