SPUD SHELANSKI LIVES ON AT THE ALABASTER BAR & GRILL

Even I could hear Myrna Plumley screaming frantically as she hustled down the three flights of stairs inside the Alabaster from where I worked in the shoe store across the street. She burst onto Main Street wearing nothing but a threadbare nightie of indeterminate color, disrupting a perfectly humdrum summer’s day. Her yellowed frizzy hair was even more disheveled than normal, which, along with her spindly legs and decrepit body, was not a vision you wanted seared into your memory. In all fairness, the old dear was most likely preoccupied having just awakened to find her liver-spotted lothario next to her in bed dead. I’m no pathologist, but I think it’s safe to say that substantial amounts of beer, cigarettes and fatty foods might have contributed to his untimely demise, yet it would be poor Myrna’s fate to be forever identified as the old woman whose ardent appetite did in ol’ Spud Shelanski.

***

The Alabaster Bar & Grill is a seedy establishment on Main Street where the drunks spend their waking hours along with their government checks. The regulars refer to it as Al’s-a-bastard because Al, the proprietor, “don’t deal in no credit. Cash only up front.” You can eat there – a burger most days and sometimes a bowl of chili – but it’s not advisable. Al rents out the rooms above the bar to his regulars. Around noon, when he opens the bar, they begin to stumble down the side stairway, out onto the street, then into the bar. When Al closes around midnight, the process reverses. Towards the end of the month as their money runs out, tempers flare and voices rise. When fists begin to fly, Al kicks the offenders out. They traipse back up the stairway, grumbling the whole way. They sit in their windows watching life on the street below and continue to grumble as they wait for the beginning of the month when their checks will arrive and when all will be right with their world once again. Little disrupts the Alabaster’s biosphere for long.

Spud Shelanski was generally an easy-going drinker who caused no problems. However, when he’d set out on foot, with a bottle for company, to visit a certain lady friend on the other side of town, he’d invariably pass out along the way. The cops would find Spud and haul him off to County Hospital to dry out, and the next day Spud would wake up and invariably escape back to the bar. Before long the cops would pull up to the Alabaster and find ol’ Spud, still wearing his skimpy hospital gown, sitting at the bar drinking. They’d wrestle him into the patrol car, exposing the rest of us spectators to his big ol’ butt in the process, and return him to County. Al finally told Spud, “You got t’find your companionship closer t’home.” As though fate had taken pity upon Spud, the newly widowed Myrna Plumley began patronizing the bar about that same time.

The late Mr. Plumley’s pension, together with his Social Security check, supported Myrna’s two-packs-a-day habit, supplied her with beer and kept her clothed in the flamboyant Salvation Army fashions to which she had become accustomed. By Alabaster standards, the widow Plumley was a winner, so it wasn’t long before Spud sidled up to Myrna at the bar and staked his claim. They’d spend their evenings spending the late Mr. Plumley’s money, and when Al closed at midnight, Myrna would guide Spud up the stairs to his place on the fourth floor. For months everyone was happy: Myrna, Spud, Al and the cops.

***

The paramedics were the first to arrive that day and were readying the stretcher when the cops pulled up.

“Where’s the stiff?” a cop asked.

“Fourth floor,” a paramedic replied.

“Forget the stretcher; it won’t fit up the stairwell. Too narrow. We had an OD on the second floor and had to use a backboard.”

“Great. Ours split last month and we’re still waiting for a replacement.”

The only substitute they could think of was a door, and the only door that measured narrow enough to fit up the stairwell was the one on the Alabaster’s bathroom stall. With the metal door pried off its hinges, they wheezed single file up three flights of stairs to retrieve Spud Shelanski.

Spud, a squat man of chunky proportions, was sprawled buck-naked on a grimy mattress in his squalid little room. He most certainly was dead and getting deader by the minute. They rolled Spud up in a grubby bed sheet and then heaved him onto the door. With no straps, no rope and no belts long enough to secure Spud, they improvised the best they could by using a roll of duct tape Al had provided from the bar.

They stood at the top looking down the precipitous stairwell and assessed their predicament. Lugging Spud down would require four able-bodied men and plenty of elbowroom, none of which were available.

“No way.”

“Nope. No way we’re gonna make it down that stairway with him.”

“Whadda y’say we slide ol’ Spud down the stairs?”

“Y’know, that might work. The wood steps is worn smooth. The door is metal. He just might slide down.”

“I dunno, that duct tape could cause a problem.”

“Not with all that weight. Ol’ Spud should slip down those steps nicely,” and with that they launched Spud careening down the stairwell taped to the metal door, glancing off walls, banking off turns as though he were piloting the luge. It was only after Spud began his descent that it occurred to the men that the body might have a problem with the third floor landing. Ol’ Spud reached the landing long before they did and, in a feat only a gymnast could truly appreciate, he bounced, flipped and miraculously continued riding the door down the next flight of stairs. By the time he reached the second floor landing he had gained enough momentum that it posed no problem at all.

They knew Spud had reached his destination when Myrna, who was standing outside fully clothed in leopard print Lycra, began screaming hysterically as poor Spud Shelanski’s mummy-wrapped body lunged onto Main Street and flopped face down at her feet.

Al put on a damn fine wake for Spud and even offered one round of cut-rate beers. Myrna, now a legend, moved into Spud’s old room and continued her socializing at the bar. Given her qualifications, she had no problem finding company to pass the long evenings; however, she was never able to coax another man up those stairs again. Seein’ as how ol’ Spud ended up, no one seemed willing to take that risk.

© 2004, Kitty Myers
All Rights Reserved