shut-in

My grandmother would sit, as I do now, at least for a short while, as is the prognosis, at the storm door, looking outside, at nothing in particular and everything in general. What’s out there looks decidedly different when you’re in a wheelchair. Yesterday, I sat at a side window and stared at a patch of green grass in the side yard, the same side yard I’d ignored for the previous 10 months, with the blinds drawn and curtains closed. What struck me were two things: one, how that patch of heretofore scraggly, crabby grass could look so inviting. And, two: what great effort, how much time, it would take for me to get there, out there. I understand, too, better, now, the term shut-in. I don’t think we hear as much, anymore, about shut-ins. Perhaps they’ve been eclipsed by our concern for the homeless, and perhaps well considered so. My grandmother was a shut-in. She lost a leg to diabetes. She’d spend hours of her days in her bedroom, listening to ball games on the radio. She loved Rocky Colavito, the slugger for the Cleveland Indians with the movie-star good looks, who performed the sign of the cross before every at-bat. I think he made her feel a bit less forgotten, somehow, The Rock did. She'd always say, "Don't knock the Rock."

hit

I saw his eyes through the windshield. I think I saw fear, panic, though I’m not sure. Everything happened so fast. The car was there, back there, then it was on me. I still remember the sound of the impact. It was dull. Sort of hollow. Not a thud. Different. Then I was down. The next thing I saw was the car. Thirty feet ahead, stopped, engine running, still, exhaust pluming in the gray, misty afternoon. He took forever, it seemed, to exit the car and when he did, his face bore a look that seemed a cross between anger and terror. He was older, dressed in a suit. I felt badly for him. Imagine that. But I did. Everyone around was telling me to lie still. Hell, I wasn’t going anywhere.

our home

Our home wasn’t a very happy place, either. In fact, a sense of sadness pervaded it. At least that’s what I felt. Maybe it was all the religion. Father was all fire and brimstone and mother was only a step or two behind him. We didn’t laugh much, either. We wanted to, but it just didn’t happen much. At best, I guess you could say we were polite. I would’ve traded a little politeness for some knee-slapping rowdiness. The best times I remember was when I was outside, in the woods. It was open, there, not suffocating, like at home. I could breathe. My best friend was Max. His house was different. His father ran the local saloon. His mother worked there, too. Even Max helped out. He had good stories. He thought it was really weird that we didn’t laugh at our house. He said that’s about all they did. I was jealous, of course. I’d eat dinner over there whenever I could. It was fun. Max’s father ended up getting shot dead by a drunk. His mom stopped laughing for a good while. Turned out, later, that she’d been seeing the man who shot her husband. He went off to jail. She sold the bar. Max left town when he was 17. Later, he joined the army. I lost track of him, after that.

blissful

We lived in a small town in North Dakota – Blissful. It was named by a Lutheran minister named Hugo Hustenburgh who founded it with his wife and three children, when they put in for a few weeks on their way to the Cascades and Seattle. For some unknown reason, they never left. The minister died three years later. Rattlesnake bite. His wife went mad four years after that. Prairie craze, they called it back then. The constant whistle of the wind. Drove more than a few pioneers crazy. She put a gun to her head. The kids were teens, by then. They all up and left for northern Minnesota and mining country and within a year all ended up in jail, or worse. Back in the late ‘40s, when “Life” magazine was making a habit of naming places “all-American” cities and towns, a rumor swept through Blissful that our town was next in line. Mother, who knew how things went about in town, said that the city fathers burned more than a bit of midnight oil rewriting the city history. Never happened, though, the selection, so our history was never redone. Blissful wasn’t a happy place. It was more workmanlike. Stolid, but to a fault. The happiest person in town was Mazie Wilkes. She was the grade school teacher. She saved my life.

uncle jim

I learned later, much later, that Jim was my mother’s brother – my uncle. He’d gone off to the war and come home different, at least that’s how my mother explained it a few years after he disappeared – “different.” I never asked her why she never told us about him, before that summer. I wanted to, but everything happened so oddly that I never felt comfortable. I never asked my father, either. We didn’t ask him much. He was always wrapped up with something or the other, mostly to do with the church. I found out later, years later, that Jim, my uncle, had been a black sheep in the family, dating colored women and gambling and drinking and getting into fights, all the time. I told Nick, my best friend at school, about him, about him being in the war and all, and he said that Uncle Jim had probably killed a Jap or two and that that had changed him. Nick said his father’s cousin came home from the war different, too, because he had killed a man while looking him direct in the eyes. It must be a hard thing, killing someone, I guess, even if it’s war.

