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The next morning, Frarn met Ruddy as planned. Frarn had the cab waiting and had already given the driver the destination address and told him to wait until Ruddy finished and then bring him back to the plant. Frarn handed Ruddy an envelope. There was some writing on the front of the envelope which, of course, Ruddy couldn’t read. Frarn cautioned Ruddy, “That’s your letter of introduction. Just show it to them when you get there. They’ll fix you up.” Ruddy was very grateful, and from the backseat of the dirty, butt-smelling cab he yelled as they pulled away, “Thank good man Frarn.”

The place was Spuckie’s Cabbage Chute Strip Club, located amongst Laundromats, pawn shops, cut-rate liquor stores and a used shoe store. Ruddy exited the cab wide-eyed as he saw the pictures in the front window of the club: “Women show bare picture.”

The cabbie yelled disgustedly, “Hurry up, will ya? A quick spurt and let’s get the fuck out of this shitty neighborhood!”

Ruddy entered the dark, empty den of lascivious activities. There was one man, a midget, sweeping up the joint. He looked at Ruddy with disgust and growled (like a Chihuahua), “We don’t open ’til noon, sonny.”

Ruddy flashed the envelope at the two-and-a-half-footer, the “Man-boy or boy-man,” Ruddy puzzled. The midget yelled, “Qharlottajellica, you got a customer.”

A door (marked private) in the back of the dark, smelly lounge creaked open. A woman’s whiskey voice luridly beckoned, “C’mon back, handsome. I’ve been expecting you.”

Ruddy made his way in the darkness toward the door, bumping sticky tables and chairs with each step. He held his hands out in front of him like a blind man. He stumbled against a platform that exploded with light and loud music. There was a shiny gold pole in the middle of the platform. Ruddy saw the “man-boy or boy-man” running toward him yelling, “Hey, ya fuckin’ pervert, ya think you gonna see some free pussy?” The little person slipped on some night-before-whiskey-and-half-digested-peanuts vomit. His short little legs went up in the air and he slammed against the stage and everything went dark again. Ruddy heard the little one moan “Oooh, my fucking tail bone.” Ruddy moved on towards the door. It seemed even darker since the bright lights had gone out. He stuck his hand into a pitcher of congealed beer; as he recoiled, he stepped on something spongy but boney, and turned his right ankle. He fell hard, taking a chair and a table with some half-full glasses of stale beer and urine with him. On his way to the festering floor he heard a drunken voice bawl, “Hey, assho’, you stepped on my nuts.” Ruddy hit the sticky floor amid breaking glass, sloshing stale beer and folding chairs. The table landed on top of him. Qharlottajellica yelled, “Jesus Christ almighty, get your fuckin’ ball sack in here before you wreck the joint.”

Ruddy obeyed and unstuck himself from the floor and hobbled into the private office. His eyes were burning from the stale booze, and his forehead had a goose egg. The office was dizzying: stacks of papers to the ten-foot ceiling, steel cabinets bulging, greasy carryout boxes by the dozen thrown all around an overflowing 50-gallon garbage can. There was a strange thing on three sticks, and in the middle of this chaos was a huge old industrial desk sagging with more books, reams of paper, a couple of oversized computers, a hot-water bottle, an enormously fat cat with mange, a bowling ball cracked in half and three gold trophies. And dwarfing this conglomeration sat Qharlottajellica. Ruddy froze at the sight before him. He still held tight to his envelope, now soaked with sticky stale beer and human excretions.

Qharlottajellica was a 700 pounder. Ruddy at first didn’t know if she was a human being. There was actually steam rising from her nearly bare voluminous body. Her steam gave the room an overall haze. Her flesh had blobbed around any clothing she had started the day in.

Ruddy saw her mouth move. “Let me see what you got in the envelope, sweetie pie.” He stepped forward like a toy soldier and handed her the soggy envelope. She looked him over. “Hey, you are a cutie.” She opened the wet, yellow-stained envelope and removed some less soggy papers. “Jesus, what’d you do—whack off on these papers?”

Ruddy didn’t understand her slur, but saw she was puzzled by the mess. “I step on man bony mess much dark.” She snapped, “Sit down on that crate.” Ruddy obeyed. Qharlottajellica hollered, “Hey, Roachie, get your bee-bee nuts in here and fire up the Polaroid.” The little man entered, rubbing his tail bone area, with a sour look in Ruddy’s direction. Roachie climbed up on a chair and began to adjust some things on the “box” at the top of the three sticks. Roachie turned the box in Ruddy’s direction and ordered, “Say shit.” Ruddy didn’t understand. Roachie sneered, “Boy, we got a dumb fucker here.” He repeated the order to Ruddy while pointing to his own mouth.

