Summer Lightning in a Glowing Bottle

Long ago and far away…

Ray was, as usual, on top of the world…or to be more accurate, he was on the top of his world.

Ray listened, learned, and came to believe that the top of the world was neither a geographical nor a social location, but a state of mind. He had good health, fun friends, a job he didn’t dread going to, an affordable downtown apartment in an interesting city, sufficient free time and enough financial security to get by on for his lifestyle. He was smart enough to realise it and was wise enough to appreciate it. Ray never thought of his past or his future unless it brought him, or others, laughter and pleasure.

Katrina was fond of studying people and making mental sketches of them. She believed Ray’s appearing to be genuinely happy attracted people like a magnet; he made them laugh and openly enjoyed their company that made them feel good about themselves. His self-confidence that attracted people didn’t extend to egomania that repelled them. Peter said he had given up trying to describe why Ray was so fun and fascinating to be with…he just was…

As they said in the army,

‘Never think about it, just enjoy it’.

Ray was simply summer lightning in a glowing bottle incarnate.

Once Katrina popped into Rico’s for a late weekday afternoon cup of coffee and shared a booth with him during a quiet period. Rico was in a happy talkative mood, unlike when he was trading insults with the Down and Outers or frantically working as he was too cheap to hire more staff.

She hoped she wouldn’t destroy his jovial mood when she asked why he didn’t like Ray.

He calmly answered that he had worked long and hard and lived on the edge of financial abyss to have his own restaurant, yet when Ray sat down inside his place, everyone thought he owned it, not Rico.

There was nothing to envy about Ray if you worshipped wealth or power. He gave the feeling that he could easily do without either one.

There were those who became hangers-on of his gang to learn his secret. Surely, he had to be rich, or a criminal making money behind the scenes, but Ray had no interest in accumulating money, power, or ego. Those that desired those things for themselves soon left the gang. His gang and the other hangers-on were loyal to him and backed him against anyone trying to usurp his role of top banana to turn the gang into petty criminals.

Ray’s employer knew his strengths and limitations; he was so adept at avoiding work without being caught that they made him a supervisor to keep others from doing so. He was a group leader at his workplace and a squad leader in his National Guard outfit that Stash and Peter belonged to.

Stash was fascinated by Ray’s leadership skills as in the civil service only suck-ups and management cheerleaders were allowed to supervise. Ray was a leader, not a manager, and he would always go to bat for his team without visibly antagonising his managers or the officers, in public anyway. In return, he did his best to honestly defend management, for no one could call them Ray’s ‘superiors’. However, standing up for your men led you to be marked ‘never to be promoted’. Ray described middle management as being ‘the meat in the sandwich’.

Without sounding like Mr. Know-It-All, he could humorously and engagingly hold forth on any topic, except one. Katrina found he would never discuss his former marriage, unlike Rico who always complained about his wife. Ray once told her,

‘Her life didn’t turn out the way she wanted it to, and she blamed me. When my mother doesn’t know what to do, she rearranges the furniture. When wives don’t know what to do, they rearrange their domestic arrangements.’

* * *

Ray completed his employer’s errand at the bank and had enough time for a coffee break before returning to work. After finishing his coffee and repartee with the waitress and other customers at the dimestore luncheonette, he placed his money on the counter.

‘Hay-Heyyyyy, Ray!’

He looked across to one of the booths to see the face of the man who had spoken.

‘Jackson!’

He moved quickly to sit down with his high school number one buddy. Jackson and he were inseparable companions, always cracking jokes and playing pranks, but smart enough to not go too far or to be caught.

‘When did you get back in town?’

‘The other day, Ray. I just stopped in to see my folks. I couldn’t find your telephone number, so I went by your place. Your folks said they’d let you know I was around whenever they’d see you again.’

Ray lived in a small apartment downtown and only used pay telephones or made personal visits so was hard to contact.

‘I’ve got to dash back to work; how long are you in town for?’

‘I’m leaving this afternoon to Chicago by train, I’ll spend the night there, then tomorrow I’m catching the Super Chief to L.A.!’

‘The Super Chief!’, Ray beamed in wonder, ‘Santa Fe, all the way!’

‘My luggage is checked in to Chicago, so I don’t have to lug it around…Look, let’s meet here for lunch, then you can come with me to the train station!’

