HIGH AND DRY

Everyone from the shopping center was invited to the wedding of
Gertrude Elfers and Vircengetorix Lopez at the First Baptist Church of
Seminole Heights. Mr. Lopez’s brothers and sisters attended too.
Pericles. Hannibal. Agamemnon. And the youngest brother, Junior, a pig farmer. Clytemnestra. Antigone. Athena. All of them were there.

After the wedding we were going to the Sweeney Motel for the
reception. The newlyweds had a night in the honeymoon suite. Then
they were off for a honeymoon in California.

I was standing in the front with Mr. Lopez as his best man. Penelope
begged me to do it because I was the only one to get along with the
old codger, believe it or not. Jeffrey Elfers escorted his girlfriend,
Teresa, to a seat near some of the older ladies – probably from one of
Mrs. Elfers’ circles there at the church. The circle ladies looked up
when they saw the tight leather jeans that accented the curves in
Teresa’s hips and butt cheeks. Jeffrey had on his leather and chains,
but because he was giving his mother away, he put on a black suit
jacket. The women from the circle fanned themselves when he patted her ass before she sat down. He went to the back of the church to be with his mother, the bride-to-be, Gertrude Elfers.​

The church was half filled when Mrs. Simmons got the nod from Pastor
E.C. Whitaker to play the wedding march. Gertrude Elfers, still
bandaged from a near fatal car accident, leaned on Jeffrey as he
paraded her down the aisle. He walked her to the front of the church
then handed her off to Mr. Lopez.

“Dearly beloved,” Pastor E.C. Whitaker began, the light reflecting off
his wire-rimmed glasses. “We are gathered here together…”

I half-listened to the Pastor who believed in eternal life and all
that, but for everything else, he liked to get paid in advance. That’s
how I ended up at the Pastor’s a few weeks prior to the wedding. Dave gave him a free waterbed in advance for hitching up Mr. Lopez and Gertrude Elfers. Mr. Lopez had been hanging around the store way too much since his wife died. He was driving us all nuts. Especially
Penelope. When’s Miguel going to marry you? When are you going to get a raise? You should have never quit your job at the telephone company.

Stuff like that.

It was right before dusk when I arrived at the Pastor’s. The front
door opened and his daughter and son sprinted outside as I parked the
van in their driveway. In addition to his shepherding a congregation,
Pastor Whitaker was also a transmission specialist. His shop was down
the street from the church. He followed the children to the door,
dressed in a blue jumpsuit worn by grease-monkeys.

“Howdy,” he said, swinging his right hand in front of himself and
extending it to me when I got to the door. “Word of God and word of
mouth. That’s how I get all my business. The truth shall set you free
as long as your transmission’s working.”

He motioned for me to come inside their living room.

“So Wilbur, have you ever been to the Holy Land?” he asked.

​”No sir, but I’ve been to Disney World. How about you?” I asked.

“Did you hear that, Mrs. Whitaker? He’s been to Disney World,”
the Pastor said.

​His wife stood behind him. She had just come into the living room.
Pastor Whitaker stuck his left hand in his shirt pocket and extracted a regal looking coin laminated in a small cardboard frame.

“Here’s something from the Holy Land for you,” he said, handing
the coin to me. “It’s a little gift for setting up our waterbed.”

I stuck it in my pocket. It was something else to throw in the
living room with all the other junk customers gave me. Antique lights.
Paneling. Sports jackets etc.

“The waterbed goes in our bedroom. Mrs. Whitaker cleaned the floor and the baseboards. You can’t move them things when they’re filled, huh?” he asked.

“No sir,” I said.

“Heater and a vibrator on it, right?” the Pastor asked.

“Yes sir. All the way. I put the vibrator on back at the shop.

It goes under the middle piece of plywood. You have to drop the bolts down from the topside. A wire goes to a control panel on the side.

You don’t need any quarters to run it either, except when you pay your electric bill,” I said.

“You know your business like I know Second Corinthians,” the
Pastor replied.

I looked straight ahead at a wall covered with framed photographs
of Pastor Whitaker shaking hands with all sorts of people, even
celebrities and sports heroes. There was a picture of him with Burt
Reynolds and Pete Rose. This guy knew everybody, what with his
pastoring and fixing transmissions.

“Mrs. Whitaker,” the Pastor said, cueing his wife.

He extended his right hand to me for an instant replay of our handshake.

“Sure is good to meet you,” the Pastor said as Mrs. Whitaker displayed
an instamatic camera with an ice-blue flashcube on it.

She focused on the Pastor shaking hands with me holding the
toolbox in my other hand. The flash exploded and silver spots jumped
before my eyes.

“That’s a winner, Mrs. Whitaker,” the Pastor said. “We can put
that one right next to the picture of Charley Hustle.”

It took me a short time, once I killed a couple cockroaches on the
floor, to set the bed on top of the vibrator, heater, and the bureau
drawers. The bureau drawers were flimsy like kitchen matches, but
somehow they supported thirteen hundred pounds of water.

