Casting Characters

With turns of luck and manipulations of schedules, Kominksi and I find time for books, beer, food, vintage cars, deer in the headlights…. Twenty years ago we could not have imagined how things have turned out, but I’ve learned that if you write enough fiction, the plot you’ve painstakingly outlined often gets out of whack, especially when major characters start to think and act in ways you don’t want them to. Sometimes they fall in love, sometimes out, and sometimes they simply remain where they are. Or, now and then they can be killed off when they get in the way, and now and then they simply die unexpectedly and leave everyone else to adjust.

A week later my oldest son graduates from college; ceremony leads to celebration, and assorted characters assemble in the backyard to toast the academic rite of passage, to embrace the graduate literally and figuratively before letting him go. It is a good thing to have worked hard at something and finally to be recognized, and I want to say “Go west, young man,” or something just as trite to encourage worldly exploration. I want to relate to him how invaluable such exploration can be.

Another major character, the graduate's brother, has news, too: he is moving to Salem, Oregon, in a matter of weeks, something that has been rumored for half a month and something that many of us have advised against, considering the impetus. I do not want to say “Go west, young man”; I don’t want to say anything trite. For some unclear reason I instead want to embrace him and not let go, to relate to him the risks in such a move—such exploration. (See “Wanderlust” in “Scribble, Scribble,” August 8, 2007.)

The hypocrisy is not lost on me.

One very major character is not in attendance—the 95-year-old family matriarch, who decided she should instead ride in an ambulance to the hospital where she could enjoy a steady morphine drip. On the way to visit her today, I told my wife I remembered when my oldest son graduated from kindergarten, and here he was a college graduate. And I thought of my grandmother being 95 and how many experiences she has had, and that she would trade none of them if doing so would get her out of this hospital room. She asks about the graduation and says she is sorry she missed it. (People who are 95 do not have to apologize for anything, do they?) And we tell her of the grandson who is moving to Oregon, which does not necessarily bother her. She understands how people move.

She, too, certainly never pictured herself like this when she looked ahead decades ago: small in the hospital bed, her hovering family asking if she needs anything.

We check our schedules, change our plans, curse our luck--and everyone remains in character: some major now, some minor.

Staying Put

In the Sacramento and Las Vegas airports, a person can access the Internet free of charge. In St. Louis that same person has to fork over $7.95 a day. Which, to me, seems kind of pricey, especially compared to "free." And who spends all day in an airport, at least by choice?

Anyway. I left St. Louis this morning and passed through Las Vegas this morning, stopping to let the hopeful off the plane and their counterparts on. I actually did not know I would be stopping in Vegas--I thought the plane would go through Kansas City. These might be important details. I sat in the aisle seat in the hopes of making a quick exit when I finally reached home, and because the plane was full, I had two people sitting next to me. The first to arrive, a short, pudgy woman who I would learn when airborne could down an entire pouch of peanuts in one gulp. Impressive. She never explicitly said she wanted to sit in my row, just kind of grunted when I looked up at her and asked if she wanted the window seat. She shut both window shades right after snapping her seatbelt closed, and soon after liftoff was asleep.

The woman who sat between us must have had a bad night, if not a long weekend. Thin and blond, she wore a gray dress, and shoes patterned with black and white squares and decorated with dull buckles. She carried only a purse and what must have been another dress in a garment bag that she shoved unceremoniously in the overhead storage compartment. She, too, began to doze not long after we took off: her head bobbed up and down a few times; her body did the pre-sleep twitch. And, soon, her head was on my shoulder. Each time I tried to edge away, my other shoulder extended into the aisle and I would be bumped by either someone walking toward the bathroom or one flight attendant or another.

So, I stopped moving away and let her sleep; I read, alternating between Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent (a kind of travelogue) and Don Waters' Desert Gothic (short stories). My friend Tom gave me Waters' book, and the story "What to Do with the Dead" I read while riding Amtrak across Nevada just after last Christmas. It is one of the best stories I have read in a long time. It is also set in Nevada.

