Dinner
with W.T.
*Title story from Dinner with WT by Rick Baber, TigerEye Publications, 2010
"Boredom and loneliness can drive a man crazy."
There are nicer places than this. I know
that for a fact. A month ago - almost to the hour -I was on the 14th floor of
The Mirage in Las Vegas, with my wife and son, being served a late dinner in
our room by a very polite young potential yuppie in a white suit and bow tie.
Tonight, I'm sitting on this hard single bed in this budget motel in north-central Missouri, spilling a chef
salad with ranch from a styrofoam go-box onto my shirt as I try to eat it with
crackers - in lieu of the plastic fork that was negligently omitted by the
waitress at the bar next door. The one I tipped so generously for allowing me to bend the rules
and actually get something to eat after they roll up the sidewalks here at ten
o'clock.
The better places have those convenient
little note pads in the desk drawer, in case one of their patrons should decide
to write a note. Or a letter. Or an epitaph. This one's being written on the
back of a photocopied map of one of those crummy little pig-farming communities
in which I was fortunate enough to ruin a good
pair of tennis shoes today. It's not a very big map. I'm wondering already how
badly this ink is going to smear on that cheap, single-ply toilet paper.
The better places have a lot of things. But
usually not insurance adjusters.
The remote control on the T.V. doesn't work.
The nearest ice machine is only an elevator ride away...when the elevator is
working. The air conditioner blows warm air. Every night at about 11:45 there's
this rapid banging from the room next door, and the sound of a man screaming
"OK baby. Now let's hook up those jumper cables!" My T.V. alarm clock
is exactly twelve hours off, which complicated waking up on time significantly
until I got smart and set the thing to go off bright and early at 7pm this
morning. Of course, now, I wish that hadn't worked. If I'd have slept even ten
minutes later I probably wouldn't be in the shape I'm in now.
It was about nine this morning when I
spotted him trying to cross one of these lettered highways they have here
somewhere north of Glascow. Highways with letters for names. Like they only
have so many numbers they can use. I had to stop and pick him up. It's just
something I always do.
He was very attractive. Unlike any I'd seen
back in Arkansas. Bigger around than most, but not as tall. Sort of a
sandy-brown color.
I tried to keep him in the front floorboard
for a while, but with that flat, oval body he kept getting stuck sideways
between the seat and the door whenever I'd get out to work. Then, when I opened
the door, he'd fall out and surprise the shit out of the people who walked me
back to the car. It's a difficult thing to explain to them. I'm supposed to be
a "professional”, like the insurance adjusters on the television
commercials. Things like that never happen to the good-hands people.
So, finally, I just had to put him in the
trunk and leave the thing unlatched so he wouldn't bake.
When I was my son's age, my dad would
always bring stuff home to us when he'd been out on the road working storm
claims. Candy. Comic books. Toys. I never have the time or money to go shopping
for my kid. I just bring him turtles off the road. He has indicated to me,
on more than one
occasion, that I enjoy it more
than he does.
This one I dubbed "W.T." ...
"Watch Turtle," like Judge Roy Bean's bear.
When I got back to my motel room in
Columbia, at about sundown, I had to figure out how to smuggle him into my
room. Again, it's a little hard for a grown man to explain why he's taking a turtle into a motel
room. Not that I owed anybody any explanation, but if they did ask it would
probably look pretty bad if I refused to answer. I turned him sideways and
stuck him into my file box.
He looked a little weathered from spending
the day in that hot trunk. Still not sure if he was a terrapin or a water
turtle, I ran a couple of inches of water in the bathtub and put him in there
to cool off. It's phenomenal how much dirt those things carry inside that shell. In just
a few minutes the water in that tub was as murky brown as the Missouri River,
and I became afraid that it would leave an indelible stain that I'd have to pay
for. And explain. So I took the little guy out and let him run around in the
room. Where was he gonna go?
I was starving. The workload of the day,
and the fact that I was lost most of the time, left no time for lunch. And I
never eat breakfast. And I hadn't eaten dinner the day before because I was so
damn tired from climbing roofs all day to look for hail damage. Doc &
Eddy's, next door, quit serving food at ten. There was just enough
time to change out of my pigcrap-covered clothes (yeah, pig farms are insured,
too), take a quick shower, and quietly infiltrate the college crowd for some
grub. But when I went to step into the tub, all that brown turtle crud was
still in there.
