What-the-Fuckville

"You don't make money sitting on your ass in an office."

"Who's sitting on their on ass, Alvy? You hired me to be your in-house sales rep. I'm supposed to be here."

"You're supposed to write business, boychik. So if the numbers are down, you hit the road to What-the-Fuckville."

What-the-Fuckville - not just 123 Main Street, Anyplace, Canada, but a state of mind. A time to get existential. So Harry packed his bag of samples, his Bob Dylan collection, a copy of On the Road that he'd "been meaning to read for a while now," his Feldman script and hit the road to What-the-Fuckville.

And be Bob Dylan:

Early one mornin' the snow was blowin'
I was layin' in bed
Wondrin' if it really happened
Whether it was all in my head
The ruse was stupid I knew it was
It didn't make no sense
A tale of lies, a plan of fools
Too late to repent
And I'm still sellin' strips of leather
Snow fallin' on my boots
Heading out to east Ontario
Dreamin' of the girl I never knew
Tangled up in two.

She was checkin' coats when we first met
I played a fool Don Juan
Lightening strikes but once my friend
And burns what it hits upon
Drove that day as far as I could
Till I ran out of gas
Called her up from a Husky station
Sadly all things come to pass
Before she banged down the phone
Thought I heard her say to me,
"we'll meet again someday when
you are true,"
Tangled up in two.

Life on road; the two-bit towns where there's no one to impress, where there's only Joes and Marys, where they eat mean sandwiches with two slices of luncheon meat-something, not more, on buttered white bread and wash it down with tubs of Pepsi. Where the branded fast food joints serve up the best meal in town, the safest one for sure. Where downtown is the gas station slash convenience store that carries a better selection of beef jerky than fruits and vegetables. Where there's always a village idiot out there counting cars with a clicker. A town where there's some poor slob with toffee-colored teeth who won a big lottery, but five years later ended broke and dead, and not necessarily in that order.

Stuck in third world town in a first world country, sitting alone in a tired booth in a drab diner where the radio is droning sorry-ass Stompin' Tom Connors songs. Where the broken-down hoser nursing a lukewarm coffee is reading the back of the ketchup label because there's nothing better to read, and if there was, he wouldn't get it. A diner in a town where it's okay to smoke, where the grey-skinned waitress who's worked there twenty-seven years and counting looks like she could drop dead at any minute, and will actually get a stroke and collapse on the floor next Wednesday on Meatloaf Special night while the Leafs are getting their sorry asses kicked on Hockey Night In Canada. A town, a cluster of washed-out people existing. Welcome to What-the-Fuckville. Exactly where Harry wanted to be.

"A pack of green Export A's," Harry said to the middle eastern-looking guy with the oblong forehead standing behind the counter at Samy's Diner. He had to be that Samy with the one 'M,' Harry figured. Another souk merchant who fled Medievaland with fifty bucks in cigar tube stuck up his ass. Another refugee with a horror story resilient enough to eat shit for a few years and then find a way to buy the Main Street diner. Happy to harvest pocket change from the local yokels.

"Three forty-five," Samy said, the R's rolling off the tip of his tongue like verbal marbles.

"Of course," Harry loved those rolling R's and hoped for more, "you could buy a carton for twenty four dollars." More rolling R's, Harry could listen to those sounds all night.

"I'll take one," not that Harry really smoked, but it seemed right, there in What-the-Fuckville, Ontario.

"And what about a gun, my friend? I've got a 22 caliber for a hundred and twenty five dollars."

"What do I look like? A bank-robber?"

"Sorry, my friend, " which is what souk merchant guys say a lot where selling is synonymous with befriending, "owning a gun around here is quite common."

And terrifying and thrilling. It was inconceivable for Harry that he'd ever own a gun. Then again, his father had a Daisy BB rifle which he used to shoot the pigeons roosting on their roof at home. That was pretty fucked up too, even more so because he kept it under his bed and let Harry and his friends take shots. After a hit, Martha, their yellow lab retrieve the carcasses from the garden amid the pansies and petunias. So this being What-the-Fuckville, Harry said, "What the fuck, let's take a look."

"Follow me, my friend," Samy said while leading Harry into the back-store. Samy pulled a carton of cigarettes off the shelf and the gun from a drawer. He passed it to Harry, "don't worry, it's not loaded."

Harry still worried that it would go off as he held it in his trembling hand. A real weapon in the hand of a flunker was dangerous any way you sliced it. A gun killed Kenny Frick, the flunker who got caught breaking and entering into Principal Resnick's house after taking a dump on the desk in the study. The article in the Gazette flashed through Harry's head, he could practically read it:

Bread-knife Burglar Shot Dead


    A defiant burglar, armed with a knife was fatally shot yesterday after taunting a city policeman to “shoot me if you can.” He is believed to be responsible for a string of burglaries in St. Claire.
       Kenneth Frick, 21, was an ex-convict who was released from prison on parole Nov.2 after serving two years for armed robbery. He died in the Mount Sinai of a bullet wound in the left side.
            Two Montreal Urban Community (MUC) policemen fired a total of four shots at the burglar as he fled after jumping to the ground from a rear window of a house at 5428 Mackenzie Avenue in St. Antoine shortly after midnight.
     Constable Luc Marois said that Frick “was armed with a bread knife that his mother had recently given him as a gift, when he jumped from the window and ignored a police order to stop.”
    Marois said a policeman outside the house, standing near the window, saw that the burglar “had a shiny object in his hand” when he emerged “and thought it was a gun.”
    The officer shouted: “Police. Stop or I’ll shoot,” Marois said.
    The man ignored his order to stop and shouted back “shoot me if you can” as he fled.
    “The officer fired once as the man ran off,” Marois said.
    As the shot was fired, the policeman’s partner, who had entered the house, appeared at the window.
    “He saw the man running away and fired one shot in his direction from the window,” said Marois.
     “The officer outside thought the fleeing man had fired at him, so he fired two more shots in the man’s direction.”
    An autopsy indicated that Frick had died of a single bullet wound in the left side.
    After the incident, police found a plastic bag containing stolen jewelry, a diploma, and a bread knife, in the yard behind the house. A human feces, alleged to be Frick's, was also found on a desk in the study of the house.
    Frick wasn’t carrying any identification papers, but was subsequently identified by the owner of the house, Saul Resnick, Frick’s former elementary school principal.
    An investigation of the fatal shooting is being conducted by the MUC police homicide squad, Marois said.
    When the homicide investigation is completed a report will be submitted to Montreal’s chief coroner, Guy Cauchon, who is expected to hold an inquest.

Guns 'n Flunkers, not a great match.

"I'll take it, but no ammo." And then he thought some more. "Then again."

You don't come home from What-the-Fuckville empty-handed.