To allay the potential pearl clutching, I immediately took my hacksaw down and cut off the exposed rebar that tripped the visiting sister downstairs. They haven’t been here long enough to understand that the landlords won’t come to fix something like that. It’s on us and it’s usually me who does it. Part of the price of my free labor is that I get to perform practical jokes.
Maybe my doorframe guillotine was a bit too much. (I’m just kidding.)
I watched her fall. She already has an arm brace on her right arm. She was not looking down when she tripped, although her version of events tell it differently.
If I were a lawyer, here’s what I would say:
“Your contention is that you were looking down?”
“Yes.”
“That assertion strains credibility. For if you were indeed looking down, it’s only logical to conclude that you saw the obstruction and stepped under it anyway.”
Visiting nieces and nephews watched me walk down the stairs with my chalk. When they realized what I was writing, they burst out laughing. The niece asked me to sign it with. “-R,” as all of them have names that begin with that letter.
The sister who fell already has a reputation for inattentiveness. The arm brace that preceded the fall tends to lend credibility to that reputation.
I may need a neck brace of my own once the sister sees the message I chalked on the pavement. She does not have a sense of humor like the two occupants below me who I know well. The “wife” of the duo below me has an incredible laugh, one that’s loud and infectious. I’ll let her know she needs to infect her sister with it.
Update: the downstairs neighbor burst into laughter, laughter that I could hear from inside my apartment. It complemented the beautiful fall day. (No pun intended.)
This is one of those posts I wrote knowing I couldn’t dare rewrite it or reread it, not even for grammar. It had to just spill out, probably absent context and subtlety. I hate pulling my punches.
Sometimes I can’t be a speaker for the dead. People and families sometimes need to hold their secrets close, even after the cause of needing to do so has withered. This is never more true when self-harm or addiction are among the demons in people’s lives. I’ve lived through countless versions of this story.
Someone I was very close to when I was very young passed away. I had fallen completely out of contact with him. As he grew up, it’s probably a good thing. His life was a mess by any standard.
For those who have been connected to either addiction or criminality by way of another person, you understand the implicit risk of trying to stay close. Bystanders, even innocent ones, always end up paying the price. It’s confusing for the person with the addiction. They don’t understand how they attract bad things. You cannot stand by the fire without being scorched by it.
Coincidentally, the last time I saw him was truly a wild coincidence. It’s been over 30 years. He lived in another part of the state and I lived in Springdale. Several coincidences aligned. Not only was I driving down the street I normally wouldn’t at that time, but I also happened to turn my head and look down the length of a long parking lot adjacent to a rehab center. I recognized his mom first, followed by him. At the time, their awkwardness and discomfort didn’t really register for me. I gave them my contact information and told them I lived less than a quarter of a mile away and to reach out if they needed anything. Looking back, I realize that I was in the presence of ghosts already.
This rehab stint was one of many in his life. The odds of me driving by and looking that direction to see him are almost impossible. I do wonder what might have become of it if he or his mother had reached out to me.
My earliest memory in life, one that my mom attempted to angrily tell me was impossible for me to remember, was one of his mother and my dad. Over the years, I reconstructed all of their lives combining research and resented questions. My memory held against my mom’s denial.
He had a violent and addicted life, one completely different than the one I shared with him when we were both very young. But lord, do I have stories. He was destined to be a hellraiser. I have a lot of memories that make me laugh when I think about him.
It’s strange when you mourn the version of a person who hadn’t existed in decades.
The truth is I didn’t know him at all anymore. He became a stranger to me almost 50 years ago. He became a name, a memory, and a connection to a life that I was dragged away from unwillingly.
Not that it’s important to this story, but I had to move to Northwest Arkansas because of my dad. It took me almost 50 years to find out the deep, dark secret that forced him to leave a place he swore he never would.
My dad and the man from my childhood who passed were connected in another tragic way, one I’ve written about in other stories but don’t want to connect here. It’s one of my foundation stories, one that screams that truth is definitely stranger than fiction.
I didn’t hear about his death until about 3 weeks after it happened. He died alone unless you count the substance he couldn’t escape from. He faced yet another return to prison. Whether the two events are connected is conjecture. But I do know that after a certain age, you are either forced to change or the universe takes over and cripples you. Often, you’ve burned so many bridges and people that your circle has become a flat line. Inevitably, you become one too.