Ray smiled his engaging conspiratorial grin that made whoever he was talking to believe that they were sharing a fun secret together. Whether it was skipping school to go fishing, dodging duty to go to town, wagging work to go to a ball game, or only sharing a cup of coffee together, it was just the two of them, together against the world, and the pair would always come out on top…

‘We’re in the groove, Jackson! What time?’

Ray made it back to work with enough of an excuse to explain his absence. Just like an executive, he was granted a long lunch to see off his old friend.

The pair caught up at the same booth at the dimestore luncheonette. Reminiscing over lunch, they royally relived their school shenanigans and remembered the characters they laughed at and with.

They walked to the station on a typically gloomy overcast Midwestern afternoon. Ray wore his usual conservative suit and fedora, his buddy was attired in a plaid sports coat, loud tie and trilby as if he was off to the races. Jackson related his life story after high school where he had flunked out of university then kicked around the USA. He had just visited his parents before his master plan to hit Hollywood. Ray didn’t speak; he realised if he had, his life since high school would take only a few seconds to tell…

Their small industrial city’s Chicago-Northwestern Railroad station at the end of Washington Street had a wood-panelled upper level with a stunning view of the city’s harbour, breakwater and lighthouse on Lake Michigan. When one watched the sailboats and white caps on a blue day it took a lot of self-discipline to be able to return to work…However, the view you couldn’t see from the railway station were the smoke-belching factories that bordered the harbour and beach.

‘I’m not heading for Hollywood until tomorrow…Why don’t you quit your job and join me just for the hell of it! It’ll be like old times and no more shovelling snow! You can tell them where to shove their job!’

Jackson gave him the details of the hotel he was staying at. As his yellow and green express train arrived from Kenosha, Ray said goodbye without walking down the stairs to the platform. As he watched the afternoon express journey south along the shores of the lake, the call came back to him.

The call was the feeling that he first had in his grade school when he suddenly wanted to be outside in the freedom with his best friend and to ditch the schools, the rules, and the fools. It was that joyous feeling of being able to do what you wanted to do in a place and a time you weren’t supposed to be, laughing the afternoon away and breathing the air of freedom that was the wind blowing in the trees. It was what his Dad called ‘A W on the loose’ when he was in the military before he was shipped overseas. The call was never any fun when you were by yourself…

When he finished work, he didn’t go to Rico’s like he usually did; he hadn’t been there for his usual lunch either. He pondered his future at the counter of a drugstore soda fountain as he twirled his straw amongst the ice and Maraschino cherry of his cherry Coke.

Was it time to go?

Between his schooling and his current job, he had only left his small city permanently to take a well-paid job in Bismarck that led to a marriage that ended up in a painful disaster. He returned with his proverbial tail between his legs and vowed no more adventures into the unknown, especially those encouraged by his family. His family was more attracted by his job in Bismarck than he was, due to its lucrative salary. He found Bismarck and its people as miserable as its weather, unlike the local characters of his hometown who always had time to laugh.

What had he been missing all these years? In his mind he combined the fun he had with Jackson with the reruns of his favourite television show, Soldiers of Fortune, where John Russell and Chick Chandler found themselves in different faraway places with strange sounding names every episode and shared two-fisted he-man adventures, laughs and beautiful interesting women.

‘Just for the hell of it’, had always been Jackson’s battle cry of spontaneity as they launched into their high jinks. By contrast, Ray’s careful scheming and planning had been over half the fun of his activities. Even if things didn’t come off, he had a hell of a time preparing their plan of action, and there was always ‘better luck next time’.

What would he do when he hit California? When Jackson made his pitch, Ray’s mind had gone no farther than their cross-country train trip where the pair of them would swap jokes and funny stories all day in the club car, then he’d share a sleeping compartment with a rich woman who looked like a combination of Miss America and a Playboy Bunny. Jackson was always one of the biggest chick magnets in the school, so Ray had plenty of his second choices.

They naturally had fun together and could tell stories of their antics; you couldn’t do that with just anyone. The weather was better in California; Chicagoland only averaged 84 sunny days a year. He had always desired to see palm trees and the ocean. As a life-long movie fan, he had always been fascinated by Hollywood…California girls were pretty, but the pretty girls in Bismarck led to marrying one, that led to…nothing made a confirmed bachelor more than a nasty marriage…

Or would Hollywood just be the beginning? Maybe they’d work their way on a ship to the Orient that was so Far East you had to travel West to get there…then Down Under to Australia…even when they were living low they’d be living high.

