My new book, a memoir, is now live on Amazon -- both paper and Kindle versions:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1492215333
The original manuscript was around 500 pages. It has been whittled down to 167. This book took me 17 years to complete. I thought it was finished 13 years ago, when I had an agent in LA, and was taking phone calls from editors at Random House. But I wasn't ready. Now, at age 57, I decided the time was right to tell the story. More about all this later. Just wanted to give any readers a teaser!
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Friday, December 28, 2012
~ a rather long, unrproofed excerpt from my new book: a memoir.
Well, I’d held the baby, and loved her. But I went back to my apartment and resumed my daily routine. I admit I didn’t think much about the baby at first. I mean, what is there to think about? She was there, I was here. I saw her occasionally, watched her being burped, examined her puking all over MB. That was cheerful. I don’t remember her crying very much. I looked in on her when she was asleep. I’d see her awake, hypnotized by a mobile (who wouldn’t be? I certainly was). She still smiled at me, but I wasn’t at their house often. I just hoped she slept well and had beautiful dreams.
I am nobody special. You need to know this to understand. I claim no status as a war-ravaged refugee. I’ve done no great deeds, nor reaped any public acclaim. I’m not to be pitied. My life has been violently torn apart from the beginning. This is not privileged information. No one gets an easy life. Sorrow is the one universal constant. It happens to you, at some point, and to the neighbors down the street.
For myself, I’ve never been right in the head. My brain chemistry is faulty, and has been since birth. No one is to blame. A storm rages in my synaptic junctures, causing them to misfire. Brain cells are like spark plugs: there is that gap in the machinery that requires a spark to work properly, a chemical ocean to be crossed by this incessant fleet of glitter-ships. Mine are shipwrecked, breached on the shoals of the mind’s phantom gelatin. They never make the connection. I’m not alone in this.
When I see children whip fizzing sparklers on a Summer’s night, I am reminded of the complex turnpike of the nervous system: the traffic is staggering! I think of all the sparklers I whirled as a child with my brothers. The jars of fireflies we kept by our beds. The dancing fire of a candle-driven magic lantern. Whenever a thunderstorm gave us a night’s opera, my parent’s knew to find me outside, staring up at the heaven’s blue-gold cutlery. I didn’t know a thing, but I could feel the pull of it.
One of my earliest childhood memories is being tugged out of sleep by night terrors. I would have been about two or three years when they began. Two or three times I would “wake,” hyperventilating and cold, pulse racing, face lathered in sweat, screaming. My mother would come rushing to pluck me out of bed, take me to the living room, where she would hold me tight, rocking, whispering soothing words of comfort into my wet and burning ears. She was as frightened as I was, because she knew I hadn’t been dreaming. I was wide awake, and this was no nightmare. I am in the nightmare now mom at this moment curled in your arms and there’s no place to go.
The entire room, the world, now telescoped beyond all comprehension, producing horizons that race on into infinity, overlapping in a way no child should know. The room was distorted, fuzzy. I wasn’t able to hold on, I would spin away into the grin of madness, I would fall through the floor and Mom wouldn’t be able to keep me solid, God bless her, I would fade.
I was outside myself looking at Mom holding this little boy
I wanted to be especially alive then, in my mother’s arms. I longed to be weary enough to sleep like my older brother. I prayed for a regular nightmare like his.
The night terrors went away at some point. The rest of my childhood was free from that grotesque phenomena -- or any other. Though I’ve been told I was a difficult infant, I don’t remember, so I can’t vouch for that. I’m certain there was a huge grain of truth to that statement, since both my mother and my paternal grandmother both avidly declared it to be so. My childhood, however, was beyond happy -- it was magical, a sentimental poem of deep play, every day so terribly alive, full of discovery. I was Magellan. I was a happy youth, imaginative but introverted. I loved reading, and climbing trees and, most of all, running. It was a fitting pastime, this refusal to stay in one place for too long (so it would not catch up), and oh how I ran. There was the relentless envy of winged things, the confusion of birds with angels -- a distinction that remains unresolved -- the desire to be mothered by the heartless wind, and still break free.
I filled my lungs with the retribution of wrens and would have run beyond all known horizons, all day and night, carrying my cargo of brittle bones long past what everyone else was already calling the World, into a glorious yonder where I might know what it finally meant, this flesh: it is merely borrowed. You can’t outdistance decay, so you run while you can. Whether the wind was at your back, or took the side of belligerence against you, you ran through it all, never looking over your shoulder. All that mattered was what lay ahead -- and even that wasn’t so important, since, in youth, nothing was: you weren’t running away, or toward, anything. You ran because you could, and your legs didn’t ever get tired; there was no pain, your breath was as full as a ship’s bulging sail, and you ran on through the fields of life, and there was no stopping you. That’s what it is to be so very young and know everything, with life keeping pace like a generous host, a fastidious butler existing only for your whims.
In my late teens, the panic attacks came. They are like night terrors writ large. You can’t tell if I’m having one. The lightning in the brain strikes rapidly, furtively, rendering all you see and feel…unreal. It’s like you find yourself inside a merciless Dali painting. You think you can’t breathe, that you are probably going to die. It’s frightening. These arduous attacks became more frequent. Then, I’d be rid of them for a year. At the age of 20, they returned with a vengeance, and remain. This was bad. I was an infant again, in the body of an adult. As if this wasn’t enough vengeance for my vanity in running away all those years, depression came to call.
To understand true depression -- the clinical variety -- you just have to experience it. No words can adequately express the bleak weight of it crushing you to pulp. Yes, it’s heavy, it has substance -- shadowy, but sincere. It is not the same thing as being unhappy, or blue, which is universal. In fact, depression and happiness can co-exist. We should really find another term for it. One that does it justice, and doesn’t confuse the general public, so that everybody who feels a bit “down in the dumps” isn’t handed a prescription for Prozac, sent home with an empty wallet -- and the false promise of a bright future.
Depression is an ember in the brain: it smolders and burns, but leaves you a shred of your substance as a reminder, so you can still feel the agony. It isn’t always constant, either. It’s an unannounced, and unexpected, visitor. When it’s in you, like a worm eating its fill, you want nothing more than to be normal, even boring, but you will take death as a palliative elixir, if no other treatment is available. You don’t know the reasons why the dark linen is trying suffocate you, because there aren’t any reasons -- other than in that mysterious electro-chemical soup factory we call the brain. This is not an illusion; it’s not my imagination, nor can it be tempered by meditation. I’ve been through every treatment you can name, and have thirty-six years of experience and research on you. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already heard. And dismissed. I know this much about myself, at least. Don’t try to tell me what you might have done, or write to me about cures. Been there. Done that. I’m just trying to save you some time and effort. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me -- I need no pity -- but neither do I want you to judge me. You haven’t earned the right. Finish this book, then we’ll talk.
This is what my life has been like, until I met the baby. But it’s all still there: the sizzling wasp, the tiger ready to pounce from its makeshift chemical zoo. The Black Lake still sends out its siren song. It will never be far away. It looms. I visit. It wants the whole loaf of my soul; I toss it scraps. The Black Lake was the only home I’d known for most of my life in the this world. I’ve tried to build new homes, places that have nothing to do with houses. Houses burn, get sold, you move. I think it’s working. I’m no penitent, not for the past or the present. I might have owned an unlived-in life, for the most part, but the rent is still expected and -- one way or another, it gets collected. You pay to be a Bedouin. You pay dearly.
Falling in love with Molly was easy: she was a baby, a newborn, a foreign object, exotic like a seahorse. What an odd, charming ornament to have in the house! My entire knowledge of babies would fit have fit on a post-it note. I didn’t have any babies. I could admit that I’d been one myself at some point, as my mother insisted, but -- beyond that -- there was little to add to my personal repertoire. That was little help, I realize, but what else was there? I couldn’t have given a very accurate definition of “pediatrics” without picking up the hefty Oxford and, though baby and book weighed about the same, I was more comfortable with the former.
When Molly was about six months old, I became her babysitter for one day each week. I don’t know how I got talked into this. I suppose it wasn’t that difficult a decision for me, since I was curious, and still had that edge to learn something. And I adored her. It also helped out MB and Mort, and gave her regular sitter a day off. What I lacked in childcare qualifications, I made up in self-doubt. Well, not completely. I mean, how hard could it be? It wasn’t like she could leave the house without my permission, or elope. She spent most of her time either asleep, eating, or pooping. Big deal. I could handle this. I was forty-one years old, past middle-age, and I could take care of a such a simple thing as a baby, for heaven’s sake. Besides, there was my pride to consider. I had to stand pat and parade the race of the male. I harbored no resentment toward the other species -- I was quite amazed by them, in point of fact, and admired them greatly. But whatever they could do, etc. I’d show them! And, at the end of the day, I’d smile when MB returned, nod, stretch, say “piece of cake, kid.” Then I’d get to go home again. Win/win. YES! Hurrah for my side!
To my great surprise, it wasn’t as horrific as I thought it would be, this eccentric new job. It was more responsibility than I’d bargained for -- after all, this is a helpless new life we’re talking about. It can’t do anything for itself. But it satisfied a curious emptiness in my soul, some estival acre of desire I thought I’d left behind in one of my other lives. At first, I was hesitant around Molly Rae. It was true that she was my niece, and thus part of my family -- but she was also, unmistakably, a baby. I couldn’t ignore that one crucial fact. Well, I tried, but it didn’t work. So there she was. And there was I.
Babies. What strange animals! Personally, at that time I was on better terms with dogs. I understood dogs. Babies were alien. For one thing, they are always smaller than you remember, inexplicably tiny. They should come with tags that say “handle with care,” or “hand wash only.” I imagined that these truths were self-evident, that parents inherently possess them by some primordial instinct. But others did as well. Even my own self, I shamelessly admit. It was either that or I fell for the prank the universe decided to play on my middle-aged life, and I refused to give it that satisfaction. Let it wonder about that, I thought. Grinned.
I immediately discovered that babies make funny wet noises that sometimes soften to murmured sonnets. They also make fanatical wet messes that aren’t particularly joyful, but they have to be tended to nonetheless. Here is a truth to all parent’s of newborns: yes, you can put the Pampers on backwards. Trust me on this. But, all in all, I was inclined to enjoy having something to tend. It wasn’t that much different from gardening, I thought at first.
