Big Foot by Peter Nolan Smith
Semi-Fiction from Peter Nolan Smith I spent 28 years in the East Village of New York. My apartment was at 256 East 10th Street. I worked nightclubs. CBGBs, Hurrah, Studio 54, and The Milk Bar. I had two motorcycles; a 1964 Triumph and 1970 Yamaha. Dmitri from the East 6th Street Bike Shop introduced Rick, the owner of Madame Rosa’s. The Californian had a Ducati and Norton. Neither of us had girlfriends and switched nights cooking dinner after which we would play gin rummy. Rick was a better cook and Dmitri joked that we were man and wife. It was only funny the first time.
When Rick mentioned to a neighbor that I was brought up in outside of Portland, the middle-aged woman extended an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at their tenement building on East 11th Street.
Jane hailed from Columbia Falls, Maine, which she considered was the last place God created before finishing with Aroonstock County.” Jane was a graduate of University of Maine. She had moved to New York to become a beatnik and ended up marrying a East Village plumber. She still loved Maine and we became friends. although she got a kick out of riding me about my hometown outside Portland. “Falmouth Foresides is almost like coming from Massachusetts.”
“Nothing like being a Masshole.” Carmine, her husband, had a good word to say about everyone. My nickname was ‘Scumbag’.
The Lower East Side native had learned pipe-fitting in the Merchant Marines. Plumbers from the 5 bouroughs asked for his advice. Carmine had pull with City Hall. The connections were a gift from his father. The old man had been a bookie. Jane collected strays. Rick, Steve the Montana ironworker, David the biologist from the natural History Museum, and countless others. Every big holiday she set a big table for her orphans. People without family in the city. We drank wine and ate turkey until we were semi-comatose, after which Carmine would mumble stories about the East Village from the 50s interspersed with racial epitaphs, although he was always helping people from every race. We all called him Uncle Carmine and thought of him as a permanent New York fixture, except he had one weakness.
Cigars and he started complaining about a stomach ache. We told him to see a doctor. He refused every entreaty. I got him medicine with fake scripts. It helped a little bit, but not much. Carmine had more than a stomach ache and passed away suddenly while I was in Thailand. Jane called room 302 at the Malaysia Hotel to convey his last advice, “Don’t go crazy, scumbag.”
Jane said the burial wasn’t taking place until Oct.12. “We’re burying him on Columbus Day up in Schoonic Bay. He liked the view from the hill.”
“I’ll be there.” I scheduled my return for late-Sept. The flight stopped in LA. I continued on to New York. My subleasee, a Swedish male nurse, had cleaned the place before leaving. Everything seemed to be in order. I dropped my bags on the floor and walked two blocks over to Jane’s compound. Carmine had bought two buildings and a vacant lot back in the early 70s. $15,000. The property was now worth millions.
Jane gave me a big hug and said, “Carmine wanted you to have some books.” Carmine’s interests tended towards military history and I picked ten books. The best was one about Stalingrad. THE ENEMY AT THE GATE.
“You’re going to help drive up to Maine?” Jane sat down heavily. She was not in the best of health.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” I had been driving her to dog shows for years. She was good company. This trip would be a home-coming for both of us. Lobsters and a funeral. She opened the closet in Carmine’s office and held out a ceramic urn.
“The old man.” Two identical urns were in the closet.
“Are those extra?”
“Those are the dogs. Carmine wanted to be buried with them.”
No markings were written on the urns to distinguish them from each other. Jane saw my eyes and said, “No know which ones are which.”
“Never said you didn’t.” Jane was almost as near-sighted as me.
We went to dinner at the local Italian restaurant and she outlined the funeral arrangements. Burial atop a blueberry hill. Friends and family consisted of Jane, her son and daughter. The latter two were not on speaking terms. Friends were a few. Rick, Steve the iron worker, Carmine’s workmates and Lenny the anti-Zionist. A strange gathering for Schoonic Point any time of the year, but Jane said, “We’ll be welcome. It’s off-season.”
