Onward Through the Fog

By Ron Cook

Included here are eight short stories of drama, comedy, adventure, and a memoir. The two mystery novelettes are The Great Pearl Alley Caper and The Girl Next Door. The short stories include a wannabe beatnik/hippie/punk, a frustrated writer, a lovesick coworker, a remembrance of childhood, and a peace-seeking individual in a no

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Cook Studios
• Release date: Nov 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989212835

Book preview

ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG

Short Stories & Novelettes

Third Edition | October 2023

Ron Cook Studios Publishing

www.roncook-author.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Copyright © 2023 by Ron Cook

These stories are works of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Trade Paperback ISBN 979-8-9892128-2-8

eBook ISBN 979-8-9892128-3-5

Printed in the United States of America

To Stella

For all your help and your love of mysteries.

Acknowledgments

I find it quite impossible to thank everyone who encouraged me and shared their expertise and suggestions over the years. This book, as well as many of my other writings, was started over 30 years ago when I went to San José State University to learn a new trade. For me, it was a mid-life career change from blue collar to white collar.

I entered a certificate program to learn technical writing. That program required me to be an English major and go through all the standard courses pertaining to that major. Two of the courses were in creative writing, mainly the writing of fiction. Several of the following stories were written then, and some others were started at that time.

The instructor who encouraged me most was Professor Rew. I owe a lot to her teaching and kind words about my work. It kept me going.

I also want to thank Left Coast Crime for the annual mystery author and fan convention. The 2017 event was in Honolulu, and during that time I was finally able to finish the last story in this book.

And there’s my wife, Stella, a long-time mystery book fan, who has also been my long-time fan. (I’m her long-time fan.) Her encouragement and help has kept me typing away.

Contents

Charles, Charlie, and Chuck

The Whispering Muse

A Short Love Scene

Any Port in the Storm

The Great Pearl Alley Caper (Novelette)

Jimmie

The Man in the Boat

Hari Krishna

Bed and Bored

The Girl Next Door (Novelette)

CHARLES, CHARLIE, AND CHUCK

PART ONE

Charles

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the Negro streets at

dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient

heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in

the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high

sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of

cold-water flats floating across the tops of

cities contemplating jazz...

- Allen Ginsberg

Man, those words send me.

Send you? Hell, Charles, you get caught with that book, you’ll be sent out on your ass. The Dean wouldn’t think twice about expelling you. He’s already tossed out a couple of hipsters and confiscated and burned their books.

Burned them?

Come on, Charles, you’ve heard about the arrests and all. The cops say its pornography. We know it’s not, but they’ve already cracked a few beatnik skulls!

Geez, Willy, I read those lines, and I feel Ginsberg’s talking to me. He’s in the groove, Jackson.

Yeah, right. If Ginsberg’s talking to you, don’t listen too hard, or you’ll turn into a faggot like that weird uncle of yours.

Can’t happen. I like chicks too much.

If you have to read it, do like me. Keep that book hidden!

San Francisco, 1957

A pilgrimage is underway. Once again, like in the days of the gold rush and the roaring 20s, the City’s notoriety is drawing the faithful, the different, and the outcast, to another Bohemian Mecca. Artists, poets, and musicians journey to the West with their silent boo-inspired prayers of enlightenment and discovery. They pursue their journeys with hope that their talents could bring about their own notoriety, allowing them to be self-sufficient and artistically fulfilled. To get there, many renounced their past, their upbringing, their middle-class backgrounds, to suffer for their arts. No worldly possessions on this journey.

Yes, this place, this San Francisco, has become a magnet. It attracts not only the starving legitimate artists, but also the Bohemian wanna-be's, those who feel they can fit in, those who want to fit in, those who want to be part of a scene even though they can’t create great abstract paintings, write meaningful, straight-from-the-soul poetry, or blow cool sounds with those ultra-cool jazz cats.

Charles is young. Or rather, Charles is naive. His gentle 21-year-old personality shows in the twinkle in his light hazel eyes and the Mona Lisa half smile on his thin lips. His baby-fine blond hair was cut just long enough and combed just well enough to look rebelliously unkempt. His goatee--also blond--was barely long enough to be visible, if you looked closely enough. His clothes were the latest in blue jeans and grey sweatshirts, and his sockless feet rested rather uncomfortably in black penny-loafers—without the pennies.

Ever since starting college, Charles wanted to be an artist, so he painted. He painted energetically and often. He felt he painted well, but didn’t paint great. He showed some talent, but hadn’t learned how to express it. He lacked experience--life experience. He coaxed his thick, colorful globs of oil paints into what he believed were texturally expressive compositions full of meaning, a meaning he couldn’t define, but hoped would awe an adoring public. However, after showing his work in a student exhibit and overhearing people say he lacked feeling, or that he couldn't convey meaning properly, or that he needed to suffer a little to be an artist, Charles took it to heart and decided to head for San Francisco.

He began his journey late one Friday afternoon after an extended color and design class and lab where he was trying to put the finishing touches on a Pollack-style meandering and on a young pretty sophomore he had his eyes on since the beginning of the semester. She left at five; he left at 5:01, following her a short distance until he saw her latch onto some jock in a letter jacket. Eight weeks through the fall semester, and he still hadn't talked to her. Now it looked to be too late.

