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Wisent Tales by Thomas J Bradley

Half way through my junket into the automobile body repair business, my father moved to Asheville to help me. I was touched. He was recently downsized from a seven-mile trunk line railroad which ran from Brownsville, Texas to Matamoras, Mexico. He went from being a vice president of an international company to being my outside salesman, which consisted mainly of driving around town stopping at used car lots trying to drum up car paint jobs for my shop.

I had sold to dealer for about four years and I am sure you will believe me when I state it was not pleasant dealing with the cry baby, cheap chiseling cocksuckers who own, run and work in these whirly bird lots. "We’ll make it up on the next one." was a used car credo after they whacked my already bargain basement price a few stories closer to hell. No doubt after a few months this had an effect on Dad. Maybe that day he was just feeling a tad ontological, as the Viking-Irish are noted for. Whatever, one typically sweltering June day, Dad arrived back at my forlorn shop and quietly sat in the seven-dollar chair by the twelve-dollar table, close to the air conditioning unit. Dad was sweating to the point that the water was dripping of the end of his prominent, hatchet-formed proboscis. He was staring out the window in a remote, schoolboy in early June way. Knowing he had heart trouble, I asked him if he was okay.

"Are you vexed?"

"Nah. I’m okay."

"That’s real convincing. Did they finally get to you?"

"Who? The dealers? Those peckerwoods? I can grease them and shove them up my ass. They’re nothing. No, Tom. All I have to look forward to is dying." I was puzzled by the conundrum of a positive "look forward" modifying a negative "dying" and stated so. I got a smile out of him. He was pretty depressed, but he’d managed to succeed in sucking me in on an Irish joke.

"No, Tom. What I mean is life is full of logical progression categories, epistemologically speaking. When you're a baby you envy those who toddle and don't shit their pants. Before you know it you’re walking over and using a wee commode with a decal of Tweetie Bird on it. Then you want to look forward to going to school. Each year a higher grade beckons. Finally graduating high school to enter college or the military. Getting married. Kids. Life is things you look forward to doing. Tom, I’m sixty four and I’m retired. I’ve done all those. Now all I have to look forward to is dying." I pooh-poohed this, apparently convincingly to him. He cheered up, never to be sad during the past sixteen years.

Now not that many years later, I’m retired and I’m a different story. I didn’t expect to be as happy as a coon dog in a cocker spaniel whorehouse, but lately I’ve been let down, bored and burdened with ennui. I always wanted to be old and craggy. Craggy I got. But somehow doing housework, driving my mother to the doctor, finding porn on the Internet and occasional periodicals are not as stimulating as I anticipated. So a couple weeks ago after clearing up a problem at out bank downtown, I drove south on North Pearl Street and noticed the Golisano for Governor HQ. I was involved in three different political campaigns in my youth, which were remembered in a golden gauzey way, like a television ad for Kodak film around Christmas. Yes indeed. I campaigned for the anti-war Congressman Dan Button in 1970, the anti-Nixon Allard Lowenstein for the Senate in 1974 and a Ray Hall for Assembly in 1974. At that moment of gauze, I failed to remember that Al and Ray both tried to have sex with me, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Christ, I drove Al to Barney Frank’s hacienda and innocently slept on the couch while Al and Barney caucused all night. So memory less but all golden gauzed up, I went in and volunteered. It was a Friday and I was invited to go to Syracuse Sunday on a bus with them to wave signs and encourage our candidate during his debate. Sure.

On that refrigerated Sunday morning, before the sun rose, I arrived and helped load the signs on the bus. At first, only present were the three stars-in-their-eyes staff twentyish staffers, guys who just knew they would be right beside the governor within a few months. Then a mother-daughter unit who made no sense and a waitress from Rennssalaer County who had served the Democratic candidate once and found him haughty arrived and ate doughnuts. A total of 24 people ended up on the bus including an extraordinarily fat man who was for Golisano because his benign less gun control stance. The fat guy sat in the two seats in front of me and we talked. Within a minute of our meeting, he told me he got involved in politics after Clinton forced him to explain to his twelve year old daughter what oral sex is. At that juncture I thought what an eye opener Lowenstein’s or Hall’s campaign would have been for him.

