Sandusky Burning, page 4
At least I thought I smiled. Since I rarely smiled, I was never sure what the expression on my face was when I tried to feign friendliness. My expression was generally one of a soldier in formation, entirely neutral.
I figured I needed to go outside and talk to him before he showed up at my camper door. There were liquor bottles on the kitchen table that I didn’t want this guy to see.
I had also been cleaning my Beretta M9 and had it laying out on a cloth by the bottles. Campground policies usually forbade firearms, and I didn’t need a hassle over it with this guy. I walked out the door and met him as he arrived.
“I’m Chuck,” he said as he walked up, extending his hand.
“Mike,” I responded, shaking it.
“Wow, this thing is a beauty! What year is it?” he asked, stepping back as he glanced up and down the Airstream.
“1974.”
“Been out here a few weeks, huh?” he asked. His hand twitched to his shirt pocket where his smokes were, but he didn’t go for the pack.
“Yeah, a few weeks,” I said.
“Where are you from?” Chuck asked. “I see you got Georgia plates on your S-10.”
“From Atlanta.”
“Here by yourself?”
“All by myself.”
“So, what brings you to Sandusky Shores?”
“I have some family in the area,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I lied, other than as a push-back to being prodded with questions by this stranger.
“Really, where at?” Chuck asked.
I paused and surveyed the street. A giant motorhome rolled slowly north, towing a white Land Rover behind it. Of course, it was driven by an older guy with white hair. People who owned extravagant toys had money to burn, and those with money to burn were generally not youthful.
“More toward Cleveland,” I said.
“So, why would you stay in Sandusky, an hour away?” Chuck asked, smiling. He squinted a little as he sized up my campsite again.
“I didn’t have any interest in camping in Cleveland, with the Cuyahoga River burning and all. It didn’t seem safe,” I said without cracking a smile. He stared at me with a blank look on his face for a few seconds then started laughing.
“Ha ha, right. That happened in the late 1960s. I think they got that under control,” he said.
“I’m not taking any chances. Anyway, this area is nice. It has a resort town feel to it, near Gravity Junction and the islands,” I stated. He touched his cigarette pocket again.
“Why don’t you just have one?” I asked.
“One what?”
“A cigarette. You keep touching your pocket there. I don’t mind,” I said, folding my arms. I had smoked at various times during my military career but had kicked the habit years ago.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“I used to like a smoke when I drank back in the day too,” I said.
“Except I’m not drinking,” he said with a smile.
“That wasn’t you over at lot 31 drinking a few hours ago?” I asked.
“You caught me, a little bit of a liquid lunch,” he said, raising his hands up in an I surrender pose and laughing nervously.
“No harm in that,” I said, showing off my fake smile again. “What is it you are looking at over there at 66, some sort of electrical issue?”
“Yeah. The camper from last week said the fuse kept popping,” Chuck said as he walked back toward his golf cart.
“Let me know if you need a hand. I know a little about electrical,” I said.
“I’m good, but thanks,” he said as he turned the key. He waved without looking at me, speeding off north toward the dumpster.
It seemed like a good time for a drink. Who was I to judge the guy for having a few beers at lunch? It was petty but getting interrogated about my personal business annoyed me. I went back into my RV.
I wasn’t intentionally surveilling lot 31, but I had a direct view of it if I stood in the right corner of my lot. The guy in 31 didn’t look like he belonged in the company of a guy like Chuck. He was too clean-cut; there was a definite square look to him.
His camper was newer and well kept. But why no wife or kids at a seasonal lot? He didn’t have the look of some solo dirtbag loitering at a campground. Then again, I could reasonably be mistaken for a solo dirtbag loitering at a campground.
Across the street, the camper door at site 51 opened, and a man stepped out, holding a big, colorful energy drink can. I had been under the assumption he was there by himself until I saw a woman walking out of his dump of an RV with a basket of laundry a week ago. They looked like the type of people who lived at a campground by necessity rather than for recreation. She appeared to be malnourished, skin and bones, with reddish-brown hair and freckles, wearing black yoga pants, a white tank top, and flip-flops.
