Getting Beyond the Familiar

The Day Before the Trail

London has a peculiar odor, perhaps a combination of antiquity, sweat, and human potential. But, I have to leave that odor behind for a while, trading it for what should be air that is less pungent. I enjoy traveling, but I'm always a bit anxious as I leave the go beyond the familiar.

I board a train in Paddington Station and ride it to the town of Stroud where I find the local information center and chat with the nice woman working there. She directs me to where I'll eventually find the bus stop I'll need later, but before first I find a busy bakery and sit down for a cup of coffee and a fine brownie, a Double Belgian Chocolate treat that hits the spot though for the most part, lately, I have eschewed such sweet things. Back out on the streets I quickly forget in which direction the bus stop is supposed to be, so I wander through some streets and through a shopping mall, just me, my knapsack, and my heavy bag of luggage. The bus shows up and I climb aboard. The only other passenger is the bus driver's son. The bus driver and I chat. He is married to a Filipina woman, and he and his family loves the Philippines themselves. We talk a bit about our travels to that country, and then a few minutes later he drops me off in Painswick, where I'll spend the night. I wander through the St. Mary's Church cemetery before making my way to the B&B. I am the only guest, apparently, though the night before the place was filled with seven psychologist. Once again I am a day too late to see people who might help me. I was once interviewed for a job, by seven people. They worked for the State of California, and I figured that seven psychologists might be more helpful. 

The B&B, which as a building that is several hundred years old, is owned and operated by a married couple. The female half of that couple and I have a good conversation that is filled with small talk, discussion of the Brexit and Donald Trump, of her daughter who has been working in Africa, of where to have dinner, of what I would like for breakfast. Painswick is a small town; perhaps it is just a village in the truest sense. I am shown to my room, which is up a steep set of stairs. It is a comfortable room. Half an hour later I have cleaned up and am out the door to The Falcon, where I  have dinner. I am seated at a small table in a corner of a large room. Though I do not mind being alone, there are times when even I would like someone to talk to. But the chair across from me remains empty, and that makes me think of one of the worst lines ever written for a mediocre song: "And no one heard at all, not even the chair." (Neil Diamond, "I Am, I Said," 1971).

After dinner I wander again through Painswick to kill some time. I am, I find, ready for bed. More of the unknown awaits tomorrow, and I want to be ready and rested.

St. Mary's Church--very old. Yew trees.

Where I slept, outside and inside.

Getting There and Setting Up Shop

Let's Go, S - F - O!

Hours before the flight and we're congregated within the United Lounge in the airport's international terminal. I'm not a member of said lounge, only a visitor blessed with a one-day pass. The world is different from the one outside where the lowly people who have no passes linger. We get free food. Free wine. Comfortable seats. An array of newspapers that provide viewpoints we agree with along with those we don't. I read them all. I actually get two meals, each different from the other: more food than many people in the world have access to in a full week. God assuredly blessed me with the benefits of trickle-down economics because I am an American.

On the airplane, though, things equal out and, though I am still an American, I am flying on United. My butt is too big for modern-day seats on modern-day aircraft: Those trickle-down economics stopped a few percentage points above my demographic. Ten hours of being a voluntary prisoner inside this aircraft might not be as bad as an hour in Guantanamo, but I'm pampered and self-righteous enough to make that comparison.

Here We Are, L - H - R!

I like London. I even like Heathrow airport, which must be larger than the town I grew up in. This is my fourth time here, and I even know where the bathrooms are after getting off the plane. Waiting in line to pass through Customs, I listen to the people behind me, strangers before they got into the queue, as they discuss their respective jobs. The man traveling alone, is a college teacher somewhere in the Sacramento Valley; the others, a married couple from Texas, are retired. The man asks the couple if they approved of President George Bush, since he, too, is from Texas. I don't hear their answer.

