Stone Park Bugle

By Barry F. Schnell

Sultry fornicators and cutthroat greed fuel the hearts of the lovelorn castaways that inhabit an industry on the wane. Sin is the only coping mechanism. Lust stokes the fire. Skulduggery wets the log. Distilled spirits help bridge yesterday into tomorrow. When the smoke clears, everyone is guilty, and virtue is the corpse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499059236

Barry F. Schnell

In his first posthumous work, Barry F. Schnell explores the depths of the feline psyche as it has never been extrapolated before. Barry F. Schnells final weeks along the beaches of Pitcairn Island were described by locals as being filled with arguments with palm trees, air quotes, and gluttonous excess. After cramming his manuscript into an emptied, dominated Jeroboam of pink champagne, Schnell grasped a wooden fork and walked into the ocean descending on a school of pufferfish never to be seen erect again.

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Copyright © 2014 by Barry F. Schnell.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014914877

ISBN:      Hardcover     978-1-4990-5922-9

                Softcover       978-1-4990-5924-3

                eBook            978-1-4990-5923-6

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/25/2014

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CONTENTS

Training Day

Molding Clay

Sage Words

Buckwheat Recap #1

Fast And Furious

Bone Machine

Probation Graduates

Buckwheat Recap #2

Merle’s

Packing And Plotting

There Ain’t No Merle

Whack Friday Rewind

Cordially Invited

Inhibitions Shminhibitions

Taste Of The Action

Back To Reality

Papa’s Pride

Under The Microscope

One Becomes Three

Ham Fisted Ascension

Dedicated to the past, the only future too many will ever have.

Why do I prefer wine to women? Anybody who has spent more than fifteen sober minutes with both will know the answer to that.

- Sugar Chet at Browntown Lounge

TRAINING DAY

In retrospect, we don’t know how we churned out a product every day.

Buckwheat’s start was easy. Buckwheat’s life has been easy. That happens when one takes the path of least resistance to everything. Which is also why Buckwheat’s life has been hard. That’s relatively speaking, I know, because Buckwheat was born a white male in the latter half of the 20th Century in the United States of America. I know the malnourished fetuses of the Sahara and the barefoot amputees in the Asian rice patties have had it a lot worse. But we’re talking about an arguably middle class white boy reared in the suburbs of the wealthiest nation humankind will ever know. He never had an inclination to do anything. So, yeah, Buckwheat was fortunate to grow up where he did when he did.

But going back to relatively speaking, Buckwheat was nothing but a dud in every way American contemporary society sliced it. Bereft of ambition, devoid of superior genes, and lacking in brain power would only ensure Buckwheat was a few laps behind his peers when it came to amassing wealth, rising in status, and horribly failing in the ever easing marathon to have butt loads of casual, commitment free sex with the exponentially expanding female population that no longer scorned such behavior. None of this is to say he is a bad guy. He’s just, well, fogged over.

So Buckwheat’s dad pulled some strings and got him in with his old cohorts at the Stone Park Daily Bugle back when it was still a seven-day per week newspaper during the final heydays of the print industry. Trayvon Comiskey put in eight years at the Stone Park Bugle advertising department some twenty years prior to getting his son juiced in. He regretted leaving every day since and looked at hooking up his only son with a low-level, inside sales position at the then still prominent daily newspaper as his second shot, too. All of Trayvon’s crew from back in the day was still at the Stone Park Bugle sitting on top of very fat retirement accounts and bestowed with outrageously high salaries. That’s where Trayvon would be now if he hadn’t left to pursue a very ill fated run for mayor against a four time incumbent where Trayvon’s political party only encompassed nineteen percent of all registered city voters. His life never got back on track. But finally, with the recommendations from his old crew, Trayvon’s son would be putting the Comiskey name back on the Stone Park Bugle payroll.

