Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 21 — “Ain’t This America?”

Chet’s best man is named Robby Waters. He looks uncomfortable in his rented black tuxedo. He’s continually pulling at his collar as if he’s a dog straining against his leash. Before the wedding Anna had begged him not to reveal the fact that he is a division leader in the Students for a Democratic Society. She needn’t have worried — except for her, Chet, Robby Waters himself, the black couple, and Chet’s three ushers and their dates, nobody in this banquet hall has the foggiest idea what the SDS is.

In fact, while Jackey Pontone was ordering a Manhattan at the bar before dinner, he overheard Robby Waters speaking with the black man. “We know which way the wind’s blowin, man,” Robby said. “That’s why we’re the Weathermen.” Jackey Pontone thought it was nice that this strange young man wearing sandals with his tuxedo was getting into meteorology. Maybe, Jackey thought, these hippies aren’t so hopeless after all.

Um, Jackey, Not This Kind Of Weatherman…

Space

Robby Waters walks up to the dais and coughs into the microphone. He wears wire-framed glasses that make him look like the intellectual heir to Einstein or James Joyce, except few people here would know this James Joyce — What was he, some kinda movie actor or somethin’? Einstein, yeah, he was that guy with the frizzy hair, the psychiatrist guy, right?

And Robby Waters does indeed wear frizzy hair, like that psychiatrist guy Einstein. He begins his toast.

The World-Renowned Head Shrinker

Space

“I feel as though I’ve known Chet all my life,” he begins. “We met a couple of years ago at the first meeting of…, of….” He glances at Anna whose eyes implore him not to say it. He hesitates a moment more and finally finishes his thought. “… of a group of friends who, um, uh, like to talk about things going on in this world.

“From the minute I met him, I could tell that Chet was a real mahatma, man.”

Rocco Bianco leans close to Jackey Pontone’s wife and asks, “What’d he say?”

Diana Pontone replies, “I think he said he was a Momma’s boy…, or man, I dunno.”

Robby Waters continues. “Chet Michalski cares about the world. He cares about his brothers in this world.”

Anna’s Uncle Louie whispers to her Uncle Frankie, “I didn’t know he had any brudders. Where’re d’ey sittin’?” Uncle Frankie shrugs.

“Chet wants to make this world a better place, a place where the youth of America can grow up in peace and harmony, in health and happiness. We’re not there yet, man! It’s a sick, sick world!”

At this very moment, Charlie Solari and his wife, who are sitting toward the rear of the hall, near the restrooms, can hear Joey loudly retching in the men’s room.

“Assassination!” Robby Waters says. “War! Racism! Poverty!”

Jackey Pontone wonders why they’re teaching this kind of stuff in meteorology class these days

Now Robby Waters is on a roll. He doesn’t notice that Anna has closed her eyes tightly and is biting her lower lip. He can’t be stopped even if Anna’d get on her knees and plead with him. He runs down a laundry list of all the evil, tyrannical, murderous, thieving, thuggish, racist, avaricious pigs who run this imperialist nation. Lyndon Johnson. Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford. J. Edgar Hoover. General William Westmoreland. George Wallace and Lester Maddox. William F. Buckley. When, at last, he gets around to indicting Vince Lombardi and George Halas, Charlie Solari can take it no more.

Now That’s Going Too Far!

Space

Charlie Solari, who has braved the McCormick Place inferno, who has climbed the stairs of the Hilliard Homes more times than he cares to remember, who has put out dozens of grease fires in those shitholes the Chinamen call kitchens, who has helped ambulance crews carry out the bodies of countless Skid Row winos, who has lived an exemplary professional life beyond reproach save for one time, once — that’s all, one time — when, for chrissakes, that strongbox was just sitting there staring me in the face and it was like my axe had a mind of its own, coming down on its lock, opening it and I saw the generosity of a loving God, twenty five goddamn thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds, and don’t I deserve it for all the filthy Chinamen and bums and shines I had to save from their own stupidity and, after all, ain’t this America where everybody, even Abraham Lincoln, can lift himself up by his bootstraps and become a rich man? And now this no good pinko, this hippie fag, this hopped-up little prick, he’s tellin’ me what the fuck is wrong with this great country? I’ll be goddamned if I let a little cocksucker like that tell me what’s wrong with my America.

