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Stupid Silly Ideas by John J. Dillon As a kid I never cared about marketable
skills. Why would I? I was just a clueless youngster. But around when I turned nine my
dad started needling me about acquiring “marketable skills in life.” In fourth
grade I remember, “Do twice as much homework as you’re assigned. You need to
get ahead of the rest of the class, get good grades, start thinking about marketable skills
so you’ll get a good job. You don’t want to be a burden on anyone. Understand?”
I had only a dim idea of what he was talking about. But I’d
nod and say, “Yes, sir. I understand.” Dad was the type you never wanted to
argue with because over and above that he didn’t tolerate disagreement, he worked for the Silenza family.
Even at the tender age of nine, I knew from rumors at school that the Silenzas were a feared
presence in our town. So I walked on eggshells on top of whipped cream around him.
Mom was always on my side, my dear angel of support. “Just
be true to yourself, Tommy,” she’d say; “Follow your dreams and you’ll
succeed. Don’t worry, I’ll protect my little soldier.”
“I want to be a ballet dancer, Mom,” I’d
say.
“You can be anything you want if you work hard.”
She’d kiss the top of my head and hold me as if something deep down saddened her.
It didn’t take much to figure out the something was
Dad, with his harsh orders, burning eyes, and the gun I’d once seen him slip into
his overcoat on the way to work. And
who also thought ballet dancers were about as masculine as pink pony herders and organic
avocado whisperers.
“Get this into your head,” he told me. “The
world runs on skills and profit. Forget girly dancing. Think about accounting. The world
always needs someone who’s good at cooking the books.”
I had no idea what “accounting” was, let alone
why anyone would cook books. But I pretended to go along.
Luckily, Dad’s job with the Silenza family required
his traveling most of the time, so he was gone a lot while I was growing up, at first leaving
my upbringing completely to Mom. With her, things were wonderful. I’d tell her about all the famous ballet dancers
in history and she’d watch me perform, calling me her “little Baryshnikov”
when I’d dance the Nutcracker. She’d always reward me for my creativity by
baking me her triple chocolate chip cake, one of my best memories of her, ever.
When Dad came home we’d stop any talk of dancing, even
if he seemed sky-high happy as if he’d accomplished something great while he was
away.
When I once asked him what kind of job he did for Mr. Silenza,
he said in an unearthly low voice, “I work in the compliance department.”
I asked Mom what “compliance” meant
but despite our being alone together when Dad was away all she’d say was “Don’t
worry about grown-up things, Tommy,” and hold my hand.
One snowy day when I was twelve and Dad was traveling, I came
home from school and Mom had a little suitcase packed for me and a big one for her. “We’re
going on a trip, Tommy,” she said. “Far away where you’ll be very happy
and won’t have to worry about Dad anymore.”
“Won’t Dad be mad?” I said.
“Leave that to me. It was a mistake, Tommy. It’s
time we left. Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll be fine, just the two us. You’re
my brave dancer.” She smiled and squeezed my shoulder and all of a sudden I felt
better and excited to leave.
But before we could leave Dad came home early from
his trip and surprised us. He looked at us and the suitcases and his eyes became angry,
the veins in his forehead almost bursting. “What’s going on here, Patricia?”
he said.
Mom grabbed me and hugged, whispered, “Tommy, go to
your room and I’ll be up to get you in just a little while, okay? Don’t worry,
Mom’s here.”
I didn’t want to go but did it, reluctantly. Dad didn’t
say a thing, watched me with his look, waiting for me to leave.
In my room way upstairs I sat on my bed and listened. Mom
would be up soon and then things would be all right. I heard Mom’s calm voice far
away downstairs saying things I couldn’t understand. After a while I heard Dad yell
once, an ugly sound I couldn’t understand either. Then there were voices all jumbled
together. I was too scared to open my door. Then I heard the front door slam shut.
I left the bedroom and watched from the top of the stairs
for a long time. Finally Dad came back into the house with snow on his arms and hands and
made a phone call. Soon Mr. Silenza, who I remembered from the Christmas party, came through
our front door. I watched them talk in whispers and shake
hands. Then Mr. Silenza phoned somebody and in a while three policemen came through the
front door too. Everyone shook hands like friends and went back outside.