How do I know any of this? Well, because I was originally in the same sales training class at the Stone Park Bugle as Buckwheat. There was no bromance in whatever the definition of that word is. But we demographically hit it off right from the get go as we linked in age, skin color, and (lack of) education, plus shared the same interest in local sports and ogling fabulous women. We’ve still got a lot in common today. I know more about Buckwheat than he knows about me, because he does most of the talking though rarely asks any questions. I’m not sure he even knows my last name after all this time. For scorecard purposes, I’m Amos Murphy. Single. No formal education. Twenty extra pounds. Better than average bowler.

Everything I’m going to spell out for you now may or may not be true depending on whom you dig up and ask. What scares me is that I don’t think what happened around our workplace is very different from a lot of workplaces at this time. But we were just putting out a newspaper (we weren’t even putting out the most important part of a newspaper, depending on whom you ask). The other workplaces to which I refer—hospitals, police stations, and bikini wax emporiums—they all deal with way more important stuff than we did. I get bumps on my spine from my nape to my caboose when I think about going in for surgery, or trying to spend a few nights inside the local jail, if the employees in those respective arenas clowned around even a tenth as much as we did while on the job. Maybe that’s why we were in those sales-type jobs now that I think about it—so society could keep an eye on us and out of the professional working tract bloodstream.

If I weren’t in the same venue with Buckwheat when most of this went down, he would later recant it to me at some point during the day or night. So you’re either hearing it directly from me, or from Buckwheat but through me. And I’m going to keep it chronological. I’ll start back on the first day of sales training class. No, strike that. I’m going to start about two weeks before that. That’s when I technically ran into Buckwheat for the first time though we didn’t exchange any words. We were both ordered to pee into an opaque, plastic cup at an offsite trailer that deals in that type of thing on behest of the Stone Park Bugle Human Resources Department. The point being they needed to weed out the weed users from the dope fiends. I didn’t qualify as either. I wasn’t so sure about Buckwheat. I showed up to jump through this contrived hiring hoop in standard workplace attire—nice dark pants, crisp white button down shirt, and a Windsor-knotted red silk necktie. Buckwheat was clad in frayed, azure dungarees and a purple Batman shirt—and this was fifteen years before it was acceptable for people over eleven to wear Batman shirts. The only other thing I remember is looking over at Buckwheat while we waited on padded stools and he returned the look with some of the most grotesque, bloodshot eyes I had ever seen. I didn’t know why he was there. I don’t think he knew why he was there. I for certain didn’t think we were both two new recruits for the Stone Park Bugle inside sales department.

Expecting to emerge from this bit of degrading tomfoolery with flying colors, I did. Though I was floored when I walked into that Stone Park Bugle sales training class that first day to find Buckwheat already seated in the room with two other women. But I didn’t realize it was Buckwheat. His eyes were sharp and white, and he sat erect in a two-piece navy business suit with light blue dress shirt and Stone Park Bugle necktie (which they sold in the Stone Park Bugle fortress gift shop on the main floor). It was indeed rare that I wasn’t the first one in the room, but I’d gotten lost when a part-time security guard told me to go to the second floor instead of the twelfth, where I was supposed to be. When nobody came to meet me, a mailroom boy set me straight and directed me upstairs ten more flights.

I sat in the training room for several minutes before I ultimately realized Buckwheat was the same person from the other padded stool at the pee-processing trailer. He had this sometimes-jittery right leg that would go into spasm every five minutes for no reason. It happened on the stool in the pee trailer, and it happened again a few minutes after I sat down next to him in the training room. That’s how I connected the dots. I’d have been a great homicide investigator, I always thought.

Buckwheat was very gregarious making both of the women in the room laugh. I wasn’t sure what the story was about as I came in at the tail end. All I heard him say was, "And that’s how we do it in Berwyn!"

That drew a hearty laugh from both of the women at the same time. Both of the women were in their early twenties, like Buckwheat and me. They were dressed nice with light colored silk and satin blouses tucked into knee length dark skirts. I don’t see many colors too well, so I’ll just have to leave it as light and dark. Even if I say I’m wearing a red necktie, I’m really only guessing.

