Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 39
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
Ben lived by.
Along these lines, he was also thinking that life was mostly
a little of this and a little of that: or, as Will might say, a mix of
Yin and Yang!
And the story of what had happened the night Ben was
watching The Uninvited and that high school kid crashed his
Camaro into the side of the Ailing’s South City home was a case
in point.
Fiction
side of the Ailing’s garage instead. Ben and others on the scene
had to had hold the two youths apart until the police arrived
and took the delinquents o昀昀 to their respective cells at city jail.
Next day Ben 昀椀led a claim with his homeowner’s insurance. They got a brand new state of the art garage door out of
the deal, and a three-day all-expense paid vacation in Napa
wine country at a motel with pool and a meal stipend while the
new door and power box was installed at their home.
Three weeks prior to the incident, Ben remembered
returning home after a long day of showing homes in the City.
It was late summer and after dark. When Ben pulled up into
the driveway of his house at 349 Arbor Drive he was startled
to see pinpoints of light emanating o昀昀 the garage door from
inside the garage. (Later, he’d tell friends and family it was like
a “constellation of stars sprinkled across my goddamn garage!”)
This was Ben’s gamble with all these new forces at play at
the Sombrero: In spite of the increasing rowdiness associated
with his boys’ Hole In the Wall shows, in spite of these strange
Russian friends of his middle boy, Ben, Jr., and in spite of Milton
Ackley pressuring him to sell his property, Ben’s hope was the
Sombrero would weather the storm.
What had happened was his boys had been harpooning
the wooden door from inside the garage with a boxing speed
bag that had formerly been attached by a steel rod to a standing
platform. Ben had bought the speed bag as part of his training
tools to get the boys in 昀椀ghting shape. Will had knocked the
boxing bag o昀昀 its stand with an uppercut punch. Little Jerry, the
wildest of his three young boys, had picked up the speed bag.
Then, using the pointed end of the metal rod the speed bag was
still attached to, his youngest had chucked it directly into the
garage door. It stuck through the wood like a giant dart. Will
and Ben, Jr. had been so impressed by the success of their little
brother’s feat, that they had followed suit—taking turns harpooning the door from inside the garage a good dozen times
until Papa Ben pulled up in the driveway. Then, like racoons in
front of a 昀氀ashlight, the little shits had scattered out of the
garage, raced back inside the house and jumped into their beds,
feigning sleep. Ben had pulled all three of them out of their hidey-holes, spanked them thoroughly with a belt and sent them
to bed, warning the brawling now bawling brats never do such a
thing again.
Ben’s instincts, his natural inclination had always been to
play these situations to advantage, or, at the very least, bunker
down in hope of a brighter day. Like the aforementioned story
of his twice-damaged garage door, Ben was a believer that most
things in life came out in the wash. Then again, he was beginning
to wonder if maybe things weren’t getting a bit out of hand at
the Sombrero. He could feel a bug of doubt working in his mind.
Myra had been next door visiting with a neighbor down
the block, the old widow Mrs. Kelly, and she had had the same
thought Ben had when she saw the pinpoints of light emanating from their garage door. Years later, Myra had even made
light of it by claiming she could make out the pattern of the Big
Dipper on their door.
No risk, no reward!
Taking a last slow draw from his Marlboro (and hoping
there was another pack of Marlboro’s in the Sombrero’s cigarette vending machine), Ben wondered if maybe it wasn’t time
to question his hard-headed instincts. Maybe there were just
too many balls moving through the in昀椀eld right now. Maybe,
for once in his life, it was time to cave. Sell the whole damn kit
and kaboodle after all: and he and Myra sail o昀昀 into the sunset!
Perhaps old John Fitzsimmons—the prior owner of this
building—was right: The days of real small businessmen like
them were numbered. How could they ever stand up against
the big insurance companies, the big corporations, the fucking
Russian mob?
Perhaps the luck that had served him so well in life was
running out on him this time around.
The Yang of this story is when the driver crashed his car
into the side of the house, he also took out the Ailing’s already
damaged garage door. When Ben felt the jolt of car crash into
his home, his initial thought was it was the big one: the earthquake he’d been waiting for since moving to California. But
when he opened his front door, he discovered two high school
kids wrestling in the dark on the small front lawn in front of the
house, 昀椀ghting over a girl. One high school kid had been making
advances towards the other’s girlfriend. When this kid 昀氀ed the
party on his motorcycle, the other kid had chased after him
with the Camaro. When the driver of the Camaro attempted to
run over the driver of the motorcycle as they came down Arbor
Drive hill, he lost control of his vehicle and plunged it into the
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