2006 FINALIST BUKOWSKI TAVERN SHORT STORY CONTEST
(Story had to include words, Harpoon, Bukowski, Pint and Pen)
It killed him about the same time Hank lost his head to that bear.
“Nothing,” he used to say. Still, he walked around for years with that gash in his side, a small scar but deep.
Hank was a friend of mine when he stabbed that man. He come home one day after we’d been out working, fixing Mrs. Bukowski’s roof. I should say I fixed the roof while Hank fixed Mrs. Bukowski. Her husband had been dead a few years.
Anyways, without much thought of his afternoon activities with that widow, Hank and I get back to his Airstream trailer. You know those silver jobs. He and his girl lived way outside of town. The lot was empty except for a scrap red shack that Hank kept his motorcycle in, the only true chrome for miles.
We pull up in my truck and the Airstream is rocking back and forth. And we hear Hank’s old lady in there moaning, wailing to catch all. The sun is coming off the trailer so you can’t see too good. Hank gets this full moon look in his eyes.
He closed the car door, quiet. I knew to do the same.
“Hold on,” I said. But he moved away through the dust, slipping inside.
I heard someone say, “No” and someone say, “Wait.”
The trailer door swung open. Hank bust out.
He ran towards me. I tossed him the keys to my truck. Hank snatched them out of the air – slow motion style. All he said was, “Alaska” as the engine came alive. The vehicle shifted into reverse and he was gone.
This part I wasn’t too proud of, lettin’ a violent act go unpunished. Not until I heard how Hank died.
In the trailer the guy Hank stabbed wasn’t doing so well.
The girl said, “call the police, an ambulance.”
“I’m fine. No cops,” he said, pulling the tip of a rusty harpoon out of his rib cage, adjusting it between the bones. “Some minor thorax adjustments,” he would later tell people.
“I’m sorry,” he says to me, shrugging his shoulders and looking down at the girl’s legs. I understood what he meant.
A month or two passed. Maybe more. I drank a lot back then. I get this postcard postmarked Juno. Nothing but “I just wanted to hold on to her for a while,” scrawled on it. The backside a shot of Kodiak Island. Still have it somewhere.
Work piled up. I hired on the guy Hank stabbed. He busted his ass. We made some money. The girl went back to Kentucky.
Never spoke on it. I kind of think the guy knew he got what was coming to him. But you could tell the wound never healed right.
I wrote Hank, “You’re no fugitive. Everything’s cool.” Turns out he’d already started a new life by then.
I didn’t hear anything for, I don’t know, half a decade. The guy Hank stabbed and I made out pretty good. Then he started to get sick. Doctor in Albuquerque said, blood poisoning, infection. The guy never made it out of that hospital. I hate hospitals but I went up there and gave his mother his last check and a little extra. Life insurance I guess. She handed me the harpoon. Never said why.
When I got back there’s a new letter from Juno, hand written in pen from Hank’s wife. She had found my address but I didn’t even know she existed.
“I thought someone from the old days should know,” she wrote.
“Hank’s dead. Killed by an old grizzly, known to locals as Pint for his tendency to break into coolers and drink camper’s six packs.”
The Hank I knew would have liked that.
“He, our son and I were hiking. The bear came out of the woods about 30 yards up trail. It charged. I froze. Hank told me to run. We did but he didn’t follow. The park ranger told the newspaper that the bear took his head off in one clean swipe.
“Hank gave us the one thing he always had. What he valued most. Time to get away.”
So, I say to you like I said to both those guys. Do you want the job or not?