As I read Bryson's description of visiting Newport, Rhode Island, the blond woman woke up and tapped me on the shoulder 4 times. (I counted--it was as though she were knocking on the door.) "Where are we?" she asked. I did not know how to answer, but I did not think the obvious "in an airplane" was what she wanted. "We just left Las Vegas," I told her. She looked at me, her thick lips open enough to show white teeth, and seemed to process what I'd told her before mumbling something about Sacramento and going back to sleep. Dozing on and off for the remainder of the flight, she would speak to me once more: "Do you know why it's taking us so long to land?" No, I didn't know. "We're almost there," I said, which caused her to mumble something else about Sacramento.

And then we did land, and she took her purse and her garment bag and followed me off the plane, stepping on my heel with her checkered shoes as she hurried to get into the terminal. "So sorry," she said, though I doubt she knew why.

Resting Up

Two days and one college graduation later on the outskirts of St. Louis, it's a night in a Quality Inn--the room stinks, the walls look like they're being painted. But it's a room with 2 beds in case I want to sleep around. Some thunder & lightning & rain & hail last night that added up to a nice dose of natural Midwestern hospitality. Many thanks for that, weather-planners. California might not provide more than a thimble-full of clouds from now until November, so I shall remember the pleasant meteorologic event.

Also met a long-lost relative today. Well, not so much long-lost as hidden from the family 50 years ago when young women could be forced to "go away to school" and then surrender their baby to adoption. She, this relative, is genuinely glad to be meeting a wide array of new people, all of whom are connected through blood, story, and myth. "I am part of you" she might like to say to all of us, and I would like to say that I hope she got the good parts from all of us....

Addendum to "Laying Over."

I never got to spend my 4 shiny quarters. I sat down to tie my shoes and call my wife, but as I was fondling my laces 2 women--sisters--sat down next to me and immediately engaged me in conversation. For the hour we waited I learned many things: they had just returned from a cruise from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, and were on their way to St. Louis. One of the women, the one who talked the most and sat to my left, told me of her travels: born and raised in Connecticut; years living in North Carolina; now moving to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In fact, just before the cruise, the sisters had driven from Asheville, North Carolina, to Cape Giradeau, where boxes had yet to be unpacked. The talkative one has been happily divorced for 16 years; her sister has lived in the same house in Dallas for 18 years, where her husband works in the oil business. They both tell me of their children, but I let the details slip by as I wonder if I can extricate myself from the conversation without appearing rude.

But I can't (or don't)--I am stuck with them until we board the plane. I disclose as little as I can about myself as they alternate talking to me, to each other, and to various sons and daughters they talk to on their cellphones. "Here's your mom" and "Here's your aunt" bounce between them and into the phones at various times. Then I hear about their recent road-trip from Texas and up the Midwest to the Dakotas, then around other places. The talkative one says, "I'm lucky that my sister's husband lets her travel with me whenever she wants to," and I think of Ann, the woman I once met on a beach and said something similar about her husband ("Beachcombing", March 11). I am thankful that I have to share only minor details about myself (the number of children I have fathered).

One good thing about letting people talk is that you don't have to.

Laying Over

Leaving Las Vegas....

A bumpy approach but a smooth landing--a good combination if you can get it. From the air, the Las Vegas Strip looks like any other city, just dry, more dusty. Fortunes won and lost down there. What happens here stays here if you believe the TV commercials. I wonder what has stayed and will remain for a long, long time. Thousands of stories in the Naked City, and where would we be without them?

The airport seems more like a casino than anything else, and I've got 4 shiny quarters in my pocket just ready to go--drop them in, press the button, watch the wheels spin. I figure my quarters will stay here, too. The woman behind me calls to cancel her facial scheduled for Monday. Maybe her face will stay here now. "I just want to come home," she says, then: "Yah, that sounds nice, but..." (That's not a typo: she says "yah" for "yeah.") The older woman next to me ends her phone call with "sorry we can't get there in time for the cocktail party. If we could've gotten a direct flight, we would've been there." She and her husband are trying to figure out how to program their cellphone, something I understand. The woman standing at the window is wearing a skirt that stops precisely mid-thigh, and she seems to be laughing with someone as she talks on her cellphone. "John Littleton" is paged to return to the security checkpoint to reclaim his property--what could that be, shoes? maybe a puppy in a box?

