Well, here it is. I've been fussing over this story for awhile and I'm confident enough now to share it. The introduction of Tillie Wiegers and Mouse is a perfect way to kick off the month of April. This prose thing is neat and I'm still enjoying the challenge. No rest for the wicked though, there's another idea brewing so stay tuned.
In the meantime, enjoy Yee Haw.
Yee Haw
Most people will tell you that Tillie Wiegers is nutty as
a fruitcake but I admire her. Most would
try and impart on you the quirky and mannish looking fifty-something proprietor
of my favorite used bookstore is a bit hard to get along with but to me she’s a
searing spoke of sunlight. Between her wild wiry sunburnt hair, wide grey eyes,
burly broad shoulders usually covered with a flannel shirt over a vintage band
tee and a quaint conceit, she’s a fascinating caricature. Her glut of
eccentricities outlines her boisterous persona, her appearance is jarring but I
think she’s a marvel. I’ve never met
anyone quite like her.
The first time I wandered into Basket Case Books she was
engaged in a heated discussion with a fidgety middle-aged business man paying
for three used copies of Wuthering Heights.
Her husky speech thundered, “Say what you want grumpy puss but it makes a helluva lot more sense to
say teethpaste than it does toothpaste. No one just brushes one tooth or one tooth at
a time? Who in their right mind would
coin a phrase so stupid? You!? Did you
invent toothpaste? I’ll tan your
hide!”
Tillie punched her stubby fingers into the keys of the
register to make his change. He grabbed
his books tucked in a small brown paper bag emblazoned with the store’s stamp
on each side. Red-faced, he wheezed, shaking his head and called out as he escaped
her combative clutches, “You old hen, you are crazy as a bed bug! I don’t even know why I bother talking to
you. Last time I’m spending my money
here! LAST. TIME.”
Pleased with herself, she chomped down on the end of her
blue Bic pen already full of generous bite marks and hiked herself up on the
tall stool behind the counter and laughed, “You said that last time, acking
fusshole. See you next week! I’ll be here!
By then I’ll have your special order in.” She looked over at me as I thumbed through a well-worn
cookbook and pretended not to eavesdrop.
She wasn’t bothered because she said to me, “That old man right there is
what you call a prefab character.
Sparse, dull, not very exciting but he spends a five-ton truck-load of
money on my books and records, plus it’s easy to rile him up. He’s a trip.”
I didn’t open my mouth.
She scared the bejesus out of me.
I quaked in my boots for fear she’d start to pick on me but she broke
the ice easily and asked, “Must be your first time in, Mouse? Ain’t never seen
you in here before.”
I nodded like an idiot, timid as could be and forced a
smile but not a sound rose from my throat.
“Cat got your tongue or something? I ain’t gonna bite you.” A fat mackerel tabby cat with a peppered nose
jumped onto the counter settling lazily across the ledger. The animal startled me.
“Gr..great store you got here. I love books.” I stuttered.
I love books? I was an idiot.
“You need anything just give a holler.” She gave the tabby a meaty paw on the striped
noggin and continued, “Me and Cat Stevens will be re-organizing this here
shipment of vinyl that just came in.
Some real good finds in this pile.”
I would be affectionately known as Mouse from then on.
While paying for my very first purchase, a ragged and
well noted trade paperback copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, I inquired, “Where
did the name Basket Case Books come from?”
“A Warren Zevon song.
Know him? Or are you too young to
know the greatness that is Warren Zevon?”
I shook my head yes but I had no idea who he was. She popped my receipt inside the book, bagged
it and started to sing not to me but at me with her throaty tone and a
rascally glint in her eye,
“Dracula’s
Daughter, Calamity Jane
smoke on the water,
water on the brain
she’s pretty as a
picture and totally crazed
my baby is a Basket
Case.
If you hang around my joint long enough, you might hear
it.”
The store itself is a masterpiece but from the outside
you wouldn’t think so. It is tucked in
between Poky’s Laundromat and the Herb’s Deli in a lean strip mall on the local
stretch of highway that leads out of town.
