Piper Down
an excerpt

The soft tones of the bagpipe could be heard on the TV behind the voice of the way too perky morning show reporter as she babbled on about what was going on this weekend in Houston Texas. Try as he might, SalPogue couldn't make out what was being played and that annoyed him. It didn't sound like anything he recognized at all. It didn't even sound like him.

Why the hell had he woken up so damn early this morning and driven to the Police Memorial on Memorial Drive, through rush hour traffic for this he wondered. They obviously didn't use any of the songs they asked him to play. It didn't even sound like warming up. What the hell was it that they were playing?

The camera panned from the blond up to Sal standing at the top of a the memorial, in his full kit; the feather bonnet, the plaid, the kilt and all. He leaned forward and stared at his crummy old TV, pausing the tape and rewinding it a few times.

"Fuck." Sal said.

Robbie looked up at the TV from the joint she was rolling, "What?"

"Fucking TV news man." Sal pressed rewind again and leaned back on the rickety futon. "That's not even me."

"Yeah it is. Look at you there's your beard."

"No. I mean that isn't me playing."

Sal watched as Robbie fished out her lighter and flicked it a few times before getting a flame. She cupped her hand around the joint and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs.

She turned to Sal, passing him the joint with a look, wanting him to continue.

"My pipes don't sound like that." Sal waved the remote accusingly in the direction of the TV, "Those fucking TV people used a fucking recording."

He took the joint from Robbie and kicked his feet up on the table, bringing the joint to his lips and sucking in the smoke in short little bursts watching the ember glow brighter and brighter.

The reporter started up again with her weekend news, the biker rally in Galveston, the balloon festival near NASA and something about a local movie star. Sal watched her closely, studying her face. Her eyebrows moved like a the little white bouncing ball they used to teach you songs as she read her lines. He'd heard this now ten times since Robbie had come over with the weed and the tape and in his head Sal spoke the lines with her waiting for the camera to pan back on him.

It had been a fine morning for the shot. The warm air of the night had bought in a fog and the scene of the Police Memorial on the rolling hills of freshly cut green grass almost looked like Scotland. Almost, if you squinted your eyes and didn't pay attention to the Houston skyline behind him. Sal stood at a three quarter profile to the camera stoically playing his pipes in his full traditional highland piper uniform. The sun was on the other side of the sky scrapers and its light beamed through the gaps cutting through the fog in great beams of gold. The morning weather forecast came up on the screen while the camera slowly zoomed in on Sal.

Sal blew the smoke out of his lungs and felt a wave of relaxation wash over him. Robbie had a knack for finding good shit and this was good shit. A faintpiney smell with a crisp fresh taste.

He re-winded and pressed play again and noted this time, on the eleventh time watching it, that he'd been playing the middle part of his traditional lament pibroch, something for a funeral which he felt would beappropriate for the Police Memorial. What he was hearing behind the voice of the reporter wasn't that at all. It wasn't even something played on a Scottishsmallpipe . It sounded Irish. The producer from the TV station had asked Sal to play "Amazing Grace" and "Going Home" while the reporter was getting ready, but Sal had felt that something more traditional would be better. Now he was watching himself on the TV and hearing someone else.

Sal took another hit off the joint and didn't care about the TV anymore.

"Fuck it." Sal spat out while trying to hold his breath. He rolled over on his side and handed the joint back to Robbie.

"You look good Sal." said Robbie.

"Thanks."

He had to admit that he did look good. It wasn't hard when he was dressed up in the full kit to look good. The red and black of his uniformcontrasted with the blues, oranges and greens of the morning shot. His tall frame looked statuesque from the angle the producer had chosen. His reddish-blond beard framed his face under the black feathers of his hat and with each deep breath his face would flush with color and then redden as he kept the bag filled with air. Under the checkered rim of the bonnet you could see a few stray commas of hair pressed down against his forehead. The three pipes spaying out from the bag made the shape of him all the more interesting.

"A man always looks good in a kilt." Robbie said staring at Sal on the TV.

"It's a chick magnet."

"I'm sure."

"Seriously, if you knew the number of times women ask to see what's under my kilt your jaw would drop." Sal smiled to himself at the thought. "At funerals too. The come up to me after their dear friend or what not has been interned to the earth and ask for a look."

Robbie snorted back a laugh trying not to exhale, "At a funeral?"

"Yeah. Where else?"

"I don't know," Robbie exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke. "I thought maybe in the grocery store or something."

"Nope. In the grocery store I get stared at, and followed by kids."

"Like the Pied Piper." She laughed.

"Funerals, weddings and after parades, especially after parades." Sal winked at Robbie and took a hit off the joint. He rocked forward on the futon and sat up to stretch his back out, blowing a stream of blue smoke up toward the ceiling fan. "That St. Patrick's Day parade up on 1960 is always pretty wild. Women love the kilt."

