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Richard Prosch

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First Skirmish

We Lived The Bonfire of the Vanities!

October 30, 2018 By Richard Prosch

There’s a scene in The Bonfire of the Vanities (great book by Tom Wolfe, bad movie with Tom Hanks) where our hero is driving a Mercedes convertible in New York City and takes a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood.
Pretty unlikely scenario for a couple of kids from the Midwest to relive.
But it happened, albeit in a different city. Right down to the convertible Mercedes.
Here’s what happened.
We had this licensing agent who lived in San Diego.
For those of you who don’t know, a licensing agent used to be just about the only way a creator could make their intellectual property available to manufacturers and distributors. In our case, Gina and I had successfully published a comic strip (and book) starring a cartoon character named Emma Davenport.
Our agent, an old guy named Frank, had secured a deal with a toy company to produce dolls based on the characters, and we were in sunny San Diego to go over the deal.
Frank was an old school jet-set swinger who’d played the licensing game since the ‘60s. Everything about his ostentatious life was for show—from the clothes he wore to his big house in its gated community—to his vintage Mercedes.
Naturally, we were taken in by his charms.
As it turned out…as it almost always turns out…Frank was all sizzle and very little steak.
But that’s another story.
That morning, the plan was for Frank to pick us up at the hotel around 10:00 am.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and we sipped Venti sized vanilla lattes on lounge chairs outside the place while we waited.
When Frank wheeled in before the doors with the black Mercedes convertible and his pretty girlfriend in the passenger seat, I wondered where we were supposed to sit.
Frank bopped around the front of the car, gave Gina and me each a hug, then dropped the car keys in my hand.
“The car is yours,” he said. “Enjoy the city for a while.”
Huh? I didn’t know what to say.
We weren’t exactly strangers, having met Frank in person twice before. But I didn’t think we were at the stage of a relationship where you handed over the keys to a car.
Obviously, Frank thought we were.
He kissed Gina on the cheek, winked at me through groovy Ray Ban shades, and explained that his friends were picking he and his gal pal up for a movie.
Right on cue, a gorgeous new BMW pulled in and honked.
“We couldn’t get out of it,” he explained. “You know the address for the house, right? The key is on the car fob.” He handed me a slip of paper with numbers on it. “That’s for the keypads.”
“Keypads?”
“For the gate,” he said. “And the home security system. See you later.”
And just like that, Frank and his friends were gone, leaving us set up like characters in a Ferris Beuller movie.
The car was ours.
The city beckoned.
What could possibly go wrong?
As often works best in big cities, Gina drove while I navigated.
Now this was in the days before GPS navigation. Our cell phones were of the non-smart variety, and we had only been to San Diego once before.
We took the first exit onto the freeway.
Young, adventurous, and completely ignorant of our surroundings, we sped along.
Sorta aiming for the Zoo.
Bumper to bumper. A zillion miles an hour.
When we saw a sign that said: Los Angeles – 36 miles, we decided we were lost.
That first exit we took was fine. No problem. Off, swing around, and back onto the freeway headed straight into the city the way we’d came.
But with our enthusiasm dimmed, and our caffeine in short supply, we opted to drive straight to Frank’s address.
“Maybe there’s a fast food place close to his house. We can have lunch, then wait for him.”
I checked the map.
And made a mistake.
“There’s a street that cuts straight across to his house from here.”
“From here?” said Gina.
“Yeah. We’re only six or seven miles from his place.”
“I’m not sure we should leave the freeway.”
“Look,” I said, pointing at the paper map, knowing full well she couldn’t look in the heavy traffic, “This next exit will take us right across town to his neighborhood.”
To her credit, she was skeptical. And we might’ve avoided the upcoming unpleasantness had not the Mercedes cast its own vote.
Remember what I said about all sizzle and no steak?
Half a mile from the exit she planned so skip, the Mercedes started choking and sputtering.
“That’s not good,” said Gina, lurching forward, then back.
“Take the exit! Take the exit!”
And so we did.
Puttering along, belching black smoke.
“What’s wrong with this thing?”
“Gas line or filter.” I sniffed. Gas for sure. “Carburetor,” I guessed. “Who knows?” At the top of the ramp, the green light beckoned us forward while a ratty Lincoln town car behind us honked impatiently. “Turn left, turn left.”
We made it two blocks.
And the first red light we encountered the Mercedes coughed to a stop.
The intersection was a war zone.
One corner was home to a burned out brick building covered in spray-paint gang tags. The lot across the chipped and broken gray asphalt street was a weed filled jungle.
Beside me, nearly within arm’s reach, an unhealthy young man laid face down on the sidewalk next to a pile of garbage bags like a living welcome mat for a brown brick barber shop with barred windows.
The bars hadn’t kept all the glass from being broken.
The stench of the garbage wafted over the Mercedes cab, pushing out the gasoline smell.
Gina turned the key. Cranked the engine. Pumped the accelerator.
“Don’t pump it,” I said. “I think it’s flooded. Hold the peddle down flat. Clear the line.”
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
“Sure.”
“No. I mean. We have to get out of here.” I followed her eyes front and center and saw three young men jay walking across the way toward us.
They looked a lot healthier than the guy on the sidewalk. Biceps and shoulder muscles covered in tats rippled in the sun.
“Where’d they come from?” I said.
“Who cares?”
Crank, crank, crank. The engine turned over and over.
How long until the battery died?
One of the young men spoke up. “What we got here?” he said.
Crank, crank, crank.
“Dunno,” said his friend.
“Check it out,” said the third.
“Call the cops,” said Gina.
Crank, crank, crank.
“Cops?”
“Cell phone?”
“I don’t think—”
“You all need some help?” said the first guy—in a way that wasn’t too helpful.
“We’ve got it. No problem,” I said.
“Oh, I think you got a problem.” His smile showed three missing teeth. “You driving a rich boy car. You a rich boy?”
“He’s really not,” said Gina.
Crank, crank, crank.
“I think he is.”
And then…just like that, the engine caught and fired off.
The Mercedes shot ahead.
“Hey, watch out you—” yelled our new friend as the fender brushed against him.
Seriously. We couldn’t have been two inches away from him.
“Ohmigod, did I hit that guy?”
I cranked my head around and peered through a cloud of black smoke.
All three of the guys stood in the street watching us go. One of them showed us his middle finger.
“They’re doing fine,” I said.
“Better than the car.”
Gina had the thing floored, the engine roaring like crazy, yet we were only going half as fast as we should’ve been.
“Just keep going.”
“Red light coming up.”
Two more guys sat on a bench near the light. They wore dirty T-shirts and had a paper bag between them.
“Run the light.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Run it, run it!”
And she did.
And we ran all the lights from then on.
Eventually…miraculously…the barred windows gave way to strip malls, and the sleeping junkies became happy Sunday window shoppers.
The map had been accurate. Frank’s place was just around a couple turns.
“Had we not taken that exit, we might be stranded on the freeway,” I said as we pulled into his driveway.
“Had we not taken that exit, I might’ve lived five years longer than I will,” said Gina.
“We must’ve looked pretty silly, driving through the hood in this thing.” I got out and kicked the tires.
“Next time, I navigate,” said Gina.
“The important thing is, we made it.”
“And now we can relax,” I said, unlocking the front door to Frank’s house and pushing in the door.
And we did too…right up until we realized the key code he gave us was wrong.
And the security system started howling.