Just a Rube on the Tube

The fast way into London is via the direct Heathrow Express: quiet, efficient, clean. The chosen alternative is the Piccadilly Line: 10 or 12 stops, lots of noise. I emerge at Earl's Court Station, and it's still early morning, many hours before I can check into the Easy Hotel. I step into a Starbucks I've visited many times before, and I nurse a cup of coffee and try to acclimate to London's smells and commotion. Finally bored enough to move, I get back on the train and reverse course to the stop near the Victoria & Albert Museum. I check my heavy luggage and wander around for a few hours, then get on yet another train and travel to Paddington Station, which is near my hotel.

Killing Time and London Times

For a couple of days I wander around London: a few pubs, the Dickens Museum to search for remnants of the Muse. The British Library: bits and pieces of writers and musicians and philosophers, the paperwork of centuries gone by. I'm always amazed at what we save, what we label as important. And Hyde Park, too--one of my favorite places to visit. I could wander around Hyde Park for days, following the paths and roads. It's a respite from the city, a place that can help ease me into what will come next.

Home: Part 30

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

January 1958

My father, most likely at my mother's suggestion, sometimes took me to work with him on Saturdays. He would wake me up early, hours before the store opened. "We have work to do before the work begins," he was fond of saying. But a couple of Saturdays after he broke my mother's tooth, he drove silently.  I sat in the front seat of our old Chevrolet as he navigated through snowy streets to the Sears store several miles away. Though he worked in the appliance department, he had been in the store long enough to have worked, as he said, "everywhere but where they keep the women's unmentionables."

I watched the snow fall. I watched a rabbit run race along beside the car before it darted left and into a snowbank. I usually looked forward to going to work with him, but this time there was so much tension between us that I wasn't looking forward to doing anything. My parents, my sister and I had barely spoken to each other since that night at the dinner table. My father seemed to be spending more time at work, staying later than he normally did and often returning home after dinner time.

"We should go on a vacation this summer," my father said so abruptly that I flinched. "I was thinking we could drive to Michigan. I spent a few weeks there when I was a kid. I don't remember where. But I remember we swam a lot, so there must've been a lake."

He might have wanted a response, but I wasn't sure. So, I stayed silent for the rest of the ride. At the store, my father unlocked the door, and I followed him into the dark store. We made our way to the small warehouse at the rear of the building. "There isn't much stuff," I said. On other visits, the shelves and floor had been stacked with boxes.

"Still stocking up after Christmas." He turned on the lights and gestured to the shelves. "They'll be filled again in a week or so. I don't have much for you to do today, so you can wander around the store, if you want. Nobody else will be here for a couple of hours, so you should be fine." He sat down in a large chair and started reading notes scattered across a metal desk.

I never tired of walking through the quiet store. I would lie on the beds and test each for comfort, then look through the tool department for a collection of wrenches that I thought I'd buy my father for Christmas when I had the money. I was in the toy department when my father called me. "I'm over here," I yelled.

"I need your help for a few minutes. Appliances." He had used a hand truck to haul new washing machines from the warehouse to the showroom. "Help me with these."

We positioned the units side by side. "Mom would like one of these," I said. "A new one."

He stared at me for just long enough to make me anxious, and then he ran his hand across the top of one of the machines. "Yeah. She would."

Home: Part 29

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

July 1974

Mitchell called a few days after I got home. "You need to stay home more," he said when I answered the phone. It was still early for me even though the sun had been up for hours.

"Why?" I asked.

"So people who call you don't have their hearts broken when you don't answer."

"I've been home," I said. "I was away for a while, but now I'm home."

"Quit trying to sound poetic."

I pulled the phone's chord as far as I could, opened the kitchen window, and sat down at the table on which a half-full glass of Scotch still sat. "Where are you?" I asked.

"Heading to Pensacola."

"Where are you now?" 

"Christ. Poetic and angry. That's not a good combination."

"Why not?"

Mitchell laughed. "Because they just don't mix. When did you ever write a love poem when you were angry?"

"I've never written a love poem." 

"Bullshit. Who was that girl in high school--Minnie? Molly? M-something."

Here name had been May, but I wasn't going to give in. Mitchell and I had been friends since we met on the volleyball court during gym glass in our freshman year. He was picked last, even after me and my fake leg. Some time during high school I'd tried to write poetry, and only Mitchell had seen it. He'd had the grace to say he liked it. After graduation, he'd enlisted in the army just to get away from being selected last for anything. He'd come home from basic training fit and confident, and had then volunteered to go to Viet Nam. 

