Wilderness

by Denes McIntosh

 

 

    One.

California

 

     I like coming here.  Not because it’s such a great place, but because it’s not.  It’s very low key, and it doesn’t matter that I only drink the house blend rather than the latte.  Or that my disposition may be a little on the rough side today.  No one knows that here.  I’m just another player in the cast of characters that make up The Last Café.  The way I look at it is that without us, and this place, San Francisco will have completely lost its traditional bohemian personality.  It’s mostly gone already because of the influx of corporate chain coffee bars.  In that regard, I remain a very important person, but without the requisite limousine.

 

     I’m not the only one who comes here just to not be home alone.  I know who the others are.  They know the same of me.  We don’t talk much however, as that would jeopardize our anonymity.  And the obligation of having to continue even a casual relationship is, at times, just a little too frightening.  Being alone perpetuates being alone for most of us.  It has become our comfort and our shield.  It has become my companion.  We’re all in our late 40’s thru early 60’s, an extended period of invisibility, the age when financial success has already been achieved, or most likely never will be.  Some of us have come close, only to find the related stress to be all but impossible to endure.  Some of us have chosen a life of simplicity in order to not be accountable to the demands of keeping up.  Some of us are disabled for who knows what reason.  Viet Nam did the injustice to some.  For others it was emotional or psychic trauma related to war of another kind.  Maybe the lasting damage a parent inflicted, or a marriage.  Some of us have put it all on the table in the past and just don’t have much left.  Some have families, some do not.  Some of us have been in long-term relationships, but are left today without them.  Some have them, but they are frozen like yesterdays casserole.  We all have different lives with some aspect in common, but probably more in common than not.  There are a myriad of reasons we end up here in The Last Café, but we’re all here, and we are all more or less alone.  I write.  Most of us write.  Sometimes we read.

 

     I’ve given names to many of the regulars, and even lives I’ve concocted from their mannerisms and appearance.  Like Gina, who comes in every afternoon about 2:30.  40ish, Italian maybe.  Hair always in a ponytail, kind of lifeless though, with gray streaks.  Perhaps the hair has lost some of its luster from being tied back for so long.  No opportunity to breathe.  She wears her button-up Levis, and classic brown penny-loafers, with a tan corduroy jacket.  No socks.  Looks very attractive.  Is a bit squeezed into her jeans, but an enjoyable squeeze.  Not the impression that she doesn’t fit into them, but that she might have had a personal moment pulling them on.  Gina always looks basically the same.  I guess we all do.  Today she has on a soft peach color buttoned blouse beneath the jacket.  It’s the only thing that changes.  And it makes me take notice of her each day.  Yesterday it was a black T-shirt, one of those European cuts with the lower neckline.  She usually takes the jacket off after being here for an hour or so.  It’s kind of an unveiling.  I look forward to that in some perverse sort of way.  She’s small breasted, and usually doesn’t wear a bra.  I find it distracting, but in a very pleasant sort of way.  I think she knows it.  The peach blouse breathes comfortably with her body.  I breathe a little accelerated at first, but eventually settle back into my own rhythm.  It’s hard not to stare.

 

     The afternoon is our time.  Everybody rushing in for a bagel, or a croissant, on the way to work, or a quick read of the morning Chronicle with their coffee, is gone.  The noontime crowd lingers for a beer and a tuna sandwich, but they, too, need to be somewhere in a relative hurry.  I don’t come in until all of that is past.  The afternoon allows quiet, and time to observe and reflect.  We observe each other, and reflect on our observations, while pretending to keep to ourselves.  It’s an odd little dance, but one done out of necessity.  On the occasion one of us is caught observing there is a slight nod of recognition and a bit of embarrassment, a sheepish grin, but the dance repeats itself again, and again.

 

     The Last Café is small.  Just large enough to allow for a dozen tables squeezed a little too closely together, but just small enough to always look crowded, even when it’s not.  The afternoon regulars position themselves at pretty much the same tables every day.  Some, like Gina, sit at the very same table, and some move around a bit, but always within a particular area.  Enough of a change, however, to appear as if it doesn’t really matter where we sit, but it’s quite obvious that we don’t want to stray too far from our comfort zone.  Territory is very important, and is marked by the positioning of chairs and even the slightest adjustment of certain tables.  Sometimes just a 35 degree turn of a table, or less, will allow someone to position their chair in a manner where they can feel secure.   Everybody wants to be able to see everybody else while allowing the slimmest possibility of being observed in return.  People also mark territory with body posture.  Just subtle little messages that there is some spatial ownership going on here.  I understand it from a personal, even experiential, perspective, but also find it silly and superfluous. I know, however, that there are so few areas in our lives that we have control over that we tend to avail ourselves of these regional management opportunities as they present themselves.

