This Footstool Earth. John Zeugner

felt his knees buckle, was aware that the wide boards of the barracks floor had risen strangely to embrace him. LP neatly flipped the handle in his hand so that the mallet end was now in striking position. Waldo cocked his head and presented his left temple for the fatal blow, but woke up before Lunch Pail could bludgeon him. Waldo thought, “God! I love ASEAN.”

      (Chapter Two)

      A week after the tempest at the Foo Bar Lewis Walling went home to New Canaan, Connecticut because his younger sister was celebrating her 18th birthday. He spent most of the drive worrying about that celebration, or more properly the heavy drinking bound to surround the effort. He was certain at some point the buffet at the Wee Burn Club in Darien would be a centerpiece of the event, and that meant Martinis beforehand, wine during and Stingers afterwards, all topped off with what his father called a “rammer”—a final double Martini to force home all the little alcoholic strays into the cage of life in New Canaan. And his sister Janice would be the most obvious drunk in the long room of absolute satiety. He figured he’d have to guide her over the maroon carpet of the Club away from the huge curved windows overlooking the endless brownish greens of the 18 hole golf course, bordering the flagmented, empty patio area with its tables and their collapsed and bound umbrellas–sentinels of proffered booze if you knew the proper number to enter on the tiny pad the waiter offered, but, of course, only when the weather was better.

      The buffet was its own reward, Lewis understood, to be savored in recollection and anticipation—especially the overlarge green stuffed olives, “hand massaged,” his father always remarked, “by Greek peasants on sun-flecked islands.” Shrimp as large as Lewis’s third finger curled on the lips of thick crystal dishes filled with fiery scarlet sauce or once, he remembered, not with scarlet but rather orange remoulade —for the start of Lent. A grotesquely large rack of beef ribs, so that he could watch the overlong rounded edge spatula knife work its squirming, swift way through the glistening fiber and out onto his overlarge plate. And everything savored through a Martini haze. “Here you are, Master Lewis,” the phony, jovial black chef, Robert, always said lifting a slab onto his plate. “Here YOU are,” he repeated with a trace of alarm and menace in his voice, as if he had taken a portion of Lewis’s spleen and transferred it onto his plate. Then Robert chuckled quietly, glimpsing into Lewis’s startled eyes, as if to say “You’re damn right I could gut you like a fish, if I had a mind to, and some proper reward.” Instead of rising to that implicit challenge Lewis invariably replied, “Thank you,” watching the blood swim across the huge, square plate. He added rice pilaf, roasted broccoli, currant jelly, a few extra shrimp, and, naturally enough, six stuffed green olives.

      When he finally got off route 95 and turned into the not quite gated circle of homes in the highest part of New Canaan, Lewis realized it was almost time to meet the train bringing his father home from New York. He’s have just enough time to say hello to his mother, if she weren’t napping, which he knew she would be, greet the latest servants in the house, a Swiss couple that now occupied what had been his suite above the garage–Susan and Frank, both overweight, accented, strangely formal and apparently ill at ease or menacing in their behavior and wearing too many layers of clothing. He wondered if Janice would be napping too.

      But she wasn’t. She was at the kitchen booth seated beside Susan and Frank looking through a large white cook book.

      Susan said, “Ver looking for ah the best birthday cake for tomorrow. I’m going to make it.

      “But I’ll help too,” Janice added. “You can get Daddy, so Frank can stay here with us.”

      “Nice to see you, too,” Lewis said.

      “That’s not what I mean. I think you know that.”

      “Mom up?”

      “Not yet,” Frank answered. “But shortly.”

      Lewis noticed there was a tall glass of what might be cream sherry in front of Janice. He remembered a scene in the movie of Fat City: Stacy Keach and Vera Miles at a bar and ordering eight oz. glasses of cream sherry. That was supposedly the bottom of alcoholism.

      Cream sherry, or was it Muscatel?

      Janice picked up on his noticing and said, “It’s just diet Coke. I forgot the ice.”

      At first he thought it a good defensive joke, but then decided there was an edge of anger in her remark, real offense. It worked well enough, he thought, silencing him. Frank shook his head.

      He heard his mother shouting from upstairs. “Someone go and get your father.” Her voice sounded tired and muffled by the swinging door to the dining room.

      2.

      As always his father came jauntily out from the tiny colonial station, on to the asphalt that led across the road to the parking lot. As always, Lewis parked back-in so that he stood now outside the car. His father liked to make a clean getaway, ahead of the exiting traffic, shouting “Let’s go,” as he got into the Buick Lewis had swapped for his dusty Toyota. “You just get home?”

      “No. A while ago.”

      “And they made you come here right off?”

      “I didn’t mind.”

      “Well, take Ridgefield. Let’s avoid downtown, unless you want to refresh your memory.”

      “I don’t.”

      “Neither do I. And there’s nothing new to see. Your mother up?”

      “Getting there.”

      “Good. Susan and Frank are good for her.”

      Did that mean Janice wasn’t? Rather than explore that thought, Once on Ridgefield, with overarching trees forming an arcade out of New Canaan , Lewis said, “I was in a bar fight in Worcester.”

      “In one, or saw one?”

      “Kinda in one. A fellow at my table slugged the bouncer. It was pretty scary. The table fell on me.”

      “You were under the table?”

      “Yes, but because I was trying to pick something up.”

      “Maybe it’s better to stay under the table.”

      “Not when it falls on you. I threw up.”

      “What were you drinking?”

      Lewis regretted getting into details. “Beer.”

      “It took rum to get me puking, when I was your age.”