(novel excerpt from EXECUTIVES OF THE WORLD)
By Dave Barrett
On this same 90 degree afternoon of his sons Will and Jerry’s World On Fire event at the Sombrero, Ben Ailing was relaxing on his Mid-20th Century Orange Velvet Sofa in the cool of his northside Republic 70’s Ranch-style house basement, watching Arnie Palmer play golf in his final U.S. Open golf tournament. Ben had lost interest when Arnie missed an easy bogie on the back nine of the Pebble Beach course, and had fallen asleep (a thing that had been happening to him more and more of late—even while he was smoking cigarettes).
Myra had yelled him awake the week before when he dozed off while watching a Wimbledon tennis match. He had missed the ashtray he’d been holding in his lap, and burned a whole in the belly of one of his favorite short-sleeve summer shirts! Myra had plucked the ashtray out of his lap and placed it back on the coffee table. As she was hurrying out the house for work, she had warned him “Damn it, Ben! What am I going to do with you? If you’re going to smoke down here—at least leave the damn ashtray where it’s meant to be used—one the coffee table, for Pete’s sake!”
And Ben had smiled sheepishly back and promised he would—all the while hiding the small burn hole on his shirt with a fist from her prying angry eyes.
“You’re right, honey! You’re right!”
But on this Saturday when Ben dozed off there was no Myra to wake him. And he fell into a deep sleep and dreamt he was a boy back in Winnipeg. Summertime. His old father and several of his brothers and one of Ben’s sisters—little Josie—were gathered on the rear porch of their ramshackle house on the outskirts of town and they were shelling peas and taking turns churning butter from cream provided by a neighbor’s cow. Ben’s father (they called him Daddy in keeping with the Irish fashion). . .was having a conversation with a man who had pulled up to their property in a shiny new car. . .honking his horn before his entrance. In Ben’s dream this man turned out to be none other than Milton Ackley the Third—the MetLife Insurance agent. Ackley was dressed in an all-white three piece suit, with a white top hat and hand-held watch on a chain, looking for all the world like a Southern dandy from the U.S. Ackley had even affected a Southerner’s accent. He was trying to sell Ben’s Daddy homeowner’s insurance and Ackley had likened his efforts to that of a “guardian angel.” And in his dream Ben’s Daddy and his brother’s had laughed and laughed and then chased Milton Ackley away—pelting him with corn cobs and slinging mud on his starched white suit as he fled– telling Ackley to “go back to the bank! Go back to hell!”
And Ackley had yelled back from his shiny car that they’d be sorry—bunch of “Bloody Micks!”– racing off in a cloud of engine smoke and red Winnipeg dust, blaring his horn in his vehicle’s wake.
And it was the sound of this horn and this image of smoke and dust billowing out from the back of Milton Ackley’s vehicle that awakened Ben from his Saturday U.S. Golf Tournament Open slumber only to discover that, while he’d been napping, not only had he forgotten to place his ashtray back “where it belonged” on the coffee table, but that it had tumbled out of his lap and the burning cigarette in it had set fire to the center cushion of his three-squared cushioned Mid-Century Orange Velvet Sofa: actual plumes of black acrid smoke filling the entire room.
Leaping to his feet, Ben grabbed the smoldering center cushion and charged up the half-flight of stairs from the basement, bolting through the front door of his home and smothering the couch cushion fire by tossing it upside down on the grass of his front yard, stomping on top of the orange cushion in his socked feet, and then dousing the fire for good with a nearby garden hose.
“Holy smokes!” Ben exclaimed.
He left the center cushion in the front yard to cool off, and then returned to the basement to “air out” the TV room. He opened all the basement doors—garage doors too. When he checked the center cushion again, he reflected that the burn mark in the upholstery was not nearly as big as he’d first thought.
He returned to the basement with the couch cushion, fluffed it up a bit, turned it over so its burn side wasn’t showing, and then shoved it back into its center position. Ben thought maybe, if he aired the basement out enough by the time Myra returned home, perhaps she wouldn’t even notice.
About the Author:
Dave Barrett is an Associate Professor of Writing at the University of Montana/Missoula College. His work has appeared most recently in Hive Avenue, Libre and Weber–the Contemporary West. His novel–GONE ALASKA–was published by Adelaide Books.