 

     I sit against the wall, to the left as you enter the café.  It offers some natural light, a bit of a breeze, and a broad range of vision.  I can see whoever comes through the door.  I can also see the counter action and most of the room without appearing too obvious.  It’s a comfortable place for me.  I sit here most of the time and people tend to respect that this is my table in the afternoon.  Occasionally I will have to take another table if a customer is there before I arrive, someone obviously unfamiliar with the dynamics of our little society.  But when they leave I’m quick to regain my familiar position.  I feel very comfortable with my back to the wall.  In fact I need for it to be.

 

     I work on my novel every afternoon.  The café has become the only place I’m able to write these days.  It’s not the caffeine, but the environment.  Considering the personal lives of the people here, somehow, stimulates further imagination, and I rely on the regularity of this obscure little community as a silent, unknowing system of support.

 

     Gina sits every afternoon in the corner in the deepest part of the café, where she feels safe, and where she can scan the whole room at a quick glance between sips of coffee.  It also offers her a greater depth of field to get lost in while searching, I presume, for the words to adequately define her thoughts.  I can’t be sure, but I think she’s been writing in the same notebook for as long as I’ve been coming here.  A black double-thick Mead with lined pages, the kind one might use to take notes for a college philosophy class.  She dangles one of the penny-loafers from her toes when she crosses her legs.  Sometimes she leaves the shoe on the floor and stretches her foot. She extends and relaxes it, opens and closes the toes in rhythm.  I can’t help but notice.  My own body tenses, and relaxes, to the same tempo, unconsciously, but I can feel her pulse pounding my thoughts into submission.

 

     Gina makes herself as, seemingly, invisible, and unobtrusive, as possible.  Seemingly, but not really.  I am drawn to her subtle, but unquestionably deliberate movements.  They are not natural moves, but the kind one might use to engender notice, and command attention, from another.  I don’t presume to be of interest to her, but it does feel a bit solicitous.  There is a definite incongruity in her presence.  She’ll trace the line of her eyebrow with the middle finger of her right hand, slowly savoring it’s shape as if it were the nipple on her breast, rather than the arch of her brow.  She has a knack for making public demeanor seem more like a private moment.  Gina quietly directs herself in a one-woman play.  She is actually the writer, the actor and the director.

 

     Jesse works the counter most afternoons.  He’s a pretty friendly kid, about 5’9”, medium build, and in his late teens, or early twenties.  A college student I believe, Caucasian in appearance, but with a hint of Asian, or perhaps Native American, through his forehead and eyes.  A good-looking young man.  Has a very straight looking haircut, dresses kind of Goodwill bohemian.  The haircut is a little contradictory to the dress.  I don’t think he knows quite what to make of the afternoon clientele.  Maybe he does.   In any event, he’s nice enough to everybody, and at the same time respects our quiet distance.  His life is quite social.  His friends drop by.  Communication is easy, and laughter is quick.  He gives them free coffee, which they usually drink standing at the counter while he does his work.  They never stay long, just drop by to remain connected.  I don’t think they feel comfortable at the tables, as it’s quite apparent that something completely independent of them is going on with the rest of us.  In some respect, I have resented the intrusion, with the laughter and the loud voices and all, but have now actually grown accustomed to it, and in a sense even look forward to it at times. There is still the struggle with feeling that the afternoon is our time, and that they should come in the evening, but it does serve as both a distraction, and some social relief, which I think is good.  Helps me anyway, from getting lost out here in the wilderness.