Ruddy said “shit” while pointing to his own mouth.

Roachie was totally flabbergasted. “This mutherfucker’s bustin’ my bee-bees.” The little man gave up on the smile. “Look this way, ya stupid fart.” The flash startled Ruddy.

While the portrait was being shot, Qharlottajellica had been busy cutting, hacking, pasting, copying and tapping the keys on her very sophisticated computers, two keyboards at once, very fast, like she was playing the boogie-woogie. Roachie handed her a bunch of headshots of Ruddy, most of them with a half blink. “Look at that silly shit. He looks like he just got fucked up the ass by a camel.” Roachie blamed his poor execution on Ruddy.

Qharlottajellica mumbled, “They’ll do. Now go get me a tumbler of Jack, and make it snappy, ya pissant.” Ruddy still understood no curse words, nor any of the cynicism leveled at him by these two well-versed freaks.

Qharlottajellica asked Ruddy for his height and weight, and his birthdate. She had his address on Frarn’s info. Ruddy just looked blankly as she answered all the questions herself: 5’11”, 170 pounds, brown eyes, black hair; and then she reached down and opened a desk drawer and pulled out some paraphernalia and unwrapped something shiny like a….“Put your arm right up here, sweetie.” Ruddy dutifully allowed her to stick a needle in his arm and draw blood. She handed the sample to Roachie, who had come back in with her tumbler of Jack. Roachie left the room with her chiding him to “Hurry up, this gentleman hasn’t got all day” (with tongue in cheek). She turned back to Ruddy. “You were born in 1965 (she ad libbed the year), and, let’s see, how about….” Qharlottajellica pulled a dog-eared paperback out of the massive pile on her desk. It caused a minor avalanche. She flipped through the thick paperback, BIRTHDATES OF HEROES, GENIUSES AND ASSHOLES. “Aha, here’s a good one. Since you’re such a well-spoken man, how about William Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23rd—okay?” Ruddy looked at Qharlottajellica and smiled. He hadn’t understood one word. She referred to the papers that Ruddy had brought with him: “Now, Frarn mentions here you also want to shorten your name—”

She was interrupted by Roachie. He peeked in. “He’s type O. I’ve got to finish out here, so leave me the fuck alone.” And then, under his breath, he said, “You fuckin’ pregnant shitfaced hippo.”

Qharlottajellica confided in Ruddy, “God, I hate that little tippy-toed cocksucker. Oh yes, I see in Frarn’s notes he says you want a good USA name?”

Ruddy finally emerged from the steaming, stinking-hot box. Qharlottajellica yelled from her sagging, gigantic, vibrating recliner with her sexiest whiskey voice, “Thanks again, sweetie. You’re most generous. If you ever want anything else, you know where Qharlottajellica is.”

The bill was $200, like Frarn said. But Ruddy gave Qharlottajellica $300. She wanted to give Ruddy a “little extra” in return, but Ruddy didn’t understand.

Ruddy left Spuckie's Cabbage Chute Strip Club with a whole handful of shiny, new plastic cards and a half ream of official-looking documents, all placed as neatly as possible in a wrinkled brown paper grocery bag. To any educated eye, Qharlottajellica’s work looked like the real thing. It was the real thing. Qharlottajellica had made a lot of friends over the last 67 years.

Ruddy now had his own driver’s license and one for Layzee. For Layzee’s photo, Ruddy selected a headshot from a book full of semi-glamorous young women. It was a catalogue of exotic dancers. Ruddy and Layzee now had Social Security cards, and they now were on record as having a top credit rating with two credit cards, each with $50,000 limits. They were fully insured for auto and home, had firearm owners’ cards for the two of them, membership cards to Costco and Sam’s Club, U.S. citizenship papers, birth certificates from the most prestigious hospitals in the country, each in a different city—Ruddy in Manhattan, Layzee in Houston, Swetty in Las Vegas and Butty at Bethesda (the footprints were faked; Qharlottajellica forced Roachie to ink up)—an honorable discharge certificate from the United States Marine Corps for Ruddy, and finally a lifetime membership card to Spuckie’s Cabbage Chute Strip Club.

An excited Ruddy slid into the backseat of the seedy cab. The irritated driver greeted Ruddy rudely: “Jesus, you must of hammered the whole fuckin’ lineup?”

Ruddy replied in high spirits, “Yes, lineup fuckin’ USA whole.”

