Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #25

I was afraid when the train slowed. We had endured so many false starts, so much false hope, to be dramatic, that I was sure we were preparing for another delay. When the conductor announced that Helper was just 30 minutes away, I heard many people shout even though most of us had many hours left before we reached our respective destinations.

"I'm going back to my seat," I said as Steven, Margie, and my father remained in their seats in the observation car.

My father wrapped his long fingers around my forearm and looked into me. "Don't get lost, okay?"

"It's not that far, Dad," I said.

I opened the Rhodia again and flipped through the pages to where I'd written my entry. I underlined the names of the brothers. I even wondered where they were, if they even remembered that night when they had me pinned down in that pup-tent. I considered tearing the page out of the notebook but instead found another blank page on the backside of what looked like Ophelia's last entry. I wrote this.

History

When I was ten years old I jumped from a low tree branch and felt something sharp go deep into my foot. I'd landed on a board hidden by some leaves, and a long nail went up through the sole of my PF Flyer. I lifted my foot up and the board came with it. I was in the woods not far from our house, and there was nobody to help so I put foot down, stepped on the board with my other shoe, and lifted up with my leg until the nail was pulled clear. I sat down, pulled off my shoe and sock, and saw that there was no blood. I limped home but never told anyone about it, but I was scared for weeks that I would get the lockjaw we'd heard so much about and come to fear. This wasn't long after Luke and John, and for some reason afterward--after not getting lockjaw or going to hell because of what those brothers did--I began believing in a lot less than I once had.

There is something about the desert I've come to need. Maybe it's simply the open space. Once Peggy and I drove every paved road in Nevada, and even hundreds of miles away from anyone or anything we'd find cinder-block homes and double-wide travels where people lived. Peggy didn't understand such voluntary isolation, and I tried to explain it wasn't any more voluntary than living in a city or a suburb. People need things, I said, and those things are always abnormal to those looking in from the outside. Besides, "normal" has a way of changing over time, doesn't it?

I hope Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriett are buried well. They've had to endure this trip too, I suppose. And I wish that Cousin Mark could bury his grief when he buries his parents. Grief, though, doesn't really start until someone's in the ground.

"Helper," the conductor announced as the train jerked and got slower, then jerked again. I got out of my seat, looked at the Rhodia, bent the corner of my two pages as a kind of marker, and stuffed the notebook into my sister's small duffel. When we'd boarded the train, Margie had insisted that we keep our luggage together so that we'd all be able to find it. I don't know why I left the Rhodia--maybe I hoped they would read it. I grabbed my own bag, walked down the steps to the car's lower deck, and waited for the doors to open. Waiting for that final stop, I thought of all the things I should've told someone, and I even wished my mother had been there. When the doors opened, I stepped outside into the cold desert air and stepped back away from the train. Only two other people got off. When the doors shut again and the train started forward, I looked through the observation car's windows and saw my family sitting there. They looked happy. My father seemed to press his forehead to the glass like he was looking for something, and maybe he saw me there. When the train was gone I crossed the tracks and walked to the bowling alley. The doors were locked. Wind worked its way through town, and I crouched in the doorway out of the wind. Sunrise wasn't far away, and I sat on the cold concrete and watched part of the sky turn pink. I knew again that something was about to happen.

- finis -

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #24

Steven lurched forward with the train. He'd slept through the conductor's announcement that we would be moving. When we shared a room as kids, my brother would often spring up in his bed and yell. He'd even once whistled so loudly that our dog whistled back. My anxieties have always followed me when I've been awake, but as relaxed as he seems during the day, Steven at night he has always been restless. Now he just relaxed into his seat, into the rhythm of the train.

"It's hot," Steven said.

"I know," I told him.

"We're finally moving."

"We've 'finally been moving' a dozen times since Grand Junction, Steven. I'm not feeling hopeful."

"You're never hopeful."

That wasn't true--I had just come to hope for different things. "The people in the next car seem to be celebrating."

"We all should be celebrating. I'm going to go find Dad and Margie."

I told myself that the relief I felt when he was gone was because I was glad the train was moving, but I knew that was only half true. If Peggy had been sitting beside me instead of Steven, she would have touched my shoulder with her small hand and said she was going to leave me alone for awhile.

The train picked up some speed, and for the first time in many hours I believed we were done waiting. I had once read that passenger trains are limited to 79 miles an hour, though I could not remember why. The train rocked as though it were moving at least that fast. I found the Rhodia and Margie's pen, and opened the notebook to a full blank page. I knew that something would be happening soon, so I wrote.

For Ophelia

I am tired of this notebook. I wish I knew who you are, Ophelia--or were. You seem lonely, and I want to tell you that there are good reasons to feel lonely, but that you will be fine. We have been stuck on this train and in this desert for much too long. I can see how a man could spend 40 days in a desert and go crazy. Or, 40 days on a mountain and come down believing he'd talked with God. Maybe the time in Winnemucca with Susan was enough to put me over the edge.

I feel that I should thank Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet for getting the family together for this trip. I haven't spoken with Margie, Steven, and Dad this much for a long time, and I realized how much I have missed them. They are good, patient people. If Mom had come along, I would've asked her and Dad about Dr. Fay, about what she might have told them after all those visits. I don't think it was fair of them to make Steven talk to Dr. Fay. I'm sorry he had to do that.

My first wife, Peggy, was a good woman. No, she is a good woman. She's the one person I think about every day even though we've been apart for so long. But everyone has that one person--and not always the person they end up with. The boy or girl in high school, the first person we think we love, maybe. Steven once confessed that the girl he dated just one time in high school was probably the person he had always loved the most--more than his wife, in some ways. "Maybe it's false love," Steven had said. "Something that never quite gets completed, you know?"

I wonder what Peggy would write now if she had this notebook. I wonder what Susan and Ellen would write, too. When Dr. Fay had me write my thoughts down between our visits, she always seemed disappointed when I wrote nearly nothing. I'd scribble something like "it snowed today." Maybe I should give a page to everyone in my family and have them describe lifetimes together just to see how the plot unfolds.

One thing I never told Dr. Fay about was what happened between me and the neighbor kids one night. Luke and John--the names seem ironic now--were a couple of brothers a years older than me. They'd been raised in Missouri or some place where rules are different, and one humid night when we were camping out in a small pup-tent in their back yard, I woke up with one of their hands over my mouth and another hand somewhere else. If I'd written that down for Dr. Fay, she might have been ecstatic. But that was a long time ago, and sometimes I am not sure that I remember everything right. The next morning Luke and John acted as though nothing happened, and so did I because I couldn't be sure.

The train must be up to 79 miles an hour now. My father is waving me up to the front of the car where he stands with Steven, Margie, and cousin Mark. My father mimes that he's eating, and I realize that I'm quite hungry.

We ate some snacks in the observation car, and everyone seemed happy. We were all happy to be moving. We would soon be stopping in Helper, the conductor announced, and I was happy about that, too.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #23

One winter afternoon Dr. Fay asked me what I imagined myself being as an adult. "Do you ever think about it?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. And, frankly, I hadn't imagined much for myself. The previous few weeks had been gray and snowy, and since we'd had so many days off of school I had spent most of my time outside. During some light snow flurries one afternoon I hid my .BB gun beneath my heavy coat and walked Sam, our half-blind mutt, into the middle of the nearby cornfield where the short stalks were mostly hidden by drifts. In one bare patch Sam flushed a pheasant, and I shouldered my .BB gun, shot, and I watched as the .BB itself curved to the right many yards behind the bird's tail feathers. Before then I had not fired a gun at anything in motion, and I had not yet learned the art of leading the target. Even sitting on the train today I can smell the cold air of that day and see Sam silhouetted against the snow as he bounced through the snow in pursuit of the pheasant, as I cocked the gun and hoped for another shot.

"What would you like to do when you grow up?" Dr. Fay continued.

"I really don't know," I said. My sister had known early that she wanted to be a doctor, and my brother was sure that he would be a professional baseball player. I had always been impressed with how sales clerks worked cash registers, though I didn't think that Dr. Fay would've accepted that I wanted to be a sales clerk.

"Well, that's okay," she said. "How is school going?"

This was easy. "It's nice having so many snow-days," I said.

"What have you been doing every day that you're home?"

"Going outside, mostly. I like to be outside when things are quiet and covered up like they are during the winter."

"A lot of people spend their entire lives outside," Dr. Fay said.

