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SCHWINN BLACK PHANTOM
What happened in 1949; We kept to ourselves
By SUE PERKINS
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2012 SUE PERKINS
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-2131-3
Chapter One
ARE YOU A MAN OR A MOUSE?
I'm too old for this, but Whitey Swift just phoned me a few minutes ago to remind me that the Woodard property is still up for sale, and that I'd best get my tired ass in gear if we're going to "gitter dun." I don't make hasty decisions, and I usually have to sleep on things before I make a move. That can mean weeks. The unappreciative second Woodard generation took over the place when their stubborn daddy, Simon Woodard, died in his bed in his nineties. Whitey, who keeps me informed about the neighborhood, says that Simon had refused to go to any stinky old people's warehouse. "I ain't ever peed my pants, and I can still fix myself a sandwich and do the Sunday crossword puzzle." I remember the spectacle of Simon driving into town backwards on his John Deere when his car wouldn't start. The only gear he could get the tractor into was reverse, so he backed that sucker down Bloom Street, hung a right on Maine and took a wide, backward left down Dragster's Boulevard and backed it diagonally in front of Lester Drew's Tavern next to the Sheriff's office.
I had moved out of that neighborhood into a bungalow near the Aksarben racetrack (Aksarben, being Nebraska spelled backward) when I got married, but Whitey stayed in Florence and still resides on Annie Belle Drive with his wife. We're both the same age, 62, and our offspring are all grown and fixing their own meals and raising their own kids. Whitey sometimes calls me THUMP, and you will find out later why. My real name is Warren Hearst.
The Woodard property is out on the northern skirts of Florence, a small community on the north end of Omaha. The white farmhouse with the big front porch sits on Spirit Hill Drive that angles southwest off Bloom Street. When you sit on Woodard's porch swing, you look right across the road at Spirit Hill Cemetery. In his younger days, when Whitey and I were ten and going into the fifth grade at Bloom Elementary, Simon was tending a full apple orchard, raising pumpkins, corn and tomatoes, which he would sell in season. I have a hunch that his wife, Eunice, did a lot of canning.
Anyway, as I was saying, (I tend to go down other roads sometimes, and you'll have to forgive me) after the old man died, his kids moved out there with good intentions of fixing the place up. I should tell you, it really needs attention, according to Whitey. He says that they probably decided that the cost of the renovation wasn't worth it, and that the next Junior League Woodard generation coming up wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Now, it's sitting out there in the boonies, watching the town build closer and eventually swallow it. It's all bound up with weeds and vines, and the barn doors are drooping and ready to fall off. If I was buried in that cemetery across the road, I'd be upset as hell at the view. I'm sure there's a developer waiting to pounce on the property and turn it into something akin to the houses on a monopoly game.
"The house is empty, and I think we should move on it before it gets too dicey. We don't move as fast as we did when we were ten. How 'bout we meet down at Bucky's place tomorrow morning about nine for a cuppa joe and lay out the plan?"
Whitey (His real name is Duane Swift, but I'll explain that later.) was always the one with the plan. Has been from that first life-altering day I met him. To this day, he's like a fart on a griddle when he decides to move forward on a thing. "The rumor in Florence is that the Woodard kids have gone south and left the place in the hands of the real estate company, and they didn't take a single thing with 'em off the property. I hear they're gonna have an estate sale."
"Sounds like it's now or not at all, doesn't it?" I'm wondering if I have the energy. As I'm talking to my old pal on the phone in the kitchen, I'm peering out the window in the early evening dusk of the back yard. All the time Whitey is convincing me to move on it, I'm thinking about the consequences here with my neighbors. I could be in hot water with the Swans, Rose and Wilber, who live next door south of me. He spends hours sitting on the ground, pulling weeds or any other foreign thing out of his manicured blue grass, and Rose tends her flowers and shines her windows with Windex all day. Nice people, though, and I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, I suppose. I have to admit that I'm on edge about this harebrained scheme, even though it was my own idea. I made the mistake of bouncing it off Whitey, and he just ran with it.
"Lemme check my date book." Whitey waits patiently on the other end of the phone, knowing damn well that all of the little squares on my BOULTON HARDWARE calendar are blank in the month of March.
"Can you sandwich me in at nine tomorrow mornin'?"
"You bet." The phone clicks and is silent. Whitey hangs up when he thinks there aren't any more possible words to say about a thing.
* * *
I live in old Omaha, where the trees could be older than I am, and you can find a corner grocery store a couple of blocks away. It's quiet here with very few small children. There aren't any covenants about fences or sheds and the like. The University campus isn't far, and the students look to be about twelve.
