Bluestone's Blog

“Hole in the World” 

EXCERPT ONE

Northern Wisconsin, 1999

 I was just passing through. At least that was my intent. But the car broke down outside of town and now I’m still here waiting. I’m trying to get up to the Great White American North—Hovland, Minnesota, to be exact. Going to meet with my partner Stuart Moser and his wife Ginny, a.k.a. Virginia Burns, and pick up my final share of the take from the twenty-seven bank jobs me and Stu pulled off over the last eight years—should be around eight hundred K. 

Ginny and Stu have been up there for over a year, laundering our money through the Indian casinos a little bit at a time. They buy a bunch of chips and gamble for a few days and then cash-in a big load on their way out. Works like a charm they say.

After I settle up with them; I’m out of the life for good. Get me some nice wheels and travel around the country like Jack fucking Kerouac. Roll all over hell like a goddamn tumbleweed. But every time I call those two lovebirds at their brand new log home in the woods up there, I get the answering machine. And I’m beginning to think they‘re not picking up on purpose. If I think about it too much, it drives me nuts.

So I’m here waiting in an upstairs room of a boarding house because I just don’t like motels. Maybe it’s the memories of all the weird shit I’ve done in motel rooms, hard to say for sure. 

The good people of Carlson Chevrolet Olds Geo have ordered the parts I need for the ABS system on the Olds 98 I bought from a coke dealer back in Chi-town. He took it in as payment on an overdue account and sold it to me for four large, half of book.

This boarding house reminds me in some strange way of a place I crashed in down in New Orleans, a long time ago. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the old metal-framed bed with the faded yellow quilt and the military-style mattress. Or the paint-speckled dresser. Or maybe the little yellow Formica table and the two square-back wood chairs over in the corner by the windows where you can look out at Ogden Avenue. If you press your face against the window on the left and look down past the parking lot, you can see a sign that says Mama’s Bar. Next door to Mama’s there’s this little house with a jungle for a yard. ANTIQUES it says in black hand-painted letters on an old red serving platter nailed to a tree on the far corner of the jungle of a yard. I call the whole deal New Orleans Corner. In Northern Wisconsin. In late winter. And the weather ain’t too bad.

But they’re taking too goddamn long with the car. First it was the diagnosis; then there was the wait while they sent to Detroit for a new master cylinder. A rare one, I guess. And now they tell me it’s not going to get here until next week. That one got to me. That and the answering machine up there in the woods. It’s Ginny’s voice, her silly little bird voice: “You have reached 462-3952. No one can come to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number and we’ll call you right back.” After you’ve heard that a few too many times, you need a drink. But drinking always seems to lead to trouble for me.

Most of the time I just lie here on the bed staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, pretending they’re lines on a map depicting the roads I’m going to travel down after I get my money from the Mosers. Sometimes I look in the mirror on the dresser and see too many gray hairs and too much flab around the middle. The eyes look tired. But how can you resist Mama’s Bar? God knows I try, if there is a God. 

Believe me, I know the trouble that can happen. 

I just need to get out of this town, get out of this whole part of the world—not start drinking and meeting people. 

I know what can happen, believe me. 

But you know, time just inches along and pretty soon I just really need to meet Mama and feel the sting of alcohol on my tongue and the heat of it sloshing in my belly. 

And, y’know, what bad could happen in a place called Mama’s, anyway? The more I think about it, the better it sounds. So I get my jacket and head down the stairs to the outside world. 

(To be continued)

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