It is literally a stone’s throw away from the sign that says Thank you for visiting Dillon Hill Pop. 1,181
Please Drive Carefully. It’s your
run of the mill exit greeting, faded and unattended. Basket Case Books looks grungy on approach
but when you open the front door, step inside and hear the tiny bell ring to announce
your entry, you have arrived at a voracious reader’s paradise. There are so many books the shelves sag and
beside them are books stacked to the ceiling.
They won’t support your weight should you get a sudden urge to climb and
retrieve an item from higher up. I tried
it. All I got was a bunged up hip and a
bruised ego. It’s a terrible mess but
it’s easy to navigate your way through the inventory. While dusting off dust jackets or record
sleeves the lack of windows, objectionably dim lighting and the sounds of Dylan,
Prine, Petty, Waits, Zevon and The Band on permanent rotation creates a
comfortable, easy atmosphere for browsing and getting lost in thought. Tillie Wiegers and her brass balls constructed
of varying degrees of wisdom and pigheadedness may stand guard but the guts of
the business she’s built is rooted in a pure unadulterated passion for the arts
and a haven for collectors.
At first, I would duck into Basket Case once a month,
that quickly turned into every few weeks.
Then I started going every other day after class until I was spending my
lunch hours with Tillie and sometimes skipping whole afternoon blocks just to
hang out. I felt like I was getting a far better education in the bookstore
than I was at college. We’d whittle the
time away talking about all the town gossip, Herb’s long string of mistresses
he keeps and then we’d talk about books and she would constantly try to broaden
my horizons with recommended reading lists that included Lester Bangs and
Adolus Huxley and sometimes she’d let me borrow records to listen to. “You need to get yourself away from all that
top 40 dung they play on the radio and listen to some real meaningful music. I’m
tellin’ you right now, the right soundtrack will change your life in ways you
wouldn’t even believe.”
Everything Tillie ate was from Herb’s next door at the
deli. Considering she lived above her
store in a small one bedroom apartment, if you could even call it that, was
more like a storage closet with a shower, there was no real reason for her to
stock a fridge when she spent the bulk of her time downstairs. We sat one afternoon, me picking at my usual
veggie wrap fretting over a school assignment while she bit into one of Herb’s
specialty sandwiches with an Italian flare, the Herbinator. Thick slices of
salami, capicola, mortadella and roasted ham with mozzarella cheese, roma
tomatoes, pickles, hot peppers, onions and in lieu of zesty Italian dressing,
it oozed with mustard and on direct contact with the deli delight, the sharp
yellow condiment dripped onto her t-shirt.
With a full mouth she spoke, “Never god damn well fails, can’t eat
nothin’ without getting it all over my sheep teets.” I laughed and she wiped mustard off of Levon
Helm’s face. “Small price to pay I guess
when you’re stuffing dry-cured pork neck down your gob. This stuff is dope. But you know what would
taste good with this here sandwich? Jack
Daniels right outta the bottle. Remind
me to refill the flask would ya?” She
took another bite, this time stray onions fell from the fold of her sandwich
onto the floor; Cat Stevens sauntered by to sniff them.
I was fretting over my writing assignment while we ate. I
was distracted while Tillie yammered on about the absurdity of them Twlight kids in a movie based on Kerouac’s best
work. I was lost in thought but she wasn’t
having any of it, “You ain’t listening to a blasted word I’m saying. Don’t even know why you bother eating lunch in
this here store, you’re always a million miles away.”
I snapped out of it, “I’m sorry, Tillie. I’m having trouble with this assignment for
school.”
“What the blazes are you working on so hard you’ve gone
deaf to ignore the likes of me?”
“Oh, just a character outline for my creative writing
class. Our professor feels we aren’t
creating characters that are vivid and interesting enough so we have been
giving the task of outlining and describing the main character of our current
work to flesh them out, to get to know them better. “
“I didn’t know you were taking a writing class. So, what’s this here character like? Test your outline on me, I’ll tell you the
truth, if it’s dung or not.” She stuffed
the last bite of her lunch in her mouth.