Dave had an India taxi horn attached to his side and at the demonstration used it effectively. "Go Golisano. Honkhonkhonk." Over and over. At brunch he showed me his hand over the brunch tray of scrambled eggs. The hand was black from rubber. "Tom, I’ve been honking my ass off all morning." On board were a few other older women, including one who’d had her brain operated in the not distant past. She asked me to keep and eye on her in case she started to list. A number of SUNY students were there. They may have just been cool, as twenty year olds prone to be, but their lack of passion caused me to think class credit was attached some how. The bright spot was the student who sat behind me was still fucked up from his Saturday night hedonism, which allowed me to amuse myself fucking with him for 130 miles. Repeatedly approaching his face with mine and wishing him a happy birthday was very effective in bring out the lad’s paranoia’s "X" factor. By the twentieth time, he had ceased explaining today was her birthday, not his birthday; although he would flinch each time he saw my melon head approaching noggin. He forsook the return bus and rode back in a van with the NRA guys, where I’m sure he learned to love the taxi horn. I hope he saw my face with each honk.

But what would a political bus trip for a marginal candidate be without a deep end thirties chain smoking paraplegic sheila from Troy who used a bullhorn to talk on the bus. Her chain-smoking Dad, who had a red polyester plaid jacket, red plaid pants, no upper plate and a few days stubble was with her, although she sat in the front while he sat in the back. He put the word out it was her birthday so she chirped happy birthday to herself on the bullhorn. While her pater shot the breeze with people, he frequently used as a punch line: "...but I haven’t had a drink in twenty seven years." You know, a finish to "My wife died last spring, but...," "I smoke four packs of Mavericks a day, but...," "I haven’t eaten a vegetable or any fruit since 1963, but...," and "Mary lost the use of her legs after she got drunk and smashed into a tree on Route 7 near the Vermont border, but..."

Mary made B & D jokes with the bus driver, which naturally were carried over the bullhorn. At our rally outside WSYR her favorite chant was:

"Pataki’s gotta go

"Cause he’s a ho."

Naturally, as she spit this into the bullhorn, all television cameras focused on her, no doubt cementing the public’s view of Golisano as a kook. I liked his Libertarian positions and was offended by Mary’s misunderstanding of demos. If I’d had a bull dick cane I’d have hit her with it. But I get ahead of myself.

Back before the liberation of my soul through participatory democracy one day I was ferrying my mother to and from her Indian doctor when I decided to make a day of it. I drove her to the new Amtrak station on the othersideoftheriver and to the buffalo ranch in Schodack. Mom told me this past summer she had never seen a buffalo, but I know she was lying. I have a black and white photo of Mom next to a bison taken in 1959. It’s in my wallet, as a matter of fact. Impressed by the train station, we moved onto the Baltic Bison Ranch. I became lost a couple times, but it was a warm humid day, so I simply followed the overpowering scent of buffalo shit. As with all such farms, the mature bison are kept at a distance. Mature buffalo bulls are moody and powerful. Near the road, roughly seventy-five yearlings were penned. They are miniatures of adults, so it was quite fun when they stampeded in reaction to my screaming, waving my arms and rushing toward them. Ah, youth!

Following this, I maneuvered Mom to the ranch store, with intent.

We parked next to a cage with two molting peafowl. A large arthritic yellow shepherd dog with mange approached us as I pulled Mom’s walker from the trunk. Inside, buffalo heads decorated the walls. Each head was identified: "Georgie 1972-1985" for example. Beloved pets, no doubt, but business is business, especially if someone was willing to pay $1600 for the head. Mom "Oh my"-ed herself past the ersatz Indian feathered things, buffalo jerky, buffalo calendars, buffalo books, buffalo bones, buffalo horns, buffalo steaks, buffalo hooves and buffalo skins. A big (need I say goofy?) farm boy was behind the counter. He said:

"How do. You folks been here before."

"I have a number of times. I almost consider it a second home. Mom never has. She tells me she never saw a buffalo before."

"Well, you came to the right place! You notice all the buffalo pieces? Well, when Daddy started with George and Edna in 1972, he vowed he’d be just like the Indians and use every part of the buffalo. And we do."

Mom was at the counter chewing a piece of jerky. "Son of a bitch!" she said, spitting it the direction of the yellow dog. "Is there any salt left in the ocean? I can feel my ankles swelling now. If Old Shep there croaks, it ain’t my fault."

Peering in the display cabinet, alternately focusing on the contents and herself as she wiped jerky slobber with her sleeve, she said: "Hoss. Be a good boy and fetch that piece of jewelry there."

He picked up the plastic bagged turquoise with a Visa slip and apologized.

"Here you take it out. My hands are all greasy. I’ve been working on our hay bailer. Don’t ask no questions though. I’m only here cause Momma’s just back from chemo and she’s all pukey and shit from it. My sister normally does this, but she’s drying out in Saugerties."