Molly’s father was an avid gardener. Mort worked such long, tiring hours at his two law offices that I rarely saw him -- and yet his big brick house was surrounded by a majestic panoply of green stuff: geysers of orange Asiatic Lilies, his favorites; rows of redbud trees, rock gardens garnished with marigolds, roses, celosia, tulips, daffodils, crocuses, alyssum; blackberry and raspberry bushes, from which he makes freezer jam. In the past few years, he’s developed a fondness for ornamental grasses, bearding the lawn with them. Mort was born in the Spring, and Spring is his passion. I envy him; he finds the time for all of this, even when there isn’t any.
Tending a baby wouldn’t be so different, I thought. It would simply be one more extravagance to find time for. Time: a shiny fish caught by hand, evanescent, slippery -- whoops! and it’s gone, scissored away. Time was the one thing I was buried up to my neck in.
Six days out of each week I led a small, unopened life. I baked bread, wrote letters, read, even cut pictures out of old magazines with the intention of taking up art again. Collage. It’s a wonder I never got around to cutting out paper dolls. I took long walks in town, and out, into the woods. I wanted to learn clock repair, but couldn’t afford the mail-order lessons. I didn’t own a car, a television, or radio. I had no telephone. I was a solitary man, a nowhere man, a man very alone in a small and isolated town in rural West Virginia. That’s the way I wanted it. I puttered about, in a dreamy state, mostly doing nothing, and so the days just happened without a lot of bother. I didn’t want a lot of bother. I just wanted to be left alone. I slept poorly, arose late. On Mondays, I had to get up early and go take care of Molly. It took me just a few minutes to realize that the gardening analogy was absurd. You couldn’t just water a baby, hope for sun and rain, go inside, wash your hands, lay back and watch Jeopardy. Jesus, you couldn’t let the baby out of your sight for one.single.second. I mean, even in the crib, sleeping. I’d watch her sleep, to make sure she was breathing. No hellish elf was going to steal this baby. Not while I still breathed. She’d already wormed her way into my heart. I had to protect and serve. Truth is, she got to the point that she expected me to be standing there when she woke up. I liked that. She needed me, perhaps. Nobody else did. Not really. I considered myself an afterthought in the minds of most people I knew. Trouble is, I didn’t really know anybody now. At this point, I didn’t even know myself. I had a few assumptions, but none that would carry me very far.
Mort usually picked me up to ferry me to duties, before he headed to work. Sometimes, MB showed up instead -- always late -- before she went off to her own office. I’d stay with Molly until six or seven o’clock, or whatever late hour her parents came home. In the beginning, I dreaded this ordeal. It disturbed my carefully orchestrated routine. Then, much to my consternation, I began to look forward to what I thought of as Holiday with Baby. I was becoming an expert at this. Caring for Molly was the one thing of consequence I could claim. It mattered, these Mondays. Nothing else had, for many years. It became important to me, this one beatific day -- something to call my own. My day! “I did it…myyy day!” I sang on Monday mornings, sipping coffee and waiting for my ride. I was alone all day with a baby and I was doing fine. Well, at least nothing bad ever happened. The worst was getting puked on, but I got used to that. I mean, at least you had warning: you knew it was coming. Not every day. There were times I escaped. But babies slobber, drool, puke, pee, poop. If you can’t wrap your head around those facts, then you should consider contraceptives.
There were times when I thought this must be a dream, one of the good ones -- and they were rare enough to note. Still, I sighed with an odd sort of sad relief when I was returned to my own three small rooms, and six days of recovery -- that included a busy schedule of mostly doing nothing. I took my medication, cleaned my apartment, baked, wrote, walked, tried to teach Petey, my parakeet, to talk. I was a creature of established habit and my Lilliputian existence was the sweet-and-sour sauce of a life no longer deeply realized. I loved to sleep. I marked my Monday’s on the calendar.
One Monday morning, when Molly was nine months old, MB stopped by to pick me up. On the short drive to her house, I noticed that a tear fell from her eye. I asked her what was wrong. Was Molly okay? MB explained that Molly’s regular sitter had been let go, since she turned out to be unreliable. She and Mort had no alternatives in mind. “We’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” she lamented. “We’re in trouble here, and we just don’t know what to do.”
And thus began an odd and harrowing journey into my deepest self, an epic migration that still resonates within the marrow of my spirit. Within a few precious moments, ignoring a severe and doubtful warning from that little reasonable voice in the back of my mind -- the one that tends to mention things like “If you keep holding your finger over that candle flame, you are going to get burnt” -- I blurted out “Well, I’ll do it. I’ll take over full-time. I mean, if you want me to.”
What had I just uttered? Had I left my mind at home? MB looked so relieved I was sure she was going to shed more tears. Shit and damn, I thought to myself. You just said something you can’t take back. Nice going, idiot.
Well, I’d held the baby, and loved her. But I went back to my apartment and resumed my daily routine. I admit I didn’t think much about the baby at first. I mean, what is there to think about? She was there, I was here. I saw her occasionally, watched her being burped, examined her puking all over MB. That was cheerful. I don’t remember her crying very much. I looked in on her when she was asleep. I’d see her awake, hypnotized by a mobile (who wouldn’t be? I certainly was). She still smiled at me, but I wasn’t at their house often. I just hoped she slept well and had beautiful dreams.
I am nobody special. You need to know this to understand. I claim no status as a war-ravaged refugee. I’ve done no great deeds, nor reaped any public acclaim. I’m not to be pitied. My life has been violently torn apart from the beginning. This is not privileged information. No one gets an easy life. Sorrow is the one universal constant. It happens to you, at some point, and to the neighbors down the street.
For myself, I’ve never been right in the head. My brain chemistry is faulty, and has been since birth. No one is to blame. A storm rages in my synaptic junctures, causing them to misfire. Brain cells are like spark plugs: there is that gap in the machinery that requires a spark to work properly, a chemical ocean to be crossed by this incessant fleet of glitter-ships. Mine are shipwrecked, breached on the shoals of the mind’s phantom gelatin. They never make the connection. I’m not alone in this.
When I see children whip fizzing sparklers on a Summer’s night, I am reminded of the complex turnpike of the nervous system: the traffic is staggering! I think of all the sparklers I whirled as a child with my brothers. The jars of fireflies we kept by our beds. The dancing fire of a candle-driven magic lantern. Whenever a thunderstorm gave us a night’s opera, my parent’s knew to find me outside, staring up at the heaven’s blue-gold cutlery. I didn’t know a thing, but I could feel the pull of it.
One of my earliest childhood memories is being tugged out of sleep by night terrors. I would have been about two or three years when they began. Two or three times I would “wake,” hyperventilating and cold, pulse racing, face lathered in sweat, screaming. My mother would come rushing to pluck me out of bed, take me to the living room, where she would hold me tight, rocking, whispering soothing words of comfort into my wet and burning ears. She was as frightened as I was, because she knew I hadn’t been dreaming. I was wide awake, and this was no nightmare. I am in the nightmare now mom at this moment curled in your arms and there’s no place to go.
The entire room, the world, now telescoped beyond all comprehension, producing horizons that race on into infinity, overlapping in a way no child should know. The room was distorted, fuzzy. I wasn’t able to hold on, I would spin away into the grin of madness, I would fall through the floor and Mom wouldn’t be able to keep me solid, God bless her, I would fade.
I was outside myself looking at Mom holding this little boy
I wanted to be especially alive then, in my mother’s arms. I longed to be weary enough to sleep like my older brother. I prayed for a regular nightmare like his.
The night terrors went away at some point. The rest of my childhood was free from that grotesque phenomena -- or any other. Though I’ve been told I was a difficult infant, I don’t remember, so I can’t vouch for that. I’m certain there was a huge grain of truth to that statement, since both my mother and my paternal grandmother both avidly declared it to be so. My childhood, however, was beyond happy -- it was magical, a sentimental poem of deep play, every day so terribly alive, full of discovery. I was Magellan. I was a happy youth, imaginative but introverted. I loved reading, and climbing trees and, most of all, running. It was a fitting pastime, this refusal to stay in one place for too long (so it would not catch up), and oh how I ran. There was the relentless envy of winged things, the confusion of birds with angels -- a distinction that remains unresolved -- the desire to be mothered by the heartless wind, and still break free.
I filled my lungs with the retribution of wrens and would have run beyond all known horizons, all day and night, carrying my cargo of brittle bones long past what everyone else was already calling the World, into a glorious yonder where I might know what it finally meant, this flesh: it is merely borrowed. You can’t outdistance decay, so you run while you can. Whether the wind was at your back, or took the side of belligerence against you, you ran through it all, never looking over your shoulder. All that mattered was what lay ahead -- and even that wasn’t so important, since, in youth, nothing was: you weren’t running away, or toward, anything. You ran because you could, and your legs didn’t ever get tired; there was no pain, your breath was as full as a ship’s bulging sail, and you ran on through the fields of life, and there was no stopping you. That’s what it is to be so very young and know everything, with life keeping pace like a generous host, a fastidious butler existing only for your whims.
In my late teens, the panic attacks came. They are like night terrors writ large. You can’t tell if I’m having one. The lightning in the brain strikes rapidly, furtively, rendering all you see and feel…unreal. It’s like you find yourself inside a merciless Dali painting. You think you can’t breathe, that you are probably going to die. It’s frightening. These arduous attacks became more frequent. Then, I’d be rid of them for a year. At the age of 20, they returned with a vengeance, and remain. This was bad. I was an infant again, in the body of an adult. As if this wasn’t enough vengeance for my vanity in running away all those years, depression came to call.
To understand true depression -- the clinical variety -- you just have to experience it. No words can adequately express the bleak weight of it crushing you to pulp. Yes, it’s heavy, it has substance -- shadowy, but sincere. It is not the same thing as being unhappy, or blue, which is universal. In fact, depression and happiness can co-exist. We should really find another term for it. One that does it justice, and doesn’t confuse the general public, so that everybody who feels a bit “down in the dumps” isn’t handed a prescription for Prozac, sent home with an empty wallet -- and the false promise of a bright future.
Depression is an ember in the brain: it smolders and burns, but leaves you a shred of your substance as a reminder, so you can still feel the agony. It isn’t always constant, either. It’s an unannounced, and unexpected, visitor. When it’s in you, like a worm eating its fill, you want nothing more than to be normal, even boring, but you will take death as a palliative elixir, if no other treatment is available. You don’t know the reasons why the dark linen is trying suffocate you, because there aren’t any reasons -- other than in that mysterious electro-chemical soup factory we call the brain. This is not an illusion; it’s not my imagination, nor can it be tempered by meditation. I’ve been through every treatment you can name, and have thirty-six years of experience and research on you. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already heard. And dismissed. I know this much about myself, at least. Don’t try to tell me what you might have done, or write to me about cures. Been there. Done that. I’m just trying to save you some time and effort. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me -- I need no pity -- but neither do I want you to judge me. You haven’t earned the right. Finish this book, then we’ll talk.
