We are heading into the home stretch, y'all. Here are the next 3 chapters. Will the next post stick to the 3 chapter pattern of publication? If so, that will leave the final chapter hanging for the following post. Honestly? I haven't decided. Time, as they say, will tell. Live in the moment. Enjoy these:
20—the el gato
The El Gato Coffee Shop is a narrow little room sandwiched in between the Grog and Sirloin on the one side and the Little Village Real Estate offices on the other. Whomever built the place was very creative. Its long, narrow shape is about the only possible configuration that could be squeezed into that particularly elongated, skinny space, but it works. It wedges deeply recessed into what was once an alleyway, slightly raised above street level, on Santa Cruz Avenue.
A veritable miracle of utilitarian design.
In this it is not unique along the streets of Los Gatos. There is a nifty little shop just down the street, called “Nature’s Alley,” which is just that—an open-air former alleyway—converted with a high degree of imagination into a tasteful plant store.
This morning all of the twenty or so stools at the long counter of the El Gato were claimed, and the one nearest to the cash register, farthest from the door, was occupied by a tall, lean, dark haired man in his early thirties. His gray running shorts and pale blue sweatshirt were not out of place, even in the last week of December, at least not in Los Gatos, California.
He sipped his black coffee measuredly, and even at that slow pace had consumed four cups of the thick, richly aromatic stuff already. He had only taken a couple bites out of the jelly doughnut on the bright white saucer in front of him.
Mostly he seemed to just be thinking. Or listening? Intently.
The pretty young waitress with the wavy long red hair was beginning to get a mild case of the creeps. She wondered if she should give Merle a call.
Merle was the owner of the El Gato Coffee Shop, and he had been very explicit with instructions when he had hired the pretty young waitress with the long red hair, “If there is trouble of any kind you call ol’ Merle, he only lies five blocks away, off University, and he’ll be her before ya can say ‘Jack Splatt.’”
“Ol’ Merle” was kind of a good ol’ boy. And he was a big one. Weighing in at close to three hundred and fifty pounds, very little of it muscle, most of it doughnuts. But it was established fact that he had very little time for troublemakers. “Lord knows,” Merle had told her often enough, “the burden of making back the small fortune I just spent on remodeling the front of this place so it don’t no more look like a greasy spoon, not to mention the fortune I lost closin’ down for a week to do it, sure don’t allow for no slack when it comes to takin’ in doughnut money.”
The pretty young waitress waited for the last of the coffee to drip into the aluminum pot of the coffee maker. She tossed her pretty hair over one shoulder and stole another glance at the man at the end of the counter.
She hated to bother fat ol’ Merle. Merle lived with his father, took care of the old guy, was always talking about him. He seemed to be getting a little better about his complaining lately. They must be getting along better.
She risked another appraisal of the man in the blue sweatshirt.
He looked pretty burnt out, all right. She had seen him around. He was kind of good looking and she wasn’t above some man watching. Plus, she had a bit of a weakness for men with moustaches. She had seen him running through the streets of Los Gatos often, even saying “Hi” or “Good mornin’” to him once or twice. But he had never been into the El Gato before, and he had never broadcasted the kind of weird, on the edge vibes that were literally pouring off of him now.
Jesus, she though, there he goes again. Turning around to glare at the people coming in. Every time anyone came up the new wooden steps into the place he turned around and glared at them.
Clop clop clop. A lady with hard-soled sandals ascended the steps. The guy, sure enough, started slightly, turned the upper half of his body around, and GLARED at her. That does it, thought the pretty young waitress with the wavy long red hair, that’s bad for business, there’s nothing subtle about that at all, I’m calling Merle.
She turned to pick up the phone and dialed Merle’s number, but when she turned back around, all she saw was the back of his pale blue sweatshirt as he bounded out the door.
His feet never even touched the steps.
21—proper channels
“Mr. Gardner, even if we could ascertain the precise location of the gravesite, I’m afraid we would at least need a name before we could begin paperwork to exhume a body for re-interment.”
“The name will be on the headstone, buried with the grave,” Will repeated, “I’ve already told you the.” He heaved a heavy sigh, not the first he’d parted with during this conversation. “Listen, Mr. Farley, I know this is unusual, God knows I know that, but you’ve got to believe me. There is a body buried there that does not belong there. Don’t you have records? The newspaper article says there’s a map. Here,” Will dug into his pocket for the xeroxed copy he had made.
Farley cleared his throat. He had seen some strange ones, but this was a prize winner. In his 35 years as a funeral director at Cosgrove he had never…
“Here,” Will said, pointing a shaking finger at the pertinent paragraph. As cool as Farley’s office was, beads of perspiration were welling up on the young man’s face.
The elder man reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a pair of wire rimmed bifocals. He slipped the glasses onto his pudgy face and read impatiently. He cleared his throat again, waving his hand in the air, replying “Yes, yes, I have read all this before, but you must understand, Mr. Gardner, that although a map of the old cemetery does exist—though not in our possession—the map, which I have personally seen, is plotted and coded with numbers, and the numbers, Mr. Gardner, refer to lists. I am afraid that most of those lists were lost in a fire, I believe in 1890 or thereabouts. That is one reason why some of the descendants of the deceased were never successfully contacted during the original move. I assure you that every reasonable effort was made, but you have to understand that the means of communication at the turn of the century were fairly limited. Yes,” he eased back into his plush office chair, “I am as certain as you are that there are a number of deceased in that large area that, as you say, ‘don’t belong,” but, and I’m sure you will agree, we simply cannot go mucking about with pickaxe and shovel underneath shops and sidewalks on the basis of,” Farley peered over the rims of his bifocals, “dreams, did you say?”
