Copyright © Jeff Hampton 2016
GRANDPA JACK
New Year's Eve
The following is an excerpt from Grandpa Jack by Jeff Hampton.
New Year’s Eve, 1999, was just another Friday night at the barbershop. While fifty thousand people jammed into downtown Dallas to welcome the new millennium, and the rest of the city partied in hotel ballrooms, celebrated quietly at home, prayed at church, or hid in their back rooms awaiting an undefined cataclysm, five men in East Dallas cared about nothing more than who would win the next hand.
Oblivious to the hype surrounding the change of the calendar, or even the fact that it was Jack Dodger’s seventieth birthday, Franky, Woody, Paul, Jack, and Judson, another neighborhood old-timer, sat around a table in the back corner of the barbershop. Blackie, who had been raised among the barber chairs, was stretched out in the jumble of legs and feet beneath the table, snoring loudly yet peacefully. The venetian blinds were pulled down and drawn shut in front of the plate glass window and door, and the front lights were out, giving the shop a look of complete desertion from the street.
Illuminated by the three coned fixtures from a beat-up pole lamp, Franky dealt cards around the table while the others moaned and groaned as they picked up the cards that slid in front of them.
“Come on now, Franky, is this the best you can do tonight?” said Woody in mock disgust.
“Yeah, Franky,” echoed Paul. “After all, the world may end in another fifteen minutes. Can’t you deal me a winning hand tonight? Just one? So I can leave this life with a smile on my face?”
Judson was silent as always, while Jack just sighed. He knew from past Friday nights that those griping the loudest were the ones to be wary of when it came time to bet. Judson was always a wild card and had the best poker face in the room, and Franky was just plain wild.
“Okay, boys, let’s see who has what,” declared Franky, who reached into his pile of chips and tossed five into the middle of the table. Jack, Paul, and Judson followed his lead, while Woody bailed out.
Jack held up two fingers indicating he needed two fresh cards. Franky stood firm, while Paul asked for two, and Judson for three. Franky obliged them, and then a moan drifted around the table again as they eyed their updated hands.
“I’m out,” said Jack, tossing his cards back toward Franky.
“Me too,” said Paul.
That left just Franky and Judson. Franky tossed in a couple more chips, Judson called him, and Franky crowed as he displayed three tens and a pair of queens.
“Pshaw,” scoffed Judson, and slid his cards across the table so they’d get mixed with the others without being viewed. “What’s the point? What’s the point?”
“The point, my friend, is winning.” Franky laughed, dragging the chips from the middle of the table and stacking them neatly to his side.
The others resumed their gripe fest about Franky’s dealing as he gathered up the cards. But it was really all in fun, as the stakes were low: the winner at the end of the night got a free lunch paid by the losers the following Wednesday.
Franky gathered the cards and began shuffling them when Blackie suddenly awakened and growled. Nobody noticed, except for Jack, whose feet had been cradling Blackie’s head.
“Must be a rat or a raccoon out in the alley,” he said to the others, who nodded but were paying more attention to Franky, making sure he shuffled well before dealing the next hand.
“The only rat I see is dealing the cards,” said Paul.
Franky’s honesty became a moot point when Blackie suddenly jumped up, tilting the table and causing Franky to sputter cards all over the place.
“What’s the matter girl?” asked Jack, as Blackie’s large bulk emerged from under the table. Jack’s question was answered by the sound of breaking glass in the back storeroom, which had a door and a window to the back alley. The breaking glass was followed by the sound of heavy thuds and low shuffling.
“Somebody’s breaking in,” Jack whispered, by this time getting everyone’s attention and making a gesture indicating that all should be quiet. “Let’s all move to the corner,” he said. As Blackie’s growls became edgier, Jack pulled Woody and Paul by the shirtsleeves toward him and away from the door. Judson followed, but not Franky. He was emotional and impulsive and did not have a full sense of the danger that might be upon him.
Just then, the door from the storeroom swung open and a man in his midtwenties came through. Franky, who at sixty-nine was still as stout and strong as he had been thirty years earlier, lunged forward and picked up the man in a massive bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides and constricting his chest and the blood flow to his head. Not knowing that the intruder had passed out almost immediately, Franky spun him around in circles, which caused the man’s legs to extend outward. As Franky made wild, awkward circles around the room, the man’s feet hit one barber chair after another, sending each one spinning.
And then his feet hit everything else in the shop—shelves of hair tonic, vats of blue Barbecide, trays of combs and brushes, boxes of tissue. All the while, Blackie barked and nipped at the man’s heels each time they passed overhead. Above the din, shockwaves from the fireworks show downtown rumbled up the street to the shop and rattled the metal blinds.
Just when it seemed like Franky might spin the man till dawn, he slipped on a puddle of Barbecide and stumbled, causing his victim to kick a big bottle of talcum powder off a shelf. The bottle hit the ceiling, the top popped off, and white powder snowed down on the entire scene. Blackie yelped, and Franky, blinded by the talc, let go of his prey, who fell unconscious at his feet.
“That’ll show him.” Franky gasped and bent over to catch his breath, clear his eyes and get a good look at the man. The others remained huddled in the corner, with only Jack stepping forward to give Franky a hand.
“Well done,” he whispered, putting a hand on Franky’s shoulder, “but I don’t think—”
Before Jack could finish his sentence, a second man burst into the room, this one no older than the first but armed with a small caliber handgun, which he pointed directly at Jack and Franky.
