Biblical Inspired Stories    

 

           A Bellyful for Kenny

 

Matthew 15:  The disciples said to him (Jesus), “Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” Jesus asked them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.” Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children. After sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan.

 

The band was playing loud loud. Kenny figured that it was to mix with the noise of the slot machines and thereby create a kind of white noise which might be perceived as silence. Particle waves annihilating each other or possibly tonight enhancing each other. His ears were full of rubber, so he barely heard it, just felt the vibrations in the stick on the machine, into which he pumped the coins one at a time, then watching the dials spin. There weren’t too many atheists in here, he thought, looking around and pulling the lever with conviction. This time. Will do it. Now. Bing bing. Crash. 

   Yeah. These tips weren’t going to last forever. Though he did manage to earn quite a pocketful today. Shining shoes. Hardly anyone wore leather shoes anymore. Sneakers with laces hanging all over the place. No gentlemen anymore, offices were casual. Salesmen and bankers. The occasional lady with heels propping her pretty feet on his box. A quick shine today, she’d say. He’d oblige displaying his finesse and besides they always tipped the best. And here he was with a half pocketful of change dumping it into the mouth of The Goblin. 

   A boy then, now a young man, wandered in from a prairie town and became a local icon for a brief time: Farm Kid Wins Fortune At Slots. Just over a hundred grand on a low odds machine. Well that was the opening up of the firmament, the dispersal of the dark clouds, and for awhile he stood on that famous stairway to heaven. But he pissed it away. All of it. When the gods smile on you, you get frazzled in the head. Good luck is a mighty fine seduction. 

   When you get to ride the dragon you get a feeling that you’ve mastered it, that the dragon is yours and will take you anywhere. So, you’ve got money now to play the wheel and the tables. Playing with the tuxedo crowd.  And that’s how it starts. Money for gas and a Mercedes to put it in. You’ve got the dragon but it’s not quite enough. The magic word: Enough. I’ve had enough now, thought Kenny. Another chance was all he wanted but he was smart enough to know the odds. That’s the thing about luck, he thought, it has nothing to do with the odds. Does it? 

   He felt in his pocket for the envelope, the letter he had received that morning. His uncle AJ was inviting him to work on his new venture, a cruise liner, a smaller type ship that catered to wealthy retiring farmers. He smiled thinking of his uncle’s standing joke: Farmers never really retire - they think about it and even if they sell their land they can’t leave, and even if they leave they’re always planning to get back into it, it gives them a reason to talk about the weather. Serious business, the weather. 

   Stupid joke, really, because Kenny knew that leaving the farm was his uncle’s bonanza, lucky stroke, and good fortune. Uncle AJ had sold the farm and he and his thin diminutive almost disappearing wife nearly drowned in the cash. Five thousand acres on the edge of the capital city were worth a surprising amount of money. But Uncle took his good fortune in stride. Boy did I get lucky, he said. He shucked the coveralls for an upscale pair of jeans and shiny brown oxford shoes. When he came to visit not long after the farm sale, he told Kenny’s dad that it was the best thing he’d ever done. Sure, it’s good farmland, but folks have to live somewhere, don’t they? Sell out your farm, Alvin, and let’s go into partnership. I’m keen on cruises you know and I love the smell of sea air. The squawking of seagulls makes my day. Mind you on the farm they had seagulls too, prairie seagulls that ate mice and bugs and other birds. They always seemed out of place and Kenny never liked them.

   Alvin surprised them all that day with his next proposal. I want you to come on a cruise to Tahiti with me and Slim (my auntie). No cost to you and Cupcake. Cupcake was my mother and considered quite a dish in her youth. Plenty sweet with icing in the right places, my father used to joke. Do men have a hard-wired oral fixation? 

   Anyway, Alvin, Cupcake needs a holiday even if you don’t, a break from the farm routine. And you don’t have to even think of the cost, maybe tip the waiter, that’s all. Why? Well, I bought the boat. Goddammit, Alvin, I bought the fucking cruiser. It’s not a big one, but still. A cruise ship. Think of the fun we can have. 

   Well, Alvin went on the cruise, and Cupcake went on the cruise, and Kenny's sister Liz and Kenny went on the cruise. Tahiti was gorgeous. Along the way, drinking fancy concoctions mixed up by a voluble barman, AJ propositioned my father again. Sell your land and come in with me, a partnership, whatever percentage your heart tells you is reasonable. Ten percent or forty-nine percent. Not fifty. 