"So, you know it's early here, right?" I said.

"It's always early there, isn't it?"

"Now who's trying to be poetic."

"Come back here for a visit," he said. "I'm working with the navy for a while, but I'll have my own 
place off base."

"Pensacola?"

"F-l-a," he said. "Well, it's more like South Alabama. It's full of righteous Baptists and frustrated housewives. I'll buy you a ticket."

"I just got home. I need some time to recover."

"Recover? You're getting old! Look, I'm at a payphone in the airport in Atlanta. I'm running out of time. When I get to my place, I'll call you and we'll figure things out."

"We'll see, Mitch. I've got things to do here."

"You never have anything to do anywhere, so you might as well do it with me. I'll call you in a few days."

Liner Notes

Not long ago I was speaking with an old friend about our respective relationships to music, relationships that perhaps because of our similar age were more similar than not. Over the last several years he has taken to the ukulele, and I have become close to both an electric and an acoustic guitar. He will certainly be a better player of a ukulele than I will of a guitar, and I am sure that like most trysts mine playing days will end in deception and tears.

But along with our penchant for stringed instruments, my friend and I also see--or perhaps used to see--music as something beyond the auditory. We both grew up when record albums were popular, when going to a store and finding just the right album demanded physical effort: find an artist or two and evaluate any visible artwork, hold the cellophane-sealed cardboard container, and go with faith that the deep cuts were as good as the song or two we'd heard on the radio. Then, at home, we would slice the cellophane and slip the paper sleeve out, cradling the record itself as if it were a newborn baby that we'd helped deliver. on the sleeve we'd find the liner notes, bits of information about who played which instruments on which song, who the producer was where the music was recorded and mastered. We'd find the lyrics, too, and even commentary written by the musicians and songwriter. It was a way, perhaps, to keep track of the music industry itself.

Placing the record on the turntable took care and attention, and we would clean the record first before dropping the needled. If we were especially fastidious, we the first time we ran the turntable we recorded the music onto good cassette tape, saving the original source and playing only the copy.

When CDs and their clean, static-free sound came along, we lost a bit of information just as we lost the hiss and pop from even the most clean of albums. Liner notes got smaller and briefer; lyrics were often excluded; inventive artwork was reduced to underwhelming sizes and proportions. We certainly got to hold the product, but the experience was diminished even if the process had changed only a little. And now, with nearly all music available to be downloaded, we have only the music and not the experience. We seldom take risks with music because it's so easy to listen to and buy only what is presented to us by one gatekeeper or another. Deep tracks on an artist's "album" these days? Bah...the stories and themes that can be developed on an album-length production have been replaced by digitized meanings-of-the-moment. Recording artists for years have sought and been pressured to release a hit song, but today it is too easy for everyone--artists and consumers alike--to stop there.

Perhaps this is just a case of a couple of old people remembering how "things were so much better" when we were young. In fact, "perhaps" might even be too nice of a term. But over the last six months during which three of the best friends I've ever had have died, I've allowed myself to genuflect a bit to certain nostalgic tendencies in several areas of life. Because I had known each of these people for many decades, I know a lot about them just as they knew a lot about me. Some of the secrets we shared are better off now that they, too, are dead, but I'd often prefer the deep cuts and the hiss and pop of a life over one that is clean and static free. 

I think about how tt different times but never together we shared much information and many experiences--our producers, the musicians we played with, our lyrics and personal commentary...liner notes that we could read at our leisure.

Home: Part 28

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

July 1974

I was home. The taxi driver had made his way through the traffic north of the airport and dropped me in front of my apartment just after dark. He got out of the car and pulled my Samsonite from the taxi's trunk. He looked at me as I turned to pay him.

"You okay?"

"Tired," I said.

"You need a hand with this thing?"

I handed him the money. "No, thanks."

He pocketed the bills. Fog seemed to drift down from the streetlights above us. "You have a good night, then," he said. He buttoned his coat and stood with his hand on the car door. "Everything okay?"