This is what my life has been like, until I met the baby. But it’s all still there: the sizzling wasp, the tiger ready to pounce from its makeshift chemical zoo. The Black Lake still sends out its siren song. It will never be far away. It looms. I visit. It wants the whole loaf of my soul; I toss it scraps. The Black Lake was the only home I’d known for most of my life in the this world. I’ve tried to build new homes, places that have nothing to do with houses. Houses burn, get sold, you move. I think it’s working. I’m no penitent, not for the past or the present. I might have owned an unlived-in life, for the most part, but the rent is still expected and -- one way or another, it gets collected. You pay to be a Bedouin. You pay dearly.
Falling in love with Molly was easy: she was a baby, a newborn, a foreign object, exotic like a seahorse. What an odd, charming ornament to have in the house! My entire knowledge of babies would fit have fit on a post-it note. I didn’t have any babies. I could admit that I’d been one myself at some point, as my mother insisted, but -- beyond that -- there was little to add to my personal repertoire. That was little help, I realize, but what else was there? I couldn’t have given a very accurate definition of “pediatrics” without picking up the hefty Oxford and, though baby and book weighed about the same, I was more comfortable with the former.
When Molly was about six months old, I became her babysitter for one day each week. I don’t know how I got talked into this. I suppose it wasn’t that difficult a decision for me, since I was curious, and still had that edge to learn something. And I adored her. It also helped out MB and Mort, and gave her regular sitter a day off. What I lacked in childcare qualifications, I made up in self-doubt. Well, not completely. I mean, how hard could it be? It wasn’t like she could leave the house without my permission, or elope. She spent most of her time either asleep, eating, or pooping. Big deal. I could handle this. I was forty-one years old, past middle-age, and I could take care of a such a simple thing as a baby, for heaven’s sake. Besides, there was my pride to consider. I had to stand pat and parade the race of the male. I harbored no resentment toward the other species -- I was quite amazed by them, in point of fact, and admired them greatly. But whatever they could do, etc. I’d show them! And, at the end of the day, I’d smile when MB returned, nod, stretch, say “piece of cake, kid.” Then I’d get to go home again. Win/win. YES! Hurrah for my side!
To my great surprise, it wasn’t as horrific as I thought it would be, this eccentric new job. It was more responsibility than I’d bargained for -- after all, this is a helpless new life we’re talking about. It can’t do anything for itself. But it satisfied a curious emptiness in my soul, some estival acre of desire I thought I’d left behind in one of my other lives. At first, I was hesitant around Molly Rae. It was true that she was my niece, and thus part of my family -- but she was also, unmistakably, a baby. I couldn’t ignore that one crucial fact. Well, I tried, but it didn’t work. So there she was. And there was I.
Babies. What strange animals! Personally, at that time I was on better terms with dogs. I understood dogs. Babies were alien. For one thing, they are always smaller than you remember, inexplicably tiny. They should come with tags that say “handle with care,” or “hand wash only.” I imagined that these truths were self-evident, that parents inherently possess them by some primordial instinct. But others did as well. Even my own self, I shamelessly admit. It was either that or I fell for the prank the universe decided to play on my middle-aged life, and I refused to give it that satisfaction. Let it wonder about that, I thought. Grinned.
I immediately discovered that babies make funny wet noises that sometimes soften to murmured sonnets. They also make fanatical wet messes that aren’t particularly joyful, but they have to be tended to nonetheless. Here is a truth to all parent’s of newborns: yes, you can put the Pampers on backwards. Trust me on this. But, all in all, I was inclined to enjoy having something to tend. It wasn’t that much different from gardening, I thought at first.
Molly’s father was an avid gardener. Mort worked such long, tiring hours at his two law offices that I rarely saw him -- and yet his big brick house was surrounded by a majestic panoply of green stuff: geysers of orange Asiatic Lilies, his favorites; rows of redbud trees, rock gardens garnished with marigolds, roses, celosia, tulips, daffodils, crocuses, alyssum; blackberry and raspberry bushes, from which he makes freezer jam. In the past few years, he’s developed a fondness for ornamental grasses, bearding the lawn with them. Mort was born in the Spring, and Spring is his passion. I envy him; he finds the time for all of this, even when there isn’t any.
Tending a baby wouldn’t be so different, I thought. It would simply be one more extravagance to find time for. Time: a shiny fish caught by hand, evanescent, slippery -- whoops! and it’s gone, scissored away. Time was the one thing I was buried up to my neck in.
Six days out of each week I led a small, unopened life. I baked bread, wrote letters, read, even cut pictures out of old magazines with the intention of taking up art again. Collage. It’s a wonder I never got around to cutting out paper dolls. I took long walks in town, and out, into the woods. I wanted to learn clock repair, but couldn’t afford the mail-order lessons. I didn’t own a car, a television, or radio. I had no telephone. I was a solitary man, a nowhere man, a man very alone in a small and isolated town in rural West Virginia. That’s the way I wanted it. I puttered about, in a dreamy state, mostly doing nothing, and so the days just happened without a lot of bother. I didn’t want a lot of bother. I just wanted to be left alone. I slept poorly, arose late. On Mondays, I had to get up early and go take care of Molly. It took me just a few minutes to realize that the gardening analogy was absurd. You couldn’t just water a baby, hope for sun and rain, go inside, wash your hands, lay back and watch Jeopardy. Jesus, you couldn’t let the baby out of your sight for one.single.second. I mean, even in the crib, sleeping. I’d watch her sleep, to make sure she was breathing. No hellish elf was going to steal this baby. Not while I still breathed. She’d already wormed her way into my heart. I had to protect and serve. Truth is, she got to the point that she expected me to be standing there when she woke up. I liked that. She needed me, perhaps. Nobody else did. Not really. I considered myself an afterthought in the minds of most people I knew. Trouble is, I didn’t really know anybody now. At this point, I didn’t even know myself. I had a few assumptions, but none that would carry me very far.
Mort usually picked me up to ferry me to duties, before he headed to work. Sometimes, MB showed up instead -- always late -- before she went off to her own office. I’d stay with Molly until six or seven o’clock, or whatever late hour her parents came home. In the beginning, I dreaded this ordeal. It disturbed my carefully orchestrated routine. Then, much to my consternation, I began to look forward to what I thought of as Holiday with Baby. I was becoming an expert at this. Caring for Molly was the one thing of consequence I could claim. It mattered, these Mondays. Nothing else had, for many years. It became important to me, this one beatific day -- something to call my own. My day! “I did it…myyy day!” I sang on Monday mornings, sipping coffee and waiting for my ride. I was alone all day with a baby and I was doing fine. Well, at least nothing bad ever happened. The worst was getting puked on, but I got used to that. I mean, at least you had warning: you knew it was coming. Not every day. There were times I escaped. But babies slobber, drool, puke, pee, poop. If you can’t wrap your head around those facts, then you should consider contraceptives.
There were times when I thought this must be a dream, one of the good ones -- and they were rare enough to note. Still, I sighed with an odd sort of sad relief when I was returned to my own three small rooms, and six days of recovery -- that included a busy schedule of mostly doing nothing. I took my medication, cleaned my apartment, baked, wrote, walked, tried to teach Petey, my parakeet, to talk. I was a creature of established habit and my Lilliputian existence was the sweet-and-sour sauce of a life no longer deeply realized. I loved to sleep. I marked my Monday’s on the calendar.
One Monday morning, when Molly was nine months old, MB stopped by to pick me up. On the short drive to her house, I noticed that a tear fell from her eye. I asked her what was wrong. Was Molly okay? MB explained that Molly’s regular sitter had been let go, since she turned out to be unreliable. She and Mort had no alternatives in mind. “We’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” she lamented. “We’re in trouble here, and we just don’t know what to do.”
And thus began an odd and harrowing journey into my deepest self, an epic migration that still resonates within the marrow of my spirit. Within a few precious moments, ignoring a severe and doubtful warning from that little reasonable voice in the back of my mind -- the one that tends to mention things like “If you keep holding your finger over that candle flame, you are going to get burnt” -- I blurted out “Well, I’ll do it. I’ll take over full-time. I mean, if you want me to.”
What had I just uttered? Had I left my mind at home? MB looked so relieved I was sure she was going to shed more tears. Shit and damn, I thought to myself. You just said something you can’t take back. Nice going, idiot.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
In a modest house near Parkersburg, West Virginia, a Christmas tree stood in the far corner of a cozy living room. It was live tree, though it wasn’t very large. It was strung with electric lights -- not the sort that blink off and on. He never cared much for those, although he thought they could be pretty. Just not on his tree. The lights on his tree were all “white.” Meaning that slightly off-amber glow that isn’t quite yellow, but not wholly white as the snow that fell outside the window. The tree had few ornaments. There were a few angel figurines and some old brass bells that dangled from the branches, a couple of small picture frames, but that was about it. Still, the tree seemed full, at least to him, and that was all that mattered. A wreath hung outside his front door made up the rest of his Yule decorations.
The man picked up a small log from the long box next to his fireplace, knelt down, used it to move the embers round, then tossed it in. He stood up slowly, for he was old. At eighty-seven, Fish stared at the fire. He briefly thought of the burning of the pile of jackrabbit carcasses conjured from the long, misty and hagridden past. He didn’t usually ponder such nightmares. They’d died along with everything else too many years ago for his often confused and tormented mind to apprehend. Everyone else he’d know from those dear, terrible, and wonderful days had died as well. His best friend, Miller Tate, had just gone to sleep a week after Miller’s boy, Jordan, had been killed in a car accident. Wasn’t Jordan’s fault. That boy had survived so much, grown into a man, only to get broadsided by some drunk running a red light. Fish reckoned Miller’s heart just couldn’t take no more. Miller was old, though not as old as Fish. Miller was strong. Hardiest man Fish ever knew. Fish reckoned Miller just done give up, and so disappeared the last of the brave, Viking-like Tate’s. Too many battles, scars running deep into the marrow, no time nor salve could heal.
