Author: RG Gnaedinger

The Farm

	Soon after Ellis got thrown out of college, he moved into a small commune about ten miles out of the little college town of Pullman, Washington.  What a rat hole it was.  There were only three young men left that could stand the meager conditions.  All the women had left, maybe more because of the men than the conditions, but at any rate Ellis made the fourth human body to anoint the place, along with three dogs, a dozen or more chickens, several cats, and one large gilt pig named Effie, named after an infamous ex-landlady from a couple of his new roommates' past.
	Well, Ellis became the fourth young, single man to room up in this place, that all the neighbors and the land lord called "The Hippie House", and the tenants referred to affectionately as "The Farm".  This run down old farmstead had housed several generations of hippies as they passed through the University system, and it had a reputation for drugs and wild parties that could last for days.  The place consisted of several dilapidated out buildings, including a fairly large barn, an old machine shop full of junk and garbage from any number of previous tenants, and a granary that served as storage for leftover items from those who had lived there in the past, but couldn't pack away all of their belongings when they left hurriedly to avoid the law or the rent.  There was also a house, or should we say two houses hooked loosely together by a small breezeway that contained the back door.  Inside the main house on the first floor was a large bright kitchen, a bathroom, a small parlor with a television, a couch and a couple of chairs, and a small room off to the side where the stereo lived.  Up stairs were two small bedrooms.  The rear house was in the process of falling down, or being torn down, or maybe it had never been finished at all.  It was hard to say for sure.
	John and Duncan, both college students at the time, had taken rooms in the upstairs of the main house.  Fred had fashioned living quarters out of the shambles on the upper floor of the rear house.  He had a bed of sorts with open springs and a moth eaten mattress, where he could throw down his sleeping bag and a sack of old clothes he used as a pillow.
	This rear house had no source of heat, and with winter coming on, Fred spent only nights in the building.  The rest of the time, he hung out in the main house, which was heated by a beautiful round parlor stove that Ellis and his first wife had stolen from an abandon Moose Lodge during their college days in Cheney, some sixty miles to the North.  This handsome, round, up-right, parlor stove was not only ornamented with more chrome and fancy casting than any other stove he had ever seen, but it was also the most inefficient, poorest heating stove he had ever been around.  It was truly sad that something so beautiful could leave you so cold when you needed its warmth the most.
	This place was a dream come true for the kind of self-inflicted poverty that Ellis had chosen for the next three seasons.  He was from an upper middle class family, and had been brought up to respect money and affluence far better than he showed during those months at "The Farm."  The place was a hovel, and yet, he would look back on it with fonder memories than any other place that he would live.  He probably laughed more and worried less that any other time in his life, and though he had little in the way of economic means, he had much in the way of pleasure and inner comfort.
	When Ellis first came to the place, he had just returned from a trip to Mexico, and was looking for a place to hole up for the winter.  A friend had told him that several people had just moved out of "The Farm" and they may have room out there for him.  Ellis hitched a ride out there and talked to John, whom he had met one time before.  He said sure, and Ellis moved in.  It was as simple as that.  Moving in was easy as well; he took off his packsack and sat down.  His ex-wife had lived there up until about a month before, and when she left, she had left their large mutt dog there, so he had one long time friend to welcome him home, as it were.  Fred and Duncan, whom Ellis hadn't met yet, had gone to town for groceries and beer if they could find any, according to John, and he was welcome to make himself at home on the first floor of the rear house.
	Ellis opened the squeaky door to the rear house less than half way before it came to a stop against something on the floor behind it.  He was too wide to get through with his pack, so he set it aside in the hall before entering the darkened room.  Once in, he could make out a dim light coming from the second floor, down the staircase that ended in a small landing.  There was no other light in the room as far as he could tell, and as he felt on the wall beside the door for a light switch, he became aware of a musty dank odor that lay heavily in the air.  It wasn't an awful smell, but one that reminded him of a damp attic that had been shut up for too long without an airing.  In a short time his eyes adjusted to the darkness and with the aid of the soft light from up the staircase he discovered that the door was blocked from opening fully by an engine block and several other parts off a car of some sort.  Next to the engine block was a large wooden workbench that took up the rest of the wall the door was on, and in front of the bench were several cardboard boxes of what looked like books and magazines.  There was also a motorcycle and some paper sacks of old clothes along with other things too numerous to account for strewn everywhere about the floor.  There was, however, a clear path leading from the partially open door to the landing at the foot of the stairs, where Fred must have passed many times going to and from his room upstairs.  On the wall before him at the foot of the stairs was a doorway, blocked from opening by a box of books and several concrete blocks.  As his eyes continued to adjust to the low light, things appeared that were hidden at first, and on the far wall to his right emerged a book shelf that went from floor to ceiling containing a dozen or more tin cans and an equal number of glass jars full of nuts and bolts.  Next to this were six to eight boards nailed neatly on the wall, as if to cover a hole.
	He went to the far wall where the closed door was and began to clear away the debris.  Opening the door, he found it led to another room, smaller than the first with deep shelves on either side, creating an isle between them that led to another doorway.  The door hung open and askew from only the top hinge, and several boards were missing from the walls, leaving the room exposed to the elements.  As he turned and walked back into the first room, he thought, "This is it.  This must be his room."  With both doors open to the light from outside, he could see the full extent of the clutter for the first time, and it wasn't a pretty sight.  He had dived into many a supermarket dumpster in search of dinner, which were less of a mess than this.  As he pondered how much of this junk he could dispose of and how to arrange the rest, the dogs all set up a racket of barks and growls, and presently a car drove up in the driveway.
	Ellis walked back through the room and out into the side yard in time to see two fellows about his age emerge laughing from a beat-up multi-colored Volvo, dating from the early 60s.  The driver was dressed in a bright Hawaiian shirt, tan pants, and scuffed up saddle shoes, and carrying a small brown paper sack that he held up high away from the dogs as they bounced playfully in front of him.  The passenger had a string potato sack half full of various vegetables in one hand and a half gallon of cheap red wine in the other that he too held high as he closed the door to the car with his foot and yelled loudly, "We're home, and we scored big."
	John had just come out onto the front porch and stood leaning on the post that held up the roof.  "What's in the sack, Fred?" he called, throwing a pan full of leftovers out into the yard where the chickens made short work of cleaning it up.  Fred didn't answer, but seemed to dance with the dogs as he waved the sack back and forth above his head.
	Fred and Duncan hadn't seen Ellis yet, but John had and he pointed his way with the pan he was holding and said, "This is Ellis, he lives here."
	"Hi," Ellis said, stepping out from the shadow of the lilac bush and into the bright afternoon sun.
	Both Fred and Duncan looked in his direction a bit startled by his presence and grinned like a pair of children with a new toy.  They lowered both the sack and the wine, and Fred said, "Hi!  Where you from?"
	"Right here, pretty much," Ellis said.  "Just got back from Mexico for a couple months, and need a place to hole up for the winter."
	"Can you pay the rent?"  Asked Duncan, as he tucked the bag of vegetables under one arm and twisted off the cap from the wine and reached the bottle out toward him.
	"Some of it, I expect," Ellis said, taking the bottle and inspecting it before raising it to his lips.
	"Yeah, far out," said John "every little bit helps.  Hey Fred, is that what I think it is in the sack?" he continued as Ellis handed him the wine.
	"It sure is, and it's good shit, let's go burn some."  Fred said heading for the house and taking the wine from John as he stepped onto the porch.  They all followed him into the house and stood around the kitchen as Duncan performed the honors of rolling a big fat joint from the home grown pot they had scored while in town.
	Duncan handed Ellis the joint upon finishing it, and asked him to start it out as he began working on another.  The joint headed around the table followed by the wine, and on about the second hit they each sat down.  The conversation subsided, and all that could be heard over the low music from the other room was the sound of an occasional very deep breath.  The wine, though of poor quality, was cooling as it washed away the dry heat of the ever-shrinking roach, that now passed from hand to hand, held in a pair of pliers.  Just before it got to Duncan, he lit the second one, took a long drag and handed it to Ellis.  He then took the roach, which was nearly gone, popped it into his mouth and chased it down with a large slug of wine.  The ceremony of the joint continued for a few more minutes, and culminated with Duncan swallowing the remains once again.
	They sat listening to the music for a few more minutes and then Fred asked, "How was Mexico?"
	"Mellow," Ellis answered, "I think I could live there if I could learn the language."
	"You would," John said, as he took off his glasses and rubbed at the lenses with his shirttail.
	"Yeah I know," Ellis said "but it sure is hard when you can't understand what anybody's saying.  It was great though.  The jungles were wonderful, and the people were nice.  In fact, the only people I met that I didn't like were Americans.  I was even embarrassed to be one most of the time."
	They sat there for most of an hour drinking wine and talking about Mexico.  Duncan got up a couple of times to change the record on the stereo, and John ran some water in the kitchen sink to do the few dishes that looked as if they had been sitting on the counter for several years.  At some point Duncan went upstairs, leaving John, and Fred, and Ellis with the wine and the bag of pot to work out the worlds problems without him.
	"Hey Fred," John began, "I told Ellis he could stay in the rear house with you.  Is that okay?"
	Fred had begun to twist up another joint as John spoke, and turning to look at him was too much for his concentration.  The paper tore, spilling the contents onto the magazine he had laid under his work for just that purpose, and looking up, he said, "Sure," and pushed the magazine, papers, and pot across the table in front of Ellis.  "Sure, that is, if you can roll a decent joint.
	Arranging the materials to suit him, Ellis began to roll up the green leaves in the yellow wheat straw papers Fred had pushed across the table.  "These papers are your first problem," Ellis mused.  "They're stiff and thick and too hard to roll, and then you have to smoke all that extra paper.  Here, Try these thinner papers," he said, tossing a pack of thin Dutch papers across the table to him.
	"There's lots of room back there," Fred said,  "You can stay anywhere you like.  I'm upstairs in the big room, but you can have the other room, or you can have the whole downstairs if you don't mind me tromping through to get to bed at night."
	"I was thinking about the downstairs," Ellis said, "if I can find room amongst the junk in there."
	"Hell, that's easy," Fred said, taking the finished joint from him with a smile.  "We can haul all that shit out of there and put it in that old machine shed back by the creek.  It's mostly stuff that should be hauled to the dump anyway."  He lit the joint and handed it to John, who had just sat down after finishing the dishes.
	"I've done my dishes for the month," he said, laughing and taking the joint from Fred.  "Nearly everything in that room is from people that lived here years ago.  Why don't you guys just haul it off anywhere you want?  You know there's a hole in the wall for a window in that room that Jim boarded up last winter when he and Karen lived here."
	About then there was a scraping sound at the kitchen door.  It wasn't the normal sound of dogs scratching, but a much lower sound with far more force behind it.  Looking toward the door, they could see it bulging in at the bottom from the pressure.  "What the hell is that?"  Ellis asked, taking the joint from John, who jumped up, and stepping quickly to the door, kicked it several times near the bottom, and yelled.
