Son of Gizmo

Maybe Penelope was wrong about advertising on a country music station, and about Dave and Margo trying to shipwreck Bedwetters on the rocks for tax purposes. After all, she was wrong about Miguel and his faithfulness. He dropped her like a bad taco after hooking up with a gringo blonde in Arthur Stuart’s office.

Dave was covering his tracks if he wastrying to ditch the business. He handed me an invoice for a king size Sierra with a bookcase headboard bound for Gibsonton, a carnival community outside of Tampa. Gibtown was close enough to be a suburb, but it would never be a suburb of anything except the mammoth fertilizer plant that glowed lemon-yellow at night alongside of the Alafia River.

By the time I arrived in Gibtowndarkness blanketed the entire area. I turned, crossing the railroad tracks off Highway 41, then drove on an asphalt road, ridged and valleyed like corduroy. From there it was a short distance until I found the house, the darkness, the night, the Alafia River, and a drunk in a white T-shirt and blue jeans.

“C’mon back. Little to the right. Now, yep, there you go,” he yelled.

​His wife came outside too.

​”Your boss said you’d need help bringing the stuff in and setting up. It’s right up my alley. What’s your name, partner?”

“Wilbur.”

“I can help you. I studied engineering, but I had to give it up ’cause it cut into my drinking time. What with my job and going to school, I just didn’t have time to drink, and that wasdriving me to drink. Driving me to drink.”

​He burst out laughing.

​”Say, you want a beer?” he asked.

“Uh. Yeah. Maybe. In a little while,” I said.

“Nobody ever turns me down when I offer them a beer. It’s a courtesy to drink a man’s beer when the man offers another man a beer,” the man, Garland, said.

​”Maybe he doesn’t want a beer. Did you ever think of that?” his wife asked.

“Will, you want a beer, don’t you? I’m gonna get another one for myself. You want one?” he asked.

“Yeah, in a little while,” I said.

​Garland went inside for beer. It took me the time for Garland to down three beers to get the waterbed all rigged up. After I set it up, I screwed a plastic male lead onto the end of the hose in order to fill the mattress. Garland sat on the floor against the wall taking it all in like it was a magic show at the carnival. Three empties next to him. The fourth one in his hand was ready to join the others.

“What’s that?” he shouted.

“That’s a gizmo so the water will go into the mattress. This other plastic thing is son of gizmo. It’s a valve that you screw on after the water’s in, to get the air out of the mattress. We call it burping the bed,” I said.

“Burping the bed. That reminds me,” Garland said.

He took a deep breath, then belched as loudly as the noonday horn at the fertilizer plant.

“You want YOUR beer now, Will?” Garland asked.

“My beer? Uh,” I said.

“You said you were going to have a beer, remember? I’ve got a cold one out there with your name on it. It’s got WILL written all over it. It’s not polite to tell a man you’re going to drink one of his beers and then not drink it,” Garland said.

“Uh, yeah, okay. I’ll take my beer now,” I said.

“There’s more out there when you finish this one,” Garland said when he returned.

I had a couple beers. Then I was ready to leave.

“Say hello to that boss of yours. He’s your father, isn’t he?” Garland asked.

I don’t know what made me say it, but I did. Maybe it was the way he asked the question. It was different than the way people usually asked me. Dave had his own son and daughter. Maybe I wished hewas my father. I loved my father. My own father was hardworking, honest, salt of the earth, didn’t say much, ordinary, and always getting screwed by the system. Dave was everything my father wasn’t. They were shadows of each other.

​”Yeah. That’s my Dad,” came out of my mouth.

​Garland handed me a five-dollar bill and a six pack of beer.

“Tell Dad I said hello,” Garland said. “Come back anytime.”