   Kenny could tell that his dad was tempted. Not to make a windfall in shipping rich tourists around the world, but to see new places. He too loved Tahiti but he never made it back there. When he turned down the partnership offer, Cupcake left him. Kenny was thirteen and sad to see her go. She was a gifted pianist and Uncle AJ got her a job on his boat. Kenny always wondered about her and Uncle AJ but he put it down to an overactive imagination. Kenny and Liz went back to the farm where they lived with their father until that too came to an end. 

   In the end, AJ could not or would not touch the 49%. His older brother had lorded it over him in subtle ways over the years and one percentage point was their separation point. Cupcake wrote letters and called regularly when she got a cellphone. We get satellite anywhere in the world, she exulted. Kenny was envious. But stuck it out with Alvin for a while until his father had his first bout of cancer. Too many farm chemicals, Alvin said. When it came back a year later, Alvin succumbed despite prostate surgery and radiation and all the nasty things they do to a person. Kenny left home when Cupcake sold the farm. He felt good about his farming skills, driving machinery, fixing machinery, painting buildings, building buildings, and dreaming dreams about next year. Which was the farmer’s lot, usually, as this year was always a mess. 

   Liz was happy to see the farm go. She had never been much a part of it anyway, as Alvin was a boy’s father and less inclined to understand where a girl might fit into the operation. But the land sold, Kenny and Liz split the small amount that Cupcake gave each of them. You’ll get it in good time, Cupcake said. But Cupcake stayed on the cruise ship playing waltzes and two-steps and schottisches for the dancing crowd. During the day she worked in the administration of the ship, as she had taken up Uncle AJ on the 49% offer. 

   Liz married a dentist who made her his assistant. She learned how to pick plaque off yellow teeth and wore a mask most of the day. The droolers are the worst, she told Kenny, ‘cause they almost always have terrible breath. So Liz got pregnant and figured staying home was the best option for a soon-to-be mom. They moved to Saskatchewan where they got lost for fifteen years and it wasn’t until their divorce that Kenny talked to her again. At least I got my teeth all done, she said first thing. Two boys in tow she moved into the capital city and phoned Kenny every Friday night to talk about their parents. To survive she once again had to start scraping plaque. 

   By that time Kenny was fully employed on a cruise ship of his own choosing, where he had started out as a shoe shiner next to the ship’s barber. He had learned the trade at the age of twelve when he had gone on the family cruise on Uncle AJ’s first ship. He had made a good haul in tips with his winsome smile and curly brown hair. He even got his first kiss from a girl that wasn’t his mother. Liz never kissed him. We need a shoe shiner Uncle AJ had said - would you like to give it a try? 

   Now here he was, Kenny the Vegas shoeshine boy, already in his late thirties trying to get his fortune back, vowing never to piss it away again. He pulled out the letter from his uncle. Uncle AJ and his mother, the beautiful Cupcake, had just married. It was no big surprise as AJ had clearly been smitten with her ever since his brother had brought her home to show off. They were taking their honeymoon on Uncle AJ’s second cruiser, renamed Cupcake, which he had purchased when he got the insurance money from Slim’s accidental death. Slim had disappeared overboard, taken by a wave in a Caribbean storm. Liz figured the accident looked pretty iffy but no culpability was assigned to anyone except the storm. Her wedding ring was worth a fortune, quipped Uncle AJ. But he was not the kind of guy to dwell on losses and soon brought his sanguine attitude back to the business at hand. When we get back, I want you to come work for me, Uncle had insisted.

   Off to Rio de Janeiro on a fully-booked cruise ship named after his new beautiful wife, he left behind the memory of Slim and embraced his windfall. Kenny’s mother slipped into her new role and enjoyed gazing at the big diamond on her finger as she entertained the passengers with her vast repertoire of piano tunes. 

   They never reached Rio. The ship disappeared off the radar after leaving Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana. A few items were recovered by fishermen in the area but no bodies. 

   Kenny called Liz. We’ve got to meet, he said, and a few days later they were seated at the Moosetown Café in Regina, Saskatchewan, discussing their future. He and Liz had just found out that they inherited everything: the cruiseliners or rather the surviving cruiseliner, the hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and the modest house in Costa Rica. What now, they asked each other across the round orange tableclothed table. Do we sell it all?

   The boys just graduated, she said. They’ll need cash for university. Kenny, who had no wife and no children, expressed sincere avuncular sentiments and took them all out for lobster the next night. Just so you fellas never have to shine shoes for a living, we’ve set up a fund for you to continue your education. 

   The boys had other ideas. I’m going to learn massage and work on cruise ships, Uncle Kenny, the eldest, Jim, asserted. Could you get me a job? They do sink you know, Kenny responded. By this time Kenny was forty years old and not inclined to argue with teenagers. OK, if that’s what you want, Jim. Liz sighed and nodded. 