Mom asked how many siblings he had, and he asked what a sibling was and she told him and this led to Mom explaining how she had a daughter who had triplets. He said: "No kidding. I got five of them." Mom restated triplets and he said, "You mean all three at once? That must be kinda rough on the old gal’s snatch. What’s her husband think?" Mom was explaining modern, hospital birth procedures, so he immediately lost interest. He started telling me how earlier in the day his baler made a bale sixteen feet long and Mom was telling him triplet trials and tribulations and I was trying to figure how to pop the question to Mom. She liked the piece of jewelry and bought it and was elated because it was so cheap.

She said: "Pick out a steak. I’ll treat."

"No thanks."

"You, turning down a steak? Hard to comprehend."

"I had one from here. They’re okay but over priced. Can I make a request?"

"Of course, Tommy, but I’m not buying you a buffalo dick."

I must admit I was startled by her celerity, but I rebounded with my own alacrity and said. "You don’t want to buy me a cane?"

"No. And it’s not a cane. It’s a goddam buffalo dick."

"Mom. You’re wrong. Would you consider The Last Supper cloth and paint? Or David a rock. A bugle mere brass? No. Think of this cane as a folk art piece."

"Jesus Christ Tom. I heard this line of shit twenty years ago when you and Byron were going to LA on business and you tried to con your Grandmother into buying you a bull dick. You called it a fine artifact of centuries of Hispanic culture. Remember how your Grandma reacted? She held her head with both hands and said to me: ‘Tootsie, is he nuts? What has the world come to? He wants me to give him fifty bucks to buy a bull dick in Tijuana! Tootsie, is he on dope?’"

I responded. "Yeah, I remember it, but she told me later she misunderstood me and said the next time I went to California she’d give me the money. She said it was a noble idea and she was proud of me. Sadly, she died before I could take her up on it. Mom, besides buying it in Grandma’s memory, as soon as I buy it it’ll become an heirloom."

"An heirloom! What are you talking about?"

"Sure. Our family is relatively new to America. We need family treasures to pass from generation to generation. We can establish a tradition today."

"An heirloom! What makes you think Mandy or Julie would want it."

"I’m not going to argue that one. You’re probably right. Right as rain. Mandy might, but Julie, never. But you know I am adopting Max and Dima and I know every time they looked at that bull dick cane they’d think of me. Grandma told me this in a dream."

Well, to make a long story short, the discussion continued in the car, while we ate a sundae at Friendly’s and then all the way back to Pennsylvania Avenue. In her shortsighted way, she never did agree to buy me one. When I got home, Olga was standing at the bedroom window of our second story apartment waiting for me. She opened the window and said: "Hello."

"Dobra vitchi Olenka. Sorry I’m late. I took Mom to the doctors and it took longer than expected."

When I got upstairs she said: "So how are you Tomusichuck, or should I say ‘Ronald Haskiell’?" My "What?" was spontaneous and sincere, but I knew a wife pegging you with a new moniker isn’t a good sign. Not a good sign at all. One night twenty years ago I came home drunk and late and the next morning Glenda was instructing my daughters to call me "Mr. Tom" from that point forward.

However the roots of Ronald Haskiell was a mystery. But not for long.

Looking for something somewhere, Olga had stumbled across a West Virginia driver’s license with my picture but with the name Ronal Haskiell. Oddly enough she jumped to the conclusion that I was leading a double life. Women do funny things like that. There was a logical explanation and I related it. Back in North Carolina, the DMV and I passed my license back and forth a number of times, so I found it logical to get another license with another name for protection.

You know, like John Allen Mohammed did. The Net wasn’t running yet, so I looked in soldier of fortune magazines for dummy licenses. I didn’t feel comfortable using the USPS, so I approached my old friend, the toad-like former Washington Redskin football player Bill Darden, who told me that Cocke County Tennessee was the place to go. Anybody could get anything there. So Bill and I drove up. I should have been suspicious when we left around three. It made it awfully tight for getting to DMV before it closed. Naturally, when we got there at 5:30, the doors to DMV were locked tighter than a bull’s ass in fly time. Bill suggested we not waste a trip, so we did a tour of Newport and what better tour is there than bars and once you’re in a bar, it’s only logical to drink. We were logical until about two in the morning. This was the only place I’ve ever been where there were no plumb trailers bolted together to make a whore house-bar arrangement. The only Yankee in every bar, I felt animosity’s cold nicotine scented breath breathing down my back. Frankly if I’d had a bull dick cane then, I’d have hit Bill over the head with it. The next day, Bill drops by and hands me Ronald’s license and says: "I got this in Fort Lauderdale about a year ago. He dropped it in a bar. A bar right on the ocean. Real nice little place. I’ll take you there some time. Anyway, the picture looks like you."

