realreally

No one rushes to greet me when I come home. Or stares out the window when I leave. She’s dead. I buried her sweet furry body myself. Her heart was stopped at 3 years and some months. She was ornery and never did what she was told, but she always brought her best. Energy. Simple joy. Love of play and just a level of trust that the world was good. She was my favorite. Her soft fur in my hands always reminded me that she was present with me. Warm body turning cold as I roll a blanket over her stilling body. No more whimpers from a broken pup. Just a house that’s too big and a Doonis-shaped hole in me. She is gone now and I miss her each moment of the day. The games of hide and seek. The sweet big brown eyes hiding mischief. The 9 o’clock crazy time. Her patient waiting outside my bedroom door. I miss you Doon.

Where am I? I feel like I’m in a courtroom in front of the judge. I listened to her decision, without really hearing it. Not really believing. Something, beyond the verdict, is troubling about this. I have heard this before. Yes. I have definitely heard this before. It must be ten no fifteen years now. I had been serving my sentence, paying my penance and making amends for fifteen years now. And yet, here I am back at the beginning. As if nothing has changed. Nothing has changed? Somebody is blind. The judge looks at me, or through me, as if I was the same man who committed these crimes so many years ago. As if nothing has changed. And in her mind, nothing has. It’s all been for naught. Fifteen years of hard work, crafting change. Putting in the time and working to better myself over and over and over until the change stuck. And I see it. I feel it. I know the change. And yet, the judge doesn’t see it. Can’t feel it. and won’t know it. So I sit, waiting. Fading. Leaving, bit by bit. Shackled to my own choice and yet unable to find the key. I’ve looked for all this time and yet it still eludes me. As I sit the indifference builds around me until it all but consumes me where I sit. Finally. Slowly. I rise, sentence passed and I’m lead back to my cell. To what? Try again? Change more? The door clangs shut and the dark finds me. Fifteen. 

The breezeway of the train is noisy, windy and hot. I’m sitting on a cooler that’s no longer full of beer, my brother, our friend Kirk and 4 Mexicans are all sitting with me between cars on the Spring break train from Nogales to Mazatlan. We had seats at one point in our journey, but we switched trains at one junction and our seats were gone when we rebounded. In fact, our entire car was gone. So, for the balance of our trip we are sitting in the breezeway in the sweltering heat. We try and communicate with our companions but it’s pretty simplistic since they don’t speak much English and we don’t speak much Spanish. You can imagine. But we do find a way to connect. At the next stop along our 18 hour train trip our Mexican friends hop off just before the station. We thought they were leaving. Kirk and I hop off to buy beers and barely make it back to the train as it pulls away, each of us lugging a case of Dos Equis cans. As we climb onto the train, from the other side of the cars, our friends reappear. Apparently they were avoiding the Federales. They share smokes and we share beers and for a couple of hours the trip isn’t so bad. Amigos.

He can see her across the quad standing with her friends in her jeans and green tank. Sun-bleached hair falling around her shoulders in wavy layers. The cool September breeze blowing it across her face. So beautiful. She looks up as she tips her head back in laughter at something her friend says and she sees him. Or seems to and just as quickly her eyes leave and he sinks just a bit. Hoping to catch her eye again – just a tiny opening is all he needs. The lightest hint that she even knows he’s alive. The way she stands so confident in her body. Always smiling and those eyes, so deep and brown. he could just imagine what they would look like up close. . . And as he’s thinking of a way to dip into her world, some way to get to know her, some excuse to actually speak to her, his friends, who he’d forgotten were even here say “let’s go get a beer” And as he begins to follow them, he stops and says, “I’ll be right back.” His friends stop and watch inquiringly and then he shouts over his shoulder, “I’ve got to make an offer. . .” He jogs towards her, meeting her smiling eyes – an offer she can’t refuse.

You sit in the desert at night. Just as dusk is fading away, not too far our of town on a crop of rocks that stick up from a sea of cacti and creosote. And, as you do, you catch the rumble of trucks on the small highway as they roar down the state road to avoid the weigh station on the interstate. The light is just enough to make out the tops of an owl’s wing as he wakes to look for breakfast. And if it’s Summer in scorched Arizona you can catch a bit of crazy rain in July Monsoon as it comes up from Mexico. It rolls over land and weeps on the desert in a flood. Literally. Arroyos and suddenly muddy animal paths get full. It never lasts for long and as it passes by headed to Phoenix the desert turns green or seems to in the dark. The smells – long baked away suddenly come back with a fury to attack your nose forcing you to acknowledge the transformation. Saguaro blooms turn to fruit in the darkness as the stars peek through the muggy clouds breaking apart to meander.