 

     Collette (we call her Collie) works with Jesse every other day or so.  I still don’t have a fix on their schedules.  But they know when they’re supposed to be here, and I guess that’s all that matters.  I like it when they work together.  It’s an enjoyable interaction.  They tease one another, try to one-up each other, and it’s obvious that they like each other quite a bit.  Collette always has the upper hand because Jesse’s more enamored of her than she is of him.  Collette is taller, (almost 6 feet), British, with a stylishly short haircut that enables her long neck to run up the back of her head forever.  She’s about Jesse’s age and usually dresses in a casually provocative style, jeans tight around her waist and ass, but baggy through the legs, low cut halter top with bare midriff, pierced naval, and casual, open-toed canvas pumps.  Sometimes she wears tennis shoes.  I’m sure much of Jesse’s interest in her is in that she’s just so damn attractive physically.  Irresistible if you will.  Something a young man would find it close to impossible to overlook. 

And in stereotypical fashion, she makes me feel young, but incredibly old at the same time as well.

 

     With the Bohemian tradition having been well established, The Last Café has the requisite original artwork hanging around the place.  Sometimes photography, always black and white, sometimes oil paintings, collage, acrylic and other mediums.  They change artists every six weeks or so.  As far as I can tell, none of the work ever sells.  But it’s a new café every few weeks, and that keeps it interesting.  A little unsettling at times, but interesting.  My particular passion is for abstract, and in particular, abstract figures and faces (think Picasso, Cezanne).  However, the current display is of watercolor school buses from different points of view.  Not my favorite theme.  Children on the bus, running to catch the bus, lined up to get on the bus, tumbling off it, aisle clogged with impatient children pushing and shoving to get a good seat, and a row of buses parked out front of the school in the afternoon waiting for the kids to be let out.  There are others.  The artist is pretty good, and it’s more representational than realism.  I like that, but the subject matter might be more appropriate in a middle school corridor than here in the café.  I don’t make the decisions about the artwork.  But it feels like it’ll be a long few weeks.

 

          Darla has just come in.  She owns the place, and has for about fifteen years.  I want to talk to her about the school buses but she has her reasons.  It’s not like they’re going to drive any of us away, or anything.  We’ll just live with them until the next collection of abstracts, or semi-nude photos.  Darla’s pretty cool.  I think she uses the afternoons here like the rest of us do.  She comes by frequently.  Doesn’t need to.  She works most mornings.  Has Jesse, and Collette, for the afternoons, both of who are quite capable and responsible, but she seems to prefer it here to being at home.  She’ll sit and work on the books for a couple of hours, or go over supply brochures like many women would do with clothes catalogues.  I like to talk to Darla, but do so sparingly.  She’s probably about my age, maybe 57, or 58, and is a weathered veteran of the 60’s.  She’s more than a survivor.  She took her experience and turned it into a lifestyle she’s very comfortable with.  She’s a social animal, funny and very relaxed.  She knows everybody that comes in this place.  She also knows who to leave alone, and whom she can screw around with.  She respects boundaries, and respects people, no matter what their condition.  

 

          Darla has short cut hair, like women often tend to wear it when it turns gray.  It’s very becoming on her.  She keeps it gray, doesn’t care about fooling anybody.  Not important to her.  She’s kind of round faced, but you don’t see it in her body.  She’s thick, but not overweight.  Large boned, accessible.  Is comfortable in her skin.  Wears very little make-up, the slightest bit of eye shadow, some light blush.  Wears jeans and T-shirts mostly.  She carries herself with casual dignity.  Has a quiet attractiveness, like a pleasant memory.  I admire her, and think she’s pretty wonderful.  We’ve talked about her marriage briefly.  Husband left her sixteen years ago.  She thought it would be a lifetime relationship.  That’s when she decided to open the café.  Has never remarried.  Wanted to do something that was enjoyable and still kept her connected.  Never had any kids.  I don’t know if she has a partner, or lover.  I’ve never seen her with anyone.

 

     Darla’s most personal touch with the business has been her involvement with the music.  She home-records all the café’s long running reel-to-reel tapes from her extensive album collection.  Eschews CD’s.  Is discouraged by the fact that there is so much product available now that people don’t really seem to bond as deeply, or as lastingly, with the artists as they did in her musically formative years.  She feels music, and most bands, have become commodity, just another aspect of the disposable culture in which we find ourselves living today.  I tend to agree with her somewhat, but not fully.  I’m sure that some of that feeling is just generational.  Darla’s quite eclectic in her taste and has expanded the musical awareness of many of her customers, including myself.  She finds great joy in that.  We discuss music occasionally.  It’s a really nice connection with her.

 

 

Two.

