Brokenhearted in Bakersfield

 

98 - DON’T FADE AWAY

Broken Heart Park is where you find it.

I awoke as I’d done a thousand times before, with perspiration trickle’n through the crust of last night’s tears.

“Man, time to wake up,” a familiar voice prodded me.  “We gotta clean out.”

Slowly I rolled myself out from under the unfamiliar tiny camper.

The Silver Ghost was back in his mild-mannered Joe Plato identity, an’ he stood over me with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” I asked, rubbing sleep outta my eyes and blinking several times to adjust to the brightness of the day.  Then I took a long look around.

Holy Christ.  I saw more trucks and more people.  Off to the far side of what was Broken Heart Park there was a yellow machine boring holes in the dried dirt.  Right behind that was another yellow monster slamming metal poles into the holes.  And right behind that was a half-dozen working men putting up Cyclone fencing.  I wondered how I’d slept through all this hullabaloo.

Joe placed a concerned hand on my shoulder.  “Our time is over,” he said.  “You ain’t got nothing left to manage, so it’s best we be moving on.”  Joe actually seemed pretty pleased with the turn of events, which I thought was a tad inappropriate.

“They’re fencing in the lizard compound.  You see?”  Joe pointed in the direction of a huge billboard:

THE FANNY LUSCIOUS KARTONE SANCTUARY
FOR THE PRESERVATION OF
THE THREE HORNED PISS LIZARD

And right underneath it read in much smaller print:

(A Tax-Exempt Subsidiary of the RobbinsYUZ Corp.)

I rubbed my eyes again, even harder this time.  I looked up at my former neighbor and asked him, “How you gonna get this camper outta here?”

Joe just grinned back at me even more.  “Let ‘em have it,” he crowed.  “I’m off to The Stardust Lounge.  That’s right.  I didn’t get a chance to tell you during all the happenings and celebrations, but when I was off searching for Dottie’s little’un I run into an agent for The Stardust name of Chet Baker.  He obviously recognized real talent when he saw it, so he offered me a job on the spot.  Now I’m their new chief of security.  And best of all, I also got me six shows a week.”  Joe performed a little celebratory jig to underscore his good fortune.

He handed me a hand-inscribed business card as he turned and pointed to the sky, “From now on it’s the ladies who gonna shout, ‘He’s sexy,’ uh-huh, ‘He’s sensuous,’ uh-huh, uh-huh, ‘He’s the Silver Ghost,’ uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!”  Our former protective brother of the Mythical Knights rolled his bandaged head around and put on a display of jive’n gyrations that was more than I felt comfortable facing.

After that he stopped and asked me, “What you gonna do?”

I pondered on this for a moment. “Looks like I’m newly homeless, so I guess I’ll start look’n for a home.  Until I find something, I guess I’ll always be at home wherever I go.”

Joe helped me get on my feet.  I proceeded to wipe away the sweat and grime off my face with the sleeve of my shirt as we slowly headed toward the interstate.  I noticed Joe was also carrying a shopping bag containing several boxes of aluminum foil.  Costume changes, I figured.  As for me, well, I didn’t have more than the clothes on my back.  But I’d gotten by with far less.

Once we got out on the highway we shook hands one last time and said final good-byes.  Then I reached into my pocket to check if I still had a lucky $20, but no luck.  Instead I pulled out a half-eaten lollipop and sighed.  With a heavy heart I surveyed the flattened, fenced, fallow ground that’d once been my beloved home.  And now I realized that sustained tragedy ain’t comedy after all.  Taken from personal experience, it’s nothing but tragedy heaped upon more tragedy.

Well, I’ll be damned!

I cupped my hands to shade my eyes for a better look.

Running across the freshly bulldozed field I saw what appeared to be a towheaded boy, with his spindly legs pumping furiously up and down and his towel-cape aflutter in the wind.  I smiled as I watched Little Billy kick up giant clouds of dust.  And as the bodily form dissolved in a yellowish brown haze, I prayed he’d always remember Bakersfield.

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