One of the women—why am I calling them women—they weren’t dead yet. One of the girls had dark hair down to her shoulder blades, and the other was yellow blonde cropped just past the neck. It looked like a natural yellow blonde. But telling real hair from fake hair was another skill I lacked. Digger was the dark haired one, and I’d give her the nod in the Who Would I Rather department. The yellow blonde told us to call her BJ She sat with what I would best describe as an uninhibited posture.

Quickly after the brief first-name-only introductions, a whistling, skipping man entered the room and closed the door. We were on the twelfth floor of the Stone Park Bugle fortress at the center of town where the indoctrination and training of all new inside advertising employees took place. The goateed man said nothing for several minutes merely skipping and whistling back and forth around the room while he set up computers, arranged his desk, and dimmed the lights. He pulled down a large white screen affixed to the ceiling behind his desk and fired up an overhead projector. On the screen in standard newsprint font it said:

Welcome to the Stone Park Bugle!

The four of us sales trainees stared at the message waiting for something else to happen, but the man just plopped into a chair behind his computer terminal, which was at a desk atop a station riser eighteen inches higher than floor level, and began poking something out. He was still whistling. I finally identified the tune. It was Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Though he was blowing with a lot of creative license.

Finally, after seven minutes of whistling and finger pecking, the man finally spoke to us without looking up from his computer.

Who here knows Juan Marichal?

We looked at one another clueless. After a long pause, Buckwheat replied.

Was he the guy that collected our pee at the trailer?

C’mon. The man sounded irritated. Right hander. Nine time all-star. Won twenty or more games six times.

The clues did not help. Digger and BJ both shifted uncomfortably in their office supply store bulk order secretary seats.

The man stood and made eye contact with each one of us for an eerily long time. I think he thought that would somehow elicit a correct response.

Silence.

I want you to think of me as your Juan Marichal, but only when we’re inside this room for the next three weeks. Outside of these walls I’m ‘Mr. Clutch.’ If we ever go to a ball game together, you can call me ‘Leroy’.

The next hour and forty-five minutes were a blur—primarily because Mr. Clutch launched straight into some of the driest, most bewildering factoids about advertising, sales goals, quotas, and the history of the Stone Park Bugle advertising department anyone had ever uttered. Every word came right out of his head without referring to a single text, cue card, or visual aid. Every factoid was glutted with baseball metaphors or interspersed with stories about people who were seemingly baseball legends all before your time.

And if you’re up at the plate with the bases loaded with the five o’clock real estate deadline staring you in the face, what do you do?

Mr. Clutch looked directly toward the girls on the left side of the room. With his gaze diverted, Buckwheat took the opportunity to pantomime that he was, well, stimulating himself with his hand. It was clownishly over the top even by pantomime standards. I looked over at the girls who were now looking at Buckwheat instead of Mr. Clutch. They both giggled. Buckwheat not only had himself in the palm of his hand, he had Digger and BJ, too.

Nobody? Mr. Clutch asked.

Mr. Clutch shifted his eyeballs over to Buckwheat and me. As if rehearsed a thousand times, Buckwheat quickly transformed his arm throttling pleasuring mechanics into a full-bore yawn and stretch.

Okay, I get it. That’s a lot of information. Mr. Clutch said while making a lot of hand gestures of his own as if he was a third base coach. Let’s clear the dugout for about fifteen, then we’ll reassemble here, do a quick review, then get into devouring this beast. We’ll also get to know each other a little better, so get ready.

Mr. Clutch placed his hand on one of the computer terminals placed at each of our training room cubicles. Across the top of each terminal just above the display screen the word VARMINT was molded into the hard plastic casing.

By the way, this is the brain of the team. And when we’re out of here in six weeks, it will be your brain, too.

