Cabana the Big

  cabana the big

  cabana the big

  Ron Charach

  Copyright © Ron Charach, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency. www.accesscopyright.ca,

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  Tightrope Books

  #207-2 College Street,

  Toronto Ontario, Canada M5G 1K3

  tightropebooks.com

  bookinfo@tightropebooks.com

  EDITOR: Deanna Janovski

  COVER DESIGN: David Jang

  LAYOUT DESIGN: David Jang

  Produced with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Charach, Ron, author

  Cabana the big / Ron Charach.

  ISBN 978-1-988040-12-7 (paperback)

  I. Title.

  PS8555.H39834C33 2016 C813’.54 C2016-905346-6

  For Eugene and Paul

  The language marches in step with the executioners.

  Therefore we must get a new language.

  Tomas Tranströmer

  from “Night Duty,” translated by Robin Fulton

  What did one ball say to the other?

  Why are we hangin’?—Slim did all the shootin’!

  Ah’ll be yore narratuh.

  Awl ya need t’know about “Slim” Reggie Canuck is that Ah was the developuh who got Harold Galloway his summuh place north of Wyomin’—on the Canuck side of the borduh—long before he left his wife and decided to use his pluto-cratic influence to build a biosphere to save the sorry asses of hyoo-manity. Stole the i-dea from Biosphere 2, jest north of Tucson, Arid-zona.

  It stahrted as a CELSS. In Galloway-speak it was a Controlled Ecological Life Support System. Not that Galloway knew much about life. But he was the only show in town jest before the second big bang.

  When Ah declined to drop the capital lettuhs from mah name and to ride with the big eight—like Tarantino, galloway jest had to do The Magnificent Seven one better—he ask’d me to tag along as his aman-yoo-ensis, galloway-speak fer the word slave. There was nothin’ left t’do but drop my “unaccented Canadian English”—as he called it—and adopt his new shiftin’ Southern stylebook to the hilt, mebbe put a little Canuck spin on things now ’n then.

  Sure Ah could talk like galloway an’ use commas an’ subordinate clauses an’ try to turn this sow’s ear of a story into a silk scrotum—but all the propuh English in the world an’ all the propuh Mandarin couldn’t save the world as it once was—

  So Ah tapped into galloway’s listenin’ posts and room bugs ’n wrote everythin’ down—and whatever Ah couldn’t di-vine, Ah sur-mised—lettin’ the characters speak fer themselves, in their own post-apocalyptic way.

  At fuhst, Ah had about as much freedom to tell things mah own way as Siri did—galloway’s slave before all the electronics went kerflooey—but gradually like cabana Ah did things my own way. Ad-herin’ to galloway’s style manual means mah punk-tuation ain’t worth shit—but then agin it never were. What Ah will do is let you in on what passed fer normal aroun’ here—though no one knows what goes on behind closed doors—be they bed-rooms, board-rooms or domed survival bunkers.

  Ah’ll be weavin’ in and out of this like Muhammad Ali—jest don’t expect me to wave at you whenever Ah re-appear or take mah leave.

  Not that galloway would author-ize the honest account that follows.

  He warn’d me: —Keep it simple, Slim Reggie! Don’t you bury my epic in rhetorical flourishes. So, permit me to bullet you the main points that posterity need remember:

  •Billionaire genius harold galloway saved what was left of the world.

  •He created cabana to keep things hopping, then used divide-and-conquer strategies to contain him and his seven familiars.

  •Dr. Henry Morganstern was thoroughly corrupted, and his kin were either neutered or neutralized.

  •There were detractors, but they were amply and humanely medicated. The women on the left and John Gideon on the right may have grumbled, but in the end, were powerless to oppose the genius harold galloway.

  In other wuhds, they wuz helpless, helpless, he-ell-pless…

  You wish—harold galloway—you wish…

  If there is a reader somewhere out there ya might want to turn off yore sell-ular de-vices—if such things still exist—and pull the condom of tolerance snug up over yer face as we try t’git thru mah oh-so-rhetorical version o’ this sordid tale.

  Yup, cabana the big as told by “Slim” Reggie Canuck, without the benefit of Otto-Korrect.

  If thangs get a mite narsty here and there—either blame cabana or blame galloway his makuh. Jest don’t shoot the messenguh. We had plenty o’ that goin’ on already.