So, I'm down on my knees, naked,
leaning over the tub wall, scrubbing the bottom with a washrag, when I realize
W.T. hasn't eaten all day either.
Visually, I'm sure it was a hilarious
sight. But, physically, it was more uncomfortable than the imagination will
allow one who has not experienced such an occurrence. I assume that would include everyone in the
world except me.
I tugged. But he wasn't quite ready to let
go.
Suddenly, I flashed back to a moment in my
early childhood when my grandpa Burgess warned me about the first alligator
snapper I ever saw.
"If he bites you," he said,
"He won't let go until lightning strikes!"
"LIGHTNING?" Hell. There wasn't a
cloud in the sky. Panic was too mild a word for the feeling that was overcoming
me. I'd been up here busting my rear for two weeks with a bad toothache and a
really nasty case of TMJ, but I didn't think I could go on with a turtle hooked
to my nads. It wasn't really that painful, after the initial chomp, because all
he got was skin. But the weight was killing me. My voice was already an octave
higher.
"But it's not a snapping turtle."
I said out loud. “Calm down. Be cool. Maybe it's not even a
male."
I placed the chain lock on the door and
plugged the little peep hole with toilet paper. Hey, you never know. Some
whacko out there in the hall could have some kind of adapter lens that he could
put up to that thing and see right into the room.
I tried to reassure myself. "It's not
the end of the world, Rick. You just have a loggerhead hanging from your
nutsack."
I gently lifted W.T. to relieve some of the
pressure, and hobbled over to the bed, thinking that if I just spread out and
laid there for a few minutes he'd let go. He didn't.
I lit a cigarette and tried to lean forward
and blow smoke in his face. That didn't do any good either.
Panic turned to paranoia. I could see the
night clerk (that greasy little weasel bastard with the wire rim glasses)
downstairs, with all of his greasy little bug-doctor-weasel bastard friends,
gathered around the secretly-installed surveillance camera monitor, spitting
beer as they laughed unrestrainedly at the image of the smoking turtle between
the naked man's legs. I turned out the lamp beside the bed, but the glow from
the television still illuminated me...and W.T. And the damn remote wouldn't
work. And it was on cable, showing Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles. I started remembering a story my wife had told me about a
woman who brought her husband into the ER at her hospital, in the middle of the
night, to have a candle removed from his...his...his posterior. Up until this
point I had always thought that would be a nightmare. Now, I wished my problem was that easily
explained.
In about half an hour it became apparent to
me that W.T. wasn't going to let go on his own. On the surface, it appeared
that I had two options: Yank the sonofabitch off, like a tick, and lose a very
small, but significant piece of my anatomy...or suffer the humiliation of a
trip to the emergency room. Neither choice was particularly appealing.
I was weak from hunger. No way was I going
to make it 'til morning without sustenance. So I decided to get something to
eat while I thought it over.
Dressed in my baggiest pants, unable to zip
them up completely, and a tee shirt, and covered with a buttoned black trench
coat, I entered Doc & Eddy's to the roar of a packed house of St. Louis
Blues TV hockey fans. Just my luck. Hockey night. Most of them had their backs
to me, facing the screens, as I slipped up on a waitress between them and the
bar and requested anything to go. It was just a few minutes after ten, and she
informed me that I might be able to get a chef salad -sort of leftovers with
lettuce - but the grille was shut down. As I was certainly in no position to
create a scene by initiating an argument with her, I graciously accepted, and
took a seat in the darkest corner I could find.
In a minute she brought me a beer to drink
while I waited. Curiosity must have gotten the best of her. As she handed it to
me she looked around at the college crowd, and back at me.
"Isn't it a little warm tonight to be
wearing that coat?"
"Warm?" I don't know what made
her think that. Maybe because everybody else in there was wearing those preppy
blue and white striped tee shirts and those preppy knee-knocker shorts and
topsider shoes with those little short preppy pansy white socks. Maybe because
beads of sweat were forming on my forehead and trickling down and dripping off the end of my nose.
