It’s difficult enough to reset an analog clock near the ceiling: it’s even more cumbersome to spring forward a backward clock. P.S. Backward clocks are awesome, especially when observing people as they struggle to easily glance at it without a look of confusion clouding their face.
I declined the GOP primary ballot this time because my vote against Trump would be meaningless, much like a vote for most of the Democrats. (Unlike 2016, when I voted against Trump twice.) In Trump’s name, I did trip someone, mocked a dozen people, and took another person’s wallet and flung it across the parking lot, so it was like Trump himself was there in spirit. Voting on the Democratic side, every candidate I chose was female. The one school board race without a female, I skipped. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Bernie due to his desire to outlaw lined notebook paper and his refusal to nominate Tom Hanks to be the Vice President. That last part isn’t true, but we’re living in a post-truth dystopia, so I can say whatever I want. The truth is that Bernie never mailed me the check he promised to get my vote. Like all liberals, I’m in it for the free money and services. (As always, I put that in to irritate at least one liberal.)
I was relieved I didn’t have a poll worker ask me which name was my first name, as if the laws governing states IDs had suddenly been rendered arbitrary, or based on what kind of flower we feel like. I recited my name, address, and date of birth as if I were reciting poetry without any meter to it.
I did give strange answers to the questions the ‘pre-screener’ asked. “Do I have the right to remain silent?” isn’t something they are accustomed to hearing. She walked away very quickly, wondering why no one had noticed my dosage wasn’t sufficient.
The strangest moment happened as I walked away after voting, paper tally in hand, headed toward the ballot box. “Sir!” someone kept shouting. After four or five repeats, I turned. “Sir? Did you already vote?” I looked down at the completed ballot in my hand and then back toward the voting machine fifty feet away, the one I had stood at for sixty seconds while I voted. It took everything I had to not say, “No, this is my CVS Pharmacy receipt.” Instead, I just smiled and nodded. I wondered about HER dosage at that point. When I reached the ballot box, the worker gave me redundant instructions. I said, “The Phoenix sees the mouse, all clear” and winked at him. I suspect he was very sad to see me leave, even though he was laughing a bit.
In November, my vote won’t matter. You can howl and moan all you want to about it. G̶i̶l̶e̶a̶d̶ Arkansas is a solid lock for Trump. Even if the Democrats ‘win’ the popular vote by some impossible miracle after stumbling around while the GOP puts them in the ditch one by one, our beloved constitutional democratic republic will award the presidency to him for a second term, if the hysteria from the latest plague doesn’t kill us all.
We enjoy boasting that we voted as if participating in the process elevates us. That’s not the case. We pick our team, our camp, our tribe and throw knives from the sidelines. I’ll vote for a bad case of derriere acne in November if it keeps Trump from office.
But I’d give my middle fingers if the Republicans would have picked anyone to run in Trump’s place. And gave Tom Hanks the Vice Presidency.
If you’re a Trump fan, just remember that I’m a liberal in Arkansas, which is about as rewarding as eating lunch in the bathroom.
Although I wrote this rule specifically about writing, it applies to most creativity and inspiration.
The old rules have disappeared.
Playing the game using other’s rules and expectations puts you at a disadvantage.
Being weird creates hesitancy on the part of those attempting to control, throttle, or change your behavior.
You’re welcome. X
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“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,” or so goes the song. Which is absurd. Werewolves don’t read Chinese.
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It’s hard to believe that it’s been 4 years since we talked about Coleman Sweeney.
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“His Sunday shoes amplified his bitter heart.” -x
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I tried defying gravity.
But the court order obligated me to comply.
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I wonder how long it would take an employer to notice that someone had modified their legal notice poster regarding minimum wage to indicate $55.43 per hour? The answer is 11 months. In theory, I mean.
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This should be obvious to all the well-meaning people out there.
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He may have gained the upper hand in the argument, but I got the lower foot.
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As the second client left the office with a grin of satisfaction, Clive slowly leaned back in the antique office chair, his feet splayed out in front of him, partially hidden by the ornate desk. At age forty-three, he had never expected to realize his dream of becoming a lawyer, even if it finally happened in a small place outside Walmart’s hometown. The modest storefront and all the trappings that accompanied it had cost only $2,300 for six months, not a bad price to start one’s dream. Ms. Elber, a lady between sixty and two hundred years old, offered to have the place cleaned and all the clutter removed, but Clive insisted on doing it all himself. She dropped all her concerns when he counted out twenty-three one hundred-dollar bills. Ms. Elber was accustomed to some strange tenants along main street.
Today, he made over six hundred dollars by agreeing to execute two wills. Tomorrow he would visit the county probate office and match his new clients against existing wills. Clive understood that most wills were needless and predatory. One of the client’s nephews drove his uncle to Clive’s office for the appointment that finished his day. When he asked about a will for himself, Clive handed him a simple will and told him to write it out himself and sign it with witnesses, and save himself a few hundred dollars. “Is that legal,” the younger man asked. Clive grinned. “As legal as my right to practice law. Arkansas allows for holographic wills. There are simple notes on the back of the form. Come back to me when you have an issue that’s more complicated.” Clive could see the look of appreciation on his client’s face.
