Down the Cloud Ladder

By Patrick Cantwell Guinan

Down the Cloud Ladder is a collection of fifteen enchanting, haunting and sometimes humorous short stores. These vividly and sensitively told stories about love and lies, sorrow and joy, living and dying invoke emotions of tenderness and understanding and establishes Guinan as an author of powerful and resplendent fiction.
As in his novella, Not A Dawn In Eastern Skies, the reader of these stories will journey from a small villa on the Northern shores of Lake Michigan to the quaint and time forgotten mountain villages of Old Mexico and other settings of romance and charm like St Marks Piazza of Venice and the French Quarter of New Orleans.
In Down the Cloud Ladder are found nostalgic colored stores of perfect love and heart breaking beauty in a world that never promises happiness. They are stories of innocence and disillusionment and of the ever growing alienation of American Youth that has been symbolized during the 1960s and the era of the Viet Nam War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493129126

Book preview

Down The Cloud Ladder

Patrick Cantwell Guinan

Copyright © 2013 by Patrick Cantwell Guinan.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013920980

ISBN:     Hardcover       978-1-4931-2911-9

Softcover      978-1-4931-2910-2

eBook           978-1-4931-2912-6

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.

Rev. date: 12/10/2013

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Contents

Down the Cloud Ladder

The All Stars and the Old Star

The Big Ride

The Chapel on the Hill

A Warm and Safe Place

Dipody, Dipody Dan

Little Plaza of Taxco

The Me-Too

A Short Story of Venice

Streetcar Named St Charles

That Hill and There

The Village Tavern

Tupe, My Sweet

X (Like In Malcolm)

The Old Man and St. Francis

Patrick Guinan

To Niles Able Williams, Jr.

And

Sandra Sue Erickson

"It’s true we have not avoided our destiny

By weeding out the old people.

Our faces have filled with smoke. We escape

Down the cloud ladder, but the problems have not been solved."

Our Youth, John Ashbery

Down the Cloud Ladder

Hello, Louie! Could you please bring me a mug, he asked the bartender as he set his books on the table and sat down at a booth in the back of the darkly lit and somber bar room.

Sure thing, said the bartender, a short stocky man with a brush cut, peppered gray and badly needing a trim. Want anything to eat, buddy? Or, did you have lunch already?

No. I didn’t. In fact, I just got up, Edward said with an apologetic and almost embarrassed tone. As he said this and looking up at the large menu propped against the giant wall mirror behind the bar, he eyed the word soup and he reacted impulsively.

Soup? Yeah, I think I have some. What kind have you got?

Today we have green pea and chili, Louie informed.

Is that all?

Yep.

To tell you the truth, I am not crazy about either one, but bring me the chili.

Sure thing, Louie said, taking an ash tray from a stack on the bar and placing it at the booth where Edward had just sat down.

In the bar room were four other patrons, all sitting at the bar. Outside the constant hissing of the rain and the gray darkness made Edward glad he was inside where it might be darker, but it was a warm inviting dark and it felt good. Watching the rain spitting against the window at the farthest end of the room from where he was sitting made Edward feel comfortable and at home. It was cozy and almost private. He took out a pack of Winston cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He had to reach up under his sweater to get at the pack. He lit a cigarette and laid the pack on the table, placing his lighter on top of the package. Continuing to watch the rain, Edward thought how much he liked the rain and how he wished it would never stop. He thought that it was beautiful and it felt perfect. Yet, it wasn’t just the rain. It was the rain and the grayness. It was the gray, the smoke like gray that permeated the whole outside and somehow found its way inside also. It made the darkness inside the bar so comforting and warm. The soup, the hot soup, would be so good. He knew it would make everything be just right. The soup would be warm inside his stomach and he became anxious for Louie to bring it to him.

It reminded him of a Hemingway novel, maybe a scene from A Farewell to Arms. To drink the warm soup, and sip the cold beer, and the rain, the cloudy overcast sky, the darkness. It was all straight from a Hemingway novel and Edward loved it. He was glad that he was alone and by himself. He was thinking that it wouldn’t be the same if someone was here when Louie brought a frosty mug of draft beer, caked with a thin veneer of ice and with a white creamy head that foamed over the side and down the glass.

How would you like a sandwich? I got some hot beef, Louie asked. It’s something special that I’m just starting here at the bar. We’re calling it Italian beef. You know, like they have up in Chicago.

Sounds real good. Yeah, I’ll have one, Edward said.

I thought you would. It ought to go pretty good with the beer and chili, Louie said.

It would too. It made it all just right. It was pretty nice of Louie to ask like that, Edward thought. He wouldn’t have thought of it by himself. Edward liked Louie for asking. It was good when people act like that.