	"Back!  Back, you pig."  Returning to his seat he continued in a softer tone,  "That Goddamn pig, it's always trying to get in here.  I wish Punt would have killed that one too."
	"Huh?"  Ellis asked.  Punt had been his first wife Karen's and his dog, and when she moved out here, he came with her.  When she and Jim moved to the coast, they left the dog, and now Ellis guessed he was his again.  Calling him 'his' was a bit of an overstatement, in that, Punt was pretty much his own dog, and did pretty much as he damn well pleased.  His father was a German Short Hair, and his mother was half Black Lab and half Samoyed.  He was about one hundred pounds, black and white instead of liver colored like most Short Hairs, and he had a curled up tail like the Samoyed.  All in all, he was a beautiful animal, but he had a mind of his own and he ran the show wherever he was.
	The scraping at the door subsided and turned to disgruntled oinks and squeals at John's kicks, and Effie returned to the overstuffed couch on the porch.  Fred explained how Punt had, several months before, instigated the other dogs to join him in a pig killing spree that ended with Effie as the sole survivor of what had once been about a half dozen little pigs.
	Fred, John, and Ellis finished up the joint, and then Fred and Ellis went to the rear house to see what could be made of the lower room.  Fred thought, since there was no electricity in the rear house, that they should open up the boarded window to let more light into the room.  Beneath the boards was a hole some three by four feet.  It had been framed in and cased for a window, but the window had never been put in.
	"There's a window about that size out in the barn," Fred said as he leaned on the large bench next to the door.  "We'll have to take a look at it when we get some of this junk out of here."
	"Is there a wheelbarrow somewhere around here?"  Ellis asked surveying the amount of small odds and ends that cluttered the room.
	"There sure is.  It's in the barn or the shed or the . . . .  I don't know, but I'll go find it.  Why don't you see if you can get this door to open all the way."
	Fred headed off, and Ellis worked on rolling the engine block out from behind the door.  He gathered up the sacks of old clothes into a pile near the rear door and was working on consolidating the boxes of books when Fred returned with the wheelbarrow.
	"It was in the barn, and that window out there looks like it might have been made for that hole there," he said, pointing at the opening in the wall.
	"That would sure be handy," Ellis said, walking across the room to where the rough hole looked out to what was once a garden plot, but now lay neglected full of weeds.
	Looking at the opening a bit closer, it became evident what must have happened.  "Hey Fred!  This work looks fresh, like Jim got this far putting a new window in here and then just quit for some reason," Ellis said, returning to the center of the room.  "Oh well, I can look at that later.  Lets get all this shit out of here for now."
	Fred and Ellis worked for several hours hauling one wheelbarrow full after another to the old machine shop where it was summarily dumped onto the floor in little piles that could be gleaned later for the good stuff.  The engine block and the motorcycle took both of them to get out of the place, but when they had finished, the room stood empty except for the built in shelves and the large work bench, which they placed next to the door running out toward the center of the room forming a sort of hallway for Fred to use to get to the stairs and it also provided Ellis with a bit of privacy.  Ellis built a box, of sorts, on the floor, formed by the corner of the room as two sides and two half sheets of plywood they found in the barn for the other two sides.  When finished, He had a container about six feet long, four feet wide and nearly two feet deep.  This box, he filled with loose straw and when packed down and smoothed some, it made a very adequate bed.  He emptied his packsack out onto the workbench for sorting, and proceeded to put most of the contents neatly on the wooden shelves in the corner of the room.  When he had finished, the shelves looked nearly full and he was amazed that his small leather pack could have contained it all.
	Taking a tape measure from his things on the shelf, Ellis measured the hole in the wall and headed for the barn to find the window Fred had said was there.  It leaned up against the wall behind several partial sheets of used plywood, and its measurements fit the hole almost perfectly.  He found Fred, and together they carried the window to the house and Fred held it while Ellis nailed it in place.  It even opened on one side, and the few gaps around the edges were small enough that only a little wind and weather would blow into the room.  He was officially moved in, and he had a room of his own.
	Peaceful, and quiet, and calm. . . .  This rundown rattrap with bad water and very little heat was nearly nirvana.  To sit on a stump in the backyard and look out across the rolling hills, recently gleaned of their grain and tilled for the next seasons crops, was a pleasure so simple and plain that Ellis hadn't known it could be his.  He had traveled a little, and seen some of the places that rest in the books of wonder, but this soft serenity surpassed even the most lavish of these sights.  He had grown up here in the midst of this splendor, and never before seen its miracle.  These voluptuous hills rolled on without end, beyond the limits of his eye, and their soft dusty lines reminded him of the reclining women of his dreams.
	It hadn't rained for over two months and muted browns and yellows were the only colors left except for the sky and the occasional bush or shrub that lived near moisture, usually invisible by this time of year.  The house was about a mile or two below the headwaters of Rebel Creek, which, at its maximum Spring flow, may be as much as two feet wide and a foot deep, but now in late September, the only sign of the creek was in the dull greens it produced in the plants that lived along its course.
	A light breeze rustled the leaves in the Locust and Hawthorn trees that stood stoically around where Ellis sat in the long grass of the backyard.  These gnarly prehistoric looking specimens seemed not to notice the lack of water that dulled the colors of the other plants, but instead they seemed to shine more now than in the Spring.  The dandelions had long since bloomed and their little umbrellas had blown to distant fields, leaving the dried stems standing naked, but not alone amongst the Yarrow, and Tansy, and Burdock that shared the backyard with the various grasses.
	"Hey Ellis!"  The sound came rushing to his ears from out of the soft gentle hum that had surrounded him under the trees in the backyard.  "Dinner's ready!  If you've got a fork, bring it."
	The "fork" part went over his head, and Ellis showed up in the kitchen without it.  As it turned out there were only three forks in the whole house, and he was expected to furnish his own.  He didn't have one, but with a little rustling around they found a spoon that would suffice until he could find his own fork.  Dinner consisted of potatoes and onions, sliced and fried in an electric skillet with some butter that may have been left over from a previous life.  All in all, it was good and it did fill the vacancy in his stomach.  The dogs sat eagerly around the table waiting for the frying pan to be given to them for the final cleaning, and after a couple of loud burps the meal was concluded.
	John reached into a drawer under the counter behind him, and produced the sack Fred had brought home from town.  Tossing it on the table, he asked if someone would like to roll up a joint for dessert.  Duncan did the honors as was usually the case, and after fashioning something that looked more like a tuna fish, pointed at both ends and rather fat in the middle, they proceeded with the customary after-dinner ritual of attitude adjustment.  Upon finishing the joint, Duncan went to the parlor and turned on the television to watch the snow on the screen and listen to some program.  John went upstairs where he daydreamed in front of his schoolwork, and Fred went out onto the porch to sit with the dogs.  Ellis went back to his new room where he continued arranging things to suit his needs.
	Life went along quietly, with little in the way of excitement for several weeks.  John and Duncan continued to attend school on an irregular basis.  The war continued to rage in Southeast Asia.  Fred worked on making the motorcycle run (which it never did).  And Ellis carved small figures from deer antlers that had been left in the granary by a previous tenant.  Sometime in mid November, Fred received a letter from his sister in Seattle, requesting that he visit her.  This seemed odd to him, but thought the trip would be fun and asked Ellis if he would like to go with him.  They threw a few things into the old Volvo, rolled up a half dozen joints, and headed West

The Trip

	The trip was fairly uneventful except the engine began making a good deal of noise about half way over, and by the time they arrived it was rattling very loudly and they limped into Fred's sister, Gloria's driveway just as it died completely.  Fred said it was bearings and they had to fix it before they could drive it any further.  Gloria was very nice, and she put them both up as well as fed them for a couple of days, while they tore the bottom off the engine to discover the extent of the damage.  The rear main bearing and two of the piston bearings were completely shot and the crankshaft was in bad shape as well.  Between the two of them, they had thirty-two dollars and some change, which was not enough to fix the car.
	This was one of those times that one needs to 'stay fluid'.  They needed an alternate plan.  They thought they had about worn out their welcome at Fred's sister's, and not only was it time for them to depart, but they also had to get the Volvo out of her driveway.  They thought about pushing the car out onto the street and coasting down the hill a few blocks, where they could abandon it.  They could then hitchhike back home, and all they would have lost is an old, nearly dead car.  Fred suggested they smoke the last joint and think about it a little before they made any rash decisions.  Ellis agreed, and they sat down at the edge of the driveway and smoked.  Before they had finished, the answer came to Ellis along with a wave of other thoughts that never really materialized into consciousness.  It was like a little whirlwind full of thoughts, and when the dust settled, there was only one thought left clear enough to pick up and use.
	"Hey, I have a friend that owns a cold storage business down town," Ellis said.  "Maybe he'd give us a job for long enough to fix the car."
	"Call him," Fred replied.
	"I'm not sure what the name of the place is, but I've been there.  We'll just have to go down and see him."
	They cleaned up the driveway as best they could, and put the parts they had removed into the trunk of the Volvo.  After leaving Gloria a note as to their whereabouts, they headed into the gut of the city via the city transit system.  Gloria lived in the far North end, so they had to make several transfers to get into the center of town, and after only one wrong choice of busses they arrived in the Pioneer Square area just a few blocks from where Ellis' friend Tom ran his cold storage plant.
	For country boys, the belly of downtown Seattle was quite a site.  There were people and cars everywhere, and sirens and honking loud enough to cause them to yell at each other to be heard.  The place was like being in the middle of an anthill or beehive, but with far less order than either.  They made their way the few blocks to Occidental Avenue where the many, similar looking loading docks lined up behind a single railroad track like cave dwellings from the Southwest.  Semi-trucks were backed up to many of these openings, feeding or being fed from the businesses within.  The cold storage was about half way down the long block, with several trucks backed up to its dock like piglets suckling on a sow.
	They walked down the street until they were in front of Tom's loading dock, and looking between two of the trucks, they could see several small fork lifts, loaded with boxes of what must have been frozen food of some kind, making their way from the depths of the cavern to where the semi-trucks were lined up at the dock.  There were also several workmen scurrying around carrying bundles and boxes.  Tom was also out on the dock talking with one of these men.  They were both waving their arms and shouting at each other in what looked like a heated argument.  Finally Tom threw up his arms and walked off, disappearing through a doorway on one side of the dock.
	Fred and Ellis walked between the two trucks, up the stairs to the dock, and headed toward the door Tom had gone through.  As they walked across the rough stained boards of the dock, the man Tom had been arguing with came roaring around a corner driving a fork truck, nearly hitting Fred, and yelling at him to get out of his way.  The door Tom had gone through led to his office, which had been built into a corner of the loading dock and had windows looking out to where they were.  Tom had been looking out as this reckless fellow had nearly run Fred down, and he burst through the door and past them before they realized he was even there.
	"Hey Johnson!" he shouted.  "It's just that kind of careless shit that I've been talking about.  You don't seem to be catching on, do you?"
	"You want the job done or not," Johnson replied, in a tone that left no question as to his dissatisfaction with the situation.
	"You don't need to worry about it anymore," Tom continued.  "You're a historical memory around here."
