“. . . Sir, we need it from everyone!”
“Bullshit.”
A bearded man in jeans and a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt milling around a parking lot on the outskirts of the town I’ve always lived in taps the corner of a clipboard against the outside mirror again. The sticky window of my vintage mellow yellow Volkswagen bus keeps getting stuck as I struggle to roll it down. I can’t see shit through the smudge marks.
“Prescription or recreational?”
“That be for rec purposes.”
“Still got the same wheels, ya old grouch. Sorry, no parking available. Mr. Johnson, go to the registry and get handicap plates, or take the free shuttle from the Main Street Mall. Leave the VW there. If you’re lucky, somebody will steal it.”
“Thanks. You call that a beard?”
I park at a movie theater lot, jog past the liquor store, pawnshop, and the new Popeye’s Chicken, and pause in front of the cemetery to reminisce. I look to the sky with a tear in my eye, remembering that brown-eyed girl. The one who fifty years ago was waiting outside the Adult Correctional Institute. I served a year in the can for possession of an ounce. An honorable discharge from the Marines didn’t mean shit. Feds jailed vets, and many other good men and women for smoking weed. The consequences of prohibition: Lives ruined — labeled X-cons. Never forget. Soon, I’ll be able to help them all.
***
Who needs handicap plates? I jog back to the Pot Shop. There’s a green canopy, big enough to house Dumbo, over a roped line with three stapled paper menus flapping in the wind. Fifteen minutes to an hour, like at the registry.
Folks know me. I’m living on a minimum pension from my days helping adults get high school equivalency diplomas. I don’t keep Yellow Mellow around cause it’s a collector’s item.
Once-in-a-while someone thanks me. Today is different. An old Puerto Rican dude wearing that same straw Fedora I gave him years ago tips his hat and says, “Ah, the Amigo that saved my son.” We shake. All I did was make a referral to the Street Gang Initiative.
“Greetings,” I say to a group of fine men and women of mixed ages, ethnicities, and dress style, who today represent Jack Kerouac’s hometown.
There’s a graduate in a three piece pin-striped suit in line: today he’s a bank manager. Who would have guessed? Quiet, only black guy in my first class. Wore a US Army Airborne jacket every day. Shakes my hand and whips out a crisp hundred-dollar note he borrowed years ago. “Where’s the bank interest, Ranger?” He can’t stop laughing. I’m not.
***
I was here yesterday and got reunited with Sal. Not out of the ordinary, in a town this size. She had on dirty jeans and a T-shirt that said, Gardening is for Lovers. “One edible before working in the garden helps me stay mellow,” Sal said.
Shrugged my shoulders. “I’m also into gardening. Edibles would fill my needs,” as we share one of the Refer Madness Menues.
“You might also like the chocolate bars. A little stronger, though.”
“Dark chocolates are good for the ticker.”
“Thanks for helping me when I was younger, Teach. Today I have a felony on my record for possession. Not easy to find work. What am I gonna to do?”
I turned away and cracked a brief smile. Sal didn’t know how lucky she was to receive probation. I interned at Superior Court while commuting to night school in Boston, saw her name on the docket, and put a good word in with the judge.
“Took the bar exam last week.” I handed her one of my new business cards. “Might be able to have those charges expunged. Prohibition is dead. Give me a call.” Wicked awesome, Sal’s my first client.
“I gotta a run. My daughter’s getting out of school. I’ll call you later, or stop by here tomorrow if ya get a chance. Okay?”
***
I’m back in line again, today.
“Hi Teach.”
“Hi kid.” Rubbing my shoulder, “forgot to get CBD oil. It’s Dan, please.”
Sal yanks my pony tail. Ouch. “Not a teenager anymore, either.” I noticed. I’m old, not dead.
A man in a Red Sox cap shouts, “IDs please.” Same card I used for the free breakfast at the senior center this morning.
“Next five customers!” We take off towards the building entrance like lawyers chasing after an ambulance.
“Sal look, a woman with purple hair.” I’m wearing a lavender aloha-shirt. I yank out my violet skivvy with my thumb, like a sailor at dress inspection. “Same color.”
“Too young for you. Need more than gummy bears to please her.” The funniest girl ever. Still the same ball-buster she was in school. My all-time favorite student. “That’s purple-pride, sir.”
Oops. “Just saying . . .”
There’s a narrow corridor after you get in the building. Sniff, a faint smell awakens my nostrils.
“Where’s my license?” I pull out my billfold. Top pocket . . . back pocket . . . nada. “Where the hell is it?”
“Relax. Retrace your steps, hun.” First time she ever called me that.
“I had it before!”
Sal rests a hand on my shoulder. “Breath . . . Dan.”
“I left my glasses in the van too. Want to take a walk, kid?”
She rolls her watering eyes. “And I’m not a kid anymore. Got a ten-year-old.”
We are almost to the counter. “Sorry, I’ll represent you in court for free over that felony charge.”
“Deal.”
Don’t smile. I would have done it Pro Bono, anyway.
***
We’re past the cemetery. “Wait, I stopped here to check out a stone.” We return to the graveyard.
“There,” says Sal, “On the grass.” First, she squats down and reads the flat gray stone out loud. “Janet Johnson, 1947 - 2017.” Next, picks up my ID, stares at the birth date, and tilts her head and smiles. Our fingers touch as she hands me the card. She shoves off of her thigh. I help her up . . . We’re too close . . . too tight . . . too long. This isn’t right. I was her teacher.
***
Friends let us go to the front of the line. “Eighty-seven dollars.” Three types of taxes come to twenty-five percent. Bloody usury, outrageous. And people wonder why they call it Taxachusetts. Less hassle scoring dope on the streets, and cheaper too.
It's late. “Dan, can you take me home?” She shivers and leans into me.
***
I start up the engine. “I gotta set the meter.” She laughs.
Wife died two years ago, son older than Sal left the nest, and I’ve been home alone ever since. I turn to face her. Dirty blond hair and brown eyes, like . . . Waiting for me to say something.
I ask her out to dinner.
“Sure.”
There are certain things I care deeply about. What town folk think about Sal Sanchez and our friendship is one. There are certain things I don’t give a shit about. What town folk think about Dan Johnson, the X-con. I’ve more than made up for that mistake.
“It’s a beautiful day in ‘my’ neighborhood.”
Don Robishaw’s collection of five FF tales found in, ‘Bad Road Ahead’ was the Grand Winner in Defenestrationism, 2020 Flash Fiction Suite Contest. Don’s short story entitled, ’Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Through the Fat 2018 Chapbook Contest. His work has also recently appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, FFM, O’ Dark Thirty, among other venues. Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or stereotypes he's met while on the road. He likes to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past. Before he stopped working to write, he ran educational programs for homeless shelters. Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.
Author's Page: www.facebook.com/donrobe1/