“It’s about a female writer in her 50s. I’m calling it Authoress, Catastrophe in a Teacup.
It’s … she’s … a dainty writer but something of an eccentric.”
“Yeah like me.”
She laughed harder than she needed to causing her to cough. “I’m right dainty.”
“And eccentric.” I
smiled looking up from my notebook.
“Go on then, read me what you got. I only have all bleedin’ day.”
I informed her, “It’s all point form so there’s no real
flow to it yet.”
Tillie sat back and threw her feet up on the counter and
crossed them. “Shoot.”
“Ok, so Estrella Banks, mid 50’s is a delicate writer
woman, radiant with eccentricities.”
“Which eccentricities?”
She asked while gathering the refuge from her lunch and tossing it in
the trash.
“Let me see, impish sense of humor, bridled with strong
moral obligations …” I trailed off.
Tillie leered at me, “Do you even know her? Strong moral obligations? Like what?”
“Like fidelity and ingenuity and hygiene.” I mourned that my statement might sound more
like a question to her.
Tillie nodded and closed her eyes as if to picture her in
her head, “Yeah, okay, go on.”
“Estrella is disinterested in the opinions and company of
others, preferring her fictional characters to regular people. She is highly intelligent with an intense curiosity
and is prone to asking inappropriate questions for shock value and to keep
people at bay. Um … she has unusual
eating habits …”
She peeked at me with one eye open, “What kind of unusual
eating habits?”
“Oh, like having to separate her foods on her plate so
they don’t touch, eating items in alphabetical order, those sorts of things.”
“Well that’s just messed up. How the hell does she eat salad or pizza?”
I shook my head and carried on, “She lives in a large
house that is sparsely decorated, hates clutter except for her bookshelves.”
She nodded, “I hear that.”
I ignored her and carried on, “She’s a brightly dressed
woman, lovely but kooky, demure but outspoken, contradiction of sorts. She also has a exultant preoccupation with collecting
pens, not biting them.” I teased, “Eccentrics
often do fixate on something like that.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were basing her on
me. Except you left out a penchant for midget
porn and late nights hitting the hookah.”
She cracked herself up.
“You’re gross.” I threw a piece of bunched up paper at
her playfully.
“That ain’t nothing, kiddo.” She caught the ball and flung it back narrowly
missing my left eye. We laughed.
“Anyway, my goal is to build a really strong character
that stands out. An eccentric woman
unlike anyone else, I want her story to be fascinating.”
“Yeah well, her story is only gonna be as interesting as
she wants it to be. You can’t fake her
story or make it up. She has to relay it
to you. If you force it, it’ll suck big
fat hairy donkey balls. You gotta trust
Estrella before she’ll reveal herself to you and even more-so she has to trust
you. Don’t make shit up or pretend she
is someone she isn’t or else she’ll piss all up in your Corn Flakes and eff up the
tale.”
I hated when Tillie was right. A few days later after working day and night
on the story, I left her a copy on top of the ledger for her to read as she
instructed me to do. She said she’d read
it and leave it for me in the store mailbox on the outside of the door so I
could take in her notes the next morning before class. She did and left a note attached to my
manuscript she had decorated quite lovingly with a bright red pen. The note read, Is that it!?!?! You can’t end it
there! You are an asshole. Write more.
Now. Peace – Tillie Wiegers.
The more time I spent at Basket Case the more I came to
know Tillie and the more she became curious about me. Like I said, at first it was all small talk and
chit chat, school work, town gossip, the customers and then she offered me a
part time job. I started working for her
so she could run errands without having to close up and sometimes with her on Sunday mornings. Naturally, things evolved on a personal
level.