I hid in my room with my head under a pillow for what seemed
like hours. Finally Dad came up into the bedroom and told me that Mom had slipped on the
ice outside our house and hit her head hard on the sidewalk. She wouldn’t be
coming upstairs anymore.
***
After the funeral Dad never talked about Mom. I spent a year
in a cold cloud, missing her day and night.
I couldn’t look at Dad without being afraid. Had he
done something to her? I couldn’t decide. I tried to carry on.
In the following years one nanny after another
became my “Mom” for a while--Lola, Zuzana, Nini... None of them was anything like
my real Mom but Dad liked them all just fine. He continued to travel most of the time and
I continued to live in my bedroom with my secret dream of becoming a dancer. The few friends
I had always ended up moving to other towns.
Through high school I was a recluse and Dad’s orders
to become marketable and self-sufficient were stronger than ever. I ended up reading a
lot.
“I want to go to college,” I told him at the beginning
of my senior year. “I want to major in accounting.” I’d decided that
was the best way out.
“Good,” he said. “As long as you stick to
accounting, get marketable skills, learn about profits, I’ll even pay for your tuition.
I want to see you successful, maybe start your own business. And--”
“Not be a burden.” I’d been practicing the
words.
That was one of the only times I saw him smile. It always
bothered me to see his mouth crack open across his face. “You’re learning,”
he said.
My grades weren’t great but Dad said that Mr. Silenza
would “fix things” with a local pol and get me into nearby Riverbend State.
On the day he drove me to the dorm, he said, “Study
hard and don’t get sidetracked, understand? The keys to success are skills and profits.
I don’t want any son of mine wasting my money on junk courses—art, drama, dance.
Or girls, either. I can stop the tuition payments anytime I think you’re goofing
off. You’re here for one reason only, to slam those accounting books. Got it?”
“Yes, Dad, got it.”
I seldom saw him over the next four years. I even stayed in
the dorm during the summers and took extra classes to avoid going home. I studied hard,
did okay. In my sophomore year I showed him an outstanding accounting student certificate
I won for the highest grade on a mid-term. He was happy at that and left me alone, aware
I was doing what he wanted.
But I was doing more than just boring accounting. I was also
secretly monitoring a few dance courses. In fact I quietly played bit parts in student
dance shows, once in the Nutcracker. I felt electrified and wished Mom was alive.
In my senior year I needed an easy elective so I took an English
course that required only one simple term paper. By that time Riverbend was my home so
I decided to write a short local history of the town itself. I checked the college library
for starters, but there wasn’t much local history there--Riverbend was a tiny unimportant
town on the Mohawk River long past its manufacturing heyday. Eventually I found my way
to the local town library housed in a converted Victorian house about a mile from campus.
I introduced myself to an elderly librarian lady who brought
me to a back room with wooden tables and chairs next to shelves of very old books. “You’ll
find some interesting local history sources here that are available nowhere else,”
she said.
Sure enough, I found many dusty historical-society type books,
memoirs, monographs, and news journals from the decades before the Riverbend State campus
even existed. I learned that the town of Riverbend had been a lawless place: whore houses,
gambling parlors, opium dens, smuggling warehouses, all brought to life by the barge and
boat traffic up and down the Mohawk River during the Great Depression.
After years of rampant crime and political corruption, power
centers began to form around a few local gangs. There were turf battles, marauding highwaymen,
murders galore until one gang in particular began to brutally wipe out most of the rivals
and rose to the top of the heap about thirty years ago, a few years before I was born:
the Silenza family.
I dug up stories from smalltime newspapers that had come and
gone during that time. They were mostly dull farm reports and church news, as if the crime
of earlier years had disappeared. But that wasn’t true.
One newspaper, the Loud Hailer, came into being and the editor,
a man named Vander, managed to publish a few gutsy stories about the Silenza family and
their methods just below the surface. Like extortion. Bribes. Arson. Trafficking. And odd
fatal accidents.
The series ended abruptly with Vander’s obituary, written
by a Loud Hailer staffer.
Vander had fallen down his cellar stairs, smashing his head
against the concrete floor.
