Ethan’s Unlucky Stars

By Thomas M. McDade  

Nothing but shit luck got Ethan Shayes enrolled at Dominican-run Kenner College. The kind he’d never found gambling. Working a swing shift at a Lamberts Fiberglass launched the journey. The only part of the job he enjoyed was stopping at Kelley’s Bar the two weeks he suffered the first and second acts. A photo of a Rolex watch from a glossy magazine was where one would expect a clock to be. Randall the bartender sang a Roger Miller song every half hour. He had a night gig at the Canopy Club channeling that singer. “More and More I Think about You Less and Less” was Ethan’s favorite. Randall was likely looking to fill another audience seat when he told Ethan that he favored the singer some. Well, he did have his dark black hair and high forehead. There was no long mirror behind the two shelves of booze, just three that looked as if they’d been removed from antique dressers. Areas of silvering were gone. A man drunk enough could conjure up a funhouse image of himself. There was a movie star photo on either side of the middle-looking glass: Steve McQueen and Raquel Welch. He was bare-chested, she was not. Ethan’s pleasure was Ballantine Ale and shot of blackberry brandy. A bay window offered a view of the factory smokestacks and their lightning rods. Salt and pepper-haired Neal Morgan concocted spacey conspiracy tales about them. Lamberts shipped products to Mars to be used in UFO construction for example. The radio was always turned up loud. It broadcasted nothing but static that worked well with his telling. For a finale, Neal would snap alive his Zippo, suck in the flame and then bow, face a foot and a half from the floor. Larry Bonds believed the tall stacks symbolized the emasculation of workers by capitalists. Cowboy side-burned Jim Bando once smashed the irritating 3X6 glass and blamed the wrist injury on his Lamberts job in the name of a Workingman’s Comp claim that failed. An out-of-date church calendar hung to the left of the window. Saint Bertrand, a Spaniard was pictured. A poster of Gone with the Wind was tacked to the restroom door, Rhett, carrying Scarlett.  Her breasts were half exposed. Ethan’s fellow workers joked and ranted about dying a slow death to keep homes well insulated, Corvette frames rolling off Chevy assembly lines, and sports shops stocked with fishing poles. ”That nasty stuff and asbestos are twins.” Bosses were mimicked, insulted, and scorned; the CEO, as well as Peter Sellers and The Pink Panther flicks. A ritual toast to tie-dyed Marty Lewis was never omitted. He’d defaced a bulletin board notice above the punch clock that read. “When an employee has been here long enough to earn a spot on the first shift, college tuition assistance is available.” Marty crossed out “College” and wrote “Screw U” using a magic marker. Last heard from, he was living in a Catskills commune. Lanky Mike Bellows, thick glasses on the end of his nose and earplugs inserted shot pool. He had an expensive stick that failed to help his game. He subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. Once in a while, he’d offer Ethan a Winston. “A long life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he warned after Ethan waved off the gift. He’d sworn off smoking after a bad tobacco experience in the Navy. Chris Sutter suspected S&M whips were manufactured in a secret department, dildoes too. The Board of Directors experimented among themselves and their wives. He’d swing an arm wildly trying to imitate a dominatrix. Ethan’s only contribution was from his Navy hitch. A shipmate hit a light post at D&S Piers in Norfolk and splintered his classic Sting Ray. Yup, he was drunk. The Shore Patrol thought he was injured but he’d just gone to sleep, a Texas fifth between his legs. An old man at the end of the bar who wore a USS Randolph cap shouted out “Fair winds and following seas.” “Damned if the crud isn’t used to make yachts,” added Sutter. Ethan pictured the strong wooden whaleboat on the USS Ramply (DD-810). He’d sanded and painted that craft, felt like it was his own. The name of the small steamboat in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” tried to enter his mind. 

