Bluehart

By Dennis Vickers

The novel’s subject, A. J. Bluehart, a lightning rod for bad luck on the day of his birth in 1920, lives with his mother in a Chicago whorehouse until his sixteenth birthday, when the women of the house decide on a special birthday gift only they can give. Bluehart moves on to a lifetime of peculiar adventures, some fortunate, some not.

At the other end of his life Bluehart’s daughter, Seven, sorts through her fathers memoirs, searching for what makes him a chubby, smiley Buddha-man, sitting on his bed, accordion on his lap, leaning against the wall with the pictures making a halo around his head, laughing and talking, talking and laughing. She finds a surprising answer.

Bluehart’s story is one surprise after another, a parade of the unexpected. His daughter’s story, the novel’s frame for presenting the father’s memories, turns out to be full of surprises itself. Amusing and poignant, father and daughter, the stories advance the idea that freedom is a necessary ingredient for life to be worthwhile.

Bluehart is Vickers second novel. His distinctive story-telling style blends wit and passion to produce a gratifying reading experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dennis Vickers
• Release date: Mar 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311924117

Dennis Vickers

Surprisingly, truth is best told through fiction. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Also, lies are best told through nonfiction, but I don't do that. With fiction, the story can be about anything so long as it has the stuff of life in it. The stuff of life -- aye, there's the rub. Like bears and Sasquatch, Dennis Vickers lives in the north woods. Sometimes he teaches philosophy and creative writing at a tribal college; other times he holds up in a river cottage and writes this stuff. As the previous sentence proves, he knows how to work semicolons and isn't afraid to use them. Book-length fiction: Witless: Rural communities clash in 18th Century Wisconsin. Bluehart: Life story of fictional blues accordion player. Second Virtue: Courage -- where it comes from and where it goes. Adam's Apple: Life story of congressman who f**ks his mother. You thought they all did? Passing through Paradise: Narrative collage mixes quest story, love story, satyr play. Between the Shadow and the Soul: Love and lust, or maybe the other way. Mikawadizi Storms: Open pit mine vs. pristine forest. You decide. Double Exposures: Collection of short stories, some realism, all magical. Only Breath: Ghost story wrapped in mystery wrapped in waxed paper.

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Bluehart

by Dennis Vickers

Published by Sunny Waters Books

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright © 2001 Dennis Vickers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image by Becca Vickers.

Table of Contents

JULIAN

BIRTHDAY BLUES

DOWNSTAIRS

LEAF ON THE WIND

LEARN TO DANCE

YOUR TURN

DANCE TO THE MUSIC THAT’S PLAYING

SEASONS

SAD, SAD STORY

BLACKBIRD BLUES

FIRST TRAIN HOME

ROSE

THEA

CHOICES

COMING TOGETHER

CHAIN AROUND MY NECK

JULIAN

Julian

I don’t know what to do,

I don’t know what to say,

I went here and there,

Lost you along the way.

Julian, A. J. Bluehart.

I moved to Paradise. I put the clothes I never wear into cardboard boxes and left them in the collection bin for Saint Vincent De Paul. I wrote a goodbye note to Charlie and left it with Jolene. I didn’t say where I was going and I told Jolene not to tell him. I packed my good clothes into storage bins I found at K-Mart, on sale, and loaded them into the car. I brought my cat, Colonel Saunders, and my shoes, all of them.

I drove to Paradise from Chicago in a 1976 Pontiac Jolene took to close a bar tab when she figured out she wouldn’t get any cash. She didn’t need a car, so it sat behind the bar for a year, fading, rusting, and sinking. I asked her what she’d take for it. She said she’d already been taken with that Pontiac. She said I could drive it away for nothing, but I’d have to clean out the junk, pump up the tires, charge the battery, and fill the tank. The seats were tattered because Wally, the man who had it before Jolene, hauled pipes and wrenches inside the car. The motor ran but the water pump howled whenever you let it idle so I had to keep the gas pushed down a little. The springs had caved in to a soft, lazy sponginess. The least little bump sent the Pontiac sashaying down the street, rolling its rear end, a floozy parading across a dance floor. Off we drove, me and Colonel Sanders, Chicago behind us, Paradise in front of us, clothes packed in plastic bins, tattered seats, water pump and Colonel Sanders howling, the Pontiac’s rear end drooping low and swinging from side to side. That was the spring of 1991.