 

     I’m fifty-eight years old.  Too old to run, but too young to lie down and die.  Going to be fifty-nine on my daughter’s birthday.  Raina will be thirty-seven on mine.  It falls sometimes on the first day of spring.  The birth date never changes, but the last day of winter does.  Her mother left me for a business opportunity she felt would be of greater benefit to her than I had ever been.  Oh yeah, and the arms of a handsome Italian stranger who’s accent she mistook for love.  Funny how an opportunist often arrives with an accent, some Italian chocolate, and a bottle of Chianti.  I don’t really begrudge her the fling.  She was finished with me already, and off on the wings of a corporate jet.  Besides, that was fifteen years ago, and she’s since found solace in an early retirement with a group of Wiccans up on Mt. Shasta.  Interesting, how people bounce around, and eventually land where it hurts the least.  In this case, a community of feminists who celebrate themselves, and worship the ground upon which they walk.  Ha, sometimes when I drive through there I wonder if she’d like to come home.  But it’s funny, she always used to tell me, “You’ll probably end up sitting in a café somewhere.” 

Sometimes I don’t come in just so she won’t be right.  But I gotta say, she’s a really good person, she just never really felt like my wife.  More like a roommate.

And I wasn’t a very good husband.  Used to play my saxophone late at night while she was trying to read, or prepare for a business meeting.  What an idiot I was.  If I could do it all over again I’d probably play the cello. 

Softly.

 

     We’d been married for just a year before Raina came, when I was only twenty-one.  My wife was twenty.  Pretty young.  But that’s what was going on back then.  We raised her together until she went off to college in Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, on the historic old Route 66, now Interstate 40.  I admit, most ashamedly, that the trips I took out there to visit Raina were as much about driving that old highway as they were about seeing my daughter.  Didn’t think I could ever say that, and thinking about it now, I don’t know that I really mean it anyway.  My marriage to her mother ended a couple of years after Raina first left for school.  Empty nest, and all that.  The focus of our lives was gone.

 

     I worked as a High School Counselor for about eighteen years.  Not as an academic counselor, but as an adviser to kids at risk.  Academics played into that, but it was personal and family counseling mostly.  Substance abuse, sexuality, pregnancy, anger/hostility, family issues of all kinds.  Mediator, intermediary, confidant.  I was well suited to the roll, and enjoyed it, but it did take a pretty good toll on me.  I’m only human.  Worked in the profession until one day Bobby Tanner came into my office for a chat, and in the course of the conversation, looked at me rather quizzically, like only a fifteen-year-old pimply-faced-kid can, and said, not too matter-of-factly, “Damn Mr. Patterson, sounds like you could use some counseling yourself.”  In a moment of clarity I realized anew what I’d already known, that this was not some smart-ass kid, just a very, very smart young man.  I made that my last year in the profession.  Sometimes wisdom comes from those you would least expect to be dispensing it.

 

     Kevin sits at a table in the middle of the room.  Doesn’t pay much attention to anyone.  Seems very self contained.  He’s an original.  About fifty, maybe a little older.  Beard that lies on the table when he writes.  I take him for a poet, not because of the way he looks, but because of the way he writes.  Down the page rather than across.  He’s got a very nice smile.  Says very little.  Nods in recognition of the others.  Myself included.  Kevin has a very weathered face, like he spent too many years at sea.  Very kind eyes.  Scraggly eyebrows to match his beard.  Bulbous nose, not huge, but round and appearing as if someone attached it to his face.  Very porous skin.  Dresses in overalls and long sleeve baseball shirts.  Has the red arms on today.  Kevin doesn’t look around much.  Concentrates on writing.  Reads sometimes, worn paperbacks that he probably picked up at sidewalk sales around the neighborhood, or possibly at the Green Apple bookstore down the block.  Sips his coffee slowly.  Gets infrequent refills.  Usually has a banana muffin just before he leaves.  I like Kevin and would like to know him.  I feel that way about most of these folks really, but Kevin in particular.  I wonder once in a while how he feels about me, from a distance.  Is his impression favorable?  Does he dislike me?  Does he even have an impression?  I wonder why I wonder about that.  Maybe I respect him on some unconscious level.  Doesn’t really matter, I guess.  Just mental exercise of sorts.

