Free A Fatal Glass of Beer by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page B
Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky
that you should never trust anyone, even a man in the electric chair with nothing to lose. The human mind has a penchant for dissembling. I learned that when I was twelve.”
I nodded and wondered about my Koko dream, tried to see clearly the face under the greasepaint. It wouldn’t come clear and I knew if I didn’t get it soon, I’d lose it forever.
“Finished your Mrs. Plaut’s chapter,” Fields said, reaching for a morning drink, probably not his first. “Woman’s a clear match for Thurber or Perlman. Want to read the whole book. Listen.”
He fished Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript from the picnic basket on the floor and began to read:
Cousin Antonio Pride who fancied himself special because he came from the Kingman branch which boasted of few who were feeble of mind and several who had finished high school, was a salesman of some stature in Goldfarb’s Haberdashery in Steubenville, Ohio. Antonio was short of build, dark of color, and even of white teeth, a full and radiant mouthful that dazzled customers and pleased Mr. Goldfarb. One morning Cousin Antonio Pride, who had a wife and three children, fell prey to the family curse. He was thirty-nine years of age. He was in the process of fitting a stylish derby on the head of a customer whose hair was parted in the middle leading Mr. Goldfarb later to surmise that the customer was a bartender. Cousin Antonio Pride left the customer, walked out of the front door of Goldfarb’s Haberdashery in Steubenville, Ohio, got on the four o’clock train heading west, held up said train with a pair of weapons originally belonging to his stepfather Hugo Arthur Slade, not his real father, Mario Pride, who had similarly departed several decades earlier never to be heard from again. Antonio’s booty was from passengers and train personnel. (He did not take any goods or cash from the porters, though the conductor was not exempt from his criminal outburst.) Two bags full of cash, watches, jewelry including rings, and odd mementos later, Cousin Antonio Pride leapt from the train as it slowed at a turn onto a trestle over a river. Word came back years later that he had gone to Tampico, Mexico, converted his booty to cash, and opened a bar where he could thrash obdurate and noisy drunks with impunity. It was said that he had taken a young Indian girl of passable looks as his illegal wife. Exactly twenty years to the day he had walked out of Goldfarb’s Haberdashery in Steubenville, Ohio, he emptied his cash register and the safe in his office and, at the age of fifty-nine, leaving behind a second wife and two dark children, headed farther south carrying with him a book called Basic Portuguese according to the dry goods salesman who sat next to him on the train and drummed up a conversation. The salesman later related the conversation to James Earl Pride, Antonio’s second son from Steubenville who had set out in search of his father with the intent of making him pay for his desertion. James Earl, who was twenty-five at the time, passed the information on to his mother and brother who still resided in Steubenville. He had learned of his father’s departure from Tampico from the Indian wife his father had abandoned. James Earl took pity on the woman and her two sons, gave up his search, and returned to Tampico where he married her legally, took over the bar, and lived comfortably until the age of seventy-nine when he was shot by a jealous husband with whose wife he was caught in a situation. The husband was a member of the constabulary.
The town gave him a good mourning in Spanish. Upon his death, a novel was discovered in James Earl’s hand concerning the bloody bandit life of Al Jennings of Oklahoma who James Earl claimed to have known. The book was sold to and published in both Mexico and the United States to poor reviews and even poorer sales. Antonio was never heard from again. These events, however, suggest that there is in the blood of our family a drive toward abandonment,
I nodded and wondered about my Koko dream, tried to see clearly the face under the greasepaint. It wouldn’t come clear and I knew if I didn’t get it soon, I’d lose it forever.
“Finished your Mrs. Plaut’s chapter,” Fields said, reaching for a morning drink, probably not his first. “Woman’s a clear match for Thurber or Perlman. Want to read the whole book. Listen.”
He fished Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript from the picnic basket on the floor and began to read:
Cousin Antonio Pride who fancied himself special because he came from the Kingman branch which boasted of few who were feeble of mind and several who had finished high school, was a salesman of some stature in Goldfarb’s Haberdashery in Steubenville, Ohio. Antonio was short of build, dark of color, and even of white teeth, a full and radiant mouthful that dazzled customers and pleased Mr. Goldfarb. One morning Cousin Antonio Pride, who had a wife and three children, fell prey to the family curse. He was thirty-nine years of age. He was in the process of fitting a stylish derby on the head of a customer whose hair was parted in the middle leading Mr. Goldfarb later to surmise that the customer was a bartender. Cousin Antonio Pride left the customer, walked out of the front door of Goldfarb’s Haberdashery in Steubenville, Ohio, got on the four o’clock train heading west, held up said train with a pair of weapons originally belonging to his stepfather Hugo Arthur Slade, not his real father, Mario Pride, who had similarly departed several decades earlier never to be heard from again. Antonio’s booty was from passengers and train personnel. (He did not take any goods or cash from the porters, though the conductor was not exempt from his criminal outburst.) Two bags full of cash, watches, jewelry including rings, and odd mementos later, Cousin Antonio Pride leapt from the train as it slowed at a turn onto a trestle over a river. Word came back years later that he had gone to Tampico, Mexico, converted his booty to cash, and opened a bar where he could thrash obdurate and noisy drunks with impunity. It was said that he had taken a young Indian girl of passable looks as his illegal wife. Exactly twenty years to the day he had walked out of Goldfarb’s Haberdashery in Steubenville, Ohio, he emptied his cash register and the safe in his office and, at the age of fifty-nine, leaving behind a second wife and two dark children, headed farther south carrying with him a book called Basic Portuguese according to the dry goods salesman who sat next to him on the train and drummed up a conversation. The salesman later related the conversation to James Earl Pride, Antonio’s second son from Steubenville who had set out in search of his father with the intent of making him pay for his desertion. James Earl, who was twenty-five at the time, passed the information on to his mother and brother who still resided in Steubenville. He had learned of his father’s departure from Tampico from the Indian wife his father had abandoned. James Earl took pity on the woman and her two sons, gave up his search, and returned to Tampico where he married her legally, took over the bar, and lived comfortably until the age of seventy-nine when he was shot by a jealous husband with whose wife he was caught in a situation. The husband was a member of the constabulary.
The town gave him a good mourning in Spanish. Upon his death, a novel was discovered in James Earl’s hand concerning the bloody bandit life of Al Jennings of Oklahoma who James Earl claimed to have known. The book was sold to and published in both Mexico and the United States to poor reviews and even poorer sales. Antonio was never heard from again. These events, however, suggest that there is in the blood of our family a drive toward abandonment,