Last Letters to the Chief

Craig M. Workman

Martin swept the front stoop of Burke Brothers Tobacco each morning, hoping his son would come out of the back room and give him a hand rolling out The Chief and getting things underway. He scrubbed the broom at the slab of one-hundred twenty-two year-old concrete and brought his head up now and again, keeping a roving eye for the muggers, conmen, Jehovah‟s Witnesses, stock-stealers, all-night tweakers and other trustees of modern chemistry, and he thought about his boy and the business. Down the street and on either side of the tobacconist, fancy corporate storefronts had already been opened by gym-toned, upper-middle-class thirty-somethings with khakis and smart
phones. There was a Check Cash Now!, a Computer-Low (the newly-conceived cash cow of the inner-city cut-rate computer world), a few drugstores, and of course, the last one Martin would be inclined to call a business, Borelli‟s. Not a business by modern standards at any rate, and that was the best of compliments he could think of.
Olivia poked her face up to the window from the darkness of the inner building. Her eyes glowed as she glanced between the cracked and missing white painted O,R, the E and the only two Ls on the glass so that it appeared Borelli‟s was called Buiuii‟s, if you didn‟t know the old neighborhood.
Any minute now, Martin thought. Here she comes.
He heard a few clicks and groans from ancient locks, and she appeared with a paint-flaked broom even older than Martin‟s. She banged the broom stick against the wall of her restaurant and went to work cleaning her family real estate. Her dark, straight hair waggled back-and-forth with each stroke of her work. Martin lifted the broom in his usual salute.
“Morning,” he said. “Snow coming today, isn‟t it?” Though it was never fully light when he saw her this time of day, he always made an effort to smile. He practiced it off-and-on during the few hours before he reached the front of the shop every morning. Hello, Olivia. Good morning Olivia. Good MOR-ning, Olivia. Hey there, Liv. No. Hell, No. Morning.
Morning. That’s it. One trick pony, Marty. “It‟s getting a bit cold for this early in the fall. Whaddya think?” He smiled and twirled the broom handle in his best impression of Dick Vandyke, and the handle clicked against his temple with a hollow, old sound. Martin stabbed his hand at the falling tool, and he easily missed it by several feet. He bent over to retrieve it, and was surprised to hear his neighbor chuckling. The sound echoed between the rows of buildings, and he suddenly wanted his son to roll The Chief out more than ever, to show up asking his old man what college he should go to, what the capital of New Zealand was, what the humidifier on the humidor should be set at, anything but to be here in this instant. He wasn‟t supposed to be acting this way. He wasn‟t supposed to be…hitting on this beautiful woman. If his dad…never mind his dad. If his grandfather had been alive to see this, it would‟ve been all over. Besides, Martin had closed that door for himself. His son was the important thing now. Embarrassing, my man, Martin thought. Not too smooth. Then again, Granddad and Pop were cancer and cancer and the robustos keep smoking themselves, so who the fuck cares anyway?
“Morning to you, as always,” Olivia said. “How‟s everything?” From his storefront, he could see her leaning against her broomstick, fingers laced together over the pole. He couldn‟t exactly see her face, but he wished he could.
Man alive, Martin thought. You’re a piece of shit, man.
“Me? Oh yeah. Just getting stuff going today, you know. How‟s business?”
“Not so great,” Olivia answered. “Bigby‟s? Down the street? They‟re killing us. Dad‟s pretty much ready to take the deal and get out while there‟s a point.”
Martin clinched his jaw, and checked the top of his shoes for scratches. He never knew what to say about the issue. He stood in the growing sunrise watching her lovely dark-haired shape, hoping—as he had for years—for a look, or a laugh, or an undying profession of love for a fellow traveler. Instead, he heard only the wind taking issue with the mailbox flaps on the block, an errant cricket in the drainpipe by the door, and his heart pulsing in his skull. He looked back to the head of the broom spotted a crinkled fifty-dollar bill hanging amidst the straw bristles. Martin shot a glance at Olivia and then clapped his foot over the bottom of the head, hoping like hell she hadn‟t seen his cheapskate move in the growing light.