The guy had thick, dark hair, cut into something resembling the Beatles’ early mop-top cuts, but a little longer. He usually wore a backward baseball cap, mirrored tea shade sunglasses, shoddy clothes, and tennis shoes. He always appeared like he just woke up.
The few times we crossed paths, his eyes had the distant look of someone who got high regularly. I saw him chatting with Chuck here and there; maybe there was a drug dealer/user relationship. I overheard he was a construction worker and hoped he wasn’t operating heavy machinery while under the influence.
As I thought about it, site 15 also had a solo camper as well. The site across from the shower house and down a few lots. The guy generally wore a Gravity Junction uniform and had a foreign look to him. Some sort of Eastern European vibe. He reminded me of some of the guys I encountered while deployed to Bosnia. Super pale and gangly. He constantly had a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
I heard Gravity Junction recruited internationally, so I guessed this guy got a visa to work for the summer and was getting a big helping of Americana at the amusement park. The tacky, overweight, loud, often drunk parkgoers probably left a lasting impression on these foreign workers.
I heard a thundering in the distance and recognized the motorcycle of the Euro guy from site 15. I thought it was a Yamaha Virago, one of the bigger models. My commanding officer rode a similar bike at my last unit.
You could hear it from across the campground, but like most bikers, I guess he didn’t mind the attention. He drove it down Starling a little too fast, and as he passed the gazebo structure in front of site 12, a woman’s shrill voice boomed, yelling at him to slow down.
The owner of that voice was a short, round, thirty-something-year-old, wearing flip-flops, a bikini top, and cutoff shorts that revealed way too much pale skin. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, wearing dark sunglasses with white rims, her makeup-less, pockmarked face contorted into a snarl. It wasn’t the first time she cracked down on him, along with several other bikers and car drivers. I figured she corrected violators at a rate of one or two per day. The campground’s unofficial audio speed bump.
There was usually a small crowd gathered by that gazebo. I assumed its construction was a collective effort, where several families pitched in and built it on the cement pad at site 12. It was a decent-sized wooden structure, a square that was ten feet wide on each side.
The back part was open, with bar tops built on the other three sides. There were various decorations, including large Ohio State and Notre Dame flags and several signs:
If you wanted to stay sober, why’d you come over?
Home is where we park it!
Today’s soup: whiskey with ice croutons.
Happy camper!
If you are looking for a sign that you should have a glass of wine, this is it!
Tiki torch sconces were built into each corner post, and track lights ran along the outside just beneath the roof, so it was fairly well lit at night. So were most of the occupants. There were usually drinkers sitting on barstools placed along the bar, morning, noon, and night.
The Euro guy pulled into the lot and got off his bike. There wasn’t a helmet law in Ohio, so his only safety equipment was a pair of wraparound sunglasses. His camper was small compared to most seasonals, maybe twenty feet long, a white StarCraft model from the 1990s. It was curious that he lived at the campground, being a foreign worker and all. I assumed room and board was part of the amusement park compensation package.
He lit a cigarette as he walked up to the front door. Long, gaunt face, dark hair thinning in the front with a narrow widow’s peak. Wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, but probably only in his early thirties, prematurely aging from vodka and cigs. He turned and glared at the woman who yelled at him and went in his camper.
Viktor 1
7:00 p.m.
“Shut up, big-mouthed tramp,” I mumbled to myself.
I did not speed. Well, I did not know for sure, sometimes the miles and kilometers mixed me up. But if I did, I did not speed badly. Three times she has screamed at me, this woman. She needed a punch to shut that mouth.
The idiots at lots 10 to 13 always watched me. Watched everyone who passed by. There was no RV at 12, they built a stupid wooden chiosc where they all sit on their big asses all day and drink beer. And let their kids run wild and ride bikes in traffic. One day, one of these little shits was going to be a speed bump. They sit there with sour looks on their faces when I go by like I’m the only one on a motorbike in this campground.