Though I am sometimes heartless in ways some people don’t know about or understand, I do mourn him. Much in the same way I mourn my brother who shared names with him. They also shared middle names with an extra letter thrown in just because we were Southern.
The person who told me of his passing also mentioned once again how grateful she was to have pulled out of the life that took him. Coincidentally, he died at about the same age that the person informing me of his death reached when she finally stepped away from that life.
I guess I mourn what could have been and what should have been.
By way of confession, I was among those who knew the inevitability of his end.
I’ll still have my childhood memories and stories where he was prominently featured.
The other part of his life?
That biography belongs to a stranger I did not know.
The great blue heron stood immobile in the creek. I don’t usually see them standing exposed in the open water around here, especially at 2:00 in the morning close to the road.
I voted at the courthouse this morning. The last few elections have been amazing in terms of efficiency. I can’t say that they’re great elections if they keep wasting their time printing Tom Cotton’s name on the ballots.
I took every opportunity to either amuse or confuse everyone at the courthouse.
“My pants are metallic. Will they go through the metal detector properly?” The deputy looked over the console and then back up at my face. When he realized my serious face had changed to a huge smile, he shook his head. “Got me that time.”
“Is there a line just for the liberals? I bet it’s right in front of the shredder.”
“Can you just mark me down as opposed to Tom Cotton? I don’t really need to fool with a ballot.”
“Why would anybody run for Secretary of State? That’s a lot of typing and filing for 3 million people.”
“Now you know who I am and where I live. What’s your phone number?” The woman verifying IDs cackled with delight because I winked at her. When she asked me if people call me X, I laughed. “I am usually referred to as ‘Defendant.'”
“How do they do runoffs for unopposed candidates?” This question elicits a much better response if you look extremely serious when you ask them.
The volunteer working for one of the judicial candidates laughed because she stopped me on the parking deck and offered me literature. “This is just like Las Vegas.” I turned the card over as if I were looking for something. “Not the right kind of picture though.” She’s evidently gone to Vegas because after a second, she burst out laughing. “I’m voting for your candidate anyway. She’s got much better hair even if her media team can’t get the picture right.”
I stopped and stepped to the side after getting past Deputy MetalPants. It’s interesting to watch people and listen. An older couple got turned around a little. I pointed them straight ahead and to the left. “Don’t forget to check your screen when you vote. Sometimes it changes your ballot from Republican to the correct choice.” I was certain neither one of them got the joke until the woman stopped after a couple of steps and turned, giving me a big thumbs up and smiling.
Today is an anniversary for my previous life, the one that feels like nostalgic gauze across my memory. Thirty years intervening.
The first picture is a missed opportunity. I wandered down 112 earlier, enjoying the stillness and watching for meteors. For no reason, I turned on Janice and followed the curve around, enjoying the blackness of the unimproved street. I found the owl sitting on this tree. I took a perfect picture of the ground because my timer was on. Fumbling, I turned it off and pointed the phone up. The owl was gone without me having heard its wings. Which meant it most likely dived down silently to the ground nearby. I waited for it to hoot. It didn’t. As I neared the next corner, it announced its presence behind me.
The other picture captures the moon, framed by one of my light bottles.
The third picture holds the moon and a massive contrail that had been dissipating for several minutes. I stood in the deep quiet and watched it for several more minutes as it passed in front of the moon, knowing it would create a colorful halo as the millions of little ice crystals received the light.
In the dead of early morning, I walked through the new massive Drake Farms. It’s already a spectacle of modernity. Enthusiasts of liminal photography should visit this place early in the morning and before its completion. It’s an unfinished world devoid of people. It is Langoliers in reverse. Time scrolls forward, adding and adding until everything becomes squares and rectangles.
Drake Farms is going to be a billion dollar place spanning 165 acres, thousands of homes, and untold businesses contained in well over a million square feet. I wonder what Noah Drake would make of it. The plan is to preserve his original grove of black walnut trees. I’ve reminded a couple of people that the area is indeed losing something difficult to define with all of this construction. But I also point out that Noah Drake himself was an avid proponent of growth and development. His footprint is everywhere if you know where to look. When the Pendegraft building went up, I loved its rustic look as I walked or drove by it multiple times a day. In the back of my mind, I knew that it was intended to be the anchor of a massive incursion into the wilderness.
I looped back on to West Drake. It’s one of the last secret places where you can stand and be equidistant from lights. About halfway between Gregg and 112, it is stunning in the dark. It provides a rare vantage point to watch the entire sky. The U of A Agri facility provides a barrier to the South. Drake Farms will eradicate the dark beauty of the night soon enough.