It was a dry cleaning bag. Actually it was 3 dry cleaning bags stolen from dad’s shirts. Carefully pilfered so I wouldn’t rip them. They were each tied on all four corners to an X-shaped set of McDonald’s straws. The straws were shoved end to end and tied in the middle with mom’s sewing thread, also stolen. We’d taken more thread and tied off the bags to the corners of the straw-X and then cut slits in the straws periodically along their spines. Then we’d inserted a series of birthday candles (mom always saved them after a celebration) into the slits. The trick is to get them to stand upright so the slits need to be just the right size. We’d spent the afternoon working on the homemade dirigibles and now they were ready. We waited until dark and we walked the first one outside carefully holding it daintily by the top trying desperately not to jostle the candles. We begin lighting the candles one by one until they are all going. The candles flicker as they fill the bag with heated air and it begins to poof up like a jiffy pop bag on the stove. I can’t hold it any more and it lifts gently into the sky. We stare at what we’ve done. Candle lights getting smaller and not one of us says a thing. Mesmerized we watch as the home made aircraft begins to stall. It stops rising and the top of the bag bursts into flame. It sinks slowly on fire and falls to a melty landing.

Dear Diary,

When will my prince come? I’m so sick of these seven hairy little men. Always drinking and swearing and the smell?! Oh good Lord. I wish they would mix in a bar of soap on occasion. They take baths without water and yet they smell like tiny wet dogs. And the gas, when it’s chili night I can hardly sleep from Grumpy’s fumes and even Dopey rattles the china cabinet on those nights. Last night I found a booger on my pillow. And then, during story time, I thought Doc was just snuggling next to me, but he was picking and flicking and he’s probably the most well-mannered of them all. It’s disgusting. And Bashful? Not so much. Last weekend when they all came home from the pub, I heard them settle in for bed and then I heard a creak on the stairs. The next thing I know I feel someone licking my feet and I assumed it was one of the forest creatures. I threw back the covers to find pervy little Bashful leering up at me from the foot of my bed. Well I threw an apple at him and hit him right in the eye. The little jerk just picked it up, took a bite and immediately dropped dead. Serves the little bastard right. I guess Sleepy’s gonna have to start pulling his weight now that there’s only six left. Well, it’s late and I’m tired so I’m going to blow out the candle. But please hurry with P. Charming cause I think Happy was looking at me funny tonight. And, frankly, he has always kinda creeped me out. Love, Snow.

The bench looked as though Zeus’s butt may have graced it at one time long ago. It had weathered Corinthian columns that supported it – white to gray with age and it nearly melted into the 67 kinds of green in the gardens. At least it appeared to merge on the paper of his watercolor pad sitting on the grass in front of him. The day was ending hot and muggy like only Athens in Summer can. And he wavered between drinking the last of his fresh water or starting another painting as he looked down upon the muddy warm brown of his painting cup.

It was almost sunset but he was sure he could fit in another quick one in the fading, quickly changing light.. Yes, use the water to paint – drink a beer on the way back to the hotel. The bushes were so perfect, so well kept like little pawns in front of the queen tall trees. Funky Greek trees that didn’t look like anything back home with just so many greens. Purple shadows falling fast and it was time to paint. It would have to be a quick one. Focus. Fast strokes, wet on wet. no time to let it dry – have to enjoy the happy mistakes that happen on the page.

Sometimes he felt that his wasn’t the road of perfect paintings. That was his brother’s path. Controlled color to make light on the page. No. His strength had always been to emote through pigment and strokes. He could spend hours crafting and planning. Mixing colors only to be disappointed four paintings later when he compared his paintings to his brother’s on a cafe table between the Amstel bottles and olive bowls.