And with that, Mr. Clutch stroked his goatee, began whistling The Star Spangled Banner, and skipped out of the training room.

Six weeks, I thought. I could have sworn he said three weeks only a minute ago.

I don’t know about you guys, Buckwheat said, but I need a drink!

I think there’s a coffee shop on the main floor. I said.

"No. I need a drink!"

Oh. I don’t think they have anything but coffee. Maybe juice. Me, I’m a coffee man. Yeah, I guess you could say I brush my teeth—

On mark, when I started to speak at length, the girls left the room. They whispered to one another on the other side of the training room glass, giggled, and BJ looked back, directly past me, to take another gander at Buckwheat before they disappeared around the corner out of view.

Nice gams on the blonde, huh?

Buckwheat seemed a tad irked that I didn’t immediately validate his statement. He rolled his seat closer.

"You know, gams—legs. She’s got great legs. Pretty. Good name, too. Anyway, I’m all about the gams. As far as I’m concerned, women start at the ankle and end at the mid-thigh."

I pretended that I didn’t want to talk about it citing that I feared the room might be bugged. But really, I didn’t even notice the blonde in that way. I thought Digger was really pretty. She wasn’t of European lineage, but I wasn’t sure what she was. Either way, I was just trying to stay on the straight and narrow at least on Day One. This was the first career tract type of job I ever had. I needed to maintain whatever type of focus my usually wandering mind could under the dry training material and hot girls in close proximity circumstances.

I’m going to run downstairs for a coffee. I interjected. You want one?

Buckwheat stood up, removed his suit coat, and draped it on the back of his chair.

"Dude, Browntown Lounge is just across the street. I’m going to get a beer. You coming?"

It’s only ten o’clock.

I know! I’m already four beers behind in the day!

I think I just want to get a coffee downstairs.

Suit yourself. But, hey, if I don’t make it back in time, tell Leroy I’m in the can with some type of lower distress. Make sound effects if you have to.

He said we should only call him Leroy if we’re together at a ball game.

Well, I feel like I am.

Buckwheat dashed out the door smacking his lips. He was hunched over at the waist taking humungous strides. He’d already had a ten-dollar bill plucked from his pocket into his left hand and held it up just below his mouth. My immediate take was that he assumed this position before—and very likely at some point early in the morning before the training class even got underway.

I shuffled downstairs to the coffee shop. The coffee shop was called Wet Ink Spot as indicated by the flickering, tiny neon sign just above the entrance door. It was cavernous. It was also really more of a cafeteria than a coffee shop, given the number of stainless steel buckets filled up with steaming helpings of edible coagulates. But of the fifteen or so downtrodden souls already seated inside with their skulls palmed in one hand, they didn’t apparently move much food. Everyone had a large Styrofoam cup of the house brew. It smelled like burning sulfur. I got a large.

Seated at the cash register, an inner city girl with a clear disdain for being awake tugged my dollar bill from my hand as soon as I plucked it from my wallet and slapped a dime into my hand.

Hee go. She said.

Alright. Thanks. You’re fast.

Her eyelids drooped a little more. She said nothing else.

I took the same elevator back up to the training room floor and started to notice a few things, which wasn’t my usual M.O. This Stone Park Bugle building was old. I wasn’t sure when it was built, but the elevator had one of those pull down seats for an elevator operator to sit on. The floor selection buttons were more mechanical in nature than electronic. Once the door clanked shut, there was a noticeable lurch in the ascent that caused a significant amount of my uncovered sulfur brew to spill out onto my shirtsleeve cuff. The lurch was probably always there, but I didn’t notice it before in the absence of scalding liquid.