Two years ago, when the idea that he might actually achieve his dream occurred to him, he had been a gas station attendant at one of the flashy convenience stores off the interstate on the west side of Mississippi. At that job, like all others, people found him to be quick-witted and inevitably tried to motivate him to be in charge or to show ambition. For Clive, none of it mattered to him. An office, a nice car, a huge group of friends; none of these drew his interest. Over the decades, he had amassed over four hundred credit hours of college under three different identities, learned five other languages, and could discuss any subject reasonably well, no matter how arcane it might seem. Clive had once pretended to attend the University of Memphis so he could be a member of the Collegiate TriviaBowl Team. He had to drop out of the team after they defeated the University of Arkansas at Little Rock 52-to-7 in their first TriviaBowl. The Arkansas team was undefeated until that contest. Even the judges at the competition seemed convinced that the Memphis team was cheating. The older judge of the two assigned to the TriviaBowl challenged Clive directly by asking him four rapid-fire questions regarding WWII. To the judge’s surprise and embarrassment, Clive easily answered the questions without hesitating. Clive controlled his urge to answer in more than one language.
Clive’s fellow Mississippians often did a double-take when Clive would answer a question with both humor and brevity. One customer who often stopped at the convenience store where Clive worked was a lawyer named John Bannon. More than once he told Clive, “You should be a lawyer!” Clive inevitably said something clever in return, such as, “Point me to the Ethics Removal office, and I’ll do it.” John always laughed at whatever Clive said in response. John told Clive that he had written a letter of recommendation for him if he ever wished to pursue a law degree.
More than once, Clive had considered moving to Virginia or Washington, both states which allowed someone to take the state bar exam without attending law school. To determine whether he could pass, Clive read several dozen law books from the State of Virginia. Using a questionable contact who worked in ‘security’ at one casino, Clive took the bar in February by posing as a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. Much to the joy of the real graduate, Clive passed the bar exam on the first try. He seemed crestfallen when told that the test was easier than expected. Clive couldn’t convince himself to do it on his own and finish with an apprentice program in Virginia. It seemed like a waste of time to possess all the knowledge but yet needlessly be required to work for free under another attorney for three years.
Clive was involved in petty crimes throughout his life. He tried shoplifting just to determine if he could get by with it (yes, he could – over and over), stealing cars and then returning them, hacking into low-level databases, impersonating bank officers, teachers, real estate agents, and undercover detectives. After a few years, he discovered that the reality of life was that anyone could do anything with a little preparation, a dash of confidence, and the right appearance. There were many times when Clive would shake his head in disbelief at how easily people saw what they wanted to and ignored anything that violated their expectations. Not once had he been caught or held accountable, even when he tried something with no preparation.
On a blistering and humid August day two years ago, Clive opened his mail and discovered a jury summons from the Desoto County, Mississippi clerk’s office. Unlike everyone else, he welcomed the opportunity to serve. He had spent many days throughout the years sitting in observation of trials, listening, watching, and learning the vocabulary and movement of the participants. Twelve days later, he was chosen to sit on the jury panel for a homicide case involving ex-police officer Curtis Burrow. Clive made it to the jury by pretending not to know much of anything and by adding a deep accent to his usual speech patterns. Clive noted that people who spoke more slowly and seemed a little dim were astronomically more likely to be picked by the prosecutor. There was no doubt that the police officer had killed his brother; both the evidence and the defendant’s face trumpeted his guilt. Nevertheless, as an experiment, Clive swayed his counterparts on the jury not to convict Curtis Burrow. When the impatient jury first voted, it was 11-to-1 to convict, with Clive being the sole juror voting “not guilty.” By lunch, it was 7-to-5. And by supper, it was 1-to-11, with the jury foreman threatening to boycott any further discussions. The foreman was the manager at a local farm equipment supplier. He felt it was his duty to protect “common sense and decency.”
The next morning, Judge Louis Jordan called the jury back to the humid, musky courtroom to talk to them about the necessity of being unanimous. Clive watched as the red-faced foreman, the last holdout for finding the ex-cop innocent, stood up and said, “We’ve decided your honor.” The judge’s face could not have registered more surprise as he sent the jurors back to register their verdict. 15 minutes later, the courtroom went silent as the foreman stood and announced, “Not guilty.” Even the defendant’s lawyer Everet Stacks seemed to have stepped into an alternate reality that bore no resemblance to the world he had expected that morning. Everet had already wasted ten minutes telling his client to expect a guilty verdict, followed by life in prison. Both client and lawyer stood, mouths open in surprise as the judge’s gavel banged twice at the bench.
