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Kristina Riggle Short Stories |
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"Tony Deranged"
We called him Tony Deranged. "I used to be ranged," he'd say, grinning through his red Brillo pad beard, and gripping his longneck bottle. "Now I'm DE-ranged." He would always squeal the "DE" like the "Yee" in "Yeehaw." He was in my tavern every night, sitting across the bar from me like a patient across a doctor's desk. Tony Deranged worked at the scrapyard and shouted his conversations. He told me once that all that scrap metal crashing was "noisy as the Devil's New Year's Eve" and he'd been going deaf for years, a decibel at a time. Tony liked to talk about his problems with frigid women and the "kiss ass sumbitches" who supervised at the yard. He even complained with a grin, as if proud to be amusing us with his tales of woe. He only grew serious if the barroom conversation turned to family. Then he'd grumble about "Fuckin' Petey" and order another beer, even if he had a full one sitting right in front of him. He was a regular for sure. Every afternoon after work he'd come in and load up with a few longnecks, then weave his way along the sidewalk toward his apartment down the block. His car would remain parked at the side of the tavern until I closed up in the wee hours. I presumed he would go get it in the morning and take it to work, because the next afternoon he'd be driving up again in that ancient gold Monte Carlo. We knew everything we needed to know about Tony Deranged, our own personal barfly. That day, Tony Deranged, like all the rest, pivoted on his stool when the door opened. Usually he would nod at the visitor and rotate back to the bar, his beer, and me. But this time, he stayed pointed toward the door, fixated on the newcomer. None of us knew him. I could tell that by the way we all glanced around at each other, exchanging blank looks and shrugs. The visitor squinted in the blackness, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows. He spied Tony, who straightened up a little on his stool, still not taking his eyes off the new guy. He wore the same kind of thing as we all did, jeans and a T-shirt advertising some NASCAR driver. That's when I noticed something, as he approached the dim circle of light cast by the lamp over the bar. He had that same reddish curly hair as Tony Deranged. Tony spoke first as he approached, in that overly loud voice of the half-deaf. "Petey. I got nothin' to say to you." He turned back to the beer finally. His voice had a hurt sound, like a little kid when someone's been teasing him about his weight or his glasses. The name "Petey" bounced around in my head for a few moments, until I remembered Tony's grumbles of "Fuckin' Petey." Just then the jukebox stopped. Every so often someone would pump a quarter in when the silence got to be too much. "Renegade" by Styx had just wound down. A guy out in the bar cleared his throat, and the customers tried to concentrate on their beers and not on Tony and the stranger. Tony caught my eye in a pleading kind of way. I rooted around in my pocket and handed him a quarter. Tony heaved himself off the stool and lumbered over toward the jukebox, pretending to study all his options, hitting the button to page through the selections. Petey looked up at me the way family members look at each other when their sister or brother is exasperating them. His look said "You see what I have to deal with?" with a weary, resigned sag in the eyes. He walked over to Tony at the jukebox in a dark corner of the bar. It was hard to hear what they were saying, except for Tony's deafness sometimes getting the better of his voice control. So I caught things like, "shoulda been mine" and "screwed me over." I served a couple of beers out in the bar, something I usually don't bother with. But I was trying not to stare. Still, this much was clear: Petey was trying to get Tony to leave and Tony wouldn't. Tony finally stalked over to the barstool again and sat back down with a growl and a glare at the man who looked vaguely like him. Petey followed and settled down, one barstool removed from Tony. The empty barstool served as neutral territory in an old familial war. "I can't believe you're still bringing that up." Petey massaged his temples, leaning one elbow on the bar. "I didn't bring up shit. You're the one who came barging in here. I don't want you in my house and I don't want you in my bar. Backstabbing sumbitch." "Look, you're the one who left home and shut us out. I tried to help. I offered to get you a job, or have you forgotten that?" Tony snorted