The Loud Hailer went silent for a week then came back with
a new publisher on the masthead: Mr. Silenza.
I ended up writing my paper on the local dairy industry.
***
Graduation day was in late May.
I couldn’t believe I’d made it, a degreed accountant
at last. It was an outdoor ceremony and Dad had told me he’d attend, a really
big deal for him since he’d always kept himself hidden from public events. But despite
that and all his needling of me over the years, he was still proud of me for obeying his
marketable skill and profit manifesto and wanted to attend my graduation in person.
He’d told me he’d be keeping a low profile in
the audience and since it was open seating he didn’t know exactly where he’d
be sitting. We arranged a little signal so we could spot each other.
Sitting onstage, holding my diploma, I listened to our college
president ramble on about choosing the correct lane in life. I looked out at the crowd
of hundreds of parents and family populating the big lawn on the sunny spring day. In the
mass of heads I eventually spotted a slightly raised hand waggling a red cap, with a twist
of the wrist, our signal. I responded with a tip of my own black cap.
Then the ceremony was over, cheers thundered, and the two
crowds merged into a huge mass of people. I made my way through to Dad to hug him, but
was repulsed by the touch of his meaty hands on the back of my head. I pushed away suddenly
and gave him a slap on the back. “Thanks, Dad, for everything,” I forced myself
to say.
We shook hands and made plans to meet next week for lunch
and then he faded back into the crowd just as I saw two familiar goonzillas maneuvering
toward us. I retreated and the crowd closed in and took all three out of sight.
Sad to say, that was the last time I saw Dad alive. Later
that day I learned he’d been killed in a hit and run car accident, no witnesses.
The sudden news was a shock but I recovered quickly that evening
after baking a delicious triple chocolate chip celebration cake using an old family recipe.
***
One thing I do regret is that Dad never knew how much I really
came to love accounting--the numbers, the debits and credits, the balance sheets, and especially
the profit margins. In fact I loved accounting so much I started my own successful accounting
business in Buffalo. Normally that would have been impossible for a new college grad. But
I had plenty of seed money after I’d fingered Dad to the rival Mangler gang
goonzillas, who were only too happy to finally eliminate the Silenza torpedo responsible
for damaging so much of their personnel and customers over the years. In fact, they’d
given me a bonus for such a smooth “month end close.”
So I had to admit the unthinkable, that Dad was right all
along: a marketable skill and a hefty profit margin were indeed the keys to success.
To hell with stupid silly ideas like dancing ballet for a
living.
Circle
Quirk
by
John J. Dillon
Loren steered the motorcycle off the interstate
onto the exit
ramp, headlight sweeping the dark, narrow road and trees ahead in silver gray. He braked down from seventy to forty as he
reached the end, then gunned past the stop sign and onto the country road. For fifteen minutes he soared along the familiar
route, hitting close to ninety, feeling the autumn wind on his face, the angular
hard shell helmet gripping his head, even the empty wallet in the back pocket
of his jeans. The wallet soon to
be filled
with cash.
Finally, he
spotted the billboard, "Crystal Lake Amusement Park--Come Scream With
Us!!". He banked off the highway
onto
the entrance road into the roundabout lined with the heavy red oaks so common
in upstate New York. Leaning left
into
the curve, he rode it around at high speed, then with dead perfect timing threw
his weight right and shot out onto the straight one-way that brought him up to
the park’s main gate. He skidded
to a
stop at the chain link fence and saw the shapes of the deserted midway in
shadows beyond the wire. He took
a long
look.
With his leather-gloved
finger he pressed the button on the speaker box. An electronic voice gargled: "That you,
Loren?"
"Right, Mr. Nock. Payday."
The gate shuddered
and ground open on squeaky wheels until Loren could slip through.
He thought about popping a celebration wheelie
straight down empty Crystal Lake Lane but decided he'd rather drink it all in
slowly. It was, after all, his last
visit till next season. He rolled
past the
dark, boarded-up food kiosks, shooting galleries, beanbag and ball throws, funhouse,
the Las Vegas Roulette Wheel, the Malavoom House of Horrors--all lined up like
the flimsy props of some exhausted stage play.