the visitor

He stayed with us one summer, in the spare bedroom overlooking the old oak tree. He walked with a bit of a limp and didn’t talk much. He had a dog named Old Joe and a worn, brown Bible that he left on his nightstand when he and Old Joe went for walks up the far side of the mountain. I didn’t talk much with him; I was too afraid. My mother said he was an outlaw, but I think she was joking. My father, who was an Episcopal preacher, would sit with him at night and discuss Deuteronomy. Once, at dinner, a Thursday night in July, I think, he asked me if I knew anything about the war. I told him we studied it in school and he said, “Then, you probably don’t.” He didn’t say it mean, he just said it matter of fact, but it came out kind of rough. My mother apologized for him, quietly, in a nice sort of way, like she did for others, sometimes. He left in the middle of the night, during a thunderstorm, was just gone, when everyone woke one morning. My mother didn’t make any excuses for him, that morning, she just cried, quietly, again. He never came back. I asked my mother, then, who he was, but she just shook her head, gently. All she would say was, “His name was Jim. Pray for him.” So, I did.

doomsayer

He is fond of saying “the revolution
is coming,” because
it
always does,
and
he is not convinced
it will be
bloodless,
because
it often isn’t, and he knows
it
will
be painful, because pain is
part of
the process.
some who dodged the
most recent financial “apocalypse”
fool themselves into
believing that the end
already came
and already
went, which is silly and
goes to show they
don’t know
the meaning of a simple word:
end.
hardly. that, anyway: that was simply
a
shot across
the
bow.

mother goose

the mother goose
hissed at the
passers-by, neck taut and
throbbing, protecting the four
goslings
sipping from the puddle behind
her, as a cool wind wafted in from
the
sound and a high sun
punctuated
the blue sky at the cross of
Weed
and
Waterbury streets. It
made one man
passing
miss his mother,
as was
the
design.

remembered

The baby bird lay, dead, in the middle of the asphalt driveway. It had fallen from its nest. He looked at the bird for a moment, studied it, watching the ants crawl across its body, then hustled the groceries into the house, left them on the snack bar, and went back outside, scooped up the bird with a piece of cardboard and deposited it beneath the shrubs near the garbage cans. It wasn’t much of a burial, but it was better, and he was reminded of the tiny bird he’d found, like this one, but alive, 25 years or so ago, when he lived in Detroit. That one was a baby starling, a bird almost as common as the ubiquitous pigeons, and he’d carefully taken it inside and they’d fed its yawning mouth with a medicine dropper for a day until someone’d come from animal control. He’d assured the children that the animal control officer would find it a home, but he knew better. He wondered, now, though, for a moment, if, indeed, the bird had lived to fly, at least once. He hoped so. Then, he went inside and put away the groceries.

gunslinger

He sits on the floor in the TV in the study of the neat, modest rented home three blocks from the U.S.-Mexican border. Madden football. Video game. He plays alone, Cowboys versus the Eagles, cell phone on the coffee table to the left. Cowboys lead, 34-17. The cell phone rings. He picks it up. Text message. He reads it, erases it, closes the phone, puts the game on hold, rises, walks to the closet, grabs his jacket and a 9mm Glock, the latter from the top shelf, back. He checks the magazine, then checks his watch. He has 15 minutes. His name is Jorge Leon Ruiz – a.k.a. Spyderbite. He’s 14 and he has his mark. He knows the target. It’s the one he’d suspected. He walks out into the night, now. It’s 72 degrees, with a slight, gusting breeze off the Gulf and a bright, oval moon. He grabs the road bike next to the garage. It’s his ride. This isn’t his first time; it’s his fourth. Fifty grand. Child’s pay. He’ll finish the game some other time. Tonight, he'll head back across the border to lie low for a few days.

the weight

He feels the weight. All the time. Pain would be easier, he thinks. Pain, he thinks, as he knows it, would ebb and flow. Jab, then release. This is different, ubiquitous, oppressive. When he walks he feels as though he’s slogging. When he runs, he feels as though he’s trying to push through something. And worse, he can’t. Like being in Jell-O, maybe, he thinks, in a lighter moment, a better moment. But the lighter moments are fewer and further between, lately. The best time is bedtime. Sleep brings relief. Morning is worst. Until he climbs out of bed. Then, it’s maybe better. But only maybe. His name is Roger and he misses his family. He misses his home. He misses what used to be. You might know him. You might see him and not know. He doesn’t want to tell you about any of this. He’s embarrassed by it. And that only makes it worse. He knows that. But there’s nothing he can do. That's how it works.

