So I ventured over to the next trailer — a perfect Airstream — and looked in to find plastic bins of ashtrays, bottle caps, rocks, peach pits, and car cigarette lighters, among other things. Hubcaps covered the walls.
I thought, you need to call up that TV show where pickers come in and relieve people of their relentless habits before they end up on that other TV show that delves into people who won’t ever discard anything, including trash.
“You found anything yet?” Ruben Orr yelled from the doorway.
I jumped in a way that didn’t make me proud. I might’ve blurted out, “Not now!” or “This isn’t how I’m supposed to die!” like that. I said, “Man, I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you have a website? You need to have some of your stuff listed on eBay, or Craigslist, or something like that.”
Ruben Orr handed me a delicate glass with a slice of orange hanging on top. He said, “What?” He held out his own glass to clink. “Now, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill Old Fashioned.”
I waited for him to drink first, of course. I even thought to ask that we switch glasses, seeing as mine might be poisoned, but then I remembered a psychology course I took one time. Evidently people can smell paranoia, and they hold poisoned drinks in their own hands knowing that they’ll be requested to switch.
My own ex-wife Rachel said that I let off distinguishable pheromones right before I admitted how I never wished to move out of Calloustown, work a regular job, have children, vote Republican, join a gym that offered spin classes, and promise that we’d one day own a timeshare in Myrtle Beach. That “vote Republican” part seemed to be what ended our marriage. Listen, I could’ve gone into the booth, come out, and lied, but it didn’t occur to me until she’d already settled down doing whatever she found necessary.
“Cheers,” I said, and we drank simultaneously. I took one gulp, and Ruben drank his. I didn’t care that I might be poisoned, understand. Indeed this drink wasn’t the traditional Old Fashioned I’d ever read about. I said, “Goddamn, Mr. Ruben Orr, what is this?” for I’d never tasted anything such.
“I normally don’t tell people my secrets,” he said. “Hell, I’ve had Worm offer me thirty-three dollars for this recipe, but I wouldn’t give it to him. I might have to in time, what with my financial state, but not so far.”
We stepped out from the Airstream and moseyed over to one of the gutted buses. From the opened door I could view what looked like an entire room of wooden finials. I said, “How come you and I have never run into each other? Calloustown ain’t exactly a metropolis. How long have you lived here? I’ve been here my whole life, except for a couple years.”
“The ukuleles ain’t in this bus, I know. Let’s go on to the next one.” He said, “Hold on right here,” and ran back to his trailer, opened the door, reached in, and retrieved an entire pitcher of his Old Fashioneds. “Here you go,” he said on return, filling my glass. He pulled out an orange slice from the pitcher and floated it atop my drink.
“I might be interested in a finial or two. I don’t have a staircase in my house, but I got a thing for finials. Maybe I could make a ukulele with a finial at neck’s end.”
“Most people insist on a couple dashes of bitters per glass. Me, I use muddled unripe raspberries. Most people insist on a maraschino cherry. I use a blackberry. See, I muddle blackberries, a lemon rind, a cube of brown sugar, the unripe raspberries, and I use rye whiskey instead of regular bourbon. I use a half and half mix of spring water and club soda. And then I put a taste of good moonshine in there — it’s not more than a thimbleful per glass, you know. That’s all I can tell you. There are two other secret ingredients I won’t tell.”
I finished my second glass. Ruben and I passed the fourth outbuilding, and then five through eight. We went by the first again and kept circling. I kind of forgot that we meant to find a vintage stringed instrument formed of pure mahogany.
“We’ve seen each other,” Ruben said. “I guess you weren’t paying attention.”
He and I rounded his place another half dozen times, high-stepping over broken glass, weeds, pottery shards, old vaccination tags, deteriorating tennis balls, broken bottles, doll limbs, and what appeared to be the sun-bleached skulls of songbirds. I tried to pace myself. I tried to convince myself that it was okay for one of America’s premiere ukulele luthiers to partake of something other than straight bourbon or rum or vodka. As a matter of fact, I rationalized, a premiere ukulele maker might want to drink nothing but cocktails that required an intense, precise, and specific muddling process, garnished with paper umbrellas. I said, “I’m not the first person to say that I’m self-absorbed. I’m the second. Rachel used to say it all the time. I think that’s what she kept saying. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention to her, either.”
“I knew Rachel. She bought some Fire-King from me. As a matter of fact, I believe Rachel met my father one time. My one daughter. I believe you met her one time, too, son. At least one time.”
I picked up on all the repetitive words. It didn’t take a master’s degree in psychology to understand that he wanted to make some kind of point. I looked into Ruben Orr’s face and, sure enough, recognized the resemblance in his eyes of a woman named Mayley I’d once known. Fuck, I thought. The one local ukulele-lesson-needy woman who required private lessons that I’d ever fallen for and — in my inability to lie — told Rachel, “Um, I met a woman I’m attracted to.” She wasn’t even local, officially — just someone taking care of a sick relative for the summer months, as I recalled. Mayley’d signed up for the ukulele class over at the Calloustown Community Center, where I taught a six-class course. To Ruben I said, “Mayley Orr’s your daughter?”
I guessed at the last name — our affair didn’t last long enough for us to know family names. Well, I guess she knew mine, seeing as she strummed a Finley Kay ukulele.
“So, what do you think about buying a little something I got taxidermied now? Mayley’s little boy ain’t interested in animals at the time, but I bet he will be one day.”
_______
I had read somewhere along the way that owning a pickup truck between the ages of twenty-two and thirty created a number of inescapable furniture-handling weekends for friends and strangers alike, and that ownership past the age of thirty brought about requests from friends and strangers to borrow the truck in order to haul firewood, mulch, and potting soil. Whoever came up with this little truism needs to update his or her adage to include a menagerie of rabies-worthy stuffed animals. Well, not quite true. I felt obligated to buy every available bobcat, fox, raccoon, and beaver that Ruben Orr needed to evict from his storage unit.
“I’m going to use this money to start my grandboy up a college fund so he can be like you,” Ruben said as I tried to drive off. He said, “You know what his name is?” I didn’t say “No,” for I felt pretty certain it was Finley. I stared at Ruben Orr. He said, “That’s right, you know.”
I said, “I’ll get you the rest of the money when I can,” for, even though he offered me a deal — we went inside and looked on his Mac at various stuffed mid-sized mammals for sale on eBay, Craigslist, and some kind of Mountain and Lake Cabin Interior Decorator’s site — we wanted to make sure that neither of us over- or underpriced the value of a beaver.
I began driving home, careful not to veer across lines that weren’t even painted on our back roads, my eyes in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t want my animals to topple roadside, for one, and I feared that Ruben Orr might follow me. What would I do if, as I pulled into my own driveway, he puttered up to tell me how his grandson kept asking who his father was? Would I reach beneath my seat and pull out one of my so-called weapons? Would I cry? What kind of explanation could I summon up honestly should he bring along a lawyer, social worker, or Mayley Orr herself?