	"What the hell you talking about," Johnson yelled.  "You firing me or what?"
	"You're starting to get it.  You just go clean your stuff out of the break room, and clear out, now."  Tom's voice was steady and showed that he took his authority seriously.  "Your last check will be ready for you when you get back down here.
	Johnson, by now, had gotten off the forklift and was standing in front of Tom.  He was a large man, well over six feet tall and all of two hundred pounds.  He appeared to be in his early thirties and had a rather mean look to him that had put Fred and Ellis on edge from the minute he had come around the corner on the fork truck.  Fred and Ellis had been standing several feet from these proceedings, but had taken no part in them, when the man turned toward them and growled.
	"What the hell you two looking at?" he asked.
	Before either of them could respond, Tom said,  "Hey, I said now.  You head out of here.  Now!  One more word, and you'll be getting your check in the mail instead of today."
	The activity on the loading dock had come to a complete stop.  This confrontation had captured the attention of both Tom's workers and the several truck drivers that had been waiting for their trucks to be loaded.
	Johnson's wild glare snapped back toward Tom and he nearly screamed.  "Don't you fuck with me, you son-of-a-bitch."
	Tom took a step forward and pointing to the opening in the front of this cave like place, where they were all gathered, and said:  "That's it, you're out of here right now.  We'll send whatever stuff you have up there along with your check."  Tom pointed up and behind himself with his thumb, where the break room was and then continued: "If you're not out of here in one minute, I'll call the cops."
	Johnson's face flushed and the veins in his neck and forehead stood up like the hair on a dog's back.  He stepped back a foot or two, and reaching behind him produced an iron bar from under the seat of the forklift.  "This won't take, but a minute," he said, raising the bar and stepping toward Tom.
	As Tom stepped back, Fred came out of nowhere.  He caught Johnson right under his raised arm with his shoulder like a defensive lineman taking down a quarterback as he tries to throw a pass.  The force drove Johnson sideways hard into a pallet of frozen crabs, boxed and waiting to be loaded onto one of the trucks.  Boxes flew in all directions and several broke open, sending crabs skittering across the loading dock.  Fred lay on top of Johnson in the middle of what was left of the pallet of crabs.  Johnson's arm, still raised and holding the iron bar, came forward awkwardly from his disadvantaged position, hitting Fred a glancing blow on the side of the head.  Unaffected by the iron bar, Fred raised his right hand and struck the man in the face three or four times, each swing a little harder than the last.  Johnson dropped the bar on about the second blow, and when he fell limp from the last blow, Fred stood up and backed away from Tom's now-quiet assailant as he lay serenely surrounded by the crumpled boxes of crabs, a small trickle of blood coming from both nostrils.
	Tom stepped forward, put his hand on Fred's shoulder, and asked:  "Are you okay?"  Fred nodded, still a bit exhilarated from having been swept into the conflict.  "Let's go in the office," he said to Fred and Ellis, and then looking out at his crew standing around the dock he continued:  "Someone go get all his shit from the coffee room and when he comes around get him the hell out of here.  I'll have his check ready in a minute."  He then turned and went into the office with Fred and Ellis on his heels.  As the door shut behind them he looked at his secretary and said:  "Janet, would you please get Johnson's check ready as fast as you can?"
	Janet, pretending she hadn't seen a thing, looked up as they passed.  "Shoo can boss," she said with an accent designed to push some kind of button in Tom's brain.
	Tom snapped a questioning look at her as she winked and smiled at him, which caused him to lighten up a bit with a smile of his own.  He went into his inner office and they followed.
	"Well Ellis, fancy seeing you here," he said holding out his hand.  They shook hands and he turned to Fred,
	"This is Fred," he said, and before he could go on, Tom interrupted him.
	"I'm sorry you had to get involved out there, but I'm glad you did.  You probably saved me one hell of a headache."  Tom said, sitting down and gesturing for them to do the same.  "Well, what's brought you two to Seattle?" he asked, but before Ellis could answer, he went on:  "Last time I saw you, was when that baby of Jim's cried all night and Doug and I nearly got into a fight over it."  He laughed and then continued:  "I hope trouble hasn't been following you around since then."
	Ellis laughed as well, and said, "God I hope not.  How have you been, anyway?"
	Just then, Janet came in with Johnson's check to be signed, which Tom did as he thanked her for being so fast.  Another of his employees had come into the office to announce that they had Johnson and his gear ready to leave.  Tom handed him the signed check and asked him if Johnson was okay. 
	To this, the man replied: "He's okay.  He may get a black eye, but that's about all except his pride."  He looked at Fred and continued:  "Nice shot buddy, everybody here wishes they could have been in your shoes."  And then looking back at Tom, he said:  "It's good to have that asshole out of here."
	Tom leaned back in his chair and said:  "Well give him that check and tell him that he shouldn't count on any unemployment from this job."  The man smiled and turned to leave, as Tom called after him:  "Thanks Bill."
	"That guy's been a pain in the butt ever since he showed up here."  Tom said turning to the other two.  "He's run over four or five things on the dock, and last month he backed into a truck driver, that drives for one of my best customers, and broke his ankle.  He gets a lot of work done, but he's just an accident waiting to happen, and it just happened one too many times.  I guess I've been looking for an excuse to get rid of him for quite a while, and the other men don't get along with him either.  So Fred, we are all in your debt."
	"Well, What are you two up to anyway?" he said, looking over at Ellis.  "Are you driving or hitchhiking?"
	"That's a good question," Ellis began.  "We started out driving, but Fred's car broke down up near Bothel, and we will be hitchhiking if we don't find a job long enough to fix the car."
	Tom smiled and leaned back in his chair, almost going over backwards.  "Whoa!" he said, catching his balance and sitting back up straight.  "I just happen to have a little painting project that may be right up you guy's alley."
	"Oh yeah?"  Ellis said, looking at Fred.
	"Let's go look at what I'm talking about," he said, getting up from his soft desk chair, and moving toward the door.
	They followed him out of his inner office and through the outer office where Janet was busy at a long counter with a stack of invoices and an old hand-crank adding machine.  She looked up as they entered, and stopping in mid-crank, said, "I'm glad to have that Johnson out of here.  He kind of gave me the creeps."
	"I think it will all work out for the better too," he said as they passed through the room, and with a short pause that gave time for a smile and a wink at Janet, he continued.  "We'll be in the basement.  I think I'll shut these two up in the boiler room for a few days, at least long enough to make it look less like a dungeon."
	They headed out of the office and across the loading dock, where just a few minutes before, Fred and Johnson had been rolling around like a couple of teenage brawlers in the parking lot of a low-income housing project on the South Side.  Some one had re-stacked the broken pallet of crabs that had taken the brunt of the fracas, and several broken boxes sat on top with crab legs protruding from the openings in the boxes.  "Looks like we'll be having crab for dinner tonight," Tom said, pointing to the broken boxes.
	He led them to a dark stairwell next to a freight elevator on the far side of the loading dock.  "Watch your head," he said, leading the descent into the blackness below.  They followed carefully, holding the wobbly handrail, more as a guide than to steady themselves, and when Tom reached a landing and turned the corner, he vanished completely into the darkness.  Fred and Ellis hesitated briefly as they entered this void, still aware of the sound of Tom's foot steps descending the stairs in front of them, and then suddenly there was a soft click accompanied by the light of a single light bulb.  They continued the several steps to the bottom and were soon standing in a long poorly lit room with four or five large doors along the dirty gray walls.  This dim cavern was filled with a muffled whirring sound like that of a powerful electric motor.  Tom went directly to the nearest door, swung it open and disappeared into the blackness.  As the door opened, the whirring sound increased to where you could feel it surround you, taking you up in its arms like a bear hug.  Once again, the lights went on and they could see large motors, and spinning pulleys, and tanks, and pipes going in all directions.
	"This is the heart," Tom said, as he turned back to where Fred and Ellis stood frozen in the doorway.  Then pointing at one of the large compressors, he again said, "This is the heart of the whole place," and pointing at the many pipes that ran up from the compressor and across the ceiling in all directions, he said, "and these are the blood veins that feed the rest of the plant.  My whole business relies on everything in this room working all the time without fail.  If these compressors go down or something else causes this room not to do its job, I can lose a little over a million pounds of food in less than twenty four hours."
	Fred waved his hand around the room as if to point to everything at once.  "This stuff looks pretty old and worn out.  How often has that happened?"
	Tom shuddered at the thought.  "It hasn't happened yet, and lets hope it never does," he said.  "I think it might be the end of me."
	The room was full of mechanical things and the tools with which to work on them.  There was barely room to walk around, and the dim lighting made the room feel even smaller.  The smell of ammonia gas permeated the place strong enough to make their eyes water, and the atmosphere condensed and dripped from the pipes running to and from the whirring compressors that perched heavily on large concrete cubes protruding from the floor. 
	"Here, feel this," he said, putting his hand on one of the two larger pipes that emerged from the compressors nearest to them.
	Fred laid his hand on the nearly three-inch diameter pipe Tom was touching.  "Wow!  That's hot," he said, pulling his hand back.
	Tom smiled, and put his hand on the other pipe.  "Now try this one," he said.
	They both reached out and touched the second pipe.  "It's cold.  In fact, it's real cold," Fred said, putting his other hand on the first pipe again to compare the two.
	Tom went through a lengthy explanation of how the cold plant worked by the compression and expansion of the ammonia that was piped throughout the many rooms above them.  He explained the use of every pipe that ran, like a huge confused spider web, over most of this dungeon-like mechanical room.  Some of these pipes carried hot ammonia, some cold ammonia, some carried oil, and some held water that had been drained off from the rooms above.  He showed them how some of the cold pipes and the valves that controlled their flow would frost up, and form ice several inches thick from the condensation of moisture in the damp Seattle air.
	He pointed to the corner of the room where rested a large yellow machine of some sort with a flywheel twelve feet in diameter and a drive belt a foot wide and running to a huge motor thirty or forty feet away.  This flywheel drove a piston laying on a ten-foot horizontal track.  The whole thing must have been twenty feet or more long and both the floor and the ceiling had been notched out to accommodate the flywheel.  This too was a compressor, dating back to the turn of the century.  There used to be two of these that ran the whole place, he explained, and sometime before he had bought the business, the two newer compressors that they were standing next to had replaced one.  This huge antiquated relic still worked, and was his only backup in case the newer compressors went down for some reason.
	"Well, the job I have for you two," he began, "is to paint this room and everything in it.  I want all the pipes color coded so it is easy to see which ones are doing what.  I don't care what colors you choose or how complicated you make it, just so long as it's clean and brighter in here.  You can get any paint and materials you need at the hardware store, a couple blocks from here, and you can stay with me while you do the job."
	There was a brief pause, and then he continued,  "Oh yeah, I'll pay you each three-fifty an hour and room and board.  What do you think?"
	Fred and Ellis looked at each other.  Ellis could feel Fred thinking along the same lines that he was.  The job sounded fun, the money wasn't bad, and the room and board sounded great, considering they had pretty much overstayed their welcome at his sister's place.
