The Last Straw

“Go on and take it…

Take a little piece of my heart”

Janis Joplin

“No one knows exactly what goes on in there, in the mind or body of someone else. Organs often take over for one another when one is a little weak and another is a little stronger. One might think one is experiencing a pain in the stomach when it is really the heart muscle rending under the powerful weight of defeat and disappointment. A tired body? A tired soul? Who knows?”

Herbert Roth

The Last Straw

This is the story of the last straw. The one that broke the camel’s back.

I was going to the Royal Castle with a pocket full of change. I had carefully counted it out and knew to the penny how much was there. Exactly enough for a breakfast special and a birch beer. It was early on Saturday morning and I had just collected my paper route. I had paid for my papers for the week. I had already put my savings away in my bedroom—snuck in quietly and put eight dollars into a cigar box under my bed and snuck back out to my bike. I had just enough left over for breakfast. I pedaled over to the Royal Castle.

A couple of blocks away, by the side of the canal Jake Eperson and his brother leaned on their Vespas. They knew it was collection day. Other days of the week they might just steal one of my bundles of papers or pick up my wire cutters while I wasn’t looking. But on collection day they were waiting for me and they were after money. I guess they figured I would have all my collections still in my pocket. I tried to ride right by them but it was no use. They jumped on the motor scooters and caught up to me in a few seconds. I jumped off my bike and put down the kickstand and just waited while they propped their machines up on the center stands. Jake with his sandy colored hair down over his eyes said nothing but reached out and grabbed me by the shirt. His brother got behind me and pushed his hands down into my front pant pocket. He came up with loose change some of which fell into the dirt where we stood. After checking all the other pockets he pushed me into Jake. Jake just shoved me to the ground.

“Fifty cents? That’s it? That’s all you got is fifty stinkin’ cents?” There was another few pennies and a nickel in the dirt. I knew it was fifty-nine cents exactly. That’s what breakfast would have cost. It was pointless trying to explain to them. “You must have collected over thirty dollars today. Where is it?” “None of your business!” I told him. “I already paid for my papers and that’s all I got left.” “No way,” said Eperson, “You gotta have seven or eight dollars left even after you paid for the papers. Where is it?” I just stood there silently, slightly off balance while Jake’s brother tugged on my shirt and pulled me from side to side.

“Next week we’re going to be here again. Next week you bring all your money. Got it?”

I nodded. Jake’s brother shoved me down into the dirt. He held fast to the collar of my shirt so that as I fell the buttons popped off the front. Laying there in the sand in the coral rock and the stickers I watched them swing their legs over their Vespas and jump on the kickstarters. Jake turned to me while he pushed the aqua green machine off the stand and with a smile he tossed the change straight at me. “Go get some breakfast” he said. As they disappeared I got up and searched through the weeds and dirt and found forty-nine cents. I brushed myself off and got on my bike. I struggled to get the big bike with the huge basket and canvas saddle bags out of the sand and back up onto the blacktop and finished the ride to the Royal Castle.

After parking the bike I went into the air conditioned restaurant and sat on one of the spinning stools at the white and silver counter. The cook was flipping minced onions on the grille next to dozens of small square burgers. The sizzling, steaming smoke was sucked up by the hood over the grille but lots of the smell still reached the spinning seat and me. The saliva was running and I licked my lips. I could taste the eggs and grits and bacon. The mugs for the birch beer were frozen with a crust of ice on them so that when he pulled the sweet root beer out of the tap into the glass it was like ice itself. I put my change on the counter.

“What’ll it be?” said the counter man, though he knew I came in every Saturday and ordered the same thing. “Breakfast. Over easy with grits and bacon. And a mug of birch beer, please.” Then I had to add “but I only got forty-nine cents. Could I owe you the dime?”

I could see his mind working like a mill stone. He absently wiped the same spot on the counter with his greasy white rag. Finally he said, “Naw. Can’t do that. Boss’d be really pissed if I started that kinda stuff.” He just stopped wiping and turned back to the grill. I just sat there no longer salivating. I was starting to shake like I had the chills. Uncontrollable shaking. The smell of the cooking meat became sickening to me. My stomach twisted like a knot. I jumped off of the stool and began for the door. Halfway there I turned and looked back at the cook. I’d worked delivering seventy papers starting at three a.m. and then collected the week’s money at seventy houses. I was hungry. I’d been beaten and robbed and threatened. All this and standing there in the Royal Castle the only thing I could think about was the dime—one stinking dime—that this guy wouldn’t trust me for. I started back towards the counter but before I got there I was seized by a gut-wrenching urge to scream—but it didn’t come out as a scream. It came out as vomit. Empty stomach vomit. The kind that is sour and liquid with nothing much in it but stomach juices. It formed a little puddle on the floor while the last few drops trickled out of my mouth on little spindly strings of saliva. My stomach was cramped. My skin was clammy and cold.

“Hey!” the guy behind the counter was yelling at me. The other people in the place looked at me with hate in their eyes. I just turned and walked out the door to my bike.

I pushed it off the sidewalk onto the black parking lot, jumped on and rode away.