WyzWmn's World©

the music: Janis Joplin – Pearl, Simon and Garfunkle – Bridge over Troubled Waters, Allman Brothers – Live at Fillmore East, Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers, Chicago III, Carole King – Tapesty, Black Sabbath – Master of Reality, Grand Funk Railroad – E Pluribus Funk, Frank Zappa – Grand Wazzo, Deep Purple – Machine Head, Mike Oldfiled – Tubular Bells

I heard almost every person sitting in that bar take one deep collective breath as I said to the officer, “look no further”. I stepped out from behind the bar and threw Big D my towel and said “take over here D, I’ll be right back” as if nothing had happened at all. I almost didn’t see the tears rollin down Big D’s face.

The room started to buzz as I walked across the mezzanine to the cops and invited them into my office. All around me I heard snippets of conversation “Mike…Muscle Beach, Baby and the baby, the Beach…”

Once inside they proceeded to tell me that Mike had been wearing a Walkman and headset so he didn’t hear his partner hollering as the load of cement slabs started to shift off that trailer.

“When they hit him he was cut in half and the coroner says he was dead before he even hit the ground” the young one said, as if that would explain it all.

And it did.

I’d given him that Walkman this very morning and told him to listen to the music as a way to keep himself from straying to the snack shack while at work. A last ditch attempt at the battle of the bulge. Seemed like my Muscle Beach was wearing a spare tire. He was putting on as much weight as I was; only I was eating for two.

Things get kind of muddled from there.

A whirlwind of people trying to take care of me. I know that I insisted on working the bar. And I know that people did their best to help me. Some things others can just not do for you. Crying was something I let everyone else do. I just didn’t have it in me.

Then came the day that Mike’s stepmother announced that I would not be allowed to attend the funeral. That none of us degenerates would. She didn’t agree with a common law marriage and was sure that all I wanted was to take from her husband, Mike Sr.

I tried to remind her of all that Mike and I had meant to each other and I know that Big D and Al went to see her and told her the whole story of how Mike and I met and what a mess we both were at that time and how far we had come together.

These people just don’t understand loss I thought, as I snuggled back under the blankets on the couch.

There I was with my life all laid out before me.

Mike and I, as happily matramonimized as any two bikers could ever be, without the paper to lock us in…and a baby on the way to seal the bargain. Muscle Beach and the Baby, together forever.

With Mike’s help and support I had been able to get into rehab and by the time I found out I was pregnant I had been clean of both booze and drugs for over a year.

One minute my life was back on the straight and narrow and the next I was right back where I had started.

I remembered the day the cops came into my bar looking for Mr. Farland. It was happy hour and we had a two for one special on. The thing about my bar is that it was on the way home for about three quarters of the blue collar workers in the city and during happy hour we did a rock’em sock’em business. There must have been about a hundred and fifty of our closest personal friends in the bar at the time.

I smiled, and pushed the hair off of my sweaty forehead thinking, “what the hell has that jack ass done this time? ” Seemed that Mike’s current favorite past time was tormenting the local constabulary, not to mention our neighbours.

When he’d first bought his knucklehead he was proud as a peacock and he knocked them baffles outta the pipes quicker than you can say “noise”. I loved the sound, and so did he and all the boys.

But those tight asses in that upscale residential housing area I’d let Mike talk me into moving to weren’t nearly as enamored. Matter of fact they complained every chance they got.
Which of course only made Mike work all the harder at being loud. He’d spend hours and hours in the driveway some nights gunning that motor and tweaking the timing and gunning and tweaking. “A knucklehead should sound like a heart beat” he’d say “pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump.”

At any rate, when the cops come looking for him I was sure that I was about to have to bail him out again.

“Who’s lookin?” I asked

The young uniformed officer stood in front of me at the bar, with his hat in his hand. As he began to speak we had one of those freaks of nature that happen in a large room full of people every once in a while. Everyone seemed to stop to take a breath at the same time and all of a sudden you could’ve heard a pin drop in that barn.

“We are looking to contact Mr. Farland’s next of kin,” said the young copper as I felt the floor slip out from under me.

“He’s been killed in an industrial accident on the island and all we could find to identify him was a “Little Baby’s Happy Hour” club card. We thought maybe you might be able to help us.”

There it was.

In one single simple sentence my life was irrevocably changed and that young pimple faced officer had got it out all in one breath.