“You are free to go after processing, Mr. Burrow,” Judge Jordan told the surprised defendant. “Thank you, jurors, for your time served and your civic service.” As he banged the gavel, everyone could see him shaking his head in disbelief. The prosecutor seemed like he was struggling to find words to voice as he shakily rose from his end of the table. It was his first loss as a prosecutor in a murder case. He had already paid for campaign signs for the next election. The idea of working as a criminal defense lawyer in Desoto County frightened him. Clive approached the tables and shook both the prosecutor’s and the defendant’s hand. The ex-policeman just stared at him when he said, “You owe me one. And don’t look so guilty after you kill the next guy.”
Clive’s secret had been one he had learned over and over as an adult: listen carefully to people and plant small seeds of doubt; water them a little and the predictability of what they would do next was rarely in question. A truth bathed in multiple small lies always met more acceptance. If he could convince a jury to let a murderer walk away, it didn’t seem like much of a stretch to imagine he could become a lawyer by merely deciding to do so. As things become more complicated, most people tune out. Clive owed this cynical lesson to a series of stepfathers his mom dragged home on alternate weekends. Most of them were sociopaths with little to teach him, except for the harsh lesson about gullibility.
As Clive got up to leave his office on his first day of work in Northwest Arkansas, he turned and winked toward the back wall where both purported his law license and a framed picture of Joe Pesci from “My Cousin Vinny” were on display. It seemed too obvious, even to Clive. “Too on the nose” was the common expression. He believed in giving people a fair shot at figuring things out, even despite the risk. People would see what they wanted to, and most people assumed it was a lawyer in-joke to see Joe Pesci’s picture in a lawyer’s office.
Deciding to impersonate a lawyer was the best decision of his life, and he couldn’t wait to discover what day two might hold for him. As he turned off the lights and turned the lock to close his little storefront office, Clive had no way of knowing that he would soon find himself in the middle of a conspiracy. Against the backdrop of the small town he had chosen, it didn’t seem possible. In a year, six people would be dead. He would have a story to tell, if he lived long enough to tell it. If Clive could see the future, he’d wonder whether the headline would indicate he was a lawyer or not. Being dead had never seemed much of an inconvenience to Clive.
Euell sat facing the long picture window, his eyes lazily tracing the rain as it cascaded from the roof. His book lay folded open and face down on his lap. How long he’d been absent-mindedly watching the rain was an unanswerable question. Time slows to a crawl on such cold, rainy afternoons. Euell enjoyed allowing the tiredness to overcome him. An hour stretched to two or three if he allowed himself the luxury of such mindless pleasure.
Behind him, the man coughed, reminding Euell that his special request was drawing to a close. Euell closed the book in his lap, admiring the book cover, remembering how much joy the book had brought him through multiple readings.
The man stood and placed his coffee cup on the small antique table next to the chair he’d just vacated. He carefully straightened his long black jacket. “It was an unusual last request, sir, but one of considerable pleasure for me. Most people request something a bit more exotic for their last request.”
Euell nodded, uncertain how to answer him. The man had unexpectedly come to gather the sum of Euell’s life, regardless of whether Euell was ready to depart.
The man gestured for Euell to lead the way. As Euell’s hand grasped the glass doorknob of the front door, he looked back toward his chair one last time. He was sitting there, slumped over and leaning slightly to the right. His book still lay open across his lap. Euell could barely tell that he was no longer breathing.
The man placed his thin fingers across Euell’s shoulder, as if to console him even as he moved him along.
“Thanks,” Euell uttered to no one in particular, as he opened the door to discover what waited for him on the other side.
“Open the door, Richard!”
It was the last thing his wife Sara said to him, as she lay on the edge of the bed, the light in her brown eyes fading. Her open copy of “The Last Picture Show” was flat on the quilt next to her. The two paramedics who had just arrived looked at Sara in helplessness, unsure what her last words meant. Pete waved his hand toward the paramedics to indicate that she didn’t want any extraordinary measures to prolong her life. Sara had mentioned more than once that she wanted to live a full life until she could no longer do so independently. Pete and Sara had shared a long life together. Despite his promise not to call 9-1-1 if the time came, he had reflexively panicked for a moment when Sara’s headache painfully blossomed and half of her body went numb.
“Who is Richard, sir?” One paramedic asked Pete as he leaned over to place a hand on Sara’s neck, already certain that she was gone. Behind him, the clock indicated 11:59, a minute short of the new day.
No one would understand that this was their private and intimate joke, representing a short-hand to entire conversations and connected moments. “Open the door, Richard,” Pete whispered.
As he looked down at Sara’s silver hair, Pete suffered a stroke of his own as his thoughts retreated in time. As his mouth contorted, and he became slack, the paramedic motioned for his partner to help him with Pete. It was going to be a long night. They took their time, instinctively giving Pete’s body time to take him elsewhere. Pete never made it back to the home he shared for so long with Sara, nor was he awake or aware of his beloved Sara’s funeral. Since they’d made arrangements years ago, Sara was laid to rest in the cemetery of the church where her father had once preached.