"That sounds good to me," I said. "But why do you keep talking about what I want to be when I grow up, or what I can do?"

She smiled. "I'm just trying to find out what interests you."

"Being outside, then," I told her. "I'd like to be outside most of the time." This was true enough, but I also hoped it would put the doctor off the scent. I could look through the window beyond Dr. Fay's right shoulder and see that the snow was falling again--full, thick flakes. This meant that Steven and I would have to shovel the driveway and sidewalks clear that afternoon, but we had developed a system that got us done quickly and would give us time for something else afterward.

"I want to ask you something else," Dr. Fay said in a tone that made me realize she wanted me back from the distractions on the other side of the glass.

"Okay," I said. And I knew she was serious because of how she lisped each "s" in the statement.

"Do you think it's worthwhile, coming here and talking to me?"

This seemed like a trap, and once again I was caught wondering what she wanted me to say. "I don't mind it," I said, which was true enough. But she wasn't giving up as easily as she usually did.

"I want you to not just 'mind it'; I want you to think it's helpful for you." She was firm.

As much as I wanted to look at the falling snow, I refused the urge and instead looked directly at her. Years later, Peggy would speak to me in much the same way when I sounded unsure or even fearful. "I think it's helpful," I said. "I like talking with you. I'm just never sure of what I'm supposed to say."

She softened. "You aren't supposed to say anything. I just don't want you to be afraid of our conversations. I'm not trying to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable."

"You don't hurt me," I said, but I could not commit to feeling comfortable.

As my father and I drove home later, I looked through the window of his Ford Falcon and felt the vibration of snow tires on the packed snow. The snow was still falling, and as we passed the field where Sam and I had encountered, the pheasant, I noticed that the cornstalks were now completely covered. The snow was still falling, and as we turned down the street we lived on, Steven was already outside shoveling.

"Your brother's crazy for not waiting for you to get home," my father said as the rear wheels momentarily lost traction on the slight slope of our driveway. Steven opened the garage door for so my father could park the Falcon, and when I got out of the car my brother handed me a shovel.

"Let me get my boots on," I said. We cleared the sidewalk and driveway quickly, and we rested for a minute to catch our breath and admire our work. When I looked to the house, I could see my parents and sister staring at us through the living room window, gesturing for us to come inside.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #22

Along with the train and its captive souls, Steven and I continued to sit. I leaned my forehead into the window glass and wished I had my brother's patience, his ability to accept circumstances. He seldom seemed flustered, something he said had helped him in a corporate world where so little of the workday made sense.

But I could not be like him, and only at fishing was I superior. Our father taught us early how to slide worms and grubs onto barbed hooks, how to bobber-fish ponds and small lakes. We also learned how to remove those hooks from the palms of our own hands or our thumbs though Steven never did quite understand how to push down on the hook just enough to get the barbed tip to slide out of the skin without tearing the small wound.

One summer our father and Uncle Frank to me, Steven, and Cousin Mark to Ontario, Canada, to "fish for something other than blue gill and sunfish." Mark, who never quite accepted my brother and me, refused to sit in the back seat with us and instead settled himself between my father and uncle in the front. Steven and I were less offended than we were sad that Mark was the only one among us who did not have a brother.

Our fathers were up early--too early for us--and ready to go each morning. From our rented aluminum boat, we would drop minnows deep into the lake as we fished for walleye before lunchtime, then stop on an island where my father uncle cooked whatever fish we caught. In the afternoon we got back onto the water and switched to lures. Casting was often problematic with five people in the boat, but when we returned to our cabin each evening we had stringers full of northern pike and, on one day, a couple of muskie. I was proud that as we cast with our open-face reels, Steven was always more prone to getting snags in his fishing line, usually whenever a fish hit is lure--the fish would be gone as soon as the line went slack. I got to where I could cast the lure in a perfect arc and then drop my thumb onto the line at just the right moment so that the lure stopped within feet of floating logs or a stand of reeds. After two days, the boat was less crowded because Cousin Mark decided to stay in the cabin so he could read one of the many books he had packed. Later when we asked our father about this, he said that Mark was the type of person who would rather read about life than live it.

"How did you like the fishing trip?" Dr. Fay asked me one snowy afternoon not long after I started seeing her.

"It was fun," I told her. "I'd like to do it again."

"What did you enjoy about it?"

I shrugged. "Everything. Being away with my dad and my brother. Being outside."

"I talked to your dad about the trip. He wasn't sure if you liked it."

"Why would he say that?"

"He said that you never talk about it."

"I talk about it with Steven."

Again, I didn't know what she--or my father--expected of me. I stared out the window behind Dr. Fay's desk and watched the snow grow heavier. The sledding would be good, I thought.

Snow was falling outside the train window, too, though I could barely see the flakes. Steven shifted in his seat, and the way he sighed I could tell that he, too, was finally starting to get edgy. The train had not moved for hours by that point. "Give me the notebook," he said.

"You going to read, or write?"

"Read," he said as he turned a couple of pages. "There's not much room left in here."

"Nope."

"You decide what you're going to right?"

"Who said I was going to write anything."

"Margie told you to. She gave you a pen."

"She should write something," I said. "Or Mark. He's the writer. Give the notebook to him."

"Not a chance," Steven said. "Mark's not getting his paws on this thing." He then slammed the notebook shut so loudly and suddenly that the people in the seats in front of us jumped. "I think we should mutiny," he said as he dropped the notebook on my lap and stood up.

"Where are you going?"

He looked one way up the aisle, then the other. "I need some answers. I'll be back when I find out what's going on."

Both of my knees were vibrating up and down, and I tried to calm them. I watched my brother walk away.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #21

A problem I had with Dr. Fay was that I could not tell her all the things I wanted to be heard. At some level she must have sensed this--an inability to confide such things as, yes, I was quite fearful of many things. I would often lead her to just far enough in one direction to make her forget about something else, recognizing early that adults search for specifics and are easily distracted by tangents. "How is school?" and "how are things at home?" were her two most common lead-ins, and I would give her a few pieces more than "fine" even when things were not fine.

Sitting alone on the motionless prison of a train, I wondered about Dr. Fay. Not long after I told my parents I would not see her again, Dr. Fay apparently got married and started a family of her own. I often felt pity for her children, for how good could childhood be if your mother is trained to always seek out problems even when there might be none? Still, I thought I might enjoy having her see me as an adult. I would ask her if I had turned out as she had expected, or if I had somehow surprised her. I squinted into the shaded window glass and put my teeth against my tongue in a week attempt to mimic her lisp.

"You sound like a god damned snake," Steven said as he plopped into the seat beside me. He thought it was funny when he startled me enough for my head to bounce off the thick glass.

"Asshole," I said. "Where have you been?"

"Talking to Cousin Mark. He's going as batty as you are right now. Says if the train doesn't move soon, he's going to, and I loosely quote, "sue the fucking wheels off of Amtrak for the mental distress of my not being able to give my parents a proper burial."

"He's a college professor," I said.

"Exactly. Not much of a legal menace, is he."

"Where are Dad and Margie?"

"Playing cards again. They won three bags of corn nuts off of Mark before he quit."

"I was thinking of Dr. Fay," I said. I put my tongue against the back of my teeth again but did not hiss.

"Did you know that I saw her a couple of times?"

"You?"

"Yep. Mom and Dad thought it'd be a good idea if someone who knew you really well talked to her."

"Shit."

"That's pretty much what I said. I tried to beg off by saying that I hardly knew you."

"Was I really that much of a head-case?"

"No more than the rest of us were, I don't think. Or are, I guess. You want to know what I told her?"

"Think it'll damage my sensitive psyche?"

"I'll risk it. I told her that I thought you just liked being alone. That you didn't hate anyone, and that you only wanted to do things in a different way. Mom and Dad were worried, so you can't blame them."

"I don't. Dad said it was mostly Mom's idea."

My brother shrugged. "Maybe. I always thought it was the other way around. Mom's always been the type to let problems solve themselves."

"I was a problem?"

"Not to me. We were all glad when Peggy came along, though. She could handle you pretty well, we thought."

He was right about that. "What about Margie--she have to see Dr. Fay, too?"

"I don't know. Divide-and-conquer sometimes works best when nobody knows what's going on."

"We need to get this train moving," I said. "I mean it." My leg was shaking and I could not stop it.

"A couple hundred people are thinking the same thing. Mark said he saw a little scuffle in the dining car. Nerves are frayed."