garage sales

I have pared my life to
about 15 boxes, max, and
a subcompact
hatchback’s worth of overflow, down,
appreciably,
from seven years ago and the holdings
of a four-bedroom home in the suburbs. I
vacillate between elation and its opposite. I
feel freed, yet still somehow tethered to that which I’ve
renounced, and a bit guilty about renouncing
it (that, them), such as
the brown and yellow scarf
knitted by a friend of a friend's friend, 13 years
ago.
It always is this way, in life, I suppose, except
that we usually don’t have
a choice,
which is way garage sales can
be so
liberating.
Time constantly holds garage sales
of (with?) our lives
without asking whether we want
to sell and how much
we’re willing to take for what
we're losing.
I like my way better. I like to be
the one deciding
whether to keep the rusty, dented Cleveland Browns
wastebasket, which
I did,
so far, at least,
by the way.

we're good

The woman in Boomer’s bed was up, now, showered, made up, dressed. She shimmied a bit, adjusting her sundress, pulled the pleats straight, looked up, studied her face in the mirror, one more time, wiped at her lipstick, wiped clean her teeth, pulled on a pair of dark, wrap-around sunglasses, checked the look, then pulled them off and hung them in the neckline of her dress. She went into the bedroom, pulled her cell phone from her purse. She had three messages. She listened to them all, then dialed one of the numbers. She didn’t wait to hear the voice on the other end. No need. She simply said: “We’re good.” Then, she hung up.

choices

One more time he thins the
holdings. This photo,
that one. This clip,
this column, this award, card,
letter,
memento.
Some stay, some go. What is left is
but
an outline,
a shadow,
a whisper of what
was.
But it will have to be
enough –
clues as to
what
was,
hints as to who were
where
when
and why.
A time capsule, for
some
later
time.
For some of them, maybe
not
all.

evergreen

They were sitting in a taverna in Evergreen, Colorado, when he said, “And we’ll live the way we want to live, not like anyone expects,” because that was the time, it was that time, and she said “Yes, we will.” But she was lying, then, or at the very least, agreeing to something she did not really want, she did not really feel. She didn’t want that sort of life. She wanted what everyone else wanted; she expected what everyone else expected. But she never told him. Had she, well, who knows? He might have walked away. Or he might have not. He might, instead, have tried to convince her that that’s what she wanted -- to be the iconoclast, the difference-maker, the idealist. For that was his way, unfortunately, too.

But for the time being, she went along with it all. It wasn’t that difficult, at least not immediately. He was gone, in the service, for a few more months, and she was engaged to a “nice guy.” It all seemed workable.

no's dive

A friend calls
It
The Black Hole. If you don’t have one,
Now, you will,
Someday, sorry to tell
U.
You can’t fill it in and you can’t just
Ignore it, she says.
You have to
Manage
It.
How is the question. It came to me, again,
Yesterday. More subtly, this time,
First time in a while.
I used to free fall.
A lot.
Regular occurrence.
Far, too, so. Worse, even,
I allowed others
To push me in.
Like I was
Wearing a “Push Me” sign on my back.
A fop.
A fool.
A penitent.
But I’ve learned
This:
If I’m headed in it will be on my doing.
It takes a while to understand that
Dynamic.
So, instead of
Letting them push
I sidestepped not the issue so much as
The blame, the acceding to fault.
This has nothing
To do with
Responsibility.
Taking.
Accepting.
Honoring.
That.

text love

IM, he suggested.
I know she answered.
No, IM he repeated.
We are, she replied.
Hmmmmm, he thought.
Welllllll, she answered.
You am, she joked.
I am? He wondered
Oh, I … M! she exclaimed.
You’re what?
He wondered.
This is 2 funny,
She wrote.
Why, too? He
Queried.
What else? He
Asked.
Was there a comma?
He worried.
Not when I IM, she said.
(Great, she stutters,
(He surmised.)
And for a moment
No one was,
Were, is or am.
Finally,
I love it when
You ’M, she wrote.
He shivered.
Bad English
Or was that M N
an Apostrophe?
Puzzled,
IM, he sighed.
Yes, you are,
She giggled.
And Im glad,
She said.