   The younger lad, still only fifteen, pondered over his lobster which he cracked open deftly with the tool provided. After fifteen years on the prairies I want out. I’m going to see every country in the world. That’s my goal. Jerry paused to eye his mother. Dad says I can when I graduate high school. If you graduate high school, said his mother. Right now you are barely passing grade nine. 

   Kenny had gone through vicissitudes enough to know that directions change. Eventually after a couple more glasses of wine, Liz and Kenny decided to take the boys on a cruise so they could experience what had become a somewhat imbedded family culture: The Business, Liz called it. Maybe it’s our destiny to end up at the bottom of the ocean. 

   Three months later they were on board what Kenny had renamed The Lazy Susan, Uncle AJ’s first cruise ship. They were greeted and treated as proper ship owners ought to be treated and it wasn’t long until the boys were enjoying the run of the ship with access everywhere as VIPs. Exotic food was available any time of day, there was evening dancing with girls aplenty for the young fellas to chase, and though Jim had completed his massage therapy course before embarking he was too enthralled with living the high life to bother setting up his massage table on board. Later, later, he stalled. No one expected him to do that anyway.

   They cruised on toward Rio de Janeiro heading to the Hotel Sol, the three star tourist accommodation that was Uncle AJ’s prize possession in that startling and exotic city, according to stories from Uncle AJ. Everyone was excited as none of them had been to Rio before. Jerry exclaimed that he was already on his third new country. Only two hundred left to go. Only fifteen, thought Kenny.

   Caribbean crab was served that night and the tools were out and making plenty of noise. Kenny reminisced about the big band noise at the casino in Vegas where he had made and lost his fortune. Shining shoes and plugging coins into the greedy slots, before and after the bonanza. Who was the greedy one? But this band was playing slow jazz and he promised himself a dance with the lady in white satin sitting melancholy at the bar. 

   He slit open the crab then tore it apart to dig out the edible bits. Not much, really, in a crab, he thought. His fork caught on something. It was shiny and he extracted it with the crab fork. It was a ring with a big shiny diamond on it, still encircling what appeared to be the very swollen and purple finger that had worn it for only a few months. Fuck me, he exclaimed, look at this, and he raised the finger higher over the candle where the ring sparkled. 

   That’s Mom’s ring, said Liz. Must be her finger too, I suppose. Couldn’t possibly be, said both boys, astounded. Oh I know that ring, said Liz. There are a few years of infidelity, or should I say romance, behind that bijou. Kenny looked at her wondering if she knew something he’d only guessed at. He had to cut the finger to remove the ring. He did not know what to do with the finger so he dropped it in his unfinished salad. He brought the ring up close to his glasses. Inscribed on the inside: Cupcake. No doubt there. 

   What are the odds of that, eh? said Liz after the dessert had been served and they were spooning the delicate whipped something of many colours. Except for Jerry the world traveller who had ordered sardines à la Portuguese, although the fish evidently came from Brazil. Small fish grilled with the guts still in and eyes that looked at you. He was eating slowly not used to biting through whole fish, guts and all.

   Oh mama. Jerry spat something across the table. I think I cracked a tooth, he spouted and winced. The object landed on the table. It sparkled. It gleamed in the candlelight. Liz picked it up. Well, well, well. I know that ring too. That belongs to Auntie Slim who long ago went swimming with the sharks. Or I guess the sardines. This is something beyond belief. She held the ring up and checked the inside: Slim. No doubt there.

   Well, that is incredible, Kenny exclaimed. We’d all better buy lottery tickets right now. Smiles all around. More wine. They were all giddy. I guess we’ll have to fight over them. Uhuh, said Jerry. I cracked a tooth on that ring from my sardine. It’s mine. It’s my world travelling fund. Hey, who paid for the sardines, quipped Liz, half seriously. Silence. 

   OK, Uncle Kenny, what about Granny Cupcake’s ring? It was indeed a conundrum. Let’s think on it overnight, Kenny proposed. Good fortune follows those who keep their heads. Maybe at breakfast we’ll find pearls? This has got to be the luckiest day of my life.

   But it was not to be. Kenny died with slot machine noises and loud band music filling his dreams. The boys and Liz went to the beyond or the below in peaceful slumbers -seafood and wine will do that to a person - not at all bothered by the gongs and whistles that happened too late, as the cruise ship slipped into a whirling oceanic black hole. This isn’t even the Bermuda Triangle mused the Captain as the ship dropped out of sight of satellites and stars twinkling like distant diamonds.