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beyond
the last star
a
bird in hand |
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You can read the first 50% of this story for free; if you like it, you can read the rest for $.50 (payable by paypal or credit card.)
[ Read more about author Efraim Zimbalist Graves ]
Self-retired New York City lawyer, David Kaufman, thinks he can escape his past by drinking in a small town pub in Verplanck called "The Paradise." Instead, he takes the men of the town on a perilous chase in their 1609 sailing ship, the "Half Moon," down the Hudson to capture the flying Sirens of legendary fame.
I used to drink in all the high class bars and nightclubs. You know, those swanky places downtown where one tips the waiters (all six of them) and the hostess, and one can smell the cologne on the cloth napkins? However, ever since my business investments have gone sour (I was part of the subprime mortgage crew), and I have acquired my new-found conscience (it's funny how alcohol makes one introspective about life), I like to hang out at what my mother, a grand matron of the Hudson River Valley, would have called one of the "seedier" establishments.
After the Fascist take-over by a succession of mayors in New York, it's really difficult to find a seedy bar to drink in. However, I like a bar that's on the Hudson River near Cortlandt. It's called the Paradise Bar & Grill, and it's located in the hamlet of Verplanck. I know, you're saying to yourselves, "Verplanck? Cortlandt? That's the suburbs, man! Westchester. You can't throw a quarter in there without hitting a Mercedes." Yes, it's true, we are a Yankee community, steeped in Revolutionary War tradition and marinated in Daughters of the American Revolution. The joke inside the Paradise is, "How many Verplanck fishermen does it take to screw a Daughter of the Revolution? It takes 1,776. One to shtup her and 1,775 to envy him."
Why do rich people envy? Think about it. The world of the wealthy consists of making certain you keep up with the other rich people. Not only do you have to stay rich, but you also have to have the latest cultural icon, family historical tree, patriotic connection or any other classy-sounding link with the rich tradition that abounds in this neck of the Hendrick Hudson woods. What's my link, you ask? My link is that I first heard the Sirens.
In most taverns, I would be the guy who sits on the corner of the bar, next to the bartender (in this case, his name is Vito, as the Paradise is an Italian tavern, and Vito is the owner's brother-in-law), so he can get the best vantage point to view the cocktail waitresses, who scurry to and fro from the bar to the tables. As a former New York City lawyer, I can keep Vito and the girls mildly entertained with my combination of gutter humor and satirical jabs at the wealthy town folk, until I get too wasted, and then Vito just kindly calls me a cab, and I am shuttled off to my boarding house room on the Point, the Campbell House, a former Federal building that used to house real fishermen who traveled up and down the Hudson from New York City to Albany. Today, I get a pretty good price for my room at the Point, because the Campbell house is soon going to be bulldozed to make room for private enterprise. No more Federal buildings in Verplanck, by God! Private enterprise is now the Yankee tradition.
The first Siren I heard was the night following the Verplanck Easter Egg Hunt. A lot of the townspeople were in the Paradise that night, as they wanted to get away from their kids for awhile and have a cold one (why is it always "one" with these normal drinkers?) and discuss the latest gossip.
I was seated on my usual red-cushioned bar stool, asking Maureen Flaherty, my favorite cocktail waitress and single parent, whose kid goes to Our Lady of Mt. Caramel School, if she knew what was black and white, black and white and black and white? She said she didn't know, so I told her, "A nun rolling down a hill," and she actually laughed. But, just as she turned to go, and I was watching her nicely shaped legs as they vibrated their stocking selves out toward the mass of boozing humanity, I heard the first great wail.
At first, I thought it was the Verplanck Fire Department testing one of their new sirens for us, as our town has more employees in the fire department than we have police, teachers and city hall employees combined, and they like to "strut their stuff" quite often, when they get their latest toy from the Department of Homeland Security or the Society to Prevent Global Warming. However, this siren sounded otherworldly, and it did not have the conventional "whoop" or "whine" that most mechanical or pneumatic horns have. This sound was loud, yes, but it was also wavy, and the vibrato it contained was definitely human and not a machine.
