November 26, 2023

Liza’s Song

The last train pulled out of Chicago’s Union Station and into the driving snow.

The train carried mothers, fathers, children, friends, and at least one left-handed juggler.

And, in one of the train cars, looking out the window while chomping on a Snickers, sat Liza Charliebrown, the only daughter of the late Efrem Charliebrown and niece of the notorious, and also dead, Avalon Charliebrown.

The Charliebrowns had once ruled Chicago. They controlled the booze, the guns, the chocolate, and the pinball. From Evanston to Stony Island, the lakefront to River Forest, they had it all.

Those days are now deader than a clown’s soul. After her father’s death, her uncle’s murder, her parrot’s suicide, and their criminal empire’s rapid demise, Liza now walks the streets of Chicago like any other 11-fingered, three-breasted schmuck.

Liza destroys the Snickers then inhales another as the first snow of Chicago’s holiday season races past the window and she thinks of her destination, Milwaukee. Her son Edsel lives there. He’s a painter, one of Milwaukee’s best. He’s also an opera singer, one of Milwaukee’s worst.

Liza remembers when Edsel was a wee one and hoped to grow up to be a gangster like his grandfather or a mime like his grandmother.

“You can be anything you want to be, Edsel” she would tell her only child. “Just don’t be an asshole.”

A man approaches Liza and eyes the empty spot next to her and inquires, “Is this seat taken?”

Liza smiles and farts so loudly it knocks the man over.  The man gets up and runs away screaming while the whole train car laughs, Liza’s sexy cackle leading the way. The laughter carries them to Milwaukee, to happiness, toward train tracks of a thousand tomorrows. –TK