The indecent hours and sliver itch kept Ethan captive for exactly three weeks. When he came in to pick up his last paycheck slack-jawed Jenkins, the super in the department where he’d slaved, curing shards in an oven, called him a shiftless drifter. Jenkins said Ethan’s work had been sloppy so don’t even think about collecting unemployment. “On your way, you're a trespasser.” Strutting out the door wondering if he’d beat last year’s W-2 Form count of twenty-two, lines from Dion’s “Wanderer” song rolled off his lips:

“Oh, well, I roam from town to town

I go through life without a care

And I'm as happy as a clown”

Ethan Shayes didn’t have wheels like Dion. He was at the mercy of thumb and bus. He wore a triumphant grin when he set fire to his torturous fiberglass-infested duds in the parking lot of an abandoned roller skating rink. Parts of his body were scratched raw. One night, a few days before his next gig busing tables at the Rockingham Park Clubhouse, just a buck or two in his wallet and a pint of brandy in his hip pocket, Ethan strolled around the housing project where he’d grown up hoping to find a soul from his youth to reminisce with and he did. A Vietnam Vet named Parker he hadn’t seen in months who drove big rigs occasionally but lived off backroom card games more than that. He’d grown a full beard. Parker took him to a project apartment where social workers lived. They were doing their weekend boozing, complimentary Narragansett Beer and Boone’s Farm Wine. Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” played repeatedly on a stereo. Ethan's lost Kansas girlfriend had given him a jean jacket she said belonged to an old beau who’d worked for a Bismarck Telephone Company. It was full of character according to a horse trainer from West Virginia named Stone who Ethan gabbed with at February’s Lounge. Ethan wore it to spattered ruin painting houses as he did the Army field jacket Parker gave him. 

“I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road 

Searchin' in the sun for another overload.”

Ethan Shayes needed wheels to get to and from Rockingham.

Some partyers were around when Parker and Ethan were kids. There was an occasional brief, quick or feigned recognition but they’d enchanted partners enough to stick to romance. Parker introduced Ethan to the leader of the do-gooder group named Mort, maybe mid-thirties. His hands were small but his paunch was not. Parker had reported earlier that Mort Reynolds’s father owned many convenience store (In-A-Snap) franchises. “Ethan, like Ethan Allen, a Green Mountain boy!” exclaimed Reynolds. He shook Ethan’s hand and patted him on the shoulder before questioning him as if he were looking for work at a Snap. He had considered applying but turned around a foot from the door, not his style. When Ethan said he'd once been a waiter at Jason’s Lobster House and Lorenzo’s Grotto, an alleged organized crime hub, Mort named a couple of people Ethan knew at Jason’s, Sonja and Dennis. They had a successful scamming scheme at Jason’s that doubled their incomes. Ethan didn’t quite understand how it worked. She’d asked Ethan if he’d like to share the wealth. He didn’t feel he was slick enough. “On second thought you couldn’t put your heart and soul into it, she added.” In the linen closet she’d let him put all of his resources into her just to keep him on her side he figured. She never wore panties. Her bra felt odd to Ethan. It was a money belt too. Dennis sneaked peeks and played sentry. Ethan only left Jason’s because his junky Impala died and the restaurant was off the bus line. He suspected Dennis had something to do with the fatal head gasket leak. Ethan thought Sonja might offer to let him ride with her or loan him dough for a car down payment but she just sweetly sucked him goodbye in her big Lincoln; not even a ride to a bus stop. 

Classy Lorenzo’s wasn’t far from the downtown bus depot. Fine dining meant waiter hell. If you didn’t have a party, you had to stand in a corner with your towel hanging over your cocked forearm. Staff fought over a bit of wine left by a diner. At Jason’s, Dennis had a connection with a bartender, who provided Ethan with three shots of Canadian Club a night. He recalled his last moments at Lorenzo’s on an overbooked Saturday, with customers, snapping fingers for attention. Ethan snapped half a dozen times back at a guy with an obvious toupee then ran out the door as if the place were on fire. The maitre d' tried to trip him. That night Ethan dreamed of a Plaza in Spain. From the bay window’ a statue of King Neptune brilliantly reflected the sun before waking with a start fearing a mob contract out on him.

