Stuart Kaminsky - Dancing in the Dark

It was then that Pancho Villa the dreaded bandit entered their peaceful though profitless lives. The bandit saw Aunt Bess in the market bargaining for tripe and was immediately enamored of her. Aunt Bess had a pleasant face and large body parts.

The dreaded bandit kidnapped Aunt Bess from the market and he rode away with her dragging tripe and screaming, “I am being kidnapped by the dreaded bandit Pancho Villa.” Now since everyone could plainly see this including Cousin Leo who stood watching there was little to comment on at the moment, though Cousin Leo later reported that a woman said in English for his benefit that Pancho Villa was known to have the taste of a snout hog. Three days later Aunt Bess had not returned to the village so Cousin Leo, whose Spanish was on the minimum and lacking in refinement, donned a hat of ala ancha (which means wide brimmed), sold what he was able of the small farm including the chickens and the house and set off in search of his paramour.

It was at this juncture that Cousin Leo’s story strains even family good will. In his travel which took him to a mountain village where Pancho Villa was reported to be staying Cousin Leo in search of someone who could speak English wandered into a drinking establishment which in Mexico is called a cantina or at least was when Cousin Leo chanced into one. There at a table dealing cards in a game of poker was a painted woman of uncertain age with a wild left eye.

Mother? Leo inquired and sure enough the woman dealing poker in that cantina was his mother Hannah. There is no report from Leo-his story having been told to me by his daughter, also Hannah-that mother and son embraced. After the hand of cards was dealt Hannah did inquire of Uncle Seymour and learned the story of her son and her husband’s second wife. Since Hannah’s Spanish and connections in the town were more than adequate and she was up for something like adventure after having dealt poker for more than ten years she and Leo set forth in search of Aunt Bess. In the mountains they came upon a quartet of banditos who claimed they were in the army of the dreaded Villa. They had a powwow on whether to ravish Hannah and dispatch Leo but Hannah’s Spanish and advanced age saved the day. She claimed to have some information of military import for Villa’s ears only.

To make a long story a short story they were led into the presence of Villa his own self. Villa, a portly man of no great beauty, was seated upon a rock sucking out the marrow of what appeared to be the bone of a goat. Though his view of the dreaded bandit had been but fleeting Cousin Leo was as certain as his poor mind would allow that this was not the man who had taken Aunt Bess. As it turned out he was correct. It had been an underling of Villa who had taken Bess. Oh the ignominy. Villa readily agreed to exchange Aunt Bess for Hannah which suited Hannah though she knew the adventure would be short lived. Bess was returned to Leo but the union did not last. She abandoned him in Puerto Del Sol claiming she had forgotten her comb and had to go back to the Villa camp to recover it.

Cousin Leo sat in the town square of Puerto Del Sol for seven days exhausting his money and the patience of the town folk and singing various hymns particularly “Rock of Ages” to pass the time. He was driven out by stick and stone, running down the road with one hand upon his wide brimmed hat to keep from losing it and screaming as he ran, “Life is too much work for a simple man.” Cousin Leo found himself in Stickney, California, married a woman named Leona who was if the story is to be believed for I have never met her of even less wit than Cousin Leo, who opened a hat shop and made a living.

Aunt Bess and Aunt Hannah emerged in Mexico City some months after Leo’s departure and running as the Gringa Sisters were elected to the newly formed Godless government of Mexico.

There is more. Oh time triumphant! Would that I endure to tell the whole of my tale.

• •

I laid the pages of Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript flat on my small table, looked to Dash for support and guidance, and went to the phone in the hall to call Carmen, the cashier at Levy’s. I invited her to a movie. I told her that I was in pain and needed a gentle hand to cover my sore spots with salve. She said her son had chicken pox. Mrs. Plaut wasn’t around so I left the manuscript in front of her door with a note saying, “Brilliant work. The plight of Cousin Leo particularly touched me. Villa was a cad.”

I walked downtown carrying a pillow under my arm and a look on my homely face that challenged anyone to ask me why I was carrying a pillow. It wasn’t more than a mile, and walking was better than trying to get back in the Crosley. I went to the movies by myself, sat on the pillow, and saw Across the Pacific, with Bogart and Mary Astor. The newsreel told me that the Office of War Information had asked deferments for Kay Kayser, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Nelson Eddy, Freeman Gosden, and Lanny Ross so they could contribute to the war effort by entertaining the troops. I couldn’t keep sitting so I got up and watched most of the show from the back of the theater, leaning against the wall. The manager, who recognized me as a more-or-less regular, came over to ask me in a whisper if there was something wrong with the seats.

“War wound acting up,” I said.

“I’ve still got a piece of metal shaped like a small fish in my back from the Marne,” he said sympathetically.

I picked up a couple of hot dogs at The Pup and brought them home to share with Dash. Mrs. Plaut hadn’t touched the manuscript that still lay in front of her door. I went to my room, gave Dash a dog without the bun, dropped my pants and underwear carefully, and did my best to swab the salve on my behind. At first it hurt. It stung. It cried. It made me wish I could say something in Indian that even Gunther might now know but that would be the major verbal attack in the long and violent life of Kudlap Singh, the Beast of Bombay. I danced around the room for a few minutes and it began to feel better. In about five minutes, I felt well enough to get stomach-down on my mattress to listen to Milton Berle and “We, the People.” Mrs. Lou Gehrig was the guest.

Then I listened to “Amos and Andy.” Kingfish was taking it easy at home when his wife, Sapphire, came in and complained about the Kingfish not earning a living. She threatened to leave him unless he found a way to buy a car. Kingfish and Andy joined forces to make the investment. Before they got six blocks from the dealer in their 1926 Overland Roadster, the car broke down and they opened the trunk. There Andy and Kingfish found a body. Lawyer Algonquin J. Calhoun told them to sell the car. They tried to stick Shorty the barber with it, but he couldn’t drive. Eventually, they discovered that the body was a mannequin. The boys had escaped the electric chair.

The world was right again.

I went to bed early and slept badly. Because of my bad back, I’m not supposed to sleep on my stomach, but I had no choice. Sometime in the night I got up, staggered to the bathroom in the hall, bare-assed and not caring even though Mrs. Plaut had one female roomer, Miss Reynal, a pretty enough woman, a little younger than myself but too skinny to rouse my interest. I wiped the salve off my throbbing behind, made it back to my room unseen, placed a pillow beneath me, and eased myself onto it, facing the ceiling. Not good, but better than the alternative.

I slept and dreamed of my senior prom. Everyone there was a kid but me. I was the same me I saw in the mirror every morning. I didn’t belong at a senior prom with Anita Maloney, who looked the same as she had on that warm May night thirty years ago. Everyone was looking at me, everyone but Anne, who was a girl again and dancing with Koko the Clown, who gave me a big, lecherous open-mouthed grin and a wink.