Tiny and Craig: Common Decency and Table Manners

By Steven Craig Welch

This story was written as a bedtime story fairy tale for county jail inmates’ bedtime story so the writer felt safe.

Francisco native since arriving in 1955. Lives in Sonoma County wine country. Former standup comedian, pirate radio show host, chef/cook and dishwasher/owner of tiny bistro in Humboldt County.

The story began as

• Language: English
• Publisher: LitFire Publishing
• Release date: Nov 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643981024

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Tiny and Craig

Common Decency and Table Manners

Copyright © 2018 by Steven Craig Welch

ISBN: 978-1-64398-102-4

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

Printed in the United States of America

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Tiny and Craig

COMMON DECENCY

and TABLE MANNERS

Steven Craig Welch

Contents

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART ONE

Tiny isn’t. At six four, add another three for the clicking Guccis, red mane soaring, she turns heads. That’s the idea, baby. This baby loves love and she knows she’s got what it takes. At first Tiny worked the fresh fish counter at the More Food for Less $. But wearing the required food handler’s hat, even in flats, she constantly knocked over cardboard seahorses and shrimp on sale signs. Next Tiny was horizontally promoted to Assistant Assistant Produce Manager. One weekday afternoon, as an off duty squad of local Beaverettes danced through the door for a once through the free sample buffet Tiny’s hair caught on the overhead mister as she rearranged asparagus. Thinking she could free herself unassisted, thus avoid another meeting with the nerd, the girl gave it her best shot. But just as she almost succeeded, the sprinkler system’s whatchamacallit crossed the connuter valve and the produce section’s environment entered the faux rainforest zone. Tiny might have jerked away from the teensy rainstorm just enough to pull the sprinklerhead loose. And herself. Unfortunately, a couple bunches of broccoli caught themselves on her bracelets. Lifting herself free, makeup dripping, Tiny may have appeared a little different to the Beaverettes, who screamed and slipped fanny long into the rapidly formingreplica of Lake Titicaca right next to a soon to collapse display of Easter Bunnies, baskets, and egg dye. Their squeals caught the attention of a favorite customer of Tiny’s, little Montagnard Toan Wan Can Murphy, who slipped stealthily through the leghole of the cart his momma was a foot and a half away from while checking out a coconut milk display on aisle 4. Toan’s delight, when he rounded the corner at the sight of Vixie, Barbi, Billie, Deenie and Maudslipping and sliding in multipastel sludge was more than the little guy could hide. The only other time he’d seen such writhing, heard those sounds, they had been accompanied by the staccato of automatic small arms fire and the bass of mortar rounds in his home village back in the mountains of Southeast Asia. This was better, cause for celebration. Come on. As any good natured boy would do in his place, Toan ran, jumped and slid into the middle of the fracas doing the bacon dance for all he wasworth as soon as he hit th e ground.

Meanwhile, orally wrangling herself a promotion in the nerd’s office, Vicki the Assistant Florist to that bitch Big Darlene decided the number of pimples on a nerd’s face corresponded with his teensyness. But she’d have Big Darlene’s job in a few more episodes. Then she’d get her Trans Am. Vicki saw herself outside the local club, Rex T’s, primping in her disco dress, checking out her layers and lip-gloss in the hood of her ride while tracing that big bird’s outline with her finger. She’d string the nerd along for enough time to get what she deserved, if she could stand it without going like insane, until her real man, GI Phil came back for her from ‘Nam. They’d live happily ever after. She’d tell the nerd what Phil had done to her last boss’s son when she cried. The nerd would become history.

Oh, you’re so fine

Vicki mumbled around his littleness trying not to gag. Then she realized her braces were caught on the fly of his boy’s department cords. Panicked, Vicki made the move so many elder salmon tell the younger salmon not to make and set the nerd’s fly in her braces like a well-set Talon brand fishhook. Eyes crossed in terror as he looked down, the nerd relaxed like a marshmallow on a hot coathanger. Playing dead.

There’s got to be another way!

Vicki thought, as loudly as she could think. Just then the nerd’s boss, both by contract and biology entered the scene. Mrs. Fingerhold stopped at the florist for a boutonierre for her little man-ager son and noticed that Vicki wasn’t in her department. She heard moaning come from her son’s office. Out of the corner of her eye she gleaned something else. Tiny, dripping and wet, limped on one shoe, broccoli hanging like extraterrestrial claws from her arms. The Creature from the BlackLagoon waved at someone across the supermarket Mr. Fingerhold had transformed into an empire decades before. A rabbit or a very small comet zipped between Mrs. Fingerhold’s knees and into her son’s office at that instant. Comet or rabbit? She couldn’t tell which. Eagles may be nearsighted too. No one really knows.