Fish carried the same wounds. Well, Miller’s ran fouler. But Fish had been there. He’d felt each cut, every loss. All the dancing spider’s of sorrow. Yeah, Fish remembered being caught in that same damned web. Sonofabitch. How the hell any of them escaped he couldn’t quite remember. Must a been a few miracles still floating about back in them times. He coughed, walked to the fireplace, and spat a tiny wad of dark phlegm into the flame. It hissed. He still carried a remnant of the brown plague. Small one. Just another reminder, so he wouldn’t never forget. He forgot much in these tired days, most of it for the best. He had good days, and bad ones. Still, he lived on his own, never having no kin, and he walked steady. Never really came near to stumbling. Gaunt as ever, his body was surprisingly healthy for his age. Never needed a cane and took no medicine. Like a handful of shit pills gonna make no difference now, he told his first and only doctor. Fish figured he’d die when his name was called. He figured that would be soon enough. He hoped so. He wanted to step off the face of this world before his mind sank too far into the bottomless shit of madness, where he couldn’t remember anything. Or worse, where shadows split apart in his head, wielding cutting instruments, severing the connections that made his reality his own. His. By God. No murmuring of some jumbled past for him. Nor only living moment to moment, recalling nothin’ that he’d previously owned. He wouldn’t have that. He’d go to hell before he had hell come knocking on his door in that manner.
Fish strode into the kitchen, where he’d set a pot of coffee going. Even though it was late, it didn’t keep him awake. He poured a cup and took it back to the living room. He looked at his tree. He couldn’t help thinking this would be his last one. But he thought the same last year, and the year before. He liked his tree, he guessed. Wasn’t sure why. He’d never been the festive type. Just seemed…not the right thing to do, but a true thing to do. Just one of many discovered truths. And it was only done for him. He wasn’t lighting a tree for the good Christ’s birthday. Hell, Fish couldn’t recall his own birthday. He’d been in many a church, but not for reasons of holding a bible and singing psalms, nor praying, nor listening to some preacher spouting off for half a day. Miller was the one who took the Bible seriously, or at least tried his best to live his life according to that book. Miller was always calling Fish out for blasphemy. Fish had tried to read the Bible. He was never much of a reader anyhow and when he came to all those damned “begats,” he put the book down and never opened it again. He’d never prayed a day in his life. He’d watched the others fall to their knees in supplication, groaning for the good lord’s deliverance. Then he watched them die. One by one. Miller was the last. It was all superstition to him, and him unread and, quite often, unreasonable. It was the only thing he and Miller had ever argued over.
Oh well.
Fish sat in a chair by the fire. He sipped his lukewarm coffee. Didn’t much matter to him. He never did get used to comforts. Never much a part of his life. He stared into the fire. He looked at his lit tree and, for a moment, thought to pick it up and throw it out the door. I mean, what the hell?
But he left it alone. Didn’t hurt nothin‘. Didn’t really help, neither. Just was. A late habit he’d picked up, for reasons unclear to him. He got up and tossed another small log into the fire. Lately, he’d taken to getting cold. A damned chill seemed to follow him around like an old hound, growling at his ankles. He’d tried to shake it off, but the damned thing had some sharp teeth. The hell. Let it bite. He had plenty of wood. He chopped it his own self. This made him smile. He had neighbors who used to offer to help him out with this chore or that. They soon learned not to come round again. Fish didn’t need no help. Day he did was the day he died.
Christmas. A holy day for some, a season of charm and joy to others. Goodwill toward men and whatnot. Carols. Good King What’s his name. Fish didn’t mind these songs. Some of them he actually liked. Some made him happy, for no reason he could explain. Like “Carol of the Bells.” Or “I Wonder As I Wander.” Even “Silent Night. He preferred the melody without the words. The truth is, Fish didn’t understand Christmas. He never had, even as a lad. Yes, the gifts were few and small. He reckoned it meant something to him because he saw happier people, for the most part. Least happier children. Yes, they wanted things. Stuff. But it was more than that. This season brought them joy that went beyond baby Jesus and toys. Maybe it was the snow. The food. The cheerfulness. There was some sort of magic at work here that Fish couldn’t grasp -- and didn’t fully hold with. Look at these children. They loved this time of year more than their own birthdays. Gifts were given on both occasions. Maybe it was the exchange? The act of giving? Ah, horseshit.
Goodwill toward men.
Well, Fish knew what that meant. He’d followed that creed every day of his life. Didn’t always succeed, but he gave it his best shot. Now, here he sat, alone, all those he’d loved -- and who’d loved him -- lost, gone, dead. They would not come back. Ghosts, even the least malevolent, were for suckers. Goddamn, Miller, how I wish you was a ghost. Jordan too. Do you know I’d go back? Hell yes, I would. To the death and the blood and the rising dust and the horror…what have I now, this instant, the only one left, and yes, goddamn I feel so alone right now…
Fish began to weep.
“He has lost so much.” said Fowler, looking through the window.
“Yes. His life had been bittersweet.” said Mother, peering in as well. “But is this not the way of all human life?”
“It is, I suppose.” said Fowler.
“Quite sad, they are.”
“This is my fault,” said Fowler. “I brought him to this.”
“You did not create the storms, or the drought. It was human error that brought all this about.” said Mother.
“But I fed it.” said Fowler. “It was my doing that his friend’s wife was taken.” He turned away, disgusted with himself.
“Listen,” said Mother. Off in the distance, carolers were softly singing ‘Silent Night.’
“It’s beautiful.” whispered Fowler.
“Yes. It is.” replied Mother. “And it’s neither our fault nor our responsibility. Not our blame nor credit, any of this.”
“We aren’t really a part of this, really, are we? I mean, we don’t belong. You or I.”
“No. If we did belong, we would be the better for it.”
Fowler thought for a moment. “I must give up this life. Go home. Retire. Die. Whatever you want to call it. Cease to be. I’m tired of it all, Mother.”
“Do you feel sick?”
“Yes.”
“So do I. It is perhaps time for us to cease.”
“I’m ready. I’ve been ready, I think, from the beginning.”
“Look, then. The Bridge is back.” Mother pointed to the stone bridge, where they’d met many time before. It came into being beyond a children’s playground. “Let us walk the path together this last time.”
“I’m afraid.” said Fowler.
“I will take your hand.” said Mother. And he did. They walked to the bridge and, in the middle, the stones cracked and broke, trees fell, thunder burst, and they fell into the stream, where both drowned, their bodies disappearing, fading away from the memory of this world. They could never die, since they had never been born, but their essence dissipated and they became lost until the world broke again upon itself, but they were altered and not the same as they were before.
Fish walked over to his Christmas tree. He straightened an angel that was dangling awry. He was an old man, and this holiday -- as all holidays -- meant little, if anything, to him. He would be glad when it was over. He would be sorry when it was over. He would feel relief, as many did. He would not look forward to the next December 25th. He was still, in his way, in love with the world, but more than ready to walk out the door, his bill paid in full, tip his hat, leave all his experience behind, and enter the darkness. He had no loved ones left, no one to love him. He was completely alone. Even though he was used to this now, at his age, it hurt more than ever. He was no longer needed. It was easy and liberating to be alone, in many ways. But to not be needed by anyone. Fish looked at his front door. He should just open it and begin to walk through the snow until he fell. Instead, he went into the kitchen, poured another cup of coffee, sat down in his chair and looked at his tree.
This, he thought, should belong to someone else. Someone who cared, who could enjoy it. The fire blazed on, as did his thoughts. He fell asleep in his chair and, to his surprise, woke up on Christmas morning. No ribbons, no bows. No one left to give a shit about him. He got up out of his chair, stretched. It occurred to him that it was not over. Not by a long shot. No, it was beginning all over again. New Year’s Eve, he thought. A brand new goddamn year. Well, wasn‘t that just a wonder?
Christ Almighty, thought Fish. Is there no end? No end at all?
“Merry Christmas,” he said, as the snow fell in large, unheeding flakes. He heard a tinkling sound from the direction of his tree. One of the old bells had jingled. He walked toward the tree. It jingled again, merrily. Fish grinned. “Same to you, Miller, you old fart.” Another bell sang out. Then another. Soon, a chorus awoke and Fish was treated to his very own Carol of the Bells.
Fish then realized that the best gifts come in small packages, and were unexpected. What next? The sound of reindeer hooves on the roof? As the music of the bells dwindled, he went to the kitchen for fresh coffee. He looked out the window. The snow was falling harder, and sticking. His small yard was covered in white. He took his cup, opened the door and walked outside. He stood still in the snow, as if carved from a bas relief from centuries ago, letting the snow pile upon him, flake by flake. It felt peaceful.
Inside, the insistent tinkling of the bells called to him. He didn’t listen. The bells begged, shaking the already arthritic tree. Needles flew off in all directions. Still, Fish didn’t listen. Not to the bells, not to Miller. Not this time. He dropped his coffee cup, the warm, brown liquid staining and melting the snow, before that hole was filled in again. Fish walked away, away from his home, his town, and Miller’s impotent cries. He walked for three days and three nights.
He had no next of kin.
In a modest house near Parkersburg, West Virginia, a Christmas tree stood in the far corner of a cozy living room. It was live tree, though it wasn’t very large. It was strung with electric lights -- not the sort that blink off and on. He never cared much for those, although he thought they could be pretty. Just not on his tree. The lights on his tree were all “white.” Meaning that slightly off-amber glow that isn’t quite yellow, but not wholly white as the snow that fell outside the window. The tree had few ornaments. There were a few angel figurines and some old brass bells that dangled from the branches, a couple of small picture frames, but that was about it. Still, the tree seemed full, at least to him, and that was all that mattered. A wreath hung outside his front door made up the rest of his Yule decorations.
The man picked up a small log from the long box next to his fireplace, knelt down, used it to move the embers round, then tossed it in. He stood up slowly, for he was old. At eighty-seven, Fish stared at the fire. He briefly thought of the burning of the pile of jackrabbit carcasses conjured from the long, misty and hagridden past. He didn’t usually ponder such nightmares. They’d died along with everything else too many years ago for his often confused and tormented mind to apprehend. Everyone else he’d know from those dear, terrible, and wonderful days had died as well. His best friend, Miller Tate, had just gone to sleep a week after Miller’s boy, Jordan, had been killed in a car accident. Wasn’t Jordan’s fault. That boy had survived so much, grown into a man, only to get broadsided by some drunk running a red light. Fish reckoned Miller’s heart just couldn’t take no more. Miller was old, though not as old as Fish. Miller was strong. Hardiest man Fish ever knew. Fish reckoned Miller just done give up, and so disappeared the last of the brave, Viking-like Tate’s. Too many battles, scars running deep into the marrow, no time nor salve could heal.