…
Soon after, Pete began a quiet life in Shady Glen Nursing Home. He moved in the day the facility opened. His picture was on the front page of the local newspaper. He didn’t speak a word after the stroke. He would learn to smile again, and the vast repertoire of facial expressions he demonstrated was evidence that emotionally he was intact. As happens with so many nursing homes, after the grand opening, the staff slowly turned over, moving on to other jobs or to other homes with better pay and benefits. By the time he was eighty-five, none of the staff employed there remembered Pete’s original story, other than he was unable to talk.
Often, he would prop himself up in bed and shuffle through the pages of his journals. Sometimes, staff would find him in his room listening to his shortwave radio in a variety of languages. His ability to freely move returned and he began to bathe himself, eat infrequent meals, and dress. He hadn’t spoken a word in his 15 years at Shady Glen. Residents and family became accustomed to Pete’s presence on the periphery of things. He seemed to drink in every word uttered nearby.
Sometimes, he would sit by the outside door and scribble in his journal, hour after hour, a relentless torrent of nonsensical scrawling. Near his tv stand, you could see his stack of journals, each filled with his handwriting. Several nosy housekeepers, nurses, and CNAs had opened them, trying to make sense of the thousands of pages of writing. They shook their heads in sadness, wondering about Pete and how badly his stroke had hurt him. A rotating cast of staff would occasionally bring him a new journal for him to later fill with his mindless scrawling. It never occurred to a single soul that perhaps Pete’s scribbled writing was something other than gibberish.
People would speak to Pete, often at length. He would sit patiently, head turned to face them. Because he was otherwise in good enough health, the doctors who would visit less and less frequently advised the staff to not pressure him toward a response. Through the years, some of the residents visited him and shared the stories of their lives with him. Often, it appeared as if he were taking notes as they spoke to him.
Other than his journals, he had one possession remaining: a picture of a lovely young woman with a sly smile, holding a smiling baby. Everyone who saw the picture stopped to admire her in permanent repose there.
Each day, Pete would take his red pen and make a large “X” across the previous day’s block on the calendar. Each “X” represented another defeated day behind him. His battle was to return to Sara when it was finally his time. The days flew past like startled birds.
A few Saturdays after his 85th birthday, Pete was still in bed after an early supper of beans and cornbread, staring at the sunlight cascading across the ceiling as it marched its way toward the evening. In the distance, he could hear a loud voice almost singing. “Hey, young fellow! Good evening!” The voice seemed to be on the prowl, its greeting changing slightly based on the sex of the listener or apparent temperament. It continued its approach and then went silent.
Knock, knock. A fist bumped against Pete’s door. Silence.
“Open the door, Richard!” the voice boomed.
Stunned, Pete lay there in silence, holding his breath, trying to imagine how a stranger was using his wife’s secret words, so many years after her passing. He hadn’t heard it spoken since the night his Sara passed away, except in a few vintage radio shows. Both the phrase and style of music had all but vanished from the American consciousness. Pete marvelled at the constant ebb and flow of music, language, and culture in the United States.
As if the stranger read his mind, he said, “Don’t make me bring Count Basie in there, sir. Time to get acquainted with your new social director! I’ve been here a month and I’m not taking another ‘No’ for an answer today.” The man’s voice boomed. Pete remained motionless and quiet, hoping this strategy would send the visitor on his way in the same way it had during previous visits. Pete learned many strategies in his long tenure at Shady Glen.
Without waiting for Pete to answer, the stranger opened the door and said, “Hi there. I’m Crosby. We’re going to meet in the main area in 30 minutes, so drag it out of that cocoon you’re in and get down there. I know you can’t talk, so see ya.” He turned and departed. Pete barely had time to notice the young man’s outlandish mustache or the bright blue suit he was wearing.
Pete stayed in bed, aggravated that Crosby would barge in, but also intrigued how such a young man might be familiar with Count Basie. His wife’s memory and their shared catchphrase compelled him to investigate reluctantly. Pete had never taken part in any of the contrived social activities at the nursing home, although he had been an involuntary spectator for many of them. Given the acoustics of the building, he had no choice but to listen to much of their gatherings, too, regardless of where he found himself inside its confines. The previous social director was very old and evidently thought that lifeless bingo and watching the television in the common area was enough socializing. Occasionally, one or two mediocre musicians would visit them. Pete could discern whether the visiting musicians were enthusiastic about their visits; their music conveyed a sense of delight and energy.
Forty-five minutes later, there was a sizable turnout in the common area. As Pete shuffled into the room, he could see Crosby standing near a record player, a reproduction of one of the older models of his youth. Crosby still wore a blue suit and had an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. He looked ridiculous, and Pete knew without a doubt that he liked him.
“As many of you know,” Crosby began, “I’m the social director. My mom named me Crosby, after the infamous Bing Crosby, because she was a standards singer when she was younger. She didn’t like Bing, so she decided to give me his surname as a first name. We’re going to start by listening to a song that is often overlooked. This record was one of my mom’s, so let’s get started.” He motioned for everyone to sit or find a comfortable spot. Many were in wheelchairs. Crosby didn’t wait for everyone to be quiet, as he knew from experience it was almost impossible to convince a group of seniors to stop talking completely. Some talked to one another, and some talked to themselves, regardless of setting.