"Tired," I repeated. "A long day."

"Get some rest, then. This fog's killing my hands, you know?" He settled into the seat and drove away.

I knew what he meant about the fog: Even inside my apartment my own hands felt chilled. San Francisco was always a shock after being in the Philippines. I poured a bit too much Scotch into a tumbler and sat in the kitchen nook from where I could see out to the street and, on a night clearer than this one, glimpse the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd inherited at least part of my father's penchant for drinking alone in dark rooms, and even as I sipped from my glass I thought there were other, better things I should be doing. I'd not had a real conversation with anyone since leaving Narcie what seemed like weeks before; the stewardess on the plane were the only ones I remembered talking with.

Shannon, before she experienced what she said was her "life's epiphany," had once found me asleep with my head on the kitchen table, my fingers wrapped around the stem of a martini glass. "Wake up," she'd said. 

"I'm awake," I said though I moved neither my head nor my hand."

"What are you doing out here?"

I sat up straight and took in my surroundings. "Drinking and sleeping."

She took the glass. "Yes," she said, brushing the hair from my forehead. "Are you really this lonely?"
"Just had one martini too many," I said.

"Yes," she said.

Afterward I became more careful about letting myself get like I was that night. It was something my father never learned to do--keep the dark away when things mattered. My sister and I had both tried to get him to quit drinking altogether, and he feigned his changed habits well enough--and often enough--that Cindy and I chose to believe his act enough to make us give up. We were both, I suppose, fools to not realize that our mother had tried just as often and had been just as unsuccessful. 

But sitting there and watching the fog, I let myself drift into weariness. I would wake up late the next morning and be glad that the glass was still half-full of Scotch, something I counted as no small achievement. 

Home: Part 27

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

April 1958 

During one or another of her bible study classes, Cindy met Terry Pipes, the boy who many years later would become her first husband. He was thin, wore one cheekbone higher than the other, and had a slight twitch in his eyebrows. He was older than Cindy by a couple of years, and his parents worked one of the farms outside of town. Half of their fields were soybeans, the other half corn, and they had acreage enough to pasture a good number of milk cows. Many of my classmates lived on working farms, and I knew how hard they worked before and after school. Terry didn't seem strong enough to be of much use on a farm, but I wasn't one to question him. His brothers, whom I'd met just once, seemed stronger; perhaps Terry took care of the fields and cows, I thought.

"Terry has thought about being a minister," Cindy said one night as she and I cleaned the kitchen after dinner. My parents were in the living room watching Wagon Train on black-and-white Silverstone television set that my father had brought home from Sears one day. "He is quite enthusiastic about spreading god's word."

"What about his farm?" I asked. 

"It's not his farm," Cindy said. "Terry says that he wants to have a small church somewhere."

I thought about the farm, what would become of it and the cows if Terry left. "He could put his church on the farm," I said. "He could be a farmer and a minister."

Cindy looked at me. "You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Dry the plates and put them away. I'm going to go read."

A week or so later, a Saturday, Terry and Cindy sat at our kitchen table. They were typing up the church program, something that my sister had volunteered for and seemed to enjoy doing. "You want to help?" Cindy asked.

"There's not much he can do," Terry said.

"Maybe if we give him a task, he'll come to church with us tomorrow."

Terry looked at me. "Him? In church?"

Cindy looked at me, too, as if re-thinking what she'd said. "Sunday school, then. He could go to Sunday school."

Terry's eyebrows twitched. "No."

Home: Part 26

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

April 1958 

I don't know if Cindy changed much the night after I saved her life, but a couple of Sundays afterward she insisted that my parents take her to church. "You don't have to stay with me," she said. "Drop me off and I'll call you when it's over."

"Why?" my father said, and then he seemed to think about something. "Which church?"

Cindy answered quickly. "It doesn't matter. I just want to go to church." She looked at me as though she knew I wanted to add something to the conversation, but she bent her head in a way that I thought better of it.

"Church," my father said as though the word were foreign to him.