Charles walked to the San Jose State College student union and met up with his best friend, Willy, who was dozing at a table in the study area. Willy was an English major who hoped to make his mark writing a modern epic poem--a Beowulf of the Beats, or so he thought. They had met in the back row of a lower-division art history course the year before and immediately struck up a friendship, mainly because they were both trying so hard to be Beats.

Willy. Hey, William Shakespeare. Wake up, Charles said, pushing on Willy's shoulder.

Willy's head fell off his folded arms and hit the table with a dull bonk.

Ow, man. That hurt. Jeez, man, I've been waiting here for two hours. Where've you been, man? Huh, man? Uh, wait, Willy continued without a pause. Don't tell me, man. You hung around waiting to see if that Beat sophomore chick would notice you again. Right, man?

Charles gave an embarrassed half smile and looked down.

Man, what'd I tell you, Willy scolded, half seriously and half joking. You got to talk to her first, man. Did you say anything to her today? No. Huh, man. Yeah, well shit or get off the pot. Wait too long and it’ll be too late. But do it later anyway, man, let's go to the city.

Charles had spoken about the girl in his art class to Willy more often than Willy really wanted to hear. Willy had never seen her, but he felt he could pick her out of a line-up really easy just from the numerous detailed descriptions Charles had given. Willy knew she was nineteen, that she had long, dark brown hair--almost black--that she wore pulled back in a ponytail, that her brown eyes had a slight oriental slant to them, that she was around five-foot-six, and that she had a Kim Novak figure partially hidden by a bulky, grey sweat shirt and partially accentuated by very tight button-fly Levi's. But what really set her off from other college girls of her type was the small gold nose ring that pierced her right nostril. This non-conformist bit of fashion made her all the more appealing to Charles, but it also scared him. It made him uncomfortable, so he never talked to her; he only stared longingly at her from across the class room.

Charles and Willy left the student union and walked four blocks off campus to the residential area where Charles parked his new-used, 1950, four-door Nash Ambassador. After a nervous minute trying to get the starter to catch, with relief they headed out First Street to the Bayshore Highway and turned north. The hour and a half trip gave them plenty of time to think about checking out places to live and to plan an exciting evening with the Beats in and around North Beach.

Both had recently read Jack Kerouac's On The Road and were feeling anxious to meet up with characters like in the book.

Of the two of them Charles was only slightly interested in poetry and had never been to a reading, but tonight, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti are appearing at the Onion, and it’s possible Kerouac himself might show up. That alone would be worth the exorbitant two-dollar admission.

The speedy, burgundy-colored Nash flew the two friends up the Bayshore highway and through the early evening’s bay fog. They made their way by the Southern Pacific maintenance yard, with its giant steam engines quietly resting on the spokes of a giant turntable. They passed the Cow Palace, then Seals Stadium, home of the San Francisco Seals baseball team. They looked up and laughed to see the big neon Hamms Beer glass sign fill up to overflowing, then empty and start all over again. After passing the civic center, they were ready to climb the windy hills then coast down to embrace cool, cool North Beach.

They searched for a parking place for twenty minutes and finally found one about three blocks off Broadway on upper Grant, Charles and Willy begin walking to Columbus Street to where City Lights Bookstore is located. They have about two hours to kill until the readings begin at the Onion, and the first stop for the evening is the bookstore. Perhaps they'll see some beatniks there. Perhaps they'll meet some cute beatnik girls there. Perhaps they'll buy a book.

They enter.

I wonder where they keep the literature and poetry, Charles says. Nothing here but... Socialist writings, Marxist writings, Bolshevik history? Must be a Communist bookstore.

Nah, whispers Willy. This place is owned by Ferlinghetti, himself.

Really? Who’s Ferlinghetti?

Uh… Coney Island of the Mind. You didn’t read it?

Don’t have it yet. I kept re-reading On The Road. Hey, that sign says art, literature and poetry are all downstairs. Oh, music too.

Downstairs. A below-street basement smelling of mildewed paper, mildewed carpet, and cat piss.

Neat. There's some records, Charles was thinking to himself. Maybe I'll find some Johnny Ray or Julie London. Uh...rats.

Any good ones? Willy says.

I've never heard of most of these. Getz...Coleman... Coltrane...Davis? You know these?

Just Coltrane. Horn player, I think.

Fifteen minutes later they emerge from the bookstore, Charles happy with his 75-cent purchase of the new Ferlinghetti book, Coney Island of the Mind, and unhappy that they didn't see any real beatniks in there. The clerk didn't even look like one.

Man, it's time for a drink, Charles said. Let's go to Vesuvio's.

Next door to the bookstore is Vesuvio's, a bar noted for its Bohemian atmosphere and thick smoke, walls covered with local art, and floors that crunch under your feet from the layer of spent peanut shells. The mezzanine is the best place to sit. You can see outside over the street and inside over the bar crowd.

Charles and Willy seat themselves next to the railing directly over the bar. They each order Hamms, light up a couple of Chesterfields, and settle in to soak up the atmosphere.

Sitting next to them are another couple of college guys that look like they’re also out for an evening of beat revelry. Behind them and next to the window sit two young ladies. They aren't beatniks either, but they are kind of cute, in a blond sorority chick way. All the guys at the two tables are staring at them. There's a lone guy by the other window. What's he drinking? Could he be a beatnik? What's he got on? Sweat shirt, jeans, and... Penny-loafers with no socks. The guy's probably a frat-rat from Stanford.

How 'bout downstairs? Nah. No one around the bar but students and a few winos. Not a proper beard in the place.

An hour