The winter before he met Anne, Davy had a double-hernia operation. Being on full disability, Medicaid handled all the costs including door-to-door ferrying since he had no friend or relative to drive him.
Snow was falling, thick and fluffy and furious as he stared out the picture window, waiting for his ride, a chill leaking in.
Before dawn, all had been clear as Davy peered out the same window into arctic darkness, blaring Erik Satie as loud as some blast Led Zep. Davy scoffed at religion, relegated it to the world of imaginary friends. But when he saw wildlife, like the twenty or so wild turkeys now passing before him, stumbling in the snow and ice, searching for food, he'd say, "God help you!"
The taxi, a pale-blue mini-van driven by a tall middle-aged morbidly-obese fellow with a beard and a ponytail, pulled into Davy's drive. If the cabby was shocked by Davy's decrepit trailer, he didn't show it: decrepit's an Oneida County norm. The van's windshield wiper tossed off snow - right/left, right/left - while Davy got in and the driver noted the time on a form.
The van carried them the two miles down Davy's largely deserted road, past the abandoned house, past the tarpaper shack, past the farm, to 12S, took a left and headed toward Utica's Faxton Hospital, a half-hour drive. The radio was on, tuned to an oldies station, it providing a locomotive chug:
"...uh-Bumpa-WHAP! uh-Bumpa-WHAP! uh-Bumpa-WHAP!"
Just a bass and drums.
"...uh-Bumpa-WHAP! uh-Bumpa-WHAP! uh-Bumpa-WHAP!"
Davy said, "Do you know who this is?"
"Grand Funk!"
"That's right! You know, this is a pretty radical arrangement, when you think about it, just a bass and drums and vocals for the longest time. It seems to go on forever like that. That's not a pop-hit formula."
Mr Ponytail said nothing, he just squinted out the window, eyes straining against the blizzard. He pulled out a pint of Old Grandad, offering the first swig to Davy, who declined. "I'm going in for an operation."
Mr Ponytail took a long draw, licked his thin lips and exclaimed, "AH!"
The radio answered with a call and response, "Doncha know that she is? SOME KINDA WONDERFUL!"
The van slip-slided a bit in the snow.
For two minutes and fifteen seconds it's the thumping bass and the drum wallop while bare-chested lugs from sooty-skied Flint, Michigan wail away on vocals, imitating a black gospel group until - finally - a Hammond organ weighs in with a chord wash, breaking the tension like the sun busting through a summer rain.
Davy had never met Mr Ponytail prior, but he knew him: knew he was just young enough to have avoided Vietnam; knew he believed it was a genuine accomplishment to have a high school degree; knew he'd spent the summer of 1972 high on Boone's Farm and Seconal and weak weed; knew he'd gotten laid for the first fumbling sweaty time on a filthy mattress in a cabin in the woods; knew he'd worried, intensely, for a month or two afterwards that his minute of pleasure/relief would result in a pregnancy. And Davy knew that he had indeed gotten her pregnant and that Mr Poytail married her and raised a brood, and tried like hell to earn a lousy buck in a lousy town. Davy had nothing in common with him, but here, on this ride on this road, the music forged a kinship. Davy glanced out his window, getting a little misty-eyed thinking about this man, his life of little, his struggle against the woeful winds of fate. If he'd passed Mr Ponytail in a kwik mart, he wouldn't have given him a thought, but now Davy saw them as brothers of a sort, bonded by loserdom in Central New York and in Grand Funk Railroad. He fought an urge to tell the man-mountain this: it's alright, everything in life, ultimately, has a purpose.
But Davy kept his yap shut for a couple of reasons: because he knew how uncomfortable it would make the both of them and because he'd lost faith in that sort of nonsense, by and large. A remote part of his heart was still occupied by the child who prayed to saints, who knew that some day Loretta Young would swoop in with all the proper papers proving that she was his true mother, that there'd been some sort of tragic mix-up at the New Hampshire hospital that day, and she'd whisk him off to Beverly Hills to begin life afresh, poolside with a lot of cool Hollywood friends: Paul Newman, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Barbara Feldon and Don Adams, Angela Cartwright and Billy Mumy. But the decades had wised him up. Now he viewed life as anything but hopeful, as only a series of cul-de-sacs and red herrings, betrayals and mishaps, until the grinning Grim Reaper nicked one's stinking hide.
Mother. His mind drifted back to when he was five, and she was shrieking at him for chipping a saucer, his eyes straying to her scissors lying there on the tabletop. He'd thought about picking them up and turning on her, stabbing her until she was quiet. But he just stood there and took it, a little soldier. Several years ago, when Mother died, slammed by a car, he defied her wishes for a proper Catholic burial, had her cremated and flushed the ashes down a toilet.
"...CAN I GET A WITNESS?! CAN I GET A WITNESS?!"
Barreling along 12S they came to the long downhill stretch, about a mile of straightaway, before the Wal-Mart complex. Davy said, "I guess I don't need to remind you that there's always a trooper along here? That it's a 55 MPH zone, even though it looks and feels like an Interstate? That they count on people doing 65 or more, just so they can ticket?"
"Yeah, they got me once. Won't happen again. I hate cops."
"Me, too. I guess they're necessary, but that doesn't mean that I have to like them."
Mr Ponytail tucked the bottle under his seat.
Traveling along Utica's Arterial, stopping for an occasional light, the radio played a high-tension song by The Easybeats.