So for several months Cindy attended church each Sunday morning, never asking any of us to join her. She went to bible study on Wednesday evenings, and hosted sleepovers during which she and her new friends discussed all things religious. Before going to sleep they would take turns praying aloud, raising their hands toward the ceiling and asking for god's blessings on themselves and their families. 

"There's bible study for boys, too," Cindy said to me one Wednesday afternoon before one of her friend's parents picked her up. "You could go with me, and I'll introduce you to everyone."

"He's a little young," my mother said as she brushed Cindy's hair.

Cindy  pulled her head away from the brush. "How can anyone be too young for god, Mom?"

"God's a big concept," our mother said. "Give him a few years."

"We might not have a few years," Cindy said. "If the Russian's bomb us, we want to be ready."

"Who has been feeding you that? Let me finish your hair."

"We talked about it last week, Mom. First god created the Russians, then he gave them atomic bombs."

My mother set the brush down and put her hands on her hips. "I don't remember learning that in Sunday school."

"God's always changing, Mom."

Interlude and Notes on the Process

I am, if nothing else, a slow writer these days. Sorry. Perhaps I've been too absorbed by the devolution of the American political process to pay much attention to other, more creative things. But that's a different story....

For Home, my own process is somewhat scattered, even haphazard. Hence, the number of typos one might find in any given section. For the most part, what is written stays at it is until I copy things to a Microsoft Word document and make some tweaks there. So far, I've written just over 10,000 words, and I'm shooting for about 50-60,000. Other books I've written are above 90,000, but I'm deliberately keeping Home somewhat short for a novel (which is what it will be). That said, at some point there has to be a significance to everything, something to make a potential reader care. Crappy writing is crappy writing, but a good plot makes things less crappy.

Right now, I think most of the major characters have been introduced, though if you've ever written a novel you know that characters appear--and disappear--without any planning or prompting. They're born when they are ready to be born, and they die when they're ready for that. Predetermination, I guess. And, yes, I realize that, thus far, there is no identifiable story line, no plot. This is, believe it or not, mostly predetermination on my own part, as it were, and when I am finished with the thing, I'll write about what I tried to do.

That's it.

Home: Part 25

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

April 1958 

The first time my sister died, we were at home by ourselves. Our parents had gone to the neighbors' to "lighten things up a bit," and Cindy and I were left to the small black-and-white television and two cans of tomato soup my father had picked up at the A&P on his way home from work. The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to me and Cindy, had just returned from a vacation to Florida and had stories to share. Mrs. Johnson, like my mother, stayed home all day while her husband sold real estate. They had no children, and I often wondered what Mrs. Johnson did all day in such an empty house. Sometimes I would see her sitting on their back porch. She would sit and smoke, staring into the two maple trees my father had helped them plant years before. She would smile if she saw me. She would raise her cigarette in a type of salute before turning her face away.

"We won't be late," my mother said as she and my father walked out the front door. I noticed that she had put her pearl necklace on.

"Behave," my father said.

"I'll make the soup," Cindy said when they were gone. "And some toast. I'm going to eat in my room. You can watch TV."

"I'm not hungry," I said.

"Yes, you are. You just don't know it." She walked into the kitchen while I lay on the carpet beside Tiger and scratched his ears. I removed my leg and tossed it onto the frayed sofa.

"What do they do over there?" I said.

"Parcheesi, or something," Cindy said from the kitchen. "Sometimes they play cards. And they probably drink. I'm making you two pieces of toast. I'm having peanut butter on mine."

"I'm not going to eat," I said.

"Yes, you are."

I was still lying beside Tiger when Cindy carried a bowl of soup and the two pieces of toast into where I was in the living room. She set them on the end table beside the sofa. "I said that I'm not hungry."

"There's your food," she said. "Don't let Tiger get it." She went back to the kitchen and got her own bowl and toast. "I'm going to my room." The smell of peanut butter lingered when she was gone.

I crawled to the sofa, then sat on the cushion nearest the food. Tiger watched, his head tilted as he watched me eat. Cindy's room was down the hall, closest to the bathroom. As I chewed my toast I heard something fall and break. Waiting for something else, I heard nothing more. "Stay," I said to Tiger. I put on my leg and walked toward Cindy's room. I put my ear to her door but could hear nothing. "What was that," I said. "Cindy?"

