The Microcosm Brewery, Incorporated
Two Friends: Consecutive Substack Story 1044
The cement barricade remained from a municipal project that was strangled in litigation and forgotten, except by some activists who still wore oversized buttons decrying the abandonment.
Somehow Owen Caster knew the buttons were about the project but didn’t know exactly what they said.
He shifted his weight on the barricade, almost kicking Lewis Torley in the ancient basketball shoes that had allegedly once been autographed by Rick Mahorn and the guy who provided the voice of Elmo.
A woman walked by wearing a knit beret.
If a woman with a beret wore a button the circumference of a softball, it was about the Dennehy project.
Owen wasn’t sure who Dennehy was.
A salon was being built in the vacant dentist’s office that Pork Luffman used to sell LSD out of.
“Remember when this neighborhood was rough?” Owen said, with a disgusted snarl that he used to discuss politics, sports and his gastrointestinal difficulties.
Lewis Torley poured a sip of his forty ounce Crunkafied Malt Liquor into the bottle’s cap.
He swore he enjoyed it more drinking it that way.
Lewis drank the capful and poured himself another.
He drank that and said, calmly, eerily calmly “You do remember that my sister was murdered three weeks ago.”
Owen nodded quickly because that was easier than an apology, and said “I’m still pissed.”
Lewis stared at Owen.
“I’ll always be pissed, Lewbert, my compadrepatriot, partn…pal,” Owen said,starting to babble like he usually did after he buttchugged Fireball next to the dumpster behind the Filipino carryout joint that Owen couldn’t pronounce when he was sober.
“But what I’m saying is, where did all these guys come from?”
“What guys?” Lewis asked, truly curious.
“All these guys that look like Duck Dynasty, talk like Bernie Sanders and act like they’re gonna brew a butternut squash porter that’s so good it will eradicate racism forever?”
Lewis knew that Owen peaked in 11th Grade when he designed a fleet of paper airplanes made out of playing cards that he could launch simultaneously with a Pocket Fisherman.
He got a thousand dollar grant toward engineering school, but since his mom and his stepmom couldn’t afford the other $102,000, Owen went semi-pro in pinball and gave drunken speeches about stuff that he read up on in the waiting room at the Schweizer Plasma and Soft Tissue Donation Galleria.
Owen was wrong often, but he was entertainingly wrong. He was listenable, even though often he was full of more shit than an outhouse at a chili cook-off.
But this time Lewis knew Owen and his colon full of cinnamon liquor was correct.
Over the course of the last three years, Wertle Flats had gone from looking like the International GangBangers Convention to looking like a privilege typhoon had dropped a college town on it.
There was a vegan Halal crepe shop in the old Erdway Muffler Shop where Lewis got his first adult tooth pulled on a 38 dollar dare.
All the new white dudes had beards, and Carhartts you could eat off, and rode bicycles with seats sitting two feet below cumulus clouds.
Owen’s eyes started to look in three different directions at once, a destination highlighted on the map of things that happen when you stick liquor inside your butt.
“Who was Dennehy?” Owen asked.
Lewis emitted a tiny little belch, like a sparrow confessing a sin to a raven priest, and asked “The Dennehy Plan dude?”
“Yeah, thaddd guy, “ Owen slurred, drifting into a prone position on the concrete barricade, resembling an overturned fisherman Hummel made out of pudding.
“He was the city councilman who lost his gig in that massive cereal mascot deep fake porn scandal. Remember the headline? “Dennehy: Snap, Crackle, and Popped.”
“I doun memember,” Owen slurred.
“Yeah, he also falsified some documents to get some Federal money and they canceled the deal, so instead of getting a new sewage treatment plant, the world’s most luxurious Planned Parenthood and a Suboxone Spa, the land and the money all went to private developers.”
“You shood learna brew beer, Lewcifer,” Owen said. “Gedd a job.”
Lewis looked at his forty.
“Someone else already brews it for me, O. I think I’ll just sit here and drink it.”
***
“…vegan Halal crepe shop..”
An ex turned me on to a few things, and one was “I got cash” by Brooklyn Funk Essentials. This quote sounds like it would fit right in with the list of things that the “politically correct pals” would enjoy.
Nice story, Jimmy. I’m there amongst the rubbish and the squalor and the lost dreams.
“The more things change the more they stay the same”. That’s what came to mind after I finished reading this story. The neighbourhood has changed over time, but Owen and Lewis are the same.