Fritz

Chapters 1 & 2

Fritz and the Burmese Fighter Pilot Caper

This is a story about a guy named Fritz, living on the West side of Campus, next to some big fraternity house, with his two dogs, one named Zilchbutt and the considerably smaller distant cousin of the infamous shag carpet, Spot. Fritz is a sometime quiet , sometime submissive, and a most of the time content to eat Bar-B-Que flavor cheese-whiz and drink generic versions of Dr. Pepper kinda man.

All day long people come up to Fritz and say to him, "Hey Fritz, How is it you got a name like Fritz? Most people walking around with perfectly normal names like Donald, Michael, Sally, Ruth Marie, Robert Hubert, or maybe even Jason, but you, you got a name like Fritz?" Fritz always smiles and responds, "I met a man in Dallas with three dots on his Chin. He came up to me and asked me to buy some men's cologne he had found and then he asked what I thought the names of his dots were? So I, being the innocent naive I once was, responded, Huey, Duey, and Louie. He smacked me across the face and stormed off grumbling about ninjas and Mork and Mindy. So anyway, my grandpa was named Fritz, so my ma said that had to be my name too. I guess I'm one of those, you know, namesake, thingies."

Fritz seems to live a rather serene existence from his house on the West side of Campus, next to that big fraternity house, assembling things for a living, doing one of those jobs you see in the back of magazines, the ones that say, work at home, up to $2,000 a week. Every Wednesday, his friend, Sophia comes over for tea and they have sex for forty-five minutes and she goes back to her apartment on 43rd street. Every Sunday, Fritz walks down 26th Street to the 7-eleven on the corner at Guadeloupe, buys two frozen burritos, a pack of frosted donuts, and a large Cherry Icee, and draws a picture with his fingers in the patch of dirt next to the sidewalk where bike tires and human shoes have rubbed the grass clear off the face of the planet. On Tuesday, he drives to the Eckerd's Pharmacy on Guadeloupe, but off the drag, and gets his prescription, of what I do not know.

So anyway, up to this point, I have managed to tell you a great deal about this guy named Fritz without actually having a story idea yet. That is the way Fritz likes it. Too much intent and logical progression can ruin almost anything.

Our adventure starts in the kitchen of the house next to that big fraternity house, where Fritz is cooking an omelet and drinking a Dr. Randall's, seemingly acting like a very normal, uninteresting, unsuitable character for an adventure, and that is the way he likes it. As the clock strikes nine he watches as Spot shuffles around his Purina Mature Dog Care, wondering if he had forgotten to do something the day before.

By the way it is Wednesday, but don't even think I was gonna see if you caught that was a day after he normally would go to Eckerd's on Guadeloupe, but off the drag, because that is not it at all. He had, in fact, a very nice time picking up his prescription the day before. What he has forgotten is that his Parents, or at least his mother and step-father, arrived in town late the night before and they are either at the airport enjoying the wide selection of pornographic magazines or slightly pissed off, and trying to explain to an over-zealous cabby that their son is an idiot, a slob, and a social worker at the same time. Fritz was in fact a social worker at one point in his life, but that whole traumatic event is totally unrelated to this story and might even be too exciting to leave space for the big adventure.

Fritz and the Return of Guava Man

On a random Sunday last summer, Fritz was walking along 26th street, heading toward 7-eleven, when he crossed paths with Destiny. She was this girl he met at a party at the end of school last semester and she was gonna be a Freshman that fall. She gave Fritz a cute little half-smile, trying to allow for all possibilities: i.e. if Fritz doesn't recognize her, she can blow it off as not having greeted him, but if he does recognize her, then she has made the initial greeting, and he is forced to say hello. He walked on past without even a half-smile back. He recognized her, he just didn't want to talk to her, because she had ended up in the engrossing hands of Lance Biffmayer, who proudly resides in Fritz's Top-Ten Death List. He made his way on to 7-eleven.

This guy named Moe worked at 7-eleven that summer. Thus Fritz and he got to know each other quite well. Every Sunday, Fritz would walk over and buy two frozen burritos, a pack of frosted donuts, and a large Cherry Icee. Every Sunday he would draw a picture in the sand, and every Sunday Moe would walk outside after Fritz left and look at the picture for a second. It was always the same.

Carefully woven into the dirt next to the sidewalk outside of the 7-eleven on the corner of Guadeloupe and 26th, Fritz would draw a young lady standing on some type of hill or island or something, with a pear tree on her right side and a dying goat lying on her left. Every week the only thing that would change would be the expression on the goat's face. Sometimes it would be a frown with droopy eyes. Sometimes a smile, and every once in a while it would be just a blank stare emanating emotional dryness and emptiness. The latter being the image that would always evoke Moe to tears, running, unnoticed, down his cheek, over his lips, sliding off his chin, and falling, falling, falling to the dirt below.

Moe would always erase the picture with a simple motion of his foot and walk back inside the store to wait on another customer, sell another lottery ticket, make another buck, and spend another day, all the time crying inside.

Fritz, of coarse, knew nothing of his friends weekly ritual, which so closely tied their lives together, like the neighbor girl next door who always stands by her window looking at the stars, and you always staring at her, from the corner of your bedroom window.

Sometime before the end of summer, on a particularly sunny day, Moe stepped out of the 7-eleven, drew his own picture in the sand and put a bullet through the back of his head.

Moe crafted a picture of solely the goat, lying in the sand, emotionless and dying, as it had always been, with a tear falling off its bearded chin, falling through the air, falling to the dirt below.

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A note

Questions, Comments, and Complaints: jcrossley@mail.utexas.edu