Ten years ago this spring, Gwen, the love of my life and the mother of my beautiful daughter, Wendy, was crossing the street down by the grocery store, when one of those students ran a red light and snuffed out her life. Just like that. She had gone to pick up some of the makings for vegetable soup, my favorite. My beautiful wife hung on for a couple of days, while Wendy and I held her hands on each side of the hospital bed, praying, crying and talking to her. Hoping. Then the Good Lord took her. I guess it must have been for the best, but it was the worst thing I ever went through in my life. I thank God for my daughter and Bernie, my sweet grandson. They make me want to live. I haven't been able to move away from this house, and why should I? I love this old neighborhood.
Whitey likes the small town atmosphere where we grew up, so he has stayed in Florence. We have been close friends all these years, even though we live several miles apart on opposite ends of Omaha. He married Connie, a spitfire, take-charge sort of gal. Connie was a classmate of ours. Whitey and Connie have five kids, born in about the same amount of years. They all grew up in a bunch, and all left the house almost at the same time. Gitter dun. Connie informed Whitey that the fifth one was the caboose, and she got something done to make sure of it. It's my guess that she figured Whitey's machinery would never break down. Whitey and Connie are eighteen-time grandparents.
My beautiful Wendy made me a grandpa once. A son, named Bernard, after my father. Bernie is one of the great joys of my life and is now twelve. Gwen and I had gone to K.C. in order to be there at his birth. I can still hear those little, high-pitched cries when he was born. If all the babies in that hospital nursery cried at once, I would have been able to pick out my grandson's cry. Wendy is divorced from the son-of-a-bitch who ran out on her when Bernie was six months old. She lives not far from me and has never married.
My kitchen smells like meat loaf microwave dinner, and I'm heading out the side door for a breath of fresh air. I'm pushing the screened door open, when Barnabus streaks through on to the linoleum and straight to the top of the refrigerator, via the counter by the sink, where he waits for the can opener to access the tuna. Albacore in water. Won't eat the cheap stuff. He's a gray tabby, weighing in at eighteen pounds. Barnabus knows when it's Friday. It's the day he gets this special "people food."
I'm just taking my fiber therapy and tossing my relaxed-fit jeans over the bedroom chair, when Barnabus springs onto the bed, sabotaging the ritual of turning down the covers by attacking my hand and nosing under everything. There's now a lump under the blanket at the bottom of the bed, waiting for my vulnerable, bare foot. I know that in a few seconds he will be curled up in my armpit. Nothing like tuna breath in the night.
* * *
It's Saturday, and the cat has been left in today with his rations. I left a load of my underwear in the machine, and I'm pulling into the parking lot on the windy, north side of Bucky's place. Whitey's red pickup truck is already there, and he's in our regular booth in the front window with a view of the sidewalk. Bucky's has been in business since I was a kid, and Petty has been waiting on us for at least fifteen years. She plunks my coffee down before my butt even hits the bench across from Whitey.
"Howze your buns, Cutie? The usual?"
"Eggs over medium, white toast, two strips, real crisp." Petty bends over so that her bright red lips are close to my hearing aid. Her generous busts are right there.
"I knew that." She whispers in her sexiest voice. I don't know her age. She's one of those timeless people. Probably had a lot of action back in the day. Possibly, even now. Petty Cash is her name, and I'm not sure I want to know how she got it. Whitey has waited quietly during this exchange. "She's probably been somewhere and back. You sure you don't wanna try your luck?"
Whitey is clicking his fingernails on the Formica table. It's a bad habit he has, and it drives me nuts. Sounds like a snare drum. It's a subconscious signal he's sending in order to get the conversation going about the plan. His technique is working, because I start talking just to shut up the noise.
"So, what are you having for breakfast?"
"Pancakes. Don't see 'em up there in the window yet. We gonna get it done this week?" clickety clickety clickety
I secretly have doubts about this whole caper. It came up a few months ago, when Whitey heard the skinny that the Woodards might be heading south forever.
"You sure they're gone for good? They're not coming back to take inventory of the house and the grounds?" I could picture the headlines: TWO OLD FARTS ARRESTED FOR TRESPASS, THEFT, DISTURBING THE PEACE
Whitey is leaning forward on his elbows, so that he sort of plugs in to my face and rivets me there. You just know you're going to be quiet and listen when he does that thing. He's been that way as long as I've known him. Whitey looks around to make sure that nobody can hear. "It's gotta be at night. REALLY night, like two or three AM. Ain't no other way. We take my truck, do the demo, load up, cover the stuff with a tarp, haul ass out of there and go like hell to your place. We unload in your garage, and I truck on home. Operation breakdown and transport complete."
Sounds too simple to me. I'm thinking about my bothersome hip and sore knees and Whitey's bad eyesight. The more I think about this, the dumber it sounds. Whitey's eyes are still looking right into my brain, while I'm processing this scenario. Petty is arriving with the vittles. She has two plates, balanced on one arm and the coffeepot in her other hand.
"There ya go guys. Need anything else?" We tell her no, and she's off in her side-to-side shuffle, as if she's been used to having men enjoy watching her walk away.
