Tacoma Stories
PRAISE FOR
RICHARD WILEY
“A gifted writer who can create and sustain tension with spare, unembellished prose.”
—New York Times Book Review
“In what I like to consider a one-man mission of ‘literary reparations’ … Richard Wiley appears not necessarily to integrate but to insert himself unobtrusively, a watchful eye and empathizing listener, into alien identities, operating through plain, credible protagonists.”
—Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature
“Wiley writes like he was born and raised everywhere.”
—Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage and Night Hawks
“If there is such a thing as global fiction, Wiley is writing it.”
—Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and A Permanent Member of the Family
“Wiley has given us a fascinating and utterly convincing portrait of a young man caught between two cultures and struggling to understand both.”
—T.C. Boyle, author of The Tortilla Curtain and The Relive Box and Other Stories, on Festival for Three Thousand Maidens
TACOMA STORIES
Richard Wiley
Bellevue Literary Press
New York
First published in the United States in 2019
by Bellevue Literary Press, New York
For information, contact:
Bellevue Literary Press
90 Broad Street
Suite 2100
New York, NY 10004
www.blpress.org
© 2019 by Richard Wiley
Earlier versions of the following stories appeared in these publications: “Your Life Should Have Meaning on the Day You Die” and “The Dangerous Gift of Beauty” in Arches Magazine, “Home Delivery” in Prime Number Magazine, “Let’s Meet Saturday and Have a Picnic” in The American Scholar, “The Dancing Cobra” in Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales, “eHarmony Date @ Chez Panisse” in The Los Angeles Review, “The Strange Detective” in Narrative Magazine.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wiley, Richard, author.
Title: Tacoma stories / Richard Wiley.
Description: First edition. | New York : Bellevue Literary Press, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018005026 (print) | LCCN 2018007335 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942658559 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942658542 (softcover) | ISBN 9781942658559 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3573.I433 (ebook) | LCC PS3573.I433 A6 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018005026
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a print, online, or broadcast review.
Bellevue Literary Press would like to thank all its generous donors—individuals and foundations—for their support.
This publication is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Book design and composition by Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
First Edition
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
paperback ISBN: 978-1-942658-54-2
ebook ISBN: 978-1-942658-55-9
For Lucas Isak Albert
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
CONTENTS
Your Life Should Have Meaning on the Day You Die
A Goat’s Breath Carol
Home Delivery
The Man Who Looks at the Floor
The Day of the Reckoning of Names
The Dangerous Gift of Beauty
Let’s Meet Saturday and Have a Picnic
Anyone Can Master Grief but He Who Has It
The Dancing Cobra
The Women
eHarmony Date @ Chez Panisse
The Strange Detective
Sarco-gophus
Out for a Drink
Acknowledgments
TACOMA STORIES
Your Life Should Have Meaning on the Day You Die
[1968]
PAT’S TAVERN, UP ON TWENTY-FIRST STREET, not far from the old LaPore’s Market, had been the best college drinking establishment in Tacoma, Washington, a decade earlier, but by 1968, when I worked there, it had started its coast into oblivion, with Vivian Flanagan running it and finding people like me to tend bar. Vivian’s husband, Pat, had managed the tavern during its heyday, hiring College of Puget Sound athletes and tough guys like himself, but not long after the college became a university, Pat’s lost its cool and even on weekends wasn’t full. Still, a schooner of beer cost a quarter and I and my fellow bartender, Mary, often gave it away to friends on a two-for-one basis, so for those lucky few a schooner cost twelve and a half cents. Mary, a knockout, had curtains of hair falling down around her shoulders, while I kept a copy of Siddhartha in the pocket of an old army jacket, in the hope that it might help with my guise as a writer. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and Pat himself sat in the corner booth with two other Irishmen, pointing out the photos on the walls.
“That’s Harold Bergh above you, Fatty,” Pat said. “He still comes in. Played semipro football after college.”
Fatty was actually thin, with the face of James Cagney.
“Harold Bergh,” he said. “H-a-r-o-l-d B-e-r-g … h!”
Earlier, they’d been playing Irish Spelling Bee, a drinking game, and Fatty was too drunk to know that the game was over.
“Stop fookin’ spelling everything,” said Paddy, the third man in the booth.
“Harold Bergh was in last night,” I said, bringing them the pitcher Pat had ordered. Pat himself didn’t drink. Vivian told me that he had once, terrifically, but quit because drink brought the fighting man out in him.
“Did you give Harold Bergh the news about your grandmother?” Fatty asked, and all three men howled. A few weeks earlier, I’d used the excuse of my grandmother’s death to get the weekend off to go to Westport, Washington. My dad came in when I was gone, and when Vivian consoled him over our loss, he said, “Thanks, I guess, but she’s been dead since 1960.” Vivian fired me the following Monday but hired me back later on.
“Actually, I asked, ‘Aren’t you Harold Bergh? H-a-r-o-l-d B-e-r-g-h?’”
Though it wasn’t very funny, that sent Pat and Paddy into another round of drunken laughter, though Pat, of course, was sober.
“Look behind you, Richie,” he said. “Vivian will fire you again if you don’t start pouring beer.”