I wanted to say something about how I'd come to understand why an animal would chew its mouth bloody when it's trapped in a cage even when there's isn't a chance of escape, even when it knows there's no chance of escape.

"You know," Steven said as he set his hand on my vibrating knee and pushed downward, "we weren't afraid that you were crazy, but that you were determined to make yourself so. You just need to calm down, now. This will all be good."

Part of me knew he was right.

"Let me see the notebook," he said as he reclined his seat.

I handed him the Rhodia.

"You read the entire thing?"

"Not even close," I said.

"It's story time. Listen to this. Some guy named Kominski wrote it. It's part of something longer."

While he lit the candles, she took two painted masks from the wall, placing one on each of their faces. She pulled back the drapes, opened the window, and looked out at the night framing a full moon.

Together, they lifted up the television and gently pushed it out of the third floor window onto the street below.

It took a long while to hit bottom.

The crash and the following silence would stay with them like an unemployed relative--for a long time.

Without a word, they took off the masks, then each other's clothes piece by piece, letting them drop to the floor. Bathed in the moonlight, they danced together slowly, their mouths drinking the elixir of love, their hands gripping and kneading whatever was available.

He closed the Rhodia and handed it back. "I wonder what that's about."

"It's about love," I said.

"Yeah," Steven said, "but isn't everything?"

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #20

I had treated the Rhodia like it was a a sacred text, some type of New American Standard published by Amtrak and left for the taking much like the Gideons leave their bibles in every Motel 6 I've ever slept in. But the longer the train remained motionless and the more I saw the same people, even my own family, the more I felt that the notebook was dead weight. It was part of a general sense of frustration that filled not just the random, overheard pieces of conversations but the blank spaces between them. Everyone seemed edgy.

Dead weight or not, however, I refused to part with the Rhodia. I had even touched my pen to one page when I thought I would write, but I couldn't get any more than a dot of black ink on the paper. As much as anything, I needed to find a space to sit alone--not to write, but to separate myself from the other passengers. I even envied my aunt and uncle for their dark, quiet beds. I no longer knew where my father, sister, and brother were. We had gone in different directions after our poker game, something that isn't easy to do when most of the available space is linear. Margie had fended off my half-hearted attempt to give her the notebook, though she said she would like to read it after I'd written something just to try to figure out which words were mine. Now, with pieces of tissue stuffed into my ears in an equally half-hearted attempted to keep outside noises out of my head, I opened the notebook and searched for and found one of Ophelia's writings.

Pomegranates

My parents were happy with Phil, and I probably should have kept him around. But we had been together since high school, and we had wearied of each other. Not in a bad way, I guess, but just in a regular way: we both had come to expect the other be new and surprising, and we both ended up disappointed when neither could live up to that expectation. Phil was a good man, and sometimes I miss him. I have especially missed him these last couple of months, though I am not sure he would be patient with my being sick. He was never patient, and as he continued to fail with his art, he reached a point where I knew he was also not living up to the expectations he had of himself. "I hate it," he said one afternoon. "I get the paints ready, and I end up producing garbage. And that's if I'm lucky. Sometimes I end up not painting anything."

Phil introduced me to pomegranates not long after we met. We had met near the river, and he had brought a pomegranate and a knife. "Try it," he said as he held one of the dark-red seeds to me. We sat by that river and cut our way through three pomegranates. When I washed my fingers in the bathroom sink later that night, I admired the stained fingertips I held under the water.

He was prolific when we first met. He could paint anything. Even pomegranates, and somewhere boxed in my parents' spare bedroom is a still life sketch of two pomegranates in a wooden bowl. The longer we were together, though, the less he painted. He kept an easel in his bedroom, and one night as we lay in bed, he told me he hated the thing. "When we're having sex," he said, "all I can think about is what I should be painting. And whenever I try to paint, I end up thinking about sex." I told him that he was probably not atypical for a man, but he did not see the humor.

We stopped seeing each other quite simply: we just stopped. "Have you seen Phil?" my parents would ask. No, I had not.

That was it. There seemed to be several more words on the page, but Ophelia had crossed them out with strokes of heavy ink. I closed the notebook and reclined my seat. I found myself thinking about Ellen--Miss Orange County--and how she could draw anything. I wondered if she was happy. I hoped she was. I hoped Phil was, too.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #19

At some point my father, sister, brother and I found ourselves together at a table in the lower level of the observation car. My father had purchased a deck of cards, and we were playing poker using Dorritos and corn nuts as money. Keeping track of who was winning was somewhat problematic because we would now and then eat portions of our bets. My father and I had also managed to nearly empty his flask, so Steven and Maggie were playing a bit smarter.

"We're gonna die on this train," Steven said at one point.

"It's a death-train," Maggie said.

"I talked to the conductor," my father said. "He said it'll be awhile."

Maggie groaned. "What does 'awhile' mean?"

"It means," my father said as he played a flush and pulled the Dorritos and corn nuts to his corner of the table, "don't get your hopes up."

"We'll never even make it to Helper," my brother said, and it dawned on me then that my family did not know of my time in Helper.

"Did your conductor-friend tell you exactly why we wouldn't be moving?" Maggie asked.

"Something to do with computers," my father said.

"You'd think that Amtrak would've had these glitches worked out by now," Steven said. "I mean, how long have these passenger trains been running across this country?"

Glitches. That was always one of Dr. Fay's favorite words, usually along the lines similar to "you've got to learn that glitches will pop up," or, "sometimes there's a glitch in every relationship." Sometimes her lisp would get in the way of the word and she sounded as though her mouth were full of Kleenex.

"Where's the rest of the family, anyway?" Maggie said. I wondered if she was starting to get tired of being around us.

"I was wondering about that," my father said. "How could we spend so much time on this damned train without running into everyone else?"

"Why don't we write in the notebook," my sister said.

"Feel free," Steven said. "Write something profoundly medical."

I handed the Rhodia to Maggie, and she turned a few of the pages in the middle. "It's pretty full," she said, and she looked at me. "You still didn't write anything, did you."

I shook my head.

"It's your notebook," Maggie said.

"Why is it his?" Steven said as he lifted the Rhodia from Maggie's hands.

"He found it," my father added.

"It's not mine," I said. "Any one of you can keep it." I felt this, too--the thing had become a burden, a responsibility.

Steven gave it back to Maggie, who opened to a random page. "So, this Ophelia is the one who started things." She read something. "She's got a lot to say. How about if I read you boys a little story."

"What about the poker," my father said. He sipped from the flask and handed it to me. When I was done, gave it to Steven, who shook it as though measuring its contents, then poured some into the plastic cup that had once held Pepsi.

"You win," I said. "Read something, Maggie."

Maggie cleared her throat. "Here's something. Ophelia's. It's called 'Thinking.' Not an original title." And then she read.

Thinking

I want to say something to the effect that I do not know if I will be the hero of my own story, but Charles Dickens used words close to those. Maybe I should just say that I don't know my own story even though I know how it will end. For now, though, I will simply think out loud.

I woke up this morning with a pain in my side that lasted for a couple of hours. I did not know what to think of that, though I did have suspicions. I dreamed last night that my mother and I were traveling from Maine to Rhode Island in the Chevy Vega she loved so much and that had taken us up and down the Eastern Seaboard in search for a new home that was more stable the one we'd just left. By the time I was twelve I had been to six schools in three different states, and I had slept many nights in that Vega as my mother held me to the soft throat of her loneliness. I am glad that we are friends now, but there were times when I would have traded her for a sack of groceries.

I suppose that I carry as many of her stories as I do of my own--a girl learns a lot about her mother's life when the two of them are shivering at a rest stop somewhere outside of Providence. I was glad that she finally found my father, though I was not glad to learn that I had two brothers that my mother had never told me about. "Kind of slipped my mind somewhere in South Carolina," she said and, really, I found that enough. I should call my parents, and I wonder how many times they have re-read the note I left for them. Will they believe the part that I am okay?

Maggie sighed. "That's it. A peculiar ending. This girl needs help."

"She sounds fine," Steven said. "She's working things out on her own."

"Young people never work things out on their own," Maggie said.

We were getting uncomfortably close to my experience with the good Dr. Fay, something my father seemed to recognize. He took the notebook and glanced through a few pages. "Someone has to write something," he said. "Maggie's right--it's pretty full." He gave the notebook to me. "The hell with it. Let's eat the money."