On entering the nerd’s office, dripping Tiny, who figured she’d just come in on her own, resign and take her lumps and get out of Dodge quietly this time, got more than three eyefuls of surprise. Kodak moments came nonstop during the next few hours as the nerd and Vicki’s ambulance gurney carried them off to the company orthodontist. Then little Toan’s mom and the nerd’s CEO/Mom discussed little Toan’s college fund and ability to keep a secret while the little boy drew zero after zero in the egg shade angels the Beaverettes left on the floor. Little known to anyone, even the zero’s artist, the patterns of the zeros would blossom into ones and zeros enough to birth a generation of nineties video games that would continue Toan’s good fortune. In time his entire family could emigrate. Lawyers and restauranteurs, liberal arts students, dope dealers, math teachers and a Roman Catholic priest would become members of American Society as a result of Tiny’s mishap. It could happen.

And then. And then one night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more. Tiny’s faves, four foot tall Latinas and Montagnard ladies that barely came up to her bellybutton shirts all bought minivans, joined PTA and assimilated. Another immigrant clan yearning to breathe free had made the grade, the Murphys. Toan’s family would shop at Safeway from that very day forth. The nerd sat in his office, stewing. He wasn’t the nerdette that Vicki repeatedly promised she’d make him on the long bumpy ambulance ride. The woman of his dreams was gone forever, thirty dozen Mr.Lincoln roses and new Trans Am in her carport notwithstanding. Pink Peruvian flake on her glossless sore lip notwithstanding. A wad of cash and boxed satin disco dress notwithstanding. Vicki was out of the nerd’s life forever. Matters of the heart and lower extremities end that way sometimes, depending on the pimple factor. The nerd sat in his office throwing imaginary darts at an imaginary Tiny photographic dart target. He knew mama would kill him slowly, probably with a plastic picnic spoon from aisle eight if he made real holes in her wall. Dreams of Vicki and himself living forever in his over garage apartment dashed, he wondered if there really was a living God anymore.

Fat chance said the nerd, chucking another imaginary dart at imaginary Tiny’s photographic target, listening for an imaginary thud.

There is a living God though. The proof is there if you look for it. No matter how far the trash is from the center of the universe, where any creative intelligence at the center of a universe would live, it gets taken out. Eventually.

A couple weeks later a real nice hippie girl, Sweety Pea and her liddle son Shineyboy would find a wrinkled Trans Am by the side of the road between Inverness and Bodega. Bodega was Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite bird refuge during his filming of the Dauphne Du Maurier short horror story "The Birds’. Shineyboy was a tired little hippieboy whose mommy also was tired. In the back of the Trans Am they found a good place for a nap. And over seven thousand dollars, mostly twenties. While Shineyboy wouldn’t get little Toan’s education, seven grandwould come in handy when mom and liddle shineman moved north. So, would the Trans Am. Vicki’d moved, probably to that big disco in the sky.

The nerd paced. He couldn’t fire Tiny even. Between the increased free advertising and big insurance check for water damage, even minus Vicki’s settlement and pain and suffering wad -Corporate loved Tiny! Corporate, he hated Corporate. Tiny went home. Big Herb and Marge sat watching their daughter’s TV debut on local news. Free advertising. The Safeway nerd sat in his office, envious, wishing he’d thought of Tiny as anything but a beanpole when she’d applied for his fish counter position. Tiny kissed Marge, then Big Herb, sat down for weenies and kraut. And TV.

That drama class really paid off, chuckled Big Herb.

Honey, cried Marge.

Thanks Daddy mumbled his favorite little girl.

Tiny wasn’t born Tiny. In an era when you couldn’t holler Kim or Patty or Kathy, Stevie, Tommy, or Billy in a grammar school without half the student body answering, she stood out. Thanks to Big Herb and Marge’s grandmother’s names, Esmerelda and Arabella, mom and dad looked a little harder at the baby book names. Her older sister, Paulette also scored bigtime on the babyboomer unique name scale. Little Herb carried on the line. Tiny grew and grew. Big Herb wondered sometimes if his mobile home business on the peninsula could support anything more than her shoe bill. It did fine with that, Little Herb’s needs, even Paulette’s sixties bellbottom and record requirements. The ranch house was secure, and the little human family inside it. And still Tiny grew and grew. None said much but they noticed. No, not like that. None seemed to notice like that until a swank quotient challenged Tom Schlobber trotted on over to her in the tenth grade. He asked through a voice as cracked as the liquid nitrogen treated rubber ball the two had giggled at during a film in General Science. Tom asked "The Question"

I’m Tom, cracked the boy. You got a phone?

Yes, said Tiny.