“Never mind,” she called. “How‟s business then? We haven‟t had a chat in a few days.”
“Keeping really busy. Really busy, you know,” Martin said. Filling all sorts of orders, all sorts. Thinking of setting up an online website-thing.” He felt glad she hadn‟t kept pressing
the issues of her son and the law or his accounts. “Probably better go check on the heir, then.”
Martin reached inside the front door and switched on the lights, and Olivia became a beautiful blur in the dawn as his lights joined the space between them. He saw his shadow leaning across the street, covering her in a skinny cast-off of his own body.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said.
Martin stepped inside the building and returned slowly with The Chief. He wheeled the cigar-store Indian onto the stoop, grabbing at the straps that held it solid to the rolling base.
By this time, Olivia had walked into the street separating the two businesses. By the sunlight that had mostly taken over the boulevard, it appeared she looked concerned.
“Martin, you ready for Plato to come home?”
Martin raised his broom and grabbed the cash as deftly as he could manage, and then reached into his front pocket, producing a blue letter and envelope.
“Yep,” he answered. “He send you a picture again, or just a letter this time?”
Olivia reached into her back pocket and retrieved her own crumpled envelope and paper, the same pale blue prison-issue stationery set they had each received in the mail once a year for the past nine.
“Oh a pic, too. Plato‟s getting pretty muscular, don‟t you think? I sent him a few DVDs last year, and then wondered how he was going to watch them. Well, other than actually watching the piece of plastic at close range. Those things are getting too pricy, you know? I always wonder how in the world he gets a Polaroid camera in prison. Guess the movies don‟t tell you everything you need to know about the big house. You‟re still meeting him when he gets here?”
“Yeah,” Martin said. “2:15 at the Greyhound Station. It‟s going to be great.”
“I‟m excited. Are you?”
He waved slightly and saluted her before turning his back to his neighbor across the street, managing something passing for a smile (not the one he practiced; he was far too surprised to make this one happen), and mentioned something about tomorrow morning. Martin pulled deeper into The Chief‟s restraints and edged him up against the storefront so that he stood squarely against the foundation, guarding against attack from some unseen foe.
The Chief had guarded the store since roughly the beginning of what Martin‟s grandfather had called The War; a thing which—since even Martin‟s grandfather was too young to have remembered—must have been World War I. According to Grandpa Leo, this wooden fellow had been here because no one—or next to
no one—could read back then. But no matter what in the world had been going on at the time, and no matter if a soul had lived there all their lives, or had just come off the boat from Liverpool, Dublin, or Morocco in decades past, he would‟ve seen that „injun‟ and run inside to get himself a smoke. And back then, he would‟ve come in to actually enjoy what the storefront still advertised. The front wall proudly boasted Tobacco, Gifts and Games, Steamship Vouchers, and We Sell Stamps! in faded gold-colored, cut-out walnut lettering. When Martin was young enough to know he still couldn‟t smoke a cigar much more than a puff or two without getting slapped in the mouth, he would sit outside on the boulevard, watching The Chief, who wasn‟t even shiny or new looking back then. But the longer Martin thought about it these days, the more he realized things could be—and usually were—shinier if you thought about how they used to be, not how they were.
Martin and Olivia and the fat, slow-minded Italian kid they called Plato used to shoot dice against the wooden base of the Indian. They played while they drank Jazz! Cola and talked about travelling the world in a hot-air balloon, a train, on horseback, and on motorcycles. They sat on the sidewalk and dreamed big dreams and talked about shiny things to the immobile fellow standing before them. He would crouch there with Plato and Olivia and fling those dice, hoping like hell his pennies
would multiply, his father wouldn‟t come out and see the game going on, and he knew everything would work out and his money would keep rolling and growing because The Chief was watching over them. With arms folded, his oversized wooden war-bonnet casting a picket-fence shadow over them most of the afternoon, the small splits in his oak eyes and body taking in all those things Martin didn‟t rightly wish to get him in trouble. He didn‟t know the history of The Chief or of any cigar – store Indians then. He didn‟t notice until years later that there never used to be a reason to pull The Chief inside after closing time. And those years later, he realized how clean and untouched The Chief used to be. Three of the wooden feathers that comprised his war-bonnet hadn‟t yet been snapped off by a seven-foot crack head that had tried to cart him off before realizing The Chief weighed nearly four-hundred pounds. The Chief never used to have fuck you Cavuto carved across his waistline in a hurried, elementary hand. Martin remembered the name Cavuto; a produce-line driver by the same name had run over an old man that lived up the street in the old neighborhood. Probably just a coincidence. Then again, the things he remembered seemed to stay there for a reason and Martin always liked to think he was being made to remember them for a good one.
