THE COLLAPSE: Swantown Road (5 page)

Stephen was ordered to do two shots by himself, in order to ‘catch up’ with Fish and Constantine.  He eagerly chased each one with a large slug of beer.  The trio was about to cheers each other with another shot, all together this time, but an intense raucous at the bar postponed their celebratory toast.  All of the regulars were up-in-arms about something on the television above the bartender, who was also watching the TV and not serving drinks.  Odd, since there wasn’t a game scheduled that evening and no UFC fight until the next day.  So it couldn’t have been sports.

Fish was the first to notice that the commotion had something to do with his beloved Chicken Stand-Off and raced over to the bar to get a closer look.  Stephen and Connie looked at each other and silently agreed with a nod that they should go see what was happening as well. 

“That’s fucking bullshit!”  One of the grizzled regulars hollered at the TV, with echoes of agreement from several of the others.  The Chicken Stand-Off had become a Chicken Slaughter.  A reporter was summarizing the events.  The protesters were given a deadline at which time they were ordered to peacefully disperse.  The ones that went along with the deadline were promised amnesty from any charges.  When the deadline approached, a dozen or so protesters left the picket line as requested, but were immediately placed into handcuffs, an obvious breach of the amnesty agreement.  The remaining protesters, observing their comrades being hauled away by the police, retreated back into the restaurant.  Law enforcement launched tear gas canisters into the restaurant, and with no protection from the awful effects, the police assumed that they would all just come out with their hands up.  That never happened.  They came out, but shots were fired, some say accidentally, but nevertheless, the seal had been broken.  An all-out showdown ensued, with a majority of the protesters wiped out within seconds.  The surviving protesters were beaten down to the ground and arrested. 

Several network helicopters had captured the events on film in real time, live, as they occurred.  The most graphic scenes were being replayed.  It was awful, and hard to believe that a civilized government police force (at any level) could possibly do this to their own citizens. 

The bartender went around and methodically turned on every TV in the joint, and adjusted each one to a different local network.  “It’s on every channel,”  he solemnly declared to his patrons.

“This is just absolutely terrible.”  Fish said as if he shocked by the events (but he wasn’t).  He was on a mission, moving from TV to TV, scanning the different reports for his favorite person, Emil Knard.  He had hoped that his hero might have survived the massacre somehow.  Maybe he was one of the first surrenderers and was already sitting handcuffed very uncomfortably in the back seat of a police car.  Fish felt as though the legendary Emil Knard would not have given up that easily, and he was likely already dead. 

Most of the networks were fixated on replaying a particularly gruesome double headshot that a young African-American female in a Krispy Krib t-shirt received as she hurriedly fled the restaurant to escape the tear gas.  It was overwhelmingly apparent from every angle that she was unarmed.  The two shots were hair fractions of a second apart, and blasted a good portion of her skull away on one side.  It pulled a few million heartstrings across America, since she had an awkward, embarrassing type of run that immediately humanized her before she was gunned down.

“Maybe they thought that she was ‘The Predator.’”  Fish said, trying to be funny.  It was a reference to the black female’s weaved-in dreadlocks that draped behind her head quite like the famous alien’s did. 

Stephen and Connie silently stared at him, along with several others.   

Fish shrugged his shoulders and smiled at his friends, then said, “Too soon?”

“Yeah, man.  I think so.”  Stephen said with utter seriousness, sensing that many were observing their behavior.  In reality, deep inside, Stephen was barely able to hold it together and act dignified.  The alcohol had taken hold, and he was nearly on the verge of busting out in laughter due to his old buddy’s absolute lack of sensitivity in public during a morbid situation.  It was ludicrous.  When he looked over at Constantine, she was suffering the same plague.  Her hand covered her mouth, and Stephen was pretty sure that there was grin underneath there.

“Ugh, I can’t believe they actually shot that girl twice in the head.”  Connie said with mock disgust.  After a moment, she added, “It was a pretty good grouping, though.” 

Stephen’s eyes popped wide open at her comment and he shot her a ‘shut-the-fuck-up’ turtle-faced grimace.  She was purposely feeding Fish.  Her fist immediately went back to her mouth and she chewed a knuckle in anticipation.  At that point, Stephen knew it was too late.