“So Mouse, tell me more about Freckles, this red-headed
Ivy League boyfriend you got. If you
ask me, there’s nothing wrong with gingers, we are a spicy bunch. I mean I’m a little more on the carroty side
but it’s the same ball park. One good
thing about gingers, you never have to wonder whether or not the curtains match
the carpet. Nothing fake on a ginger.”
I wanted to die at her candor but I came to expect
nothing less. For a woman with sharp
mental vigor, she talked like a red neck trucker. I told her, “Benoit …”
“Benoit?! What the flame thrower?! What’s his last
name?” Tillie asked flabbergasted.
I hesitated, “Fitzwalter.”
“Lord dying Jesus, at least he gets points for having a minor
Shakespearian last name but that first one is a doozy. Ok sorry, continue. Tell me more about Ben Wah Balls.”
I started to feel nervous about the direction of our
conversation but continued, “We met at a concert.” I showed her a photo on my
phone taken of the two of us in our seats; an unfortunate self-portrait washed
with bright flash and closed eyes, terribly unflattering but too precious a
moment to delete.
Tillie leaned forward to study us. Engrossed in the story she asked, “What
concert? This is important to me for obvious
reasons.”
I regretted my admission, “John Mayer.”
Tillie winced and recoiled dramatically, “Mary, mother of
God, man! You just went down several
notches in my book. Remind me to fix you
another mix of real music later. Jumpin’ hairy Jesus. My heart can’t take that
kind of agony, it ain’t strong enough.”
She drew in a deep breath and quickly blew it out. Now, keep going. But keep in mind, my current state is really fuckin’ fragile.”
I took a deep breath and kept on, “His seat was next to
mine. We were both alone. It’s awkward to go to a concert alone. We were both so shy at first but then we
started flirting without words. It was
the sweetest thing.”
“Two losers stag at a douche nozzle’s concert, that’s the
sweeeetest thing I’ve ever
heard.” Tillie mocked me and rolled her
eyes.
“We slowly rose out of our seats when ‘Your Body Is A
Wonderland’ started and then turned into silly dancing machines during ‘Why
Georgia’. We were laughing and holding hands.
It was an instant connection. Maybe
even love at first sight.” As I said it
I knew it sounded naïve but I meant every single word.
“I think I’m gonna hurl. Don’t tell me, afterwards you
two shared an ice-cream float using the same gnarly straw and then you sucked
face at the front door until your creepy neighbor spied and you had to go
inside?”
It was now my turn to trip Tillie. I said pointedly, “Actually no, we went back
to his dorm room and had sex.”
Tillie’s eyes bulged and she half coughed, “You knocked
boots?! A John Mayer concert made you
that electric in the pants that you boffed a complete stranger? Maybe I should
start listening to him.”
“I didn’t even know his name at the time. It just happened that way. To be truthful, I had never done anything
like that before.”
She scoffed, maybe a little too much, “Hellllls belllllls, I believe that.”
“I was in the city visiting with my Dad and he was being
so difficult about me wanting to come back here to live with my Mom and go to
school. Things in my life had become so
maudlin and predictable. I just
outwardly rebelled. I felt sick and
excited all at the same time. It was a big deal for me. After the sex, we had breakfast together,
introduced ourselves and ever since we’ve been attached at the hip, he’s been
coming out here to see me some evenings and weekends when he’s free.”
“Attached at the stick and starfish you mean. When do I get to meet Ivy League anyway?”
I blushed, “You want to meet him?”
Tillie jeered, “Does Pinocchio have wooden balls? ‘Course I do.”
I bowed in agreement, “Then you will, next time he
visits.”
“Yee haw! Give me a heads up and I’ll bring an extra
stool down from upstairs he can sit his tight little academic buns on while I
grill him about his intentions.” She
winked but I think deep down she was being serious.