Cool, said Tom, suave and newly debonair. And he trotted off.

Hey Tom, said the princess to the prince. Do you want my number?

The prince backpedaled. What was he thinking?

Please. I’m Tom.

I know, you said before when you forgot to ask for my number,

What’s your name?

I’m Tiny, well Andrea’s my real name.

But Tiny stuck.

Is there anything like the first taste of love? Or the next? Or the last wrinkly kiss before the lid gets nailed shut? Phone calls and showing off, flowers and more phone calls, smooches and cuddles and poems and tiffs and all those things that turn a standard life into one with AM/FM stereo,whitewall tires and Hurst four speed manual with a 4:11 rear end?

No. Flat out not in a zillion years of Sundays making out under the refrigerator. Even nerds find out eventually. It’s a double edge that never loses its edge for delight and devastation on about an equal level of hone. She loves me, he loves me not. She...yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah. Maybe Divorce Court’s televised at nine in the morning, the Dating Game at night so those who know what’s truly important aren’t warned away from what’s important. A cruel and completely necessary assurance in the continuation of the species.

A moment after Tiny and Tom returned to class something equally wonderful happened. Two robins who’d been sitting on the lawn before the school building, they began chattering. In a moment they spread their wings, took off for the wild blue yonder. And parts beyond the wild blue yonder that only winged creatures know about. A couple hours later north the robins hung out with a trio of blackbirds for a few minutes, then returned South. The blackbird headed north for the next rendezvous with a vee of honkers carrying the message. Flight is a crazy, impossible thing in a way, and not. Air is what keeps all of us going. It is also invisible and weightless and fragile. It is also what holds birds up when they travel hundreds, thousands of miles. Loving is kinda air’s cousin in that respect. Love’s invisible as a black hole. You only know of love’s existence by what happens around it. Nothing hurts as much as when forevers and alwayses turn into nevers and the empty feeling that comes when it’s over and we find ourselves staring into crowds for days or years seeking someone interesting after the interesting one is gone.

Tiny, climbing out her window late one night ran smackdab into Little Herb’s shiny combat dress boot. The young man put his bootcamp strong hand on his little sister just long enough for her to estimate the depth and height of his Budweiser consumption. Silently, the newly trained protector of this great nation put his finger to his lip and shook his head. The little sister determined in her own mission stretched up to her full height. Little Herb looked up, staggered a mite, turned and walked into Big Herb and Marge’s house without a spoken word. As she ran through the darkness, Tiny heard a commercial’s song run through her head. You’ve come a long way baby.

Blocks away, leaning against his shiny Ford pickup, Tom pondered just why he didn’t wear a watch. He pondered wildlife too. Birds. Bees. Girls. His girl, Tiny. Carefully the boy looked around himself at the trees surrounding the parking lot next to the duckpond, then sniffed his armpits. He rubbed his freshly scraped chin. His knees shook a little. It wasn’t cold on this June night. The voice he’d tried to ignore so valiantly made itself heard.

What if she doesn’t like it, or me? What if she laughs at me, or him? What if she knows that I don’t know what I’m doing. What if Bob wasn’t telling the truth and I mess up and she tells somebody? Or everybody? Will it hurt? Will it tickle? Do I have enough time to get away? Why isn’t she here yet? How come I couldn’t pick her up like normal? Am I old enough for this? Do I really smell all right? Why does love got to be so sad?

The girl ran through the darkened streets, towards the park and a slice of her destiny with extra cheese wondering. Am I ready for this? Is Tom there waiting yet? Do I love him? Does he love me, really? Will Little Herb tell on me? Why am I so nervous, people do it all the time? Will I have to wait a lonely lifetime, God, if I change my mind tonight? If you want me to I will.

Reaching the parking lot, she ran right up to him, stopped dead two feet away. Time stopped with her sneaker squeak. And his. Then the kiss. Gently first, then a little more energetic. Hungrier and circular, wet and long and deliciouser than any other shared dessert ever devised. Into the truck the Princess and Prince crawled toward the main course. It’s okay to eat dessert first, if it’s your favorite dessert, and there’s still room for dinner. Even dipping your cheeseburger in your milkshake’s okay in private. That’s the rules. Ducks quacked from the duckpond, cars drove past, stars twinkled silently. It wouldn’t have made any difference had the stars played Grand Funk Railroad versions of John Phillip Sousa marches or a Brahms lullaby. Time in two awakened lives outside them was forgotten. It’s that way. If it isn’t, you’re not doing something right. So, reload up on carbs and try again. It’s remarkable what can happen in an enclosed space at the right moment as far as teleportation beyond all the worlds known, and not. Time and space, distance and reality dissolve.