Wynter and the Curmudgeon
(A Curdmudgeon Fest Story)
by Russell Hoisington
This story was written for Anoninsac's 2004 Curmudgeon Fest honoring my editor, website maintainer, ASSM moderation team sempai, and Older Brother, Denny Wheeler. If you like it, great! If not, that's okay, too, because the only opinion that counts with me for this story is Denny's. If you're a regular visitor to the ASSD newsgroup then you will recognize most of the people and inside jokes herein. If not, that's cool. You should understand the ending, so try it. It's short, and you're in no hurry anyway. And there's no sex to slow you down.
Wynter King, Future MD, grasped the front corners of the wooden chair seat and, with her ankles crossed, swung her slender legs back and forth in wide-eyed wonder. Something in the air tickled her nose, making her want to sneeze, but she barely noticed that. Her blonde ponytail lashed as she twisted her head about, trying to take it all in. She'd been inside bars in Rifle and Granby and Evergreen. She had seen through the doors into some in Steamboat Springs and Las Vegas. But she sure hadn't ever seen any like this "La Taverna" before. It was weird! Even the floors couldn't decide if they were hardwood, tiled, or carpeted, changing every time she looked at them. This strange place made dumb old Aunt Diane and yucky Uncle Bob seem perfectly normal. Almost.
Every outside door in this crowded place seemed to go somewhere else—and she wasn't sure how many outside doors there were because the number changed when she wasn't looking. It was a late fall afternoon outside when her favorite uncle had brought her in here—wherever "here" was, because she wasn't exactly sure how he had gotten her to this place—but it looked like a springtime noon outside that door where the man dressed in motorcycle leathers was coming in. She watched some lady walk up to him and call him "Cats," and then she gasped in amazement. The door behind the man had vanished! It was just a wall, with a painting of a reclining lady wearing—well, not much.
And outside that door over there it was nighttime and raining! And there were inside doors that were just as weird. One, with a brass plate marked "Callahan's Place" on it, was in the wall next to the archway leading to a dining room. But when it opened she saw another bar—not the dining room—and a German shepherd talking to people!
A small woman with real wings was leaning on a podium and giving orders to a work crew up on the stage over thataway and causing sparks of light to appear whenever she snapped her fingers. The men were sawing wood and building something. She guessed it was sawdust that tickled her nose.
From the top of the wide, beautiful, wooden staircase she heard thwacking noises, each followed by a man's scream in a different pitch. The screams played a song she recognized: "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You." Nobody else seemed to notice. She stopped a short, busty woman with long dark hair.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but—somebody is screaming up there!"
The woman smiled and patted her shoulder reassuringly. "It's okay, dear. It's just Hecate and Suzee in one of the bedrooms playing Chess."
Wynter turned to gape at the stairs. She'd played chess before, but never in her bedroom—and it sure didn't involve any screaming men. She turned back to the woman in time to see her disappear into a birch tree in the corner. Had that tree been there all this time and she'd missed it? And how did the woman get inside? There wasn't any door.
Two pretty women in slinky dresses walked past, sipping drinks. One said she was going upstairs for a cup of soup. The other said she'd go with her, but wanted a fish taco instead. This place must be really big if it had another dining room upstairs. She giggled suddenly, remembering what Kenny Taylor had once called a "fish taco." She wondered if the lady had ever heard the term used that way.
A flash drew her eyes to the prettiest woman she had ever seen, one who's skin looked like smooth, silver metal, holding the arm of an apparently normal human man who looked several years older. They stopped next to a friendly looking couple. "Sagittaria, Leowulf," the first man said, "this is D2-B2. Since I created her, I named her after myself."
The itch in her nose suddenly grew worse. She took a napkin from the stack on the table and sneezed into it, making the itch go away.
"Bless you."
She looked up. A man dressed in priest's clothes was smiling down at her.
"Thank you," she said, wiping her nose. "I didn't know they let preachers in bars."
"Nor did I realize they would allow someone your age," he said with a funny accent she didn't recognize. "But this is where I'm most needed, you know." The man upstairs let out a final, high-pitched scream and the priest looked at his watch. "In fact, I'm needed upstairs in two minutes or they'll start without me. Good day, my child." His fingers waved a cross in front of her forehead and, after another smile at her, he climbed the stairs.
Wynter tucked the used napkin in the pocket of her yellow knit shorts. She didn't much care for being called "child" now that she was an eleven-year-old grown-up, but Pastor Digby called everybody, even old Mister Fogarty, "child." She guessed that was how all preachers talked.