“For Christ’s bloody sake, is his name really Richie, Pat?” asked Paddy. “No wonder your tavern’s gone downhill!”
VIVIAN WAS SHORT AND SOUR and disliked nearly everyone who came into Pat’s. Sari and Hani, two students from Saudi Arabia, were at the top of the list of those she disliked, but they were regulars, sitting and drinking like some Muslims do when they get to America, and she didn’t want to lose their business. Still, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut and whispered, “Look at them, Richie, bold as you like, and on Saint Patrick’s Day, too.”
Vivian kept a milk shake container full of Mogen David wine by the cash register and sipped from it often, in order to still her outrage.
Sari and Hani were in a booth with Lars, the guy who’d gone to Westport with me; Immy, Lars’s girlfriend; Jonathan,
recently graduated from Yale; and Becky Welles, the daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Becky looked more like her dad than her mother, had a knowing manner, and enjoyed coming to Pat’s because we liked her for who she was, and not for her famous parents.
At the bar sat Ralph, an English teacher in his fifties; Lindy, a woman whose ex was doing time at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary—a far more exotic presence for us than Becky Welles; a divorced guy named Andy, who was a lawyer; and Earl, a shaggy-headed philosophy professor. So we were Pat, Fatty, Paddy, Vivian, Sari, Hani, Lars and Immy, Jonathan from Yale, Becky Welles, Ralph the English teacher, Lindy the convict’s ex, Andy, Earl, and Mary and I. Sixteen characters in search of a play on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1968. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I had dyed my hair green for the occasion. I have to mention it now, however, in light of what Lindy said next, which was, “You look good with green hair, Richie.”
I’d known Lindy as a kid, and now she came to Pat’s most nights, often taking men home with her. She enjoyed saying “McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary” in a low and husky voice to those she wanted to take home. I thanked her for the green hair comment, then hurried off with beer for Sari, Hani, Lars and Immy, Jonathan from Yale, and Becky Welles.
“I’d like two hamburgers when you get a minute, please,” said Hani. “In fact, bring two burgers each for everyone at the table, my treat.”
Hani was fatter than Fatty and had more money than everyone.
“Cooking’s out tonight,” I told him, “what with Saint Patrick’s Day and all.”
The beer I’d brought them was as green as my hair. Jonathan said he’d go get burgers at the Frisco Freeze if Hani gave him the money up front, so Hani pulled out a twenty. As Jonathan headed for the door, I worked my way back past Earl, who said, “I know you’ve read Kerouac’s On the Road, Richie, but have you reread it?”
When Mary heard that, she came over fast, though people were demanding beer. “I reread the damned thing and it doesn’t hold up!” she said. “Rereading makes it ordinary, Earl, just about like you are.”
Mary and Earl had had a fling a couple of months earlier, but Earl had told her he was moving on. She glared at him like Gertrude Stein probably glared at Ernest Hemingway, never mind that Mary’s beauty far surpassed Gertrude’s and that Earl’s insufferability more than equaled Ernest’s.
Even before Earl dumped her, Mary didn’t do much work at Pat’s, and Vivian never did anything but drink Mogen David and growl at the customers, so I was busy for the next hour, with both taps running and green beer flowing and with Andy saying that he’d like to write me a will. He offered the same thing to Lindy. At least as often as Lindy took a man home with her, Andy offered someone a free will, so it, along with Earl extolling the virtues of rereading, had been staples at Pat’s that entire spring.
Irish music came from a record player Pat had brought in for the occasion, and Paddy kept trying to make everyone stop talking while they listened to it.
“Shut fookin’ up” was how he put it.
“Do you mind if Jonathan works for a while?” I asked Vivian. “We need to get some schooners washed, or we won’t have any clean ones in about ten minutes.”
I’d forgotten that Jonathan was out buying burgers for everyone in Hani’s booth, but Vivian didn’t know who Jonathan was anyway, and when she said she’d pay him ten bucks at night’s end, I asked Ralph, the English teacher, if he would pretend to be Jonathan until Jonathan got back. But Ralph hated Earl and wouldn’t wash schooners if Earl was going to drink out of one of them. So Becky got out of her booth, walked behind the bar, and tied an apron around her overalls.
“Never mind rereading,” said Earl when he saw her. “How about rewatching? Everyone’s rewatched Citizen Kane, but it’s my belief that rewatching The Third Man pays more benefits. I’ve got two words that explain it, Rebecca, Joseph and Cotten.”
“J-o-s-e-p-h C-o-t-t-o-n!” shouted Fatty. “He was an Irishman!”
“I’m afraid it’s spelled with an e not an o, Fatty,” said Becky. “I met Joseph Cotten. He used to come to our house, but he wasn’t Irish. He was a working-class guy from Virginia, and had a great big crush on my mom.”
Becky was washing schooners fast, running them in soapy water, then plunging them into the rinsing tub and placing them on the drying rack. Orson Welles had come to Tacoma once to visit her and she’d brought him into Pat’s. But I’d missed meeting him, since that was the weekend of my grandmother’s ersatz death and my trip down to Westport with Lars.