No. She wasn't saying that at all. What she
was really saying was "Is that a turtle in your pants, or are you just
glad to see me?"
The wheels of my brain had just begun
spinning wildly in search of an answer to her question when W.T. decided he was
going to take a walk with my baggage. His hind claws were ripping my thighs to
shreds, and I could see my lap jumping up and down under the raincoat. I
gritted my teeth to
avoid screaming - which sent TMJ
pains shooting all through my head. And through all of this, I was somewhat
happy, because I thought he might let go and stick his big brown head through
the coat and say hello to this nosey bitch.
"I've been sick," I said quietly
as I handed her a ten for a six-dollar tab. "Keep the change."
"Oh, you're a doll," she said,
turning sideways just enough for me to tell by her silhouette against the light
from one of the TV screens that she was carrying a load of her own. "In
about four months I'll need all the money I can get."
"A little bambino!" I
acknowledged, with a big, wide, toothy grimace on my face that I was trying now
to disguise as a pleasant smile.
Hell, I had to say something. But I didn't
mean to start up a fucking conversation. She must've been as starved for
somebody to talk to as I was for food. Right there - at that most...
inconvenient time, she just opened up to me like I was her shrink or something.
It seems that she'd been living with this guy for the past eight years. About
three years ago, her parents finally learned to accept him and her dad built
them an apartment over their garage. But the dude didn't really want to get
married, so they got into this big fight about it and she ran out and got
knocked up by this Cambodian dude she'd been having cybersex with on the
internet. Now, sometime after the baby's born, and she can fit into a nice
looking wedding dress, they (she and the Cambodian) are going to try to get
married. But she doesn't know if it's going to work because the old boyfriend
is still living above her parent's garage. On top of that, she finally got her
folks to give the OK for her to bring the Cambodian over for dinner, but, when
she did, her mom's lips got numb and her legs gave out, and they had to rush
her to the hospital. They did a bunch of CAT scans and MRI's but the doctor
couldn't find anything wrong with her. He did indicate that the
"spell" could have been caused by some kind of stress.
And, speaking of stress, I was under
plenty. While her story did serve to take my mind off my own troubles long
enough to laugh uncontrollably at hers for a few seconds, W.T.'s next attempt
at a stroll brought me sharply back to my own present reality. When the
waitress ran off to the bathroom, crying, I took the opportunity to
escape.
With one hand carrying my dinner and the
other in my coat pocket, supporting my load (potentially a line for an Alanis
Morissette song), I slipped in the back door of the motel and took the elevator
to my floor.
Back on the bed - just me and W.T. in my
tee shirt - I opened the styrofoam box to consume my last supper. I had decided
on the way back that I was going to eat, and then jump out the third floor
window.
Oh, sure. You pompous asshole. Go ahead and
find fault with my rationale. You don't think that's what you'd do in this
situation? Well, fuck you! You've never been in this situation, have you?
You've never had a five-pound reptile dangling from your family jewels, have
you?
Well, I did. And, at the moment, that was
the best I could come up with. It seemed rational enough when I thought of it.
It couldn't be worse than going to a doctor. It couldn't be worse than looking
my wife straight in the face and saying "Well, honey, a turtle ate
it."
If it killed me, it would be a relatively
painless death. If it didn't, maybe it would jar W.T. loose and I could,
somehow, blame the wound on the fall. After all, a suicide attempt is much more
socially acceptable than...whatever this is. I could check into a treatment
center and everybody would think I'd finally grown up like the rest of them.
But, as I received nourishment, some of my
reasoning capabilities returned. I have an idea.
It's a mammal. Right? I mean, it can't
breathe under water. Right?
When I finish this salad, I'm going to fill
the tub to the rim with the hottest water I can stand, and I'm going to take me
a muddy bath. If W.T. wants air, he's going to have to let go to get to the top
to get it. I'll be free. I can live.
Or...I could drown the little bastard with
a death grip on my family jewels.
That's when I jump.
(c) 2010, Rick Baber, TigerEye Publications
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