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."

The Heat of Things

I don't remember when I did not dislike July in Northern California. High-pressure systems press in, the air goes still, and even the dust stops moving. I'd hoped to be somewhere cooler this weekend, but poor communication and ongoing work-related tasks dictated otherwise. Having been to neither mountains nor ocean for over six months is creating its own high-pressure system as I get squeezed tighter between two ranges of mountains that roughly run parallel the Sacramento Valley. Chicago and Portland for a couple of days each were nice respites, but those trips seems too long ago to make sense. Perhaps a scheduled quick jaunt to Portland next week for a wedding will draw a bit of steam out of the kettle.

Nobody, though, has made the various beds I lie in; responsibility for mattress and bedding is my own and there is little reason for complaint. And a recent lunch with a writer friend and an email from a different writer friend that same day helped me re-evaluate a bed I would choose over the others. Sleeping in it full-time is neither possible nor practical, but like in a Motel 6 someone has left the light on there.

Yes, that is a couple paragraphs of poor writing; I can admit that. If I want to blame anything, though, I'll blame the heat.

Blackberries

With various deadlines gnawing at my little brain and a fledgling summer cold pressing against the remainder of my body, I do the wise thing after a long day at work and go for a 24-mile bike ride. I'd left the office with good intentions--take work home with me and make some progress, then brew some peppermint tea and tackle preparations for the course I start teaching this week. Having loaded my bike onto my car 10 hours earlier, however, was akin to loading obligation into my life, so I promised myself a short ride at an easy pace. Short turned into average once I got going, though, and easy switched to less easy when someone passed me and pressed my not-yet-extinguished enjoyment of competition.

Concentrating on catching the rider ahead of me (which I never did) was at least good for forcing the weight of deadlines into a small mental compartment; how my cold will respond is still in question. But, at the end of the ride, I wandered to the small patch of wild blackberry bushes I have visited several times this summer, each visit finding a few more ripe berries that, for some reason, the birds and other people seem to have overlooked. Happy to sacrifice pieces of skin to the brambles, I experimented with small berries and large: which are the sweetest?

It is, perhaps, a silly quest to find that one perfect berry, and each time I found what I thought was a good one, I continued picking and hoping to find a piece of fruit that was even better. Always searching for something better might be the sign of general unhappiness with what is, but rather than dwell on that, I'll dwell on remembering the taste of those berries that were just right--warmed by the afternoon sun, purple and sweet, within easy reach.