Ruddy unfolded the important-looking document that officially changed his family’s name to a USA name. He studied it and smiled. (Qharlottajellica had given him a brief lesson in how to read, pronounce, and spell his new name.) Ruddy went through his stack of cards and documents and made sure the new name was on every card and document. Their USA names:

Ruddy Whore

Layzee Whore

Butty Whore

Swetty Whore

(Qharlottajellica had a really nasty sense of humor.)

A lump formed in Ruddy’s throat. Tears of joy welled and trickled down his cheeks as he stared at the new family name and said, “Whore good USA.”

Ruddy’s wonderful moment was broken by the cabbie. “That’ll be an even 100 bucks, Mr. Randy.” Ruddy gave him a ball of wrinkled bills: $237. The cabbie was bug-eyed. He thanked Ruddy and sped off before “Mr. Randy” could change his mind.

It was lunchtime at the plant. Ruddy put all the cards and documents back into the brown paper bag and entered the factory, ready to work. Frarn signaled to Ruddy to join him for lunch. They sat on a wood bench between two greasy, monster machines.

Frarn asked, “How’d it go?”

Ruddy answered through a big smile, “Good very. The people real good to me. One, a child-man,” Ruddy held his hand about two feet off the floor. “The other, a woman, a hill like,” and he spread his arms out full-width, “with smoke out come.”

Frarn leaned close to Ruddy. “I have to tell you, Ruddy, don’t ever tell anyone where you went or who sent you or what you got, you know what I mean?”

Ruddy was thinking only of his wonderful new USA name. It didn’t matter, because Ruddy could never, in a thousand years, coherently tell of his trip to Spuckie’s Cabbage Chute Strip Club to get his USA name. Ruddy was beaming. “Frarn, my name new USA is—” Ruddy was interrupted by the back-to-work whistle.

Frarn stood up. “Let’s go get ’em, Ruddy. You can put your sack in my locker.”

The afternoon was all business—heavy greasy work repairing another monster machine. Ruddy decided it was “not time to new name tell.” Frarn had to leave before quitting time to attend a foreman’s meeting. Ruddy strolled home that night with his loaded brown paper bag, one happy Whore.

CHAPTER TEN

gate

He walked the route which took him by the “For Sale House.” It was not as big as Zip and Dollette’s house, but Ruddy preferred it because it had goats. There were two people standing in the expansive front lawn, feeding the goats. Many goats were swarming around them, white ones, brown ones and black ones, small and big; they all looked beautiful to Ruddy. The couple seemed old—very old—to Ruddy. As he approached the front gate, Ruddy was enraptured by the pastoral scene. His heart thumped. The late afternoon sun rimmed the old folks and the goats. It didn’t look real to Ruddy. The couple noticed Ruddy and gave him a friendly wave and a froggy “hullo.” This roused Ruddy from his idyllic stupor. He stood and watched until they were done feeding their goats. They strolled over to Ruddy and held out their hands to shake. The old man said, “Hullo, I’m Alonzo Shoesingsmith, and this is my wife, Toe.”

There was a long pause as Ruddy tried to gather some words that made sense. Finally he smiled and softly blurted out, “You house to sell?”

Alonzo gave the ineloquent gentleman the once-over. Ruddy had a wrinkled brown grocery sack tightly gripped in one hand; his other hand pulled up his drooping, greasy overalls, revealing dirty (once white) socks and well-worn Nike slaps (he always left his grease-caked work shoes at the factory in Frarn’s locker).

Ruddy, thinking they hadn’t understood him, tried again: “House you sell house to sell?”

The wife, Toe, responded tentatively, “Why, yes.”

Ruddy got right to the nitty-gritty. “Money much how want you?” The couple hemmed and hawed and wondered how to get out of this conversation. Ruddy could see they were perplexed. “Buy me your house much money lots of?”

Alonzo decided to scare him off. “We’re looking for $350,000. If we could get cash, we would go as low as $300,000.” The truth was Alonzo and Toe would go for $250,000. They were old, old, old, and wanted very much to get to Florida before their time ran out.

Ruddy was politely impertinent. “Can see house?”

Alonzo and Toe were trapped. They didn’t want to be discourteous to this industrially soiled young man. “Well, yes, come in,” said Alonzo. They opened the gate and Ruddy walked with them up the beautiful driveway to the spacious front porch. They were followed by a herd of playful goats. Alonzo opened another gate at the bottom of the porch steps (to keep the goats off the porch). Ruddy admired a swing hanging from the porch ceiling. He sat in it, “This sale too?”

“Yes, yes.” Alonzo answered.

In the house the furniture and everything else was exquisite. It was impeccably clean.