Olivia waved and made for the door.
“All you men come by when he‟s off the bus. We‟ll celebrate. Like the Three Musketeers again, except four. We‟ll see you later, then?”
Martin nodded and waved, then went inside. Martin clicked the security switch, and the entry-buzzer test fired with a shrill, quick sound.
The inside of Burke Brothers Tobacco looked to be taken from a history book, or perhaps from an old movie about youngsters so many decades ago making their riches by beginning in the corner shop. Though it was in the middle of the block, this was that corner shop. Faded green floor tiles ran the length of the narrow building, contrasting with the old mahogany, teak, and walnut of the countertops, the pillars, the chairs, and the shelves of cigar boxes behind the register. And brass. Everything that wasn‟t tobacco, wood or tile was brass. Martin had used brass cleaner over and over, as had his forbears, yet he just couldn‟t seem to get them to shine like he had remembered them when he was young. One night he had stayed there until four o‟clock in the morning scrubbing away at the brass shin-rail beneath the old register, and it didn‟t seem to do any good. The stuff was just old. In the boxes on the shelves were cigars of every variety, cased in humidors. It‟s just that there weren‟t as many as a customer would think upon entering the store. Martin had long ago become what Olivia had called a subsistence business owner; the money wasn‟t tight, it simply wasn‟t there. Why come in for a Rocky Patel Vintage 92 Robusto for thirteen dollars plus sales tax plus tobacco surtax when you could just as easily buy it online, with free shipping, for six dollars apiece? Why come in and try to smoke a cigar, a cigarette, or a pipe with one‟s friends when the picketers show up and shout about smoking killing their unborn children that haven‟t even been conceived yet? So Martin used small tubes of tobacco leaf called wrappers, and he made tubes. Not for all of them. It still made sense that he was eventually going to sell a cigar here and there. By rolling these tubes up over and over, it made the humidors look full. On the very rare occasion one of the old-timers stopped in for a torpedo, Martin held the humidor to them, opened it himself, took out the top one himself, and offered it to them, never allowing them to hold or touch the humidor. Most times this happened, the customer would buy the last cigar of that variety Martin had. The expenses to keep this place open had pretty much tripled since he was a kid, and things weren‟t exactly rolling along as they used to. The stack of FINAL NOTICE bills under the counter was growing day after day. Martin and his son lived in the back in what used to be the storeroom for two reasons. He hadn‟t seen the need to have their home anymore. His wife was gone, ran off with a man she had gone to high school with. She left Martin with little Martin on a Tuesday morning while they were both asleep. The note she left had said,
Going with Barry Fisk. This ain‟t gonna work.
Martin likes to have his oatmeal in bed. Bye. J.
Those last several months before she had gone away, Martin had tried to talk to her to see why she was acting so strange. She had taken to having conversations with herself and wearing sheets, blankets and towels as if they were fine French Couture. She refused to eat anything green or yellow, or anything that crunched or had once come in a box. She had telephone conversations at three in the morning when no one was on the other end, and she had conversations with her food and with her belly-button. She refused the notion that anything whatsoever was wrong, and she resented Martin for suggesting as much. And then she was gone, though she had kindly left her genes with their only son.