She was lying half on, half off her canopy bed as though she were in mid-prayer.  The soup bowl had shattered when it hit the floor, and tomato soup was soaking into the rug. The window was open, and I could hear cars as they passed in front of our house. "Hey," I said, but she didn't move. I got closer and looked down at her, at her blue face. I pulled her shoulder, and she slid off the bed so that she was lying on her back with her face toward me. My first thought was to call the Johnsons' house and to talk to my parents. Instead, I reached beneath Cindy's armpits and pulled her upright. I patted her back--softly at first, then hard. Her mouth sagged open, and I stuck my finger deep inside. Whatever was there was thick and soggy. I curled my index finger around it and pulled, removing a large, sticky piece of toast coated with peanut butter. I slapped her back again, and she seemed to belch and cough at the same time. Her eyelids fluttered. When I set her down and leaned her against the bed, she stared up at me as though trying to figure out who I was.

I looked down at her. "I was happy," she said flatly.

I left her room but did not shut the door. I returned to the sofa and found that Tiger had eaten my dinner. I wondered if I should call my parents anyway, let them know what had happened. But I just sat there and listened to Cindy as she rustled about. When she walked into the kitchen and dropped the pieces of soup bowl into the garbage can, she seemed to be fine.  On her way back to her bedroom, she stopped a few paces away from me and seemed to take in her surroundings. Finally, she looked at me. "You finish your dinner?"

"Yes," I said.

"Okay." She considered her hands, then lifted her eyes to me again. "There's so much to see," she said, and then she went into her bedroom and shut the door.

Home: Part 24

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

February 1958 

The piano in our basement had been shoved into a corner as an afterthought. In many of our neighbors' homes, the basements had been finished; they served as game rooms or dens or extra bedrooms. The wall studs and concrete foundation in our basement were visible, more warehouse than living space. 

I have no memory of the piano's actual appearance--it was simply always there. Only my mother played, and then infrequently. My bedroom was above the piano's corner, and I would lie on my bed and listen to my mother play, listen to the soft curses as she repeated passages over and over. I often wondered if she practiced when she was alone, when my sister and I were at school.

"I like that one," I said once as I sat on the concrete floor and watched her play.

"Beethoven," she said. "'Fur Elise.' Everyone has to play it at some point. Most of it is easy." When she played, she tilted her head to the right just so, and she would sometimes shut her eyes. Her back was straight. She seemed happy sitting there, working her hands across the keyboard, her feet on the pedals. 

"When did you learn to play?" I asked.

"My grandmother had a piano," she said. "You never knew her. She taught me the notes when I was a little girl. She was patient with me. I couldn't use two hands for a long time. 'Don't think about your hands,' she would say. 'Think about the music. Your hands will follow the music.'" She looked at her hands. "I was never very good, but my grandmother also told me that I didn't have to be. She'd say, 'Just play. When your grandfather is angry with me, or when I am lonely, I always have the piano and the music. They are never angry.'"

"It looks hard," I said.

"It is, sometimes. And then it gets easier. See, watch." She started with her right hand, slowly. "'Fur Elise'--everyone knows it." She played the opening notes over and over as though she were learning it again. "Then, the left hand."

The concrete floor was cold and hard, but I sat there and watched how she played, and I wondered if she was lonely, too.

Home: Part 23

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

August 1974

 
We were an hour or so south of Flomation, just before dawn. The moon was full, bright; two long stretches of orange clouds were like a diving bird's wings on what I could see of the horizon. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open as Mitchell steered with one hand. 

"You fucked up," Mitchell said. "And you almost got us fucked up. They take that stuff seriously up there, you know."

Things hadn't ended well in Marianne's. After we'd started playing pool, Mitchel went to the bar for beer and came back with four bottles and two women. "Camille and Rhonda," he said. He handed a bottle to me and set the other three on the round table near one corner of the pool table. "Camille said she wanted to meet you. She said she's been admiring how you handle that cue stick."