I told my friends in Chicago that I wanted to be with my father. They didn’t ask, How come you don’t just visit now and then? Why you got to move to Paradise? Honey, isn’t there some other reason? It’s good no one asked because I don’t have answers. My intuition told me to move to Paradise. I had a hunch; that’s all.

A hunch isn’t a good reason to do anything. I know that. Hunches are about how ideas feel in your stomach and not why you have them. Acting on a hunch means doing something without answers to the why questions. It’s irrational, I suppose, but I wouldn’t say moving to Paradise was irrational. It’s such a negative word, and I’m not negative about moving. I’m happy about it.

Intuition is women’s territory. Everybody said so. But, intuition isn’t something that comes from hormones, the way other women’s traits do. Intuition is what leaks out when you put your feelings into a chest, hide it in the attic under a blanket, and try to forget it’s there. The stuff you put in the chest never wants to stay there, finds tiny cracks, and squeezes itself out like toothpaste through a split in the tube. Men hide things and women hide things, but women hide things more, so intuition is women’s territory. I’m happy about that too.

As I drove into Paradise I could see something was going on. I’d been here twice before, once four years ago when A. J. first moved to the county home, when I came up on the bus, and once back in January on A. J.’s seventy-first birthday, when Emit drove me up for the weekend. It was two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon when I bounced over the tracks on Main Street, prime time for activity in Paradise, but the downtown was deserted except for a few cars outside the Sunshine Hotel Bar and an old dog crossing the street in front of the drugstore. When I got to the north side of town, near the county home, I found out why. There was a big commotion and everybody in town was there. Two fire trucks were parked on the lawn. Smoke drifted out of the windows of the county home, which were all open, although it was March and not warm. There was a crowd standing outside a yellow tape strung around the building. Cars were everywhere, some parked at crazy angles against the curb, some standing in the street. I had to park two blocks away.

I gave Colonel Sanders a kitty treat to calm him down, locked the Pontiac, and ran back to the county home. By ran I mean I moved as fast as I could considering I was wearing heels and a tight-fitting skirt. I put on nylons, heels, and a skirt after I packed the car in Chicago because I was moving to Paradise, not just visiting. It’s important to make a good impression on people when you’re planning to live among them. Besides, I hadn’t seen A. J. since his birthday, and I didn’t want him to think I was taking him for granted. The skirt was black cotton with a flare at the hem and a wide waistband. The shoes were black pumps. With heels and a tight skirt you can only move as fast as dignity will let you. The skirt wasn’t so tight when I bought it.

I looked for A. J. in the crowd standing by the front porch of the county home. I didn’t see him. I took some time to catch my breath and looked again. The fire alarm inside the building was going offwhoop, whoop, whoop!and it was plenty loud even outside the building. My heart was pounding and my breath wanted to come at the same pace as the fire alarmwhoop, whoop, whoop! I didn’t see A. J.

I hurried around the side of the building. I stayed back even though there wasn’t any smoke along the side, because there’re no windows. There wasn’t any smoke in the back, either. People were standing on the patio, scattered into groups of three or four, not all huddled together like the crowd in front. Mostly the people in back were old people from the home, and there were a few aides and firemen too. They chattered away the way old people do, everybody talking and nobody can hear a thing. They talked about all of the excitement, and how the fire didn’t seem to be much of a fire, and would their things be okay in the building, and would they be able to go back inside after the fire was out, and would dinner be late. I walked from one end to the other of the patio looking for A. J. and wishing I’d worn sensible shoes. He wasn’t there.