Pete, being near the wide entrance, carefully plopped onto an oversized ottoman. There were six of them along the nearest wall, designed to both seat and catch someone with uncertain stability.
The needle hovering over the record descended and after a hiss, voices began speaking. Within seconds, Pete lost the ability to remember that sixty years had passed since he and Sara had stood in the nightclub, laughing and shouting “Open the door, Richard!” at one another until they had forgotten what was funny to begin with.
2005 faded as 1940-something coalesced in Pete’s imagination.
…
Sara stood in front of him, close to the gaudy jukebox, the dress her mom made for her shining a bright yellow despite the smoke-infused light in the nightclub.
Just 7 hours earlier, they were married, with Sara’s father Reverend Thomas Burns officiating the ceremony. They had chosen a place near the river by Sara’s childhood home to have the wedding, even though the Reverend’s church was only a quarter-mile from his house. About 15 family and friends attended. Sara insisted on wearing a yellow dress instead of a traditional white one and after some bashful objection, her mother joyfully made it for her. She told Pete that he had to wear black slacks, a white shirt, and a blue tie.
After the wedding ceremony, Pete changed into slacks and white long-sleeved shirt so that Reverend Burns could baptize Pete in the river. Much to Pete’s surprise, both Sara and her mother Lucy had a plan to run and jump into the river after the baptism was finished. Even Reverend Burns had no idea what they were up to until he heard them whoop and jump into the river. As they came out laughing, Mrs. Burns shouted, “You’re never too old for a refresher baptism!”
Reverend Burns tried to act irritated, but even he burst out laughing at the spectacle. “It’s a good thing that you’re an only child, Sara,” he shouted. “Otherwise, it would be the death of me.”
After the wedding and baptism, everyone came to the Reverend’s house to enjoy a communal meal. Pete asked Thelma Pinkins to make enough Lady Baltimore Cake for everyone. Her sisters, all seven of them, cooked enough fried chicken to fill three bathtubs. A friend of the Reverend, someone you’d never find inside his church, managed to provide a sizable assortment of wine, beer, and moonshine. Others brought soda and sweet tea, of course. There was enough food to satisfy a hundred people. It was a celebration unlike any Pete had witnessed in his life. John Hoskins, along with his brothers and cousins, brought their guitars and fiddles and provided the music. Rumors said they’d memorized thousands of songs just by hearing them on the radio. Anyone foolish enough to skip the celebration would undoubtedly hear both the music and the frivolity through their screen windows, anyway. At Reverend Burn’s church, everyone was welcome to be married there and for a meal to be provided. Members of other congregations often chose his church to celebrate. Because of Reverend Burn’s reputation, other pastors seldom became upset about it. Those with jealousy in their hearts knew to keep their criticisms private.
Sara’s parents, though religious, loved to socialize, dance, and share a good drink. They were well known in their small community for having open invitations for people to come to share their supper or sit outside as the fireflies approached. Often, they’d sing songs and share a drink as the night deepened. All were welcome. Reverend Burns was ahead of his time and didn’t overly concern himself with appearances. He worked the fields when needed, helped chop wood, and built furniture for those needing it. He constantly reminded everyone that the world was a short place to stay and to get one’s fill while the good Lord provided. Pete could think of no better way to express his views on life now that he was once again with Sara. “Live now, then live forever,” he’d say as if it were a prayer, exactly like his father-in-law had done. “Praying is done best with dirty hands,” the Reverent often reminded people. “Just like washing your hands removes the dirty, prayer and reflection help us get past the wrongs we’ve done.”
Sara’s parents died in a fire five years later. Over a thousand people came by the Reverend’s church to pay their respects. John Hoskins sang several hymns for the funeral and finished with the Peerless Quartet’s “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” a song both the pastor and his wife loved.
After the Reverend’s death, Pete sold his managing interest in the lumber company his dad started and operated with a paternal cousin. He became a public school teacher, just as Sara had. Both he and Sara spent their lives in the small school district. No one knew that Pete’s share of the business had become worth a small fortune.
As Pete stood near the wall, laughing almost uncontrollably to the musings of Count Basie being played at the nightclub, he couldn’t imagine how life had brought him back to Sara. War and the wide world had conspired to separate them for a time. He’d survived being shot 4 times and as he bled, he thought only of coming home to Sara. Even among his German captors, he shared stories of his girl back home. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he bore no hatred toward the soldiers themselves; each of them found himself trapped by decisions made by strangers with titles or rank. Pete was discharged forty pounds lighter than when he had enlisted. Unlike many others, however, he spent his time in captivity listening to everyone’s stories, even those the Germans sometimes shared. He learned German, Italian, and a great deal of Spanish while they held him captive.
He knew that several men in the nightclub were stealing glances at Sara, attempting to gauge her beauty and measure her smile, weighing their chances of a dance with her. When she laughed, everyone seemed to forget that life was filled with troubles.
Each time Count Basie or those around them would say, “Open the door, Richard!” Sara would throw her head back and laugh like humor had just been invented for her. The phrase was a fad, one which was everywhere until it disappeared like an early morning mist. For that night, though, it was hers.