The Shoesingsmiths began to enjoy his reactions. Ruddy’s question over and over again was “This sale too?”

After Ruddy had seen the whole house and everything in it, he declared, “I buy inside all like.” He made a grand sweeping gesture spreading his arms wide. “I bring 1,000 bill lots tomorrow morning way go to work.” Alonzo and Toe smiled and said, “Okay.” They thought he was a little cracked. The Shoesingsmiths waved goodbye to Ruddy at the front gate. Ruddy walked away, almost skipping, then he stopped abruptly, turned and shouted, “Goats too sale me?” Alonzo laughed heartily, “Yes, yes, the whole megillah.” Toe felt sorry for Ruddy.

That day the counselor at Butty’s school decided the little one should go from kindergarten to fourth grade at the start of the next term. The decision was made after Butty did his book report a few days before in front of the class, the teacher and some visiting members of the Board of Education. While the rest of the kindergarteners were still wrestling with “Jack and Jill” and “The Three Little Pigs,” Butty did an impeccable treatise on “How Homer’s Iliad was Instrumental in the Discovery of DNA.” When Layzee was notified by phone about Butty’s promotion, she didn’t totally understand—but she did get the idea that it was good.

Ruddy arrived home a little late with a sly smile on his mug. Layzee tried to explain about Butty, but didn’t do the story justice.

Layzee had another piece of news. She explained to Ruddy, as he was getting out of his greasy work clothes in the basement, that the Frostacellis had to go on a short business trip and asked Layzee and Ruddy to take care of the house and Dorian for a few days.

Ruddy was deep in “buy house” thought, and kind of missed the point. “Zip go bye Dollette after go Zip?”

Layzee laughed, “Let’s go eat.”

At dinner, Ruddy hugged Butty and ducked under a big platter of chicken wings to kiss the nursing Swetty on her chubby cheek. She didn’t notice, and neither did Layzee as she set the platter down on Ruddy’s head. They all got a kick out of the mishap. Two wings fell inside the back of Ruddy’s shirt, and they all laughed harder. They began to eat and Ruddy began to tell his exciting story, concluding with “Tomorrow move we house all inside ours, goats many too. Now our USA name is Whore. You Layzee Whore, him Butty Whore, she Swetty Whore, I Daddy Whore.”

Layzee liked the new name, “USA Whore now,” she chanted four times.

That night they packed up most of their belongings. Ruddy figured, “We move after work me.” Layzee would stay with Dorian until the Frostacellis returned.

After the rest of the family were asleep, Ruddy emptied his seabag on the living room floor. He took from the US pile. Ruddy had rudimentarily learned to count at work. He was still so excited about what had transpired that wonderful day that his hands trembled as he counted out 400 one thousand dollar bills. It took him three hours. He put the lump sum in another trusty brown-paper grocery bag. This one had paper handles and a big green logo: “Junkmusher Groceries, Real American Food for Everybody Dirt Cheap.”

Ruddy finally went to bed at 2:30 a.m. He was one happy Mr. Whore. However, he realized he hadn’t thought about his real driving force, Rock and Roll, in quite some time. “I must soon that to do.” Then he fell asleep with a smile and dreamed with sound only: “Ain’t that a shame....” The perfect end to a perfect day.

Ruddy was up extra early the next morning. He put on freshly laundered overalls and glowing-clean white socks and slipped into his Nike slaps. His khaki work shirt had military creases—Layzee’s touch. She learned it from Dollette who ironed Zip’s dress shirts when he was a drill instructor at the San Diego Recruit Training Center. Zip did a tour after Vietnam and went on to be the first one-armed drill instructor.

Ruddy kissed Layzee goodbye. “See you this night.” And he was off to do some “buy house” business with the Shoesingsmiths. He was on his way, way, way extra early. He wanted to get the house business over with and still have plenty of time to get to work. He was never late for work.

The front gate presented a problem. He pressed a red button on the gate post and held it a good 10 seconds. There was no answer except for a couple of protests from the goat herd: “Baaahhh aaah ah aaahp.” Ruddy sized up the gate; he could barely reach the top of the ornate iron bars topped with Roman spearheads. He tried the red button again. No answer. He decided to climb. Ruddy rolled the top of the money sack as tightly closed as he could and threw it over the gate. He jumped and grabbed a crossbar and pulled himself up to the pointy top of the gate. He then vaulted from the crossbar over the lethal Roman spears. Almost. The baggy seat of his overalls caught on one of the spearheads. Before the seat of his overalls could be ripped off, Ruddy slammed back into the gate like a charging dog reaching the end of his leash. Then he was propelled by backlash off the gate, minus the seat of his overalls. Ruddy landed feet first with his toes still gripping his Nike slaps on the beautiful custom hand-laid brick driveway. He’d made it.