	Fred nodded almost imperceptibly and Ellis turned to Tom and said, "Sounds fine with us, lets get started."
	"Great!  I've wanted to clean up the engine room for a couple of years, but never had the time.  This is going to work out great."  Tom looked pleased as he rubbed his hands together and looked around the room, almost frantic trying to decide where to begin.  On inspection, the place was a mess.  There were various boxes and piles of things having nothing to do with the mechanical room lying about.  They would all have to be taken out before beginning, and a considerable amount of cleaning and scrubbing would have to be done before paint would even stick.  The place was a real mess, and it was decided that a couple of days would be needed to get it ready to begin painting.
	"Let's go have lunch first," Tom began.  "We can go up to the Athenian Cafe in the market.  They serve a good side pork and beans with a salad, and then we can go find some cleaning equipment and get started on this place."
	It was all set.  They went to the market for lunch, picked up some cleaning materials at some hole in the wall hardware about a block from the cold storage plant, and went to work on the mechanical room.  Work was right.  The entire room was enveloped in half an inch of grease and dirt.  There was some scraping of old paint, but mostly, the job consisted of scrubbing away the layers of goo that had built up from time and neglect.
	Around six o'clock, Tom wandered into the mechanical room, or the "engine room" as he called it, and announced it was quitting time.  Fred called his sister and explained what they were up to, and that they would be by to gather up the few belongings they had brought with them.  Tom drove them up to Bothel to get their stuff, and on the way back he stopped at the "Blue Bandanna" for dinner.  It was a feast, at least by their standards.  They started with beer, imported beer, in a glass.  There was a tablecloth and napkins, and the silverware was laid out properly (at least as far as they could tell).  The menu was only brought at Tom's request, and the waiter, who was dressed as if he were headed for some formal evening with heads of state, asked Tom politely if they would be having wine with their dinner.
	"The reason I ask sir, is that I would like to give it a bit of air before you dine."  He spoke in an affected fashion that reminded Ellis that they were now in the big city where he should expect most anything.  The fellow lisped as well as adding a phony accent that resembled that of some exotic butterfly.  He moved his hips, as he talked, in a way that brought your eyes unconsciously to a bulge in his groin, that may or may not have been his own.  Fred and Ellis looked naively at each other, and thought how ultimately different this young man's life must be from their own.
	Tom held up one finger as if to stall the waiter for a moment, and turned to Fred and Ellis.  "You don't mind if I order for us all, do you?" he asked.  "That is if you like fresh fish."  They both agreed, and he continued with the waiter.  "Let us have two bottles of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild if you would please."
	"Oh, but sir, that would be wrong with the fish," the waiter admonished, with an expression of disbelief.
	"That's just wonderful Philip," Tom began, mimicking the waiters tone, "we like to mock the conventions of flavor."
	"Stephano, sir.  My name is Stephano, and as you please, I will open two bottles of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild."
	"Also, if you would bring us some bread and a plate of fresh oysters, it would be nice, and we will be ready to order when you return, thank you."
	Tom smiled and shook his head slightly as the waiter turned and receded into the background ambiance.  "That Philip or Stephano or whatever, is a goof if I ever saw one.  In fact, this whole place is a bit strange if you ask me, but they serve excellent food, and if you keep your eyes open, it can be quite entertaining around here." 
	The bread and oysters came, and Tom ordered something with a long name for three.  Stephano lisped his way through the short conversation broken wrist and all, his hips rotating around the bulge in his pants that had been either put there when he dressed for work or had grown there like a weed or a tumor.  Either way, it looked like it would be in the way of anything approaching a normal life.
	The three of them sat there slurping beer and oysters, and talking mostly about the painting project Fred and Ellis were embarking on.  Stephano brought the wine and his presentation was perfect except for his parting comment, that he hoped their choice didn't make them sick.  They all laughed as they toasted being together and the new face that would soon grace Tom's engine room. 
	They shoveled in the oysters and washed them down with careful combinations of beer and wine as their conversation wandered the inevitable trail followed by single men, which seems to end invariably with dialogue on the subject of the fairer sex.  After considerable discussion on the subject, Tom and Fred concluded that, although they were enamored at the thought of them, and occasional encounters were a definite pleasure, they both found the feminine gender to be far too much bother for the regular expenditure of essential energies.
	Ellis, on the other hand, was left alone to defend the nature of so many men, who following that bulge in their pants, have wandered through life surrounded by the scent of their own heat.  "This river we live," he explained, "begins high in the hills, and when it reaches the flat lands and takes to wandering back and forth in slow meanders, it is here that lovers glean the pleasures of their digressions from the straight line that non-lovers follow to the same final end."
	By the time their dinner came steaming from the kitchen, they had polished off one of the bottles of wine along with a couple of beers, and their mood was headed toward the surreal.  Stephano appeared as though he had been imbibing of something of his own, and when he reached their table with the large round tray of plates high above his head, he couldn't resist the impulse to hop and skip as he wagged his hips one last time.  It must have been the wag of his hips that sent him off his balance just enough to tip the tray, still high over head, sending it's contents cascading onto the table next to them.  The sound of dishes intermingling with each other as they crashed onto the table below, brought an abrupt end to all conversation in the vicinity of the restaurant, as well as bringing most of the kitchen staff out of their regular domain.  The two men, who appeared to be a couple, sitting at the affected table next to them added little high-pitched squeals to the crash of dishes, and pushed themselves away from the table hard enough that one of them tipped over backwards, landing in the lap of an elderly lady, who promptly dumped what looked like spaghetti in his face.  When the reverberations of the crash subsided, there was a silence in the room like a void, like a black hole, like the dark belly of an Egyptian tomb.  Stephano stood frozen in the midst of this disaster, like the statue of some forgotten and inconsequential monarch from a past era.  Finally, the maitre d' came to the rescue.  Stephano, who was disconcerted to the point of tears, was excused from the scene and then one of the other waiters was enlisted to begin the process of cleaning up the mess.
	First he attended to the gray and wrinkled woman, who, aside from a very small bit of spaghetti in her lap, had come through the mishap untouched.  From the commotion she raised however, one might have thought she had been thrown into a pit of vipers.  The maitre d' petted her a bit and said something soft and gentle that they couldn't hear.  She slowly regained her composure, and when he assured her that her dress would be cleaned at no expense, she scooted her chair back up to the table and took a long drink of some kind of white wine.
	The poor maitre d' went next to the fellow who had tipped over backwards.  He had managed to upright himself, and was standing amidst a heap of food and broken dishes, inspecting the gourmet condition of his clothing.  Bits of salmon and white sauce dripped from the front of his L.L. Bean, button-down shirt, salad peered from one of the pockets, and the old woman's spaghetti slid off his face to join the rest.  The maitre d' handed him a napkin, and asked if he was okay, as he picked up the fallen chair.
	The man's companion, still seated motionless, a full two feet back from his original location had a look of utter disbelief.  He had a turned-over bowl of hot soup in his lap that dripped silently onto the carpet beneath, looking as though he had just wet his pants.  His shirt and jacket were covered with the delicate flavors that were meant for Fred, and Tom, and Ellis' now very hungry, taste buds, and he had what looked like half a baked potato resting on his left shoulder.  The waiter, that had been called in to replace Stephano, was on his knees scooping up the mixture of pottery and cuisine from the floor, and as the maitre d' turned to attend the third casualty of the evenings disaster, he stepped into the young man.  In his attempt to avoid the collision, he threw himself off balance, appeared to spin around the kneeling waiter like a halfback around a downed lineman, and landed amidst the mess on the table.
	He luckily avoided cutting himself on the broken dishes, but he ended up covered with salmon, potatoes, and sour cream up to his elbows.  He stood up self-consciously, held his arms out where they wouldn't drip on his trousers, closed his eyes, and gave an almost imperceptible shiver.  Opening his eyes again, he picked up a lightly soiled napkin from the table and wiped away the bits of food from his sleeves and hands.  That accomplished, he went directly to the seated man, and taking the potato from his shoulder, asked him if he was hurt.  At first the fellow didn't react at all, but just stared straight ahead.
	"Are you hurt anywhere sir," the maitre d' asked a second time.  The seated man finally turned his head a little toward the maitre d' and nodded very slightly, and then looked down at his lap just as the empty soup bowl slid off on to the floor with a little sploosh as it hit the wet carpet.
	"Do you think you can walk sir?" he asked, and the man nodded again without a word.  The maitre d' pulled up gently on the man's arm, and he rose, more from the lift than by his own power, but the farther up he got, the more his own volition took over, until he was standing on his own.  The first man had recovered from the excitement and was now at the side of his companion reassuring him that things would be all right.
	"Please sirs, follow me," beckoned the maitre d'.  "We can go somewhere more private and take care of your clothes."  He led them both out of the room and out of sight.
	Other than losing their dinner, Tom, and Fred, and Ellis had escaped unscathed, and as Ellis looked over toward his friends, Tom was just finishing refilling their glasses with the fine wine he had chosen at Stephano's distress.  Ellis could not help feeling that Tom's choice of a red wine with fish had triggered Stephano's little dance, that in turn had caused the tray to tip, which in turn had brought this entire scene to fruition.  Regardless of the cause, Tom had obviously enjoyed himself, and he raised his glass in a toast.
	"I would like to toast the 'Blue Bandanna', a place that is never dull."  He said this loud enough that most of the people in the dining room heard him, and as Fred and Ellis raised their glasses, they could see many of the others in the room do the same.  As they all drank to this, the maitre d' returned to the scene with someone from the kitchen to help with the cleanup.
	"Well people," he began, obviously less amused by the whole thing than the rest of the room, "I am very sorry, but the show is over.  I hope."  He turned to their table, and letting out a slight sigh, he addressed the three of them.  "And how are you people doing?"
	Fred and Ellis nodded, but said nothing.  Tom stretched and leaned back in his chair a bit before he spoke.  "Franklin, I have always enjoyed my meals here, but this, I should think will prove to be one of the more memorable, that is if we ever get fed."  As he said this last little bit about getting fed, he smiled broadly to indicate that he wasn't complaining.  Franklin looked very sternly at him, then a wisp of a smile curled just the corners of his mouth, and he stepped forward.
	"I believe I can have your dinners ready in about five minutes, in the mean while I shall bring more hors d'oeuvres and another bottle of this ..."  He gulped slightly as he looked at the wine and continued, "of this very fine choice of wine."
	"That would be very nice Franklin, don't under-cook the fish now."  Tom said as he winked at the maitre d'.
	Franklin swished away, leaving the waiter and the busboy to finish the clean up.  Fred stretched slightly and looked around the dining room.
	"It seems like we're a little under-dressed for this place, don't you think."
	"That's the story of my life," Tom replied with a smile.  "But then, here in the city, there are so many people dressed in so many ways that if you have clothes on at all, people don't even notice you.  I think Franklin would like everyone to come in here with a tux on, but he doesn't get paid to worry about what we wear."