Columbus Day was overcast without the threat of rain. Cumberland County takes up the farthest corner of NE America. Weather stations in New England cite it in the northern reach of their maritime forecasts. “Eastport to Block Island.”
We stopped in Brunswick for lobster rolls at the Chamberlain Inn. Rick and Steve were enthralled with the Maine delicacy. It meant more to Jane and me. My grandfather and father had attended Bowdoin and Jane had gone to U Maine. We were familiar with the town. This was home and every mile more like heaven. Pine trees bordered long coves offering glimpses of the sea. The foliage was a little past prime. The air was champagne from Canada.
Jane had picked Ellsworth as our destination for the night. The hotel was on the strip. It had seen a hundred thousand customers this summer. The rooms had not stopped vibrating from their comings and goings. “Nothing is open in Schoonic Point this time of year.”
She distributed room keys. This trip was on Carmine. We had a great lobster at the bridge leading to Bar Harbor. They were closing after this weekend. The Lobsters were soft-shelled and delectable. We agreed that Carmine had made the right choice about being buried in Maine. Upon re-entering Ellsworth, Jane said, “I know Rick is a good boy and wants to get to sleep, but I checked out the bars for you and Steve. There’s one that’s a fern bar and the other that is always in the police reports. I’m not letting you drive, but here’s a twenty for the taxi.”
Rick was married with a kid. Steve was divorced and I was perennially single. We said our good-nights and headed first to the fern bar. We lasted a single drink. The same taxi took us to the bad boy bar. The driver told us to watch out for the girls. “They like strangers.”
Steve and I stood before the bar. Loud rock music and neon lights. We drunk beers on more than one occasion. and he knew my tastes and said, “You can have all the skinny ugly ones and I’ll have all the fat cute ones.”
“It’s a deal.”
He opened the door and then shut it. “What about Big Foot?”
A she-man grabbed him before he could explain. I followed and was immediately set upon by two women twice the man I was. Steve was dancing to Deep Purple to a 200 plus human version of a moose in heat. She wore size 14 boots. The men at the bar appeared relieved to be allowed to drink without any female interference.
Steve shouted one word. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew the word was ‘help’. We stayed three beers too many and were driven back to the hotel by four seriously masculine women in checkered shirts. Steve was groping one of them and whispered, “I’m checking to make sure they don’t have any dildos.”
“Dildos?”
Back in 1974 I had been picked up by two lesbians in Big Sur. They had had their way with me for two days without stop. I had to escape into the redwoods. If they had possessed dildos they would have used them. So would these girls. The Big Foot women were talking dirty. Sex as a Sumo wrestling event. I told them we couldn’t do anything and they said, “Date rape.”
Their station wagon braked before our rooms. Hands unbuttoned my shirt. Steve was dragged out of the car. We were doomed, until Jane appeared in a celestial nightgown. “Leave those two men alone. They’re with me.”
“Gigolos.” They muttered, reluctantly before letting go of us. Jane stood her ground until they left the room and then asked with a smile, “You boys have fun.”
“Yeah.” We were glad to have escaped Big Foot’s grasp.
“I’m sure Carmine would appreciate it, now go to bed. We have a busy day tomorrow.” She was right. We buried Carmine without a priest. On a blueberry hill overlooking Schoonic Bay. The sun came out as we lowered the urns into the earth. Jane cried and her children hugged her. They almost seemed like a family.
I proposed a drive around Bar Harbor before the memorial dinner in Hull’s Cove. Rick and Steve loved the rocky coastline and also that we saw Martha Stewart who was in hiding from the New York press. She had been a bad girl. Steve said she looked like a Big Foot woman.
I didn’t laughed.
Dinner was in a small restaurant and two of the waitresses were from the Big Foot tribe. A dress tamed them and they made sign of recognizing us. Jane couldn’t help but tell Rick about last night’s scene and he was happy to tell everyone in the East Village that Steve and I had mated with moose. Jane knew the truth, but said, “It’s funnier the way he tells it and Carmine would like that ending too.”
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