I returned to the training room and sat alone for the next hour and ten minutes waiting for somebody, anybody, to return. Finally, BJ and Digger tiptoed in. My back was to the door and I guessed they didn’t want me to notice them. As it happened, I spun around in my chair out of boredom and managed to see them just before they sat down. Had I not taken that random spin, I could have sat there thumb wrestling myself for quite some time before I even knew they were there. Something was different about them. They had switched outfits! BJ was now wearing Digger’s clothes, and Digger was wearing BJ’s clothes. They also smelled like cigarettes and cologne spray samples.

Hey, did you guys change clothes? I asked.

Weirdo! said Digger.

Perv-o! added BJ

They sat cross-legged in their seats, huddled together, repeatedly rolled their eyes, and spoke in whispers intent that I wouldn’t hear anything.

Finally, Buckwheat returned. Right on his heels was the whistling, skipping Mr. Clutch. Buckwheat shot me a thumbs-up with his right hand and plopped into his seat. Mr. Clutch slapped me on the shoulder as he went up to the front of the room towards his desk.

"Hey, you should’ve joined us over at Browntown. We were like the proverbial one-two punch heart of the batting order sampling some quarter drafts of a new micro-brew out of Boystown called Sausagefesters. I saw the girls out on the street and told them we could just extend the break into a whole hour or so. I didn’t want you guys getting burnt out on your first day. I’m throwing a lot of curve balls up here."

My man, Leroy, can really put them down! Buckwheat said.

Oh, don’t sell yourself short. Mr. Clutch said. "Plus, he really knows his game; huge Pale Hose fan, this guy!"

Mr. Clutch tussled the top of Buckwheat’s already mussed up hair then sat at his trainer’s desk perch.

I just didn’t know, I said. I’ve been in here drinking coffee the whole time.

No one said anything, but I could feel them giving me a wedgie with their eyes.

Hey, you two look like you have each other’s clothes on from before, am I right? Buckwheat asked the girls. "That’s hot!"

They giggled. BJ playfully wrinkled up her nose and jerked her head side-to-side to force her blonde locks to ripple around her shoulders.

Do you like? she asked.

Hell, yeah! On, off, swapped…however, me like!

Buckwheat slapped his knee and laughed. The girls laughed.

Who here knows our mission statement? Mr. Clutch interrupted.

I guessed we were all of the age that none of us knew what a mission statement even was. The lack of a response from anyone proved me correct.

Our mission, Mr. Clutch continued, is to provide customers excellent service, exceed any earthy expectations, and enhance the customer-merchant relationship to every immeasurable degree.

He repeated it twice more then stood up to look at our faces and determine any impact that it had made upon us.

Okay, clearly nothing registered. It’s a mouthful, I know. I don’t expect you to remember it right now, but you will need to recite it in order to graduate out on to the floor and start earning. But maybe if you think of it like this. You’re at the plate—you’re the mission. You’ve got the bases loaded with excellent service, earthly expectations, and the customer-merchant relationship. It’s a little mnemonic device. I happen to use it for almost everything. Suddenly, everything clicks. You’ll see.

Mr. Clutch pretended he was stroking a sweet, left-handed hitter’s home run with his outstretched arms then sat down and poked at his computer keyboard.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Digger slide a tape dispenser off of her cubicle desk and into her purse. She moved fluidly, quick, and then sat in complete stillness. I’d seen boa constrictors on the television dismiss rabbits in a similar manner, but never with as much confidence.

MOLDING CLAY

After a week, we’d been exposed to more lectures about Field of Dreams and Bull Durham than we had about anything relating to advertising or what our essential job functions may be. Mr. Clutch would slip into three different character voices at the same time when lifting complete scenes from the films to help flesh out his analogies a little further. He belonged either in the Yankees front office or on a stage in Vegas; I couldn’t decide.

Buckwheat, who was only enraptured in the training when Mr. Clutch went off on a more theatrical tangent, wore the same suit and tie every day. Though he did manage to change his shirt once.

One by one, office supply items continued to disappear from Digger’s cubicle. By the following Monday, only the VARMINT remained. Digger convinced Mr. Clutch that he should start inquiring with the