As if Whitey could hear my thoughts and doubts, he continues after Petty is out of hearing range. "You're gonna go chicken on me, right?"
I can't chicken out. This has been priority one in my mind since Wendy's jerk of a husband left her and the baby high and dry down in Kansas City. Glen, the A-Hole Orthodontist, had announced at the dinner table just before Christmas, that he needed some space and some time to find out who he was. I'll tell you who he was ... a self-absorbed, cheating, womanizing snake-in-the-grass fast-laner, who raced around in his Porsche and blew off the fact that he was a father and husband. He told Wendy that he didn't think he was cut out for fatherhood. He was right. I met my devastated daughter and my grandson at the airport within that week. We found a temporary apartment for them before the month was out, and they've been in Omaha since then. Wendy now has a nice home near the university, and, thanks to the divorce settlement and child support, they are financially okay. But, I can tell you one thing ... That maggot of an EX of hers had better not meet me in an alley.
"Count me in."
"We're doin' the right thing." Those disturbing eyes of Whitey's can really pin a guy down. So can his size and his strength, even though he is nearly sixty three. He was a state champion wrestler when we were seniors in high school. I, at one hundred seventy pounds, would not fare too well in a physical battle with Whitey, a solid two hundred weigh in. The pounds came on when he quit wrestling.
After three cups of Bucky's stout coffee, we've solved some of the world's problems and made a list on the paper placemats of the stuff needed for the upcoming caper. Between the two of us, we have flashlights, work gloves, claw hammers, saws, dark clothes, an extension ladder, some heavy rope, a large tarp and a six pack for the truck when we're done. If we live through it and don't go to jail by being caught by the County Sheriff.
"You sure it's still there?" I'm a number ten worrier.
We decide on the small hours of Tuesday morning. I mention to Whitey that we should probably break out the thermals, and he gives me that look I get, when he thinks I'm overworking the plan. That's the way I tend to be about everything, but Whitey flies by the seat of his pants.
Having tipped Petty and paid at the counter, we forge out the north door into the March wind and trudge toward our respective vehicles, my tan Buick LeSabre and Whitey's red Ford pickup.
"Don't forget a stocking cap. You'll glow like a beacon!"
"Yeah, yeah. At least I still have hair, buddy boy!"
I crawl into the Buick, and my clothes have that faint aroma of bacon. It's a satisfying feeling you get from Saturday morning breakfast. I don't miss the absence of the smoke that used to be part of the cafe atmosphere. I quit the killer habit when I married Gwen. Whitey never did smoke. He was a top athlete and wanted to be able to breathe and keep up with his grandchildren when he got older. Neither of us is upset with the new smoking laws.
Whitey is an albino with a thick mop of chalk white, unruly hair, a pink complexion and white eye lashes that don't do a very good job of shading those disturbing pink eyes. I take pride in my own curly, reddish gray, wiry fringe that looks like a nest for my shiny, bald head. Whitey has commented that I'm probably the senior Napoleon Dynamite.
Chapter Two
WHEN YOU GOTTA GO, YOU GOTTA GO
I think it is plain old fate that put Whitey Swift into my pathetic life as a ten-year-old. Well, fate and my Mother. Dad didn't have to spend most of the day with me like Mom did, but he would kick in and do his bit after work and on week ends. I guess I should explain why I thought my life was so blamed miserable.
I had the shivers, nausea and a temperature. I was all bundled up in a blanket on the back seat of that '47 Fleetmaster Chevy Woody station wagon. My older sister, Beverly, was up front next to Dad. Mom was in the middle seat, so she could be closer to me and keep Beverly as far away from me as possible. Dad pushed it to the max all the way into Omaha, Nebraska at 50 miles per hour, which was about top speed for that wagon. We were coming in from Lexington, Nebraska, east on highway thirty. Mom kept looking back at me with her eyes about ready to spill over. She had filled a milk bottle with water and a straw, and every few minutes Mom's arm would arch over the seat back to where I was. I just gulped some of it down whenever I saw it coming. I was hot, cold, and hurting real bad, as Dad drove us through all those little farm towns along highway thirty. Kearney, Gibbon, Wood River, Grand Island, Columbus, Fremont, and each one of them had a grain elevator right next to the Union Pacific main line running parallel to the highway. "See those trees over there? That's the Platte River." Dad had a way of pointing out spots of interest, but I was too weak to sit up and look.
I had been diagnosed with Polio, and we were heading for Children's Hospital where there were more doctors with more experience. My sis kept reading those silly signs about a shaving product along the road. I didn't think they were as funny as Beverly did. "Dad, get a load of that!" She would say every time she spotted one coming. You had to read all of the many signs to get the whole message, because they were "written in segments." Mom explained.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from SCHWINN BLACK PHANTOM by SUE PERKINS Copyright © 2012 by SUE PERKINS. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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