Fred

Take some time. Look around you. Look what love has brought about, what it has brought me to, what I have brought others to.

There was a girl I fell for hard, long ago in England, Christina’s the name. Was the name. You’ve been around as long as me, you forget what you remember and what you want to forget way too often. No, I don’t think it has to make sense.

Anyway, I travel a lot for my...work, and I found myself wanting to go somewhere I’d never been before and there were not many places left on that list. So it was Manchester, and my first stop when I got to town was a local. A pub, a bar, wherever you’re reading this in the world, you get where I was and that’s where I saw her.

Christina caught my eye like no one had in ages. Ages.

But she wasn’t buying what she thought I was selling. At first, she was just not responding as I tried to talk to her. I would like to say it was because she was busy tending bar, but no. No, she just didn’t care for a chat up from me.

But if there’s anything you can call me, stubborn would be near the top of that list, so I decided to head into the pub earlier in the day, maybe avoid the Christmas rush of people trying to avoid others and/or numb things before seeing others.

She put a pint down in front of me, and it was cold, frosty even. It had nothing, however, on the look she paired it with.

“I saw you in here the other night.” Not a question. Not a statement. It was the verbal expression of annoyance. “I know your game, and I don’t want to play.”

If there’s anything I appreciate in the day to day, it’s someone that knows my game. Whether they do or not. Makes the job more fun. Gotta enjoy what you do, right?

“You know my game?”

“I do. Out of towner, ain’t ya? Hoping to get ya some local flavor and hit the skids before there’s any mither, right? I think you Yanks have taken enough from jolly old England.”

I was offended. A Yank? That wasn’t what I was going for at all. I was trying to be Canadian. After a mental note to work on that, I had to fire back before I ended up against the wall. 

“Oh, that’s what you think? That I want to avoid bother and hassle and just get a little something? Maybe me stomach thinks me throat’s been cut, and I’d like some company to fix that?”

You know, when I hit the ground in a new place, I try to blend in with the local culture. Learn some slang, not look like a tourist. I was inviting her to a meal. What she invited me to do was go and sit on my...yeah. And spin fast.

I am a gentleman above all. I raised my hands and stepped out of the pub and on with my life.

My life. Oh, there’s a place I did have to get back to. In my field, there’s always something to do, even if I’m bored with it sometimes. Part of me wanted to settle down, and, as I’d come to find out, that part wanted it to be with Christina. But she didn’t want, and I didn’t pry, and there were some things to attend to.

Oh, oh, I did have some fun afterwards. There was this time, just off the coast of Japan, a boat of commercial fishermen got themselves a little tanked and just kept going. Now, my mission as I saw it was to keep them from drifting into China’s territory. Yeah, right? They sure were hammered, going that far off course, but there they were.

Something told me that the little thing I had to take care of was keeping them from getting blown off the face of the planet. That’s my job. The little things. That’s what I do.

But I was going to do it my way.

One of the fish decided they had to talk. OK, it didn’t decide, I decided.

In Japanese that would’ve made Sadaharu Oh want to take a bat to me, the fish began to tell them jokes at first, hoping to stop them from driving forward to their doom. They didn’t want to listen to the fish, they wanted to laugh at the fish. My fault, that one.

So the fish started to try and reason with them. The captain, sadly the hardest hit person on the boat, decided the fish didn’t amuse him anymore, and he got his gun out, and sent my fish to Cod.

Now I was angry. Now all the fish had something to say.

By the time all of them began to recite warnings, each in a different language, with glowing eyes, the sobering began instantly, the engines were full speed ahead, and they were back in Japanese waters before the fish could say sayonara.

I thought I may have been a little hard on those fellas, and while it may have been for their own good, I think I knew why.

I was missing Christina. I had to try again.

Back to Manchester it was, not long after the day of the talking fish. (I wonder if anyone ever ran with that idea. An animatronic talking fish. Maybe have it sing. I dunno.)

I had gone off and had many meals between Christmases, as the lady suggested. She was still there, still looking like every other thought I had over the last year. And I must’ve looked the same myself, because she sure remembered me.

“Oi, you’re back, Yank?,” her greeting, still with dirty look attached, “I told you to do one and you sure listened.”

I nodded. “Yes, I went away, and I came back. Suppose that counts for nothing?”

Here’s what that counted for: some “dinner,” me learning that meant lunch (my confusion being that it was only noon, and that made me the weird one), and finally her name.

No, I didn’t even get her name the first time that year before. 

Oh, and one other thing I got: she still wasn’t interested in being part of the local tour.

“So, why don’t you go do another one? At least another year should do the trick.”

I was stunned. “It doesn’t matter at all that I more than gave you space?”

“I think you’re working very hard on making me want to pop you one.”

Oh, those poor people who needed little things done in that year after.

They did not get nice God of Little Things. Not at all.

Don’t worry your heads about them. All of them lived, none of them had permanent damage. All property survived.

OK, most property survived.

I may have had a bit of trouble in Germany.

I may have become a local legend because of what happened with some taxidermied animals. Maybe where some of them ended up. Like, say...attached to trees in weird ways. The head of a stag on one side, the rear end of a bear on the other. And the antlers on the stag transferred to the butt of the bear.

The owner was not happy with what I did to that bierhaus. But, if I hadn’t done my little thing fixing magic stuff at that time, the local soccer team would have gone there. They would’ve gone there, gotten good and soused, and missed the big regional finals, or at least not been in any shape to play.

Now, I say it was incidental that they were so creeped out about the large male (me) trying on some of the heads and making them talk to run them back to the buses that psyched them out so bad that, even though they arrived on time and in one piece at the match, they got pasted by five goals. The little thing I had to take care of was getting them to the pitch on time.

Hey, now, look here, the owner was entrepreneurial enough to take advantage of the situation. That is why I am known as the Damon des Waldes, Demon of the Woods, and the Damon Bierhaus has a tour you can take of his, er, my handiwork.

So I say everything worked out perfectly.

And I was back in Manchester, as promised, a year later.

Christina still made me work for it, keeping me at arm’s length for the whole of my trip, until the last night. Oh, she still told me to go do one, but as I went to, ready to go do one forever instead of hurting (and making more tourist attractions), she slipped out the door behind me.

“OK, mate, you’ve got one more night in town? Take me out for a proper tea, a nice restaurant and the works. That’s dinner to you. What you Yanks did to the English language gets me all kinds of ‘angin.”

“If I disgust you so much with my mouth, why go out with me?”

“Maybe I’m throwing you a bone. So take it, big dog.”

The next night, we met for dinn--er, tea.

We got on each other’s nerves quite a bit that night. 

With some...other activities in between, until the next morning.

I did one again, at her request. Not the settling type. 

But I kept coming back for years after.

Until she got sick.

Then I went back to say goodbye.

That’s when I was done. Now, in my line of work, you can’t retire, let’s face it. But I needed a place of my own. And I needed a way to bring my work to me.

In the most obtuse way possible, since I was angry, and sad, and happy and hopeful and irritated all at once.

So I decided to raise an island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Named it after a cop I met and his large, large family. Bring people to it all the time and mess with their lives, but, hey, all to their benefit.

But, hey, at least the fish don’t sing and the stuffed animals stay put.

Right?