  As the froggies used t’put it: Ne tirez pas sur le pianiste. Sur le pénis is more lak it.

  Apparitions

  cabana the big

  As cabana the big saunters in you notice from a distance that one of his legs is a mite shorter than the other, the effect bein’ like a bullock in purple-dyed leather lone-stars whose one heel strikes terrazzo a good two seconds before the other. But you don’t jest sidle on up and say —Whajja do—forgit to slide in one of yer gait-breakers? ’Cause if you did he’d just smile as if to say suck rocks, maybe roll his metallic eyes around at you for an hour ’til you wished you were dead. Save the orthotics jokes for the afterlife.

  Any room cabana enters becomes a situation room. In his off-time he gits off on rollin’ oil drums at the once mighty cariboo, every now and then scorin’ on a stag with seven-pointed antlers. The noble beasts are all Dreamworks overstock just like the eighteen exotic Plasticine dino-saurs that grace this dimly lit biosphere.

  cabana likes to chuck oil cans at little birdies and other endangered species—now and then scorin’ a direct hit on a nestful of spotted owl eggs. He’s proud of jest about everythin’ he does and most of all he’s proud of his name. It was in a steamy shower room that someone first had the gall to look down from cabana’s furnace-like glare. And the sight of it hangin’ there like a section of Keystone XL jest an inch off the ground was enough to tag “the big” right on after his name.

  Call him jest plain cabana if you want to. But you mightn’t really want to. ’Cause if you do he jest smiles as if to ask, What’s that rhyme with? You do some mind-work damn quick, likely wince and answer banana. Whereupon he rips off his gator belt, the one that’s species intactus, and whips you with it repeatedly ’til you have welts like scarification lines. Either that or he might jest stand there: roll around his casino eyes at you ’til you wished you were deader than dead. With cabana’s victims such a state is more than possible.

  Respectfully, in what by now has become ritual, the townfolk whether chosen ones or mutants ask sheepishly: —Excuse us sir but is that your gun?

  But if you get in good with him—play it cool and through a narrow lens—you might one day sit right next to him for a minute or two in Carla’s saloon. Sort of turn to him real easy and flash a cusp or two—never show cabana more teeth than you have to—and chance a quick Howdy cab.

  But keep it to a minimum. Or cabana will get his up.

  And that one-eyed trouser snake is jest what you might refer to as “firmware.” It makes even harold galloway’s
grand central power cable look like a string o’ spaghettini.

  For hardware cab tilts towards a Glock 19 or 22 or a Royal Blue Python .357 Magnum, sometimes an FN Five-seven with armor-piercin’ capacity, a SWAT team fav’rite—Colt .45’s bein’ more than a little passé. Shit, they all was machined in the USA, even the ones with the Krautiest names: Sturm-Ruger-Mini-14, Mini-Breivik, Steyr-Mannlicher HS .50, Heckler & Koch, Glock, Glock Glock… Sig Sauer, Sieg Sauer! Names ’at would make Uncle Addie’s little toothbrush moustache twitch upwards in a satisfied smile. What side really did win that war?

  cab’s partial to flesh-rippin’ hollow-point bullets and X-tended ammunition clips—fun fare of the former Texas/Arizona gun shows or scofflaws down ole Tacomah Washington way, purveyors to John Allen Muhammad and his Beltway sidekick Boyd Lee Malvo. Didn’t they ring a few bells…

  Hell, when you’re hung the way cabana is, it’d be pointless to apply for a CHL, or a Concealed Handgun License as galloway would call it. Yas-sir! cabana is free and open carry at its full-frontal best.

  Like that ole bumper sticker: Gawd, Gats, and Guts. Keep What’s Left of America Free.

  Too bad what’s left ain’t worth writin’ home about. Least not in capital lettuhs…

  cabana the big de-mythologized

  In fact he is a real man, with a heart that beats and a navel that does nothin’. Sometimes he lazes around at Carla’s just starin’ at himself in the plastic-ivy framed mirror like pre-Governator Arnold, rollin’ aroun’ his eyes until even he feels hand-held-camera sick.