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #18

Dr. Fay, the therapist my parents sent me to see when they were prematurely concerned about my mental well being, would occasionally catch her tongue in her teeth and speak a word or two with a prolonged lisp. It wasn't until I'd seen her half a dozen times did I find the courage to look her in the eye, but I got to where I would almost hope to hear that lisp as one of my parents drove me across town to Dr. Fay's office. Something about it was alluring. Considering our family's often-precarious finances, in retrospect I should have appreciated my therapy more if only because I know now that my parents were going without something or another just so I could get the "help" they believed I needed.

"We'd like you to see someone," my mother said to me one autumn evening.

"Someone?" I said.

"Someone you might like to talk to," she said.

"Oh," I said. I thought of my friend Brian whose parents had taken him to "see someone" about the oval knob of bone on his forehead. That knob had turned out to be something bad, though in the decorum of small towns nobody ever gave me or my siblings the details. Brian left school a week later, and he and his family pretty much disappeared. "Sometimes people just grieve," my father told me, but I was too young to understand what that meant.

"It's a counselor," my mother said. "Your father and I spoke to her a few weeks ago, and she sounds very nice. "We'd like you to talk to her, too."

"Why?" I asked.

My mother bit her lower lip and squinted her left eye the way she did when she searched for answers. "She's very nice. Maybe you can tell her things that you don't want to tell anyone else."

"Like what?" This was the first time in my life when I considered that keeping things to myself was considered bad form.

Now my mother shrugged. "Things that might bother you."

"I talk to people all the time," I said. "Steven and I talk every night before we go to sleep."

She smiled. "I know. We hear the two of you. It's nice."

"Will she ask me questions?"

"Probably." Then she seemed to recognize something. "But it's not because you've done something wrong. This isn't a punishment."

Our first hour together, Dr. Fay did ask a lot of questions--about my brother and sister, mostly, but also other things that didn't seem to matter. "You like sports?" she asked.

"Not watching, but playing," I said.

"Which sports?"

"Baseball, mostly. Football's good. I'm not very good at basketball."

"Do you and Steven play together?"

I nodded. "When we can. He's smaller and younger, but he's faster and seems to know more than I do."

"He knows more about what?"

"How things work. How teams work together, too. He seems to know what's going to happen in a game before it even does."

"He sounds like a good brother." That was the first time I heard the lisp: thhhounds.

I said that he was a very good brother.

"Your parents are worried about you," Dr. Fay said.

"About what? I'm not a bad kid." I'd heard enough stories about "bad kids" to know that, mostly, I wasn't one.

"No, you're not a bad kid. And your mom and dad don't think you are. They just worry because you seem sad."

"I've told them I'm not sad." I thought about what my Uncle Frank had said once about my being quieter than a dead loon.

She changed the topic. "How's school?"

"It's fine," I said. "I've got nice teachers."

"I'm sure you do," Dr. Fay said. She let me stay silent before she said anything else, something I liked about her.

"Would you like to come back again?"

I had to wonder if this was a test of some sort. "Do I have to?" I was young enough to know that I probably did not have a choice.

"You never have to," she said. "Your mom and dad would like you to."

"What do you want?" I asked.

She seemed surprised by the question. "I'd like to talk to you some more."


On the quiet, motionless train, I wondered if the year's worth of discussions with Dr. Fay had done me any good. My parents and I had spoken very little about the visits, and they never told me why the visits stopped. For years I assumed that Dr. Fay--and probably my parents--had given up on me and pronounced me a lost cause. When I told Peggy about the therapy, she smiled.

"I think it's sweet," Peggy said. "Your parents cared enough about you to try something like that."

"I'm not convinced I needed 'something like that'," I said. I told her how I'd avoided Dr. Fay's eyes for a long time.

"You must have felt threatened," Peggy said. "Or scared."

"Maybe. But I got over it."

"What happened when you did?"

"I looked her in the eyes," I said, "and then things changed."

"How?"

"She had one blue eye and one brown eye."

"How did that change things?" Peggy asked. "So she had two different colored eyes."

I thought about it. "I just never knew which one of them to trust," I said.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #17

“You want anything to eat?” my father asked.

I was looking through a window on the other side of the train than I had been in the observation car, but nothing seemed any different.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Are you being polite, or are you really not hungry?

“I’m really not hungry.”

“You should go find your brother and sister,” my father said.

“I saw Margie a little while ago.”

“Hard to see how the five of us could spend so much time apart on this train,” he said.

“None of us particularly likes sitting still,” I said

He laughed. “That’s true! Used to drive your mother and me crazy when the three of you were little. Seems like we spent half our time looking for one or another of you.” He turned his head to look at me, and his voice dropped. “You were the worst, though. You know that. You never quite grew out of it.”

“Steven’s the only one of us who actually ran away from home,” I said. Which was true: he’d packed a small backpack with clothes and books, walked into the kitchen, and announced to the rest of us that he was leaving home. To their credit, my parents let him go. When he returned a couple days later, nobody said a thing.

“I guess we all run from things at some point,” my father said. “Steven just got it out of his system early.”

“Margie’s never left,” I said. “She’s pretty stable.”

“No, she never actually went anywhere. But during her freshman year of high school she threatened to leave nearly every week. She and your mother used to go at it like wildcats.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“I do. Your mother would end up crying in our bedroom, and Margie would end up crying in hers. I tried talking to them both a couple of times, but they made it clear I had nothing to offer. Now they’re great friends.”

“What was it like with you and Uncle Frank?” I asked.

“Best of friends and worst of enemies,” he said. “Different than you and Steven. You two seemed more stable together. Uncle Frank and I would beat the crap out of each other in the morning, and by bedtime we were buddies again.”

“That therapist you and Mom sent me to asked me what I thought about you and Uncle Frank,” I said.

This seemed to pique his interest. “What the hell did she ask that for?”

I shrugged. “I don’t remember the details. Something about the male role models I had. I told her that Steven was my real role model, and she found that odd—that I would see my little brother like that.”

“For the record, it wasn’t my idea to send you to a therapist.”

“You blaming Mom?”

He chuckled. “Nope. I just said it wasn’t my idea. I’m not saying that I didn’t end up agreeing with it.”

“I never trusted her,” I said.

“Your mother?”

“The therapist.”

“I’m not sure I did, either.”

“She was nice enough, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to tell her.”

My father processed that idea for a moment. “I think you were supposed to tell her whatever you wanted to tell her. Your mom and I were just worried about you. For a long time we thought that we’d done something wrong.”

“You didn’t,” I said.

“We didn’t know that,” he said. “At least, we didn’t know it for a long time.”

“I’ve never blamed anyone for anything,” I said. “I just get nervous sometimes. Especially when there are a lot of people around. And I’ve never gotten used to strangers.”

“You afraid you’ll not hit the mark with anyone?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Peggy always said I was just born afraid.”

“Peggy was a good woman,” he said.

I thought about Peggy then. A few days before she left, we were lying in bed and listening to a light rain. “Things are going to be so much different,” she said. “Things are always different,” I said. She turned onto her side and stared at me. “What does that mean?” “Nothing,” I said.

My father shifted in his seat. “You still have that notebook?”

I handed the Rhodia to him.

“You write anything?” He leafed through some pages.

“Not much of a writer,” I said. “That’s another thing I had to do with that therapist—write things. She thought it would help me express my thoughts.”

“Did it?”

“Nope. But I made up a lot of stuff just to keep her happy.”

“There’s a lot of stuff in here,” he said. “Ophelia seems to have found a way to get people talking about things.” He read something, then he cleared his throat. “Here—Ophelia wrote this, too.” He handed me the notebook. “Read this.” He touched his finger on a short paragraph.

From Thoreau’s On Walden Pond

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

“What do you think?” my father asked.

“Ophelia sounds lonely,” I said.

“That’s not Ophelia writing,” he said, “it’s Thoreau.”

“Still, Ophelia put it in here. It must have meant something to her.”

“Maybe,” my father said. “But if that’s what she believes, she’s not saying that she is lonely. She’s saying that it’s okay to be alone—that it is not the same as loneliness. And maybe a person can feel very lonely even when there’s a crowd of people around.”

“Maybe I should re-read it,” I said. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

My father stood up and stretched in the aisle. “I’ll be back. I’m going to go refill my flask.” He patted the pocket of his shirt.

“They don’t sell that on the train,” I said.

“I was a Boy Scout,” he said, “and I was prepared. I’ve got a half gallon of the stuff in your brother’s duffle bag. I just have to find your brother.”

