A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER VI
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
PART II THE SECOND VISIT
Moe was feeding me two Big Macs in between waiting on people. The two Big Macs were my breakfast, lunch and dinner, I explained to the college dude who had a hard time remembering what I had spelled. I was not complaining. Moe and I were in the rush season before Christmas … well, it was supposed to be a rush season … and Moe was on the go all day, not eating anything (a diet, as Shitface called it), and was looking very shitty. Once a day, he sent a junkie to get the cheeseburgers for me. But I wanted to save Moe, to reveal his plight to his friends so they would help him. Moe was too proud to do it. He came by and shoved another piece of hamburger in me to shut me up. And then moved on to referee a fight between a Jewish father and his frizzy-haired son over an American flag leather jacket.
Daddy would buy the jacket if Son would write the term paper due next Friday at his private high school. He would buy the jacket if Son promised that he’d do it because Daddy trusted Son … and if Son didn’t keep his part of the bargain, Daddy would bring it back. Son wanted the jacket for Christmas and didn’t want to write the paper. Finally, after much cursing, Son would maybe write “that fucking paper.”
“You’ve just been bribed, my boy!” said Moe, slapping the boy’s back. The old man, who was not going to listen to such language, gave the $60 to Moe.
“I want you home in a half hour to start that paper,” Daddy said.
“I’ll be there in a little while,” Son said as he admired the long fringe.
“I want you there in a half hour.”
“In a little while.”
As Daddy opened the door, he bumped into someone coming in with a sad-looking hot dog. At first, I couldn’t tell if that someone was male or female. Just covering his ears, “he” had brown hair … brown like his eyes. He looked at me as he took off his plain, wire-rimmed glasses, putting them into his old Army jacket, which was warm but two sizes too big and erased any trace of his figure. He watched Moe give me another bite. Then he said, “Friend, do you want me to feed you?”
It was a chick’s voice. She took Moe’s place. In between bites, I found out her name was Carol.
“What do you do?” I asked her.
“Nothing.”
“You do something. You live.”
“Since I got back from California, I’ve done nothing. Mostly in my room, out of my mother’s way. I read. I take Beauregard for walks. Usually we walk to the library, and sometimes we come in here.”
The dog, Beauregard, looked like he was about to go within himself permanently.
“I got him from the pound,” Carol saw my look. “Someone did something to him; he hasn’t forgiven people yet. Doesn’t trust people, not even me. But he’s coming around with my love. He has to. He needs someone. But I’ve got to keep him on a leash, or he’d run away from me.”
She stopped and went to JT who was talking to Moe. “Excuse me. Friend, but do you have a cigarette?”
“Oh, the old ‘friend’ trick,” JT said as he threw back his hair and gave Carol a cigarette.
She came back and knelt in front of me and lit the Salem. She sat there, looking at me. “Do you need a friend … someone who will sometimes come in and talk to you?”