Daysleeper

Not too long after I left the old man's house I was going to an old bar in the middle of the mainland side of town called the 'Oak Tree'. Someday I'll have to write about the struggle of that bar to find a decent owner after the Babe died, but that is another story.
Hanging out at the 'Tree' as we called it I got to know a guy who we'll call 'Tommy'.
Tom was a milkman and I was a headthumper. We worked nights. Tommy would be up and gone at 2:30 in the morning and get done about noon or sometimes eleven, I worked midnight to eight at one of the brand new condos on the beach.
On the weekends Tom and I would be bright eyed and bushy tailed when the bars closed and often went out for breakfast. He had a plan. He had moved back in with his folks for a few months after his last cohabiting girlfriend had burnt all his clothes except his milkman uniforms for "caring more about the damned milk than ME!".
Tommy cleaned out what was left of his stuff while she was at work, and had all the utilities turned off, told the landlord he could have his security deposit if he would evict the former woman of his dreams, and started locking the gate to his folks house that was on a couple acres of land just outside of town.

There was an altercation one night in a 24 hour grocery that Tom was stocking with her but the cops understood his side of it and Tommy declined to press charges because as he put it, "Her gun didn't actually go off!".

So, Tommy had a plan. He was buying a house from the owner of the bar that the Babe had bought for his ner'do'well son and daughter-in-law and that she had simply refused to live in.
It was on a lot that sat on the railroad tracks.
About forty feet from the freight tracks. Of course there was the crossing bell too.
After we'd been there awhile we'd simply stop speaking at the first clang of the bell. The bell really wasn't that loud, but you soon got to where you could hear it, and knew what would follow.
When you'd stop speaking people would ask what was wrong, at least the first time or two.
I'd simply raise a finger to my lips and say 'ssshhhh'.
About 45 seconds after the bell got going good the trains would come through.

The southbound freights weren't so bad because they'd be loaded with goods, cars, tanks of this and that and heavy.
The tables and floor would shudder a bit, but it was OK.
Northbound, unless it was a bumper crop citrus season, the cars were mostly deadheading empty and there is simply nothing as noisy as a empty railroad car doing forty or fifty miles an hour.
Add to that the fact that going back empty they'd collect strings of cars here and there all on one engine and the racket would go on for a long, long time.

So Tommy had bought this place and needed a roommate.
I was rooming with a buddy who worked days at a blind book center and though a fun guy just wasn't quite up to my level of hi jinks. I told him that I was moving and he seemed relieved.
I met Tom at the bar and we went down to the house in his car, a huge old Dodge that he had had forever.

I'd yet to see the place, agreeing blind to move in and was amazed.
It had been done on the cheap in the nineteen twenties when they built it.
Babe after his darling daughter-in-law balked at living in it had had it redone AGAIN with all new carpet, fresh drywall, new doors, new appliances, and a new big air conditioner in the back kitchen window.
The location of that window unit was important because in this house, what is known in the deep south as a shotgun shanty' there was no place that cool air wouldn't go.
'Shotgun shanty' is so called because if you open the front door and the back door and fire a shotgun with a tight pattern down the hallway between them the odds are you won't hit anything.
The place was just a long central hallway with rooms opening off it, kitchen in the back.

Walking in for the first time to the place I would end up living for four years, Tommy was telling me, "I get the biggest bedroom", but you can have your pick otherwise. The next biggest bedroom had a private entrance, good light and was roomy, but I passed it by.

"Are you sure???" Tom asked me more than once, as we were leaving, "Sure" I replied, lets setup a table in there and have a dining room, and someplace to play poker, and make the place FEEL bigger than it is", I told him.  The house had both breaker box and fuses box and the breaker box was in my new bedroom which proved useful for loud livingroom parties when you were trying to sleep.
So I moved in.

Six months go by. I work every night from Midnight till eight, go from work to school where I am studying the graphic arts and come home crash about three in the afternoon till whenever I get up. If I get up early I go to the bar and hang out with the gang of mid shift service workers, but usually I just go on into work.
Work was fourteen miles away and I was on a Kawasaki triple. When the weather was clear it was great, when it was nasty it was just horrible.

Tommy and I got along great, the only time we really saw each other during the week was the occasional meeting at the bathroom door coming or going. The the weekends were more than passing strange, however.
Where before we'd hang out at the bars and go for coffee or breakfast now we'd go in different directions and end up back at the house at four in the morning, drunk, sometimes high, and wide awake.