And so there was no house to be bothered by anymore. It‟s true that had been his father and mother‟s house, but there was the business to think about, so he sold it, paid the back-taxes on the business, overdue utilities and a mountain of overdue expense accounts. That this had been a mistake didn‟t matter. He couldn‟t get the house back and so they had tried to make the best of their ever-changing situation. As he had little to no stock in the stock room, he set up two single beds, a nightstand, a meager lamp, one of those dorm-room-sized refrigerators, and a bookshelf for Little Martin‟s curious book collection. For those two reasons, Martin found himself realizing he was hoping the loan from the bank for remodeling and renovation would be going through soon. He imagined the new look of things. A shiny, digital register like the McDonald‟s down the street had. A separate wing on the back of the building for a walk-in humidor and a smoking lounge. A place—a real place—for he and his son.
Little Marty came out front with his bag slopped over his shoulder. His leather jacket, the oversized rings in his ears, nose, and face suggested that he, this not-so-young son was not here to sell Partegas to the old man down the street, but that he was here to, as he said, find a man, then kick ass, or kick ass, then find a man, finally stay out of juvenile detention for more than three months at a time, and—surprisingly—help his old man out for the first time in…well, ever. It wasn‟t that he had crowds of people hanging on every word concerning his son, because there weren‟t too many people near here that even cared about a tobacco shop anymore, let alone a weird-looking kid that read weird books and said and thought weird things like, „I really can‟t wait until I‟m eighteen, then I can find a man and marry him and move to the planet Neptune and then I‟ll finally be free of the bonds of society, as it were.‟ Or like „Dad, I
think you should sell out. Gramps would‟ve understood. Let‟s go to Ireland and live at Sandycove. James Joyce did it.‟ He had just rewritten the marker-art on his scalp with thick, jerky lines recently, and Martin could smell the acrid tang of the marker as his son passed by. “Later dad. School.”
“Got it, son. Have a great day and don‟t forget I‟ll call to make sure you got to school. I want you to do well and get an education and I know you can do it.”
But Little Marty had already walked out and the security door had snapped shut. Martin propped himself behind the counter and shook the letter and picture out of the thin envelope. The photo showed a big man in prison blues crouching next to a steel bed, holding a carton of Rothman Full Flavor cigarettes, a carton Martin had ordered and overpaid for. The man in the picture had a peculiar smirk on his face that seemed to say he was pretty tough, unless you knew him as well as Martin did. Martin found himself wondering what he always wondered: who kept taking these yearly pictures? Was Plato really ok? How ok could you really be locked up for ten years when you perpetrated an armed robbery of a grocery store four doors down from the Chicago Police Department?
Martin brushed the picture off and placed it on the counter. He reached underneath a slot by the back shelves and brought out a gold cigar box. Written on the flap in colored pencil was one word: PLATO. He set the box on the glass top and took out eight pictures and eight letters and stacked them up against the edge of the register.
Hey motherfucker! (Ha-ha) this year‟s letter had started. Plato always was thoughtful that way. Hope all is right with the world of tobacco. One week man! One week man! Parole. PAAAAA-Role! Thanks for the smokes. Euro-bacco, huh? Tasty as hell, M. Can’t believe Little Marty is so old. Guess time flies when you’re in segregation, huh? Ha-ha. Don’t let him give you any kinda shit, man. You can tell him I said so. He ain’t so big Uncle Plato can’t walk up and down his ass. Sent Olivia a letter too, but I sure as hell know you’re gonna ask her this so you can talk to her more. Get over that shit, man! Ask her out. Notice I’m not asking if you asked her out yet? Cause you didn’t yet? Go do it. Talk to you soon, my bro. Next year. Hope you got an opening for whatever Gramps Leo called it. Tobacco tucker? Ha-ha. Tell Little M. to keep his shit together. Plato (your friend) Ha-ha.
Martin folded the letter and put everything in the cigar box. He decided he didn‟t want Little Marty to read this one, after all.
The rest of the morning went pretty much the same way every morning did at Burke Brothers Tobacco. Martin sat at the corner of the counter, listening to talk radio out of a transistor with a broken speaker, playing chess, waiting for his son to come from school with his daily fever or sore throat, or from something along the lines of the Ebola Virus. After a few hours of this and—as usual—no customers, he decided to take a break. Martin stood up from the creaky bench, stretched his back so hard it popped. He turned up the radio. The interviewer asked some woman a question about what it meant to her to be the only survivor of the crash as Martin walked into the backroom.