	A young waiter, not more than seventeen or so came in with a tray of hors d' oeuvres and a fresh bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild hoisted over his head in the same fashion as Stephano, but this time the tray was emptied in the recommended manner, one item at a time.  This time, the hors d' oeuvres were some kind of p‚tÈ rolled up in a crepe along with a small bowl of purple sauce.  The three of them pecked away at the plate of p‚tÈ and drank wine for no more than five minutes, when Franklin himself came in with a large steaming tray held high above his head.  He set the tray on a folding stand made just for that purpose, and began setting their dinner on the table before them.  The delicate smells rising from the gorgeous mound of food before them were more than enough to open Ellis' salivary flood gates and let that first gush of digestive juices flow out of control.  He had to swallow several times to keep from drooling.  When Franklin had finished setting their food in all the right places on the table, he stood back and inspected his work.  Once satisfied with the arrangement, he clicked his heels together lightly and gave a slight bow to Tom, who nodded in return.
	"You gentlemen have a nice dinner," and after a short pause, "and keep as much of it as you can, off the floor."  As he said this, he gave them a broad grin that, in itself, was very much out of character for Franklin, but seemed to fit even him considering the previous events.  Then, without another word, he clicked his heels again and headed straight for his post at the entrance to the dining room, where he regained his stiff and formal pose, like a guard at the entrance to a tomb.
	That pretty much wound up the excitement for the evening.  They finished their delightful dinner without incident, and went back to Tom's house.  He showed them a spare room where they could throw down their sleeping bags, and it being late they all went to sleep.
	 The next day they again attacked the engine room with soap, and scraper, and brush, and lots of elbow grease.  The shear quantity of gunk they removed could have been measured in tons.  Ellis scrubbed until his right hand was so tired that he couldn't hold the brush any longer and then changed hands, and when his left hand gave out, he changed back.  He found muscles that had been lost for decades.  Those muscles came staggering up out of the quiet funk, from which they had been hiding, with a vengeance, aimed at evening the score for the long years of neglect.  By the time Tom walked in at about six o'clock, and announced that the last trip to west Seattle (where he lived) was leaving shortly, they were about to drop.  The three of them stood near the doorway for several minutes reviewing the work that had been done already, as well as assessing what was needed before painting could begin.
	"You two are nearly ready to start painting."
	"Yeah!  I figure tomorrow afternoon," Fred speculated.
	"We need to figure out what colors to use pretty soon," Ellis added.  "I guess we can work on that tomorrow while we finish up the cleaning."
	Fred and Ellis turned simultaneously and headed up the stairs.  Tom lingered long enough to turn off the lights and by the time they reached the edge of the loading dock, Tom was locking the gates, and they all headed for home.  They had a light dinner, watched an hour or so of something on the television and went to bed.
	Morning came all too early, and brought with it the Seattle rain, that light drizzle, more like warmed up fog than actual precipitation.  The sky, the air, even the trees were some muted shade of gray.  Color was all but absent from nearly everything.  Ellis felt as though he had awoke in a black and white movie from his childhood.  After a breakfast of cold cereal and toast, they headed for the cold plant.  Traffic was heavy.  The rain had made everyone a little less patient and it seemed as though every car tried to crowd in front of them as they headed toward the center of the city.  Horns blazed, tires screeched, people even yelled at each other as the traffic moved slowly past a stalled motorist that had pulled only part way off the roadway.
	Ellis sat in the back seat of Tom's older Mercedes Benz, listening to the sounds of rush hour traffic mixed with whatever Tom and Fred were saying in the front seat.  They all blended together into a monotonous buzz that sent Ellis' thoughts out of focus and into an uncontrolled drift across time and space.  As he meandered in and out of consciousness, he kept seeing the engine room all bright and shiny from a new coat of paint.  The hot lines were red, the cold lines were blue, the walls were white and the floor looked as thought it was a checkerboard.  The Vilter compressors were all painted a bright yellow with purple and blue pin striping and all the dials and gages sparkled and shined.  There were no lights in the room, but instead, it was illuminated by the glow of everything within it, and the iridescence of the whole scene made him feel like he was in the cockpit of a space ship headed for distant worlds.
	The car lurched to one side slightly as Tom switched lanes to avoid rear ending the car in front of them, that had slammed on it's breaks for some reason.  Ellis was brought back rapidly from his excursion adrift, and his awareness of the present stumbled back into focus as they slowed, and swerved, and then sped into the next lane to the right, from where Tom launched them onto an off ramp that spilled out onto a busy street just a few blocks from the cold storage plant.  Ellis was just returning to full consciousness when they pulled into a parking place between two semi-trucks in front of the loading dock.
	The muscles in Ellis' forearm cried out as he took hold of the door handle, and the very thought of gripping the scrub brush for again another day, seemed impossible.  Ellis stepped from Tom's car into the moist polluted air of Occidental Avenue and headed for the short iron ladder that hung down from the left side of the loading dock.
	Fred and Ellis stood at the door of the engine room looking in for nearly a minute before Fred turned to Ellis and said, "I think we'll be ready for paint before noon."
	"I hope so.  I don't think my arm will hold out scrubbing for any longer," Ellis said, walking into the room and picking up a bucket and scrub brush.  Together they set out scrubbing and sweeping the last of the engine room, and by about eleven o'clock they had the place ready for paint.  Fred sat down and began to make a list of the various parts of the room that were to be color-coded.  There were the obvious, which included the oil lines, the hot lines, the cold lines, and the electrical.  There was also the floor, the walls, the motors themselves and the compressors.  They paid special attention to the big old Vilter compressor that was only used as a backup.  This beautiful old machine was more like a piece of art than anything else and they felt it deserved more detail than the rest of the room.  By noon or so, they had a color plan sketched out that could be taken to the paint store.  Nothing was very firm except the hot lines would be red and the cold lines would be a light blue.  The rest of the colors they had come up with were only rough estimates of what they thought would look good.
	They headed up the stairs to tell Tom of their progress, and then they planned to have lunch before going to the hardware store for the many cans of paint.  Tom was excited just to think of the engine room with a new face, and he got up and went straight down there to look at it all-clean.  They followed him back down the stairs and into the room.
	"It looks better already," he said, "it almost sparkles.  It's amazing how much brighter it is in here with just the crud removed.  What have you decided about colors?"
	"Well, we really haven't made any final decisions," Ellis said "but we have a list of the things that need to be different colors, and we can put color to them when we get to the paint store.  There's about a dozen or so of them."
	"Well, it looks great.  If you guys can wait about five minutes for me to clean up a couple things in the office, I'll take you to lunch."
	Fred and Ellis looked at each other and smiled.  "We can wait," Fred said, as they all turned together and headed up the stairs.
	They reached the top of the stairs to find one of the dock hands struggling with a very large side of beef that had fallen off a pallet that held maybe a dozen of them.  Tom reached down as they went by and picked up one end of the half cow.  As he and the other man lifted the side up and back onto the stack of dead animals, the whole pile shifted slightly and then came apart, one side at a time, sliding, first to the left, then right and then the bulk of the sliced bovine slid off the front of the pallet, one off which caught Tom behind the knees, bringing him down on top of the whole mess.  They all laughed at the sight of him lying there, unhurt, in the pile of frozen cow parts.  Tom didn't like being the subject of their laughter, but he could picture the scene from their perspective and smiled broadly as he picked himself up.
	"Why don't you go finish your office stuff, while Fred and I help get this little mess put back together," Ellis said, reaching to help him out of the pile of frozen flesh.
	"Sounds like a plan," he said as he headed for the office.
	Fred, John the dockhand, and Ellis went to work re-stacking the sides of beef onto the pallet.  This amounted to layering the sides in alternate directions.  Once finished, they had another precarious pile that looked as though it may topple again if they took their eyes off it.  John took a tool that held a foot wide roll of clear plastic, much like "Saran Wrap", and began to wind this material around the whole pile of frozen cows until he felt they were safely contained.  "That ought to hold the little devils for a while," he said, returning the roll to the small shelf nailed to the wall near where they were working.
	Tom had returned to the dock, and was standing back against the wall watching them finish up.  He was dressed in ragged blue jeans and tennis shoes that looked as though they may have come across the prairie on a covered wagon.  The shoes were so old and worn that it was difficult to figure out how they even stayed on.  The holes in the side were large enough that his whole foot could have slid out through them, and the laces had more knots than a rope factory.  He did have on a nice Pendelton wool shirt, but it was mostly covered by an old gray hunting jacket that was so moth-eaten and torn that the bottom edge hung unevenly and the sleeves had worn to where the cuffs were gone and one had actually frayed back to just below the elbow.  His curly hair looked like a bird's nest that had gone through a hard winter, and he hadn't shaved for several days, but you couldn't call it a beard yet.  He looked more like a street bum than the owner of a successful business, however the clear look in his crystal blue eyes left no doubt that this ragged appearance was but a thin camouflage, hiding something far more.
	John rolled the pallet of beef sides into the awaiting semi-truck, and Tom, Fred, and Ellis headed for the short ladder that would take them to the Mercedes and then the Athenian for lunch.  Tom had an uncanny knack for always finding a parking place where there should be none, and he as usual, found a place quite near the restaurant to park, leaving them only about a block to walk through the noon-hour throng of pedestrians at the Pike Place Market.
	Their lunch was simple, but quite delightful.  After which, they headed down First Avenue to Yesler, where Fred and Ellis got out as Tom stopped for a traffic light, and they made their way to the nearby hardware store.  Selecting more than a dozen colors of gloss enamel was not an easy task, and agreeing on where they would go was impossible to do in the store, so they settled on merely finding the colors they thought would go well together, and left their final destination to be wrestled over later.  When they had finished their selection, they had nineteen cans of paint, four gallons and fifteen quarts.  It was obvious that they couldn't carry all this back to the plant in one trip and Ellis asked if they could leave some of them behind the counter until they could get them to the job.  The owner of the hardware store was most accommodating, and offered to deliver what they couldn't carry the next morning.  They agreed, and off they went with two gallons, four quarts and a hand full of brushes and rollers to get started.
	The Seattle rain was hanging in the air like gray cotton candy.  It had to be pushed aside like thick underbrush, and as they waded through this viscous atmosphere, even the sounds of the city seemed muted.  As usual, the rain hadn't kept anyone at home; in fact, they all seemed to have come out at once, scurrying from place to place like ants.  Fred, Ellis, and their packages made their way through this horde with some difficulty.  It seemed to them that they were the only ones with a purpose, and that all the rest were wandering in large aimless circles, waiting for when it was time to go home, but then, even at night the place looked much the same, so there must be a second shift of these careless wanderers to fill in the scene for the evening hours.  Once they crossed King Street the throngs thinned, and their passage was much easier.  They finally made it to the plant without incident, and headed down the stairs to the dungeon-like basement that was home to the whirring compressors they were about to paint.