I saw Mary, one of the people who work at the county home. I remembered her because he was A. J.’s favorite. She didn’t hassle people over little things that were none of the home’s business, A. J. said. She went about her job, which was to put on uplifting, stimulating events for the residents. All the better if they were events that helped keep the old folks minds working. All the better if they burned off a little energy and improved their regularity too. Mary moved from group to group telling people everything was okay, and they should stay there on the patio until someone told them otherwise.

Where’s Bluehart? I said, talking loud over the chatter on the patio. The fire alarm wasn’t as noisy as in the front of the building, but it was noisy enough to make everybody talk loud.

She looked up from the group of people she was talking to.

A. J. Bluehart, I said.

What about him?

I’m his daughter, Seven. Remember me? We met when I came up for his birthday in January.

Yes, I remember.

Where is he? Suddenly the fire alarm stopped whooping. Everybody stopped talking all at once. I took a deep breath and felt like I had control of my heartbeat again.

Mary looked around the people standing on the patio, one group at a time. He should be here, she said. He was inside with everybody else. He must be here.

I can’t find him.

Don’t worry. He’s here somewhere. Did you look in front of the building? There’s a big crowd out front.

I looked there already.

Mary shook her head. He must be there, she said. I’m sure he came outside with the others. He must be out front.

I went around the building again on the other side this time, not because I thought Mary was right, but because that’s what I do when I can’t find somebody. Everybody does. We look for someone where we think they are, when we know they’ll probably be gone when we get there. It’s best to sit in one place and not to go looking, because if you go looking you’ll be one step behind them through a whole chain of steps, and eventually you’ll end up where you started. I went around to the front of the county home. That’s what people do.

* * * * *

A. J. sent me a letter on the first of every month starting when he moved into the county home. Before that he lived in Chicago and he didn’t write at all. We were in the same city. Why write to someone in the same city? He’d call once in a while. Every time I got a letter from Paradise I’d sit down and write back. Our letters were like a clock with a lopsided tick-tocktick, tock . . . tick, tock. There was one day between the tick and the tock, and the rest of the month between the tock and the tick. A. J’s first letters mostly complained about the county home.

Today they gave Mel bacon for lunch, a bacon sandwich with real bacon. Prudy sat across the table from Mel and shouted out for everybody to hear, Hey! Mel gets bacon! How come we don’t get bacon? I figured there’d be a riot. The countyhomers can’t chew mashed potatoes, let alone bacon, but they’re banging their spoons on their plates and shouting, We want bacon! We didn’t quiet down until the aides wheeled some of us away and Nurse Clawson said if we weren’t quiet by the time she counted to three there’d be no desert. Some were still shouting when she said, One, and still shouting when she said, Two, but it was dead quiet when she said Three. It’s pathetic, isn’t it, how we’re bribed with a sorry-assed cup of pudding?

Poor Mel. The only time you get bacon around here is when they figure you don’t have long.

Once A. J. had been at the county home for a year his letters changed and he didn’t talk about the county home anymore. He talked about who he knew and what he did in Chicago when he lived there. Sometimes he’d go all the way back to when he lived at the Scarlet House. That reminiscing went on for several months, then he told me about something new he was doing.

I wandered into a yard sale when I was walking. I bought a tape recorder and a box of tapes for four dollars. At first I figured I’d record songs. Then I figured I’d record stories. I asked Mary to look for more tapes, and she passed the word, and now I got a pile of tapes. I’m recording everything I remember.

The next letter he wanted me to come to Paradise to help put his tapes in order. I said no. I told him if I had time I’d record all the important things in my life and put them in order. Besides, putting things in order isn’t something somebody does for you, not things like that. You have to do that for yourself. He kept asking.