unmet, yet

It’s not her smile,
But the curious, little wrinkle
Of it.
Not her elegant hands, but the way she
Moves them.
Not her eyes, but how open
They are
To all sorts of things. It’s the
Things I see when I watch her
When she’s not seeing
Me.
The way she brushes the bangs
Of hair from her eyes. The way she bends
girlishly to fix the heel
Of her shoe.
The way she sees, watches,
Smiles at those
Who need to be smiled at.
She moves with a
Particular grace,
Of course,
And when she stumbles in any manner of ways,
Because she does,
That too,
She laughs at herself.
It’s not the way she writes, but
The way her mind works. The words,
The rhythm,
The pauses,
The climaxes.
The securities
And insecurities.
It’s not the view when she’s on top,
But the abandon and absolute, complete
Nakedness, there, without
A shred of abashedness.
A total
Surrender.
But not, too, also,
At the very
same time.
Honesty.
And
Truth.
Offered.
Given.
And when I finally meet her
she will say, perfectly, with a knowing smile:
“What took you so long?”

dividing duty

It was an interesting time. She focused on making the tiny house into a home, and she was very good at it. She had a nice touch about decorating, fixing things. She was good at selecting colors – wall papers, paints, bedding, wall hangings. He dove headlong into his work, for he was driven to being the bread-winner. It was a perfect division of duty, an arrangement that would allow their relationship to survive easy for at least 15 years, until he began to work from home. But for now, all was good.

To be fair, he wasn’t the easiest person with whom to live. The demons that beset him, well, he wouldn’t understand them until she left him. Indeed, he thought he’d escaped unscathed the dysfunction of his family. He hadn’t. Not by any means. Not that she saw that, either, though it was, of course, most important for him to see that, not her.

breakfast

She was done eating by the time he arrived. He sat, grabbed a cup for coffee, poured some, drank. She was busy reading the local paper. He wanted to look in her eyes and she flirted with that, too. Not with him, but with that. She teased him with that. It was her way of keeping things at some safe distance, for she did face this conundrum, and she knew it: if she allowed him too close, she might actually end up loving him. That was possible, she thought. If she kept him too far, he might leave, though she did know, too, that him being Catholic and being raised strictly so made that less of a gamble, less of a risk. So she leveraged that, too. She knew, quite coldly, that she could afford to be cooler than warmer.

waking

When he woke, the next morning, she was already up, already almost dressed. He lay in bed for a few moments, listening to the silence. They were at a small motel in upstate Wisconsin. It had snowed overnight – 16 inches – and, oddly, he thought, he felt the weight of the snow, not its lightness. He closed his eyes and made a pledge, to himself: he would make her love him, somehow convince her to love him. She entered the bedroom, now, came to the bed and sat near him. She told him she was heading downstairs to get coffee and said he should join her as soon as possible. He reached for her arm and tried to gently tug her into a hug, but she smiled and pulled away. Coffee, she said. And breakfast. She was hungry.

in line behind them

They stood at the WalMart pharmacy window, trying to pick up their $4 generic medicines. She was dressed like a flower girl, odd, perhaps, a bit, because she was in her late 70s. He was wearing a Yankees ball cap and Bermuda shorts hiked up over his waistline, cinched there by a green web belt. He looked to be in his 80s. She was arguing with the pharmacist. He said, “Let’s just go, then.” She said, to him, “Shut up.” She argued some more, now, with the pharmacist’s assistant. He said: “We’re never coming back here.” She said, to him, “Be quiet.” She argued some more with whomever would listen. This time he just said, “What?” A patron to the right said aloud and in full voice: “This has been going on for an hour, at least.” Neither of them – neither him nor her – heard. WalMart: Where America shops.

their life

To say that their love blossomed would be a lie. They settled into more of an exercise of détente. He later would struggle to remember happy times during those early years, but he would never distinguish them as disappointing. They were more like playing house, he would think. And as he would recall, too, her teasing coldness he took more as a challenge: he would make her love him, not because it was him, necessarily, but because he sensed that she wanted to love someone. He was wrong, as he would later see, on both accounts. It was because it was him. He needed to be loved. And, two, the other mistake: she had no desire to love anyone.