Fish carried the same wounds. Well, Miller’s ran fouler. But Fish had been there. He’d felt each cut, every loss. All the dancing spider’s of sorrow. Yeah, Fish remembered being caught in that same damned web. Sonofabitch. How the hell any of them escaped he couldn’t quite remember. Must a been a few miracles still floating about back in them times. He coughed, walked to the fireplace, and spat a tiny wad of dark phlegm into the flame. It hissed. He still carried a remnant of the brown plague. Small one. Just another reminder, so he wouldn’t never forget. He forgot much in these tired days, most of it for the best. He had good days, and bad ones. Still, he lived on his own, never having no kin, and he walked steady. Never really came near to stumbling. Gaunt as ever, his body was surprisingly healthy for his age. Never needed a cane and took no medicine. Like a handful of shit pills gonna make no difference now, he told his first and only doctor. Fish figured he’d die when his name was called. He figured that would be soon enough. He hoped so. He wanted to step off the face of this world before his mind sank too far into the bottomless shit of madness, where he couldn’t remember anything. Or worse, where shadows split apart in his head, wielding cutting instruments, severing the connections that made his reality his own. His. By God. No murmuring of some jumbled past for him. Nor only living moment to moment, recalling nothin’ that he’d previously owned. He wouldn’t have that. He’d go to hell before he had hell come knocking on his door in that manner.
Fish strode into the kitchen, where he’d set a pot of coffee going. Even though it was late, it didn’t keep him awake. He poured a cup and took it back to the living room. He looked at his tree. He couldn’t help thinking this would be his last one. But he thought the same last year, and the year before. He liked his tree, he guessed. Wasn’t sure why. He’d never been the festive type. Just seemed…not the right thing to do, but a true thing to do. Just one of many discovered truths. And it was only done for him. He wasn’t lighting a tree for the good Christ’s birthday. Hell, Fish couldn’t recall his own birthday. He’d been in many a church, but not for reasons of holding a bible and singing psalms, nor praying, nor listening to some preacher spouting off for half a day. Miller was the one who took the Bible seriously, or at least tried his best to live his life according to that book. Miller was always calling Fish out for blasphemy. Fish had tried to read the Bible. He was never much of a reader anyhow and when he came to all those damned “begats,” he put the book down and never opened it again. He’d never prayed a day in his life. He’d watched the others fall to their knees in supplication, groaning for the good lord’s deliverance. Then he watched them die. One by one. Miller was the last. It was all superstition to him, and him unread and, quite often, unreasonable. It was the only thing he and Miller had ever argued over.
Oh well.
Fish sat in a chair by the fire. He sipped his lukewarm coffee. Didn’t much matter to him. He never did get used to comforts. Never much a part of his life. He stared into the fire. He looked at his lit tree and, for a moment, thought to pick it up and throw it out the door. I mean, what the hell?
But he left it alone. Didn’t hurt nothin‘. Didn’t really help, neither. Just was. A late habit he’d picked up, for reasons unclear to him. He got up and tossed another small log into the fire. Lately, he’d taken to getting cold. A damned chill seemed to follow him around like an old hound, growling at his ankles. He’d tried to shake it off, but the damned thing had some sharp teeth. The hell. Let it bite. He had plenty of wood. He chopped it his own self. This made him smile. He had neighbors who used to offer to help him out with this chore or that. They soon learned not to come round again. Fish didn’t need no help. Day he did was the day he died.
Christmas. A holy day for some, a season of charm and joy to others. Goodwill toward men and whatnot. Carols. Good King What’s his name. Fish didn’t mind these songs. Some of them he actually liked. Some made him happy, for no reason he could explain. Like “Carol of the Bells.” Or “I Wonder As I Wander.” Even “Silent Night. He preferred the melody without the words. The truth is, Fish didn’t understand Christmas. He never had, even as a lad. Yes, the gifts were few and small. He reckoned it meant something to him because he saw happier people, for the most part. Least happier children. Yes, they wanted things. Stuff. But it was more than that. This season brought them joy that went beyond baby Jesus and toys. Maybe it was the snow. The food. The cheerfulness. There was some sort of magic at work here that Fish couldn’t grasp -- and didn’t fully hold with. Look at these children. They loved this time of year more than their own birthdays. Gifts were given on both occasions. Maybe it was the exchange? The act of giving? Ah, horseshit.
Goodwill toward men.
Well, Fish knew what that meant. He’d followed that creed every day of his life. Didn’t always succeed, but he gave it his best shot. Now, here he sat, alone, all those he’d loved -- and who’d loved him -- lost, gone, dead. They would not come back. Ghosts, even the least malevolent, were for suckers. Goddamn, Miller, how I wish you was a ghost. Jordan too. Do you know I’d go back? Hell yes, I would. To the death and the blood and the rising dust and the horror…what have I now, this instant, the only one left, and yes, goddamn I feel so alone right now…
Fish began to weep.
“He has lost so much.” said Fowler, looking through the window.
“Yes. His life had been bittersweet.” said Mother, peering in as well. “But is this not the way of all human life?”
“It is, I suppose.” said Fowler.
“Quite sad, they are.”
“This is my fault,” said Fowler. “I brought him to this.”
“You did not create the storms, or the drought. It was human error that brought all this about.” said Mother.
“But I fed it.” said Fowler. “It was my doing that his friend’s wife was taken.” He turned away, disgusted with himself.
“Listen,” said Mother. Off in the distance, carolers were softly singing ‘Silent Night.’
“It’s beautiful.” whispered Fowler.
“Yes. It is.” replied Mother. “And it’s neither our fault nor our responsibility. Not our blame nor credit, any of this.”
“We aren’t really a part of this, really, are we? I mean, we don’t belong. You or I.”
“No. If we did belong, we would be the better for it.”
Fowler thought for a moment. “I must give up this life. Go home. Retire. Die. Whatever you want to call it. Cease to be. I’m tired of it all, Mother.”
“Do you feel sick?”
“Yes.”
“So do I. It is perhaps time for us to cease.”
“I’m ready. I’ve been ready, I think, from the beginning.”
“Look, then. The Bridge is back.” Mother pointed to the stone bridge, where they’d met many time before. It came into being beyond a children’s playground. “Let us walk the path together this last time.”
“I’m afraid.” said Fowler.
“I will take your hand.” said Mother. And he did. They walked to the bridge and, in the middle, the stones cracked and broke, trees fell, thunder burst, and they fell into the stream, where both drowned, their bodies disappearing, fading away from the memory of this world. They could never die, since they had never been born, but their essence dissipated and they became lost until the world broke again upon itself, but they were altered and not the same as they were before.
Fish walked over to his Christmas tree. He straightened an angel that was dangling awry. He was an old man, and this holiday -- as all holidays -- meant little, if anything, to him. He would be glad when it was over. He would be sorry when it was over. He would feel relief, as many did. He would not look forward to the next December 25th. He was still, in his way, in love with the world, but more than ready to walk out the door, his bill paid in full, tip his hat, leave all his experience behind, and enter the darkness. He had no loved ones left, no one to love him. He was completely alone. Even though he was used to this now, at his age, it hurt more than ever. He was no longer needed. It was easy and liberating to be alone, in many ways. But to not be needed by anyone. Fish looked at his front door. He should just open it and begin to walk through the snow until he fell. Instead, he went into the kitchen, poured another cup of coffee, sat down in his chair and looked at his tree.
This, he thought, should belong to someone else. Someone who cared, who could enjoy it. The fire blazed on, as did his thoughts. He fell asleep in his chair and, to his surprise, woke up on Christmas morning. No ribbons, no bows. No one left to give a shit about him. He got up out of his chair, stretched. It occurred to him that it was not over. Not by a long shot. No, it was beginning all over again. New Year’s Eve, he thought. A brand new goddamn year. Well, wasn‘t that just a wonder?
Christ Almighty, thought Fish. Is there no end? No end at all?
“Merry Christmas,” he said, as the snow fell in large, unheeding flakes. He heard a tinkling sound from the direction of his tree. One of the old bells had jingled. He walked toward the tree. It jingled again, merrily. Fish grinned. “Same to you, Miller, you old fart.” Another bell sang out. Then another. Soon, a chorus awoke and Fish was treated to his very own Carol of the Bells.
Fish then realized that the best gifts come in small packages, and were unexpected. What next? The sound of reindeer hooves on the roof? As the music of the bells dwindled, he went to the kitchen for fresh coffee. He looked out the window. The snow was falling harder, and sticking. His small yard was covered in white. He took his cup, opened the door and walked outside. He stood still in the snow, as if carved from a bas relief from centuries ago, letting the snow pile upon him, flake by flake. It felt peaceful.
Inside, the insistent tinkling of the bells called to him. He didn’t listen. The bells begged, shaking the already arthritic tree. Needles flew off in all directions. Still, Fish didn’t listen. Not to the bells, not to Miller. Not this time. He dropped his coffee cup, the warm, brown liquid staining and melting the snow, before that hole was filled in again. Fish walked away, away from his home, his town, and Miller’s impotent cries. He walked for three days and three nights.
He had no next of kin.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Carol of the Silent Bells
This morning, as I walked through the streets, admiring the window displays on Christmas eve, I met the strangest man ever to live here. I should rather more properly say appeared here, since I’d never seen him before and he disappeared the next day with no trace of having ever visited, let alone lived all his life in town, as he’d confessed. It’s a very small town in rural West Virginia, well out of the way of any major highway or interstate. It’s the kind of town where everybody knows everybody else. Or, at the very least, has certainly heard of everyone else. This would have been especially true of Dr. Irving Koap. He’d have been hard to miss by anyone, although I’ve lived here most of my life and just, as I say, made his acquaintance today.
It was snowing slightly, enough to make walking outdoors pleasant, but with no wind to give it access to your face. The sky was overcast, covered in marbled clouds, but it wasn’t dark, like the ominous bleakness that the last three days of cold rain pronounced upon us. I don’t much leave my own house these days, except to run errands and do a little shopping. I have lived alone these past twenty years, and now share a place with two cats. At fifty-six, and retired, I live a small life. I don’t have much. No vehicle, no mortgage, no credit cards, very little stuff. My personal bric-a-brak consists in some art from friends, a few toys I’ve collected, a smattering of porcelain rabbits that belonged to my mother, and lots of books. I have family here, whom I rarely see, and one or two friends. I’m rather a hermit. It took me a while to get used to this sort of life, but once I found the peace in it, I knew I could live no other way. I won’t say I don’t get lonely. I do feel alone, even abandoned at times. Depressed, as well. But this hell is impermanent. It passes. I don’t require much to get by.