One day I was on a walk with Jolene. We wanted to be outside because we’d been cooped up for three days while a big, heavy, wet snow dumped itself on Chicago. We were bundled up like first-gradersmittens, scarves, boots, more socks than you’d need to open a sock store. We walked through the park and around the pond. Mostly we stayed on the sidewalk, which was shoveled, but sometimes we cut across the deep snow so we could crunch the snow under our feet. Jolene wore her long coat with the hood with the leopard-skin lining. I never said so to Jolene but that coat looks cheesy to me. You don’t see actresses lined up to get into the academy awards with leopard skin hoods on their coats. What the hell, Jolene thinks leopard skin is elegant. She told me so. It’s simple, yet elegant, she says. She won’t change her mind about it. A leopard won’t change her spots.

We stopped by the pond to see a snow angel somebody made. That was Maurice, Jolene said. Her breath came out in cold white puffs. The leopard-skin hood was pulled snug around her face.

What? I said.

Maurice, she said. What’s the matter with you today, honey? You’re distracted as a priest with a late girlfriend.

I told her about the tape recordings A. J. was making, and how he wanted me to help get all of his stories organized.

He’s getting ready to die, Jolene said.

A. J.? No! He’s old, but he’s healthy. It’s one of his crazy projects; that’s all.

I’ve seen it before. People get old and they think about dying and the stories come out.

He’s an old man with a new toy; that’s all.

Honey, you don’t see it because you’re too close. That’s all.

Close? He’s a hundred and fifty miles from here.

"I don’t mean close like that, I mean close."

You’re wrong either way. We’ve never been close. He writes once a month. I write once a month. He sends a birthday card. I send a birthday card. That’s as close as we get. That’s as close as we ever got.

I don’t mean close like that either. I mean you’re alike, you and A. J.

I thought that was about the stupidest thing I’d ever heard Jolene say. I couldn’t think of a thing to say back. It’s just like somebody in a leopard-skin hood to say something like that. How do you know it was Maurice made the snow angel, I said finally.

Huh?

How do you know it was Maurice made the angel? It could’ve been anybody.

Look at the size. That’s the size of an eight-year-old boy.

Lots of kids that size come to the park.

See the mark in the snow at the top of the angel’s head? That’s from the fuzzy ball on the top of Maurice’s stocking cap. And, see the footprints leading off toward the drugstore? That’s where Maurice goes to read comic books. And, see how those baggy pants he wears show up in the snow? That’s Maurice all right.

Could’ve been anybody.

Could’ve been, but wasn’t. It was Maurice.

I asked Maurice about it later. He said he had made a snow angel that day by the pond.

* * * * *

The crowd around the front of the county home was beginning to break up. No A. J. I found a place where I could see everyone and I waited. I leaned against the side of the fire truck. After a while I thought, how does that look, high heels and a tight skirt, leaning against a fire truck, so I moved over by the front door and waited there. After a while Mary found me. She said I should come with her but she wouldn’t give me any reason. She said I’d understand once we got to the kitchen. I followed her through the tape the firemen had strung across the front of the building, down the hallway, through the activity room, and back to the kitchen.

The county home smelled of smoke, and the floor in the hallway was dusted with soot so you could see the tracks where the firemen had walked through in their big boots. I thought, great, I’m going to smell like a campfire girl. Mary said the fire spread through the basement and the smoke came up into the first floor where it could, through a heating vent or a laundry chute or whatever. While we walked I wondered why Mary wanted to talk to me. A. J. is in trouble again. A. J. has been playing his accordion at night again. A. J. has been telling those jokes to the old women again. A. J. raided the kitchen. I figured that must be it. But, why would he raid the kitchen when the building was on fire?

When we came into the kitchen I saw A. J. sitting in the doorway of the refrigerator, a big stainless steel one with double doors. He sat right in the refrigerator, between the wide-open double doors, with his legs stuck out onto the kitchen floor. He held his accordion in his lap and his face was smudged with soot. He looked up at me and smiled. There were three or four firemen standing around with their arms crossed.

The kitchen was a mess, a bigger mess than I saw anywhere else coming through the building. There was water standing in pools on the floor, the sprinkler nozzles in the ceiling were dripping, and there were silverware, dishes, and towels everywhere.

