Steve Prusky is a transplanted native of Detroit who now lives, works and writes in Las Vegas. Yes, beyond all the neon, some real life occurs in Vegas. Steve attended Northern Michigan University and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee a life time ago. Before all that Steve was in the Navy during the Vietnam War and before all that he was a snot nose kid with a big mouth and the scars to proove it.
Lea's Camper (November, 2011. Issue 33.)
Sheriff Cook and Lea hated each other equally. The belligerent lawman's crude methods cowed most citizens in Leelanau County. He didn't scare Lea. Cook reminded her of an arrogant Teddy Roosevelt victoriously waving his saber atop San Juan Hill comically chanting "Bully! Bully! Bully!" Cook failed at badgering Lea with petty threats: "Lea, pick up yer road apples when ya ride that damn nag mare of yers in town…" "Keep yer chickens cooped or I'll have the next one I catch for dinner…" "Get off my lawn or I'll run you in…" Lea returned Cook's threats with malicious pranks; loosening his steed's saddle straps so the seat slid round to the horses belly when he tried to mount, forcing him to fall flat back into a fresh puddle of horse piss; screaming in falsetto terror when Cook trotted by, panicking his gelding to bolt in an uncontrollable frenzied gallop. Lea was an under-aged youth granted immunity by law from Cook's revenge. Silent loathing was the worst punishment he'd ever mete to the red haired pony tailed pre-pubescent pest.
Cook tracked offenders with the ruthless efficiency of Sherman's march through Georgia. Many never made it past the county morgue to plead their case. A few years before the first Model "A" Ford bounced down the pot holed wagon rutted roads along Leelanau Penninsula, word spread Cook was on the hunt for someone hiding near Old Mission Point where Lakes Michigan and Huron mate to parent the waters a Monet-like pastel blue. The Point was the least populated part of Leelanau, Lea's turf, the farthest tip of the shriveled ring finger meekly protruding from left handed Lower Michigan. The virgin pines there were thick, close together, erect, two-hundred years tall. They were scaly barked cone laden sentries any smart felon was bound to hide in. Like pickets guarding an army's perimeter, the pines were the first line of defense broadcasting most noise approaching from half a mile in any direction to anyone concealed inside the wooded cocoon. No better place existed to hide than here.
To Lea, the dense curtains of pine trees were grayish throws of mystery embellished by tales she'd read of Irving's skittish Ichabod Crane, The Brothers Grimm, Peer Gynt's "Buckride." In spring and summer Lea kept the window open to anesthetize the stale infectious winter air that had lingered too long in her room. The window faced five feet off the bramble border of the sunless pine stand. Clamor from the restless trees shedding dormant winter; a snapping branch, a dying tree felled by age, a raccoon's night trill, a squirrel scooting up a tree, rang out well past the briar boundaries of this grayish wooded hole as if echoing off tall steep canyon walls. The high pine needles shrieked shrill music as the last late chilled Chinook winds exhaled winter's final breath. Each spring Lea intently listened to the aroused soul of that dark wooded void breath the first quintessential gasp of rebirth shooing cyclic winter to recede further north once more.
In late spring, barely audible human activity from the White Pine stand bordering Lea's cottage whispered through her opened bedroom window. These sounds weren't the usual creaking, stretching, groaning pines moan when waking from winter's prolonged hibernal sleep. This din was muffled, methodical camper's noise; a well honed hatchet splitting kindling, an early morning cough before a smoker's first rolled Buglers cigarette of the day, the thump of gathered wood dumped on the cushioned pine needle floor, an occasional pop and crackle snapped from a fresh set cooking fire. Lea suspected her camper was Cook's latest prey. An in arrears debtor? A fugitive fleeing minor warrants? A thieving migrant farm hand fleeing an angry fruit grower's wrath? Lea wasn't told his crime while he was alive, but with the instincts of a pup that can quickly sense an approaching stranger is either affectionate or cold, Lea instantly perceived this camper posed no threat to her.
Lea's camper stayed through summer. The rabbits that normally raided her mother's vegetable garden dwindled to near extinction as summer passed on to early fall. Her camper's snares were well placed, productive; the hares he caught roasted nightly on his hickory stick spit. In September Lea and her mother harvested and canned a bumper crop; tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, squash, strawberries; cherries and apples from their small orchard. The camper would remain a secret to everyone but Lea during the long winter freeze.
After the first snow Lea's concern evolved into compassion for this camper struggling to survive a typical arctic Michigan winter among the pines. She began sneaking out a few of her mother's preserves from the cellar once or twice a week. She crept up to the thickets to place the Mason jars just out of site from the road bordering her trees. Each morning she woke to look the jars were gone.
When the snowmelt ended the sheriff and his deputies swept Lea's pines in line of skirmish with the slow, silent certainty of hunters tracing the trail of a sure kill. Even Lea didn't hear them. The camper had no chance. The sheriff and his men didn't offer or give quarter. Lea heard shot gun and pistol blasts echo through the woods. The aromatic cooking fires stopped. The hatchet ceased its chopping. The rabbits returned enforce. The woods reverted back to their normal spring yawns as they woke from winter.
A week later the sheriff visited Lea's. He asked her mother, "Grace, are these your Mason jars?" staring accusingly at Lea.
"Why, yes, I believe so. Those are my fruits and vegetables inside," her mother quizzically replied.
"Last week we shot'n killed a suspected murderer from Kalkaska in yer woods." Cook never took chances. He often shot suspects without proof, cause or warning as if the offender's sentence had been decided long before it got to the judge and jury. "Were you feed'n this scoundrel?"
"No. Of course not." Grace looked down at her daughter, a bit suspicious.
