Brokenhearted in Bakersfield
37 - HE’S NOT MY BROTHER
I got a sudden inspiration
while sitting in a roadside diner eating banana cream pie and staring at some
mighty fine glutials wrapped in pink polyester. As soon as Brother Hickpacker’s radio message
about looking out for Number One concluded, I jumped off my stool and shouted
out, “Where’s that Cosmically Enlightened Tiny Storefront Chapel of
Self-Propagation?”
My angel waitress cooed, “Out on Ukulele Pick Boulevard by the Arthur Godfrey
turn-off, just between G-Strings and B-Flats.”
I grabbed her shoulders. Our lips met
like a fist meeting a casaba, all squishy and more finger than tongue. Even with my eyes closed I could tell she was
standing on one leg. As our lips was
locked, my hands wandered as far south as they could with a counter separating
us.
“Hey, hey, heyyyyyyyyyyyy!” She pushed
me away as she pushed her hair back to a vertical position. “That’ll cost you another twenty bucks.”
“Stick with me, baby, you’ll be blowing methane through silk.” I straightened my shoulders. “But right now,” I bolted for the door, “I
gotta see a man about a kitten.”
With my lucky $20 retrieved during our passionate encounter, I headed out to
find Ulele Pick Blvd. Turns out, the
Cosmically Enlightened Tiny Storefront Chapel of Self-Propagation was about an
hour’s walk from the diner. At least, I
think it was an hour. Walking around Ulele
can get you really buzzed.
I was hanging on a Stop sign when I looked up and saw it: the abandoned storefront, its windows covered
with the dried mud of disregard, its rusted security grate pulling away from the
door and revealing a graffiti covered handmade sign:
COSMICALLY
THE DIVINELY ^ ENLIGHTENED TINY STOREFRONT CHAPEL Of
SELF-PROPOGATION
I invited myself in.
No one seemed to be around, but I gave another holler anyway. “Brother Hickpacker? Yo, Brother Hickpacker, you around?”
From somewhere in the back arose a potent sound of much coughing and
spitting. “Don’t have a conniption,” the
familiar bourbon-and-cigarette voice called out, “I’m comin’ soon enough.”
Musty curtains in the doorway parted and Brother Hiram P. Hickpacker appeared. He looked like a boiled owl in a rumpled
white suit. His mane of thick gray hair
had a yellow tinge from years of nicotine use, and his gray beard featured
brown tar stains flaring from each nostril opening.
“If you’re here for the car, I already sold it,” Brother Hickpacker
snarled. “Along with the TV and the
stereo hi-fi.” He raised his fist in
dramatic fury, “No precious blood shall ye squeezeth from this barren stone.”
“Brother Hickpacker, I’m…I’m…I’m,” I stuttered.
“Well, it don’t really matter who I am,” I decided to dispense with the
formalities and get right to the heart of the matter. “I heard you on the radio today, and I just
gotta say, I ain’t never been touched by a man of God like you.”
Clutching at his chest, Brother Hickpacker tried grabbing for the back of an
invisible chair while his eyes darted to the ceiling. “God?
God? Who said anything about God? Son, I do inspirational broadcasting. My pastoral outreach is to create a concerned
citizenry. I don’t do God.” He leaned forward. “You from Internal Revenue?”
“No, Brother Hickpacker, I’m just here to get some advice.”
“You got $19.95 on you?” He drove a hard
bargain. I reluctantly pulled my lucky
$20 to pay him.
“Hallelujah,” Brother Hickpacker swiped the bill from my hand. “I don’t make change.” He tucked the bill in his coat pocket. “What do you want from me?”
I took a deep breath and asked, “Have you ever heard of my Aunt Fanny Kartone?”
“Fanny Kartone? Fanny Kartone? You telling me Fanny Kartone’s your auntie?” Brother Hickpacker’s eyes turned to
saucers. “She must be a hundred years
old by now, and worth millions.”
“She’s well over a hundred,” I answered.
“She stays spry on coffee and martini enemas.”
Brother Hickpacker stroked his chin. “Coffee and martinis, you say? Hmmmm,” he examined the ceiling again while his hand tugged at his stubbly growth of beard.
“It never really connected for me that she was rich until recently.”Brother Hickpacker reassured me, “You could benefit from some pastoral assistance, and maybe I might be of some help in this particular regard.” A smile brightened the old man’s face, his teeth appeared like an exposed row of corn nuts, and I just knew he would birth another almighty buck-grabbing idea.
“The problem is, the she’s been holding out on me,” I confessed and kneeled down. “Brother Hickpacker, I don’t want to get aced out of my inheritance. I truly believe you are the only person in Ulele who I can depend on for financial guidance on how to grab my rightful birthright.”
“Son, is anyone else interfering in your auntie’s affairs right now?”
“Just some foreign dude called Lars.”
“Foreigners!” Brother Hickpacker spat. “Bah! Most can’t even fart in English.” His grubby hands came down firmly on my shoulders as his watery eyes locked with mine. “Son, you get back home pronto, and you stake a claim as your auntie’s nephew and protector. Never, and I say never ever, yield unto others that which is thine to righteously grabbeth.”
As Brother Hickpacker turned to reach for a carton of cigarettes on the side table, I deftly slipped my lucky $20 from his coat pocket.
“Maybe you can get your auntie to sign one of those If-It-Ain’t-Nailed-Down contracts?” he suggested.
I arose and looked deeply into his bloodshot eyes and asked in my best heartfelt voice, “Brother Hickpacker, will you help me to attend her?”
“Son,” he clamped on both of my hands, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”