Jonathan Pearce

The Balona Kings

Ginger hasn't finished the letter she started retyping at 3:10, and it's now after 5:00. Outside
the office window Front Street is dark. She's making that whining sound again. "Daddy, Mom
says you're s'posed... I mean she said for you to get us Taco-Time for dinner tonight and also pick up her order at Mr. D. H. Carp's."

Kenworth Kuhl strokes his tan mustache over his long upper lip. He frowns, stretches himself
in his chair, pulls on his long nose, raises his chin better to see if the mote on a lens of his wire-rimmed glasses is permanent or only grease or a gnat. Decides that it doesn't matter either way since he doesn't plan to examine anything closely in the immediate future. Kenworth sighs,
scratches his chin. He plucks a ballpoint pen out of the middle drawer of his desk, inserts it into an ear, and routs about, feeling the pleasure show on his face. "Well," Kenworth responds, "none of us are going to be constipated, that's for sure, eating that stuff again." Kenworth knows "her order at Mr. D. H. Carp's" means gin for Bapsie again, three fifths this week alone, but it doesn't do any good to complain. She just gets mad, and when she's mad, home is hell, more hell than usual.

Besides, in a couple more weeks, she'll maybe knock it off and won't have a drop for a month or two --that Kenworth knows about anyway.

If only he could make a sale. Only nobody is buying now, and it is awfully cold and foggy and wet to be going out and knocking on doors trying to sell a house or a ranch like some young kid. Wish I'd inherited Uncle Oliver's fortune instead of her, that dumb little Claire Preene.

Kenworth has been making a few bucks now and then by peaking-up foreclosures. That is, he
listens carefully over at Veterans Hall and Ned's Sportsbar and at Solidarity breakfasts and at D.H. Carp's Groceries & Sundries for the names of Balona folks who've let on that they're having a tough time making their mortgage payments. Then Kenworth calls old Cavolo Runcible who'll
go out and make an insulting but gratefully received offer to the people in trouble. Uncle Cavolo Runcible usually takes along Uncle Kenworth Burnross to talk legal-speak, and together they often gets the property for a song. No skin off Kenworth Kuhl's nose since the losers brought it on themselves. Finders keepers, losers weepers is what you say in Balona about stuff like that. And then Kenworth Kuhl picks up a commission from old Cavolo, about which he may tell
Bapsie, or probably not.

The young guys working for Putzi Purge over in Delta City really do go out in the cold and fog and knock on actual doors and try to sell houses. Sometimes maybe it works, but probably it
doesn't, Kenworth is sure. Except that Trev Primsnall, who's about to retire from the Postal
Service and take a part-time job at the D. C. Country Club, said the other day, "I heard that Putzi Purge's salesmen are selling more houses than any firm in Chaud County. Did you know that,
Mr. Kuhl?" Selling even in this miserable market. Since Trev Primsnall seems to know
everyone's business in Balona, he's possibly right about Purge's successes in Chaud County, too.
Although at the time of Trev Primsnall's revelation Kenworth noticed that old Mr. Primsnall was
smiling strangely. Putzi Purge pronounces his last name like poor-guy, but he's anything but poor. Mr. Primsnall probably said that about Putzi Purge being so successful just to show Kenworth what a poor guy Kenworth is.

There's got to be a better way than knocking on doors or fingering your neighbors for that old
vulture Cavolo. If I could get a few thousand ahead I might be able to roust some foreclosures
myself, only it would take more than a few thousand, I bet. Pondering that problem for a while is a welcome relief from worrying about Bapsie or daughter Ginger or son Joey or younger son
Richie.

Ginger will get a guy and move out sooner or later. Richie will end up in jail probably. But
Joey. Poor Joey. Kid with the most potential, a chip off of the old block. All he wants out of life, poor kid, is a driver's license. A senior in high school and no driver's license because Bapsie's being mean and always has to show who's boss. If Kenworth weren't so afraid of what Bapsie might do, Kenworth would show some muscle, sign Joey up for behind-the-wheel, no matter what Bapsie says. Wish I'd been the one who inherited Uncle Oliver's estate, instead of that dumb little Claire. Then I'd have some clout.

Getting drafted kept him from going to law school, he reminds himself, or by now Kenworth Kuhl would be Kenworth Kuhl, Attorney at Law or Kenworth Kuhl, M.D., or maybe Kenworth Kuhl, CEO of King Turkey. The draft back then actually kept him from going to college at all. Then after the service, he felt too mature to go to school with a bunch of kids.

Kenworth was at least happy in his work back when he was in the army. The day after he'd arrived home from Vietnam, still thinking how happy he'd been in the service, and how maybe he ought to have tried to stay in there, he'd proudly decked himself out in his winter uniform with the ribbons stuck on that he'd bought from a street vendor next to the Saigon PX just before his
departure from that place. A whole chestful of badges and stripes and bars and colors, including
the Germany Occupation and Korean Service and United Nations Service ribbons, all of which he
was way too young to have actually earned, but stuck them on just to make the display come out
even. Reasonable enough. Besides, nobody in authority ever really looked at the ribbons. And in
that fine dressed-up uniform, a bright blue infantry fourragere pinned around his left shoulder,
Kenworth Kuhl had driven over to Delta City in Daddy's Buick and swaggered into Runcible's at
the University to have a cup of coffee and maybe be admired by the college girls over there.
Bapsie'd never know. While he was sipping his coffee and looking around, his jacket nicely
buttoned and his ribbons flashing away impressing everybody, some of those long-haired smartass
draftdodging football players from the university came up to him sitting at the counter there.