“I know, right?  That
was
some excellent grouping!”  Fish bellowed loudly in agreement and laughed.  Stephen lost it at that point and went on the march.  He headed straight to the bathroom, as he did not wish to be witnessed laughing his ass off during a crisis of that nature.  He remained in there for several minutes, hiding in a toilet stall as humor tears streamed down his cheeks.

After some time, Stephen heard the bathroom door creak open and somebody walked in.

A voice, “Yo...” 

It was Fish, checking to see if his pal was still in there.  When Stephen heard his voice, he erupted in another snort of laughter.  Fish might have had a good buzz already also at that point, because he decided to use his six foot four frame to violently shake the metal walls of the well-worn stall that Stephen resided in, on the toilet.

“Steeeeev-o.”  Fish said as the entire frame shook on its wall mounts and the bending metal thundered loudly around his buddy.  “Pinch it off and get back out here and drink.”

Still laughing, Stephen replied over the thunder, “I’m here dude, but I’m not taking a shit.  Let’s finish those drinks quick and get the hell out of here and go somewhere else!”

Chapter 7 – How Tarralikitat Became Tarra Alexander

Meanwhile, after supper was finished and the dishes were done, Tarra let the Kays take turns holding the baby boy as she closely monitored them.  She couldn’t remember any time in the past that the Kays had ever held a baby, so she gave them specific instructions on how to position the baby to keep him comfortable, meanwhile providing support to his head and neck.  The Kays absorbed the information quickly and applied it perfectly.  They were naturals.  They took turns feeding the baby as well.  Tarra was very proud of them.  She was also surprised at how calm the baby boy was, even after being with them for several hours, he had yet to cry.  Tarra remembered how fussy and needy her Kays were at that age, and how difficult it was to simultaneously juggle her attention between the two of them. 
I guess baby boys really ARE easier to raise than girls
, she thought.  She had heard that from other women before, mostly other navy spouses, but never really put any stock into it.

As Kyla’s turn ended and she handed off the bubbly baby to Katrina, she asked her mommy a question, “Is daddy still out having fun with Uncle Fish?”

“Yup.  He sure is.  He’s probably going to be gone for a while, honey.”  Tarra answered.  Then she gave Kyla a sly look and said, “You know what?  Mommy used to go out and have fun with daddy and Uncle Fish, too, once upon a time.  Before I was blessed with you two.”

“That’s because Uncle Fish is fun!”  Kyla exclaimed.

“Your daddy is fun, too.”  Tarra stated.

Katrina spoke up while holding the baby, “Yeah, and daddy is smarter, too.”

“No he’s not, Uncle Fish is smarter.”  Kyla stated, snootily. 

“Um, no. Daddy is way smarter, he is always fixing Uncle Fish’s mistakes.”

“No he doesn’t,”  Kyla argued, “mommy, who is smarter; daddy or Uncle Fish?” Kyla asked. Tarra noticed that they were each developing a whiney tone in their voices and she instinctively changed the subject before it turned into a full-blown argument.  They were getting tired, and needed to decompress before going to bed.  It was also a question she would refuse to answer to the girls, who would only use the information to jab at each other.  Kyla obviously sticking up for her Uncle Fish and Katrina tending towards Stephen.  Which was comical, because it was just a week or so prior to that when the roles were reversed.  Kyla was favoring her father and Katrina was for Uncle Fish.  Tarra realized through her own girls that women could be catty at
any
age.

  Once Tarra and the Kays had fed the baby and he fell asleep, it was time for the twins to go to their rooms and wind down for the night.  On their way down the hall, Katrina stopped and pulled her mommy down to her level to ask her a private question, “I know daddy is way smarter than Uncle Fish, right?  I won’t tell Kyla.”

Stunned and put on the spot, Tarra had to think of the right answer.  After a moment, she winked at Katrina and said, “They’re both smart, honey.  Just in different ways.”

“Oh, ok mommy.”  Katrina replied.  She was satisfied with the answer and lightly pranced her way down the rest of the hall to her room.

As her daughter disappeared into her room, Tarra thought about ol’ Uncle Fish.  Most wives would have strategically eliminated a cocky, obnoxious, irresponsible and womanizing best buddy such as Fish from their husband’s lives a long time ago.  Most likely by giving their husband an ultimatum:  It’s either
him
or
me
.  But Tarra was altogether different from most wives and kept Fish around, purposely.  She knew that she had the power to get rid of him at any time, if she ever so desired, but she would never manipulate her husband or secretly strategize a venomous plan behind his back to force Fish out of their lives.  Although he made poor life decisions from time to time, Fish’s heart was pure, and he would do anything up to and including giving his own life in defense of any member of the Alexander family.  Tarra rewarded his loyalty by providing unlimited access to her husband.  Stephen, of course, would limit his time with his best friend accordingly.  He appreciated his wife’s tolerance, and didn’t want to spoil it by spending too much time with Fish.

