The Mayor of Whiskey Hill. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1:

One of the ugliest sights in all the world has got to be the November sky through the window of your car at about nine-thirty on a Sunday morning. It was something I'd seen a lot of in the past week or so, the naked trees like jagged black threads against the gray Michigan sky.
My face was kind of stuck to the vinyl upholstery of my 1970 Datsun 1200, a car that was three years old but bore the scars of a much longer life. As I sat up, I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that my right cheek held an imprint of the grain and a pleat that ran from the back to the front of the passenger seat. I knew from experience that it would fade rapidly after a shower and some coffee. This was, after all, the fourth morning in a row that I'd woken up in my car. Looking around me, I saw that I was parked in front of the cottage that I'd rented, along with the other members of my band, overlooking scenic Traverse Bay. We usually stayed in hotels when we were on the road, but we had booked this job for a month and we decided to go the more exotic route of staying in a 3 bedroom beach cabin. The price was right and we had a great view of Lake Michigan out of the windows looking west.
I was cold, and I had a hell of a headache, but at least I didn't have to play the "Where Am I" game. That's the game you play when you wake up in front of a strange looking place, usually in the middle of East Cat's Ass, Michigan (town motto: "We can't give you directions until you have brushed your teeth."), and you drive around, in ever-widening circles, fighting the accompanying vertigo, until you're rescued by someone who recognizes you. It helps if you have a hole in your muffler to attract the attention of people who are on the street and in a position to help.
I opened the door and raised myself out of the seat until I was upright and standing next to the front left fender, leaning on my right hand. This flurry of activity caused a wave of nausea to pass through me and I felt the sweat on my forehead turn amazingly cold in the brisk wind that blew in from the bay. I knew I had to get inside the cottage quickly or I'd have some serious health problems to deal with, along with the temporary, alcohol induced, serious health problems that I was already in the grips of.
Somehow, I managed to get inside the cottage. I have a vague memory of my keys not working, or not fitting the keyhole, or maybe they were still in the ignition of my car, and after fumbling around for awhile I tried the doorknob and found that it was unlocked. Inside, the air was way too warm and filled with the subtle sounds of sleep. I closed the door softly behind me and walked, shakily, through the tiny living room to the kitchen.
As I was searching for the can of coffee among the rubble that covered the counters and table, I was overcome by a feeling of indifference that compelled me to walk out the back door, which was also unlocked, and sit on the wooden steps outside. I found my cigarettes in my jacket pocket and the smoke seemed to settle my stomach.
That's where I was, about an hour later, when my cousin Greg came out the door with two cups of coffee. Dressed in a blue terry cloth robe, Naugahyde slippers, flannel pajamas, and wearing tortoise shell mad-professor glasses, he had a smoke dangling from his lips.
"Nice outfit," he said.
I looked down and realized I was still dressed in my "show-clothes" from the night before. No more than twenty-five feet away, people were walking up and down the beach and were, apparently, finding the sight of me quite entertaining. I had been pretty far away, mentally, for the last hour or so and hadn't noticed that I had become something of a spectacle. Oblivious to the world, I had been chain-smoking, staring at the ground, wearing bright red satin pants with electric blue suspenders, red satin racquetball shoes, a Superman t-shirt in the classic red, blue and yellow design, and a canary-yellow sport coat. I checked to see if I had been drooling.
"Did you ride back with me last night?" I had to know. Normally, I don't like to admit what I don't remember, but Greg was happy to fill in the blanks when he could. That way he'd be able to ask me what I remembered when he needed to.
"You don't remember a fucking thing, do you?" He shook his head. "Do you remember getting us fired?"
"Kind of," I said weakly. It was coming back to me, but very slowly, and hazily. I had gotten into an argument with Big Bill, the owner of "Big Bill's", our boss. He said he didn't like our obscene language onstage, especially during dinner and if we didn't cut it out he'd "show us the door". I had stood by my convictions and denied that we'd said, or done, anything obscene and I'd expressed my disbelief at the notion that anyone could see it otherwise. I think my exact words to Big Bill were, "You're full of shit." Things went really bad from that point on and the conversation ended with Big Bill firing us. He told us we could come back when he opened up at noon the next day to pick up our equipment. I think I told him to go fuck himself because there was a quick flailing of arms and bodies, and I was pushed out to the street by Bob and John, my drummer and bass player, while Greg held Big Bill back.