Filed Under: Blog, First Skirmish

Indiana

July 26, 2018 By Richard Prosch

I can’t hold it against Indiana, what happened that early summer night.

Not so long ago.

Ten years. The kid was still in his pumpkin chair, but facing forward in the back seat of our white rental car and paging through Dr. Seuss books while my wife, Gina, and I entertained him on the long road from South Carolina to Missouri with bad renditions of show tunes.

By eight-thirty, we’d all had enough.

We had reservations just across the Indiana border at a name-brand hotel that I don’t see many of these days. Back then, they were more-or-less reputable, if not exactly luxurious.

When we parked the car, I noticed we were one of only three cars in the lot. But it didn’t click that anything might be wrong. Like I suggested above, we all were tired.

Had I been more alert, I might’ve noticed that at least a third of the security lights were dark, while the ones that were lit flickered faster than the swarms of June bugs around them.

Thick with bugs, thick with humidity, the night was a sour kitchen sponge in need of a cleansing rain. I licked dust from my lips.

Inside the motel, the girl behind the counter stood beside a No Smoking sign with a butt dangling from her lower lip. She seemed a little drowsy while checking me in.

Weren’t we all?

The first real warning bells went off when I read the back of my key card.

A message like I’d never seen before, and have never seen since —red, rubber stamped on the white plastic in an empty white space.

