Gorilla Joe asked Marge if he could stay a few days, “to help finish off this keg,” as he put it, and I overheard some sketchy conversation about being kicked out by his girlfriend. She took him inside to be comforted, while the rest of the men tried to remain upright on the deck, with varying degrees of success. It seemed to pitch and roll, as a schooner in a storm, and the crew was hanging on for dear life. It was a very large keg, and it nearly wiped out the entire male population of the Rusty Bucket Ranch. Only Bobby Brew continued into the wee hours, clutching that spigot the way a sailor grasps the till of a lifeboat.
The next morning, as the sole survivor of the shipwreck, Marty tiptoed across snoring bodies to the front door to wait for Marge in the driveway. There was another long day at the pet store ahead of them: the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Out on the deck, Bobby Brew was washed up like a pale, drowned child in a puddle of beer. At least Marty hoped that was beer, and prayed he was actually asleep, too, for that matter. His face seemed too young to be wasted like that, but in reality, Marty was only a couple years older. He spared him the indignity of checking his pulse, or removing the spigot he still clutched crookedly in his hand. Goodhearted Marge fussed over his inert body when she came out, cleaning him up a little with a towel before covering him with a blanket.
Aquarium Beautiful was beginning to appear more run-down than Marty remembered it. At 16, he was such a veteran of the companion animal trade that he actually developed an eye for that sort of thing. Pat was battling emphysema and diabetes, but propped herself up behind the counter doggedly, with a ubiquitous cancer stick poking out of her sour face. She wheezed when she talked, but still pierced right to the heart of the matter with black eyes of carbon steel. Bob acted as if he was in charge now, because his mom was too tired to admonish him. He was still doing cocaine, and his eyes bugged out with chemical anxiety.
“C’mon troops! Let’s go!” He clapped his hands. It was over an hour before the doors opened.
“Martee-e-e-e-e!”
“Hookie-e-e-e-e!” The ageless, one legged macaw was as scruffy as always, except maybe he had lost a few more feathers. He weaved his head vigorously back and forth, as if pacing on his perch, while he remained anchored on one foot. Marty gave him a quick scratch, then tended to all the other cute animals hoping to find loving homes for the holidays… like the reptiles. A new shipment of thick, Burmese pythons coiled up on their heated rocks, balefully watching the tasty rodents on the shelves directly opposite. Only the fact that they were enclosed in glass prevented nature from taking its grisly course. Rabbits and Guinea pigs waited impatiently for their food, and hamsters quarreled among themselves about who would bite the humans first. Mice ran on their wheels to get away from the noisy parakeets next door, while nervous finches hopped back and forth in their cages, beeping in confusion about the missing sky. Pissed-off parrots sulked abjectly in their prison cells, grimly plotting their revenge. Even the cockroaches seemed to know it was chow time, as Marty could see their antennae sticking out of the cracks in the walls. To all of those creatures, he was a god who bestowed upon them food and water, and for some strange reason known only to gods, whisked away their excrement. (When displaying animals for sale, the object was never to remind the customers of the compostable by-products.) The unwitting pet owners bought food to put in one end, pine shavings for what came out the other end, and enjoyed everything in between.
Sean, the new bucket monkey, scurried in just before they opened and got chewed out by Bob for being late. He and Marge usually showed up early just to take good care of the animals, but only got paid for the time the store was open, so he ignored the impotent badgering about time. Sean was a skinny little kid who said he was 14, but appeared closer to 10. He had a cherubic Irish face, with freckles and a mop of curly hair, and a sassy personality that got on everyone’s nerves. He chattered constantly, with the ebullience of a tree primate, as he sloshed the buckets from the filling station to the tanks… but nobody listened to his salty banter. Except Cap’n Hook, of course, who absorbed everything. The old parrot bonded the new kid, for the chance of learning so many new cuss words. Sean was apprenticed to Marty, and learned all the interesting facts and techniques of the aquarium hobby. His favorite task was to feed the large, predatory fish such as Oscars, Piranhas, and Cichlids that were popular with hobbyists, who enjoyed watching goldfish get mutilated in aquatic slasher movies.
“Oh my god, he bit his eye out!” Sean gleefully narrated the underwater carnage. “Oh, and he’s going around the other side… holy shit! He got the other eyeball!”
“Beats watching TV, huh?” Marty drawled as he walked by, carrying a heavy box. “C’mon, help me unpack the gravel.”