“She probably feels fit as a fucking fiddle about it,” Martin said. “She probably feels not dead.”
The backroom always reminded him of one of those old flophouse rooms they showed in the old black-and-whites at The Majestic before it was condemned. Crusty red and green wallpaper peeled at the corners. Little Martin‟s bookshelf wore a scrap of it on top of the wood where apparently it hadn‟t been happy on the walls anymore. Martin picked up the piece of brittle paper and dropped it into the wastebasket next to the shelf. He noticed one of the books was pulled out of an otherwise flush top rack of volumes. Martin pulled it all the way off the shelf and examined it. The Garden of Eden it read. By Ernest Hemingway. He had heard of it, and that was about all he could‟ve said on the matter. His son had seemed attached to his mother‟s books, and so had taken many of them with them when they moved. Martin held the novel in his hand while he scanned the other titles. The Stand, Brotherhood of Blood, the Great Gatsby, the Rainmaker, the How-To-Be-A-Genius on One Quiz a Day Book, and three other shelves of works he himself had never read, or even opened. He felt like reading a little for a change. He fingered the front cover of Hemingway, and a scrap of paper skittered out of the novel and onto the crumbly floor. Martin stooped to grab at it. He picked it up and went to replace it inside the front cover, then for no reason at all opened the bright piece of steno-paper.
Marty—
I really had a great time last night. Planning this stuff is so much fun! It
kicks ass! Can’t wait till Halloween. Let’s get out of this shithole and never
come back, kay? Still working on getting the money, but don’t worry about
that right now. You’re my man. I’m ready to start over with you. The job is
pretty much mine. See you Tuesday night, hon. Luv and luv and luv!!!
X0—Joey (Your Joey)
Martin refolded the sheet of paper, put it back in the book, and slid Hemingway back in its place, leaving it offset just as it was before. He sat on the bed, and scrubbed at his eyes with his fists. He lay down on the bed, and before he knew it, he was fast asleep.
A short time later, Martin didn‟t know if the radio, the phone, or the buzzer had awakened him, but he jumped out of the small bed and headed for the front. The buzzer on the security door had sounded, and the young man with the tailored clothing was at the door. He was smoothing his hair, looking in at the shop. Martin hit the release button, and the young man walked in with a lanky kind of scramble and shot his hand out in an awkward excuse for a wave.
“Pipe tobacco,” Martin said. “Captain Swein Gold?” Of course Martin knew what this young man wanted, because he never wanted anything but Swein Gold. Customers were funny that way. The customer nodded in the affirmative as he stepped to the counter, took out his wallet and pressed a ten-dollar bill to the glass top. This was perhaps the fifth or sixth time he had come here. His pock-marked, sharp face, his slicked hair, and his taste in linen shirts and tweeds made him seem almost like he belonged back in the old days, in the best days of the old neighborhood. If it weren‟t for the Bigby‟s Bistro nametag that identified him as Shawn-Manager, Martin might have thought he‟d gone back in time. He rang up the purchase, returned three dollars and seventy-one cents to his customer, and gave the reply he had heard all his life in the store, “Thank you for your business. Come back and see us.” Shawn nodded curtly and exited the shop. The wind blew his hair cockeyed when the door closed.
Martin dug into his pocket and unfolded the fifty he had found. He clicked open the register and went to put the money in, then changed his mind and stuffed the money back where it had been and picked up the phone. He dialed and stood at the counter, tapping the glass and listening to the muted ringing on the other end. Olivia picked up the phone. He told her he was still excited about Plato coming home and about everything that was going on today. She said that she was excited too. She said she couldn‟t wait until they were all together again. Martin asked her if she planned on being around at the restaurant for awhile. She told him she planned on being there for awhile, yes. Martin told her that was fine, and he was wondering if he could stop by to ask her something. Olivia sounded strange, almost excited. She said that it would be wonderful if he stopped by to ask her something. He said that sounded great, and he would see her in twenty minutes or so.