Next the scare rides slid into view, the Hammer, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Swinging
Axe, the Super Saucer, the Whipsaw, prime attractions during the summer for the
surrounding area's families, college kids, farmers.
Then the Sphere
of Fear loomed into view and Loren felt his stomach leap.
He stopped and with
a surge of pride and accomplishment, swung the headlight across the twenty-two-foot
high globe of steel bands bent and welded together to form a gigantic cage.
For sixteen
years, three shows a night, six nights a week from Memorial to Labor days plus
all the backbreaking practice sessions, Roarin' Loren had been Master of the
Sphere. Roarin' Loren, delivering
cardiac
arrest thrills to all as he swooped around in a precise fifty-four mph centrifugal
trajectory while three other drivers shrieked in and out of his orbit like a swarm
of synchronized chainsaws. At every
performance
he maneuvered through the buzzing machines, missing collisions by millimeters
and microseconds, dodged death and dismemberment at high velocity, upside down,
rightside up, sideways and all other angles, then ended his impossible acrobatics
with arms and helmet held triumphantly in the air to the cheers of the crowd. There was no one like him.
Roarin' Loren, stunt driver from heaven.
Now the
summer's revenue
was all in, and it was bonus day and the end of another year.
Rest and travel through the off season
beckoned, this time to exotic Uruguay and its rabid motorcycle culture, a place
where he’d undoubtedly be idolized as an American celebrity.
Foreign adventures, side business
opportunities, romance on the hot Atlantic beaches awaited. Then, next spring, he'd strike back to
Crystal Lake where practice for his seventeenth season would begin.
And next year, old man Nock had better finally
make him a stakeholder. Or else.
He tore himself from the Sphere and
headed to the one-story cinder
block admin building secluded at the rear of the park, down by the lakeshore. He pulled up to the steel door, cut the
engine, snapped the chrome kickstand open with his booted heel.
Under a dirty lightbulb he removed his helmet
and dismounted, taking in the night. Nock
had already clicked him through.
Inside the
hallway he marched under sputtering ceiling fluorescents to the back office.
Old Man Nock was sitting behind a desk
staring at his computer,
arms and shoulders thin and frail but eyes as intense as a foundation
specialist searching for cracks in the concrete.
"Evening,
Mr. Nock," Loren said.
Nock kept his attention on the screen. "Loren, my man," he said distantly. "Have a seat. Dog and beer?"
The offer irritated Loren, the way Nock
barely acknowledged his
number one performer. Loren itched
to
head south, where he'd be treated like the royalty he was. But for now, this last task remained. "A beer sounds stellar," he said, sitting,
helmet in lap, knowing it was smarter to indulge the owner, stay calm and
respectful.
Nock reached behind him into a fridge
jammed with eats, grabbed
a can, slid it across the desk. "Let's
talk, my friend."
Loren heard Nock's
voice coming out of his mouth and didn't like the sudden, serious direction. A talk? What the hell did that mean? This
meeting was supposed to be a handshake and
a trumpet blare, with significant remuneration.
Loren felt as if he were sailing around inside the Sphere, the edges of
his vision starting to redden as g-forces squeezed his head, face, lungs. With a silent effort he pushed back against
the advancing red, kept his wits. "Sure,
Mr. Nock," he said, snapping the tab.
"Anything you say."
Nock disengaged himself
from the monitor, turned, unblinking. "Loren,
there's no easy way to say this," he said, his voice loaded with fake
respect that Loren saw through. "We
have to part ways. I'm sorry."
The words failed
to register with Loren. Their general
meaning
seemed to make it through into his skull where it implanted itself like a painful
shard. But he wasn't exactly sure
what the
talking head in front of him had just said, as if the words were muffled and coming
from far away.
"Come again,
Mr. Nock?" Loren heard himself say.
"I know this
is a rotten news," Nock said, shaking his head. "But I have no choice. To
me you'll always be the one and only
Roarin' Loren, commander of the Sphere. But
I can't risk another year like this one, Loren. It's time to hang it up."
Loren was
confused. Hang what up? He took a sip of his beer and it tasted like
dry
ice. He stared for a minute, hearing
for
the first time an office radio playing some irritating, whiny song.
"What do you mean?" he managed to
say as the red ate its way inward from the edge of his vision.