No cable on the teevee in those days, and we were smart enough not to play poker with just each other, so we became the one late night tevee channels' strongest critics.
We'd watch intently for the slightest error and then compose long rambling letters to the station on my old Remington Upright typewriter, which we'd gleefully mail away before going to sleep at daylight.

It was about here that I jerked one of a pair of Jehovah Witnesses into the house one bright shiny morning and made his life pass before his eyes for hammering on my door while I was sleeping,  but that too is another story.

This being a very old, very nasty house with a shell built into the inside to cover the facts we didn't live there long till we started to notice odd things.

Socks would walk from one room to the other on their own, Clean SOCKS!
We seemed to be eating an awful lot of bread though we didn't remember it.
Garbage bags would crash over on their own at times.
Eventually I was sound asleep one day when I heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire in the hallway. Fearing for Tommy, I took my weapon from it's hiding place and quickly pulled open my bedroom door.
I found Tom with the twenty-two caliber pistol I'd sold him sighting down the hall into the kitchen.

"I think I got him", he says... He's just a little guy but I'm pretty sure I got him. On closer inspection I see three little holes in the back door, beginning about a foot above the floor, rising about three or four inches on each one.

"Was he climbing walls???" I scream. "What the fuck are you shooting at!?!?!" follows.

"We got MICE" shouts Tommy, half deafened by the report of the little pistol in the confined hallway.

"Let me see that piece" I shouted at him, and he hands it to me, I take it and disappear back into my bedroom with, "GET A CAT" at the top of my lungs bouncing in the hallway.

And so to bed.

I'd unloaded the pistol that evening and laid it on his pillow  before I left for work, and thought it just  another funny story to tell the gang.

Time passed, Tom went on his rounds, grocery, women, and bar.
Work for me was as always, deadly boring. Sitting in the bottom of a forty story condo reading and passing folks in and out was enough to numb the soul. When something DID happen if was usually scary..
I must have read three hundred books sitting there. I went all the way through the LORD OF THE RINGS twice, and though it took me longer I actually finished Chip Delaney's "DAHLGREN".

The stunningly beautiful lady who worked days usually came in a half hour early so I was able to get on  the bike and get to the local "Junior" College in time for class, but by Thursday or Friday I was pretty much operating on instruments.
I still haven't decided if it was a wonderful or terrible thing but my work week ran from Sunday night at midnight to Friday morning at eight AM. I had a three day weekend every weekend and in those days I squeezed it hard.

So, the point of this story, yes there IS a point, is that a few days after He'd shot up the back door Tommy saw the mouse again and decided to activate a 'plan' that he had been considering all week.

Visualize this. It is now Friday afternoon, about three PM. I come dragging in after a horrible week of very little sleep, long days at school, with a fair sized paperbag of groceries that I had balanced on the tank of the Kawasaki for several miles and head for the kitchen to put them away.

It is a dark day but there is plenty of light to see what I'm doing so ignoring the light,  I go to the fridge and placing the perishables on the counter wad up the bag and toss it over my shoulder toward the garbage can.

A bright BLUE flash filled the kitchen followed by a loud BANG and the snapping of fuses blowing.

I found myself sitting in the sink.

Tommy had taken a three foot square scrap of half inch plywood, stripped the insulation off of a cheap brown extension cord, ALL the cord except the last foot or so up by the plug and used electrical tape to attach this bare wire in parallel circles to the board.

In the center of this scrap of wood he had daubed about three ounces of the household peanut butter onto the plywood and then moving the garbage can out back carefully plugged this monstrosity into the outlet on the back wall.

My paper grocery bag had closed the circuit, fortunately blowing the fuses before catching fire.
I took this thing and sailed it out the back door, replaced the fuses and went to bed.
Little was said over the weekend, we avoided each other, trying to keep the peace I suppose.

Sunday rolled around, I went to work, went to class, came home.

On the header to the door way into the back of the house and the kitchen was a hand lettered sign.

"BEWARE! ! ! ELECTRIC CAT (MARK II)".

This one had a new feature, a pan of WATER with the bare cord going down in and out..

I got it unplugged without  incident and was standing in the back door wondering just how to get rid of this thing when all of a sudden the Railroad crossing bells began to ring.