For Thursday, June 25, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 733 words

Some-are stories

Sal and Lupy decided to hit the beach. The day was blue and hot. They took Lupy's truck, with its bald tires and leaky transmission. The beach stretched out at the base of a steep mountain road. They made it safely.

While walking in the surf, talking, they saw the ocean swell. Up came a sleeper wave. Sal and Lupy could expect to get wet. They braced themselves to body surf up the beach. As they turned their backs on the ocean, Sal saw a looming black mass and leaped far to the right.

A killer whale rushed ashore with the wave and grabbed Lupy up to his waist. The whale turned sideways and rode the undertow back into deeper water. Lupy went quickly, head out, pushing against the whale's lower jaw with both hands. The fins dipped and reappeared later, far out to sea.

Sal stood alone on the beach. He was afraid to drive Lupy's truck.

Hector and Veronica had been dating for three years. They'd been intimate for two years. They were teenage runaways living on the streets of San Nibisco, eating out of dumpsters. For birth control they used Good Luck, an OTC panacea.

One day Hector and Veronica tried their hands at fishing. They borrowed the fishing pole and tackle from a dead hobo they found under a bridge.

On the third cast, Veronica hooked a striped bass that weighed as much as she did. They ate well for several days, then got horribly sick. In the hospital Veronica was convinced to call her mother, who called Hector's parents. The three of them flew in that night. After tears and a few harsh words at the hospital, the parents and kids made up and everything was hunky-dory.

Joey-Joey-Joe-Joe and Ed were Travelers. They sold aluminum siding. Trick is, the siding was attached to the buildings with quick-release hasps. At night, they would come back, remove it all, sell it to the local aluminum recycling center the next morning, and skip town.

One day Joey-Joey-Joe-Joe liked a female customer and didn't want to steal back the aluminum. She had a sick kid, who needed an operation. She had a three-legged cat and a one-eared dog. Ed argued and yelled , but Joey-Joey-Joe-Joe was in love for the night.

"O.K." said Ed. "You win." They left town without recycling.

Back at the ranch, the siding kept falling off the garage. The female customer had to hire someone else to remove the siding. Unbeknownst to her, she hired another Traveler, Spence. Spence secretly removed the garage from underneath the siding and drove off with most of the woman's future garage-sale items, and her garage.

Jake and his dog, Spats, were walking around the lake. Jake was an environmental attorney working on a lawsuit between the state parks and a group of activists who wanted increased funding for killer-whale-habitat restoration. Their leader, Sal Amanca, was meeting Jake for lunch at the Lakeside Resort. Jake tied Spats to a water spigot near the front door and walked inside.

Business was slow. A group of five had the corner table, three adults and two teenagers. Jake noticed the young girl was extremely thin.

Outside, two handymen were installing aluminum siding on an attached boathouse. The restaurant manager, Spence, stood watching the handymen from behind the bar. He was laughing and talking on the phone.

Someone at the table of five banged his fist and yelled, "Because I care, damn it!"

Sal waved at Jake from the end of the bar. The bartender brought over a second iced tea, and the two men talked business. The skinny teen yelled, "Because I hate seafood," and ran outside.

Suddenly, Spats began to bark ferociously. Sal and Jake leaned forward to see the dog straining against the leash, barking at man in a wheelchair who was trying to pull the door open. Apparently, the chair frightened Spats. He snapped, and the man lost his grip. His chair rolled backward into the street.

A passing truck full of muscular men with pipes was trying to turn in at the boathouse when the girl stepped off the curb. The truck swerved to miss her, blew a tire and skidded out of control. Then the transmission gave out, and it crashed into the wheelchair, knocking the man into the lake, where he drowned.

Sal clapped his cheeks. "Lupy!" he cried.