“Management not responsible for theft. Not responsible for accidents. Not responsible for altercations. Suggested curfew: 10:00 p.m.”

Altercations?

Curfew?

Back at the car, I showed the key to Gina and told her the room number. “Let’s get something to eat first? The boy’s tired,” she said.

“We might end up out past curfew,” I said.

Navigating from the parking lot, I was too busy searching the horizon for glowing restaurant lights to notice the old blue Ford pickup that followed us out.

Deciding to fill the tank with gas before we ate, I drove past a sit-down chain restaurant toward a dimly lit station.

I parked beside an island of two old pumps and the blue pickup slipped in behind me.

Two young guys with ball caps and sleeveless T-shirts the pulp stories call wife-beaters. I wondered why they called them that.

Inside the car I could see my hungry, young son pull a crabby face as Gina tried to console him. We should’ve stopped earlier.

“Hey smart-ass,” said one of the guys from the pickup. The one behind the steering wheel. Backwards cap, gray Fred-Flintstone stubble field on his lower jaw. “What’chu say to me, smart ass?”

Talking to me, but I didn’t make eye contact. In fact, at just that moment, I became intensely interested in the nozzle of the pump, still connected to my car.

In bad movies, the tourist-victim is so stupid, he’d stand there and finish filling his tank.

Or worse, he’d start making conversation with the guys in the truck.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, white-Toyota man. I thought I heard you say something to me.”

This wasn’t a movie. This was real life, and I wasn’t stupid.

Or even the slightest bit drowsy.

Just like that, everything I did took on an odd clarity—almost like it was in slow motion.

I disconnected the hose, hung it up on the pump, turned, stepped into the car, and told Gina to look straight ahead.

I drove smoothly forward—not fast, not slow– and wheeled deliberately back to the street.

Once there, I sailed past the restaurant, ignored the turnoff to the motel, swung a left-turn onto the interstate and, once securely in my lane, punched it –putting as much distance between me and the blue pickup as I could.

“Hey, relax,” said Gina. “What was that all about, anyway?” We were two miles down the road before I realized the kid was crying.

I had lost sight of the Ford just after we passed the motel.

That didn’t stop me from moving on across the Indiana plains.

“How far to St. Louis?” I said. “Maybe call ahead and make a new hotel reservation?”

“We’re not going back?” said Gina.

I thought about the run-down status of the motel—the flickering lights, the warning message on the key card. The way the blue pickup purposely targeted us.

“No, we’re not.” I said. “You can call them later and check out officially. Tell them we had a family emergency and had to leave.”

Which was true.

“You didn’t say,” she said. “What exactly was that all about?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

But I had some ideas.

And even if the boy was crying. And even if we were tired.

I knew we were better off than if we had stayed in Indiana.

“How about a show tune?” I said, and Gina started to sing.

And it was one of the best renditions I’ve ever heard.

Filed Under: Blog, First Skirmish

Free Crime Story: Gun Guys

July 26, 2018 By Richard Prosch

So by the time we crossed the Brooklyn bridge, two dozen septuagenarians and me in a tour bus stinking of diesel fumes and stale AC, I thought Grandpa and the gun guy, McGee, would have exhausted everything there was to say about firearms.
But no.
As soon as McGee got back from the john, Grandpa pointed out a scruffy looking guy driving past in a rusty VW. The guy’s long hair inspired a dialogue on sniper rifles that carried us all the way to midtown.
We’d left Omaha two days before, and all through the cornfields of Iowa and Illinois the clean-cut old timers talked Colt, Walther, and Smith & Wesson.
Along the Ohio River it was a history of long guns from Kentucky Rifles to German hunting muskets.
When they got to the 1873 Winchester, they switched back to pistols and spent most of Pennsylvania on a bloody trek through the Old West. Talking Mare’s Legs, Pepperboxes, and Peacemakers, some of the old ladies riding along thought the two men had finally changed topics completely.
Trapped in the window seat beside Grandpa while he chattered across the aisle with McGee, thoroughly riddled with their rapid fire conversation, I knew better.

—

This story was free during the first full week of July, 2018.

—
“Gun Guys” is one of several short stories in Season of Ice, a collection.

Each month this year, I will post a free crime story on the first Tuesday of the month, and a free western story two weeks later on the third Tuesday. The stories will stay up for seven days, and each will feature a “behind the story” post.