Tillie got called away to help a groovy hipster looking
for anything and everything she had on Allen Ginsberg. I watched her shuffle around the store with
him. The contrast amused me. A young boy waif in red skinny jeans and a
large checked scarf wrapped around his neck that fashionably accented his
leather jacket next to Tillie wearing her flannel shirt, rock t-shirt and
camouflage cargo shorts with heavy socks and sneakers so worn in the toes curl
up. She was animated; talking with her
hands, shaking her head, telling him God knows what. That is when it occurred to me, under all of
that gnarly attitude and eccentric behavior, she had a big heart and I wondered
how she had used it during the years before I knew her. No one goes through life unloved. I asked
when the customer paid for his books and left.
Perched on my stool re-loading the stapler I opened up a
dialogue I wasn’t sure would fly, “Now that I’ve gone on about Benoit it’s your
turn to tell me about yourself. Who did
you love?”
Tillie tousled her wild hair as a knee jerk reaction to
being put on the spot, avoided eye contact and habitually chewed on the pen
that was hanging out of her mouth, “Nothing to tell here, Mouse. Do I look like Danielle Steele to you?” She held her flannel shirt open fully
exposing her faded Eagles t-shirt.
“Surely you must love or have loved someone at some point
in time in your life.” I knew she was
holding back by her lack of eye contact so I braved it and pressed her. It’s true that there are questions to be
asked that you only wished you did when it’s too late and sometimes by the time
it’s too late you realize you have that many more. I had this burning desire to let Tillie know
someone wanted to know about her heart.
She sighed and reluctantly began, “Mousie, I grew up in
the north end of Dillon Hill on Heartbreak
Hill and it was just that for me, heartbreak. Not a lotta boys wanna hop your scotch, if
you know what I mean, when you’ve been beaten with the short end of the ugly
stick. I was always a bit of a loner, didn’t play sports, didn’t go to dances,
get invites to parties, I hung out in the library. Books were my friends.”
I felt so bad for asking, “There must have been someone?”
“Oh, there was
someone to be sure. Rob ‘The Grave
Digger’ Duggan. I met him at the bus
depot when I moved back here. All six
feet of him was slouched in one of them plastic chairs cleaning his fingernails
with an X-Acto knife. He wasn’t exactly
lean and he wasn’t really all that pretty.
Had this here scar on the side of his face stretched all the way down under
his earlobe and a head full of long black curly hair that went way down past
his nipples. So much hair I could hardly
see his eyes. At first I thought he was
one of them long haired metal heads from some washed up 80s hair band. The grungy leather jacket and dirty jeans
being my clue but turns out he was a former middle weight boxing champion.”
“You said was?
What happened? Did you two break up?” I
felt guilty.
She said flatly, “He croaked. Massive heart attack.”
Tears rose to my eyes at her blunt delivery, “How long
were you together?”
“I don’t know, what was it, five years and some I’d
say. He helped me get this here store
going. Two days after we opened, he
dropped dead, right over there in that there nook. Only seemed right to re-arrange my stock and
put all the sports related crap there. What
do you call it? A memorial kinda.” She
nodded to the sports section.
I bolted up off of my stool, “He died in here!?”
“He ain’t Casper or nothing, doesn’t spook the
store.” She barked.
I held onto my chest in disbelief, “Tillie, that’s so
terrible. And you loved him. He must have loved you too to help you with
all this.”
She pulled her wallet out of the back pocket of her cargo
shorts, flung it open and showed me their photo. There they were, Tillie and Rob standing side
by side. She stood awkwardly in his
embrace squinting from the sun, Rob’s long hair covered his eyes but he was all
smiles. “Love ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, kiddo. Love is a four letter word. It’s just an illusion and it’s fleeting. Ain’t meant to last.”
“I think it does last and I truly believe that anything
is possible.” I defended.
She quickly argued, “Yeah well anyone who believes
nothing is impossible ain’t tried
stapling pudding to a palm tree.”
“That is a terribly pessimistic take for someone so in
love with literature and music.” I pushed.
“Suit yourself to think that but in my sad case, books
and records never called me Quasimodo or a butch dyke. They were always right there when I needed
them and even when I didn’t need them.
It`s a certain loyalty you don`t get from flesh and blood, breathing,
shitting, low life beings. People suck.