For the moment, both Sara and Lucy accepted offers of a dance from eager strangers. They swished and twirled on the dance floor as Pete and his father-in-law watched in wonder as the women in their lives demonstrated their graceful and carefree approach to dancing. As another record dropped to play, both Pete and Reverend Thomas approached their respective wives to claim the next dance.
Sara and Pete spent their honeymoon night under the stars, in a field near the Reverend’s church. After that night, the first of their long marriage, both of them used the phrase “Open the door, Richard!” to signal “hello,” or “goodbye,” or even “I love you,” and all manner of meaning residing between them. Family and friends grew accustomed to hearing the phrase as the years passed. As time took its toll and friends and family departed, almost no one remembered the origin of their catchphrase, much less what had inspired it.
Like all great stories, it was born in intimacy and laughter.
…
Pete felt himself being shaken. It shattered his connection to the recollections of the past. His head felt both light and foggy at the same time.
“Are you okay, Pete? Pete! Can you hear me? Nod if you can!” He felt hands near his shoulders, shaking him.
He opened his eyes and he could see the faces of a few fellow residents hovering over him, and behind them, the ceiling. It occurred to him that he was on the floor.
Crosby’s face came into focus above him, the absurd cigar now dangling toward him. Crosby seemed concerned. He probably thought Pete had a stroke or had shattered a hip in the fall.
From within Pete’s own throat, an alien sound burst out. For a moment, Pete didn’t understand what had happened.
“Crosby, are you going to help me up, or not?” Pete’s voice sounded perfectly normal, as if he hadn’t been mute for more than a decade.
The cigar fell out of Crosby’s mouth and struck Pete across the forehead. A few of the residents gasped in shock at hearing Pete’s voice. Many were convinced his brain had been scrambled years ago.
After a few moments of conducting an inventory of Pete’s general well-being, Crosby helped him sit up and then shakily stand.
“Let’s go outside,” he told Pete, as he led him outside and away from prying eyes and ears.
…
A few minutes later, Pete sat outside below the driveway canopy. The sun was finally receding below the distant treeline across the road. Crosby sat next to him, still with a concerned look on his face. His blue suit seemed other-worldly in the remaining sunlight.
“Pete, are you really okay? You were smiling and just fainted dead away.” Crosby patted him on the knee.
As if he had not spent years unable to speak, Pete said, “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m okay now. That song broke something loose inside me, Crosby. It was our song, my dear Sara and mine. I was remembering our wedding day.” Pete shook his head as if something were still loose.
“I love that song, Pete, and Count Basie in particular. It’s a coincidence, that’s for sure.”
Pete and Crosby sat in silence for a minute, neither of them certain it was a coincidence at all.
“Crosby, can I tell you a secret?” Pete whispered the words.
“Yes, of course!” Crosby couldn’t contain his curiosity. He knew the other residents were inside repeating the miraculous first words of Pete’s a few minutes ago.
“Those journals of mine? The ones everyone thinks are full of scribblings? Those are my stories.” Pete laughed.”There are probably 10,000 pages of the stuff. Everything in my life is in there and at least a third of it is about my precious Sara and our life together.”
“Oh?” Crosby asked. He was suddenly at a loss for words, an unusual predicament for him. His mother used to pretend to faint from a lack of oxygen when Crosby would excitedly tell a story.
“The real kicker is that the stroke only affected me for a few weeks. Everyone just assumed that I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to, though. After a time, I think even I forgot.” Pete laughed at the absurdity of his long prank. Crosby didn’t know what to say. The staff had told him several wild and speculative stories about Pete’s journals and life.
Ten infinite minutes passes as both Crosby and Pete sat with their own thoughts.
“Let’s go back inside and listen to that record again, Crosby, before I think this is all a dream.”
As Crosby reached for the door pull, Pete laughed and said, “Open the door, Richard!” They both laughed like old friends. Like all good friends, they had recognized something essential in each other.
…
As Crosby readied the record player and prepared the needle, Pete stared at Crosby. Only a couple of the people from the previous playing were still in the common room. Most had gone back to their own rooms, to the expansive dining and activity area nearby.
“I want you to take the journals, Crosby. Do with them what you will.” Pete’s voice was now vibrant and strong.
“I can’t take them…” Crosby began to object but stopped as Pete held up his right hand.
“Okay, okay.” Crosby realized how awkward his voice now sounded. “If it will keep you off the floor, I’ll agree to anything.”
“Ha!” Pete barked. “Now put on the song before I croak.”
Crosby dropped the needle. The song began to play for the second time as he sat down a few feet away from Pete in the darkening room. When the song ended, Crosby rose to turn the record over and play the B-side.
A chill rose up his spine.
As he leaned over to look more closely, he knew with certainty that Pete was dead, well on his way to find his Sara.
“Open the door Richard!” would be their eternal greeting.
