Two Stories and Three Variations

The Willow Weep for Me Variations

1.
...........Ponytail-sporting woman with bangs and Malcolm X sunglasses steps up the street with a jaunty gait, her shaggy dog stomping around and wiping his feet. Immediately the pageant of life falls in behind her, with daffodils and nice little lunches with soups. A marching fellow has a snare drum slung from his neck, and he taps out a figure we’ve known since birth. Pickup truck with rounded hood and sagging plywood uprights careens around a corner on two wheels, like in the comic books. Then a saxophone-playing hack lumbers into “Willow Weep for Me,” the ponytail woman vanishes up a path, and the whole tableau falls down a trap door as I look on in horror.
...........It’s a tenor.

2.
...........Ponytailed woman—bangs, man’s sunglasses—advances up the street
with a jaunty stride, her shaggy dog pounding his feet in a minuet. Right away the pageant of life falls in behind her, with daffodils and nice little lunches with
soups. There’s a snare drummer and why not a few fifes. Pickup truck careens
into view on two wheels—its cargo of grinning bozos losing their hats on the
breeze. Then a saxophone-playing hack starts “Willow Weep for Me” and the
whole happy little fishbowl drops through a trap door. Except my favorite
neighbor—the one with the conked hair—who nods and points. We go down,
never to be seen again.


3.
...........Who doesn’t love a tomboy with a ponytail? That’s what we’ve got.
Redhead with shades like Buddy Holly’s, bursting with joie de vivre as she
bounces up the street, behind her a shaggy dog impersonating a mad bull just for fun. And the whole pageant of the world—all of life—falls in behind her and
everybody gets a nice little lunch with a soup. There are daffodils and a guy with a snare drum, plus a careening truck full of bozos. Then a saxophone-playing hack trots out “Willow Weep for Me.” And just like werewolves facing a garlic clove, we all hit the woodwork. The saxophonist is the only one left, and even that is a guess.

The Chungs

......In the morning, Mr. Chung would pick up his egg-over-easy, place it
on top of his pancakes, and thwack the yolk with the side of his fork.
......Then Mrs. Chung would say: "I hate it when he does that."

The Operative

......Next door to me in a little lane of cottages back from the street was a steady, happy-faced bartender from the Blind Dog Saloon. You had to have exceptional sanity, the way he did, to tend bar at this place, because despite a palpably calm ambience, the Blind Dog drew a crowd that included many of the island's intelligent, powerful, crazy, contrary, and rich. A lot of them were formidable, and while at the Blind Dog, a lot of them were drunk.
......In Key West, there were a number of bars where you could find somebody to set fire to your broken-down car and spur an insurance settlement, but if you wanted a cop to do it, this was where you'd look.
......The bar itself was circular. Jabbo, my neighbor, moved easily through his space inside it, a little chubby in his short pants, but a study in efficiency, with no extra steps and never a wasted gesture.
......He could leave the bar untended for a moment or two while ushering a prosperous drunk to a waiting cab, make bathroom-floor puke disappear before the clientele knew it existed, and get the occasional extracurricular need discreetly addressed. A bartender's bartender. Talk of sports and the weather, there wasn't much, though even it could be summoned.
......As the summer slid toward the Fourth of July, momentum picked up, and as more and more overheard conversations concerned the inevitable Independence Day upheaval to come, which would take a form that was, nevertheless, unforeseeable—chaos and disturbance did in fact build. Temperatures rose, the island population dwindled, and the sounds of breaking glass, police sirens, loud expletives, squealing tires and gunshots became more common.
......Jabbo, whether in his bar, bouncing up the lane, conversing with a late-morning female guest at the window across from mine, or hopping onto his bike, remained unfazed.
......It was, however, about this time that oversized cardboard boxes began arriving at Jabbo's place via UPS. Three, on successive days. Large, but so lightweight that the driver carried them on his shoulder. One of these big boxes, when dropped inadvertently on Jabbo's porch, bounced. Still, nothing that unusual. The traffic in marijuana and sniffable cocaine in fact touched nearly everyone. Reaching the island by sailboat and other small craft up from Latin America and the Caribbean, the drugs flowed so easily that, in the words of "unidentified" federal agents, "the only people who got caught were bumbling idiots."
......By nine o'clock Fourth-of-July evening, bottle thefts and fistfights had led the local police to close half the island's 130 bars for the night.
......Generally untouchable, the deeply connected Blind Dog was eventually shuttered.
......Jabbo had blood all over his white shirt and more was falling from his hands as he stumbled up the lane at 10:30 that night. One of his female visitors trailed six feet back. "Like I said, 10 o' fucking clock," he muttered fielding an apparent question as to when the cops had closed his bar. He spun around a few times in the yellow, bug-clogged light of my porch, glaring at the companion and splashing blood on his face as he pushed his hair back.
......"It's got nothing to do with me," he said. "Nothing nothing nothing nothing." He wagged his finger and spit flew with his words.
......"Fucking tax shelter... Importation... Went off the take... Crossed him... Packing... Not even a god-damn warning..." — was approximately what reached me as Jabbo's rant grew louder and ebbed while he stormed through his cottage, occasionally tossing furniture at a wall.
......He left in a cab the next morning, early, never to return.
......The cottage had been rented by noon.

“The Chungs” and “The Operative” were originally published in Stephen Emerson’s collection How I Met Jack Buswold (Blue Press, 2019).