Do you know why people read, Mouse?
Why they listen to music? It
ain’t for the sturdy stories or the sweet sounds, it’s for the company. Plain and simple. You think people read on a crowded bus for
fun? No, they read because even though
they are in the middle of strangers’ stench, around people, they need something
to keep them company, easiest place to be lonely is in a crowd. Same with headphones, it’s to tune out all
the crap and to be kept company by something soothing, by someone who gets them and will always deliver the
goods. That’s how the lonely live and we are far better off than people trapped
in loveless relationships based on unrealistic expectations.”
“I understand what you’re saying but I beg to differ, you
had Rob. That was something real, he got
you. He understood who you were and loved you for it.”
Tillie scanned the room, “Yeah, and where is he now? Gone
and dug his own grave because he couldn’t keep off the hooch and the bacon. I
loved him enough and Lord knows he loved me.
I’m god damn grateful for it all too to know I at least deserved love
like everyone else.”
“Well of course you do. Everyone does. You are too precious in your self-deprecating
fog. You do know that you are lovely,
right?”
She cut her eyes at me and guffawed, “You do know I’m not
a lesbian, right?”
I jabbed her in the arm, “You are impossible!”
“Listen, people who look like me would argue you that it
ain’t all peaches and cream and happily ever afters. I wouldn’t have known it without him. My father didn’t care much for me and my Ma
died soon as she squeezed me out. Daddy
didn’t want a daughter so he raised me like a boy. That’s what I look like anyhow so it stuck I
guess. Didn’t take me long to high tail
it off the old proverbial farm. Went to
live with my Ma’s sister, she was a dancer
so I was on my own a good chunk. When
she was off working I’d be home
listening to her records and reading her books.
I basically graduated from the school library to her flat to this here
shop. All the stuff in between was just
survival. Couldn’t stand being anywhere else.
Except for the short period I quit my job washing dishes in a greasy
spoon and went on tour with The Boss. I
sold t-shirts.”
“The Boss? As in …”
She pointed to the photo of herself behind the cash of her
and Bruce. The wall behind the register
was amazing, littered with Polaroid shots of rock-stars and authors who stopped
by the store coupled with old concert tickets and literary souvenirs. “Bruce
god damn Springsteen. Yep. Best few months of my life, except for the
time I had with Rob bumpin’ uglies like dogs in heat and spending my days here
in the store.”
“I do suppose we can’t really call you a romantic.” I popped a piece of gum in my mouth and
offered one to Tillie.
She declined and said, “No, Rose-Colored Glasses, you
could not.”
“I just have so many hopes and dreams. Own my own business someday, to be married
and live in a big house with a wrap-around porch and have tons of babies. That’s all based in love and desire.”
“Those things float your boat, Mousie. They don’t float everyone’s. You’re dreaming of Prince Charming and a
white picket fence. I wanted to be a diamond thief. The best laid plans, strategically designed,
well-prepared heists filled my days but then I’m fish out of water. Most ladies dream of wearing diamonds on
their wedding finger and around their dainty little necks, me, I long to steal
‘em and sell ‘em for a hefty payday.”
She changed her mind about the gum, stole a piece from my package and
popped it into her mouth.
“You know what? In
so many ways, you remind me of Estrella, the writer in my story.”
“I know who she is dumb ass, I read the damn thing. Maybe she reminds you a little bit of me. I’m
sure people would call me an eccentric. I’ve been called lots of things to be
sure but one of the nicer things would be an eccentric.”
“I gather most would think you unique. But you’re wonderful just as you are. That’s what makes you so likeable.”
“Aw shucks, Mouse. Likeable? You’re too much.”
“You are always the source of such interesting stories,
Tillie Wiegers. You’ve had such an
interesting life.”
“Have I?” She
grinned mischievously, “Or do I just know how to spin a good one? Had myself
lots of time to practice.”
***
Happy rainy Easter Monday to those of you who are at home snuggled in while I remain at my work station until quitting time.
In propinquity,
Nic