Not only did Fish have a pure heart, but he was, in fact, the entire reason that Tarra had developed a relationship with Stephen in the first place.  Literally.  Had Fish never existed, neither would her perfect husband Stephen or her perfect girls Katrina or Kyla.  And for that, Tarra loved him like a brother, just as Stephen did.  He was the big brother she never had (and never wanted, at the same time). 

As she slowly spun around in the hall and walked back to the living room, Tarra reminisced about the chain of events that led to her to meet, marry and multiply with Stephen Alexander.

It was during Tarra’s heavy drinking and drugging days in her early twenties, and she was still living in Ketchikan, Alaska.  She drifted from job to job, mostly living off handouts from her relatives, specifically her grandfather, whom she was very close with.  Although he was disappointed in his granddaughter’s behavior, he never lectured or chastised her for her lifestyle choices, for he knew that the ancients had blessed her with great beauty and intelligence beyond her years.  He also knew that most remarkable intellectuals endured a period of their life in anger and self-destruction.  Much like her namesake, the butterfly, Tarralikitak had not yet found her chrysalis, to change her ugly life into a beautiful one.  She was in a terrible place.  Her life had no direction, other than to the nearest bar or house party. 

Her grandfather once told her that he had a vision of a white man traveling with a crow, that would arrive unexpectedly on a great and powerful sailing vessel, and he would bring her much happiness and security, and she would bear his children.  Unfortunately for her, Tarra wrote off her grandfather’s vision as one of any of the dozens of white guys in Ketchikan that arrive on fishing or crabbing boats.  Most of which treated her like local dirt and used her for sex until they went off to another job or went back to the lower 48 with their seasonal fishing salary.  And what about the part about “traveling with a crow”?  What the hell did that mean?  She thought that maybe the old man was smoking a little too much of the peace pipe, if you know what I mean. 

But, as long as he kept her fed and threw her a few dollars here and there for alcohol or a quick fix, she’d pretend to be interested just about anything he proclaimed to her. 

Tarra was sitting on her favorite barstool on one particular afternoon with only a few bucks left in her pocket.  It was early, so she was rationing her dollars by forcing down cheap draft beer from the poorly rinsed, soap-spotted pint glasses.  After a couple hours, none of her friends, boyfriend (if you want to call him that) or ex-boyfriends had made an appearance for her to mooch off of, and her alcohol tolerance was exceeding her cash on hand. She decided that once she had finished her pint, she was going to leave the bar and head over to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of something cheap but highly potent to maximize her cash-to-alcohol ratio.  She would brown-bag it in the parking lot until somebody showed up that would either buy her drinks or borrow her a few bucks.  Neither mattered, as long as she got drunk or high.

Tarra was almost finished with her pint when two half-drunk companions in their late twenties or very early thirties poured into the bar and looked around. 

“Looks kinda dead in here.”  The tall-and-tattooed one said to the shorter guy with perfect hair.  The guy with the perfect hair reminded her of one the guys in the Hair Club for Men commercials she’d seen on TV.

“Just the way we like it!”  Hair Club said to Tall-And-Tattooed as they high-fived and walked up to the bar.  Both men were attractive, in their own ways.  They were both way too clean cut and well-dressed to be fisherman or roughnecks from the off-shore oil rigs.  Tarra sneered at them, she figured they were just salmon-chasing tourists that got a little too drunk while day-drinking and were lost in the wrong part of town.  But
she
was wrong.  She had no idea that they were both from the USS Chandler, a U.S. navy destroyer that had just finished a combat deployment and was making stops in Alaska and Canada before returning home to Everett, Washington.

And, they weren’t lost.  Not by a long shot.

They purposefully chose the hole-in-the-wall bars that were far, far away from the ship to avoid all the other navy yahoos from the boat that would run to the nearest bar possible once the Chandler moored in port.  It just so happened that they had been bar-hopping all afternoon and ended up in Tarra’s bar by early evening.