  And there is a good deal more to him than a mere foot of flesh-toned tubin’. There are also two huge Britannica globes gone hairy with pulsin’ dorsal veins ’n arteries that swell to every beat of his magnificent pace—threatenin’ to ignite the very air he displaces. And there is also a certain—class. Like the swirl on a calligraphy W. His is the authority of walkin’ quietly while carryin’ a big stick. cabana is there; he is together—of a piece. Like one of those Mongolian arrowheads that whistles as it flies thru the air, makin’ everyone duck to both sides.

  Moves like a cross between Michael Jackson and an Abrams tank. And when cab goes by he swings.

  carla’s saloon

  Carla loosens the x-lacin’ on her Frisco dress, givin’ cowpokes a peek with each deeply drawn breath. You can only make out shadows, but when Carla pushes, the silken teddy moves up and down softly enough to get you stiffenin’ to her whereabouts and the potential for fresh milk in season.

  She is lithe and catlike, tall for a woman—moves with a skater’s stroke when you’ve tipped back a few whiskeys, curves around corners, pelvis in sight long before the rest of her arrives, moldin’ the surroundin’ scenery to the mood of her indigo dress. Gunmen and hired hands watch her out the sides of their eyes; her sly motions tickle like them hesitatin’ bubbles that leap through the room-lit haze of freshly poured sham-paigne.

  Around closin’ time, when the mutant bus-girl Lucy mops the broken glass and yawns once or twice so Carla will see jest how tired she is and let her take her life in her hands sneakin’ home on the back streets, Carla awakens to full form. She insinuates up to the tallest table, where only the big ones dare sit playin’ stud, five card and four—kings and queens flashin’ by so frequent you’d think the deck had nothin’ but face cards—every now and then an ace flyin’ by, pullin’ a grin across one of their faces even as it darkens the eyes of the others. By now all the young married mutants have been hauled home, and the boys and girls of the town are in dreamland. galloway’s best-in-show townies are slavin’ away in some underground machine shop, keepin’ the life-blood flowin’ to his brightly number’d oh-so-silent generators.

  No man of minor mettle would dare walk the streets with the sounds of flyin’ cards cuttin’ the night like a deck. Carla alone is the womanhood sittin’ it out with the meanest and the best, long after the midnight valve has closed on the town and the townies in their beddy-byes and nightie-nights.

  As she perches on the glass tabletop eyein’ their tremolo playin’ hands, each of them secretly watches for shadows. The pyramid V always peeks into view when she sets herself down, that Guccione V between her firm settlin’ thighs and jest beneath ground-cover, a dusky grassy knoll you don’t dare to think on. Oh, the white-pantied V that no mincin’ little ridin’-up nothin’-o-a-thong c’n approximate.

  Carla clicks her pink tongue at a snake-eyed young one ’til he starts playin’ recklessly, awaitin’ a response. She smiles, with those tunnel-end pupils and only a long gold hatpin piercin’ her broo-nette pulled-back hair to warn: here is a woman with class and bite. If you show her teeth, make it your ivory best. Only gifts from the range-flats she’ll look at are diamonds—no enamel or glass or bits of glintin’ quartz need apply. And please—no zirconium.

  Since no one has diamonds or gold any more she moves freely around them, sittin’ only on a whim on that caramel quim so unthinkably out of reach that you’d need t’be an ack-ack-ac’tuary to fully reckon its worth. cabana-like guts to drop trou and go in after it.

  galloway

  Sweet ’n Low galloway. Splenda. galloway of the Microsoft soul. Like the other Donald—Rumsfeld—who made his fortune hockin’ NutraSweet and Metamucil, galloway catapulted into the Pentagon’s graces by learnin’ how to de-hydrate pretty nearly anythin’ ya might need when sittin’ out an unclear war in a bunker. Then graduated all the way up to DARPA where he made himself as indispensable as a fume hood.