Though I don’t stay up late anymore, I’m not a morning person. I wake, hoist my creaking joints out of bed, tend to the cats, then make coffee. I check my email, most of which is spam, have a look round Face Book to what my far-off friends are up to, check news and weather. Sometimes I make breakfast, but most often I’m not hungry till around noon -- and sometimes not even then. I spend most of the day in a t-shirt and/or sweater, and, in cold weather, wearing flannel pajama pants. I shave about once a week. I am not a healthy man these days. I live in constant pain from a herniated disc for which, apparently, there is no cure or respite. I have terrible panic attacks. I suffer from agoraphobia, and have -- off and on -- since childhood. Lately, sciatica has been added to the mix. It’s getting more difficult for me to get about. I take a daily regimen of far too many pills. I smoke and drink too much, I know, but let that be, I beg you. Quite often, I will make a second pot of coffee before showering, getting dressed, then heading out into the “real” world to see what all that particular fuss is about. It usually amount to nothing more than more traffic than usual, or a long line at the Dollar Store where I purchase cat food and litter.
Some days I do not venture out into the town, although I live right on its doorstep, so to speak. My small apartment is smack dab in the middle of town. I can see most of it through my kitchen window, which needs cleaning by the way. The cats love to sit on the windowsill and dream of catching birds. Sometimes, they just seemed to be people watching. I used to do that, decades ago. Now, I’m rarely interested. The harried, hurried lives of others is in direct opposition to my own stagnant day.
This particular morning, however, I got a “wild hair” as they say around these parts, had only two cups of coffee -- the horror! -- and braved the front door early. The city crew had put up the Christmas decorations and they were in full bloom. The shops, mostly consignment and antique/folk art storefronts, were also decked out in their finest, as was the corner deli, which has the best coffee in town. It was all very pretty, I’d thought, looking out my kitchen window. But when I actually got on the sidewalk and peered around, I changed my mind. Not pretty. Beautiful. Like a pretty girl. Hey, I’m old, but not above looking and lamenting a past long lost to me. I wondered as I wandered, looking in the windows. So many curious and unique things! I supposed I should do my usual meager Christmas shopping, although I dreaded the annual exchange of gifts at my brother’s house. I had little to give, and could no longer afford to purchase gifts, even small ones, for everyone present. Even there, where I used to feel at home the most, I felt like an outsider. An odd bystander. The uncle in the way. A burden. Hell, I was enough of a burden to myself -- I didn’t need to become one for anybody else.
So there I was, gazing into one of my favorite windows, no matter the season: Hughes Jewelry, an old family owned business passed down through the generations. The current owner was a friend of mine, and one of the last certified horologists anywhere. It’s a lost art in this superficial digital age. Most people don’t even own clocks now, and when they want to know the time, they look at their damned iPhones. I wear an analog watch. My house is full of clocks. They are all cheap, but one, which was a gift from my father -- an old wind-up chiming mantle clock that was over one hundred years old. I am not a child of the digital age. I permit only analog clocks in my home. Yes, I have a cell phone: it’s nothing fancy. It rings. Not often, but maybe twice a week. That’s enough for me. But Steve’s window, out of all of them, was always the best in town. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, clocks, Faberge eggs, all arrayed to catch -- not your eye, really -- but your imagination. To go inside was to be in clock heaven. Steve still repaired clocks -- real clocks, not the fake ones -- and his handiwork covered the walls. God, I loved the place! The chiming of the quarter hour…who remembers that now? Maybe this will all soon be another remembrance from better days past. But I have to believe, for my own sanity, for my own sake of the beauty and ingenuity of the human mind and hand, that this is forever. Real time being told, not merely casually glanced at. It’s got to outlive me, or this town, and one of my lingering loves, dies. The Holy should always remain. ticking with intricate gears and brass mechanisms. These are the numinous machines; all else is plastic and pathetic and unreal.
On this occasion, I did not go inside. I probably would have done, just to say “hullo,” and stare for hours at the hours, mesmerized, but it was just at that point that I was jostled.
“Oh, Hullo. Sorry, Michael. Wasn’t watching where I was going, then, was I?” He chuckled as he patted me on the shoulder. I smiled back, wondering who in the hell this guy was, and how he knew my name. He was of average height and weight. He might have been indistinguishable from any other citizen, except for the top hat. Never seen that before. I, myself, wore a black bowler, and had know some fedora’s, but a top hat? White cotton curls eked from under the brim. He sported a white mustache and goatee. And he wore a tie. Ties were not so usual in this town, except, when duty called, by professional folk. It was a casual town. Even our bankers went about their business with dress shirts, unbuttoned at the top. Often with blue jeans.
“No problem,” I said, looking him up and down, while a dusting of snow accumulated on his top hat. “I’m sorry. I hate to be so direct, but…well, no I don’t. I’m honest about it. I don’t know you. Or don’t remember you.”
He laughed. “Don’t remember me? Oh, dear. How awkward.”
“I swear I don’t. Although, I admit my memory is not what it used to be. Did we go to school somewhere together?”
“Did we…” He looked at me in disbelief. “Michael Titus. Man now, but I knew you as a lad! We were best friends. I knew your parents. Many a meal I’ve had sat at your mother’s table. I will never forget that meatloaf.”
“I still don’t…” I began.
“Oh, pish tosh.” He said. “It’s me! Irving. Irving Koap. Now Dr. Irving Koap.”
“Again, I’m sorry. I don’t know that name. Did you just move here?” I was trying to be as charitable as I could.
“Oh dear.” He put a palm against my forehead. For some reason, I didn’t flinch. “No fever. That’s good. Michael. Mikey. I’ve live here all my life.”
Well, I reckon you can imagine my surprise at hearing this. I mean, I’d lived here most of my life, with a few years away in Huntington and Charleston. But I moved back here from Huntington sixteen years ago. I remembered this town when it was full of working people. I remembered the soda fountain at Staats. The Toggery Shop. Morrison’s. The Spencer Department Store. Hecks. The Coney Island. The Green Lantern. DeGruyter’s Jewelry. The old, beautiful courthouse, before it was torn town and an insane square box put up in its place. The State Hospital -- the longest continuous brick structure on the east coast. Phillip’s. Bobby’s Gas Station. Tanner’s Crossroads. Aldo’s. The hippie co-op. G. C. Murphy’s. My best pals, Clay, David, Jerry, Charlie and Mark. I could not deconstruct this old man’s face to fit any of them. He was lost in the ever-changing foam of time. Was I losing my mind, or was this odd fellow having a huge joke at my expense?
He must have guessed what I was thinking. “I know it must be hard, Mikey,” he said. “Come with me. I live right here in town, same as you. I’ll show you.”
The worst, and best, thing you could say about me is that I’m intensely curious. At my best, fearless. I felt no terror from this man, whoever he might be, angel or demon -- although I believed in neither. But I had to know. He winked at me, turned and walked down the street. I followed. Somehow, I knew that he knew I was right behind him.
It was the shortest, and longest walk I ever took. It was the longest, because my mind whirled like the gears in Steve Hughes’ shop, as I pondered how this man did not appear in the sweet, resonant faces of my childhood buddies; it was the shortest because his own apartment was indeed in town, not far from my own, on street level, in a converted shop front. There was a single door, a chair posted outside. He would later tell me that he often sat there and people watched, same as my cats. He opened the door -- it was not locked (he later explained that he never locked his door, as there was no reason to) -- and bid me enter.
His apartment was small and simple, like mine. A living room with two chairs and a tattered loveseat, bathroom, bedroom, tiny kitchen. As a matter of fact, my own place seemed a mansion compared to his. He nodded to a chair. I sat. He went into the kitchen to make coffee, which I reckoned was just about all he could do in there. He had no refrigerator. No toaster. No microwave. Just a coffee maker and a few canisters. I saw one Mason jar. But there was a sink, at least. He drew water from the faucet, scooped some coffee from the Mason jar, filled the coffee maker, the returned and took the chair opposite me.
“You still do not remember you, do you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve been trying.”
“You’ve been trying too hard. You always did,” he said with a sigh. “Oh. Sorry about your health problems, by the way. I have my own. Don’t we all, at our age?”
“Yeah. But that’s now. Who are you?”
“Hah,” he said. “Coffee’s ready. Wasn’t that quick?” I thought so. He brought two cups in, no cream nor sugar. “I know you take yours black, as do I.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said, as I took a sip of the liquid life. It was perfect.
“No. No, I haven’t.” He seemed lost in thought. “I don’t think you’ll believe my explanation. I believe you might think I’m lying to you. But I swear I’m not. I would never.”
“I know all the doctors in this town,” I said. “But I don’t know the name Koap. And I’ve never had a friend name Irving. I’m not that far gone. Not yet.” I sipped coffee. “So, unless I’ve gone insane, you must understand my skepticism.”
“Oh, I do. Most certainly I do, Mikey.” he said. “You must try to understand. I do not live in linear time.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You understand the concept?”
“Of course. I’ve always been a scientist of sorts. In my own bizarre way.”
“My life,” he explained, “is non-linear. I wanted to tell you as a boy, but then you wouldn’t have grasped the concept. You hadn’t even begun to read science fiction then. You were so fond of mystery stories, faerie tales, Doc Savage.”
“So?”
He sighed, put his coffee cup on the table between us. “You were a haunted, hunted boy. At one point you thought you were cursed.”
“I only told my mother that!” I cried.
“No. You told us all. Remember the barn on Simmons Street?”
“Yes,” I replied, with some hesitation.
“You weren’t supposed to go there, but you did. With her.”
“Clay? Only Clay knew about that!” I stood up, startled, spilling my coffee. Koap didn’t seem to notice the mess I’d made.
“Oh, sit down, Mikey. I know all your adventures.” I sat, slowly sinking back into the chair. I waited, trembling.