“Well, he’s what makes The Third Man, however you spell his name,” said Earl.
“What makes The Third Man is the story and screenplay, both by the great Graham Greene,” Ralph said. “And Becky’s dad didn’t direct it, so why be such a sycophant, Earl? Always the Mr. Know-It-All.”
“He did too direct it! Citizen Kane, The Third Man, and The Magnificent Ambersons!” Earl stood half off his stool, then sat back down.
“You’re right on two of them, Earl, but Carol Reed directed The Third Man,” said Becky.
“Wouldn’t you know it, a woman!” Paddy said. “Women direct the entire world.”
“Carol Reed was Donna Reed’s sister,” said Fatty. “And if anyone says Donna Reed wasn’t Irish, I’ll knock their teeth out!”
“Sorry to tell you Carol Reed was a man,” Ralph said.
Both drunk Irishmen doffed invisible hats in honor of Carol Reed’s Irishness, or Donna Reed’s, at least, while Pat asked Mary to bring them more beer.
“Thanks for helping,” I told Becky. “And thanks for the story about The Third Man. I’m still sorry I missed your dad.”
“It was you I brought him in to meet, Richie,” she said. “I’m sorry you missed him, too.”
Vivian had been here on the afternoon Becky brought her father in. When my dad came in and Vivian gave him her condolences, Orson Welles did, too.
“Orson Welles in Pat’s own tavern,” said Vivian now. “Can you believe it, Pat? We’re the watering hole for famous men. I should have taken Orson’s picture. Maybe when the two Omars get famous, we’ll put their photos on our wall.”
The two Omars—Sari and Hani—raised their glasses. She’d been calling them the two Omars since Dr. Zhivago came out. For a while Hani corrected her, but Sari had understood both the joke and the insult from the beginning. Now, however, drink brewed up the fiery side of Andy, who swiveled on his stool to point at the men in the corner. “How would you like it if people started calling you the three Conans?” he asked, though this time it had been Vivian, not them, who’d issued the insult.
“He’s talking to you, Pat,” said Paddy. “Perhaps he thinks you need a will.”
The door kept opening and closing, people coming in and going out. Jonathan came back quickly with his sackful of burgers. When Hani got up to help him pass them out, Lars and Immy got up, too, to dance in the one clear space, intent that their love be known to everyone.
“Why I didn’t take Orson Welles’s picture, I’ll never know,” said Vivian, while Pat stood to dance his way over to Lars and Immy. He led them back to their booth, since dancing wasn’t allowed, then got plates from behind the bar, took the bag of burgers from Jonathan, and laid them out, only one burger per plate, instead of the two that Hani had ordered. He gave the burgers to Sari and Hani and Lars and Immy and Jonathan, who now sat at the bar. He got five more plates for the five remaining burgers and delivered them to Earl, Lindy, Ralph, and the two Irishmen in the corner. Vivian, Becky, Andy, Mary and I, and Pat, himself, got no burgers at all.
“Cook up a mound of fries, Richie,” Pat said. “The burgers are on Omar, but the fries are from Viv and me, with a happy Saint Patty’s Day to all.”
Pat truly believed that Hani’s name was Omar, and Hani tipped an invisible hat at him. Ten burgers delivered then, and five men tipping invisible hats, and the story’s not nearly at its end.
I GOT THE FRIES FROM THE FREEZER. The various tensions in the
bar—between Earl and Mary, between Earl and Ralph, between Vivian and the two Omars—seemed to dissipate by general consensus, since Saint Patrick’s Day was for exhibitions of good cheer. As I cooked, sweating green sweat out of my hair, I heard Becky tell Jonathan that Vivian had offered to pay him ten dollars for washing the schooners. I also saw that all the schooners were clean and that Becky had taken off her apron. But instead of going to sit with the others in the booth, she took a stool next to Earl, available because no one else wanted to sit by him. Jonathan put the apron on, hoping to get the money without having done the work, while Mary made eyes at Andy, since Andy had offered to write her a will and also since Earl was watching them in the mirror.
“I think I’ll stay in Tacoma after I graduate,” said Becky. “There’s nothing for me in L.A. anymore, and there’s something about this place. It’s comfortable, it’s beautiful, and it leaves me alone.”
She was talking to me, though I was facing the french fry basket. Andy was on her left, with Lindy on the other side of Andy. Becky would graduate in June.
“There’s something special about every place, Becky, not just Tacoma,” Earl said. “If you’re in a place, you end up thinking there’s something special about it. And there’s really something special about great books, if anyone ever bothered to reread them.”
I could feel warmth coming toward me from two directions, from the crazily cooking french fries and from Becky.
“But what is it about Tacoma in particular that makes Becky want to stay here?” asked Lindy. “All I ever wanted to do was get out.”
Becky had just said what it was, of course, but Lindy was asking Earl, and by so doing, showing an interest in him. Andy, who hoped she’d show an interest in him, was ready with what he considered to be a better answer than Earl’s. “Becky’s not in probate in Tacoma,” he said. “Orson’s not the judge and Rita’s not the jury.”