But his best was always a moment captured. A sunset dipping into the Aegean or chasing the color of a shadow as it melted to dark. He would still see his work as just short of his brother who always had the natural gift. Always a better draw-er.Always more finished. But his was earned. He had so much less natural ability but his path wasn’t the easy one. Never had been in painting or otherwise. So he mixed. Pierced the little cerulean blue and payne’s gray puddle with his #7 Windsor Newton and gestured Zeus’s bench. Half present, half anticipating the cold beer and comparisons.

January 15
To: Church Staff
From: Pastor Bill

This is to inform you about some happenings in the church building that have been causing some consternation to our flock. These behaviors must stop as they are clearly the work of someone who is challenged in knowing right from wrong. I am referring to the hanging of garlic wreaths around the doors and windows of the church and the distribution of flyers warning of vampires. Whoever is doing this, please stop.

January 18
To: Church Staff
From: Pastor Bill

This is the second time I’ve felt the need to write about this topic and I’m very upset. All of the holy water in the church was loaded into super-soakers and place at intervals in the sanctuary along with baskets of wooden stakes. This behavior must stop immediately!

January 21
To: Church Staff
From: Pastor Bill

Damnit people. Enough is enough. Ringing the church with crosses and changing the sign out front to say, “Bloodsuckers not welcome here!” isn’t helping anyone get closer to God. This has gone too far and when I catch whoever is doing this, I’m gonna call down the wrath of the almighty and all his apostles upon them. And for the last time, there isn’t going to be a “Vampire self defense course” after Sunday tea. I don’t care what the posters say.

January 24
To: Church Staff
From: Pastor Bill

Goddamnit! This is the last straw you little mother-grabbing, Twilight-watching heathens. All of my clerical collars were dipped in silver and are now completely ruined. Despite the assertion that our church is the base for Vampire slayers, this will do you no good if I ever catch the person who spray painted the words, “Home of Van Helsing’s heir” on the side of the building. I’m done with this and if I do catch you I will drive a stake through your evil little heart myself.

The Volkswagon bug was crashing through the underbrush of a dry arroyo and my brother, drunker than a hooty-owl, screams out the window, “You gotta hold on!” Well  no shit. Easier said than done with a rifle in one hand and an open Coors in the other. We hit a particularly big bump and the contents of my can empty upward, freeze for a second mid-air, then slam into my face drenching me completely. Most of the beer dries quickly in the dessert heat, even at night. And I still hear my brother laughing and hooting as he drives the bug like a 4-wheel drive down the Arizona desert paths.

Nothing new in my brother screaming out a window of a moving vehicle. He’s been doing it for years. Once, in Omaha, years before during the summer after 8th grade, I visited him there. His friend had a pickup truck, a modified army parachute, 300 feet of nylon rope and a large open field. We borrowed all four and decided that while most people need 4-5 people to parasail on land, we could do it with two. So he coils the rope in a large pile at my feet and I strap into the harness. He inflates the chute behind me and jumps in the idling truck, slams on the gas screaming out the window, “you gotta fuckin’ hang on!” I watch the rope uncoiling disturbingly quickly and notice my brother not slowing. I begin to understand fear and inevitability. The rope goes taught. I am jerked off my feet and I sail in a perfect arc through the air 30 feet before I land. I am dragged screaming up and down hills eating dirt for about a half a football field before my brother looks in the rearview mirror. His eyes get huge as I’m sure he’s thinking, “Shit. Dad is gonna be pissed.”

And while this was perfectly horrifying, the time I was most afraid to hear my brother tell me to hang on was when we were spelunking in southern Arizona. We were in the Chiricahua  mountains and we had spent the entire day in a crystal cave exploring. Our group was tired and our arms and legs had turned into sewing machines. The last part of the exit-trip was  the most technical and I slipped going up it. I was grasping at a rope while below me was a 30 foot drop to a ledge I had just left. Below that was a very dark, very deep black hole. Not inviting. I had stupidly volunteered to go last which meant I had a few of the newbies packs as well as my own, some bottles and an extra coil of rope. This all seemed like a lot as my skinny arms clung to the rope that was leaving my grasp quickly. My brother screamed as I slipped and informed me that he was gonna kill me if I didn’t hold on. I thought this a redundant thought, even in that short moment, but as he and the others pulled up the rope with me still clinging to it I found hand holds along the way and began to see and end. I scrabbled the last few feet, flopped onto my back at the top and began laughing uncontrollably. “You gotta hang on.” . . . no shit.