Road Act

flash fiction, read aloud

Photo by Ahmad Adi Prasetyo on Unsplash

My brother, Danny, and I used to have an act. A road act, with bits and jokes and Danny played banjo and I played harmonica. We were bringing back vaudeville. We took Amtrak or drove—never flew. Danny hated airports. He hated waiting. I hated them too, but for different reasons. We played the clubs and rooms and VFW halls of all the littler cities—Dubuque, Flagstaff, Youngstown. But we wrote the jokes and the songs, and we got the laughs and, most of the time, we got paid.

Once, in Peoria, they were awfully rough on us. In this little theater with velvet covered walls, off the lobby of the Prince Edward, a hotel that isn’t there anymore. We were in the middle of our Swanee River routine.

“What a pair of peckerheads,” this goon in the front row suddenly said. He was talking to the gal next to him, but he was looking up at us. Big, dark eyes. He had his arm around her and she was squirming. “A real pair of peckerheaded grifters. Ain’t they, doll? Ain’t they?”

Danny, well. Let’s just say there was a dustup, a real donnybrook. The folks got their money’s worth, though, I’ll say that. What a helluva show. But we all wound up in a big Black Maria and they took us straight to the can. The next morning, they set Danny and me on the sidewalk. Officer O’Malley escorted us out.

“What about our things?” Our props, costumes. Danny’s banjo and my harmonica. All of it was back at the damn Prince Edward.

O’Malley said, “Forget about them things. Them things is mine now, if they’re anybody’s. Just get out of Peoria and don’t ever come back.”

We were still in our costumes. Danny had managed to hang onto his boater hat. Mine was, well. For all I know the peckerhead back at the old Prince Edward found it on the floor and gave it to his girlfriend.

“Let’s find some breakfast,” Danny said.

“You heard the bull, that O’Malley.” I looked over my shoulder. We were walking away, but he was watching us go.

“How’s your eye?” he said.

“Black.”

“Black,” he said, “That’s funny.”

“What about your beak?”

“Broke,” he said.

“Broke,” I said, “That’s funny too.”

Around the corner, we found The Colonel, a diner named after the owner’s father’s job in the Army. It was on the menu, a little origin story before the food. I guess he gave them plenty of hell in Vietnam. We sat in a booth in a corner in the back.

“Ain’t we friends with them now?” Danny said.

“Who?” I said.

“Vietnam.”

“We’re friends, sure. Now. Diplomacy and all.”

“Moolah.”

“Money?”

“It has plenty to do with it, I’m sure.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how, baby brother. But I’m sure.”

The waitress came over. “Jesus Christ, what happened to you all?”

“A fracas, a ruckus,” Danny said, “A melee, a fray.”

“What are you guys supposed to be?” she said. She put all her weight on one leg.

“We’re your entertainment,” Danny said, “The musical number, the old-time thespian act, the fellas with the jokes, see? The mummers, the clowns, the troubadours.” Then he started to sing a little jingle we wrote in our mother’s basement, a long, long time ago. We hadn’t used it in the act for years.

“Doo-wocka-doo, we’ll make you smile, if you let us.

Oh, doo-wocka-doo, deary mine.

Doo-wocka-doo say you’ll sit down and let us, try our best-us

To show you the rest-us ain’t nothing but a waste of your t-i-i-i-i-i-i-me.”

He sang it in the pinched-nose warble he’d mastered and, even though it had been forever, it still sounded perfect to me.

“What the actual fuck?” the waitress said, but she was smiling.

“We’re brothers,” I said, “and we have an act.”

“And I’ll have the Denver omelet,” Danny said, and smacked the table.

She smiled, smiled bigger. A grin, even. She wrote it down on her pad.

“The same for me, by the by,” I said, “And coffee. Plenty of coffee.”

She wrote that down too, still smiling, and took out her phone and typed out a text to somebody, some love, maybe. Then she went back to the kitchen, or wherever she went, smiling still, to tell whoever it was what exactly it was that we wanted.