"Don't look at me," Lea blurted, glaring at the sheriff, shooting bolts of hatred at him from her narrowed eyes. "Them woods scare me. I'm 'fraid ta go in 'em."
Frustrated, the sheriff cast a last vindictive glance at Lea. He couldn't prove her complicity. "Damn fool must'a stole em from yer cellar in the night," he half heartedly speculated. He knew that wasn't true. "I suggest ya hasp and pad lock them cellar doors. Keep'n these as evidence," he lied. Grace's preserves won ribbons annually at the Leelanau County Fair. This year they were his pallet's prize. "I'll be watchin' ya Lea," the sheriff warned. He mounted up and trotted off with the stuffed Mason jars in hand. The remaining afternoon Lea retreated to her room and listened to the waking White Pines stretch and sigh to life rejecting winter's grip. She hummed what few notes she knew of "Tales from the Vienna Woods," as another aged pine close by fell, too tired to resist its end.
Leaving Vegas (November 20, 2010. Issue 22.)
No one moves to Vegas now. New home construction is a nostalgic anecdote pondered on by the unemployed. Tourist traffic has fallen off. Down town casinos complain their take is down. Smaller off strip clubs and bars locals' play are nearly vacant monuments to greed. Empty store fronts and year old repo'd homes swamp the valley like weathered wood markers on forgotten desert ghost town graves. Old Vegas, the city losers money built, isn't wining anymore.
Times were better when the mob ran Vegas. There were rules of behavior, dress codes, winners, losers, favors, violent farewells to those who went broke and bitched. Thugs glutted the ranks of casino security guards. They struck fear in those aware of their omnipotence. When provoked, they'd swoop down on the miscreants who broke the mob's casino rules, pistol whip them for all to see, then drop the bloodied losers in the Pittman wash, or the garbage dump at Sun Rise Mountain or a shallow hole in the desert--the mob's cemetery for malcontents. Slot cheats suffered short careers. They'd sink to the bottom of Lake Mead, their lead slugs as added weight. Caught card counters at the Black Jack tables, well.the lucky ones that survived the beating in the kitchen freezer, lost a hand, fled back East to cabbage land in search of more stable jobs one-handed people do. Under the scrutiny of the mob's tight reins the Vegas economy never waned. For all those who obeyed the rules there was a fix for every habit, a market for every vice, free meals and rooms for those high rollers who lost. If caught too drunk behind the wheel mob friendly cops drove locals home. The mob always won in Vegas and Vegas won with it.
Vegas has changed. For the better our current mayor, a former mob lawyer, exclaims. The town is respectable, civilized. It promotes tamer traces of its old self. It withers under shadows of high rise Strip mega-resorts to the south. Pawn shops, legal loans sharks, pan-handlers, bail bonds, 7-11's litter every corner like scorpions infest the desert. DUI's are nearly a felony. Lush buffet's beckon. Table games tease. Old Vegas single deck Black Jack was a player's game offering the best odds in town. Now it's a house scam dealt from a 500 card shoe. Cops write traffic tickets with one hand on their pistol grips. The mob is a tinier mouse hiding deep in its burrow waiting to make a move. We Locals who leave Vegas soured by the towns changed character contract Vegas withdrawal pains soon after. The flare of multi-colored neon lights becomes our homing beacon to old sins. We revisit a foreign land of musical video machines that boast high payoffs, progressive jackpots one player in a thousand hit, slot clubs that offer free hats, t-shirts and jackets the more you play. We realize we too are only tourists now from an old desert boom town gone nearly bust we can't completely leave.
A Dollar (October 20, 2009. Issue 10.)
Sun beaten, weathered old too soon, some father’s forgotten son of thirty-five; his old boot’s worn heals scrape along the singed desert track, silica dust, barking July winds his faithful mates on a path only he’d dare walk un-armed. He’s hungry, but not just for dinner hungry. A fifth of Scotch sounds good too. Home is the abandoned culvert half a day by foot from his desert hell to here. He lugs a scarred three gallon plastic bucket jammed tight with dense copper wi
re heavy as a lump of granite. He’ll fetch what cash the scrap yard pays today, get a meal, two bottles--maybe three, and hope for some change. At the jagged edge of town--the land of laws enforced by unleashed dogs until dawn or the cops arrive--a graffiti tagged billboard brags in faded reds and greens:
ONE $ DOWN MOVES YOU IN
Greed, roads and gates and signs, and bars and women soon appear. Here, unbridled by deceit he’ll always fight but knows he’ll never cure, he asks, “What would Chinaski do?”
On the way back, one of three bottles already gone, he struts through the sales office door. With a whisky cough he snubs the matte renderings of model homes too few are now hypnotized enough by success to buy. The crafted oak walls they poorly hide are better art to him.
The realtor gasps in fear. Fashionably exposed breasts quiver like shaky pudding just cold enough to serve. His narrowed eyes betray what can’t be good intent. He won’t stop staring at her chest. He imagines her shapely legs. She hit’s the button in staccato bursts to alert the dozing guard--an MP3 his hearing aid. Like T.E. Lawrence with no more unruly tribes to lead, awkward, clumsy. . . gently, he places his last wrinkled dollar bill half on the hem of her short skirt, half caressing her sculpted, upper thigh.
“Show me which house is mine!” He smiles the smile of one who’s known the answer since his head first peaked out of the womb.
The sign is gone. He sees the realtor on occasion; when there‘s an extra bottle to share, two empty model homes and seven bedrooms with sheets and, showers. Each trip past the forgotten sign he takes a swig, “To Chinasky!” he whispers in a scratchy voice. His bucket’s burden lightens a bit--but not for long.