Episode #8
High Stakes in Omaha
I think it was General George Custard who was supposed to have said about Omaha, "Is that the cows or the Indians?" The evening time in Omaha has got something you can sense: a big thick gas cloud rises from the south side of town, the stockyards. A popular local bumpersticker proudly proclaims: THE STOCKYARDS ARE NEVER VERY FAR. You can move across town in Omaha but you can' t move away from the dusty, doomed cattle and the smell of their wholesale slaughter.
But why did I have to go to Omaha? Why did I have to cross the wide Missouri? Why did I have to smell the cows? You want to know why? I'll tell you why: I was on welfare for the C.I.A.. I was undercover under the belly of the beast. I was teamed up with another agent euphemistically dubbed Honeypot and she had sent me to Omaha because my sister lived there and she was on the dole. Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Some big somebody somewhere saw it as a threat to the American way o'life. They were probably gonna use me to get to her to get to the welfare system. I didn't really know.
I got off a Greyhound bus downtown and trudged over by the Aksarben Bridge that ran between Omaha and Council Bluffs, Iowa. They made awesome twin cities. Aksarben was Nebraska spelled backwards. There was even an Aksarben king and queen. At least the cows got cut up in a couple of daze, they didn't have to live here.
My sister Chesterlynn lived down by the river in a sub standard ramshackle of housing code violations. The kids Ikeena and Kadinsky were trying to strangle a stray dog in the front yard when I walked up.
"Hi kids! Better turn old Rover loose there..." They were giving new meaning to the song 'I got a dog and his name is blue'.
"C'mon Ikeena, slack that clothesline and let Champ draw breath". I thought making up cute names for the poor lost beast would bring out compassion in young niece and nephew out of wedlock. But they kept on choking Spot.
"Fluffy is gonna buy the farm if you don't ease up there Kadinsky pal". My sister named Kadinsky after the famous artist, Kandinsky, only she didn't know how to spell him right. Kadinsky was a sic kid. I mean his spelling was correct, even though wrong. lkeena was also sick: asphyxiating doggies when she might.
"Better let Uncle Dolan take that rope" I gently cooed not wanting to upset the kids. I loosed the hangman's knot on the aged cur and he fell on the porch wheezing.
"Mom! Funky Unky is here and he won't let me kill the dog." Kadinsky went whining into the house like a spoiled welfare brat. Little Ikeena was right behind him bawling her nose off. Ikeena was named after Ike and Teena Turner. My sister had never gotten over them breaking up.
"Dolan?" Chesterlynn stepped out onto the porch in a moo moo. That was popular welfare garb, especially in Omaha.
"What are you doing here? I thought you went to Washington to get in the Post Office." My subsidized sibling was only slightly behind the gargantuan events that had pressed me into the service of my cunt tree in the last few eternally short weeks.
"I didn't get on with the Post Office, sis, but I got another job." I knew I wouldn't be able to tell her much, especially since she was probably gonna be the patsy in Nectar. Nectar was the secret operation Honeypot and I were assigned to. "Well come on in and have some coffee. lt's good to see ya." Chesterlynn gave me a big hug and ushered me through her meager abode back to a cubicle of a kitchen that could have been completely redecorated just by defrosting the refrigerator. She mixed me some Department of Agriculture generic coffee and we talked about the kids, the family. Pretty soon I worked up the nerve to start gathering a little background for my mission. I didn't want to hurt my sister, but I didn't like to be unprepared either.
"Chesterlynn, what's it like being on AFDC?" I blurted out like Phil Donuhue.
"It doesn't work with only two kids. You need four to make it cost-effective against a negative cash flow over a pro-rated fiscal year commodity exchange." She asked if I wanted to see some charts she had been working on but I pretended I had to go to the toilet. That was a mistake. I don't think there was enough Tidybowl in the world to help that taxpayer-funded biff. I managed to stay long enough to look like a real pit stop, then rejoined Chesterlynn in the kitchen. The kids were back outside playing Joan of Arc with a neighbor girl. I doubted Kadinsky would actually light the sticks they had piled around her.
"I'm just glad you and the kids have a nice place to live", I returned the conversation to my sister's disenfranchised financial status, "but do you ever wonder what would happen if the welfare system broke down?" I had to help her get ready for anything that might happen as a result of my handout-busting mission.
"What are they gonna do with the kids, let 'em run wild?" She had a good point. AFDC was at least a form of welfare that paid mothers to look after their OWN children, thus sparing the government incredible expense.
"You know how much it would cost per diem to warehouse one kid?" I shrugged like a scientist who can't explain the loss of enough nuclear material to turn Israel into a short cut to Hawaii.
"$78.34 per diem. Per kid! You know how much I get monthly to feed, clothe and shelter the both of 'em?" I shook my head like a dog that is being strangled on the porch.
"$458 a month. I'm tapped out. Can't get another cent. So you figure out how much I'm saving them to raise these kids myself. Besides, you can't pay somebody to bring kids up the way their own mother would." I'd been wrong about Kadinsky torching the little girl he had tied to the stake. A horrible scream echoed down the river and the pungent whiff of an ugly BBQ hit the airwaves.
"Kadinsky! Get in here! I told you not to play that anymore!" She was a strict mother, but a good mother.
"Is it alright if I visit you for a few days sis?" I'd been ordered by Honeypot to hang around Chesterlynn's house until I was contacted for the next step of Nectar.
"Sure. There isn't much food though. I had to spend half of the food stamps and all of Ikeena's medicaid on a new turntable, the old one was fucking up on the forty-fives." She loved music.
Then it was the easy TV life for a while. We'd just get up in the morning and turn it on, drink generic coffee and watch game shows and sitcoms that went to heaven. Chesterlynn would smoke her way through a pack-and-a-half of Kool Lights, but that's not bad for a welfare mother. Kadinsky and Ikeena didn't bother us much. They had better kids to fry.
After about a week of this freeloading boondoggle, I was surprised to get a letter.
"Who's this from?" Chesterlynn wanted to know when I got a federal looking thing one day.
"Must be about my new job", I answered with a lot more truth than she would ever have the need to know.
Dear Cowburger,
Hope you are having a nice time visiting your sister.
Nectar is ono ogo. Ixnay lanspay. Honeypot got caught.
She may have spilled the beans. You may be in trouble.
Better amscray quick. Would have told you sooner,
but things are just a mess here.
signed, Philanthropist
"Are they gonna hire you?" Chesterlynn asked when she saw my eyes float up from the letter in a bleak stare of stark terror.
"Yeah. They want me. I better leave right away." I had put her and the kids in enough danger already.
"Where are you reporting?"
"I'll write you when I get there."
"Get where?"
Her simple question cracked my shook up penumbra and I climbed the Omaha wall.
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