During a break in the action, Marty showed his apprentice the ceremonial pet tribe peace pipe, and they went upstairs to make an offering. The space above the utility room was accessed by an extremely steep, narrow set of stairs that was closer to a ladder than a stairway. Old bird cages and other junk were piled on each step, but if you placed your feet precisely, it could be ascended as a mountain climber scales a rock face: using all four limbs. The reward was an extremely hot, dusty room that used to be a dog grooming parlor. Silver, standing dryers that resembled ray guns from an old Flash Gordon movie were covered with a thick layer of grime. Everything else was under an even thicker layer of dust mixed with dog hair, which gave the room the appearance of being covered in volcanic ash. Sean cleared a spot to smoke, trying to touch as little as possible. In one wall a spy window overlooked the pet store below, including the front counter, so they could still keep an eye on things. There was a large square hole in another wall, leading to the attic space over the rest of the shop. Over the years, many animals (including snakes) had escaped from their cages, which was why Marty refused to eat at the deli next door. Sean shined his little flashlight into the hot, inky darkness, and wondered aloud what fantastically overgrown creatures might be lurking in its depths. That was the moment when Marty grabbed him.
“Aie-e-e-e!!” he squealed like a poodle that just got its toenails cut, and threw a wad of dusty hair at Marty. They laughed until Pat yelled in her husky voice for Sean to come down and do a carry-out for a customer. He scrambled down the stairs like a capuchin, and practically saluted. She wheezed and grimaced; glaring up at Marty, who ducked from the window. He could hear the sarcasm in her voice, “When you’re through ‘training’ up there (cough), I need you to load those bags in Mr. Pearson’s truck.” From the spy window, Marty could see the bag of dog food was bigger than Sean, but he wrestled it up onto his head with his skinny arms, and staggered out the door, resembling a walking mushroom.
Sean was always called upon to perform the dirty tasks, of which there were many in the old pet shop. There were lots of moldy corners and grungy shelves that hadn’t been touched in years. One of the worst jobs was cleaning out the brine shrimp tubs. Those tiny crustaceans were bred in the salt flats of the bay, and delivered in huge plastic bags to be used as fish food. Some tropical fish only ate live food, like the popular Siamese fighting fish. The “sea monkeys” were fascinating little creatures, and Marty enjoyed watching them with a magnifying glass. They were kept in aerated, chilled water in the back hall, but when they died, they were nastier than a foamy layer of scum on top of a cesspool. You either had to bail out the sludge and endure the horrid stench, or use a siphon – which was faster, but risky if you started it with your mouth. The best method was to fill a hose with water, close both ends with your thumbs, then put the high end in the tub, the low end in the bucket, and release your thumbs… but of course Marty didn’t tell Sean that! Such sacred knowledge was reserved for the inner circles of the pet store brotherhood. The willing acolyte put one end of the hose in the tub, and stooped down and sucked hard on the other end. Marty also forgot to mention the importance of using a clear hose as a siphon, so you could see the water before it got to your mouth. Sean was using a garden hose and never saw the stream of putrid shrimp offal coming, and it gushed into his mouth. Marty laughed (the same way Bob had laughed at him the first time he did it), and took pity on the lad, as the mortally disgusted look on his face was worth having to help him clean it up.
“Did you like your shrimp cocktail?” Marty teased, and dodged the filthy mop Sean thrust at him.
Later, Marty took him down to the old parking garage beneath the building, where more sinister junk was stored in a dungeon-like grotto next to the walk-in refrigerator used by the deli. They were supposed to get some old dog crates that a customer had purchased. The crypt-like basement was as dank and dingy as a dwarf’s dumpster. They found the crates behind a stack of broken fish tanks, but when they moved them in the dark spaces, they disturbed a colony of rats that were having a filthy party in the corner. Marty made a mental note to “borrow” one of the snakes from upstairs to cut down on the rodent population. Sean again speculated on how big some of the escaped pythons might have gotten, with an unlimited supply of rodents loose in the building. When something large and unseen lurched behind stacks of pegboard, they hustled out of there with the wire crates.
Bob remembered a few more crates that were stored in another loft above the fish tanks. There seemed to be no end to the dirty old nooks and crannies where things were stashed, and Bob had a hoarder’s mental inventory of where every piece of junk was. He cleared some old magazines off another rickety set of stairs, and Sean scampered up dutifully to fetch the metal crates. There were decrepit light fixtures and loose wires hanging down from the ceiling in the tight crawl space, and when he lifted one of the crates, it got hooked on a live wire! His curly hair stood straight on end like a cartoon, and his body was surrounded by a halo of light! The metal crate arced with the wire, and Sean’s entire body vibrated for several seconds, until he screamed and toppled over, which finally broke him free of the current. He fell headlong off the loft into the hallway that led to Bob’s office, and the crates fell on top of him. A cloud of dust rose dramatically, as if Wile E. Coyote had hit the floor of a canyon. Marty got to him quickly, pulled off the crates, and could see small wisps of smoke coming from his hair. He wasn’t moving.
“Call an ambulance!” Marty yelled.