	They had two gallons of white paint that was destined to lighten up the walls and ceiling.  The owner of the hardware had mixed the paint in an old mixer that shook the can rapidly in all directions at once.  They would start on the ceiling, Fred with a roller, and Ellis with a brush painting the tight areas where the many pipes crossed on their way to wherever they went.  The open places where Fred could work with the roller were scattered and few and it wasn't long before he had finished with them and had to resort to a brush along with Ellis.  The work was slow and tedious, and the paint and ammonia fumes commingled, flattering each other in a way that would have sent the perfume industry into a tizzy.  They painted on, under and around the many pipes and electrical lines.  The constant whir of the two, one-hundred horse power motors and the compressors they drove, became a drone much like the ringing in ones ears except lower in pitch and higher in volume.  Paint dripped onto the floor in places and Ellis had little white rivers running up his arms nearly to the elbow.  Fred, on the other hand, seemed to have more control over this glossy white liquid.  The paint in his brush hadn't even reached the handle, as if defying gravity.  By mid-afternoon the combination of tedium, fumes, and looking up had them both ready for a stretch.
	By half way up the stairs to the dock, the sounds and smells of the engine room diminished and the salty flavor of Seattle entered their nostrils.  It was a pleasant sensation.  A combination of fish, and seaweed, and diesel fumes and of coarse the ever present rain.  That fragrance of rain was always there, like an undercurrent dragging you along.  It freshened the other smells, those old pent up smells, that when they come out from their hiding spots, they crawl onto you like an invisible sex offender.  The rain did its best to wash away these scents, but they still poked one grimy little toe through and into that complex that made up the perfume of the city.  The dimness of the basement lightened only slightly as they reached the top of the stairs, but when they turned the corner and faced out through the opening of the cave, even the gray drizzle of the continuing rain was bright enough to make them squint.
	Without a word, Fred and Ellis walked down the cement stairs to the street, where the full weight of the moist grayness rested gently on and around them like a muffler.  Occidental Avenue was not used much by those everyday cars that fill First Avenue, and Main Street, and the others in the neighborhood, but instead it serviced the loading docks and back doors of the many and varying blue collar businesses in the area.  They walked toward the Pioneer Square district talking of how much it would cost to fix the Volvo, and what they might do with the money they would have left.  Reaching King Street, they stood looking at the crowd of pedestrians that squirmed randomly on the other side of this busy passageway that seemed to separate them from the enigmatic masses of the city.  There was no stop light at the corner where they were, and the cars streamed by in a blur that left them with little or no inclination to cross.  After only a moment or two they both turned and headed back from where they had come, still worrying over what to do with any money left after repairing the car.  They returned to the dungeon, only to find that the little bit of white paint they had smeared around on the ceiling had lifted the chains, unlocked the doors, maybe even let out some of the unseen captives of this underground vault.  By six o'clock, when Tom came down to gather them up and chauffeur them home, they had finished with the ceiling and were cleaning up their tools.
	There seems to always be a siren screaming somewhere within earshot in a large city like Seattle, and some people get so used to them that they can't even sleep without them purring away in the distance.  To Ellis, they were a constant reminder that someone was in trouble, someone was having a bummer, probably a very serious bummer.  These sirens were so constant that after only three or four days in the city, he had learned to ignore them.  They had blended in with the continuous din that the city produces.  They call it "white noise" like that made by a television after all the channels have gone to bed, like the sound of the ocean or a rushing river, like that of wind or a stadium crowd.  White noise is all the sounds of the city put together and stirred up into one big pudding.  White noise is the sound of the rain.
	Ellis couldn't say why this particular siren woke him.  It wasn't any louder than the rest of the distant moans made by these town criers of ill tidings, but for some reason, just as the sun poked over the tree line of the distant Cascade Mountains, it pulled him up out of a dead sleep.  It was a faint sound, almost soft, if that high-pitched drone can ever be called soft, however, it had grabbed him firmly by the ear and lifted him from those gentle dreams that held him dozing in the warm womb of sleep.  It came closer and closer, and louder until it shrieked its mean message into their neighborhood like a yellow jacket that's working its way the last few inches into your inner ear.  When Ellis finally crawled from his sleeping bag and went to the window, there were two police cars pulling up in front of the house.  Their sirens wound down, and three officers emerged from the two cars.  One of these uniformed storm troopers pointed at Tom's house and started up the short steps from the street.  Another one called to him and pointed across the street to a large green clapboard house that sat high above the rest of the diminutive homes on their block.  A fourth officer, a short Spanish looking man, emerged from the second police car and pointing to the house across the street, headed in that direction.  The four of them headed two and two up the steep and winding walkway to this poorly-kept old home.
	Ellis' dreams were far away now, and he watched intently as one of the officers rang the doorbell on the house across the street.  They had all unsnapped the top flap of their holsters, and the two officers in the rear had hands on their firearms.  Presently the door opened, and a large dark-haired woman stepped into the opening.  She and one of the officers spoke a few words that Ellis couldn't hear, and then the first two men went into the house.
	Fred was beside him at the window and Tom was just coming into the room.  "What's going on out there," he asked as he came up beside them at the large window in the spare room.
	"It's hard to say," Ellis stammered.  "Those two cop cars came screeching in here and four cops jumped out and went up to that green house across the street.  They started up here first.  There's two of em in the house, now, and those two waiting on the porch."
	"Guldynski must have slugged his wife again," Tom said, shaking his head in disgust.  "He does that about twice a year.  The cops will haul him out of there in handcuffs, and then they'll make up before the day's over and he'll be back."  As he said this, he turned and left the room with a sigh.  "I've seen this scene before and it doesn't change," he called from the other room.
	Fred and Ellis looked at each other and shrugged.  Presently the police led a man in pajamas and handcuffs out of the house, down the walk, and into the police car.  Everyone left, and the street returned to its quiet post-dawn nature.
	They got dressed, had a bite to eat, and headed downtown for another day of painting.  They actually painted for three or four more days before they had the room looking the way Tom wanted it and by the time they were done, everything in the room had its respective color.  They had traipsed back to the paint store at least a half a dozen more times after new colors and finally finished up with sixteen different colors and shades.  The place looked like a randomly ordered rainbow and far exceeded everyone's initial expectations including Ellis', who had started with exotic dreams.
	At some point about half way through, Tom paid them up to date, and they bought most of the parts to fix the Volvo along with taking the crankshaft in to be ground back to something near round.  This left them with barely enough to eat and have bus fare for the remainder of the job, but they made it with a few dollars left over.
	By Friday they had finished the job to Tom's satisfaction, gotten paid, and headed North to Fred's sisters to put the Volvo back together.  Tom had insisted that before they went back over the mountains to the Palouse, they must let him take them out to a celebration dinner in honor of the new and improved engine room.  They agreed that as soon as they had the car running they would let him know, and meet him for dinner.
	They picked up the crankshaft and the rest of the parts for what turned out to be a partial overhaul of the engine, and headed for Gloria's to begin the re-assembly of their ride home.  Everything went back together smoothly and by around noon the next day Fred had the car running like a Taiwanese watch.  Ellis called Tom and told him they were done and set a time and place for dinner.  They had a hundred and fifty-three dollars left over from the re-build, and they sat down in Gloria's backyard to figure out what to do with it.
	"The way I see it," Fred began, "we have three choices.  We can split what's left, or pool it and spend it on something we need to get through the winter, or just save it until we get home."
	"We'll need some of it to get home, I suppose.  It would be nice to have a little pot for the ride home, but I don't know anyone that would have any around here."
	"Now that's a good idea," Fred said, "and I do know someone over here that just may be able to help us out.  I'll give her a call and see what we can come up with."
	As luck would have it, Fred scored, and they headed down into the University District to see an old girl friend of his and buy an ounce of marijuana.  She lived above a little book store on Fifteenth Avenue, and they made their way up the two steep flights of stairs and knocked on a door with a sign that read "Slow or Fast, But Make it Last".  The landing in front of the apartment was well lit by a window at the end of a short hallway with two other doors off it, and the bright walls and colorful blue and yellow doors and trim made the place seem quite cheery, and very much unlike somewhere you would go to buy drugs.  After what seemed like a long wait, the door opened and a tall thin girl about twenty-five welcomed Fred with a warm hug and a kiss square on the lips.  Fred seemed a bit surprised at the reception, but managed to respond in an amiable fashion and introduce Ellis without appearing embarrassed.  She invited them in and offered them something to drink.  They sat down at a small table in the kitchen, where she set three tall cartoon glasses, and then went to the refrigerator for a Tupperware pitcher of grape Kool-Aid.  She poured the Kool-Aid, returned the pitcher to the refrigerator, and sat down.
	"Let's burn one," She said with a grin, looking first at Fred and then over at me.  Pulling out a drawer in the counter, she took from it an old metal container about three inches square and two inches deep with a hinged lid.  It had once been tinned, but the tin had since worn off in places and the iron under it showed through as dark spots.  There were just the remnants of a fish painted on the top of the lid and several more swimming around the sides.  She opened the box with a little squeak, took out one loose cigarette paper, and after arranging it properly in her left hand, she dipped back into the little tin and sprinkled the broken up green leaves of marijuana onto the paper she held.  She quickly rolled the green material into the paper, twisted the ends slightly, and lit it with a wooden match she produced from a shirt pocket.  The joint went quietly around the table from one of them to the next until it was nearly gone and then, as a roach, it ended up back in the small tin with the fish painted on it. 
	Fred let out his last deep breath.  "That's good tuna," he said trying to regain the normal rhythm of his breathing.  "Those are tuna fish painted on your little box, aren't they?"
	"Yeah, look here," she said holding the box over toward Fred and pointing to some faded letters on the lid, "see, it says 'Tongue Tuna' right on the front."
	"Well, tuna it is then," Ellis said, "and fine tuna at that.  Is this what we are going to be getting?"
	"Yeah, but it doesn't come in the nice little box," she said, turning from the table and opening a cupboard door beneath the drawer the tin had come from, she produced a brown paper grocery sack.  She looked at Fred and asked, "How much you want?"
	"I don't know," he said and then looked at me.  "What do you think?"
	"It could be a while before we find any more, you know how dry it's been these days.  How much is it if we get a quantity?"
	"I'll give you a quarter for thirty-five, a half for sixty, and I can let you have the whole pound for, say a hundred."
	Fred didn't even hesitate.  He reached into a shirt pocket and produced all the money they had left and counted out one hundred dollars.  He looked over at Ellis and said,  "Should we?"
	"What the hell, there's no sense going home with any more money than we left with.  And you can't eat money."
	"You can't smoke it either," Fred threw in, and the deal was made.  He pushed the stack of bills across the table and she pushed the bag to him.
	"Wait," she said, "you better count those lids and make sure there are sixteen of them.  I think there are, but you better make sure."
	Fred counted and they were all there.  They finished their Kool-Aid, chatted a bit more and headed out and down the stairs to the street.  They were soon in the Volvo and headed back to Gloria's house.
	By the time they got back, it was late afternoon, and they spent the rest of it gathering up their things, rolling a handful of joints for the trip back across the mountains, and saying good-bye to Gloria.  A little after five o'clock they started off for the restaurant Tom had chosen for dinner.  It was about as far South as one could get and still be in the Seattle area, so they thought they should get an early start, considering they didn't know their way around very well, and the chances of getting lost once or twice were pretty good.  They did better than one might have expected and drove straight to the restaurant, which put them there fifteen minutes early.  Tom's Mercedes wasn't in the parking lot, so they just sat in the car and waited, watching the thin drizzle of rain that had been coming down for several days.
