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Funny Stories by Dick Oakes, Jr.

July 29, 2015 Leave a comment Go to comments
Dick Oakes, Jr.

Dick Oakes, Jr.

I peeled off the bandages that were covering my shins. Dr. Yothers poked at the sores with a tongue depressor.

“Years of hard living, Dick. There ain’t nothing I can do for you.”

I looked at him.

“You don’t have any creams, any kind of salves?” I glanced around the shabby paneled office for a diploma on the wall. There wasn’t none.

He laughed.

“They don’t have anything like that, Dick.” He opened and closed the top drawer of his desk suddenly, senselessly.

I was pretty sure they had all kinds of creams but I didn’t press it none. Still, I couldn’t figure on any of it.

We sat there for awhile. The doc was staring off mindlessly into space.

“Could be the ocean,” he said out of nowhere. “I wonder if the ocean could be good for you, all that cool, fresh water.”

“Salt water?”

“Yes, yes, of course. It also might be good to get a little…” He was trying to get something out but it wasn’t coming. I figured on helping him along.

“A little sun, doc?”

He smiled contemptuously. “You could call it that, yes.” He commenced writing something down in a worn and dog-eared notebook.

“Pete’s Cabins out in the International Island Chain.” He handed me the paper. You couldn’t read a word of it– it didn’t even appear to have been written in any language I had ever heard of. “I know Pat. He keeps a respectable little lot of cabins for a certain…class of people.” He looked hard at me.

I decided to get the hell out of there before he had the chance to figure out some kind of bill.

Couple of days later, I took the ferry over to the International Island Chain. I asked a guy about Pete or Pat’s Cabins.

“That’s on island number three,” he said. He was a short little brick shithouse of a guy, shaped like one of those heavy urn planters. His face was bloated and ugly as sin. “Pat’s has got all those wild oversized ponies that hang around.”

“So?” I didn’t know what else the hell to say.

“I was just presentin’ some items of interest.” He seemed genuinely hurt. “You didn’t have to get all testy about it. I was gonna’ go ahead and mention some of the local types of trees and the general topography but you can forget about it now.” He moved to another seat.another-view-outside

By the time we arrived at island number three, I was blind drunk. I didn’t see nothing in the fact that I was the only one left on the ferry, the only one that got off at the makeshift pier or the presence of about five oversized ponies at the end of it. I didn’t see nothing in the empty, bereft streets, covered with driftwood and moss or the half-open deadbeat places that dotted the main street or the toppled gravestones in the overgrown cemetery. And then I don’t remember nothing.

When I came to, I was in a tight windowless room constructed of red cedar. There was a thin mattress on the floor but I had passed out on a splintery cafe chair. I swung open the double doors and stepped out into a pebbly yard surrounded by common house sheds. Cars were parked haphazardly all over the place.

I made my way to the office. Pat or Pete was in there, eating a sloppy sandwich and watching some hazy program from the East on a battered portable television.

“I’m Oakes. I thought these were cabins. They’re just sheds.”

“They’re chalets,” he corrected.

“They got no windows,” I said. “It’s a hundred degrees out.” I couldn’t figure on any of it. A pony wandered up to the door. “Sssshh,” Pat or Pete warned. There was a moment of high tension. Then, the pony sidled off.

“Jesus Q. Christ,” he said, visibly relieved. He immediately took three fast bites of the sandwich.

“How much did I pay to stay in a god damn shed?”

“Forty dollars, Lankville. They’re chalets.”

I opened my wallet. There was ten bucks left.

“Well, what the hell, where’s the beach?.”

“Fifty miles east,” Pat or Pete noted, pointing aimlessly towards the ceiling. “Just follow the beach road. You got a car?”

“Nope.”

“Forget it then. You have to go through fast. A hundred miles an hour at least.”

He took another bite of the sandwich. A pony, a different pony looked in the door.

“Oh Good Lord Jesus,” Pat or Pete whispered. It was barely audible. Part of the sandwich dropped on the counter.

I went back to the shed.

The sores got worse.

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