Taking it, I thanked him, and then looked at it. Ronald had essentially no nose, just sort of a smear of nose flesh on his right cheek. His eyes have that special Atta look in them. As I study it, I am muttering: "Jesus Christ... me? You think this guy looks like me? This ugly motherfucker. God Almighty, Bill, look at him!"

I hand the red license back. Bill looks at it, then me. "Yeah. He’s a big guy like you."

"A BIG GUY! That’s what we have in common?"

"Well, at a routine stop, if they look at the weight and height and it’s dark and they only glance at the picture..."

"Glance at the fucking picture! The guy’s probably wanted for murder. If they run it, they’ll throw me in the clink and I’ll get the chair."

"Now, Tom, don’t go over board. You might get a few years, but nobody is going to put you in the electric chair."

I huffed and puffed some more, then we spent the afternoon taking Polaroids which I inserted in the license. Hearing this logical explanation, Olga hugged me and stated I was the most wonderful man in the world. This story naturally made me wonder about identity. It lit up my ontology glands. A rose by any other name stuff.

I have subscribed to magazines using the name Drake Duckworth, Pinky Pinkowski and Porker Turnipseed. I claimed I did this to see whom they sold my name to. I know I treasure a letter from President Carter requesting a contribution which began "Dear Porker Turnipseed..." Of course, I wonder if it’s deeper then that. After I settled into Antarctica in 1993, I went through a period where I was the mayor. On Friday and Saturday’s I would approach people as I wandered around drunk in the midnight sun and minus 40 weather and approach people stating: "Good morning. I’m Mayor Tom Bradley and I hope next Tuesday you remember me when you vote." Most people found it amusing, if eccentric.

As the season wore on, I became Karl LaFong, a direct theft from W. C. Fields’ 1935 movie It’s A Gift. It was totally plagiarized, but since no one I’ve ever met has seen the movie, I don’t feel too guilty. Anyway, the routine is introducing myself as: "Hello. I’m Karl LaFong. LaFong. Capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g. LaFongggggg." I added a bit of Al Franken’s shtick and wore the routine out, although I must admit a number of people liked it enough to spell my name in unison with me or greet me in the bar with my routine. "Well if it isn’t Karl LaFong, capital L..."

You’re aware of the sparseness of women in McMurdo, but Audrey Moran made up for it. Just so long as she didn’t talk. Audrey was twenty-four and built. Half Italian, half Irish she was almost six feet with a pouty-lipped oval face, green eyes, an ample milk fund, a beautiful keister and all the other fine female attributes. Unfortunately, her family was well to do Long Island who moved to southern California and Audrey was an architect student at the university of New Mexico. Her self-esteem tank needled out above the "F" and she drew building plans with those cloud-like, puffy trees which make me angry when I look at them. Had I possessed a bull dick cane I’d have employed its magic, tapped her twice, muttered "Al D’Amato" and removed her Long Island personality. Right before Christmas we had survival school. We built igloos and spent the night. It was fun. Very sunny and almost 32 degrees, we cut ice with our shirts off and got sunburn. We worked together except for Audrey, who assumed Isadora Duncan poses on snow heaps. Although it was explained that we’d each sleep in the unit we built, it didn’t sink in with Audrey until we arrived at bed time. Lester, a Sioux from Montana, and I built an igloo and I looked forward to retiring to it with my bottle of Jim Beam.

Audrey thought I was a soft touch because I was always telling her how pretty she was and how I wished I was ten years younger. Corny shit like that.

I would have considered letting her stay with us, but she was too pushy. She said she’d like to because we were nice guys and she’d drink with me. This upset me. Lester didn’t drink, but all I had was a quart, barely enough for me. So I told Audrey no. She pestered me about this until I crawled into my igloo. She disappeared for a while but returned to say no one else would have her. In a singsong way, she begged. "Tom. Let me in. Let me stay in your igloo with you. Please. Please Tom." This was annoying because I just wanted to get drunk in peace, chat with Lester some, then pass out. Then she really annoyed me. She started calling me Karl. "Karl. Karl. Karl LaFonggggg. Let me in. Let me spend the night with you. I want to be yours Karl LaFong. Maybe Mrs. Karl LaFong someday. I want to bear the next generation of LaFongs, Karl."

What the fuck? Did she think I thought I was Karl La Fong? Did she think I was nuts? Didn't she realize that even if I were Karl LaFong, all I'd have to look forward to is dying?

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