Crosby smiled. Witnessing an honest life and death were both a rarity in the world. Of the hundred thousand people who died that day all over the world, Crosby predicted that Pete would linger in his mind for a long time.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence, Crosby made his way to the nursing center to inform them of Pete’s death and to start the machinery tied to someone’s demise. To his further surprise, he found that Pete had all the arrangements made.
Once Crosby deciphered Pete’s handwriting, he spent his waking moments reading the stories of Pete’s life.
…
A year later, Crosby walked along the edge of a barren cotton field and felt the pull of an early-October wind. The river was nearby, and the smell of earth and water washed over him. After reading all Pete’s journals, he felt compelled to visit the places Pete, Sara, and Mr. and Mrs. Burns called home. To his surprise, the small community still stood, even as so many others faded. People had come and gone, to be sure, but the spirit of the little town was intact. So much of Pete’s journals were meticulously detailed, and each place was mentioned with care. It was difficult to imagine that everything he’d written in them was true.
A hundred yards further, Crosby saw that a white church and its sharp steeple stood against the treeline. On the other side, an expansive cemetery occupied the landscape. The gravel parking lot ran all the way up to the front of the double doors in front of the church. On the front, a small sign indicated, “Perkins Gospel.”
To the right, a marker stood a few feet from the wall of the church. A copper-colored plaque was attached to the upright chunk of shaped rock. “Perkins Gospel, founded 1899. Generously funded in perpetuity by an anonymous donor, in memory of the most humble of God’s servants, Reverend Thomas Burns.”
After Crosby composed himself, he dared to walk the remaining steps and stand in front of the graves of Pete and Sara. An hour passed before he could pull himself away, both from the gravestones and the overlapping memories of this place so lovingly described by Pete.
He would never again hear Count Basie without picturing Sara in her yellow dress and Pete’s admiring eyes following her.
A place, a time, a love, all in equal measure.
…
Say it with me, friends, even if you don’t know the original song: “Open the door, Richard!”
May a song of your own choosing forever propel you forward, in this life and the next.
…
As with my post that followed the Syrian dad teaching his daughter to laugh at bombs, this post follows an interaction I had with a writer who is largely unaware of her ability to write. I worked on this post and didn’t post it. It’s been sitting in my draft folder for a long time, like undiscovered poison. Later the other day, I discovered that the writer had visited my blog and read about my cousin who died of cancer. It was an odd coincidence, one which prompts me to share it now, long after I was inspired to write it.
A few years ago, my cousin was dying of cancer. He’d been in remission for a while but as often happens, the cancer returned, vengeful and malicious. There was more than sufficient time for everyone to see him during his first round and in the interim intermission. While he was still a little wild and still a fan of drinking, he’d transformed from the person he’d been five, ten, or fifteen years prior. My cousin realized that anyone who really wanted to see him had more than enough time during his life and during the last couple of years. All else was an excuse. He recognized that he had been guilty of the same dismissive immortality with some of his friends and family.
My cousin became withdrawn. Daily life was a struggle for him, and his moments became both agonizing and precious. He wanted to reduce the drag on his spirit from visitors and ghosts from his past, especially those who brought with them the accompanying demons wrestling inside them. I tried to inform people politely that he wanted peace, to not take offense to unreturned calls, declined visits, and to honor the requests some of us were passing along on my cousin’s behalf.
To preface, there were people who were gloriously helpful, compassionate, and of unimaginable help. We all know people like this. They embrace, reach out, sit by the bedside, scrub the floor, and know when to be quiet or smile. They light us up with joy. Those people were around, too.
All of us who’ve lost someone, though, have stories of despair that sometimes overtip the balance of good vs. dark.
I was ignorantly unprepared for the backlash of anger, resentment, and hostility from some of my cousin’s friends and acquaintances. I’ve written about this time before.
I almost had a nervous breakdown due to another family member. Unbelievable as it may sound, I also became convinced that the family member was going to kill me, someone trained and capable of doing so. Though I discarded most of this sort of hateful memory, I have a couple of voicemails from the guilty party, ones in which he laid out his plan to kill me, and kill anyone who dared interfere with what he wanted to do. He also made sure that I understood that his knowledge of the system would not only allow him easy access to others to help him exact his will but also to avoid being held accountable for it. I can’t listen to them without despairing for humanity. It’s some of the ugliest things I’ve ever heard in life. This episode ruptured my connection to the family member in a way I didn’t believe was possible. Addiction or not, it was profoundly evil. It didn’t help that the family member gaslighted me and everyone around him about it, either. I still struggle with the aftermath of the anger and hate that came from that period.
There were other people like him, but most were amateurs on the fringes. Through it all, I felt horribly sorry for both my cousin and his wife. The angels among us helped my cousin’s wife get through to the end.
Really, though, the last part prompted this post.