Ethan’s mind slipped out of his waiter reverie for a moment and he recalled his father taking him to view merchant marine ships from a steep, rocky hill, a billboard for Jason’s “Spectacular” Lobster House wasn’t far off. Maybe it was seeing those vessels that prompted Ethan to join the Navy, a two-year hitch he’d completed four years ago. He managed to get an honorable discharge despite his Marlboro Cigarette activity. He was accused of selling them to black marketers in Valencia. He was saving to buy a midnight blue MG sports car when he got out. Not on lean Navy paydays. On the first port call, he connected with a black marketer through a bartender at the Santiago Hotel. Ethan was relieved of the test cigarettes with a switchblade instead of pesetas. What was he going to do, report the incident to the Policia or Navy Shore Patrol? Soon after, he toppled dick over head for a petite, mahogany-haired hooker who got his attention with a wolf whistle from a dark doorway. She charged twenty a throw but half that after Ethan gave her a white hat, neckerchief, and Zippo lighter with the USS Ramply likeness and motto on it. A crusty CPO suggested it was good to be a sailor bearing gifts. Her voice bordered on husky. She wore no makeup and her quick eyes were green. She said they were a gift from her half-Irish grandmother who was a shepherd in New Zealand. She smelled like lemons not kiwis. Ethan recalled a movie scene, Susan Sarandon after her oyster shucking job, squeezing the juice from half a lemon into her hand and massaging her breasts. The size and firmness of Cherry’s matched those on a postcard statue Jeremiah, a tall signalman had shown him, Rodin’s “The Eternal Idol.” Ethan kept searching his mind for candy in the shape of her nipples and his mouth watered over them. She called herself Ceresa Caliente and even had business cards, flaming cherries in the background, and a woman on a trapeze. He was speechless after feeling her flames but managed to stutter the puzzling “Cherry” handle. Was it her mission to give virginity a bad rep? She was an acrobat. Her nails were the color of her name but on her left foot, one was white and one blue. “For you boys,” she said. Her dream was to visit the Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. Those petals as soft as her skin Ethan suspected. She giggled when he licked her cheek. Her lips were full, her mouth a tad wide, and her teeth perfect. Her ears had no lobes. Ethan told Cherry about the robbery. She said to bring packs to her. She’d work something out.

While underway for three weeks of NATO Exercises, Ethan hoarded those dirt-cheap hard packs, bargained, bartered and borrowed. With the help of a PO3 Rueben, supply type, he hid them in the General Storeroom as if they were spare parts for the Anti-Submarine Rockets. On the return visit to Valencia, he hightailed to Cherry’s place. First thing, she showed off her new tattoos, a cherry atop each of her hipbones. “Estupenda,” he shouted after their sex. He’d found an English-to-Spanish dictionary in the tiny ship’s library. Cherry laughed and said, “Muy Boy.” He told her about his cache. She called him her Marlboro Man and presto, she was his partner. Her brother Cisco had been experimenting with extracting oil from cannabis and injecting it into cigarettes. “With the Marlboro name and the potion, we’ll make a fortune, twenty or thirty dollars American per stick. Of course, the filters will have to be cleanly removed. Here’s a filter tip for you,” she purred, framing her clit between her index and middle finger before gently yoking the back of his neck with her free hand.

Soon after, Jeremiah distracted the drifty Officer of the Deck on all three trips to get the first shipment of contraband off the Ramply, in Ethan’s socks, in his sleeves, tied to his bell-bottomed shins, and two packs in his skivvies that Cherry removed with no hands, undid each of the thirteen buttons with her teeth and tongue, precision instruments. After having him on top and under her she said she loved him. They stood and he held her, kissed her gently as if at an altar rail. She assured him the Marlboro thief had been taught a lesson. She’d move the Marlboros all right. She wanted Ethan to go AWOL and be her chulo. She was tired of freelance. Ethan liked that word better than pimp.

He never found out who turned him in but he suspected the leader of the ship’s Bible Study Group. Two of his Good Books had been assigned to Davy’s Locker and he was accusing left and right. Tossing and turning unable to sleep he recalled something Cherry told him. She had a camera installed in the ceiling for safety purposes. No one was going to get away with larceny or murder, mucho perverts and fiends out there. A switch was well hidden in the frame of the bed. She shared another reason. If her client was a flaming asshole, she put him on a Kodak 3X5 a half a dozen times or more. She sold the photos to a porn dealer but kept the negatives of course but she was not a blackmailer...yet. “Diversión Sexual” is what she called her art, “Sex Fun.” Ramply’s captain, Harlan Duncan was a c-man. It was common knowledge that he’d entertained a Skidmore College girl in his stateroom in Crete and a Yale grad student in Malta. Could he have visited Cherry?