I unlocked my camper and went in. It was hot and smelled of beție ... booze, dirty laundry, a full wastewater tank, and two-days-old pizza. I heard something moving back in the bunk area. I still had mice and bugs. Until I did something, they were not going away, but I had no time. A mouse chewed some of my blankets and shit in little piles in the bedroom.
A bottle of Stolichnaya was where I left it on the kitchen counter. I looked for a cup, found a used red plastic one in the sink, and rinsed it. The water pooled in the sink because the gray water tank needed to be golit ... emptied.
I poured a shot and drank it quickly. I poured another. The smell was too bad, and it was too hot inside the RV, so I walked outside with the cup. Before I would bring the bottle out, but Chuck told me to be careful about drinking vodka straight from the bottle outside. It may upset my fat neighbors.
I sat in the lawn chair I found by the dumpster. A good lawn chair, it was a little dirty and the bottom sagged. I would rinse it when I had time.
I leaned back and looked down at the stupid uniform I wore. A blue polo with the Gravity Junction logo and a name tag: Viktor, Romania.
Nobody at the park cared about Romania. Nobody asked about Romania. People from Colombia and Argentina got other Spaniolă speakers to talk to them. Even the Rusi and Polonezi got interest. Not Viktor, no one knew what to think of Romania. No American could find it on the map.
One tourist asked me what language they speak in Romania. Chinese, you dumb shit. America is supposed to be educated, yet they know nothing.
The rest of the uniform was khaki pants, black socks, black sneakers. I went back inside and changed, putting on a pair of gym shorts and a white Gravity Junction T-shirt I found in the laundry pile. Stupid cartoon dog by the logo. I threw the uniform in the pile. It had no stains, so I would wear it again.
I was told I was lucky to be at the campground and not in the Gravity Junction employee wing at Cloverleaf. Rodents and cockroaches worse than Bucureşti. No one will complain because they are foreign. What are they going to do, go home? Are you going to walk from Sandusky to Columbia or Croatia? Good luck.
Gravity Junction, the biggest park company in the country, puts foreign workers in the ghetto by the dirty trailer park and dirty campground. Some of these workers never see anything but the stupid park and ghetto for the season. This is America to them.
I drank again, and the heat from vodka in my stomach began to calm me. Spending ten hours in the park did nothing but annoy. Spending ten minutes in the park would annoy. Stupid adults, stupid kids, stupid questions asked. Stupid bosses, stupid coworkers. All stupid.
Then I come back to this stupid campground. Fat, lazy people riding everywhere on motor carts. Get your big butt off the cart and walk.
I looked at my watch; it was 1915 hours. Forty-five minutes until the meeting. I had to be at the Taj on time, or Mr. Randy would have a goat. There was no excuse for being late. I was just two sites away.
Calling the trailer the “Taj” was stupid. It had to be a name made up by Chuck. The RV was good, but to comparaţie it to the Taj Mahal was the usual American aroganţă.
Mr. Randy was the American dream guy. By a campfire at the Taj late one night, he told me his story, how he started from nothing and built businesses and bought land. His key to it all was knowing the tourist cultură and to pârghie ... leverage that to find new oportunități.
The business he was known for by the locals was his bowling alley. Fat people throwing balls down the lanes and drinking pitchers of bad beer. Everywhere in the US, they loved watery beer. Bud, Coors, Miller. All the same. Blue Moon my ass. Squeezing oranges in the beer? What I would give for a Timisoreana. I should have brought some. Maybe Elena would send some. But with what? She had no money; that is why I took the job in America, to make money.
But no foreign worker left Sandusky with money. Everything costs too much. Everything in the park had criminally high prices, and yet the fat tourists all pack in, paying four dollars for a bottled water and twelve dollars for a burger and fries. A cheap T-shirt made in China was twenty-five dollars. So much stupidity.