	The comings and goings of the place were of some interest, in that it appeared that the restaurant, a place called 'The Watering Hole', was frequented by an odd assortment of clientele.  There were four or five large semi-trucks parked on the edge of the parking lot, three of which had out of state license plates.  There were nearly a dozen big Harley-Davidson motorcycles lined up next to the handrail near the entrance, along with a limousine and six or seven Cadillacs, a Rolls Royce, and a beautiful maroon Jaguar sedan.  The paint-worn Volvo looked very out of place in the company of these shiny vehicles.
	Presently, the navy-blue Mercedes pulled into the lot with Tom at the wheel.  He pulled up next to them and parked.  Fred and Ellis got out into the light rain and waited for Tom to pull himself up out of the luxurious leather seats of the Mercedes and join them in the damp parking lot.
	"Sorry, I got hung up at the plant.  You wouldn't believe it.  That Johnson guy, the one you had the hassle with on the dock," he said, looking at Fred.  "He came in about quitting time, and demanded his job back with back pay and everything.  He even wanted to know where that no-good bastard was that had punched him for no reason last week.  I finally had to call the cops and have him dragged off."
	"Sounds like you could have used Fred there again," Ellis said, with a chuckle.
	"Yeah really!  John, the guy you helped with the spilled sides of beef, stepped in just before the cops got there and pretty much subdued him with a shovel.  I think the police took him to the hospital before they locked him up.  He didn't look too good this time.  He had a bad cut on his face, that would definitely need stitches, and one hell of a lump on the side of his head."
	"Sounds more exciting than our afternoon, but we did score some good 'smokin tuna'.  You want'a burn one before we have dinner," Ellis said, looking at Tom out of the corner of his eye and smiling.  Ellis knew full well what Tom was going to say next, and he glanced at Fred and held up one finger as a sign that Tom was about to begin.
	"I swear!  It's hopeless," he began, shaking his head.  "You guys take your last few bucks and buy pot, instead of food or something useful.  I see you did get the car fixed first, at least I hope it was first, or you'll probably have to fix it again.  That's why I do the hiring, and you do the grunting.  You two aren't ever going to be fat cats as long as you spend your time and money on that shit."  He laughed, to lighten up his little lecture, but Ellis knew he mostly meant it, especially the part about being a fat cat.
	"I take it you don't want to burn one before dinner then," Ellis said, just to goad him on a little, but he wouldn't take the bait, and they headed across the parking lot to the restaurant.
	"Notice anything odd about the patronage here," Tom asked as they dodged the puddles that dotted the asphalt.
	"Seems like the place caters to truckers, bikers and rich folks," Fred mused quietly through the gentle rain.
	"Yup!  They also serve good food, and you can get a real breakfast twenty-four hours a day.  In fact I think that's what I'm having."  Fred and Ellis agreed that bacon, and eggs, and potatoes sounded good to them as well, and it was agreed that they'd all have breakfast before they even got into the restaurant.
  	The place looked a little like a warehouse from the outside, with its tin roof and old rusted metal siding.  A sign reading "The Watering Hole" ran along the ridge of the low roof, and a tall round brick chimney poked up through it like a huge cannon barrel pointed at the sky.  There was a loading dock that had been turned into an entrance area of sorts, by putting a hand rail around it and the four or five stairs that led up to it.  There were no windows, and the door itself was a very large wooden affair with thick iron hinges and a handle that might have taken two people to pick up.  There was a six inch square wrought iron window, with bars, set within this heavy door at about head height, from which one could look outside to see who was seeking entrance, and as they walked up the short flight of stairs, the little window opened briefly and then closed again with a secure click of the latch.
	They had been checked out, and as they reached the door, a huge burly man that welcomed them in a gruff tone opened it.  Although the place retained its warehouse character on the inside, it did have an elegance to it that justified the several Cadillacs in the parking lot.  Straight ahead, was a wooden bar, some twenty or thirty feet in length spreading out on both their right and left.  Behind that was a very old-looking back bar that had several mirrors separated by ornately carved mahogany figures of women holding large clusters of grapes and other fruit.  Between the bar and the back bar was a short middle-aged man with a mustache that would have made a respectable set of horns on a longhorn steer.  He stood near the center of the bar with his hands busily working on the manufacture of some exotic drink.  As they looked off to the left, they could see several dining tables and beyond them was a beautiful old pool table and a very ornate snooker table with leather pockets and hand carved legs.  To their right were more dining tables, set with tablecloths and napkins.  Several were occupied by what appeared to be the trucker clientele.  A dozen or more well-dressed gentlemen were eating and drinking at a large oval table near the far wall by a small door that had a sign reading, "PRIVATE".  The mahogany-paneled walls were hung with paintings, large and small, that looked like they would have been more at home in some dusty old museum, but they added a kind of dignity to this strange watering hole.
	Tom went straight to a small rectangular table set for three against the back wall under a painting of geese swimming in a pond at sunset.  Or was it sunrise.  It was hard to tell for sure.  His companions followed him and they all sat down.  A tall thin man with an apron came out from behind the bar with a pitcher of ice water and filled the glasses on the table.
	"Would you fellows like anything to drink?" asked the man in the apron.
	"Beer?"  Tom said questioningly, as he looked at Fred and Ellis for approval.  They nodded, and he continued.  "Sure, let's have three Oly's, and I think we've all decided to have bacon, eggs, and hash browns, so you don't need to mess with menus."
	"How would you like your eggs?" asked the thin man, looking at Ellis.
	"Over easy," Ellis said, and the others followed with the same.
	He left, returning to behind the bar, and then disappearing through an obscure doorway, that at first had seemed hidden in the ornamentation of the back bar.
	"Who owns all the Harley Davidsons in the parking lot?"  Ellis asked quietly.
	"What do you mean, who owns them?"  Tom asked in the same low voice.
	"I mean where's the motorcycle guys?  Those guys over there are truckers, and those other dudes..." Ellis said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the large oval table surrounded by the older well dressed gentlemen,  "...they sure didn't roll in here on bikes."
	"Watch where you point around here," Tom said in a whisper, "Those guys over there don't like to be pointed at, and you don't want to piss them off."
	"You mean they're..." Ellis started, but broke off, afraid to say what he was thinking.
	"Yeah that's exactly what I mean, and as to your motorcycles, their owners are probably having a little meeting in the back room, behind the pool tables," Ellis looked across the room to the pool and snooker area, and noticed a small plain door in the far wall between two pool cue racks.  "You don't want to piss them off either."
	"I can believe that," Ellis said, thinking of how it might be to be stuck between the Mafia and a motorcycle gang.  It wasn't a pleasant thought, and he let it fade away as fast as he could.
	The bartender came over with three beers in frosted glasses, and set them on the table.  "Your dinner will take a few minutes, because the cooks got a bunch of steaks on the grill right now, but it won't be too long.  Can I get you anything else while you wait?"
	"No, we're just fine," Tom replied.
	Ellis took a drink of beer, leaned forward, and in almost a whisper, asked,  "How'd you ever find this place."
	"I drove by one time and saw a bunch of trucks out front.  I figure truckers know where to find good food, and I decided to have lunch, and I've been back, oh, I don't know, about ten or a dozen times."
	"You've always liked weird places."
	"And weird people," Tom added with a grin.
	"Not us," Ellis said.
	"I didn't say I liked you either."
	His grin turned to a broad smile and then he got serious, leaned forward, and in a near whisper, began again.  "This place really is quite unique.  It's kind of the old and the new.  The old boys in the corner," and then looking over at Ellis, he continued, "you know, the 'dudes' that 'didn't roll in here on bikes', they come here from time to time to talk about business over a nice meal.  This is more of them than I've ever seen before, but this is a regular kind of place for them.  The 'dudes' that did roll in here on two wheels are sort of a new generation of enforcers, looking for a piece of the  ...  I don't know, let's call it the organization."
	Fred took a long drink from his glass, held it in his mouth for a few moments before swallowing, and then looked over at Tom.  "What about the truckers?"
	"They're just truckers doing their job, and eating another meal on the road."
	"They must kind of legitimize the place a bit, huh?  It's like it's the Mafia club house, with a truck stop front," Fred mused.
	"I don't think it fools anyone, but it probably pays the help and the light bill."  Tom tipped up his beer glass draining the remainder down his throat in one large gulp, then turning toward the bar and catching the bartenders eye, he held up his empty glass, and then pointed at their glasses as well.
	"Now that you've spent all your earnings, what are you two going to do all winter to keep from staving to death?"
	"That's yet to be seen," Fred said, "but there wasn't enough left over after the car to go very far anyway, so we figured it would best be invested in winter recreation.  In fact, it's like short-term capital gains, where you get to keep all the gains.  It pays off, not only in personal savings, but also with mild profits.  We don't plan to get greedy or anything."
	"Well there does seem to be a bit of business in you after all," Tom replied smiling, "but I hope it doesn't get you into trouble."
	"That would be a real bummer alright," Fred agreed with a nod, "and I hope we don't either, but our new asset is also like a savings account, and we can make what little money we have, stretch deeper into the cold belly of winter through this small variable-risk investment, than we can if we leave it as cash.  Cash, you can spend anywhere.  Tuna," he paused, momentarily glancing at Ellis, and then continued.  "Tuna is something you can't just walk in anywhere and spend.  It increases in value, no problem, but it has a limited marketplace.  It makes you think about whether you really want to spend it, or if you would rather just smoke it.  Unlike some other commodities, it seems to hold a fairly stable price.  During periods of shortage, the price rises a little, but when there is plenty and the market is flooded, the price never drops below the base line, It's like there is a government price control set on it to ensure profits to the small businessman."
	Tom laughed, leaned back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, looked past Ellis and Fred to the group of older gentlemen dining over business across the room.  "You might get along with those fellows better than I might have thought," he said.  "The only problem is that your commodity is against the law, and you have to run your business from behind closed doors, and out of dark alleys.  And any time you start dealing with the underground, you start to get involved with the 'underworld', whether you like it or not.  Somewhere up stream, your commodity will have usually passed through the hands of one of those old men's organization, and in so doing, comes to you with the arbitrary rules and restraints that their tight little fraternity puts on it.  Your freedom to conduct business the way you see fit is gone, and you become a pawn in their orb of commerce, which, by the way, leaves you powerless, and at far greater personal risk than that which you face from the legal system."  He leaned forward and taking a drink from his beer, continued, "I run a straight business, and because of that, I have little to fear from either side of the law.  My only risks are related to the general market place and the soundness of my own decisions in the operation of my life.  I do work hard at making the cold storage run smoothly and profitably, but I make one hell of a lot of money at it too.  I have been rewarded."
	The tall man in the apron came out of the kitchen carrying a tray steaming with hot food.  Balancing it on the back of a chair, he easily set their dishes in front of them.  "Sorry this took so long, I don't usually have this many dinners at once.  Can I get you guys anything else?"
