The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

“Here we go again!” Jihad Jack shouted at the big screen over the bar at the Pilot Lounge the other night, Ladies Night as it were, a new gimmick by John the new owner to attract more business — or maybe to dilute the testosterone of the usual rowdy crowd. Near as I could see, it wasn’t working, not a lady in sight, just a table of the South End Slammers, our women’s roller derby queens and if anyone called them ladies, god help them. They wee mean mamas, leave it at that.

Jack was on his hind legs at the bar, beer glass clenched in a meaty fist, obviously more angry than usual. “Now it’s a new epidemic. Mpox my monkey ass! It never ends! Covid, measles, AIDS, bird flu, what’s the new one, the fever?” Brenda at the Slammer table said, “Dengue. Dengue Fever. Makes your bones feel like they’re breaking.” She seemed to know this, maybe from the rinks, what that would feel like I was betting. Couple of body blows at the cantilevered turns, she probably knew firsthand.

Jack turned his attention from the TV news report and considered her and her information. “All I know,” he said, maybe to Brenda, maybe to the rest of us swillers, “the government wants you to put on masks again, get more of those weird vaccines, make us damn slaves.” No news to us regulars — we’d had more than a few earfuls of Jihad’s Covid conspiracy theories.

But Brenda apparently hadn’t. “You think this stuff is all made up, fella?” she asked with a slight smirk on her face. “Yer damned right they make it up. All just a master plan to scare the stupid sheep into doing whatever they’re told.”

Brenda took a long slow swig of her beer, burped loudly and said, “That’s the most ignorant BS I’ve seen all week. And I work cleaning stables at the equestrian place north of Stanwood. Bullshit, horse pucks, all the same.”

Jihad could hardly believe his ears. “If you weren’t a woman …” he started. But Brenda was out of her chair and up in his face before he could finish the sentence. Jack’s a big blowhard but he’s not a big man. Brenda had him by four inches and twenty pounds. Every breath in that bar was on hold for the thirty seconds it took Jack to see there was no winning hand here.

“Just stating an opinion,” he finally squeaked out. “Free country, ya know.”

Brenda just grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Yes it is,” she said, “but sometimes it pays to keep those to yourself. If you don’t mind ….” Jack said he didn’t. Brenda said thank you … and that, I suspect, was the last Ladies Night we’ll see at the Pilot House Lounge. Probably a government plot, but for what nefarious purpose, who knows? Other than Jack, certainly none of the rest of us boyz.

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Fat Phil spent most of his days down at the O-Zi-Ya Auto Body Shop where all the layabouts mostly got in the way of Bondo Billy’s crew who were required to wear plague masks even though the visitors never did. Phil and the other malingerers thought this pandemic stuff was a crock and a hoax. Well, at least until Wally came down with the Covid, exposing at the Flathead Car Club who frequented Bondo Billy’s to a potential death sentence. Wally ended up in the ICU for a week on a respirator where no visitors were allowed, mask or no mask, and the boys were banned from Billy’s until their quarantines were ended, two weeks, Billy declared when they complained.
Wally recovered. Sort of. Scarred lungs, the docs said, but lucky to be alive considering his underlying conditions, meaning his obesity, his ravaged liver and his years of three pack a day smoking. If you think the boys started wearing masks, you’ve been smoking more than tobacco. Naw, they let the mizzus haul to the store for beer and food when masks were finally required.

Fat Phil visited Wally when he got released from a week’s rehab at the Mabana Sunset Home and found him propped up on pillows in his trailer’s livingroom, watching daytime TV, Fox News it looked like. ‘How ya doin’, Walter?’ he asked. Wally had lost 20 pounds it looked like and his eyes were sunk back in their sockets, making Phil fidgety and already regretting coming over, but then, after all, what are friends for?

“Not real good, Phil, not good at all, you want to know the truth. Grab yourself a beer,’ he gestured feebly toward the fridge.

“You want one, Walter?’ but Wally shook his head no. ‘Doc says lay off the sauce.’ Later Phil would tell the boys down at the Pilot Lounge Wally looked like death warmed over twice. ‘Underlying conditions,’ Little Jimmy said, sipping his drink. Underlying conditions, they all agreed. Thank god, each man jack of them thought to themselves, I don’t have those. ‘Drink up, men,’ Phil cried, ‘the next round’s on me.’

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