and sneered. "Gee, thanks. Offer to get me a job after you took the one that shoulda been mine? The one that Old Man Davis promised me? How big of you." As I continued to wipe a clean counter, I tried to inspect Petey more closely. I noticed despite the old jeans and t-shirt, his fingernails were clean and trimmed, and his stomach was flat instead of bloated with beer. He wore a fine watch. A quick glance up at his head revealed a gold chain around his neck. Fortune had smiled on Petey. "I didn't force you to get drunk and oversleep. I needed a paycheck, too, and I was there and awake and sober. Hell yes, I took the job. For God's sake, I can't turn back time." Petey slapped his hand flat on the bar, and then shook his head, grimacing as though in pain. "Why won't you let it go? It's been what, 15 years? Anthony, I've got to talk to you, now let's go somewhere else." Tony Deranged just shrugged and turned his eyes forward, toward the selection of liquor bottles arrayed on my back shelf. "If you won't leave, I'll tell you right here." Silence. Tony had not selected a song. He was in fact using the quarter to draw patterns in the spilled beer and condensation on the bar. Petey stood up straight and took a breath. "Ma died last night." Tony stopped swirling the quarter and swiveled his stool, looking up directly at Petey's face for the first time since he walked in. He tried to put his beer down, but only caught the edge of the bar, so the bottle crashed to the floor with a clank, breaking in two. Everybody jumped and gasped, realizing how intently they had been watching, and made a conscious effort to turn away again. I walked around the bar with a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the broken glass. I had to stand at Tony's elbow to do it. "What do you mean?" Tony quavered. "I've been writing to you for a month that she's been sick. You haven't been reading my letters?" Tony turned away and didn't say anything. Petey moved to the closest barstool, violating the neutral territory. "Jesus. I knew you wouldn't write back, but I thought you'd at least read one of them." I took the broken glass back around the bar to dump it, then without saying a word, I got Petey a beer. I don't know why exactly. It's the only thing I could think of to do. He absentmindedly took a sip, as if it had been there all along. "Petey, why didn't you call me? Why didn't you come find me like you did tonight? Dammit, to not tell me before now…" "Last I knew you didn't have a phone. I don't know, man. Maybe I was hoping I wouldn't have to say anything, that Ma would just get better. Anyway, I figured you'd tell me to go to hell." "Bullshit," Tony said, his voice was empty of anger. He paused. "She's really gone." Petey took a breath and looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah. You coming to the funeral?" Tony winced at the word funeral. "Yeah. Guess so. Where?" Petey said "It's in the obituaries today." He started to fish around in his pockets and hopped down off the barstool. I looked at him and waved my hand. Never mind. On the house. He nodded at me and headed for the door. Tony looked down at his beer as the door opened. Petey paused and looked back at the hulking back of his brother for a moment, then went out into the sunshine, putting a hand over his eyes to shield them. After the door swung shut, Tony hopped down from the stool himself and took three quick steps toward the exit, then veered sharp right toward the men's room. The normal lazy buzz of murmured conversation resumed among the working class stiffs out in the bar. Five minutes later he came back, finished the last third of his beer in a gulp and pointed at me with the bottle. I got him a fresh one, which he gripped with both hands. Someone started up the jukebox. Tony Deranged only came in once more after that, a couple days later, dressed in a dark suit and a dress shirt with a collar that had gone faintly yellow. "You OK?" I asked him, as I popped the top on his beer. He shrugged and sniffed. "I got laid off." I responded with the only words of solace that leapt to mind. "Shit, man." Then, observing he'd just come from his mother's funeral, I added, "Today?" "Double-goddamn-whammy." He gulped the beer and then raked his free hand over his face. "Jesus." "Petey's gonna give me a job." "Your brother?" One of the guys down the bar chimed in, "Fucking Petey?" "Yep," Tony Deranged said with a loud exhale as he studied his beer. "Fucking Petey." ### This story was first published in Espresso Fiction, July 2005. ( www.espressofiction.com ) |
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