The men who now infiltrate the seats around me talk about buying real estate, and they use "dare" for "there," "dem" for "them"; they talk quickly and remind me of Midwesterners. Wait: I'm a Midwesterner and I don't talk like that. Maybe they're from the Other Midwest.

Time to find a slot machine--these guys talk to loudly and too fast for me.

Taking Off

Sacramento International Airport.

At least, I think it's an international airport--I know there are a couple of flights to Mexico each day, and maybe one to Canada. That's about how international we get.

And now, cleared as a non-terrorist and with my shoes back where they're supposed to be, I'm 100 feet and 60 minutes away from take-off. I also have 4 quarters in my pocket, quarters I hope to turn into a fortune during the hour layover in Las Vegas. Across from me, 2 men out of 3 are talking on their cellphones. The woman behind me is texting on her cellphone. The man a few seats down from me, his sunglasses on and a toothpick in his mouth, types on his computer. We are all connected to the wireless world, nothing in our lives more important, apparently, than our connections. If we didn't have modern technology, how modern would we be?

On a bike ride a few days ago, I watched a buzzard not quite get out of the path of an oncoming Chevy pick-up. I watched as the buzzard flapped its wings, banked left, but didn't have the needed altitude. At this airport, planes taking off occasionally "encounter" birds, which from what I've heard is not a good thing. (As I look through the airport's large, clean windows, I hope the birds will be napping until my plane is above their glidepath.) I thought it somewhat ironic when I saw the buzzard fall to the asphalt: an eater of roadkill becoming roadkill itself. Riding the same route today, I passed the buzzard again where someone had moved it to the bike lane. How respectful. The bird--large and brown and oh-so dead--hadn't been touched by other buzzards. I wondered if there is a buzzard code of ethics: eat anything but your own kind.

Standing By

I first flew in an airplane when I was about 15 years old. That was back when people dressed up when they flew, when they didn’t wear flip-flops (and probably not thongs, which is what we called flip-flops then) and tank-tops. I remember dressing up a bit, probably wearing the best clothes I owned: a pair of slacks, a shirt with buttons, dress shoes. That’s about as good as my wardrobe gets even now, though I think I do own a tie that is probably coiled on the floor in the back of my closet.

This wasn’t long after we had moved from Illinois to California, and I bought my own ticket with money I’d saved from my paper route I was forced to give up when we moved. I was on my way to reconnect with friends I’d left behind. I don’t remember anything about the trip itself, and I find it odd that I recall what I wore on the plane and that my ticket cost $168. Go figure. I was also flying standby, which you could do then fairly easily. You could go to the airport, buy a standby ticket, and someone at some point would say, “Standby passenger Bob, please come to the counter.” (In the navy, when our ship was at sea and the water was rough and the ship was about to turn, a sailor would announce over the intercom, “Stand by for heavy rolls.” Then the ship would turn and roll, and the people who were prone to seasickness would do so. It was great fun for those of us who did not get seasick.)

My cousin, the oldest cousin in the family, was flying with me, sitting behind me; she must have been visiting from Illinois. As we sat on the plane, I read the information packet about what to do in an emergency. “Hey, Bob,” she said when we started to taxi, “we’re moving!”

This same cousin is graduating from college in just a few days, and I am going to attend the ceremony. When she started college a half-decade ago, I promised her I would do this. I am very proud of her because sometimes her life has not been easy. She once was a flight attendant for a major airline (she might have even started out as a stewardess), and when that airline was bought by another major airline, she worked for that airline for awhile and then lost her job—was “furloughed.” Afterward, she toiled hard: sold real estate, worked in a coffee shop, raised 2 sons, managed to stay married when all hell was breaking loose around her… And all the while remained in school. I have known other, less inconvenienced people who dropped out at the first challenge—you teach enough college, you see it all the time.

Oddly enough, she was unfurloughed a few of months ago, so she has been flying again. The thing is, she also has enough years working as a flight attendant that she can retire relatively soon. Then, if all goes well, she will become a middle-school teacher, a profession that is not unlike working as a flight attendant. So, I will be flying to St. Louis in a couple of days, and along with my sister and an assortment of my cousin's acquaintances, friends, and relatives, I will watch the graduation and be very happy.

And already I’m thinking: teaching middle-school kids? Cripes! Talk about standing by for heavy rolls!