	"No, I think we're fine," Tom replied.
	"Looks like you could use a few more beers here though," The waiter urged.
	"Yeah, you're right, we better have another to go with dinner."
	The waiter, empty tray in hand, headed back to the kitchen.  The bartender brought fresh beer, and they dove into their meal in silence.  The clicking of silverware on the dishes and the less than polite sounds of three ill-bred bachelors slurping their way through beer and breakfast was all that could be heard from their corner of the room for some time.
	By the time Fred and Ellis had put away about half their meal, Tom was just finishing.  He unfolded his untouched napkin, and wiping his mouth, he pushed himself back from the table about a foot.  He took from his shirt pocket a pack of cigarettes, and asked if it would be all right if he smoked.  Their mouths full, they merely nodded, and he resumed his quest for nicotine.  As he struck the match, a loose spark ignited the whole book in a bright flare that lit up the area like a cameraman's flashbulb, and brought the attention of the room upon them.  Tom instinctively dropped the flaming book of matches, and they fell to the wooden floor of the Roadhouse.
	At the same exact time the matches flared up, the door at the far end of the room, beyond the pool table opened, and out came eight or nine large burley men dressed in leather and blue denim.  Most had full beards and long enough hair to be worn in a ponytail or braided down the center of their back.  They all had leather jackets with the Yin Yang symbol on the back and under it was written "Zone 7".  Two or three of them went to the pool and snooker tables and began gathering the balls from the pockets.  Several of them sat at the wooden tables near the pool area.  Their conversation was low and indistinguishable, almost as if they were speaking in a foreign language.
	One member of the group, a smaller blonde man with a serious look on his face and a large knife on his belt, went to the bar, spoke quietly to the bartender for a few moments, and then returned to his comrades.  The bartender stepped momentarily into the kitchen and then returned to his place between the front and back bar, where he began filling tall pitchers with beer from a spigot that protruded from the wall of the back bar.  The thin man with the apron came out of the kitchen and proceeded across the dining room to the table of older gentlemen.  He bent down, and whispered in the ear of a large man, in his mid seventies, wearing a dark blue suit.  The waiter then returned to the kitchen.  The old man in the blue suit, who sat near the middle of the table on the wall side, looked to both ends of the table and then quietly spoke several words to his small group.  The other men at the table looked at each other with surprised and disconsolate looks on their faces.  It was obvious the thin man had not brought them what they wanted to hear.  Several of them turned, craning around in their chairs to look at the younger rowdier group at the far end of the room playing pool as if it were just another Friday evening, in one of their own local bars up town.
	Tom had managed to get his cigarette lit, and sat back against the wall quietly smoking and watching the evening begin to unfold within the confines of this quiet little road house in South Seattle.  Fred and Ellis were still working on their dinner.  Their most distant thoughts from the food in front of them, being those that touched the idea of where this food might have come from.  Ellis could see little strips of bacon, with legs, running around a barnyard, rooting up potatoes, while a flock of chickens played baseball, hitting home run eggs into the kitchen, where his grandmother caught them and put them in a frying pan.  Fred could see the backyard where he had grown up.  He was just beginning to dig a row of potatoes that appeared to be as long as the runway at O'Hare International Airport.  In the row next to him was a large striped pig.  The pig was running down the potato row with its nose under the ground, potatoes were popping up out of the soil, and landing in frying pans that hovered along next to the pig like flying saucers.  Chickens, of course, flew around laying eggs that landed comfortably in the same frying pans as the potatoes, and by the time he had dug only a very few hills, his breakfast was ready.
	Looking out from the thick cloud of cigarette smoke that had settled silently around him, Tom had been watching the tensions of the room increase.  The old men were busy talking amongst themselves in quiet muffled tones, but they occasionally looked across the room to where the younger group was playing pool, and drinking freely.  This group too, seemed to have an agenda that warranted some secrecy, as they would gather from time to time in small groups of two or three and talk in whispers, looking cautiously across the room at the older men.  Tom took his wallet from his pocket and removed a twenty-dollar bill.  He placed the money on the table under his empty beer glass, and looking at the bar, he caught the attention of the bartender.  He pointed at the money under the glass, the bartender nodded, and Tom leaned forward and spoke to his companions.
	"You two better finish up there right quick.  This place could get real wild in a minute or two, and I think we should be the hell out of here before it does."
	"Huh!"  Fred said, with his last mouth full of potatoes still filling the majority of his mouth.
	"What do you mean - - - when what does?"  Ellis asked, still half in the grips of the barnyard daydream he had been indulging in.
	"I mean that your motorcycle guys and our illustrious leaders of 'The Organization' are not seeing eye to eye, and I think it would be a real good idea for us to be out of here before anything too serious breaks out."
	Fred swallowed his potatoes and looked carefully at both groups.  "Do you think there'll be trouble?" he asked.
	The old man in the blue suit discretely gestured to the bartender, who came out from behind the bar and headed in his direction.
	Tom stood up.  "Let's go.  Now!" he said, and took a step toward the door.  Fred and Ellis hesitated, and Tom repeated himself.  "I mean right now!"  He then turned and headed for the exit.  Fred and Ellis finally came to, enough, to rise and follow him.  As they made their way across the dining room, Tom looked back once to make sure they were following, and then glanced toward either end of the room, where the two groups were beginning to take more notice of each other.  The pool games and those surrounding them were getting louder.  Some of the bolder ones in the group were pointing at the gathering of old men across the room, and making rude remarks about them.  A large man, with enough curly black hair and beard to render him entirely too big for a mug shot, had stuck a poster, with someone's picture and some writing on it, to the back wall of the room.  The blonde man, with the knife on his belt, had taken the knife from its sheath, and was about to hurl it at the picture.
	At the other end of the room, the old men had nearly all risen and were looking toward the younger group, and shaking their heads.  They spoke sparingly and quietly, but beneath their serene demeanor they were easily as agitated as those they were looking at.  This group, that called themselves "Zone 7" had resorted to the only thing they knew, intimidation, rowdy, boisterous, mean intimidation, hoodlum style, with a touch of crudity that one might expect from grown men, still wearing the colors of a club that had been born out of a bully mentality, when they were still teenagers.  The mature and civil group of old men stood folding their linen napkins, and pushing their chairs neatly under the table.  They seemed more sad than anything.  The arrangements they had made with these ruffians had been aimed at a mutual gain, and now it appeared this agreement had failed.  These bullies wanted the whole pie.  They didn't understand that when the organization had made them the offer of handling certain portions of the business, they were obliged to take the offer the way it stood.  The organization was not in the habit of compromising with other groups, and these old men were definitely not going to stand for the impudent behavior displayed by these young hooligans at the other end of the room.  Once their table was in order, these dons of the organization, opened the door marked private, and quietly filed through, one at a time, closing it again behind them.
	Tom reached the door, and the same burly man that had let them in, opened the door to let them out again.  He nodded and thanked them for coming.  He also remarked that they had good timing, as to when to leave.  The three of them stepped out into the dampness of the rainy city.  It was dark out, and the few lights in the parking lot only dimly illuminated the area, but it was easy to see that there were more cars in the lot than when they had arrived.  It was also easy to see a group of ten to fifteen large rough looking men approaching the stairs to the loading dock that had become the entrance to the 'Watering Hole'.  Ellis' first thought, was that they looked like a lynch mob, looking for someone to hang.  Tom had just started down the stairs, and the group hesitated at the bottom to let him and then Fred and Ellis, who were still straggling behind, pass without incident.  Once down the stairs and into the open parking lot, they headed for their respective cars without a word.  Ellis looked back once, in time to see the last of the group disappear into the building and the large heavy door shut tightly behind them.
	When they reached their cars, Tom stopped and turned back toward the restaurant and his companions, who still seemed to dally blithely along as though they might be returning from church services.  "I think we got out of there just about the right time," he said, glancing around the dim parking lot to see if they were alone.  I have a feeling things are going to get a little rough in there real soon."
	"I think we just passed the enforcers on the way out," Fred remarked, unlocking the door to the Volvo.
	"I would sure like to see what goes on in there next," Ellis said.
	Tom turned back toward him, after opening the door of the Mercedes.  "Yeah maybe so, but I don't think it's worth the risk of being in that building right now.  Hey check that out, over there in the shadow on the left.  That wrecker parked behind the semi-truck, it wasn't there before."
	To the left of the building, parked in the shadows, was an extra large wrecker, probably designed for towing semi-trucks.  As they stood there looking across the parking lot at the wrecker in the shadows, it started up with a short, low pitched roar, as the driver revved up the motor a little on starting.  It then sat there quietly idling in the wet darkness of South Seattle.
	"I think we probably ought to get out of here completely," Tom said, as he got into the Mercedes.  Fred got into the Volvo and reached across the front seat to unlock the passenger door.  Ellis climbed in and rolled down the window to say good-bye to Tom, who already had his window down, and said, pointing at the wrecker.  "Take a look at that."
	The wrecker had begun to move.  It pulled forward, picking up speed so that by the time it reached the row of motorcycles, it was up to about thirty-five miles an hour.  The large sturdy front bumper of the wrecker struck the first cycle like a snow plow and didn't hesitate a bit as it picked up the motorcycles one by one until they were all glommed into a knot of twisted steel being pushed along the parking lot.  Two or three managed to break themselves loose and skitter to rest, mangled and broken.  The rest hung together tightly as the wrecker pushed them to the edge, and over a slight embankment into the alders, that lined the smoothly paved parking lot.
	"Wow!  That was cool," Ellis said, as Tom started his car.
	"That was pretty cool, alright, but I think we'd better make ourselves scarce."
	Fred started the Volvo and leaned across the front seat.  "Take it easy Tom.  Thanks for everything.
	"Have fun!  See you later and thanks," Ellis said, looking over at Tom who had lit a cigarette and was blowing smoke out the window toward him.
	"You guys give me a call sometime, and remember I can always find several days work for you, if you need to make a few bucks," Tom called out as he pulled away.
	Fred eased the Volvo into gear and followed Tom out of the parking lot and onto the side street.  The traffic was light, and they easily made their way the several blocks to the main arterial that led to the freeway.  Traffic increased when they got to the arterial, and by the time they reached the freeway, Tom and the Mercedes were out of sight.  Fred and Ellis headed North on the freeway until they reached the I-90 interchange and headed east for home.

The Return

	The reflection of the many colors of lights, from both the city and the cars on the highway, made squiggly patterns on the pavement as they sped along in the ever-increasing rain.  The light mist had thickened to where it was now a downpour, and the windshield wipers could barely keep the road in sight.  The spray from the tires made the cars in front of them look like hydroplanes, as they sliced through what was rapidly becoming a shallow river that they had to navigate as they continued East.  When they got to the Mercer Island tunnel, it was a welcome reprieve from the drenching rain, but it only lasted a few minutes, and when they returned to the open, the rain seemed even worse.  When they reached Issaquah, the divided highway changed to two lanes in each direction, and the oncoming traffic washed up a tidal wave of water onto the little Volvo.