How’s classes going? Louie yelled after he got back behind the bar.

Okay! I guess. Getting tired. Will be glad when Christmas vacation comes, Edward said.

Did you go home for Thanksgiving?

It’s too far.

Yeah, I guess. New York is pretty far to go in that short of time. You do live in New York, don’t you?

Yes.

That’s what I thought. Turning to one of the old men at the bar, Louie continued. He lives in New York. Comes all the way down here to go to school.

Edward knew the bartender was just trying to be nice and it irritated him for some reason. It always irritated him when people did it. The bartender could have been just wanting to be nice and start a conversation between him and the guys sitting at the bar, but Edward didn’t feel like talking. There was no need. He just wanted to sit and eat and drink and be alone. He just wanted to sit and watch the rain through the window in front of the bar which was becoming steamed. He still liked the bartender though. Only he wished and hoped Louie wouldn’t ask him anymore questions. He would have to answer them because he didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Louie had been good to him and Edward liked him.

Hanging over the swinging doors which led to the kitchen was a clock. The time was two o’clock in the afternoon, but it seemed by the darkness to be about five or six. It was only December and still unseasonably warm. It was New Orleans-in-the-fall kind of weather. If he were home in Michigan, it would be snowing by now. He was glad the weather was like this. This is why he had come here. Everything else had been a disappointment, but these kind of days were just as he planned.

It had been like this in New Orleans the winter before. Now, watching the rain, reminded him of those February days when he did the same thing he was doing at this moment. He remembered those Saturday afternoons when he sat down at Baptist’s Corner Café and watched the little children across the street in the little neighborhood playground called Washington Park. The children would run and play and laugh and scream and it brought him such joy to see how happy they played in the little park hidden just outside the French Quarter. Angelo’s Italian Restaurant was another favorite and secret spot where Angelo’s whole family worked to make you feel at home. It was there at Angelo’s restaurant, down on Decatur Street, that he ate most of his evening meals. He ate his meals alone in a corner booth hidden in the far back of the restaurant and now thinking of these places made him nostalgic for that winter he had spent in New Orleans. He knew that he was feeling sentimental and he wasn’t ashamed.

There was only one person who he wished could be there with him. She would be the only person who would not spoil anything. He knew that she would like these things also, this day, this bar, this secret and private spot. These feelings he had, he knew that she would understand and he wanted to tell her. So, he took a pad of paper from under the books, moved aside the cigarettes and lighter and began to write.

As he began to write, Louie brought the chili and the hot Italian beef sandwich and Edward ordered another beer. He ate the all the chili. It was warm and good. He even ate the red kidney beans which he usually didn’t like, but everything tasted so good that he had forgotten about them. He accepted the chili in its entirety. The sandwich was made with thick hot lean slices of beef, lying on thick slices of garlic bread. He spread a very thin layer of horseradish and spooned some sautéed onions over the beef and ate every morsel along with the dill pickle that Louie had placed on the plate next to the sandwich.

After he finished eating, he just sat and smoked for a while, sipping his beer. With a dramatic gesture, he picked up the pen and started writing again. It was almost three o’clock when he finished writing and it wasn’t until then that he put the four pages in order and immediately read it like he was seeing it for the first time and had no idea what it was going to say.

My dearest Sara, this is the first letter that I have written anyone in such a long time. God knows that I owe enough people a letter, especially you, but then I haven’t been able to write. I tried enough times, though, but I sorta got out of the habit and it was so hard to get back in. I know that it was probably something more than that. I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, or maybe I just didn’t have anything to say. I honestly think that was it. I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t have anything to say to the people I wanted to say things to. Look at what I just did! I just ended a sentence in a preposition. I guess that says something about me.

I haven’t done very well in school this fall. I am even failing French. I don’t even have an excuse. That’s kind of scary. When you are so screwed up and don’t even try to make an excuse for yourself, I guess, then, you have to admit that you’re really messed up. Sometimes I try to rationalize about it all, but most of the time I don’t really care.

In the middle of October, I came into some money when my student loan came through. I didn’t tell my Aunt that I got the loan and she gave me a big gift of money that was supposed to pay for tuition and all. This meant that I no longer had money problems, but it didn’t make any difference because I spent it all in a couple weeks. I spent it all really foolishly, too. I should have been kicked in the rear. I’m broke again, and I hate it. I am probably going to have to drop out of college again. I hate that too, but what the hell. I guess I should care more, but I don’t.

I spent Thanksgiving with my rich Aunt and other relatives who live on a small farm near a little town about hundred miles from here. I didn’t make a very good impression on anyone. I guess I drank a little too