A man in a blue baseball cap and carrying a cup of wonderfully smelling hot chocolate looked down at her, said, "All stop!" and froze in place. She didn't have time to read the words in gold letters on the front of the cap before he spun it around with a fingertip to the bill. "Up scope!"
She giggled. He seemed like a nice man the friendly way he smiled at her.
"Honey, are you sure you're supposed to be in here?" he asked.
Wynter smiled back, all coral lips and even, white teeth. "I'm here with my uncle," she said, pointing to a tall man with a ruff of white hair and a short brown beard accepting two drinks from the bartender. "He's getting me a "Shirley Temple." That's a weird name for a drink, isn't it?"
The man glanced at her uncle. "Diving officer, make your depth sixty-five feet!" he said and then squatted beside her, causing more giggles. He glanced around and then whispered, as if telling her a really big secret. "Listen, the bartender keeps a special supply of this good chocolate just for me, but if you tell him the secret phrase, 'Answer bells on batteries,' he'll fix you a cup. But don't let anyone else hear you say the phrase or he'll run out before dinner is over. Okay?"
"I might later, thanks," she said. "It wouldn't be polite to ask for something else right now."
The man nodded understanding and winked. "Down scope! Surface! All ahead two-thirds!"
He rose and took one step before a tiny, very pretty redheaded woman hooked his arm and said, "Hey, sailor! I'll trade you a mooseburger for some chocolate."
The "clik" of two glasses on the wooden tabletop brought her head back around. She looked at her glass, sniffed at it, and then waited for her favorite uncle to take his chair. "Thank you," she said. "Er—what's in it?"
"You're welcome, sweetheart," he said. "It's nothing you can't have legally, so try not to look disappointed when you drink it."
"Smarty pants," she said and made an exaggerated disappointed face at him. But he made one right back, causing her to laugh. Before she could ask any of her questions a loud argument erupted in one corner. Two groups of people at a round table were yelling at each other, and both groups yelling at a white-haired, gray-bearded man. She turned a worried face back to her uncle.
He waved a hand as if brushing the people away. "Story codes. They argue about them with Uther and with each other every night, but nobody has ever been injured I doubt they'll need a Future MD to patch up any gaping wounds."
Well, that relieved her mind!
"Are you going to try your drink?"
She grinned and reached for the glass, but she froze when the door marked "Callahan's Place" burst open and a grinning man strutted out. The German shepherd called him something she'd heard Daddy call Uncle Bob once when Daddy was really "pissed off." The man doubled over laughing as the door slammed. When he straightened and wiped his eyes he was looking directly at her. He moved in their direction and stopped beside her uncle.
"Sky," he said, nodding.
Her uncle shook his head. "Let me guess: tomorrow's Seattle Times headlines will be "Denny Wheeler Outpuns Ralph von Wau Wau?"
"If I'm lucky, yes. And 'Out-Puns' should be hyphenated."
"So you're proud you beat a dog?"
He shrugged. "Hey, a victory is a victory." He suddenly looked directly at her again. "You're Wynter, aren't you?"
She blinked and swallowed. "Uh huh. I mean, yes, sir."
"You misspelled 'Katz' and 'Cupasoup' and 'click.' It's a 'lectern,' not a 'podium,' and 'Deetoo Beetoo,' not 'D2-B2.' You should have single quotes around 'Shirley Temple.' You think and speak in too many dashes, italics, and exclamation points; you start too many sentences with conjunctions; and you need to watch your antecedents because beards don't accept drinks, your uncle does He nodded curtly, said, "Nice ponytail," and turned away. "Hey, Younger Brother!"
She watched his retreating back with her eyes wide and her mouth even wider, so wide that anyone could tell she had no fillings in her perfect teeth. The man stopped at the bar to speak with a tall, gray-haired man wearing glasses and sipping a gin & tonic. She closed her mouth, turned to her uncle, and waved him closer. "Uncle Sky," she whispered in his ear, cupping her hand around it so that her words wouldn't carry, "is that what Daddy calls a—um, a 'sanctimonious asshole'?"
He laughed, took her hand, and kissed it like they did in old movies, making her heart feel too big for her chest. "Maybe out there in the Real World, honey," he said. "But in La Taverna, that's what we call 'Our Beloved Curmudgeonly Editor'."
© Russell Hoisington 2004
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