“No, wait,” said Bob, no doubt thinking of the trouble he would be in, “Lemme check him first!” He pushed Marty out of the way and pulled Sean up off the floor. The skinny boy was groggy but conscious, and Bob brushed him off, obsequiously muttering inappropriate platitudes such as, “All that electricity’s good for your sex life.” Sean was dirty and still shaking, but smiling and happy to be the center of attention. He smelled like ozone, and walked funny. Amazingly though, he escaped serious injury with only a scrape on one arm. Bob dabbed the wound with iodine like a battle field medic, pronouncing him “fit enough to fuck a flock of floozies.”
Marge asserted her motherly instincts. “Are you crazy? The poor boy needs to see a doctor!” She bundled him up, “in case of shock,” and drove him to the hospital in her truck. Marty went along to help, and all the while Sean was protesting that he really wasn’t hurt, and all he wanted to do was go back and work. He insisted on not going to the hospital, and they wound up dropping him off at home: a beat-up trailer near the dump. Marty could see why he needed that job so badly. His family was even poorer than his! He felt so sorry for him he gave him all the money he had in his wallet.
“Here’s a bonus for today,” he reassured him, “I’ll get it back from Bob.” A skinny man in a dirty t-shirt opened the door and immediately started yelling at Sean, and the lithe little urchin waved them off and darted inside, quick as a rat returning to its hole.
Marge rubbed her son’s hair as they got back in the truck. “Good for you, honey,” she said with an approving smile, “We always help those less fortunate.” Then she drove back to the pet store and ragged on Bob all day, until he exploded and yelled that he would fix those goddamn wires, and pay for a fucking doctor’s appointment, and he slammed the door to his office to sulk. Marge had an amazing talent for using her mouth as a weapon to make men go away. Pat interrogated her to find out if Sean was okay, while mentally calculating the chances of getting sued by a poor Irish family.
Amazingly, Sean was back the next day, and worked all weekend as if nothing had happened. Bob and Pat treated him very solicitously, however. Bob even bought him a sandwich, and helped him top off the fish tanks! After work, when the womenfolk had retired for the evening, the hired hands smoked a bowl of very strong sinsemilla that Bob produced as a peace offering to bury the incident. He even pulled out his best bottle of tequila from its secret hiding place, and offered some to the high-voltage boy who was barely fourteen. “No thanks man, I’m cool,” he waved it off easily. Bob shrugged. Sean exuded a wholesome, friendly air, with which it was impossible to argue.
“All the more for me, then. You want some?” He offered the bottle to Marty, a seasoned partier who was barely sixteen. Cap’n Hook had noticed the bottle, and was performing his Mr. Bojangles routine behind them.
“Um, no thanks. I gotta drive home.”
Bob snorted. “Well, if there’s no men around who will drink with me, I’ll have to drink with a parrot. Hook, you old bastard, you wanna get drunk?”
“Fuckin’ A. Right!” The bird said clearly, and Sean and Marty cracked up. He was already at the edge of his platform, weaving his head in anticipation. Bob set him up with a shot glass and a slice of lime. The macaw tossed the garnish off with disdain and laid down next to the glass, dipping his tongue in the tequila like a drinking gourd. “Whoopee-e-e!” His pupils constricted with excitement.
Bob took a large cardboard box from the hall. “Watch this.” He winked as if he was going to do a trick. Hookie raised the feathers on his head when he saw the box, which meant he was agitated. Is he going to put him inside? Marty wondered, as the old scallywag eyed it with aggravation. His focus was on the shot glass, but you could tell he was very distracted by that box! He knocked over his glass before it was finished, and cussed out Bob for interrupting his constitutional. Then, instead of putting the parrot in the box, Bob placed it entirely over him upside-down, covering the platform of his perch the way a bird cage sits on its base. Then he poured himself a shot, sniffed a spoonful of coke right in front of the boys, and pointed his chin to where the parrot used to be. Inside, Hook was yowling like a cat in a sack, but with an unmistakable tone of delight.
Suddenly, his sharp beak pierced the side of the box! Right at the level where he usually sat on his perch, he carved out a hole big enough to peep through. A white-rimmed eye appeared, and he gleefully shouted a muffled, “Woo hoo!” His beak reappeared and chiseled a bigger hole, then his head popped out. “Woo-o-o-hoo-o-o!” It was so funny to see that daffy parrot’s head sticking out of the side of a box, the humans could hardly stand up from laughing so hard. The cartoon bird head popped back inside, and soon another hole was made. And another, and another… until the box resembled Swiss cheese. Hookie was having so much fun just being drunk, that when those humans laughed at him he’d join in: “Ho, ho, ho!” His beak had become unusually strong from having to compensate for a missing leg, and so he made quick work of that cardboard box, tearing off chunks and tossing them over the side to the floor. He didn’t rest until every scrap was off his platform. Then he pulled himself back to his perch in triumph, shook his feathers out contentedly, and smiled with no lips. Another box bites the dust!