"That last
crackup inside the Sphere a week ago. You
lost the pattern and threw everyone off.
The team went down, all three of them, left just you standing in front
of the crowd. A miracle no one was
seriously
hurt and the guys got up. It could
have
been much worse. And there was that
pileup
in practice last spring, and other signs, too.
We’re lucky no one’s raised a stink with the cops. I've managed to keep a lid on this, hoping
you’d pull out of it. But
Loren, my
friend, you've lost something. It
happens to everyone. It's time to
go out
a winner."
Loren felt the familiar
anger invading his shoulders, arms, and neck.
"What the hell are you accusing me of?
Those wrecks weren't my fault. The other guys screwed up.”
Nock stifled a nervous
laugh, shook his head and rubbed his hands across his face. "Loren, no one's screwed up but you. The team's rebelled, said they're scared of
getting into the Sphere with you. They
won't work with you next year. They're
justified, Loren. It's been sixteen
years. You've been around the Sphere
too
many times, taken too many spills. It's
gotten to you. There's no shame
in
it. Call it a career before it's
too
late."
"You're
firing me?"
"I'm sorry."
Loren tried to concentrate but his mind
was racing. Had the team really
spread all these lies? There’d
been hints, but he hadn’t wanted to
believe. Now he could see the
truth. "I know what you bloodsuckers
are trying to do."
"We're not
trying to 'do' anything except tell it to you straight. We're begging you, start a new life for
yourself. You're still a young man. You've got many years ahead of you. Find a girl.
Lose the..."
"The
what?"
Nock shrugged. "The dependencies. They're
going to end up killing you."
"You weasel,
Nock. You’re calling me an
addict?”
"You know
the truth. Let's just say you're
not the
stunt cyclist you once were. Loren,
get
help before it’s too late.”
Loren
got the picture loud and clear: fire
the
star so the cheap second-raters could take over. Loren, the perfect employee, had come here to
celebrate another successful season, have a few laughs, drinks, collect his
bonus, plan for next year. Instead,
he was
being betrayed and his character assassinated.
As if everyone else in the business, Nock included, didn't dose
themselves stupid whenever they wanted. Loren
felt a withering resentment against this man who'd taken the best he could give
and was now tossing him away like a gnawed wing.
"After all
these years you’re dumping me and saying it’s my fault.
You’re gonna burn in hell for this, Nock. Give me my bonus so I can get the hell out of
here.”
Nock used his
sleeve to wipe sweat off his forehead. He
gazed at Loren oddly, then reached into a drawer. An envelope appeared in his hand and landed on
the desktop. “I’m sorry
you feel that
way.”
Loren grabbed the
envelope and ripped it open. Inside
were
a few bills. He flipped through
them in
disbelief. "Is this a joke?"
he said, barely able to speak. "Five
hundred dollars?"
Nock took a nervous
swallow of beer. "Loren, believe
me, I'm not trying to cheat you. It
was
a bad year. The park had unexpected
expenses, the crowds were off. I'm
hurting. Everybody's taking a hit. Please try to understand."
Loren rose,
unable to restrain himself as he looked down at Nock. "Understand? I understand
you're a thieving liar. What the
hell am I supposed to do with five
hundred dollars?"
"It's the
best I can do this year."
"I should
have ten times this, twenty times, like last year." Loren gripped his helmet tight and shook it
at Nock. "I bring in thousands of
people. Everyone loves me. I'm the star." Shaking, he stepped closer and jabbed his
finger at Nock. “You’re
stealing my
money,” he said in a tone filled with threat.
Alarm flashed across
the old man's face. "Please, you're
a son to me. I want to see you get
healthy. But back off, okay?" As he talked, Nock slid open a drawer and the
next thing Loren knew, a revolver was on the desk. Nock stared, and with measured words said,
"I don't want any trouble, Loren. Just
take the money and go."
The sudden
presence of the gun triggered a burst of hatred toward this backstabbing thief
who now dared to threaten him on top of everything else. He leaped onto the desk and
round-housed his helmet into Nock's head, snapping it
sideways, grabbed
with his free hand for the gun but missed as Nock beat him to it. Nock struggled to sit up straight, fumbled the
weapon, met with another blow that knocked him half over into a defensive huddled
position and sent the gun flying.