Someone else who knew my cousin well, someone I knew in passing due to overlapping schools and geography, told me I was the worst #$%^ing human being in history, was gay, probably half-black, and that he hoped that I died of the worst form of cancer imaginable. I’ll call him Fred. He said these things because I asked him to treat my cousin’s wife in the same way he wanted others to treat his own wife. My cousin loved the moments he’d shared with Fred, but couldn’t find the energy to wax nostalgic with someone who would only make him feel worse. Fred loved drinking and hitting people, male or female. He couldn’t imagine a world in which someone might not want his anger and alcoholism around someone trying to find a few days of peace in his dwindling life. He doubled down and called my cousin’s wife every name in the book. In the most sincere way I could muster, I told him that I hoped he’d find a way to get past the anger in his soul. That only made him angrier. Because he needed to hear it, I told him that it was my cousin’s wish to be buffered from people who weren’t in control of themselves. Fred kept screaming, “I hope you get cancer X, you and that b@#$% he’s with.” He was fixated on it. He finished off his tirade by saying that my cousin deserved the cancer.
I recently found out that Fred has cancer.
Pause…
I’m not sure how I feel. Fred continued to have anger and addiction issues in the years after my cousin’s death. I’ve heard stories. I’ve watched Fred use a combination of anger and bullying on other people. He’s deserved a multitude of plates of crow and humble pie. I infrequently drop in, so to speak, and look for indications that someone is calling him out for his misbehavior. Now that he has cancer, it is impossible for anyone to call him out for his previous hatefulness.
He’ll pass away, and the world will continue to spin. I’ll feel a little pang of relief to know he’s gone. It’s not nice for me to say it, even if I’ve admitting it while not callously naming names.
My conflicting feelings don’t paint me in a flattering light. I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone. Much of my aversion to Fred in all honesty stems in part from the poison of hate and addiction that my parents spewed into my life. My other family member, the one I was certain was going to kill me, mixes into the same karma that befell Fred. They are inseparable because they both contain equal parts of hate and addiction.
We all want justice and to see that “what goes around, comes around” has teeth. We don’t want the suffering, if we’re good people, but that sense of things being set right can’t be denied, not if we are honest with ourselves.
If Fred’s wife could feel even a tiny bit of the hurt that her husband inflicted on me a few years ago, she would collapse into a deep pit of anger and despair. Imagine if someone talked about her like her husband did about my cousin’s wife. I would hope that Fred himself would recognize how vicious and inhuman he was a few years when my cousin just wanted a peaceful death. He doesn’t though. His close family members are bigots and the opposite of what I consider to be good, compassionate human beings. They won’t see the irony of applauding this man’s life.
I sit with this little piece of recognition of myself. It poisons my life a little. But I protect it.
I’m not comfortable with myself. My threatening family member and Fred share the fact that they lived their lives roughshod over those they quarreled with; their anger was their first line of attack. They saw no need to withdraw from anger and even less a need to apologize or make amends.
Time cures them. But they’re quickly replaced with people who share their lack of humanity.
A video of a Syrian dad recently went viral. He’d taught his daughter to laugh when she saw bombs dropping. To some, it sounded ridiculous.
I didn’t doubt it. I have a story I wrote down four weeks ago, one involving Latinos with a different approach to negativity. It didn’t seem as interesting until I saw the Syrian dad with his daughter yesterday in the video.
.
I was careening around Walmart to distract myself from the malaise of modern living. You know the feeling: one moment you’re happy with life and smiling at babies – and the next, you desperately need to walk around in a cavernous retail warehouse to get incredibly (and incrementally) irritated at other visitors. You know how it is: you enter the market to buy a bathtub plug and 75 ounces of Argentinian fava beans, then realize that something is amiss with the world; namely, that being in a market is both necessary and ridiculous.
As I rounded the aisle near the spices, an older woman jumped backward as two adorable little Latina girls whirled by, both chatting feverishly to one another. “Chicas!” a concerned dad shouted from just out of sight. I could hear the practiced exasperation in his voice.
The older woman hissed toward me, “They’re everywhere. And can’t control their little brats.” The girls suddenly stopped their mutual little dance and looked from me to the older woman. It was apparent they spoke English, as well as understanding the tone of the woman’s voice. I hoped they didn’t think I was with the hateful older woman.
The dad rounded the corner. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the older woman said. Normally, I don’t get surprised by people. It was obvious she wasn’t referring to being at Walmart.
This story isn’t about anger or prejudice, though.
It’s about me witnessing the response of this amazing dad.
The two girls looked at their dad as he said, “I’m sorry. Please forgive us.” The older lady didn’t acknowledge him at all as he apologized the second time.
“Había una vez, niñas…” Both girls smiled and told their dad they were sorry.
The old woman evidently couldn’t stand the sound of another language in her delicate ears. She whirled her cart around and stomped off, her face frozen in an ugly state.
For those who don’t know, the phrase “Había una vez” translates to “Once upon a time,” and often starts fairy tales and stories in Spanish.
Because of this, I asked the dad what he meant by the fairy tale phrase.
In Spanish, he told me, “It’s game me and the girls play. Don’t let someone having a bad day or life get us down.”
“You’re a genius, sir,” I said, as he laughed at the idea.
“Tell them that,” pointing at his two girls, who once again curtsied and made dance-like steps between the aisles, their encounter already forgotten.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 