  Would have to stand on tiptoes to kiss a rat’s ass. So tight he squeaks when he walks. How many clichés would it take to put him down so right he’d stay down—clichés drippin’ off the mealy mouths of those low enough to consort with him. But even clichés are too good for this silver-spoon’d slop bucket. Inter urinas et faeces nascimur, said St. Augie. Well, he must have had ole harold galloway in mind. Pfffft… pssss…kerplonk!

  galloway pathetic at five ten. Too crooked to fit a urinal and couldn’t go anyway with a real man standin’ beside him. Why do they design urinals in little intimate duos? Who was the closet dweeb that dreamed up that one? frets galloway. Nerdy li’l shoulders in suit-jacket paddin’, Deltoides absconditi. Every minute of his life he’s playin’ Careers: ask him a favor and oh yeah he’ll do it sure he will—but he’ll carefully enter it in a ledger so detailed it’d make a loan officer cream his pinstriped trousies. Deals in charts and graphs for one reason: so every deed in his life will have alternate import, secondary gain—his life one big Columbus voyage with the sole destination of the elusive ass-hole of progress, puckerin’ for a kiss. Now, that’s fulsome. Lucky for galloway there are those around who adore the feelin’ of wet lips on their posteriors. It’s the thing he does best—when push comes to shove.

  galloway makes a capital investment in Carla’s saloon. Four hundred shares, at a greasy five a share. Slides out an endangered-species wallet and dusts off his Harris tweed suit, worn to establish an abrasive image under a well-blocked bowler. Bastard son o’ Bat Masterson.

  C’n neither shoot straight nor ride. In-tention tremuh an’ knock-knees. Canters down the street on the only horse with enough death in him to be safe—a reguler annuity of a hoss. Steps over the many cables leadin’ to his precious generators an’ gently leaps the grand central cable like it were part of a steeplechase for Shetland ponies.

  Reinin’ he tips his hat at the ladies—or what’s left of them—tuneless merriment spurtin’ from his puckered lips. About as convincin’ as a foreskin in a flower-show—Harper, Toews an’ Nicholson crashin’ a women’s book club. Or make thet Harper, his undertaker Blaney an’ squeeze-faced Petey MacKay of the sixty-five un-con-tested F-35s. Shee-yit—they was all sent packin’ by Kid Tru-doo—banished by his sunny ways.

  ma rosemary

  What can you say after you’ve stared for an hour at the crack’d spiny back of a blue-grey lizard smolderin’ in a sun-gutted wadi like the last reptilian l
ife-form to escape bein’ Gucci’d? When you’ve rubbed your burnin’ hands in the bit of wet sand you finally clawed to the surface, tryin’ to keep your lips from bakin’ in the brain-drillin’ global warmerin’ heat?

  Well then—what d’ya say to some ice-cold cider?

  And if that’s wayyy beyond just a thank you—what words are good enough to describe the li’l ole mid-life honey who brews it jest fer you?

  When you drag your ass back into town on your dribblin’ Appaloosa, clutchin’ its straw-thick mane—no longer able to look up into that ozoneless glare outside the dome—you can always tie up at ma rosemary’s, and she’ll welcome you and yer hoss, waterin’ the latter with a jug or two of Crystal Springs then helpin’ you peel yer buckskins before you stumble into a shower-stall then a feather bed while she takes yer temperature in three places as you fret and rub yore eyes like a snot-nosed brat. Then listen as she pours a pint full of the world’s best cider, freshly squeezed—make that freshly thawed—New Zealand orange pippin without so much as a hint of Alar, all mulled in cinnamon ’n clove spices, with re-constituted “fresh” bread to slosh around in it.

  And you don’t have to say thanks ’cause ma don’t take thanks anyhoo but jest sort o’ shrugs ’em off and beams: —There’s plenty more where that came from, cowboy, now you just catch some beddy-bye. She’ll even send you off with a little rub ’n tug fer those who ask po-litely, nudge you gently into delta-wave slumber.

  Course, only the big ones dare come by. Who else would show up with the likes of cabana or big ned skulkin’ about? Each of ’em grins as she com-pliments his great looks or walks by with a pan of hot epsom water for his saddle-butt or Gawd-awful smellin’ feet—and all the while she smells like fresh-cut hay, her round far side o’ middle-aged form jest as springy. Woolen shawl a-swervin’—spotless even at its frayed old edges. The big ones take to talkin’ like little boys at a birthday about buyin’ her presents for all ’at she’s done. But the would-be birthday girl just colors and makes them take back those silly sagebrush wreaths and rattler necklaces. She tells ’em to give Carla more business instead—to keep up their whiskey, their gamblin’ and their jest-fer-sport gunfights and all the other boys-’ll-be-boys thangs that ma knows her big ones need for distraction.