“Clay, her eating dirt in front of your house. You and David in so many contests, in an attempt to prove something meaningless. David and you, deeply in love with each other. How his older brother’s tormented you, but you bore it out of love for David. Your heart breaking when he moved away. Then you and Jerry crossing that rattling bridge to their farm. Two tiny Tarzan’s swinging on grape vines. Running from the bull on the Carper’s land. Jerry’s ‘lab’ in his grandparent’s house, the time he saved you by pulling the plug from the electric razor you’d taken apart after you’d stuck a screwdriver in its exposed guts. You spending night’s at Charlie’s house -- how you love that house and how you loved him -- never having the slightest idea he’d kill himself when he grew up oh jesus, you and Mark and Byron playing Vikings on the hillside where the hospital would later be built, where the Three Trees stood, and there you bowed down for the first and last time, and then worshipping Big Lou in the basement and Major Matt Mason in the bedroom and then later you’d fall in love with his sister, because you’d never recognized female beauty before, and just to hold her hand was almost more than you could bear and in your own backyard that one glorious day, when she lay beneath the apple tree and the fragrant white blossoms fell about her golden hair, you were forever lost, a hopeless boy in a world that was passing you by and after that you never believed in angels again oh christ you’d do anything to just hold her in your arms you stupid bastard just to hug that girl and breathe in the honey scent of her hair”
“Shut up! Shut your goddamned mouth. I’ve heard enough, you sonofabitch! Who, or what the hell are you?” I stood with clenched fists, my face blanched with these truths.
“Sit. Sit, Mikey. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get so carried away with the truth. It was never my intention to harm you.”
“Yeah. Just bring up dear memories and cut me with them. You might as well have just done my autopsy, you shit, while I’m still alive!” I was furious. If I could find it in my nature, I’d kill this man.
“You still don’t get it.”
“What is there to get, except the hell away from you?” I cried.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve gone about this the wrong way. I always do. Don’t you know? I was all those you knew and loved. I told you I do not exist in linear time, as do you, and all whom you know. I was Clay, Davey, Charlie, Jerry, Mark, Jill -- and all the rest. I was drawn to you because you seemed so lost, so alone, so sad. You needed me. I needed you.
We had to be together, in all the incarnations. Remember when you father said “Mike has only one friend at a time?” I did. “He was right. He opened the door for me to fill all the faces the many hearts and souls you’ve loved so dearly over the years. Do you see it now?”
“You were all of them.” I said, crumpling into the chair again. “Why?” I asked. “Why the long deception?”
Koap rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t really know. You needed the same thing I did. A grand childhood. And then after, love. What else is there for any of us?”
I pondered this. Thinking back, looking back with my heart engaged in the process, it seemed plausible. Even probable. But it also frightened me. I felt manipulated to some extent. There was one thing I had to know before I left this man and walked home.
“Were you also Molly?” I asked, my voice breaking.
“No.” said Koap. “I couldn’t be. She was different.”
“How so?”
“All the others helped create your life. She saved yours. That’s beyond me. You were beyond me at that point. In your youth, a lad or lass wasn’t such a trouble. A new life is something I couldn’t even manage. You were on your own with her.”
“But it’s true then about the others?”
“Yes. But you must understand this: I were never playing a role. I was that lad, that lass. Heart and soul. Not a game. It was our brittle but magic life. And I, for one, give thanks for each and every moment.”
I stopped pacing in Koap’s apartment. I’d just become aware I was doing so. It was time for me to leave.
“If I come back tomorrow, will you still be here? Will you be known to the people of Spencer? I mean, if I asked around, since you‘ve been here all your life.”
“Known to some, unknown to others. Different names.” he said. “Reckon it depends who you ask about. Ask about Koap, you’ll get nothing. Don’t open up a can of worms, Mikey. Each in their time.” He smiled. I couldn’t tell if that was a happy or sad visage.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that’s just the way it was.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
“It’s likely,” said Koap. “I’ve always lived here. Can‘t guarantee anything, y‘know.”
I said my farewells and walked back to my own apartment. It was late now. I’d been out longer than I’d thought. It was dark and the shops were closed. I really wished Christmas meant more to me, like it did when I was younger. But I just couldn’t bring it back. There was much I wish I could bring back. But so do we all wish we could grant to this world.
I turned my key in the lock of my own apartment door, and was greeted by two vocal cats, and hearing Doak saying, “Can’t guarantee anything, y’know.” He was right. There was no guarantee. No promise. You were left with all you had gained. For me, it was two sweet cats, a reminder of Christmas pasts, and the loves I carry with me to this day. I’m old and broken now, but what the hell. Take the hand of a girl. It’s soft. It warms your heart, even if it’s far away. Merry Christmas.
As for me, even though tomorrow is Christmas day, I’m going back to look at the clocks, because they don’t just tell time, they sing it, in ways you’ll only understand when you are my age. I’m not old, except in body In my true heart, I’m a little boy, and all I want for Christmas is to begin again.
A tree, a train, a friend, a girl.
This morning, as I walked through the streets, admiring the window displays on Christmas eve, I met the strangest man ever to live here. I should rather more properly say appeared here, since I’d never seen him before and he disappeared the next day with no trace of having ever visited, let alone lived all his life in town, as he’d confessed. It’s a very small town in rural West Virginia, well out of the way of any major highway or interstate. It’s the kind of town where everybody knows everybody else. Or, at the very least, has certainly heard of everyone else. This would have been especially true of Dr. Irving Koap. He’d have been hard to miss by anyone, although I’ve lived here most of my life and just, as I say, made his acquaintance today.
It was snowing slightly, enough to make walking outdoors pleasant, but with no wind to give it access to your face. The sky was overcast, covered in marbled clouds, but it wasn’t dark, like the ominous bleakness that the last three days of cold rain pronounced upon us. I don’t much leave my own house these days, except to run errands and do a little shopping. I have lived alone these past twenty years, and now share a place with two cats. At fifty-six, and retired, I live a small life. I don’t have much. No vehicle, no mortgage, no credit cards, very little stuff. My personal bric-a-brak consists in some art from friends, a few toys I’ve collected, a smattering of porcelain rabbits that belonged to my mother, and lots of books. I have family here, whom I rarely see, and one or two friends. I’m rather a hermit. It took me a while to get used to this sort of life, but once I found the peace in it, I knew I could live no other way. I won’t say I don’t get lonely. I do feel alone, even abandoned at times. Depressed, as well. But this hell is impermanent. It passes. I don’t require much to get by.
Though I don’t stay up late anymore, I’m not a morning person. I wake, hoist my creaking joints out of bed, tend to the cats, then make coffee. I check my email, most of which is spam, have a look round Face Book to what my far-off friends are up to, check news and weather. Sometimes I make breakfast, but most often I’m not hungry till around noon -- and sometimes not even then. I spend most of the day in a t-shirt and/or sweater, and, in cold weather, wearing flannel pajama pants. I shave about once a week. I am not a healthy man these days. I live in constant pain from a herniated disc for which, apparently, there is no cure or respite. I have terrible panic attacks. I suffer from agoraphobia, and have -- off and on -- since childhood. Lately, sciatica has been added to the mix. It’s getting more difficult for me to get about. I take a daily regimen of far too many pills. I smoke and drink too much, I know, but let that be, I beg you. Quite often, I will make a second pot of coffee before showering, getting dressed, then heading out into the “real” world to see what all that particular fuss is about. It usually amount to nothing more than more traffic than usual, or a long line at the Dollar Store where I purchase cat food and litter.
Some days I do not venture out into the town, although I live right on its doorstep, so to speak. My small apartment is smack dab in the middle of town. I can see most of it through my kitchen window, which needs cleaning by the way. The cats love to sit on the windowsill and dream of catching birds. Sometimes, they just seemed to be people watching. I used to do that, decades ago. Now, I’m rarely interested. The harried, hurried lives of others is in direct opposition to my own stagnant day.
This particular morning, however, I got a “wild hair” as they say around these parts, had only two cups of coffee -- the horror! -- and braved the front door early. The city crew had put up the Christmas decorations and they were in full bloom. The shops, mostly consignment and antique/folk art storefronts, were also decked out in their finest, as was the corner deli, which has the best coffee in town. It was all very pretty, I’d thought, looking out my kitchen window. But when I actually got on the sidewalk and peered around, I changed my mind. Not pretty. Beautiful. Like a pretty girl. Hey, I’m old, but not above looking and lamenting a past long lost to me. I wondered as I wandered, looking in the windows. So many curious and unique things! I supposed I should do my usual meager Christmas shopping, although I dreaded the annual exchange of gifts at my brother’s house. I had little to give, and could no longer afford to purchase gifts, even small ones, for everyone present. Even there, where I used to feel at home the most, I felt like an outsider. An odd bystander. The uncle in the way. A burden. Hell, I was enough of a burden to myself -- I didn’t need to become one for anybody else.
So there I was, gazing into one of my favorite windows, no matter the season: Hughes Jewelry, an old family owned business passed down through the generations. The current owner was a friend of mine, and one of the last certified horologists anywhere. It’s a lost art in this superficial digital age. Most people don’t even own clocks now, and when they want to know the time, they look at their damned iPhones. I wear an analog watch. My house is full of clocks. They are all cheap, but one, which was a gift from my father -- an old wind-up chiming mantle clock that was over one hundred years old. I am not a child of the digital age. I permit only analog clocks in my home. Yes, I have a cell phone: it’s nothing fancy. It rings. Not often, but maybe twice a week. That’s enough for me. But Steve’s window, out of all of them, was always the best in town. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, clocks, Faberge eggs, all arrayed to catch -- not your eye, really -- but your imagination. To go inside was to be in clock heaven. Steve still repaired clocks -- real clocks, not the fake ones -- and his handiwork covered the walls. God, I loved the place! The chiming of the quarter hour…who remembers that now? Maybe this will all soon be another remembrance from better days past. But I have to believe, for my own sanity, for my own sake of the beauty and ingenuity of the human mind and hand, that this is forever. Real time being told, not merely casually glanced at. It’s got to outlive me, or this town, and one of my lingering loves, dies. The Holy should always remain. ticking with intricate gears and brass mechanisms. These are the numinous machines; all else is plastic and pathetic and unreal.
On this occasion, I did not go inside. I probably would have done, just to say “hullo,” and stare for hours at the hours, mesmerized, but it was just at that point that I was jostled.
“Oh, Hullo. Sorry, Michael. Wasn’t watching where I was going, then, was I?” He chuckled as he patted me on the shoulder. I smiled back, wondering who in the hell this guy was, and how he knew my name. He was of average height and weight. He might have been indistinguishable from any other citizen, except for the top hat. Never seen that before. I, myself, wore a black bowler, and had know some fedora’s, but a top hat? White cotton curls eked from under the brim. He sported a white mustache and goatee. And he wore a tie. Ties were not so usual in this town, except, when duty called, by professional folk. It was a casual town. Even our bankers went about their business with dress shirts, unbuttoned at the top. Often with blue jeans.
