You don’t need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows.
Blancheflower piled his computer, camera satchel (it had black lining to obviate film exposure, in its very specific way, NOT a purse), & various restaurant effluvia into his passenger seat, smoking a cigarette & thinking of the aggressive nature of the local police force.
On Saturday, The Fisherman had been picked up on his bicycle for circling back towards the Texaco. Lady Kim, his saucier, was still in jail. And yet, here sat CS BlancheFlower, in his tin can, finishing his Thanksgiving rounds with ample thanks, glory he did not deserve, but accepted. The celebration would begin with cigarette. It would refine his thoughts on a week that seemed impossible.
The Blue Water Grill was beginning to foment in ways in which BlancheFlower himself, a quixotic optimist, could have never conceived. The potential existed before he signed the note to buy a run-down cafe at continent’s end, with its nasty owner/chef & perfunctory failure. Crusty Pooper was rotten, but boy could she turn a burger. And now, her burger was glowing like Gatsby’s light. As he drove through the single red-light in Paradise Beach, BlancheFlower’s heart stirred. He wiped the ashes off his dashboard.
As his gas-sipping Honda headed up Blue Water Highway, back to safety, he could feel the frozen air across his face. The wind intensified, & his mind swirled in glee, trying to interpret the meaning of a Thanksgiving filled with Summer. How could he not have seen it coming? Hundreds had lined up for pizza & burgers. Most of them arrived with smiles. Aside from a few burned burgers served up by The Fisherman, most customers had left smiling, as well. BlancheFlower looked toward the ocean as his Honda rattled through the State Park. It was night, and the Gulf projected a line of darkness more intense than shades of grey that settled on the dunes & flora in front of the water. The moon was a well-defined, thin crescent, laying in the air, open toward the stars. The dark water had portent, and then, BlancheFlower thought of Ethan Stein.
It had been a while since the name had popped into his head, an unwelcome thought. But there was Stein, his military hair cut, the angular over-accentuated nose, the sorrowful beads for eyes, a siamese cat, without the promise or the fur. Stein’s face hovered in BlancheFlower’s windshield, a shadow, pathetic in its self-importance.
He took the last puff of his cigarette, wizzing past the weeds & ocean, back towards East End warmth. “Serving up suffering since April Fool’s Day.” he said quietly to himself as the cold wind blew harder, his tin-can Honda shaking in its force. BlancheFlower flipped the filter of the cigarette, out of his driver’s window, into the wind. He watched in the rear view mirror as it hit his back window, cigarette embers sparking-off in winter’s dry air, landing in the median of Blue Water Highway, near blooming andropodon glomerulus & a patch of withering firewheel. And then, this song started playing.