When he was gone, I looked through the notebook and saw that though many of the passages were in different colors of ink and had been signed by different people, the penmanship was similar to Ophelia’s. The train lurched, and it seemed we had begun to move. Soon enough, though, we were motionless again, and I set off to find my father.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #16

Miss Orange County

I have always found it somewhat odd that when I think of my ex-wife, I think of Peggy. I never think of my marriage to Ellen. Perhaps this is because Ellen and I were together for barely a year, and only six months into our marriage we both realized neither of us would ever be sober or sane enough to survive much longer sharing the same life. Ellen was closer to the bottom of things than I was at that point, but somewhere in our respective doldrums we recognized how bad things were.

“You’ll find someone else,” Peggy said as she packed her final box. I watched her hesitate as she considered taking a picture of the two of us standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. When she finally decided to leave it behind, I was more sad than angry.

“I don’t think I will,” I said. But I did. I had been working as a waiter in a small restaurant in Winnemucca, Nevada, and Ellen was a regular who always came in with a group of people who always seemed to be having fun. When Mario, my boss, told me that Ellen was a prostitute, I wasn’t bothered. I had stopped judging people years earlier.

Ellen and I started slowly, casually. After a six months of mutual flirtation, we took advantage of Nevada’s casual requirements for marriage and were married by one of her former clients, a married man who said he was sad to see Ellen trade lying on her back for less-honest work. Ellen got a job at the Ace Hardware store that was owned by another of her former clients who said he’d gotten too old for sex but still appreciated all Ellen had done for him over the years. “It’s not just sex men are looking for when they come to see me,” Ellen told me once.

Ellen was also a former Miss Orange County. “I thought I’d end up being Miss America,” she told me. It was her claim to fame, she said, since she’d won fair and square. “I’m not stupid, and it wasn’t easy. I worked hard for that title.” Ellen was the only person I had ever known who had even come that close to anything famous, even fame in a place as small as Orange County. "The closest thing to reality in that place is Disneyland. There were a lot of girls who wanted that title. Most of them were too blonde and too conservative in a year when the judges were looking for someone different, and being someone different isn't easy in Orange County. I was lucky—it was my year.” I felt special being with her knowing how hard she had worked to achieve something,

Then, though, during a quest for Miss California, she found out she was easier manipulated than she thought possible. “I slept with a couple of people involved with the pageant,” she said, “and I found that I liked sex and cocaine more than I liked winning beauty pageants. One thing led to another, and on a morning in September I found myself buying a house in Winnemucca. I gave up most of the cocaine but kind of enjoyed the sex.”

Our first couple of months together were great fun. Ellen stayed in touch with old friends and former clients, and we allowed each other to be more self-destructive than we might have been alone. Peggy and I had been down some bad roads, but we also found ways to say stop. But Ellen and I couldn’t do that, and it wasn’t long until we were both out of work when my restaurant closed and the Ace Hardware had enough of Ellen’s lack of dependability. If Ellen hadn’t had a bought-and-paid-for house, we would’ve been homeless. Somewhere in the middle of everything, though, we found the strength to divorce as easily as we’d gotten married. Ellen sold the house and moved to Colorado, and I went back to California. She left a message on my answering machine one night saying she was fine, that she had re-married and now had two step-children and had found God. She said she would pray for me, but that I was not to call her back.

The only person I did call after that was Peggy, who was working as a pre-school teacher in Port Angeles, Washington. She was single and going to college, and I told her I was proud of her. “I still miss you,” I said. I didn’t know if I should’ve have been proud of my two wives that they had worked their way back to their feet, or if I should be disappointed that I had not.

“It’s been a long time,” Peggy said.

“I never even told my family about Ellen,” I told her.

“Why are you telling me?” She sounded distracted.

“I thought you would be interested,” I said. “You were always interested in me, weren’t you?”

She was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “Have you changed?”

“I like to think I have.”

“Ellen doesn’t like someone you would be involved with if you had changed.”

“Ellen’s gone now.”

“But she was there,” Peggy said. “You were married to her.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Peggy.”

She was quiet again, and I did not know if she was even breathing. “I’m not sure, either. I don’t know if I should say anything. I’ve got a good life here now. Are you happy for me?”

“I have always been happy for you, Peggy.”

I wanted the train to move. More people had come into the observation car, and they all seemed anxious, perturbed. We all wanted to be moving, or at least to know why we were not. The air in the train seemed different—more stale and close. I didn’t like sitting still like this because without movement, I tended to dwell upon mistakes I had made or memories of people I had either (or both) loved or hurt. Part of me knew that I should be happy about being so close to my family, even my dead aunt and uncle.

When a group of small children pushed into the observation car and took seats around me, I left and returned to where my brother and I had been seated. My father, though, had taken my brother’s place. “Where’s Steven?” I asked as I sat beside my father.

“He went to talk to your cousin somewhere,” my father said. “I told him I’d keep his seat warm.”

“Any idea why we’re stuck here?” I asked.

“You didn’t have to come.”

“I mean, stuck wherever were stuck—why the train’s not moving.”

My father shook his head. “Nope.”

“We’ve got to get moving,” I said.

“We’ll probably stop again in Helper.” He had pulled out the route map. “That’s our next stop. Helper, Utah.”

“I know,” I said.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #15

I wanted to sleep. I was suddenly quite weary of being on the train. I should have returned to sit next to my brother in a more comfortable seat, but experience told me that my desire to sleep would be over-ruled by my inability to do just that. "It's insomnia," a doctor had once told me when I'd complained about so many nights of sleeplessness. "It won't hurt you."

The train had stopped for nearly half an hour, and now it was barely moving, as if it felt the same anxiety about getting to Helper as I did. Earlier, a group of teenagers had giggled their way through the observation car, and I envied their ability to be so openly foolish. They had lingered for awhile before passing through to the next car and leaving silence to claim the space they left behind. I still clutched the Rhodia and my sister's pen, but I had not yet written anything despite all good intentions. As the train stopped again, I opened the notebook again, leafed past more of Ophelia's writings, and found something long, something to occupy me.

Words Like Love

After six hours of what started out to be aimless driving, I ended up in Bridgeport in front of a combination café and bar called Little Clancey’s, though I was probably headed there the moment I left home. The “Little” on the hand-painted sign had faded, but “Clancey’s” in red letters was bright in a sunrise diffused by thin clouds. I’d traveled through California’s dry central valley, then turned east through Yosemite and finally north on Highway 395, just like we sometimes do when we visit our daughter Becky and her husband Ron in Carson City. By the time I reached Mono Lake, the eastern sky was crimson and I knew that Bridgeport was just north and would be the place to stop.

All four windows of the Impala were open when I rolled onto the gravel in front of Clancy’s, and a cool breeze brushed gently against my bare arms. I used to drink a lot, and when I did every window in the house or car would be shut tightly. The voices, the ceaseless wind, the smells—everything used to bother me. Now, though, working my way through sobriety, I welcome the fresh air and keep at least one window open wherever I happen to be.

“You’ll catch cold,” Nora, my wife of twenty-five years, will say when I keep both bedroom windows open all night even in winter.

“Viruses cause colds,” I tell her as she pulls the heavy quilt closer to her wide chin, “not open windows or even getting your feet wet.” But after awhile she’ll get up and shut the windows, caught up in one of my old habits.

I sat in the Impala and thought that Nora would be wondering where I had gone. She’d given up actually worrying years earlier, when I was drunk most of the time and hardly found my way home anyway.

“You could call me if you’re not coming home,” she would plead. “A little respect is all I ask. Just the smallest bit of consideration. Is that too much?”

It was too much, as far as I was concerned at that point in my life, in our marriage. “I’m an adult,” I’d tell her. “I don’t have to check in with you.”

We went on like that until one day Nora quit asking questions. But she would always wonder, even when I left the house last night with her yelling at me. We’d been watching television and a beer commercial came on. I told her that a beer would taste good, a nice cold beer in chilled mug, just like on television.

“A what?” Nora said very quietly. “God damn you, Brian. You go this long without a drink and after all that’s happened and you can still say it so easily, as if it meant nothing to either one of us?”

“I didn’t say I wanted one,” I said loudly. “I just said it would taste good.” I looked down at the worn carpeting in front of the couch, where our feet spend so much time.

