Brokenhearted in Bakersfield
91 - UP FROM THE PITS
At Broken Heart Park we admit
it: it’s always darkest before we regain
consciousness.
Kittens, Kartones, shattered crockery and twisted metal littered the lot around
the First Coach and the acreage of Broken Heart Park. What had been Miss Dorothy’s trailer was now
a blazing fireball burning hot into the sky.
I’d never seen worse conflagration in my entire life. (Well, I admit, there was Great-Granny’s
funeral, but no obliteration was so close to my heart as this.) I never thought my dream job could end up so
terrifying for me and my loved ones, and even the ones I hated.
I forgot all about Maggie till I heard her wailing for someone to call 9-1-1. She was still laid out flat on our brand new
living room carpet, drenching the pile with a heavy flow from her gashing
wound.
“Mr. Manager,” I heard the Silver Ghost address me formally, “I’ll go make the
emergency call.” As he jumped to action
he yelled, “Safety! Security! The—”
The Silver Ghost silently walked over to the old landline, tenting the turkey ever so carefully.
I picked up my beer and walked outside onto the stoop to survey the particulars. Miss Dorothy’s home was a bright orange cinder. Edna’s plot of planted posies was a smoking crater. All around me little stakes with pieces of burnt string marked out the squares that’d been our yard, but now was just an excavation site for exploitation by alien Injuns. Bits of Kachinga pottery, bowlery and platery was exposed everywhere. I wondered how was it possible, from where we started, to ever arrive at this?
Then, behind me, I heard the Silver Ghost cussing. “Damn! The fucking phone’s out. Them goddamn Kartones must’a disrupted da lines.” (This came as unhappy news, since Maggie's cellphone needed recharging and the electricity had been cut.)
“Maybe the lines just got blowed up,” I suggested.
Looking down I spotted the smushed remains of the dead piss-lizard that sabotaged the Silver Ghost’s mission. “Here,” I peeled the dead reptile up off the ground. “This one still has its head attached, maybe you can cash it in for a coupon reward or half an uneaten breakfast burrito?”
Maggie’s sweet voice shouted out from inside No. 1, “Will you two shut up out there and help? Somebody get me that bottle of O Promise Me.”
The Silver Ghost dove into the closet and grabbed a fifth of the vintage whiskey I’d found in late Edna’s booze locker. He sped to Maggie’s side (after sneaking a small hero’s reward for himself, I noticed).
“Jesus,” Maggie sounded relieved, “give it to me.” I watched Maggie take a deep draw of O Promise Me and then wipe her mouth on her sleeve. Then she drenched the wound in her thigh with the premium blend. “Shiiiiiit!” she yelled. “Burns like hell!”
Maggie’s moist eyes glanced up at me. “That’s gonna have to do until we can get to St. Ides.” Then she ordered, “Now, help get me up.” As Maggie struggled to stand she hollered, “I gotta see the carcass of that fat bastard before I’ll believe he’s really dead.” I gently guided Maggie outside our domestic double-wide and down the driveway.
“I gotta go look for the young’un,” the Silver Ghost interjected racing off into the desolation, his hand firmly gripping Maggie’s weapon. I assumed he was off to check on his heroic sidekick, Little Billy. And I conjectured to myself that perhaps one day Little Billy himself might have a future as a Mystical Brother.
Maggie pressed her hand over the bullet hole in her profusely bleeding leg as she hobbled from place to place, kicking over charred piles of debris after charred piles of debris. “Where are you, goddammit? I know you’re out here somewhere. Where in God’s name are you, Christos?”
“Maggie,” I asked, “wha’cha do’n?”
Her eyes grew wide as she pointed off into the distance. “I’m looking for…that.”
I followed the line of destruction from the end of Maggie’s pointing finger to the crater near what used to be Edna’s memorial flowerbed. I watched a burnt and battered shape raising itself from out of the hole. It looked like a man. A man climbing up from the pit. He shook his singed and burly head, and burnt bits flew about everywhere.
“Holy smokes,” I whispered. “It’s blackened Christos.”
“I knew hell wouldn’t take you,” Maggie scowled at him.
Christos rubbed his forearm across his eyes. “Dat’s right, lady.” He coughed and spit on the ground. “Only a damn fool has any doubts about Christos Kartone. Feh! And even if you got yourself hooked up wit dat loser, I already know you ain’t no fool.”
I watched the hulking form of Christos limping toward Maggie and me. “Look!” I cried out. “Look at what you done to my home!”
Christos stopped dead in his tracks and glared, his eyes glowin’ red underneath the black soot and ash.
“Your home?” he bellowed. “Your Broken Heart Park?” he bellowed. “Lissen, you fukkin’ little putz, you don’t fukkin’ unnerstan’ what dis fukkin’ Broken Heart Park is. You tink dat you can give me your fukkin’ money and because, outta da fukkin’ goodness of my own fukkin’ heart, I let you stay here, dat dis is your fukkin’ home? Dis is not your fukkin’ home. Dis is my fukkin’ business. Dis is my fukkin’ life.”
Christos halted his obscene speech long enough to stretch his massive back. Then he straightened himself up like a grotesquely burned pot roast. I could hear bones snapping and crackling as he strained.
Christos shouted: “Broken Heart Park is da fukkin’ American Dream.”
While Christos was speaking his fukkin’ mind, I suddenly noticed the Silver Ghost slowly approaching from behind, step by step, pistol pointed like he was an armed phantom. He edged closer, but Christos spun around, revealing a quickness I did not know he had, and he held a chunk of Kachinga pottery in his right hand that he brought down with a terrible force atop the bandaged head of the Silver Ghost.
I was horrified to see our protector go down hard again, stumbling backwards and hitting his skull against rocks as he fell into a Kachinga excavation pit. Maybe more unfortunate, the gun dropped from his hand.
In a flash Christos scooped up the fallen gun. “It wouldn’t be healty for any of youse to be messin’ wit me,” he waved the weapon at us.
Maggie grimaced in pain as she muttered, “Kartone, your mouth writes checks your ass can’t cash. You might murder an unarmed Minister’s Son under cover of darkness, but I’m betting you aren’t tough enough to use that thing right now, right here, mano-a-mano, in the light of day.”
I was beginning to question the wisdom of Maggie’s plans.