"You hear that?" I asked Vito, who was doing his perpetual routine of washing glasses and then drying them on his towel that said "Save Venice--it's Sinking!"
"Nah, I can't hear nothing over this chatter, David. It must be those dog ears of yours!" said Vito, chuckling at his own joke.
"No, listen. It's a siren wailing. Wait a minute," I said, and I actually got up from my stool and headed for the front door. Everybody in the establishment turned to look at me, as it was a rare night indeed when David J. Kaufman, Esquire, got up from his bar stool! It usually meant the Messiah was coming, or I was going to do some drunken stand-up comedy and a few songs for them. This time, it was neither, and I was poised at the front entrance with my hand perched on the lion's head door knob from the movie Cinema Paradiso, that the owner, Sam Parino, bought off E-Bay.
As I opened the wooden door, I turned to my assembled Easter Egg Rolling folk, who were working on Easter Egg Nog Hangovers, and said, "Listen! Do you all hear that?"
Maureen Flaherty, bless her, came over to stand beside me, and she had the cutest expression on her pixie-like face, and with her turned-up Irish nose twitching, she said, "It sounds like someone's calling the cows home," and that's when the women started nodding in agreement.
Ed Walsh, the town's mayor, pushed his brawny way through the crowd and to the door. He stuck his cigar-mouthed red head out the door as if he, alone, had real ears. "It sounds like it's coming from the Half Moon." He was, of course, referring to our hamlet's recreation of the Dutch (actually he was a British) Explorer, American Native slaughterer, and land buyer-upper, Hendrick Hudson's 1609 sailing ship, which was docked down on the river at King Marine.
This is the strange part: the sirens only affected the men. The women simply yawned and played with their hair, while we men began to fantasize about a naked songstress. Yes, and it was the same naked woman we all dreamed at once. We compared her description, and each of us had the same vision of her. She had long, red hair and she was completely nude, sitting on a rock out in the river. The brown nipples on her breasts were firmly jutting out, perky in the cold wind, and the water was sloshing between her thighs, foaming in and out, rhythmically, and we all described being pulled into those thighs, until we became lost inside her womb, seemingly forever, inside her moist darkness.
As we all snapped out of our reveries, I came to first. "C'mon, men, what are we waiting for? Let's go down and see where these women are coming from!"
We must have been quite a sight that day, as most of the male population of our little hamlet trudged, like love-struck zombies, down to the Hudson River at King Marine. The women, in a rather frustrated pack, followed us from behind, whispering among themselves about what could have possibly gotten into us.
We could still hear the siren's call as we approached the Half Moon, which was in her usual slip at the dock, bobbing up and down in the moonlight like some ancient artifact from a bygone era. Our sea-going link with the past seemed to be a kind of prophetic harbinger of what was soon to come.
Many of our men were convulsing in ecstasy, literally tearing at their clothes as they walked, clutching their crotches like dancing Michael Jacksons, letting the music of the songstress pour into their bodies like aural heroin. It seemed like only myself and the mayor were together enough to think about anything, and the idea came to us almost at the same moment, immediately following what we then saw out on the river.
Just beyond the bow of the Half Moon, sitting on a large buoy, was the first siren. In the twilight, we could still see well enough to notice she was the one doing the singing, and she was--to our total shock and amazement--part bird and part woman! Her torso was completely and anatomically female--a red-haired, voluptuous femme, with two piquant breasts, a succulent, ruby-red mouth, and, yes, those twisting bare buttocks, which were enveloped around the brown buoy like white globes from heaven. The rest of her, however, was all bird; gigantic white wings sprouted from her alabaster shoulders and hung against her sinuous sides; her long, flowing red tail feathers jutted up from the waves as they lapped against the buoy's surface while the metallic cork rocked her delicate body to and fro. The back of her was also completely feathered in white, almost glowingly white down, that glistened under the moonlight and drove the men on the dock wild.
Copyright © 2008 by Efraim Zimbalist Graves . All rights reserved unless specified otherwise above.
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