“No problem,” I said, looking him up and down, while a dusting of snow accumulated on his top hat. “I’m sorry. I hate to be so direct, but…well, no I don’t. I’m honest about it. I don’t know you. Or don’t remember you.”
He laughed. “Don’t remember me? Oh, dear. How awkward.”
“I swear I don’t. Although, I admit my memory is not what it used to be. Did we go to school somewhere together?”
“Did we…” He looked at me in disbelief. “Michael Titus. Man now, but I knew you as a lad! We were best friends. I knew your parents. Many a meal I’ve had sat at your mother’s table. I will never forget that meatloaf.”
“I still don’t…” I began.
“Oh, pish tosh.” He said. “It’s me! Irving. Irving Koap. Now Dr. Irving Koap.”
“Again, I’m sorry. I don’t know that name. Did you just move here?” I was trying to be as charitable as I could.
“Oh dear.” He put a palm against my forehead. For some reason, I didn’t flinch. “No fever. That’s good. Michael. Mikey. I’ve live here all my life.”
Well, I reckon you can imagine my surprise at hearing this. I mean, I’d lived here most of my life, with a few years away in Huntington and Charleston. But I moved back here from Huntington sixteen years ago. I remembered this town when it was full of working people. I remembered the soda fountain at Staats. The Toggery Shop. Morrison’s. The Spencer Department Store. Hecks. The Coney Island. The Green Lantern. DeGruyter’s Jewelry. The old, beautiful courthouse, before it was torn town and an insane square box put up in its place. The State Hospital -- the longest continuous brick structure on the east coast. Phillip’s. Bobby’s Gas Station. Tanner’s Crossroads. Aldo’s. The hippie co-op. G. C. Murphy’s. My best pals, Clay, David, Jerry, Charlie and Mark. I could not deconstruct this old man’s face to fit any of them. He was lost in the ever-changing foam of time. Was I losing my mind, or was this odd fellow having a huge joke at my expense?
He must have guessed what I was thinking. “I know it must be hard, Mikey,” he said. “Come with me. I live right here in town, same as you. I’ll show you.”
The worst, and best, thing you could say about me is that I’m intensely curious. At my best, fearless. I felt no terror from this man, whoever he might be, angel or demon -- although I believed in neither. But I had to know. He winked at me, turned and walked down the street. I followed. Somehow, I knew that he knew I was right behind him.
It was the shortest, and longest walk I ever took. It was the longest, because my mind whirled like the gears in Steve Hughes’ shop, as I pondered how this man did not appear in the sweet, resonant faces of my childhood buddies; it was the shortest because his own apartment was indeed in town, not far from my own, on street level, in a converted shop front. There was a single door, a chair posted outside. He would later tell me that he often sat there and people watched, same as my cats. He opened the door -- it was not locked (he later explained that he never locked his door, as there was no reason to) -- and bid me enter.
His apartment was small and simple, like mine. A living room with two chairs and a tattered loveseat, bathroom, bedroom, tiny kitchen. As a matter of fact, my own place seemed a mansion compared to his. He nodded to a chair. I sat. He went into the kitchen to make coffee, which I reckoned was just about all he could do in there. He had no refrigerator. No toaster. No microwave. Just a coffee maker and a few canisters. I saw one Mason jar. But there was a sink, at least. He drew water from the faucet, scooped some coffee from the Mason jar, filled the coffee maker, the returned and took the chair opposite me.
“You still do not remember you, do you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve been trying.”
“You’ve been trying too hard. You always did,” he said with a sigh. “Oh. Sorry about your health problems, by the way. I have my own. Don’t we all, at our age?”
“Yeah. But that’s now. Who are you?”
“Hah,” he said. “Coffee’s ready. Wasn’t that quick?” I thought so. He brought two cups in, no cream nor sugar. “I know you take yours black, as do I.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said, as I took a sip of the liquid life. It was perfect.
“No. No, I haven’t.” He seemed lost in thought. “I don’t think you’ll believe my explanation. I believe you might think I’m lying to you. But I swear I’m not. I would never.”
“I know all the doctors in this town,” I said. “But I don’t know the name Koap. And I’ve never had a friend name Irving. I’m not that far gone. Not yet.” I sipped coffee. “So, unless I’ve gone insane, you must understand my skepticism.”
“Oh, I do. Most certainly I do, Mikey.” he said. “You must try to understand. I do not live in linear time.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You understand the concept?”
“Of course. I’ve always been a scientist of sorts. In my own bizarre way.”
“My life,” he explained, “is non-linear. I wanted to tell you as a boy, but then you wouldn’t have grasped the concept. You hadn’t even begun to read science fiction then. You were so fond of mystery stories, faerie tales, Doc Savage.”
“So?”
He sighed, put his coffee cup on the table between us. “You were a haunted, hunted boy. At one point you thought you were cursed.”
“I only told my mother that!” I cried.
“No. You told us all. Remember the barn on Simmons Street?”
“Yes,” I replied, with some hesitation.
“You weren’t supposed to go there, but you did. With her.”
“Clay? Only Clay knew about that!” I stood up, startled, spilling my coffee. Koap didn’t seem to notice the mess I’d made.
“Oh, sit down, Mikey. I know all your adventures.” I sat, slowly sinking back into the chair. I waited, trembling.
“Clay, her eating dirt in front of your house. You and David in so many contests, in an attempt to prove something meaningless. David and you, deeply in love with each other. How his older brother’s tormented you, but you bore it out of love for David. Your heart breaking when he moved away. Then you and Jerry crossing that rattling bridge to their farm. Two tiny Tarzan’s swinging on grape vines. Running from the bull on the Carper’s land. Jerry’s ‘lab’ in his grandparent’s house, the time he saved you by pulling the plug from the electric razor you’d taken apart after you’d stuck a screwdriver in its exposed guts. You spending night’s at Charlie’s house -- how you love that house and how you loved him -- never having the slightest idea he’d kill himself when he grew up oh jesus, you and Mark and Byron playing Vikings on the hillside where the hospital would later be built, where the Three Trees stood, and there you bowed down for the first and last time, and then worshipping Big Lou in the basement and Major Matt Mason in the bedroom and then later you’d fall in love with his sister, because you’d never recognized female beauty before, and just to hold her hand was almost more than you could bear and in your own backyard that one glorious day, when she lay beneath the apple tree and the fragrant white blossoms fell about her golden hair, you were forever lost, a hopeless boy in a world that was passing you by and after that you never believed in angels again oh christ you’d do anything to just hold her in your arms you stupid bastard just to hug that girl and breathe in the honey scent of her hair”
“Shut up! Shut your goddamned mouth. I’ve heard enough, you sonofabitch! Who, or what the hell are you?” I stood with clenched fists, my face blanched with these truths.
“Sit. Sit, Mikey. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get so carried away with the truth. It was never my intention to harm you.”
“Yeah. Just bring up dear memories and cut me with them. You might as well have just done my autopsy, you shit, while I’m still alive!” I was furious. If I could find it in my nature, I’d kill this man.
“You still don’t get it.”
“What is there to get, except the hell away from you?” I cried.
“I’m so sorry. I’ve gone about this the wrong way. I always do. Don’t you know? I was all those you knew and loved. I told you I do not exist in linear time, as do you, and all whom you know. I was Clay, Davey, Charlie, Jerry, Mark, Jill -- and all the rest. I was drawn to you because you seemed so lost, so alone, so sad. You needed me. I needed you.
We had to be together, in all the incarnations. Remember when you father said “Mike has only one friend at a time?” I did. “He was right. He opened the door for me to fill all the faces the many hearts and souls you’ve loved so dearly over the years. Do you see it now?”
“You were all of them.” I said, crumpling into the chair again. “Why?” I asked. “Why the long deception?”
Koap rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t really know. You needed the same thing I did. A grand childhood. And then after, love. What else is there for any of us?”
I pondered this. Thinking back, looking back with my heart engaged in the process, it seemed plausible. Even probable. But it also frightened me. I felt manipulated to some extent. There was one thing I had to know before I left this man and walked home.
“Were you also Molly?” I asked, my voice breaking.
“No.” said Koap. “I couldn’t be. She was different.”
“How so?”
“All the others helped create your life. She saved yours. That’s beyond me. You were beyond me at that point. In your youth, a lad or lass wasn’t such a trouble. A new life is something I couldn’t even manage. You were on your own with her.”
“But it’s true then about the others?”
“Yes. But you must understand this: I were never playing a role. I was that lad, that lass. Heart and soul. Not a game. It was our brittle but magic life. And I, for one, give thanks for each and every moment.”
I stopped pacing in Koap’s apartment. I’d just become aware I was doing so. It was time for me to leave.
“If I come back tomorrow, will you still be here? Will you be known to the people of Spencer? I mean, if I asked around, since you‘ve been here all your life.”
“Known to some, unknown to others. Different names.” he said. “Reckon it depends who you ask about. Ask about Koap, you’ll get nothing. Don’t open up a can of worms, Mikey. Each in their time.” He smiled. I couldn’t tell if that was a happy or sad visage.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that’s just the way it was.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
“It’s likely,” said Koap. “I’ve always lived here. Can‘t guarantee anything, y‘know.”
I said my farewells and walked back to my own apartment. It was late now. I’d been out longer than I’d thought. It was dark and the shops were closed. I really wished Christmas meant more to me, like it did when I was younger. But I just couldn’t bring it back. There was much I wish I could bring back. But so do we all wish we could grant to this world.
I turned my key in the lock of my own apartment door, and was greeted by two vocal cats, and hearing Doak saying, “Can’t guarantee anything, y’know.” He was right. There was no guarantee. No promise. You were left with all you had gained. For me, it was two sweet cats, a reminder of Christmas pasts, and the loves I carry with me to this day. I’m old and broken now, but what the hell. Take the hand of a girl. It’s soft. It warms your heart, even if it’s far away. Merry Christmas.
As for me, even though tomorrow is Christmas day, I’m going back to look at the clocks, because they don’t just tell time, they sing it, in ways you’ll only understand when you are my age. I’m not old, except in body In my true heart, I’m a little boy, and all I want for Christmas is to begin again.
A tree, a train, a friend, a girl.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
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