So while Greg droned on and on about how we were going to starve to death due to our unemployed condition, I started thinking about a dream that I'd had sometime during the night. In the dream I was very drunk and was arguing with the guys in the band about the events that had transpired at Big Bill's that night. We were in the living room at the cottage passing around a bottle of vodka and had smoked several joints and everyone was at that point we used to reach where we made no sense at all but felt like everything we said was very profound. Still in the dream, I had left the cottage in a snit and a huff and went outside to where my car was parked, got inside and pulled a cold Stroh's beer from the cooler that was always in the back seat. I couldn't be sure what happened next, you know how elusive dreams can be, and usually when you try to pin your dreams down they slip further away. But, this time was different. This time, it seemed like I was remembering things from the dream, and the more I concentrated, the more I remembered.
I was in the alley behind Big Bill's. I could smell the grease and garbage in the dumpsters that stood on either side of the back door. In my hands was a Detroit Tigers souvenir baseball bat, which I swung at the small window above and to the left of the back door. A week before, that same window had been broken by a drunk who, after being bounced out the front door, walked around back and tossed a brick through the window. The next day, as we rehearsed in the afternoon, a guy came and repaired the glass. I overheard him tell Big Bill that he didn't have a replacement part for the alarm at that window, but he said he was going to bypass the window so that the alarm would be active throughout the rest of the building. I had to hit the window a few times before I was able to break the glass, then I ran the bat around the window frame to remove the rest of the shards before raising myself up on a dumpster and through the open window, into the kitchen. Once inside, I groped around in the darkness until I found Big Bill's office and threw myself against the hollow, wooden door.
I've never been much of a door smasher, although I have tried, on occasion, to enter a room a la John Wayne. Dreams have a way of making you stronger and less vulnerable, able to breathe under water, soar to great heights. This dream was no different in that respect, the door caved in after one blow from my hundred and fifty pound bulk.

Sitting there in my clown clothes, with my cousin's voice admonishing me for my stupidity, my mouth suddenly went dry and my head started to pound.
"You look like a fucking clown, you know that?" Greg had lit a joint and was passing it to me, my empty coffee cup hit the ground and I ignored it and reached for the joint. I took a long pull and held it in my lungs for as long as I could, then I slowly exhaled through my nose. I felt my nerves and muscles relax slightly, my head stopped throbbing and the knot in my stomach loosened.
This dream was starting to frighten me. It had the surrealism you expect in a dream, but it had some qualities that didn't fit. It was too linear; it made too much sense.
"Greg, something bad happened last night," I said.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. Just because you got us fired from the last place in town that would even consider hiring us, there's no reason to think of it as something bad. Bad is when we can't pay our bills anymore and we have to work in welding shops and shoe stores. Bad is what's coming, not what just happened."
I stood up and said, "I better figure something out."
"What? How to shut up long enough to think about your situation, our situation, before you get us killed with your big mouth?" He was walking around the porch with his chest puffed out, proud of the only sermon he'd delivered in his life. But, I was up and moving toward my car, my sport coat flapping in the breeze like a caution sign in a tornado. Greg followed me around the side of the house to my car, keeping a safe distance.
I found my keys in the ignition, and felt my hair begin to stand up on the back of my neck. That dream had been too vivid, too full of hazy detail. In my heart, I knew that the dream wasn't a dream at all. The key slipped into the keyhole in the lid of the trunk, and as I turned it and my heart skipped several beats, I was dizzy now as the lid sprang open and my guitar case was the only thing inside. I unsnapped the clasps that secured the top half of the case and raised it slowly.
By now, I knew what was inside the case because by now, I knew that what I'd thought, at first, was a dream was a horrifying reality. You see, stuffed in around the neck and body of my '67 Fender Telecaster was the most money I'd ever seen in one place in my life.
In the course of ransacking Big Bill's office I had discovered that he had a metal box that was in the bottom drawer of his desk. I had beaten the box with the souvenir baseball bat until it fell apart, inside was the cash that was now inside my guitar case. I didn't take the time to count it but I knew it was serious money. I grabbed my guitar and put it in it's case and packed the money in around it until I couldn't fit anymore in. There was still a big pile of money on the floor next to my case and I found a bag in the office to carry the remaining bills out to my car.
I was really a mess. Hung over and dull in the crisp autumn air, I couldn't talk or move or think. I just stood there and watched as Greg closed my guitar case and then the lid of the trunk. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge," he said. I coughed and sputtered but no words would come out, I felt paralyzed. Greg pushed me into the cottage and as the other two guys in the band slept, oblivious to the situation that had developed, Greg and I gathered our stuff and loaded my car.
"It's quarter to eleven, if we aren't out of this town in an hour, we're screwed." said Greg. His eyes were bugging out and he was sweating in spite of the cool weather.