Filed Under: Blog, First Skirmish, Free Short Stories

What’s Left Behind

June 12, 2018 By Rich

I was 7 and she was fourteen, and I was madly in love.

Being what it is, memory doesn’t always follow a linear narrative, so the movies in my head are fragmentary bits and pieces, a patchwork quilt of happy, smiling pictures that still warms my heart now, almost fifty years later.

She sat in the back of the school bus. I was in the front, where the little kids were supposed to be.

But she crooked a finger at me, invited me back with a big smile, her long blonde hair caught and pulled by the wind of an open window, dust billowing around us as we roared headlong down a rural gravel road. Me, swaying along down the aisle like a sailor on a ship at sea—landing in her arms (Big hug!!!).

She let me sit beside her and I told her about a kid who brought his dog to school (She got a kick out of the story). About my dad’s hernia operation (That story—not so much). I told her what I wanted to be when I grew up (an animal doctor).

She told me she wanted to be a princess.

One day she got off the bus early and forgot her math book, a heavy tome covered in brown paper with a big, blue B painted on the front (B for Bloomfield. Go Bees!).

Panic! I called to the driver, made him stop, then hurled myself out the door with her book, waving wildly, shouting, yelling.

She was so grateful, she kissed my cheek.

Swoon!

Because we were neighbors, I saw her one day fly past in a blue car with some other girl. And she was laughing.

She was always laughing and smiling.

But in my mind—if not in reality—that was the car that took her away.

Took her away from all of us. Forever.

To this day, I don’t like blue cars.

They put a memorial plaque up in the band room to remember her. I didn’t see it until I arrived on the high-school scene six or seven years later. The memorial brought back all the memories and I’ve carried them with me all these decades.

When I passed her in age, I remember thinking I was finally old enough to take her to the movies.

In my thirties, I thought about her one day—and realized I was old enough to be her dad.

Typing this, now, I could be her grandpa.

And she’s still back there in time, ageless, laughing and smiling with peace symbols embroidered on her jeans and a necklace of beads around her neck.

And part of me is still there too, ripped up by the roots and left like dried flowers pressed in a book with a big blue B on the cover.

Tonight, I’m thinking about what’s left behind.

And who.