A radioman leaked news of a man’s body discovered in a garbage barge with a crumbled empty pack of Marlboros in his mouth and thirteen knife wounds in his back. Ethan felt vaguely corrupt and a little scared. The day before leaving Valencia he was still restricted. Jeremiah agreed to visit Cherry to try to get some cash and relay Ethan’s love. He volunteered to take more smokes and a pamphlet given out when the ship was open for civilian tours. Duncan’s photo was on the cover. Jeremiah told her about Ethan’s situation. She was very concerned and angry. When he showed her the photo, she said it was the fool who’d shouted she’d just had the captain of the USS Ramply, the best ship in the Sixth Fleet. He ordered her to salute. She did and then pulled Ethan’s Zippo gift out of a drawer, flicked the flint and held the flame an inch from his nose. Duncan pushed her hand away, looked worried, dressed in a hurry and bolted. Cherry gave Jeremiah the negative and a sizzling freebee. She instructed him to give the twenty to Ethan. She supplied another eighty. She vowed to send him more: “Ramply (DD-810), Care of Fleet P.O. New York, New York,” she sang. 

“Don’t get it developed to display in the living room back home.” joked Jeremiah. Ethan wasn’t surprised that he gave him the hundred. He was a good friend, honest as the depth of the Seven Seas combined. That’s why he had to spill; almost apologize, about his sex with Cherry, as if he’d scored another man’s wife. “Ethan, she could be in films and I’m not talking porn. She’s beautiful.” He reported that she’d just finished hanging a Linda Ronstadt Greatest Hits LP jacket above the bed headboard. She’d pointed and sang “Desperado,” then sighed that Ethan was her version.  He added a fib. She said she’d never forget him and would pray and light candles toward his return. Ethan swallowed hard. She told Jeremiah her flyaway father was an Air Force Sergeant. She’d revealed to Ethan that her mother was a Brit college student serving as a hostess at a USO. Two boatswain’s mates walked past. They croaked. Ethan figured he and Jeremiah were locked in as soul mates. Ethan had never referred to the bullfrog song even once since he’d known Jeremiah.

Ethan was driving himself nuts trying to figure out a way to drop Duncan hints. Unexpected assistance came to his rescue. The day before the hearing, while Ethan was standing a helm watch, the obnoxious moonfaced dork Ed Hebert at the lee helm announced loudly that a whore named Cherry said he was very photogenic, worthy of immortality. Duncan who was smoking while relaxing in the captain’s chair dropped his fancy meerschaum. Ethan nearly gagged picturing Hebert with Cherry. After retrieving the pipe that had landed at his feet and returning it to Duncan, Ethan told the Hebert that he once knew a man with a photogenic memory. “That’s been said of me,” Hebert bragged.” Duncan smiled an instant before staring harpoons at Ethan. There was no court-martial, not even a Captain’s Mast. He got off with extra duty bilge cleaning assignments. Duncan didn’t show. The Executive Officer did the honors.

Mort Reynolds asked if they were interested in going to college. Of course they answered and loudly if only to attract some female attention but didn’t think there was much of a chance either way. Mort trod slowly up the stairs that took Ethan three or four steps at a time as a teen. A guy named Doug whose mother Ethan had seen fistfight a woman neighbor was locking lips, close to a wall with a tall woman with folk singer raven long hair. The project walls were metal and tossing magnets at them was a pastime when Ethan was a boy. The wall saved the lovers from toppling to the floor. Their heads clunked over Glen Campbell’s voice. She put a hand on her noggin and her loose blouse exposed her hairy underarm. Cherry would have been mortified at the very idea of housing such a nest. Ethan imagined shaving the pit and got hard. He thought he saw a mouse run under an easy chair. The only Mickey he could recall in his youth was one a fleet-footed kid named Maurice chased, caught by its tail and tossed up onto a roof. Jeremiah would have commented the rodent was imitating his bat cousin and my heavens no cats up there and the mouse might later copy a lemming. Jeremiah had a way with words. Ethan pictured fiberglass-infected mice trembling in a Kelley’s corner waiting to scavenge for potato chip and microwave popcorn crumbs after the door locked for the night. The Frenchman’s memorable triumph was in a yard with a hawthorn tree. Its thorns wounded many climbing kids and of course victims of handshake pranksters. The thirteen stab wounds came to mind and Ethan shuddered.