Martin hung up the phone and exhaled. He could feel the pulse thumping in his head, and his arms were tingling.
“Well, there you go, Plato. Little Marty will never believe this. Not in a million years.” He stood up, keyed the alarm to ACTIVE, and then went out the door and down the street, jingling the keys in his hand as he moved. At the far end of the block was the internet florists, Sable‟s Inc., and he meant to buy a small bunch of daisies for Olivia, or as much as maybe five of his fifty could pay for. As he walked inside the ultra-modern steel door, something caught his eye further down the block towards the new businesses. His son stood on the sidewalk with what looked like a plastic bowl on his head and a rickety-looking guitar in his hands. Little Marty played the guitar briefly, then threw it against the sidewalk and did a cartwheel. The bowl on his head spun into the gutter. Little Marty got up and started clapping his hands, slow and rhythmically, yelling nonsense at the sky and the wind and the power lines. Martin knew his son hadn‟t seen him there. He stood at the steel door of the florist and watched his son act in a way that seemed all-too familiar, that he wished he didn‟t recognize but did. The young girl behind the counter was looking at Martin and saying something about crazy people.
“What,” Martin asked without looking at her, “did you say?” He kept his gaze on his son down the street, his grip on the door handle growing less and less firm. Now he turned to the girl. “What did you say?”
“I just said there‟s crazies all over the city, huh?” She slapped her hand on the counter and laughed, then stopped when she saw Martin‟s face. “Yes there are. Fuck you.”
Martin walked out and let the wind slam the door. He walked quickly toward his son, calling to him as loud as he could. When he had come within a few feet of Little Marty, he went to put his arms around his son. Marty whipped around to face his father.
“Son, what‟s going on what’s going on son? Are you ok? Are you ok? Come here, let‟s get you home. Come on, Marty. It‟s ok it‟s ok son. Let‟s get home. It‟s ok.”
His eyes were bulging and bloodshot, and he had a good amount of snot running from his nose. He put his hands out and walked backwards away from Martin, looking at this this man who had come to help him as if he had never seen him before this moment. Martin approached him with arms extended. As the crowd grew near the fallen guitar, he chased his son down the sidewalk, past Bigby‟s, past Computer-Low, past Check Cash Now! And all the new business of their part of the world. And as Little Marty outran his father, shouting Police! Help! Police! Police! Get this fucking guy off me!, Martin wondered if he would catch his son and get him home, safe, and helped.
***
On a spring day many years ago, Martin and Plato sat on the front stoop of Burke Brothers Tobacco, waiting for Olivia while they ate ice cream from the shiny truck that had just gone jingling down the street. Olivia hadn‟t come out from Borelli‟s yet, and she had missed her chance on the ice cream thing. Too bad, so sad for her. Things were better then, and his granddad and pop always flipped them a quarter or two for ice cream. Now the men walked out onto the stoop carrying beach chairs and a couple of fat, dark brown Tabak Especials, asking Martin where his girl was. Granddad poked Plato in the back with the toe of his wingtip and playfully growled something about renting the sidewalk or getting the hell out of the way. They opened up the chairs and sat on either side of the door and chatted with the kids and each other through the afternoon. Martin remembered looking across the street, and Olivia came out of Borelli‟s riding on her father piggy-back. In her hand had been the biggest green pinwheel he had ever seen, then or since. The boys waved at her, and she giggled in return, shoving her head in the back of her father‟s neck as he walked away.
“You hear me?” granddad Leo said. This time, it was Martin he nudged in the back with a wingtip, and he craned around to look up. “Look around, Marty. Someday, you‟re gonna be in charge of all this, my lad. They‟re going to be looking to you. This will all be yours.” Martin smirked at that. He thought he could see it. Yeah. Strange to think he‟d ever be in charge of anything except Plato. He thought for a moment, and then realized it was something to look forward to.

112 East 79th Street
Kansas City, MO 64114

Tags: Bhutanese Literature Craig M. Workman