So Charlie Solari quickly drains his bourbon, neat, and stands proudly and with the conviction of the only real man in this goddamned place with balls enough to tell off this little rich boy who’s still wet behind the ears lecturing us like we’re all idiots or little kids. He takes a deep breath and yells, “Siddown, ya goddamned little pissant!”

Robby Waters freezes at the sound of Charlie’s voice. As he stands motionless at the dais of the head table, he feels a rush of adrenaline. He feels as though his sandaled feet are no longer touching the Earth, or at least the faux parquet flooring of the raised dais. He leaps over the head table and dashes madly between the round tables filled with paralyzed wedding guests who watch as he takes a lunge at Charlie Solari. Charlie is as tough as nails and normally would pound a pissant like this frizzy-haired intellectual little homo Robby Waters but the warm butterscotch bourbon has altered Charlie’s reactions just enough so that when he takes a roundhouse swing at Robby Waters, he misses grandly and the kid is thus able to wrap his arms around the fireman’s waist and tumble with him to that faux parquet flooring, a tackle that would make both Vince Lombardi and George Halas proud.

As the two wrestle and a dozen men paw at them in an effort to separate them, Chet takes the microphone. “Peace, man! Peace! Let’s not fight! Please!”

Anna now pushes her plates and silverware aside and lays her head on her arms as if she wants to take a nap. Al is pacing and muttering, “This has gotta stop! Jesus Christ, this has gotta stop!” Tree sits calmly at table Number One and sips her whiskey sour, smirking. Eddie Halloran runs toward the brawl, eager to get in his licks but the sock of his shoeless foot slips on the highly polished floor and he slides a good ten feet before the back of his head hits the tile. All the muscles in his body relax and he begins snoring, his arms spread wide like Jesus’ on the cross.  Jackey Pontone’s driver reaches inside his suit jacket and fingers his holstered .38. Jackey catches his eye and shakes his head. The driver withdraws his shooting hand and resumes waiting, patiently. Joey opens the men’s room door, eyes the scrum and feels another wave of nausea wash over him. He retreats into the safety of the men’s room.

Rocco Bianco has run over to the pile of grapplers and stops short. Robby Waters is on all fours, his left arm around Charlie Solari in an unplanned half-Nelson. Robby’s hind end is pointed toward Rocco. Rocco appraises the tableau for the briefest of moments and concludes that Robby Waters really has a cute little ass. He exhales broadly, purging himself of his deepest secret, and steps up smartly to boot Robby Waters in that ass.

Robby Waters and Charlie Solari are successfully separated. Five men hold Charlie back, their restraining hands nearly caressing him as if they are tending to the alpha dog. The five men who hold Robby Waters back are clawing into him. Some of them are pulling his hair nearly out by the roots. The neighbor cop, Sal Sanfillipo, knees him repeatedly in the thigh. “Try sumpin’, tough guy,” Sal whispers. Oh, how he wants this hippie piece of shit to try sumpin’. He wants it so badly he begins to feel the beginnings of an erection.

Chet is still hollering into the microphone. “This is what happens in a violent society!” he thunders. “Hate’s all around us! We have to overthrow the….”

His amplified voice is almost drowned out by catcalls from the crowd. “Shuddup!”  “Sit the fuck down!” “Stick that revolution shit up yer ass!”

Chet hollers louder into the microphone. “The forces that caused a white man to murder Martin Luther King, the forces that are responsible for the rioting, for the killing in Vietnam, for all the gun deaths in our inner cities, they’re right here in the banquet hall!”

Chet points at the prone Eddie Halloran. “There’s your corrupt justice system!”

He points at Mickey Finnin. “There’s your corrupt ‘representative of the people’!”