Tarra assumed they were just stuck up tourists with a pussy-ass alcohol tolerance and a chip on their shoulder, so she pretended not to notice them as they walked up to the bar and ordered their fancy bottled beers and Jaeger-bombs (years ago, Jaeger-bombs were all the rage before Fireball came around). 

After the tourists made friendly small talk with the bartender, they took all their multiple drinks and placed them all on a table away from the bar.  Tall-And-Tattooed ambled over to the jukebox while Hair Club sat and eagerly sniffed the Jaeger-bombs on the table. 

Tarra huffed under her breath to herself,
Ha! Wait until they notice that all this shitty little bar has for music is 80’s and 90’s junk.  Maybe then, these stuck-up pricks will leave.

But just the opposite happened.

“Dude, check out this playlist, yo!”  Tall-And-Tattooed yelled over to Hair Club, who was still sniffing the Jaeger-bombs.  Tarra assumed that Hair Club was extremely shy and didn’t know what else to be doing with himself.  He joined his buddy at the jukebox and they excitedly took turns putting more and more music into the machine. 

Oh, my god.  Now these jackasses are going to be stuck here for hours.  Gag me with a spoon!
  Tarra thought to herself.  But she was denying to herself that not only did she find both of them attractive, but she sensed an aura of happiness and enjoyment around the two.  It was obvious from their physical features that they were not related, but they treated each other as if they were brothers that had not seen one another in a very long time.

A length of time passed as Tarra people-watched the two jackasses.  She was so absorbed in their activities that Jessup, the old bartender, had to wave a hand in front of her face to get her attention.  “Hey, Butterfly, you want another one?”  He said as he pointed to her nearly empty glass.

“Yeah, why not.  Hook me up, Jessup.”  Tarra replied as she sucked down what was left of the warm beer and slid the cloudy glass over to him.  She mentally abandoned her plans to get a bottle from the liquor store.  She wanted to see how these two city boys fared once the roughneck crowd rolled in.  Her buzz was fast receding and she wouldn’t have the cash to bring it back up, but for some weird reason she didn’t care.

It wasn’t long before the roughneck crowd actually did begin to roll in, and the bar became very loud and busy.  Jessup had raised the volume on the jukebox to match the crowd, and also to attract any wandering roughnecks walking by.  ‘
Drunks naturally migrate towards loud music like flies to cow-pies’
, he would sometimes say. 

After Jessup raised the volume, Tarra could no longer make out what the two jackasses were saying anymore, and this angered her.  She felt like she would be vindicated once the roughnecks discovered some outsider city-trash salmon-chasers in their bar, and a confrontation would ensue.  She wanted to be able to hear it.  She couldn’t wait!

Unfortunately, once again, Tarra became disappointed as several roughnecks made their way to the jackasses’ table and shook hands with them and made conversation.  She couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other, and it was also getting harder to watch them as the bar filled up with more people, including a couple women, who were also making their way to the jackasses’ table.  What angered her most though, was that several of the roughnecks had gone to the bar and brought them back drinks, and even did shots with them!  Outrageous!

Tarra angrily stewed in her own juices. 
You’ve got to be kidding me, right?  These two city-boy jackasses are waving twenty-dollar bills around like toilet paper and you roughneck morons are buying THEM drinks?
 

After she observed two older crab fishermen that she personally knew buy the two jackasses a round of Jaeger-bombs, she called them over to her corner of the bar, which to her disgust, was still vacant.  Nobody was sitting by her.  Nobody was talking to her.  She had been alone all afternoon and into the evening.  Suddenly, she came to a realization that she was not wearing makeup, her hair was unkempt and a little greasy from not being washed (she had been out all night, previously) and her eyes were bloodshot from very little sleep.  Even in that condition, however, she was still somewhat attractive, and was normally at least flirted with.  She told herself that maybe it was still just early. 

Once her fishermen friends had fought their way through the crowd to her area, they each gave her a quick hug and sat down.

“What’s goin’ on, darlin?”  One of them asked.

Tarra took a deep breath to bide her anger before she spoke to them.  “I’m just curious, why in the name of all that’s holy, did you two buy those jackasses over there drinks?”

The two old men laughed, “Oh, honey, you must not have talked to them yet, have you?  Those are two sailors from that navy ship that pulled in yesterday.  They just finished up an eight-month deployment in the Persian Gulf and they’re one more stop away from home.  Everett, Washington, I think they said.”