"Uh huh. And do you show them?"

"Depends on if my underware is clean." He eyed the joint turning it slowly between his fingers, "Or if I'm wearing any."

They both burst out laughing.

Sal had known Robbie for five years and he considered her one of his closest friends. They met through a mutual friend who thought they'd make a cute couple; the tall bag piper and the short Chinese-American girl. Romantically nothing lasting developed, but they both discovered a kindred spirit in each other and became fast friends. The two of them spent their free days, which where more often free than not, together hanging out at coffee shops or bars and getting high.

"So, mister early riser, what's the game plan for the day?" Robbie carefully stubbed the joint in the clay ashtray that she'd painted one afternoon at the Mad Potter. She and Sal had gone more because of the name than any serious desire to make a nice piece of ceramics. Typical of their friendship, doing whatever struck them as a good idea.

"I don't know. I've got nothing going on this weekend until a funeral out in Atascosita on Sunday."

"Anyone I know?" Robbie's standard question.

"No. Some businessman who got shot."

"Ooooh, A murder? Cool."

"Cool?"

"Yeah, sure. Beats dying of cancer or something doesn't it Pipes?" Robbie grinned, "Don't you think?"

"I don't know. I think I'd rather go peacefully. This guy got shot when he showed up to work one morning."

"Who did it?"

"I don't know. Andy told me about it when he called to set things up." Sal stood from the futon and again stretched his back out. He thought back to the conversation with the mortician at one of the bigger funeral service companies in town. Andy hadn't said anything about who killed the guy, just that it had been a tough job. A close range bullet to the forehead just inside the parking lot of the company the guy owned. "Probably a crack head I guess."

"Oh sure, blame the crack heads," Robbie said "First they came for the crack heads and I said nothing."

"Then they came for the meth addicts huh?"

"Nope, the ravers were next."

Robbie turned off the TV and switched on the stereo, "How 'bout the beach?"

"To far."

"I'll drive."

"Way too far in your car."

"Oh come on Pipes, it's going to be a great day today."

"Yeah, and the biker rally is starting there."

"I know," Robbie grinned, "assless chaps over tight blue jeans everywhere you look." She pulled the blinds open and let daylight into the small apartment.

"Is that better than a man in a kilt?"

"I need to do more research on that one."

"Seriously, I really don't want to sit in the car for two hours getting there only to listen to bikes revving up and down the seawall."

"Party pooper." She put her hands on her hips and pouted at him.

Sal walked into the kitchen and made two glasses of Tang, tripling the directed amounts of orange powder into the glasses.

"How 'bout the zoo?" he asked as he handed her a glass.

"There's a thought."

Sal slid open the door to the balcony and they walked out into the sun. He lived on the tenth floor of an apartment building that fancied itself to be lofts. The building was once a hotel and the apartments still had more in common with the temporary living areas of a hotel room than of anything one would call a loft. Still, the view of the city was wonderful at night and the location was central enough to suit Sal's job. His apartment was formerly a suite of two hotel rooms with one side being a large bedroom and bathroom and the other side being a large living room and, where the former second bathroom was, a kitchen. Each side of the apartment had it's own balcony and door to the hallway making many people wonder where the restroom was when they first arrived.

Sal liked the compartmental design of the place. The cabinets and windows were very sixties with all the hopes for the future embedded in the architecture of the building. Most of all he liked having access to the roof where he would on nice days to practice his pipes. Most everyone in the building worked and the only residents who were there during the day were either too deaf or too drunk to complain. When you make a living playing bag pipes you learn the value of a good place to practice.

For a while the two of them stared down at the cars whizzing along the streets. Occasionally Sal or Robbie would let loose a glob of spit and watch it fall aimlessly to the roof of the portico entrance to the building. Sal felt good. He had five hundred bucks in his pocket from the morning TV spot, which was great considering they cut out the audio of him playing. The funeral on the weekend would bring his take for the month up to eight hundred and it was only the second. Eight hundred was only two funerals away from his monthly minimum for expenses and he knew he'd be able to get that this month. He'd been living month to month for too long and the opportunity to get ahead before Christmas was a welcome sign.

Plus, Sal was high, a nice glorious feeling coursed through his body and mind and he relished in it. He felt at ease and relaxed under the warmth of the sun burning through the last of the morning fog.

"So?" Sal asked.

"What?"

"The zoo?"

"Sell it to me."

"Sell it to you?"

"Yeah Pipes, how's the zoo going to be better than assless chaps?"

"They have monkeys."

"Mmmm, assless chaps are still better."

"It's all about ass for you today isn't it?"

"The tight blue jeans and throbbing engines between their legs help too you know."

"I'll buy you a snow cone in the lion cup."

Robbie thought about that.

"Let's Go!" she said.

And they did.