“Damnit, old man!” Will shouted, and for a flicker of an instant violence hung in the small office. He caught himself and inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he paused, “I apologize.” He took another deep breath. “What if I paid,” he asked, “What if I paid, what would it cost?”
“I’m afraid, sir, that, even with the permission and cooperation of the landowner, an exhumation of this nature would not come in under, let us say, somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars, perhaps more.”
Will looked lost, and Farley saw it, adding, “In addition, of course, to the cost of re-interment.”
At this last Will slumped ever so slightly into the leather chair. The older man, removing and folding his spectacles and leaning closer to the younger, assumed an expression of total sympathy. It was so complete that a less practiced actor would have pushed it past the point of believability, but Farley made it work. It was, of course, his stock and his trade.
“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Gardner,” he oared softly, “perhaps after you’ve talked to the landowner and thought this over, perhaps we can be of some assistance.” He smiled gently, paternally. “My own advice, young man, which I do feel constrained to give, is to…”
Will’s look silenced him. There was an underlying threat to it similar to those with which Farley had some experience, in the faces of the young, in the faces of the left behind.
“Well.” The funeral director concluded. “If you will excuse me, sir, I do have business to attend to. Good day.”
After Will had quit the office, Farley picked up the telephone and dialed the number of the Los Gatos Police Department.
22—vigilance, and Sarah
Will walked somnambulantly home, mulling over the whole mess. It as if his thought were the ingredients of a thick stew, and they had all been thrown together in one big bowl, but the chef was beginning to suspect he should have chosen a larger bowl.
Still he stirred it all about, hoping the mixture would blend and become something, not overflow, and not just remain a bowl full of stuff.
The body was under the El Gato Coffee Shop steps.
It was a tortured, forgotten soul. He was sure of it.
Perhaps there were other such souls scattered about underneath shops, streets, or sidewalks; but this one was the only one that mattered.
To Will, at least, this soul mattered crucially.
“Little Willie may be satisfied with his lot in death. Maybe he is under the bar at the Grog and Sirloin, thought Will. Maybe he’s entertained nightly by all the talented, underpaid musicians who played there. Maybe he is delighted by the clinking of ice cubes in highball glasses, cheered by the melodious mellifluousness of laughter, entertained by loud voiced arguments over football games and real estate markets. Perhaps “Little Willie” has indeed gone to God and his soul couldn’t give a rat’s ass where his corpse rotted.
But Will was absolutely certain, beyond a shade of a doubt, that whomever it was who was killed by that team of runaway horses back on East Main Street, that soul was now reaching into Will’s dream life and encroaching upon his conscious perceptions, and that person? That human person was not resting in peace.
Will did not have a thousand dollars.
But he did have a shovel.
The notion that—as Webster defines “vigilance”—“when the processes of the law appear inadequate,” the law can be taken into one’s own hands, has a richly cultivated, time honored history in Los Gatos, California.
A bitter controversy between teamsters bound through the Santa Cruz Mountains and owners of a tollgate set up at the south end of town lasted a solid year. Despite court action prohibiting and punishing groups of men who, in 1877, cultivated a penchant for tearing down the tollgate and throwing it over the Main Street Bridge, that process was repeated over and over again until the County Board of Supervisors declared the road public in 1878.
In 1883, a convicted and particularly brutal murderer named Garcia was dragged out of jail and treated to a lynching party in his own honor, held, again, at the Main Street Bridge. It was a really swinging party.
And just before the turn of the century, it took one vigilant, public minded soul two tries to burn down the shack which had long been used as a makeshift jail by corrupt authorities. Even the local paper commended the burning of “the sweat box,” as it was commonly called.
Will wondered what the local paper would have to say about a little public spirited, altruistic, graverobbing.
******
“Hi, Willum,” came Sarah’s voice from the other side of the door. He was fumbling for his key as his door swung open. The interior of his apartment was uncharacteristically bright and cheerful for this time of day. Something sweet-smelling sizzled on the stovetop. Sarah stood before him, smiling warmly, her long blonde hair tied back, her beautiful breasts pleasantly straining a bright blue long-sleeved leotard. Will’s silly red scotch plaid apron was cinched around her tiny waist.
She kissed him quickly and turned back into the kitchen, and his eyes were drawn to that lovely behind. She was poured into a new pair of jeans he hadn’t see her wear, and they fit her like a second skin.
“I took the liberty, she tossed over her shoulder. “Your gloomy old pit was a mess, your cat was starving, and what little I’ve seen of you lately suggested to me that you could use a good meal, or any meal for that matter, and since it’s the maid’s year off, I figured, well, nothing ventured…” She glanced up from a frying pan full of chicken, wooden spatula in hand, and the silence hung in the air for a moment.
It fell. “Will. I miss you.”
He stood there. Sarah set down the spatula with a soft little click, stepped over to him and, reaching up, took his tired face gently in the soft smooth palms of her hands.
He felt like crying.
He needed a friend. Badly.
“Will, honey,” she whispered, “you look like shit.”
He did cry.
After hugging him closely for a few moments, Sarah turned off the stove and led him into the bedroom. She sat on the bed, pulling him down beside her, and held him in her arms, rocking him gently while he sobbed.
When his store of tears seemed exhausted, she held him tighter still until they kissed, and their hands began to wander. In a sweet rolling waking dream of hands and flesh, they made long slow love until they had spent their bodies last thin dimes. They fell fast asleep.
Sarah awoke sometime later, sometime well before dawn, to discover that Will was no longer in bed with her. She had long become accustomed to his rising at odd hours, so she fell back asleep, dreaming of earth. Deep. Brown. Rich earth. Cool to the touch and fertile smelling, she dreamed that she ran her fingers through its richness, and all was as it should be.