Loren lost count
of how many times he swung the helmet.
When he finally stopped, he was breathing hard, looking down at a
motionless Nock and what had been his face.
He slid off the
desk, the cratered helmet smeared red in his hand. Gradually his head stopped pounding and he
was able to think. Idiot Nock, pulling
a
gun. He'd left Loren no choice but
to
defend himself. If Loren hadn't
acted, he'd
be dead. It had been clear self-defense. Loren or Nock.
Loren’s mind
spun. Self defense, yes, but the
cops might
not see it that way. Over the years
he’d
seen how those arrogant bastards worked, always looking for a way to twist the
situation against you just for the sport of it.
He had to keep himself out of this mess.
Playing the good citizen, turning himself in would be suicide. He needed to get out, leave this losing hand behind.
From his jacket came
mirrored sunglasses which he held to Nock's crushed mouth. No breath.
He searched through the desk drawers, found more than a dozen envelopes
of cash amounting to several thousand dollars.
His well-deserved bonus fit neatly into his pockets. The hell with the other lying losers. And the cops would love the robbery gone
wrong angle.
He
located
an ancient security camera hard drive system in a cupboard and spent ten
minutes with a found hammer converting the delicate hardware into a smoking heap
of scrap metal.
Ignoring the revolver on the floor,
he left the building carrying
his helmet, careful it didn't touch his clothes.
Outside in the
night, he walked around back, down to the lakeshore where he washed his gloves and
helmet. He'd have no trouble later
tonight digging anonymous graves in the forest miles from here for the helmet
and clothes.
Returning to his
cycle he strapped the helmet onto a rack and climbed on, fired up the engine and
drove, cool and calm now, toward the park's entrance. Uruguay.
In a week he'd be thousands of miles away with loaded pockets. A new identity would come shortly after.
As he passed the
Sphere of Fear he stopped, turned his headlight onto the enormous metal globe,
bringing it out of the shadows. Struts
and
girders hummed faintly in the night's breeze.
Calling?
He looked up at
the structure and felt exhilarated, as he always did when he stood before it. The plan would work.
He had money, maybe not as much as he'd hoped
for, but enough. Soon he'd be gone
from
the face of the earth like most seasonal workers. He'd stay away and start over, lose himself
in another culture teeming with people. Good
bye, Nock. Too bad you asked for
it.
But it was difficult
to break himself away from the magnetic attraction of the Sphere.
What was another minute or two?
He would probably never see it again.
The Sphere of Fear, the role it had played in
his life, demanded fealty.
In fact, he felt
he even had the time to open its gate and drive up inside the airy, cathedral-like
interior and pay regards to something that had given him so much.
He
could rev his engine up to speed and take flight for three or four loop the loops,
a fitting farewell. And with no
amateur
drivers to contend with, the effort would be minimal and danger-free, just his speeding
around in energizing, comforting circles alone, a final winning set that would
last him for the rest of his life. He
crept
forward, imagining the crowd, the engines, the noise. Roarin' Loren and the Sphere of Fear. One last performance.
But no, it would
be insane and he forced an end to the ridiculous fantasy. Time was running out; he'd been given the
gift of a safe escape and couldn't squander it.
He didn't have a minute to spare.
He had to hit the road.
He ripped himself
from the Sphere’s pull and headed for the main gate and out of the park for good.
#
Later, when the police
were trying to determine why a fleeing murderer would sabotage his own escape
by zooming around the park’s entrance roundabout hundreds of times, judging from
all the tire marks, until he'd skidded off the road to slam into the red oaks, killing
himself in a twisted heap of metal and wood, all they could do was shake their
heads, point at their temples, and twirl their index fingers.
In circles.
END
John
J. Dillon’s worked for many years in the computer industry, and his favorite job
was on an atom smasher project. During that time, he’s published non-fiction
and fiction—book reviews, mystery/crime short stories, edited textbooks on
the reign of Joseph Stalin, and co-authored a spy novel from Cliffhanger
Press. He finds Italian cooking worth robbing gas stations
for. So his favorite party topics are cybersecurity, crimewaves and
despots, and meatballs.
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