And then she yelled about how my father had been drunk for so long that nearly his whole liver was eaten away by the time he died. About how close my drinking had come to killing both her and me, that if she hadn’t been in the car on my last birthday I surely would have died. She stopped yelling when she ran out of breath. Her chest was heaving beneath her lightweight pink blouse. Nora’s eyes were dark with disappointment like they were after Sam Tinker threw me the surprise birthday party, when she came to see me at the hospital. It was two days after I’d lost control of the Ford wagon we owned and Nora and I went bouncing into a large stand of aspens.

“Jesus Christ,” Nora had said after pulling me from the car and cradling my face in her hands. She got only a few scratches across her chin, but I caught the steering wheel with my sternum and then the dashboard with my forehead. For months afterward it hurt even to breathe.

Lying on the grass, I’d looked up at her, feeling her kiss my mouth time after time. Everything was confused, but I didn’t know if it was because of the accident or the pitcher of martinis I’d helped Sam drink earlier that night. It was raining, and drops of cool water were falling from Nora’s hair onto my face. Then everything turned a dark purple and I shut my eyes as Nora’s voice disappeared.

After Nora finally got her breath back last night, she stood from the couch and started in on me again, using words like responsibility and trust and love. So I took my keys from their hook beneath the phone in the kitchen, and I walked out the front door, letting her yell from the front porch as I started the car and left. At the Shell station I filled the Impala and got a cup of coffee, then drove away.

When I stepped into Clancey’s, Maureen was doing the beer orders for the week; I was the only one in the place. I’d met her years earlier, one of the times I’d driven alone to see Becky. Nora travels on her job selling pharmaceuticals to hospitals, so sometimes when she is away I wander. This morning I asked Maureen if she remembered me, but when she said she wasn’t sure, I told her that it made no difference.

Maureen had dark, curly hair and the smooth facial features—thick cheekbones and a mouth burned down at the edges—that I’d found myself falling love with for as long as I could remember. She reminded me of a waitress, a good dancer, that I’d known when I was in the Navy. But then, it seems every woman I’ve either had or desired has reminded me of someone else or the lover before.

“Why’d you come back?” Maureen asked when she filled our mugs with coffee. One coffee pot had DECAFFEINATED stenciled on it in bright orange letters. Some of the letters were partially scratched away, as if the pot had been in use for a long time.

“Restlessness,” I said, wondering if I should say that maybe it was because of her that I’d stopped there.

“How does your wife feel about that?” She gestured with her mug toward my ring finger.

“She understands.” I looked at the ring and tried to think of the last time I’d taken it off.

“You mean, she puts up with it.” She looked at me as if she’d heard lies from men for a long time.

I left the bar after two mugs of coffee, after Maureen got busy with other customers. Wandering around town until lunchtime, I finally stopped at Cleo’s Drive-In, where I ate a chicken-breast sandwich at one of the redwood picnic tables. I watched Maureen come out of the bar across the street, walking toward Cleo’s. She smiled when she noticed me.

“Still restless?” She said after ordering at the walk-up window. Her hair was neat and her legs thin, and I knew that she was the type of woman who took care of herself.

“Yeah,” I said. The Sawtooth Ridge was visible over her shoulder.

“At least you’re eating,” Maureen said. “I haven’t had a customer so early on a Saturday for quite some time.”

“I like coffee after a long drive,” I told her.

She took a bag from the girl at the window just as I finished my sandwich. “You feel better, now that you’ve eaten?”

“I feel good,” I said. “I feel almost....” I paused and looked up at the gray, ragged Sawtooth, trying to think of the right word, the right feeling.

“Almost what?”

“Almost human,” is what I told her. It was the most fitting word I could think of.

She nodded slowly, then followed my gaze up to the Sawtooth. “It’s going to rain. Come over later and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Thanks,” I said, again thinking that a beer would taste good.

Maureen smiled as she turned and walked back to Clancey’s. I sat at the table and stared at the mountains. The ridge was high, nearly eleven-thousand feet, and I had spent a lot of time hiking in the area when I was younger. Below the ridge itself was Matterhorn Canyon, where a combination of ignorance and exhaustion almost killed me and Sam Tinker both. Just as after the car wreck, it was an experience that left me changed, though it changed me into someone who drank heavily. Though I never figured out why, it was after that when I started believing that nothing I did in life mattered. Most people would have reacted differently, but I just stopped caring about a lot of things.

After Maureen left, I decided to drive to Carson City after all. Becky always appreciates it when her mom and I visit, since she’s so far away from us. She and Ron have a small hardware store, and more than once I’ve helped them stock conduit or boxes and bins of nails.

“Oh, Daddy,” Becky said when I called her from a payphone at Cleo’s. “We’re just on our way out. We need some stuff from a warehouse in Reno, so we’re making a long weekend of it.”

“That’s fine, Becky,” I said, and it really was. “Enjoy the weekend. Maybe Mom and I will drive up next month.” If I had told her how far I had driven that morning, she might have changed her mind.

“Give her my love,” Becky said, and I told her I would.

I hung up the phone and looked at clouds covering the Sawtooth and thought back to when Sam and I got caught in the autumn snowstorm and nearly didn’t make it out. We were carrying neither a tent nor warm clothing, and for a full day we huddled around a small fire and waited for the storm to pass. We never told anyone about it, either, because we knew we’d been fools for being so unprepared. But several times in the years that followed, when Nora and I weren’t even talking to each other, I thought that the mountains might have been the place to die when I had the chance.

The wind had grown colder, and the clouds had dropped over Bridgeport. I smelled rain as I pulled my windbreaker from the Impala’s trunk. When I got back to Clancey’s for the last mug of coffee, Maureen wasn’t surprised when I said I was leaving.

“I had a feeling you would be,” she said. Her hands were wet from washing glasses in the small sink behind the bar. “I could still buy you a beer.”

“I have a long drive,” I told her. “But I might be back, if you want to save it for me.”

She smiled, showing teeth that were white and straight. “You’ll be back,” she said, though I wasn’t sure how she meant it. I stared at her, but she turned away before I could tell her that she probably was right.

I got home late that night after driving slowly through rain most of the way. The weather didn’t break until I stopped at a mini-mart to buy cherry Lifesavers. Outside the store I saw stars winking through small gaps between clouds sliding across the sky.

As I parked the Chevy in the driveway, I slipped a Lifesaver beneath my tongue. Candy had once been a way to hide the smell of what I’d been drinking, but now it just tasted good. When I stepped quietly into the house, I let the last sliver of a Lifesaver drop down my throat. Nora was watching television, and I smelled her lilac perfume, my favorite, as soon as I shut the door behind me.

“You came home.” She didn’t look up. Her feet were propped up on the large footstool we’d bought just a week earlier.

“Yeah. I had some things to work out.” I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes on the carpet.

“We were supposed to go to dinner,” she said, and I noticed then how she was dressed up, still expecting to go out. That was why she was wearing perfume. “We were supposed to eat at someplace nice, and that’s all I’ve been waiting for. I thought you’d be home, so I never cancelled the reservation.”

I didn’t remember anything about dinner, but I didn’t doubt her. “Tomorrow,” I told her. “I forgot. I’m sorry. We’ll do it tomorrow and make it special.”

“Have you been drinking? You’re eating candy.” It was the first time she looked at me since I’d come into the house, and her stare was cold.

“I’ve been driving,” I said, fingering the single remaining Lifesaver in my pocket, wondering how she had noticed the candy from twelve feet away. I thought that even after twenty-five years of marriage it would be nice to have at least one secret, to have something that Nora did not know.

“Nice way for you to show your love for me,” she said plainly. “Skipping dinner for getting drunk. You could have called and then at least I could have eaten here. I could have fixed something instead of sitting here and waiting.”

“I do love you,” I told her. “And I’m not drunk.” But she’d been drinking—a half-full bottle of gin and a glass with ice were on the floor beside the couch. I wondered about the Sawthooth, about whether the ridge was now covered with snow. And I wondered about Maureen and her beer orders, even about what she’d bought for lunch at Cleo’s.

Nora had tried to hide the gin, and I wanted to say that it didn’t matter to me what she did or whether she believed that I was sober. I didn’t care if she was drunk then or drunk for the rest of her life.

“You do love me?” she asked. “You do?” She wasn’t convinced. But she was drunk and nothing would matter by morning. Her perfume was strong, and I wanted it to be stronger yet, to envelope me and the house and all that I knew in its silky embrace.