​”I’ll be seeing you at the wedding in a couple weeks,” the Pastor
reminded me before I left that evening.

I returned to the van. With the light on, I was anxious to look at
the golden coin from the Holy Land that Pastor Whitaker gave me. On
one side of the coin a lion brandished a sword in his right paw. The
lion stood in front of the sun. A crown was engraved above the lion
and the sun. Printed on the cardboard housing: 50 Dinar-Iran.
I backed out of the driveway, thinking Pastor Whitaker needed
transmission work too, because he slipped me a slug. Iran wasn’t in
the Holy Land. It was in fucking Iran.

The next time I saw Pastor Whitaker was in the front of his church,
standing alongside Mr. Lopez. Something behind him caught my
attention: the biggest waterbed frame I had ever seen! Right there in
the Seminole Heights Baptist Church! Not more than ten feet away! It
had wooden sides, sanded and covered with a glossy finish like the
wood in a bowling alley. The wood sides were like an outdoor pool, and
were a lot deeper than the frames Jake turned out at the warehouse.
It didn’t have a mattress or a vibrator, but it was filled to the rim
with water. A wooden ladder on the side was attached to a small
platform that led to another ladder submerged in the water. It was the
Seminole Heights Baptist church dunk tank that was a substitute for
the cleansing waters of the River Jordan, where Pastor E. C. Whitaker,
whenever he wasn’t working on transmissions, dunked members of the
congregation after proclaiming Jesus Christ as their personal attendant and savior.

The longer I looked at it, the more it reminded me of one of those
dunk tanks at the state fair or a school carnival where a clown or the
most hated teacher sat and taunted people about how ugly they or their mothers were. It was a place where you could say the most awful things or make the crudest gestures and nobody cared.
That’s when I heard it. “High and Dry,” in a taunting, sing-song
voice like my mynah bird might sing or like my seventh grade social
studies teacher. Charley Cook always did the dunk tank at the Easter
carnival and sang in a plaintive, tenor voice. He was this pathetic,
overweight man, who could barely fit on his perch above the dunk tank.

He was white as a flounder. His hair was patchy and was slicked
straight back. His forehead had deep furrows like sand dunes caused by squinting behind his eyeglasses that had thick, black frames with
sidepieces that over time left white stripes on the side of his
massive head. He always wore a billowy white shirt and tie. Underneath the white shirt you could see the outline of the shoulder straps on his sweaty undershirt. His slacks were cinched with a belt that sometimes hung down, depending on his fluctuating weight. He hadn’t seen his scuffed-up shoes since Pope Pius XII.

“High and dry,” the voice taunted.

“Who’s that?” I wanted to call out over Pastor E.C. Whitaker’s
boiler-plate wedding vows.

Whenever we pissed off Mr. Cook instead of sending us to the principal for a good, Catholic beating, he would make us do push-ups, something he was incapable of performing. Mr. Cook showed us how to do it though. He walked to the front chalkboard and placed both chubby hands on the dusty, green slate. He would nuzzle his soft, airy midsection close enough to leave white and yellow streaks of chalk. Once he was in position he did his famous vertical push-ups.

“High and dry.”

There it was again. Who was it, calling out and taunting me to dunk
them? And where were the baseballs, three for a quarter, to throw at
the asshole in the cage?

What was even more pathetic about Mr. Cook, he was married to Mrs.
Cook, the fourth grade teacher. She was pathetic too. She had a
pointed nose like an Afghan pup and wore flowered, gingham dresses.
Her complexion was rough and crimson like a fresh-picked strawberry.
Mr. Lopez nudged me.

​”The ring? Wilbur, give me the ring,” he said.

I reached into the pocket of the sports jacket given to me by Gwen
Connolly, the mother of eight children. I put on the jacket that
morning even though I hated looking like I was in cardboard. It was
either that one or a Naugahyde jacket.

“Wilbur, you’re holding us up,” Mr. Lopez snapped.

I pulled out a sheaf of yellow onionskin papers from one pocket.
Reckless driving. Speeding. Failure to stop. Her oldest son hid his
traffic tickets in it.

Charley Cook and Mrs. Cook never had children to take to the dunk tank at the school carnival and listen to some asshole taunt them. I guess it was because Mr. Cook couldn’t do the push-ups or something, or lost his tenure when he stopped going to church because he couldn’t fit in the pews or the confessional any more.

I reached into the other pocket, and found what felt like the ring,
and handed it to Mr. Lopez who tried to slip it on the new Gertrude
Elfers Lopez’s finger. Pastor Whitaker tried to pronounce them man
and wife, but there was no ring, just a goddamned 50 dinar slug from
Iran that I had put in the wrong pocket. I left the ring in the
Naugahyde jacket when I tried it on that morning before driving Mr.
Lopez to the church.

“The ring is high and dry in a Naugahyde jacket,” I sang in a
pleading, tenor voice like Charley Cook, right before Mr. Lopez and
his brothers, Pericles, Hannibal, Agamemnon, and the youngest brother, Junior, escorted me to the dunk tank for my first trip to the Holy Land and the healing waters of the River Jordan.