“Don’t move,” he shouted, with more panic than authority in his voice. The room became silent for a moment, and even Blackie quit barking. Then, the silence was broken by a talc-induced cough coming from one of the men huddled in the corner, which excited the intruder all over again.
“All of you, all of you, get on the floor now!” The five men followed his orders as quickly as their old knees would allow. Blackie sat too at Jack’s command. “Okay, who’s got the money? Where’s the cash register? Now—where is it?”
Jack raised his hand and pointed to the cash register on the counter near the door. It was old and solid and was one of the few things in the shop that had survived Franky’s heroics. Jack made a key-turning gesture, indicating that he could open it.
“Good.” The man motioned for Jack to get up and go to the cash register.
Jack fumbled in his pocket for the key as he maneuvered through the scattered debris. He opened the cash drawer, and then stepped back.
“We really don’t have much here,” Jack said in a calm, apologetic voice. “We went to the bank this afternoon before we closed for the holiday.”
“Shut up.” The man pocketed what little there was, eyed the card table with the chips scattered on it, and went over to look for more cash.
“Sorry, but we don’t play for money,” said Jack. The man leaned over to verify that point, when Franky, covered in white talc from the shoulders up, got the urge to make another move. But he was stopped in his tracks as the man whipped up his gun and pointed it directly at Franky’s gut.
“Okay, we don’t want to get in your way.” Jack slid between the man and Franky and backed Franky into the corner with the others. “We don’t want any trouble. We’ll just wait here, and you can be on your way.”
Still pointing his gun, the man froze for a moment. He looked at his accomplice passed out on the floor and then at Jack. He pulled Jack by the arm and drew him to his side. “I need you to come with me, old man.”
“Sure, whatever you say. You fellows don’t wait up for me,” Jack said to his friends, who stared back in shock. He gave Franky a wink and then walked out the back door with the gun-wielding intruder following him closely. The others heard a vehicle start up—they recognized it as Jack’s Ford pickup—and roll away slowly down the gravel alley.
With the gunman gone, the others moved out of the corner.
“If that don’t beat heck,” said Woody, scratching his head. “Been here forty-five years and never been robbed. Must be that millennium bug or whatever nonsense. All the crazies are out tonight.”
“So, Franky, what’a you suppose we oughta do with this one?” Paul asked, standing over the other intruder who was still in a lump on the floor.
“I’ll tie him up while you get on the phone to the police. Gotta tell ’em Jack is missing.”
Franky looked around for something to tie up the man and finally settled on an electric trimmer with a twelve-foot cord. He used the trimmer to make a knot around the man’s neck and then used the remainder of the cord to bind up his wrists and ankles. “That oughta hold him for now.”
“Wait a minute, wait just a doggone minute.” Woody’s face was red. “This feller wrecked our evening, wrecked our store. Heck, he even made us miss the fireworks. I’m gonna give him something to think about.” With that, he plugged in another trimmer, and lifting the man’s chin, he cut a big wide furrow down the middle of his head. “A little reminder of your visit to the barbershop.”
It was two in the morning before the police had taken a statement from everyone, cuffed, and removed the abandoned intruder, dusted the back door and cash register for fingerprints from the other man, and checked the alley for evidence.
“Why don’t you fellows go on home and get some rest?” said the investigating officer. “We’ve alerted other departments and the highway patrol about Mr. Dodger, and we’ll call you as soon as we know something.”
At four thirty, Jack Dodger’s dark blue pick-up rolled up to the curb in front of police headquarters downtown. He was driving. His assailant sat in the passenger seat.
Jack climbed out first and walked around and opened the door for the other man, who climbed out slowly and somewhat cautiously compared to his earlier bravado.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked Jack, a puzzling question coming from someone who had been in control earlier.
“You’re just gonna have to trust me,” said Jack, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder and turning him toward the door. “It’s not gonna be easy, but you’re doing the right thing.”
They walked side-by-side up the dozen steps and through the front door, where Jack introduced himself to the desk sergeant. “I believe you may have been looking for us. My name is Jack Dodger, and this young man here has decided he would like to clear up some business with you.”
The man was escorted down a hallway for questioning. Jack was led down another hallway to an office, where he was given a cup of coffee, asked if he needed to see a doctor—he assured them he did not—and then was asked to give a statement detailing the previous four and a half hours.
That business was wrapped up by five thirty, and before heading home, Jack called Franky and then his daughter, Caroline. After Jack calmed Caroline’s fears, and after she offered him a “Happy Birthday” and a kiss over the phone lines, he drove home to East Dallas.
The first day of the new millennium dawned as Jack pulled into his driveway. He stopped on the sidewalk, picked up the newspaper, and carried it inside where he was met by an excited Blackie. Again, Franky had taken care of everything, this time making sure Blackie got home. Jack was glad to see her, although he laughed when he noticed she still had a light dusting of talc on her short, black coat.
“Hey, good girl, did ya miss me?” He bent down to pet her as he carried the paper to the kitchen table. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna lay down for a few minutes. We’ll take a walk later.”
Jack plopped on the couch with a sigh, pulled his shoes off and then pulled his feet up and stretched out. Blackie sat on the floor next to him, blowing her warm breath on his face as he drifted off.