Filed Under: Blog, First Skirmish

50 Shades of Sunday, or How I Made Up With Mama Tilda For Being a Long-Haired Hippie Freak

May 29, 2018 By Rich

Mama’s stare is so hard, so consistent, and so filled with disgust, I struggle not to turn away.
But I keep my eyes level, my unaccepted hand out, my backbone straight.
I’m trembling inside.
“Happy Birthday, Mom,” I say, thankful in that awful spotlight to know Tilda isn’t my mother.
Her daughter-in-law, my friend Jean, puts a gentle hand on the old lady’s shoulder.
“Rich is saying hey to you, mom,” she says.
Tilda holds me with her eyes, doesn’t miss a beat. The battle-scarred she-wolf glaring at a scrawny pup.
“I know,” says Tilda.
I don’t even rate a sneer.
“She’s just mad Fred isn’t here,” whispers my wife, Gina, and it breaks the tension enough for me to make a hasty escape toward the gift table where I toss down the birthday card I carry.
Gina gets us some punch.
Fred, our basset hound, is part of the reason Mama Tilda doesn’t like me. (A recent incident involving a rain-drenched Fred, Mama trying to nap in Jean’s recliner, and a lot of slobber.)
The other reason is that I’m a long-haired hippie freak.
I know this because one afternoon after walking Fred past Jean’s house, my friend shared her mom-in-law’s frank judgement.
“She’s from a different time,” said Jean. “She worked in the mills her entire life. She’s a hard woman who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
So, going into the birthday part, I knew the part I played.
But in the near-decade we’ve lived in South Carolina, Jean has become family. And Jean’s family, too is dear to us.
Sipping my glass of bland pink punch, I look across the room at Mama in her chair, stoically accepting her guests, greeting each of them with not much more joy than she showed me.
She’s a hard woman. And I wonder about her.
When we leave, I don’t say good-bye.
And then, one bright Sunday morning, I’m standing in the open narthex of a historic church as the congregation flows past, moving outside where they’ll shake the minister’s hand and greet the noon hour.
Gina and I are picking Jean up for lunch after the service, and we arranged to meet her here in the front of the church.
While we smile and nod, and greet a few people we know, I spot Mama Tilda, doddering toward me.
I can’t tell if she’s seen me.
She’s resplendent in a soft orange dress, tasteful gold earrings, and a freshly colored pile of thick-sprayed hair.
An old man greets her with a smile and, incredibly, she smiles back.
I’ve never seen Tilda smile.
Even now, it’s not much. Sort of an anemic tic of the cheek. But it’s there.
And the sparkle in her eyes can’t be denied.
This is Tilda in her element. With her people.
And her soft, parchment thin hands, knobby from decades of work and thick with veins gently accept the greetings offered to her. She holds hands with the man, his wife. She bends to touch the chin of a toddler. She coos over a newborn babe.
And then she’s beside me, looking straight into my eyes.
“Good morning, Tilda,” I say.
She nods, turns away. We’d both like to be somewhere else, but we’re trapped by a new wave of chatty, back-slapping parishioners heading for the exit at glacial speed.
“Nice day,” I offer, just for something to say.
Tilda nods. Which is some progress.
And then she cocks her head and her eyes light up with emotion.
She puts her hand gently on my arm, and when she speaks, her voice is warm like I’ve never heard it.
“I’d like to show you our upper room,” she says, and moves backwards toward an open door I hadn’t noticed before.
Again she touches me, then gives me a mischievous wink and crooks her finger for me to follow.
Away from the crown, beside an open stairway, Tilda is suddenly all sweetness and light.
“You’ll find a lot of joy in our upper room.”
Not being a religious person, and certainly not a Methodist, I’ve never been in the church before.
Or alone with Tilda for that matter.
“Discipline too,” she says. “I can show it to you,” she flashes me a genuine gold-crowned smile. “If you’d like.”
Swallowing hard, I don’t know what to say.
Tilda’s warm hand of friendship—of joy in the upper room!—rests on my arm.
Her smile is contagious.
Alluring.
She really is a beautiful woman.
The upper room awaits!
“Your wife will enjoy it too,” says Tilda.
Now I’m really sweating.
And she steps toward me.
Reaches around my back.
“Mama?”
Tilda picks up a paper pamphlet from a pile on the polished table there.
She holds it in front of my face, a thin newsprint booklet bound with two staples. A photo of a stained glass window on the cover, a series of Bible verses and commentary inside. The cover is emblazoned with the tract’s title.
The Upper Room.
“Read this devotional every morning when you get up, and each night before bed.”
“Joy?” I say.
Tilda pats my arm. “And discipline,” she says.
Then she moves deliberately back to the crowd.
As I watch, she turns back once. “Share it with your dog, too,” she says.
And she gives me that hard stare I’ll always remember.
And wonder about.

Filed Under: Blog, First Skirmish

The Wheel of Life

May 22, 2018 By Rich

Newly wed, living in Laramie, Wyoming.

And we’re getting to know the neighbors in our apartment complex.

There’s the young couple that graduated with my cousins from Sioux City East.

And a Mormon couple who cook outside on the deck.

There’s a strange single guy we simply call “CIA” because we know he’s a spy.

And then there’s the family in the corner with three kids who become our best friends.

The oldest girl, who is six, comes over to our apartment daily. Rather than knock on the door, she stands at the screen door, points a demanding finger, and announces her intention: “In!”

And we let her, often followed by brother and sister, in to share afternoon cookies or a slurp of soda.

When she falls out of her bunk bed, and breaks her arm, I draw a Snoopy on the cast.

During the Fourth of July, she sits on Gina’s lap.

Fast forward 17 years.

The little girl is getting married, and she invites our not-quite two year-old son to be her ring bearer.

It’s a Scottish themed wedding, and Wyatt gets to wear a kilt.

Splendid!

Great-grandma Hattie is of Irish descent, so we secure the McFarlane tartan.

The boy accomplishes his task in grand fashion and we never tire of saying we’ve finally discovered what real men wear beneath their kilts: Pull-Ups!

Fast forward 12 years.

The married girl, who no longer lives in Laramie, has kids of her own.

The oldest is soon closing in on the age that his mom was when we met her.

And our son is in high school and—if he gets married at the same age she did—could conceivably ask our friend’s daughter to be a flower girl in his wedding.

And the wheel of life goes on.

And the generations pass.

Around and around.

Filed Under: Blog, First Skirmish

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Richard Prosch
PO Box 105552
Jefferson City, MO 65110
richard@richardprosch.com

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