Two vehicles rocketed past, both of them easily going 80 mph. Although it’s rare, they are at risk of colliding with one of the infrequent deer who run along the cyclone fence of the Agri facility. Two years ago in November, the hair on the back of my neck stood up as a huge deer sprinted toward me from behind and raced past. Had I not been startled, I could have touched it. It finally found a spot on the north side from which to leap across and into the wilderness. The wilderness that will soon be concrete and conduit.
The night/early morning was breathtakingly still. Each bird call and each twig snapping carried far beyond its normal reach.
I didn’t want to leave the long lonely stretch. I saw three meteors as I stood or walked back and forth along the length of Drake.
Returning, I stopped at the huge X and took a picture of the hill and of the beautiful luminous moon that’s two days away from being full. Even the contrails from high altitude planes are gorgeous as they streak and spread, remaining behind for minutes after the plane streaks away. They’re ice crystals trapped in the upper atmosphere. That’s where contrails got their name: condensation trails.
I knew I had to walk this route again soon. Like so many other places, encroachment incrementally eradicates its deep and dark natural beauty. The walk I took this morning was a goodbye.
Those who think I’m too maudlin won’t appreciate that I was a little upset. The night world exposes and amplifies each loss of dirt and trees.
Lights, once placed, never cede control back to nature.
It’s Esondite Day. (Escondite is a Spanish word for ‘hiding place.’)
A couple of times in the fall, I collect pounds of acorns, choosing them carefully from the ground and climbing trees to shake the limbs like Cool Hand Luke. If anyone driving down the hill on Appleby wondered why the tree was shaking, now they know.
This time, I also have a bag of dried corn for these darn squirrels.
And of course, the perfect place to place them.
If you didn’t know, this time of year is prime hoarding and burying time for our local squirrels. They absolutely love getting green ones so that they can bury them and let them ferment and ripen. It saves the squirrels time and energy. Granted, you’re going to have to shake the tree like hell or climb one to get the really good green ones that won’t fall for a while.
I would not have guessed that it would be 80° on October 23rd, or that actual mosquitoes would nip at me as I loaded the tree and the fence line with treats.
Thomas smashed the gray urn against the mantle, shattering it in dozens of pieces. He wasn’t prepared for the massive dust cloud that eddied and spread.
“F*** him.” He didn’t raise his voice. Anger suffered long enough becomes calm.
His mom didn’t react. She didn’t jerk, or even let her eyes widen. After thirty-two years with the object of her son’s anger, she understood. Her husband had no idea how many times she calculated the odds of getting caught if she ended him. Two weeks ago, she decided that waiting for him to do her in didn’t work for her any longer.
“Thomas, leave the mess. I’ll make us a cup of coffee with a dash of whiskey. We can curse about him as we drink it.”
Thomas followed his mom into the kitchen as she made them both a cup of coffee. Each of them were mired in their own thoughts as they picked up their cups and exited the house through the back door.
“What are you going to do now?” Thomas sat on one of the three stumps that served as seats. He stared at the fire pit between them.
“Well, I don’t know, but it can be whatever the hell I want to for once.”
Thomas burst out laughing. After a couple of seconds, his mom joined him.
His mom took a sip of her coffee and smiled. “I guess I can vacuum up the mess. I could leave the vacuum bag on the mantle when I’m done.”
“I’m sorry about the mess. I’ll clean it up when we go back inside.”
“You know, I just realized it’s the last time either one of us will have to clean up after him.”
Thomas laughed again. Standing up, he pulled the little bottle out of his pocket and poured the liquid into the flickering fire.
“We don’t need this anymore.”
“Never again,” his mom reverently whispered.
Thomas dropped the empty bottle into the flames.
Both of them watched the bottle blacken and then crack as the heat enveloped it.
As I stood next to the trail debating where to leave my trinkets and nuts for the crows and other birds, a crew of collectors came through. It was a motley group. An older man went into the brush and pulled out a really nice desk chair.
“You can’t take the chair, Sarge,” the man who I presume to be in charge told the older man.
“Uh, I would suggest that you sit in the chair and have him push you,” I said. I added, “The chair doesn’t belong to anybody, if that’s your concern.”
Someone must have changed his mind because Sarge put his collection bag on the chair and made his way down the trail, more than happy with his discarded treasure.