"...Even my old man looks... good."
Pulling up to Faxton's entrance, "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis & The Playboys. Davy thought about a diamond ring, the one he'd bought for Lizzy those many years ago. He gave the memory a violent shove off a steep cliff.
"Good luck in there, dude. Don't die!"
"Thanks, man. You, too!"
Davy was right on time, the required fifteen minutes early to do two minutes of paperwork. Then an hour's wait in one room, ripping through the NYT crossword puzzle book he'd brought.
From there he was herded to another room, given a blue apron-like thing to wear, and a plastic bag to put his clothes in. He got in the bed and lay there for an hour and forty-five minutes, trying to coax some warmth out of the thin blanket, staring at the ceiling, thinking. Finally, he was wheeled into the operating room. Dr Malvino and two young nurses were readying when he entered.
Looking over Davy's chart, Dr Malvino said, "So, you're divorced? My partner got divorced recently."
A brunette swabbed the crook of Davy's left arm with alcohol, readying him for a dose of Demerol.
As the nurse jabbed Day's arm, Dr Malvino continued, "She took him for everything he was worth. He's starting life over at 49, from scratch."
"Really? Didn't he have a lawyer? He should've gotten half."
"Well, he's passive, he let her walk away with everything: the house, the dough."
"So, she's single? And has a house? And all the dough? What's her number?!"
Davy basked in their laughter, knew his timing had been Jack Benny exact-so, enjoyed it for that moment before the Demerol hit him like a wave of ebony joy. The next thing he knew he was opening his eyes in another room. A nurse, a different one altogether, walked over and said, "Would you like to get up, try a few steps?"
His ride home, in pitch black, the roads now a mess of slush and sand, was in an actual taxi, driven by a young woman, a single mom working her way through Mohawk Valley Community Collge. They had a most pleasant chat for the thirty minutes back to Davy's wreck. He told her that he couldn't tip, explaining that he was broke, on every form of relief.
"Only some customers tip. You know, I'm just happy to have a cheerful soul on board, you're a good guy. Our conversation is worth more than a couple of dollars. You wouldn't believe some of the grouches I get. Real assholes. You're okay."
Davy felt like a million bucks.
This day was the highlight of Davy's social life for the winter of 2008/9, for all of his years to date after Lizzy walked out, after he wound up in this hellhole, until he met Anne and they commenced their drug, romance and murder spree. That's when things really began to cook. But for now, this was his red letter day in Oneida County.
Opening his door, no animal greeted him, no noisy dog, no curious cat, just stillness. He closed the door and flicked on a light.
Inside his trailer, his shell, Davy didn't bother mixing a batch of martinis, he just grabbed a bottle of gin out of the fridge and guzzled, taking glorious drafts. To hell with the medical warning of no alcoholic beverages tonight! To hell with the formality of a glass! Jesus, it comes in a glass!
Beefeater coursing through him like white-water rapids, he recalled a New Year's Eve with Lizzy, their final as it turned out. They were at a party in Philadelphia, visiting her Main Line childhood friends. A grandfather clock struck the midnight hour and the houseful of toffs roared. He turned to his wife, but she and bearded trust-fund Tim, her high school-era boyfriend, cheered each other with an arms-entwined-toast, sipping champagne from the other's flute, eyes glinting. Then she made a beeline past Davy, right past him, to get a refill, Tim trailing, too close to her butt.
Davy stood there, as alone as a man has ever been, drained his drink and thought, "Happy fucking New Year's."
He bit his tongue until they were back in their hotel room, both blurry drunk. "How could you do that? With me standing right there? You didn't even have the decency to wish me a Happy New Year's! You just had to belly-up for more champagne - with that asshole!"
"Oh, grow up! Get off my fucking back! Who the hell are you, anyway? I'll do what I want! If you don't like it, go kill yourself! Really! We're five flights up. Go on the ledge and leap, head first, see if I care!" She put on her overcoat, her pretty face a criss-cross of anger, the ruby lips scowled to one side.
"Where are you going?"
"Out! Just out!"
Then his thoughts, with trap door suddenness, switched from rage to a blissful time, thinking about when he'd proposed to her, spontaneously, surprising even himself. And she'd accepted, them standing there on Lexington Avenue, outside of Bloomingdale's, that April afternoon, as the river of blind humanity rushed past their little island.
The morning after his operation, hungover as hell, Davy drank a pot of hot black coffee and went for a walk in the snow. The sky was an even pewter, the sun a hazy circle, the palest salmon. In the woods he made up a little ditty, a few notes based on two chords, C major and A minor. He sang the words over and over for a bout a half-hour, sometimes clapping the beat, sometimes singing full-throttled with his head thrown back, sometimes crouching it to a whisper:
Can I get a witness? Can I get a witness?
Way over yonder, from the other side?
Tiring of this, he switched to a marching beat, chanting for the remainder of his walk:
Ah luv a gurl ya see,
Her name is Patti Lee!
She does the frug the best,
Wearin' a Dee-troit vest!
Back home, he ate a bowl of Cheerios, showered, then shaved for the second time that morning. Brushing his hair, he counted 100 strokes.
He'd pretty much lost that blind faith of a child, yet an iota remained, a single lit candle in a vast black auditorium.
On the bathroom sink was a toothbrush holder, it holding two toothbrushes: one his, one Lizzy's.
Hey, you never know.
