Scale

Flash Fiction

Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

Sootch Kramer was giving Rick Arroyo CPR like he was in a fucking CPR contest.

I saw Rick Arroyo fix a picture frame once.

Grabbed it from Thatchy, said he’d run next door. Next door was a row of brick buildings with a nail salon and steel pull down doors over what might have been three other businesses, once, all unmarked, all seemingly vacant.

On the east side of the building was a turtle holding an Uzi. Commission quality, but guerilla, rogue, feral, like the neighborhood.

The Crossbar was a buzz-in bar, once owned by Stan Owsley, who played goalie for the Wings a few seasons before I was born.

Thatchy’s dad bought it off him, Thatchy kept it going.

Rick Arroyo was an Oakland A’s fan.

Passionate for a quiet guy, weird in an endearing way.

We gave him shit, you know, because we were all Tiger fans, except for Railroad Mike, who grew up in Leamington and liked the Blue Jays.

Trauma 7 transported Rick, but Sootch gave me the look.

He’d have a headstone next, not a heartbeat.

The first old white lady, I swear I thought it must be Rick’s sister.

Then another old white lady, walked right up to Capt. Szymanski and started pointing like she was giving orders.

I never made it inside the buildings. Ladder 53 contained it, Engine Company 14, we came to make sure The Crossbar didn’t go up.

The street started filling up. It was almost 23:00, and women were exiting cars on Warren Avenue like there was a ribbon cutting for a new library.

Szymanski radioed and the Inspector walked up. Cullen. Cops started herding the women across the street. Apparently the women wanted to enter the building, see if anything was salvageable.

Tears, man, and shock. I’ve seen it before, of course I’ve seen it. But I never really saw Rick talk to a woman who wasn’t a bartender or on the pool league.

Rick Arroyo, in that little unmarked building in a neighborhood the Chamber of Commerce didn’t add to their website, made doll houses. Collectable and custom dollhouses. Apparently in doll house world, Rick Arroyo was Mick Jagger.

He fixed that picture frame for Thatchy. Came back in the bar, the frame perfectly squared and the faded black surrounding a picture of Terry Sawchuk repainted and glossy. Don’t know why I remember that.

I didn’t go to Rick’s funeral, I was at the firehouse. The guys collected a hundred bucks to send to the dog rescue mentioned in the obituary.

After the fire the nail salon expanded.

I saw them carrying stuff out of Rick’s place that we didn’t know shit about.

“He just told me he was a carpenter,” Thatchy said. “Nothing else. Didn’t sound that interesting, so I never really asked.”

I finished my beer and walked out to the parking lot. The dumpster was overflowing with charred wood, waterlogged courtesy of Ladder 53.

A piece of white fluttered from one of the hunks of wood, like a surrender flag. I walked closer to look at the remnants of a man’s life.

The white paper was a piece of dollhouse design. Ripped, smoke and water damaged, but almost all there.

I freed it from the twisted slivers of wood.

Lots of down time at the firehouse.

I might not be any good at it. But that’s not gonna stop me.

***

I might start another streak. Who knows?

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