The wagon was starting to look like a…one of them Italian romantic boats, the ones the dudes pushed with a pole.
The water was that deep. Wasn’t a body of water within a couple miles, so some of it had to be sewage.
Fuck.
Mairbom busted his damn prosthetic leg, and Wendell Thomas was using the wagon kinda like a half wheelchair contraption.
Mairbom said he would pay for the leg after he got done being mad that Wendell had taken it off and left it in the garage while he fixed the chain on Mairbom’s kid’s bicycle.
Wendell used his right leg like… like a…gondola, yeah man, gondola, that’s what them boats are…gondola pole…
The rain was silly ridiculous now.
Mairbom couldn’t afford to pay for the damn leg.
Wendell would go to the VA, tell ‘em what happened.
He wiped rainwater from his face with a soaked sleeve.
The wind had shifted, rain was straight in his face now.
There was an awning at the Cadieux Cafe.Â
He’d get under there for a minute, about a block down Cadieux Road.
He pushed the little red wagon, stump hurt like Christmas tree needles coming alive and crawling up it.
The water was seriously sloshing against the bottom of the wagon. Least Mairbom’s kid’s wagon was already rusted. Thing was so old it mighta belonged to Mairbom when he was a kid.
It was about to be a boat, for real, if the rain kept coming.
The small bag of weed was in Wendell’s pocket, a gift for Dierdre, if the sandwich bag hadn’t gotten a hole in it. His pants were soaked through.
If the weed did get soaked, he could show it to her.Â
Thought that counts, right? Can’t get high off a thought though…
Now his right knee was aching too, normal, natural aches, but still…
He looked at the Cafe awning.
‘Bout half a block.
Corners of the building and all over the lone working streetlight were fish flies.
Wendell was pretty sure the water didn’t kill ‘em.
Nasty ass things.
Swarms of ‘em.
They weren’t flitting and flying now though. Just stuck to poles and buildings, in the pouring down rain.
Least I’m making progress.
A car came down Cadieux making big roostertails in the water. The kinda water that made your brakes stop working. Almost deep enough it could flood your engine.
The street was darker than normal
The floodlights from the Cadieux weren’t on.
The damn bar was closed.
It was Monday.
Any day but a Monday he could go in and use the pay phone, tell Dierdre he was on his way, maybe ask her to come get him. Smell her perfume before she smelled like weed.
Not today.
Snyder, his old 82nd buddy, got a job building towers. Said one day everybody in America would have a mobile phone that fit right in their pocket.
One of them would come in handy right now.
A second car came down the street, faster than the first.
Wendell waved his arms in an X fashion above his head.
Slow down, dawg. There’s big water over the road.
Guy hit the wave that had closed behind the first car like Moses had given up.
It made a splash, but more solid than a splash.
Wendell guessed the car’s grill got cracked, shook his head, wiped water from his face with his sleeve.
The wave from the wake of the second car headed right at Wendell.
Somewhere in his head, he was fifteen again, meeting Deirdre for the first time at Finney High School. He had hops. Could almost dunk.
When the wave came, he tried to jump it, one legged, keep his crotch and the weed dry.
Lost his balance, tried to hang onto the wagon handle and that tipped too.
His ass hit water then pavement.
Flat on his ass the water was chest high.
The weed was soaked for sure.
He righted the wagon and lay on top of it like a bodyboard, pushing with his hands like dog paddles, except touching the ground.
Took him a few minutes, but he made it under the small awning.
The water up by the buildings was only a few inches deep. Little islands of dead fish flies floated near his ankle.
This was nothing like Venice.Â
It wasn’t a gondola.
It was a rusty wagon.
Wasn’t anything romantic about it.
By the time he made it to Deirdre’s at Mack and Grayton, her husband would get home, and wonder why she was talking to a drenched cripple with a wet bag of weed.
***
There’s a musical Easter Egg in here.
Life hits everyone differently.
Definitely a Wow story.
Wendell loves to help others, but seems to have only Deirdre to help him.
Great writing to show a time in Wendell's life.
Wendell must’ve loved Deirdre very much. Katrina was a lot to battle through for any other reason. Hits home because of a detail here I won’t go into. But the fatalism is a little too much for this fatalist. Great story, inner voice, J. The 82nd lost too many, wasted.