On the other hand, he had always counted his blessings and knew what he had here. He had advanced to be a supervisor and had the respect of both the workers and management and could ‘get away’ with bits of free time. On the downside, he knew he’d never go any further in his job.

He would be starting all over again…How long would it take him to work up to a comfortable niche? He’d be competing with the locals. Hollywood had massive rewards for some, but massive failures for everyone else.

It was purely ridiculous, or reallydiculous as Joey would say, to quit his job overnight, then there was organising a transfer to the California National Guard.

With a pile of coins, he telephoned Jackson’s hotel from a phone booth.

‘Hay-Heyyyyy, Ray! What time will you get here?’

‘Why don’t you get yourself established first, then I’ll give notice and join you.’

He was totally unprepared for what happened next.

‘You’re a punk! You’ve never gone all the way, Ray!'

Jackson began whining like his former wife; he had never done that before. He was hysterical, almost as if he was in tears.

Ray kept feeding money into the pay telephone, as he let his old friend talk on and on. Jackson acted like a woman in a confessional booth telling him how everything he had done in his life had ended in failure. If he was like this, Ray would have to find a job for him as well as himself. Was that what Jackson was hoping for?

He went to his downtown apartment and remembered their times together, but in much more detail…Who would have predicted what Jackson would have turned into? He always had self-confidence…or did he? Was Jackson leaning on him even then?

* * *

Ray returned to Rico’s for lunch the next day. Everyone, even Rico seemed relieved he had returned, and asked where he had been. Ray merely said he had run into an old high school friend.

‘Ray!’

It was a very wide-eyed Angie.

‘Ray, I dunno why, but I had the feelin’ I would never ever see yuh again!’

They both hugged each other without realising what they were doing. Joey and Stash seemed mystified; Rico wasn’t…

‘It looks like there’s something to this female intuition after all…’

‘Don’t ever leave me…’

‘I can’t leave any of you, even you, Rico!’

Rico didn’t answer, he suddenly remembered something he had to do in the kitchen.

Angie snapped out of her frame of mind and the gang carried on as they always did. Rico returned in a great mood; there were no insults in any of their usual banter and it seemed that there were more laughs all around...

* * *

It was over a week later that there was a telephone call at work from Ray’s parents that invited him home to dinner that evening.

Though they didn’t live together, they remained on the best of terms as their son had independence, but he still was nearby. However, their relationship was still strained over his divorce that was the first in the family and the neighbourhood; Ray’s mother took it hard.

His Dad sat him down in the living room to tell him that Jackson’s parents had informed them that their son had committed suicide in California. Everything he had done since school was a tragic and depressing failure, a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force, scrapes with the law, a string of debts...He had returned home and used every emotional trick in the book to get money out of them. They warned him that the money they gave him would be the very last, there would never be any more again.

Ray’s Dad was a blunt no-nonsense type of guy, as those who went through the Depression then fought in World War II were. His motto was,

‘I’m never your friend, but I’m always your father.’

‘Don’t ever blame yourself for not going to California with him. People like that drag you down with them. You’d always be looking over your shoulder keeping an eye on him. He’d blame you for everything that went wrong with his life and then stab you in the back when you least expected it.’

‘I guess people like the Jackson I talked to on the phone were like that…I just never would’ve believed that the Jackson I palled around with in school was that way.’

‘You’re a winner in your own sort of way. He was a loser in every way.’

‘I don’t know if I’m a winner…I barely keep my head above water.’

‘Son, every man, no matter how much money he has, is just keeping his head above water…and another thing…you’re always truthful, your pal wasn’t. Remember when that sales manager you once had said you’d never make it as a salesman because you were too honest, and you talked to people rather than at them? Though you lost that job, I was proud of you. We really knew that we brought you up right.’

‘Dinner’s ready’, Ray’s mother said from the kitchen.

‘He had a great time with you in school, but lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.’

‘No, it never does. Let’s eat, Dad.’

FIN

Author Notes: I am the author of three Extra Dimensional/Ultraterrestial military science fiction novels MERCENARY EXOTIQUE, OPERATION CHUPACABRA and WORK IN OTHER WORLDS FROM YOUR OWN HOME! as well as two travel books THE MAN FROM WAUKEGAN and TWO AUSTRALIANS IN SCOTLAND (all from Lulu.com). I live happily ever after with my wife in paradise (coastal Kiama, NSW Australia).

Recommend Write a ReviewReport