I shook my head and drank my beer. Camille was short, blonde, and wore her slight pudginess honestly.

"He talks you up something good," Camille said to me. Rhonda had settled on a chair at the table and was dangling a cigarette between two fingers of her left hand. 

"He talks about everything pretty well," I said.

"Want to play teams?"

"He does!" Mitchell said. "Rack them!"

We played for hours. When I could no longer see the tip of my cue clearly, I stepped away from the table and let the three of them continue. "Let's dance," Camille said when she, too, had had enough.

"Not my strong suit," I said.

"Yeah, Mitchell says you have a bad leg."

"More or less," I said.

"Come one. I've danced with worse."

Sitting in the truck with the full moon setting over Mitchell's shoulder, I tried to recall something after the dancing, but I could come up with only some loud voices and Camille yelling, "Get away from. Just get away!" Then Mitchell was behind me and guiding me toward the parking lot.

"You know I don't drink," I said. "You know that."

"Don't blame me for this. Look, what happened? The two of you seemed to be fine together. The next thing I know, you've got Camille's brothers looking to cause you some serious damage."

"I'm not sure of the details."

"Rhonda told me you said Camille was fat. Right to her face, you said that."

I wasn't surprised More than once in my life I'd made fun of people, hit them where I knew it would hurt. "I need to sleep," I said to Mitchell. "Just for a while, okay? Let me know if you want me to drive."

  

Home: Part 22

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

February 1975 

Shannon and I had hiked to a clearing along the river. She’d packed a picnic lunch, and as we sat in the shade of cottonwood trees that grew along the levee, she handed me what seemed to be a piece of fruit. “You ever had one of these?” 

"No,” I said. “What is it?” 

Pomegranate.” She took it from my hand. “I’ve got to cut it.” The knife she used had a curved blade, and she sliced through the pomegranate’s skin, then pulled it away to expose the seeds. 

"You sure that’s edible?” I asked. 

She had removed the white pulp and was using her finger to force the seeds into a bowl she’d set in the grass. Her fingertips were quickly stained a dark red. “Taste.” She gathered several seeds and set them on my tongue.

 Interesting,” I said. 

“Good, though, right?” 

“I’m working on that.” I watched her remove the remainder of the seeds. She picked flakes of pulp from the bowl, then used a plastic spoon to eat as though she were enjoying breakfast cereal. 

“Open your mouth,” she said. She fed me with the spoon, and as I chewed I couldn’t quite tell if the seeds were sweet or sour. “Better?"

I nodded. “A bit.” 

“I love these things.” 

“Kind of messy, aren’t they?” 

She sucked on her fingertips, though they remained red. “How are my teeth?” She grinned at me. 

“Red,” I said. “Mine?” 

She kissed me and ran the tip of her tongue along my front teeth. “They even taste red.” She ate the remaining seeds and lay on her back. “Have you ever thought that some days are just meant to be good?” 

I lay next to her. Our shoulders were touching, and I stared up through the cottonwoods to where a few clouds had formed. “I think that most days are meant to be good,” I said. “Sometimes, though, they just kind of turn crossways.” 

She seemed to think about that. “I don’t know. I’ve wondered if we’re simply given some good days, some bad ones.” 

“Predetermined.” 

She pushed closer to me. “Yeah. Something like that. I’ve had days that started out badly, days I couldn’t change no matter how hard I tried.” 

“You’re getting a bit deep for me, Shannon.” And she was, too—I’d spent a lifetime avoiding conversations of any real consequence with most people. 

“Just baring my soul,” she said. She laughed and turned onto her side to face me. “Or part of it, at least.” 

 I looked up to her face. “Your teeth are still red. You look like some kind of demon when you smile.” 

“Maybe I am a demon.” She rubbed her teeth with her forefinger. “I should have brought a toothbrush with me.” 

 “You after my soul?” I asked. 

“I’m not the devil. Just a minor demon.” 

“A beautiful one.” “I am?” 

“You are. You’re one beautiful demon.” 

“And I’m yours, right?” 

 “All mine,” I said. She laid her head on my chest as if listening for the beating of my heart.