He points at Jackey Pontone. “There’s your criminal boss!”

At this, Jackey places his hand inside his crisp Ermenegildo Zegna suit jacket, brushing against his fresh Sulka shirt, and begins to finger the handle of his own holstered .22 until he glances at his good friend Al Dudek and thinks the better of it.

Al has placed his palms against his ears and appears to be on the verge of tears.

Al’s daughter Anna, not napping but actually deciding at this precise moment what the course of her life will be, lifts her head from her arms and joins her brand new husband at the microphone. Her hand covers Chet’s on the mike. She pulls the mike down toward her mouth. He grins at her as if she’s given him the greatest gift a groom can receive from his loving, devoted bride, one who, previous to this very second he really didn’t know. And now he believes he does know who Anna Claudia Michalski, nee Dudek, truly is.

“Please,” she says, and, like that, the pandemonium ceases, such is the power of a bride on her wedding day. Some 250 guests remain in their positions as if a good witch has cast a spell on them. They gape at her, in her virginal white, her six hundred dollar Margie’s Bridal Shop dress cleverly puffed to camouflage the four and a half month old swelling of her womb. She is positively glowing with that most fleeting combination of womanly beauty and girlish cuteness. Even Tree, who is half in the bag for the first time in her orderly life, drinks in the visage of her daughter, the same one whom she wrote off when she learned of the second pregnancy, and becomes misty-eyed. Al brings his hands together at his chest, almost a gesture of prayer, and thanks the God he has ignored for the past quarter of a century that his princess will bestow a redemptive coda upon this nightmare.

“This’ll Cover Up That Little Tummy Bump, Sweetie.”

Space

Anna scans the crowd. Her eyes hit upon the prone, spread-eagled figure of State’s Attorney Eddie Halloran. She glances at Jackey Pontone’s driver, that fearsome square block of a man with the cold stare. She sees the bouffanted wives of Galewood with their thick blue eyeshadow, their inch-long store-bought eyelashes, their dangling ear bangles, their painted nails, and their slender cigarettes. She sees her little brother Joey reemerge from the men’s room, pale as a hermit. She notices her new husband’s best man still in the clutches of that loathsome cop Sal Sanfillipo who, believe it or not, has grasped the lump beneath Robby Waters’ trousers and has twisted it, producing the most frightful grimace on the face of his victim. She sees Rocco Bianco, staring at Sal Sanfillipo’s hand clasping Robby Waters’ crotch and even from this distance, some 30 feet, she can see his tongue dart over his lips. She catches the glint of the pinkie ring worn by Mickey Finnin. And finally, she locks eyes with her father.

Mickey Finnin’s Pinkie Ring

Space

Al Dudek’s gaze implores her to right this madness. Poor Pa. Poor Al. Helpless to stop the ball he started rolling a couple of decades ago when he accepted the help of his brothers-in-law whose membership in the 42 Gang virtually insured the success of his new business. Poor Al. Poor Pa. Really a good guy but, man, so weak, so willing to sell his soul. Damn you, Pa!

Anna, the angel, Daddy’s little girl almost all grown up, takes a breath and with her hand still over Chet’s as they both hold the microphone, finally speaks.

“Fuck this shit!” she hollers.

With that, she and Chet, hand in hand, run together out of the Nuovo Mondo banquet hall, adrenaline-drunk, a dead-on reprise of Ben Braddock and Elaine Robinson running out of the church in Anna’s favorite movie ever, The Graduate. But rather than board a bus in the northern California sun, Anna and Chet burst out into the chilly early April air, the sky still gray from the smoke of the smoldering West Side fires, police and fire sirens wailing in the distance, and clamber into their honeymoon limousine.

Chet pulls the door closed with a bang. The driver asks, “Where to?”

Chet and Anna look at each other for an answer. Neither has one. They giggle.

“Just go,” the respond in unison.

Anna’s Favorite Movie Ever

***

See you Saturday for the next installment of Black Comedy.