Mr. B. waited the fire out inside the refrigerator, Mary said.

What? I looked at A. J. He winked.

He threw everything out of the refrigerator and climbed inside, Mary said. She stood next to A. J. and put her hand on his shoulder. He closed the doors and he was in there the whole time the building was on fire.

I didn’t want to leave the building, A. J. said. He broke into a fit of coughing.

For Christ’s sake, A. J., what do you mean, you didn’t want to leave the building? I said.

Mr. B. needed to stop over in the men’s room, Mary said.

What?

The men’s room. He went to the men’s room, the one next to the activity room, when everybody else evacuated the building. That’s how we missed him.

You were going to the bathroom when the building was on fire?

I didn’t want to be outside and have to pee and have nowhere to go, A. J. said. He coughed again but not so hard as before. There were tears in the corners of his eyes from the coughing.

Are you crazy? The building was on fire!

A. J. didn’t answer.

When he came out of the men’s room everybody was gone and there was smoke in the hall so he decided to rescue his accordion, Mary said. He went to his room to get it. By that time there was smoke in both of the exits and there was nowhere to go.

I figured the refrigerator would be safe, A. J. said.

That’s crazy. The refrigerator? Why?

It’s metal on the outside and it’s sealed up tight. There’s no way for a fire to get inside. There was soot in his hair and his moustache and a smudge of soot on his forehead. He looked like he’d been to an Ash Wednesday service that got out of hand.

You can’t sit inside a refrigerator. That’s dangerous. There isn’t any air!

I did though. I did and it was okay. He winked again.

Your father is lucky to be alive, one of the firemen said. He threw everything out of the refrigerator, the food and the shelves and all of it, and he climbed in and shut the door. We found him because we couldn’t figure out how everything came to be on the floor instead of in the refrigerator, so we opened the door, and there he was. There was smoke everywhere but there he sat with his accordion on his lap.

A. J. stood up while the fireman talked. He pulled a hanky from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and brushed at the soot on his accordion.

There was nothing to do but hug him and be grateful he was okay. It was awkward because he had his accordion strapped to his chest and I had to get my arms around that too. I had to lean over, bending at the waist, because he’s smaller now. It’s embarrassing to lean over like that. I noticed how small and fragile he seemed, but of course I still had heels on so that was part of it.

They arranged for some of the county home residents to stay at the Sunshine Hotel in Paradise until their rooms were cleaned up. A. J. was one of those who were to go there so after a while they put him on a little school bus. I hugged him again before he got on the bus. It was the same as before, awkward. He seemed embarrassed too, pleased and embarrassed. I thought about how it was always like that when I hugged A. J., from when I was little, a kid in his pajamas who wakes up and goes into the kitchen early on a Saturday for a bowl of corn flakes. He’s sitting there at the kitchen table drinking coffee. He always seemed pleased and embarrassed.

The driver closed the school bus door behind him. It was a fold-in-the-middle school bus door the driver worked with a lever. A. J. sat by the window in the front seat on the right side with his accordion on his lap and his face still dirty from the soot. He smiled and waved at me through the window as the bus pulled away.

I walked back to the building. The firemen were taking the yellow tape down and tidying up their trucks. Mary was inside the front door with a mop and a bucket.

How’d the fire start? I said.

In the basement, Mary said. She leaned on her mop handle with the head of the mop in the bucket.

But how?

Newspapers down there caught fire. That’s what the fireman said.

Just like that? What kind of newspapers catches fire just like that?

Mary laughed. Tabloids, I suppose.

Is it okay if I go down to A. J.’s room? I told him I’d pack some clothes and a toothbrush and take them to the hotel.

Next-to-the-last door on the left, Mary said, pointing down the hallway by tilting her mop handle. Be careful, the floors are wet.

I found A. J.’s room, the same room he was in on his birthday. The soot wasn’t so bad there. The hallway and