“I do,” I said, “I really do. You’re a princess.” I thought then that one day soon I would tell her about nearly being frozen in the mountains, about what that experience had done to me.

“Yeah?” She came over to me and took my hand, holding it to the side of her face.

“Yeah,” I said, and I sat down beside her to watch television.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #14

I wasn't sure if I had expected to write something in the Rhodia after my sister left the observation car, but I believed I planned to. This, though, wasn't atypical. Before we were even married, Peggy told me that the gap between my expectations and my plans was as wide as she had ever seen in anyone. I told her I thought that was a compliment.

So, rather than put pen to paper, I leafed through the notebook's pages yet again and found another of Ophelia's short entries. This one, titled "St. Peter's Gate," was illustrated with small clouds.

St. Peter's Gate

First, I have to say that I do not believe in angels. At least not the winged type that float beneath halos. If there angels, they are among us and embodied in living beings: the man who reaches out to stop you from stepping into San Francisco's traffic, the woman who hugs you after your first visit to the oncologist. At the train station in Chicago, though, I believe I did see an angel--a small, compact man who seemed to move through the crowds both unnoticed and accommodated at the same time as people changed their paths ever so slightly. He walked with such grace from the ticket counter toward the trains that I could not help but watch. And he watched me, too. He watched as I searched for my ringing cell phone and then let it ring unfound when I knew there was no reason to answer. Then, when he was gone, everything seemed fine. The anxiety of leaving Chicago and being without direction was gone. The commotion in the train station seemed suddenly comforting. I wanted to follow him.

I wondered about Ophelia's angel. On my trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, not long after Peggy and I had separated, I wandered out of Waverly Station and hoped the climate would soothe my literal and figurative hangovers. My brother Steven had recommended an inexpensive bed and breakfast, the directions to which I had written on a small piece of paper that was barely readable. "Head toward Holyroodhouse," Steven said. "It's a palace. The Queen sleeps there when she's in town." So, I carried my worn knapsack out of the station and turned where Steven's instructions said I should turn. When I found the palace, I stopped to look and thought of the idea of royalty. "Excuse me," a woman said as I began walking again. I turned around to see a tall, thin woman who smiled like no woman I have ever seen. Everything about her seemed perfect--her clothing, the tilt of her head, how she held herself against what had become a cold breeze.

"Hello," I said.

She held out her camera. "Will you take a picture?"

I could not place her accent, but I guessed French. "I will," I told her. She stood so the palace was behind her, and I took her picture. "You should look at it," I said as I returned the camera. "See if the photograph is okay."

She looked at the digital image now inside the camera. "It is good," she said. "The palace smiled nicely." The palace smiled nicely. Such a perfect phrase. "Thank you," she said as she put the camera into the pocket of her denim jacket. I watched her walk away, her hands clasped behind her back as she headed away from the palace and toward what appeared to be a castle at the top of a hill.

Later, as I lay in an uncomfortable bed that barely fit in a small room, I thought about her, how I could have loved her forever. Angelic, is what I thought.

Not Even in the Dark

The first girl I should've kissed but didn't was named Alice. This was a long time ago, probably the last day of seventh grade when we walked from our rural school to a more rural working farm Val's family owned, Val being the girl who accompanied me one summer (maybe that same summer) to the McHenry County fair that occurred each August. I remember being on one of the fair's rides, I think it was the Scrambler, and doing all I could to keep from sliding across the seat and pushing up against Val. It was symptomatic of the shyness and social awkwardness that I've never truly overcome. I should have let inertia drive me into her shoulders! I knew a lot of farmers then, or at least I knew their kids who lived in the bucolic regions outside my small Midwestern town and always had to get home after school to do their chores.

Alice and I had a little history in seventh grade, a brush with the evils of youthful criminality. Well, not just the two of us; there were several of us. For one reason or another, we thought it would be fun to light small smoke bombs while out at recess (or whatever recess is called in junior high). Being young and fairly stupid probably contributed to our not thinking things through: It's not easy, or even possible, to light smoke bombs without someone noticing. Soon enough, Alice and I and our fellow delinquents were sequestered near the scene of the crime, a teacher or two watching over us. What made me more nervous than anything was that I had worn no socks to school that day, a clear and deliberate violation of District 200's rules of behavior. I sat in the grass and covered my bare ankles with my hands and hoped no teachers would notice. Soon enough, we were in the principal's office being lectured and admonished by Mr. Pace, a stern and stern-faced man who, like most adults I'd encountered as a boy, had little patience with what I thought were harmful indiscretions. Years earlier, my friend Tony and I found amusement in covering a green Post Office drop-off box in mud freshly formed by heavy rain. One or another authority figure, someone who was associated with the Postal Service, I believe, was less amused, and that same evening whoever that person was joined my parents and me in our living room. My parents, I'm sure, were humiliated. I lost a shoe in the mud that same night, something I thought was a more serious problem.

One by one, those of us in Mr. Pace's small office were interrogated. Alice, to her credit, owned up to being the one who had supplied the smoke bombs. She was close to the principal's desk as she was questioned, the rest of us a few paces to the rear. While she spoke, I stepped forward to stand beside her, and I said that Alice was not the only one to be blamed, that we had asked her to bring the smoke bombs. Mr. Pace, even less amused than before, told me I had enough to worry about and that I should save my energy to defend myself. I think I stopped trying to be brave for awhile after that admonishment. I do not recall the punishment that befell me. Alice, though, was banned from the school bus for a week or so, which I'm sure caused her parents no small amount of trouble.

The last day of school was always fun, for we did nothing. That year, we played softball and ate pre-made sandwiches all afternoon. Alice and I were both pretty good baseball players then. The baseball field, in fact, was the only place I felt comfortable for much of a my youth; it was a place where I didn't have to worry about conversation or trying to figure out the ever-changing dynamics of various social circles. All I needed on the baseball field were a decent bat and a reliable glove. At the end of the day, our entire seventh grade class walked--yep, walked--the several miles from the school to Val's farm. Most of us had been together since kindergarten, and we shared a high level of comfort together. We must have eaten something at Val's house, and we must have played hide-and-seek. Not too oddly, every now and then one or two people would disappear to where they could hide and not be found. Eventually, around dusk, Alice and I found ourselves together near one of the large silos. I'm sure we talked about many things, and I am positive I knew that I was supposed to kiss her. Alice was a very smart girl and now teaches law at a very nice university--so she must have remained smart.

She also probably knew when enough was enough, and she said something like this: "I think I see your mom's car." She didn't. I knew she didn't. It was simply code for "Kiss me now or won't get another chance." We never did kiss, of course; that would've been too easy. Even in the dark I could not be resolute. We just sort of drifted away from the silo and into the lights coming from the farmhouse, and eventually my mother did appear. If I had known that night that about six months later my family would move to California, I might have been more courageous.

Many years later, Alice and her husband would visit my wife, son, and me in California, and the visit was pleasant. Alice was a reporter then, an occupation I greatly admire. I doubt that Alice remembers that night at Val's farm, and there is no reason she should. I would bet, though, that she remembers the smoke bombs, the bright clouds of blue and red and green that rose into the trees, spread across the grass, and eventually found a way Mr. Pace's stern eyes.

The Man and the Duck

One good thing about growing (or being) old is that I've seen many things and met many of people. At an age now where I can make comparisons easily, I've got a knapsack-full of "she's just like what's her name," "he's a replica of someone named so-and-so," and "that's the other thing but in a different shape." The comparisons come so easily and readily now, I often wonder if I'll ever again meet anyone who is truly unique. Oddly, or perhaps not, this phenomenon means that I am seldom disappointed in or surprised by people, though there have been notable exceptions. These exceptions are more gossipy than not, however, so we'll just agree to let that topic drop. A couple of good friends have disappeared over the last few years, which I find more disappointing than surprising since those disappearances were neither announced nor anticipated. Paths converge and then separate, don't they?

My recent lament that I've been stuck between 2 mountain ranges for a long time still rings true, but this is nobody's fault but mine. So, seeing any new places has been on hold for awhile. A couple of half-hearted attempts to get out of Dodge have failed because of a variety of reasons, but with just over a month left of summer, I think that same heart is growing a bit stronger. My friend Tom recently sent me a photograph from a mountain peak, an image that arrived by email about 2 days after I'd spent time thinking I'd like to go climb a mountain (and I now have one in mind). Shawn has been writing and fishing; Kominski's on his way to the Midwest for a week of enjoyment. Good for the 3 of them--the bastards.