But.

Ruddy panicked. The money sack was gone. He looked around him, then widened his scan. He started running immediately. Fifty yards to his left he saw the thief: a large white goat who started running away from Ruddy with the sack tightly clenched in her slobbery mouth. After some great broken field running by the goat, and an amazing pursuit by Ruddy who had to hurdle goats and run like a cheetah, Ruddy finally was able to execute a picture-perfect flying tackle on the thief. They wrestled on the ground, and other goats began to join the fray. It became a brawl. Ruddy had a choke hold, with one arm on the squirming, kicking animal, while he tried to work the sack loose from her slimy mouth with his free hand. In the middle of the chaos, he noticed a strange feeling on his butt. Somehow he was able to glance back. It was a goat licking his bare ass. Ruddy had lost more than the seat of his overalls on that gate top. It had also ripped his underpants off. Throwing goats over his head, to his right, and between his legs, elbowing, kicking and kneeing while being thrown around like he was riding a Brahma bull by the crook goat, Ruddy finally pried her stubborn mouth open and retrieved the money bag. It was juicy but still intact. Ruddy shooed the goats away, and tried to get himself together for his “Shoesingsmith buy house sell business.”

With his bare ass hanging out.

He rang their doorbell. It played a tune that made no sense to Ruddy: “Goodnight, Irene.”

Ruddy rang again. This time the doorbell played “The Chattanooga Choo Choo.” Alonzo opened the door a crack. He was in his pajama bottoms. His bare torso was not to be dwelled on. He gave a phlegmy “hullooo” and hacked up a big goober which he mouthed for a moment before shuffling to the porch railing and ejecting a sizeable, golden, gelatinous blob onto a grazing goat’s forehead.

Toe had now appeared wearing Alonzo’s pajama top—only. Ruddy was not stunned, but was a bit curious about her 86-year-old, bony bowlegs and her inch-thick yellow toenails.

Alonzo and Toe were also curious about Ruddy’s appearance. He was sweating profusely, his clothes were filthy, his hair was matted with something that looked like spit and he smelled like a goat. And he was carrying a large, soggy grocery bag. Ruddy was conscious of their looking him over. He made sure he kept his bare backside away from them.

Ruddy smiled at them pleasantly. “Come buy all thing. I have short only go work time.”

Alonzo moaned, “Ruddy, please. We’re very tired. It’s not even 5:30.”

Ruddy lifted up the nasty bag. “I money 400 with 1,000 by corners.”

Alonzo looked in the bag: “Oh, oh, oh, ooooh, oh, my goodness,” and fell backward into the porch swing.

“Alonzo, what—” Toe didn’t finish her exclamation when she looked in the bag. At first, she felt lightheaded. This gave way to ecstasy. She swirled around in the front yard in Alonzo’s pajama top, which floated and revealed far too much. Her yellow-tipped toes barely touched the moist green grass (abundantly graced with goat turds). The goats scattered. Toe sang out with joy, “Is it true? Oh God, don’t fuck with us!” (Alonzo wasn’t aware she knew that word.)

They talked with Ruddy and tried to explain that papers would need to be drawn up. A lawyer would have to get involved. Ruddy couldn’t comprehend. They kept talking, but got nowhere. Ruddy looked at his Timex: “Time short.” The Shoesingsmiths suddenly panicked. They thought of winter. It was months away, but it was definitely coming. They thought of Florida and a soggy sack full of thousand dollar bills.

Alonzo hesitantly suggested, “I could make a bill of sale.”

Toe urged him on. “Do it. Do it.”

Alonzo had a “but.” “But we’ll need two witnesses…at this hour?” Toe ran to get pen and paper. Alonzo perked up. He heard the roar of a truck and loud cursing and the exaggerated banging of metal garbage cans. “That’s the witnesses, that’s the witnesses. Hurry, Toe—the pen, the paper, and open that fucking gate.”

Toe yelled back, “What about the goats?”

Alonzo shouted, “Fuck the goats,” as he ran down to the gate to summon the witnesses. The roar of the big truck frightened the goats to the rear of the house. The stampede knocked Alonzo on his pajama-clad ass, but he bounced right back up like teenager—a man possessed.

In the meantime, Ruddy sat down on the porch swing to hide his exposed rear. He swayed gently, understanding not one thing that was going on.

The garbage men were gentlemen, and agreed to wait ten minutes for Alonzo to write the deal. They tried not to look at Toe.