I would leave Sandusky with money. I had to listen to Mr. Randy and do as he asked. The money I would make from his work would be a lot more than the money made at the park.
Randy 1
7:35 p.m.
Walking out the back door of Glory Bowl, a text came through on my phone. I was wearing my typical biker wear of boots, jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black leather vest.
I could afford to dress better, a lot better. The boots and vest were expensive, but only another biker would know that. I saw no point in trying to dress like a businessman, since that would add nothing to my business’s bottom line.
The bowling alley was doing good business for a Tuesday night. It was a little early in the season, so the full tourist surge wasn’t happening yet. Being busy meant there were a few more dollars for Sam to skim off the top.
Sam was a reliable guy, but there was no question he skimmed money. I underpaid him, so from that angle, if you included the skimmings, maybe he got paid what he deserved. I knew what I was getting when I hired Sam, and most of his value to me was from things you didn’t put on a resume.
Sam was a menacing guy, even as he pushed forty. He was six-foot-four and close to 280 pounds. About fifty pounds of that was flab, but he still had big arms and shoulders from when he played high school football. He was too slow to make it beyond high school ball and too dumb to go to college without an athletic scholarship, so when the marine recruiter took interest in him, he went that route.
Sam’s dad died when he was a kid, an overweight factory worker who suffered a heart attack in his forties after a twelve-hour shift racking fenders. I doubted Sam cried a tear about it, since his old man tended to beat the shit out of him on a regular basis. That left Sam without a father figure, as poor of a father as he was, so the marines seemed to be a solid option for a kid with few prospects.
Sam’s mom bowled in a league at Glory, and I got updates on Sam from time to time. He seemed to be doing good as a marine.
The next thing I knew, he was back home. I walked into the bowling alley one day, and there he was, sitting at the bar, watching a football game.
The bowling alley had never been what people would consider a nice place. It was a dump when I bought it, and I hadn’t done much with it since. I replaced the roof and renovated the women’s bathroom with insurance money after it flooded, but beyond that, I spent just enough money on the business to get by. I replaced the bowling shoes and balls when they were unusable and not a minute sooner.
I did invest in my office, which was originally two storage rooms on the second floor. Walls were knocked out and a big window with one-way glass installed so I could view the lanes. I had the remaining walls soundproofed. Later, I had a full bathroom and a small bedroom constructed. Sometimes I would let friends crash there if they drank too much or if I decided it was safer for me to stay at the alley instead of returning home.
The alley had twenty lanes, a small arcade, and a bar area with a few old TVs mounted above. Most modern lanes installed fancy digital systems with color monitors to track scores with the bowlers’ names, but mine were at least twenty years old and were black and white. People come there to throw a bowling ball down a lane and drink; they didn’t need all those bells and whistles. Besides, I owned the only alley in Sandusky, so good luck taking your business elsewhere.
That afternoon, when I saw Sam sulking at the bar, I did a double take. He should have been at Camp Pendleton in California. He was trimmer and had a military buzz cut, but beyond that, he was the same Sam I knew before he enlisted.
“Hey, Sam! Home on leave?” I asked, sitting next to him at the bar. “Genie, the next one is on me.”
“Uh, thanks Mr. Gorey,” Sam said sheepishly, taking a drink from his clear plastic cup and setting it down next to the empty pitcher.
“When you going back?” I asked.
Sam paused, looking down at his hands. “Never,” he mumbled.
I sat up a little straighter. “What happened, kid?” I asked, motioning for Genie to bring me a drink. She brought me a bourbon on the rocks.
Genie had been a decent-looking gal when I hired her back when she was a teen, but decades of drinking and smoking had not treated her well. She was still my main bartender, as reliable as they came, and honest, as far as I could tell.
“I was discharged,” he said softly.
“Discharged?” I said in disbelief. “You signed up for four years.”
“I know. I was accused of stealing,” he said, taking a big swig that finished off the cup. Genie had taken the pitcher and was refilling it at the tap.