Reynolds wasn’t kidding about the Kenner College applications. Ethan wondered how many others had tossed them, filled out, half-done or blank, or made paper planes out of them as Parker later would. He folded it carefully to the size of a racetrack program and slipped it into his back pocket. The next morning though badly hungover he left his furnished room on McGill

Street early, barely missing the landlord. He was three weeks in arrears. He completed the Kenner paperwork using his sister’s portable Olivetti typewriter. He brought the envelope to a window at the post office to skip the possibility of loss at a street box. Three days later a special delivery letter arrived, inviting him to take an admission test. He borrowed bus fare from Chick, a one-armed bartender at the Silver Moon Café. He drank ginger ale so he’d have a clear head. A gabby guy with deep set eyes wearing a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap sitting next to him authored a tip sheet he sold at Rockingham. He’d picked five winners that day. Off Color went off at 25-1. Dexter used his hand and fingers to make a point. When Ethan told him of his new job there that he’d be starting soon, Dexter said he loved a coincidence. Sure Ethan could ride with him. What’s more Dexter also lived on McGill.

Ethan was happy to have an entire seat on the Greyhound trip. Everyone was friendly and welcoming at the College. A cigar-smoking philosophy professor who was joking with a colleague shook the hand of everyone entering the gym. A stern looking priest who looked like Jenkins and had thick glasses like Bellows observed with his arms crossed. A few of the students were his age but most of them looked five or six years younger. Some dressed in a preppy way, others like hippies. Two Black men with impressive Afros wore colorful dashikis. His desk was nearly under a basketball hoop. He thought of Parker, a decent point guard in high school. How he wished he would have joined him for this adventure. He recalled the project basketball court, poles sunk into the ground and tilted, a few links left of the metal net. A heavy kid sitting at the desk next to him yawned loudly. Ethan turned to see him rest his hand against the side of his face. The yellow stone in his class ring was like the one Jeremiah wore. Ethan often told him about boyhood friends and enemies. Jeremiah told him he held too many reunions in his head. The tests were nerve wracking. He hadn’t taken one in a long time. He was happy for the multiple choices but the two essay questions about any subjects he desired worried him. After one sentence about Valencia, he was on his way. Of course there was no mention of Cherry. Well, she had told him to visit a museum to see a painting of St. John the Baptist by El Greco. She said Johnny looked stoned. He did and he did. Ethan left that part out. He described a medieval castle and cathedral he’d walked by and the ancient town gate. Next, he exaggerated standing a forward lookout watch in a raging Atlantic storm, the bow of the USS Ramply often dipping under water like a boat in the hands of a kid in a back yard inflatable pool. He remembered the name of Conrad’s boat, The Nellie and the boatswain’s whistles as well as a pitch pipe from the first grade and a tuning fork from a TV show. He filled three blue exam books.

Dexter was true to his word about the commute He knew Ethan’s landlord and swore, right hand in the air that Ethan truly had a job. Ethan enjoyed the Rockingham crowd, excitement and tips courtesy of big winners. An older guy who looked like an ex-jockey with two young attractive short-skirted women gave him a ten spot. Ethan thanked his unlucky stars that he hadn’t bet it on 40-1 Yvonne My Girl instead of the next to last finisher Deadly Weapon in the feature race. He would have gone on a week or more binge for sure and been hard to find. Dexter was kicking himself for picking Waste Not in that race. After they enjoyed a clam strip dinner at Howard Johnson’s, Dexter dropped him off. He wearily climbed the stairs to find the landlord waiting with a special delivery letter he’d signed for. Ethan had been accepted. The next day, he made arrangements with Dexter to pick up and cash his last paycheck to settle his rent and to pay back Chick; also a sample of his signature for endorsement. He carefully packed his seabag. It had never occurred to him how little he owned. Dexter wished him good fortune and gave him a five dollar bill.