But, to end things here, let me tell you about the man and the duck.

A few weeks ago while my car and I were stuck in traffic, I watched a man standing on the sidewalk, his cardboard sign saying he was homeless, had a family, and needed money. The sign also said "god bless you," which I appreciated. As he paced, he was soon accompanied by a duck, a shapely brown duck. The duck was cute. The bird walked toward the man, stared up, wiggled its tail feathers, and seemed to be waiting for something. The man looked down, walked a few steps and turned the sign toward the string of cars. The duck looked down, waddled a few steps, then looked up at the man again. The man said something, and the duck wiggled its feathers. I could not tell if the duck and the man were connected somehow; I had seen one man or another there before, but I had never seen the duck. When the light ahead turned green, I wished that it would quickly change to red again so I could sit in my car and watch. There is a drainage canal near where the 2 of them were strolling, and I wondered if the duck lived in the water there.

I was happy about that short episode. I don't often interact with people on street corners or with ducks, and this was something new and different.

I Went to the Doctor and the Doctor Said

"Your blood pressure's up," the doctor says as he reads my chart.

"I thought it might be," I tell him as I wonder what he's scribbling. "I can feel it."

"Not much, but a little," he says.

I think that a little can be enough, but I don't say this.

"Any idea why?" he asks.

"A few ideas," I say, and I drag a couple off the top of the list and hand them over. I always wonder if he really wants to hear these things, or if he's simply like a disinterested spouse who asks just to be polite.

Neither of us is overly concerned, so he moves on to other things. He does some stuff that I don't particularly enjoy but have come to tolerate, and he tells me to make an appointment for a couple months in the future. The woman at the counter takes my money--check or cash, no credit cards or debit cards--and asks me when I want to come back. We negotiate a date, and she uses a pen to write my name in the appointment book. I tell her that using a pen instead of a pencil is a sign of confidence that I'll come back, and moments later I'm on the road back to the office.

That night I never do find a cool spot on either side of the pillow. I toss and turn as quietly as I can and wonder what gets the blame for tonight's insomnia: caffeine, the heat, the things I told the doctor about.

After a few hours of marginal sleep, the alarm sounds and 15 minutes later I'm out the door and on the road to the office again--wash, rinse, repeat. Somewhere in the middle of the day I remember being on a ship down near Guam. I was standing on the catwalk outside the compartment I worked in, gathering fresh air after being cooped up inside with radio receivers and cryptographic equipment and the heat all that gear generated. Other than the sounds of the ship's bow sliding through water and the radar rotating on the mast, there was no sound as I leaned against the guardrail and counted stars. The quietest darkness I've experienced was on a road between Sandy, Utah, and Ely, Nevada. The only thing I could hear when I got out of my car and stood on the pavement was the clicking of the Ford's engine.

Returning mentally from the Pacific Ocean to my landlocked cubicle and the computer screen in front of me, I think of the movie Requiem for a Dream, the scenes in which the television seems to come to life. It's strange to go from being at sea to reviewing last weekend's movie. Maybe it's because as my blood pressure is going up my vision is going down from staring into a computer monitor so long every day, and perhaps the monitor has a life of its own and is plotting something just like the television does in the movie. I jump off the third horse in this daydream trifecta, and I imagine getting into my car and taking a little road trip across the country or at least into the middle of Utah. Just a little jaunt I think right as my email program reminds me I have a meeting in 5 minutes. My monitor seems to flicker a wink at me as I lock my computer. I grab a notebook, find a pen, walk into the conference room, sit myself down, and get my mind back to work.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #13

I had joked to my parents more than once that the only time I put pen to paper was when I was signing for my belongings after posting bail or, more likely, having it posted for me. They had never come to see the humor in this even after I assured them it had happened only twice. Plus, the second time didn't really count because no charges were ever filed. "Some things parents never find funny," my mother had said. She was right, I suppose, and I know it must have been more of a burden for her and my father than it had been for me. I could always leave town and start someplace new, but they'd lived in the same house for 45 years and had to live and work among people who knew more about me than even I probably did.

Only half a dozen or so people were in the observation car with me after Margie left. The train would stop next in Helper, and something about passing through that town made me nervous. The Rhodia felt slick in my hands, and I realized the more I thought about Helper, the more sweaty my hands got. I watched a man who looked a few years younger than me come up the steps in the middle of the car. He was carrying a can of beer in each hand, and I thought a beer would taste good then. Behind the counter downstairs a short, wide woman stood counting money. "Can I get a beer?" I asked.

"What kind?" she asked.

"What are my options?"

She pointed to cans of beer lined up on a shelf behind her. I wondered how they stayed there when the ride got rough.

"Coors," I said, picking it only because I suddenly remembered Matt, an actual grave digger I'd known in Pensacola, Florida. This was before Coors was sold everywhere, and Matt had driven from Florida to Kansas and back one weekend just because he wanted to buy a case of Coors. Matt and I would come close to some bad trouble one night, but when he returned with the Coors he was generous enough to share as we sat on the beach and watched lights from ships and boats reflect off the Gulf of Mexico.

There were fewer people upstairs when I returned to where I'd been sitting. I set my feet on the small ledge beneath the window, but seeing my full reflection in the window now made me even more nervous, so I found a chair that would swivel and keep my reflection to myself. Several pages in the middle of the Rhodia were blank, and I picked a page right next to one of Ophelia's entries. I braced the notebook against my knee, test the pen on my hand, and knew after only a few minutes what I would write.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #12

After finishing "The Map-Reader," I got as comfortable as I could in the observation car. I watched telephone poles pass by and imagined that they were moving but the train was not. When I was seven or eight my was taking me to see a counselor because "he doesn't seem to want to talk to anyone." My parents might have thought I was suicidal, but at seven or eight I'm sure I hadn't reached that stage yet. During the ride to the counselor, I watched the broken lines in front of the car and asked my father how we knew the car was moving, not the road and lines. He didn't say a thing. He just tapped on the break pedal so I could feel the car slow down. Later I wanted to say that the lines had slowed down, too, but I knew his point was for me to feel something.

But the telephone poles. I watched them long enough to sense there was a pattern there, and I removed the BIC pen from the Rhodia's spiral binding. My sister had given me the pen when she'd stopped to check on my brother and me an hour or so earlier. "You still have that notebook?" she asked. I showed it to her. "Then you might need this," she said and handed me the pen before walking away. She had been encouraging me to do things since I was a kid, and this was no different.

I first noticed that some poles had a plate with a number on it, which I guessed was a mile marker. Then, 10 poles later was one that had a single reflective strip wrapped around it. Pole 20 had two strips, pole 30 had three, and pole 40 had four as well as a plate with a number one less than the first pole: 40 poles per mile, I assumed. I used the stopwatch on my Timex to see how long the train took to pass from one numbered plate to the next, then used Margie's pen on the palm of my hand to write the calculation that showed our speed. I felt like the boy in "The Map-Reader" learning something new about navigation.

Margie found me not long later, after I had watched hundreds of telephone poles. She sat down in the adjacent seat and pointed to my hand. "You've got a notebook full of paper. Why did you write on your hand?"

I looked at my palm, at how much of the ink had smeared into the narrow lines and folds of skin. "I guess I was saving the paper for something important," I said.

"You going to write something?" She took the Rhodia and leafed through some of the pages. She handled the paper carefully, with a delicacy that must have suited her profession.

"I don't have a lot to write about," I said.

"Sure, you do. Write about how crazy it is to be riding on this train with a couple of dead relatives."

"You write it," I said.

She shook her head. "Not me. This isn't my story. I'm just along for the ride."

"That doesn't make much sense, Margie."

"Probably not." She stared out the window. It was getting dark outside the train, and our faint reflections looked back at us. "Remember when we were kids?" she asked. "When Mom and Dad would go out to dinner or something an leave the three of us alone? How we'd turn off all the lights until someone finally got scared enough to turn them back on?"

I laughed. "You never did give in."

"I used to cheat. I'd keep a tiny flashlight under my pajama shirt so that only I could see it. Then I'd wait for you or Steven to break down."

"You did that?"

"I did."

I shouldn't have been surprised. Margie had always been very smart, but she also had a certain sneaky streak that probably continued to serve her well.

Margie stood up. "I'm going to see if I can call Mom. You staying in here for awhile?"

"Might as well," I said.

She moved away, heading for the next car. "Write something."