He’d planned to board a bus again but his brother Don, a plumber’s apprentice offered to give him a lift after Ethan called him up to brag a bit. He had a vintage Saab, he’d restored himself. He was drug wild for a time but had miraculously settled down. Don showed up on time with coffee and donuts. He relayed a message from their father, “Don’t screw this up.” The old man also gave Don $60 to give to him as well as papers from the VA to apply for the GI Bill. Ethan was amazed. He hadn’t been on speaking terms with his father for months since he showed up tipsy to help his family out of the project, literally to the other side of the tracks. There wasn’t much conversation during the trip. Dan’s 8-track tape player monopolized: Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath, The Who, Allman Brothers, and more. Steely Dan’s “Reeling in the Years” got stuck in his head. Don turned down the volume to tell Ethan that the duo was named after a dildo. To joke about it being manufactured at Lamberts Fiberglass would have been lost on him so he asked Don if he had a Roger Miller tape. Don got a big guffaw out of that. Looking over his Navy discharge papers Ethan thought of another branch and a Berkshires vacation with his aunt and cousins that his parents forced on him. His father borrowed a cardboard suitcase from a drinking pal that required a piece of rope to stay shut. It sported a Coast Guard insignia. He didn’t know how to act the entire week. The same situation here he reckoned. After a couple of wrong I-84 exits, the Saab found the campus. Ethan thought of the University of Kansas where he’d earned three Freshman English credits. He winced estimating how many times he’d made a fool of himself reeling off words from his textbook to impress women in barrooms and lounges. Would the woman he knew in Lawrence now a junior applaud his enrollment at a college in a well-to-do community in New York State? He figured he’d leave off the return address if he ever chose to write to better the odds for a reading considering the way the relationship ended. Sociology was her major and she sometimes made him feel like a term paper topic as she probed his Federal Housing background and all. He was sorry that she had to file him under “deviant.” Ethan imagined he’d work his life into themes and term papers the way he did in the gym. He hoped to take a creative writing course to become a short story writer. He’d yet to try poetry. Before they passed a slow-moving semi, he noticed “Jeremiah” on a mud flap. The mate was missing. He’d never heard from him or Cherry again. He’d dreamed a couple of times they’d married and had a couple of kids with better names.

He shook hands with Don who’d lifted the seabag from the trunk. “Don’t forget about me when there’s a boss party or concert,” said Don. Parker had expressed the same sentiment. Ethan swung his life over his shoulder and as he walked up the Condon Hall Admissions stairs he wondered if all that he was leaving behind was boot camp enough for this. No one was at the desk. A sign under a Roman numeral clock read “No Smoking,” a red circle around a pack of Marlboros, a line through it. He smiled. He dropped his seabag and examined the walls. There was a large square of polished wood, mahogany, or walnut with metal rectangles inscribed with the top alumni contributors. The champion was centered at the top: Mortimer X. Reynolds Sr. He told himself that figured. Ethan stopped at a window that reminded him of the one at Kelley’s. He could see a statue that was surely the same St. Bertrand as on the faded Kelley’s calendar. On the wall with framed pictures of the College administrators, he expected to see a Dominican priest listed as president in the traditional habit, tunic, and cape but it was Captain Duncan. Ethan was shaken. He almost ran toward the door without grabbing his seabag but stopped dead. “Wall,” he said to himself reminded of Jeremiah’s living room wall joke. Ethan had kept the Duncan negative. It was in the pages of his Kansas Freshman English text at the beginning of Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat.” No need to panic. When he was sweating out the black-marketing charge, he’d imagined escaping in the Ramply’s whaleboat. When he heard “May I help you?” with no husk in the speaker’s voice he was somewhere between joy and dismay. He turned to see a smiling, slight sandy-haired woman. Her white alb-like blouse was buttoned to her neck and a cross hung off a chain. “Fair winds and following seas” filled his being and he wondered if there might be a watering hole the worth of Kelley’s to be found.

*

Thomas M. McDade is a 76-year-old resident of Fredericksburg, VA, previously CT & RI. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA, and at sea aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). His short fiction has most recently appeared in Panoply Magazine and Green Shoe Sanctuary.

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