 

     Kevin is a presence in the room, even more so than Gina, but in a much different way.  Gina commands my attention, but Kevin’s persona is more like a warm coat, or a welcome mat.  He uses the bathroom frequently, more so than anyone else here.  May be a medical condition.  Could be that he’s the one who writes most of the poetry on the walls in there.  Some interesting stuff, not just the usual bathroom-drivel.  Always in pencil.  I remember bits and pieces.

 

Brilliant shadows

leaving your impression

as they fade.

In the latest afternoon

in the disappearing shade.

 

Kevin doesn’t look much like a romantic, but then heck, what does a romantic look like, anyway?

  

     I live just around the corner from the café.  Been there since shortly after the divorce.  Never remarried.  Could never get used to the idea that the woman I would happen to be with at the time was not the woman I’d originally chosen to be with.  I guess I’m a little funny that way.  Have had a hard time letting go of the traditional ideal.  Get together, stay together.  I like the idea of that.  Always have.  It just didn’t work out that way.  Pretty deeply ingrained in my DNA though.  Anyway, I’ve been alone for most of these subsequent years.  Have had a few short-term relationships, and a couple longer ones, but I always end up back at being alone.  I think I eventually sabotage the relationships out of a sense of loyalty to my first wife, or perhaps guilt.  Both maybe.  Doesn’t matter now.  All things considered though, I’m never really completely alone.  I’ve got a great little companion.  A classic little gray, black, and brown mutt whom I call Wag, the dog.  A better friend than him, a man could never have.

 

     Home is a 3^rd floor walk-up in a great old wooden building on 5^th Ave.  Survived the ravages of time, and calamity, and even the youth invasion of the 60’s.  Has an exterior staircase in the back with a large deck.  Lots of privacy and quiet.  I look out over the back yards of the neighborhood and am privy, at times, to some pretty interesting goings on.  I also have access to the roof from my flat.  Wag likes it up there as much as I do.  Since I occupy the entire top floor, I’m the only one in the building who has access.  There’s a three-foot-high cement wall around the perimeter of the roof, which serves as a privacy barrier, but also doubles as a guardrail of sorts.  It has helped prevent, on more than one occasion, a rooftop friend of mine from wandering over the edge after a nighttime sky extravaganza and a long bottle of wine.  I have some chairs up there, a table, and an old Weber barbecue.  Although it’s a pretty infrequent occurrence, it’s a great place to entertain a few people, or have a romantic evening with a good friend.  But mostly it’s just Wag and I enjoying each other, and the view.  I have a Coleman lantern for when the sky is dark, when the celestial bodies are feeling a little too shy to show themselves.  If I want to spend the night under the stars I’ll bring up an air mattress and sleeping bag.  Only thing missing is the proverbial hot tub.  Between the deck and the roof, I’m able to feel some essential union with the natural world, even while living in the City.  Not a bad place to live.  A sheltered plateau, a secluded retreat, a fortuitous place to be, away from the maddening crowd.

 

     After leaving my job at the High School I traveled around Europe for a couple of years, then settled back here in San Francisco.  For the past ten years I’ve been working part time up on the Sonoma Coast, conducting a morning recreation and mobility class for Developmentally compromised adults.  A place called The Center For Creative Living (CCL).  My class is part of a very ambitious program funded by the State, and private grants.  Located on a beautiful campus under the redwoods, the CCL offers medically fragile, and physically/mentally challenged adults, a rich and emotionally nourishing life.  All students are residents of the campus.  Some live in group-housing situations, and some on medical units, but all receive an incomparable level of care by a staff of well-trained and dedicated individuals.  I am just a very small part of the much bigger picture.  I make the eighty-five-minute commute from the City in my Jeep Cherokee four mornings a week for my 9 a.m. to-noon class.  I don’t mind the drive at all.  I’m going against the traffic since most commuters are coming into the City for work.  I leave about 7:30 in the morning, and return home around 1:30.  I actually do enjoy the drive.  Wag goes to work with me.  He’s great companionship in the truck, and has a profound relationship with, and impact on, my students.  I like leaving the City, but I also like returning to it, back over the welcoming arms of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’ll generally have some quick lunch at home and then wander down to the café about 2:00 or 2:15 to work on my novel and keep in touch, at least minimally, with the others who make up this unlikely community of bohemian misfits.  We’re alone, but at least we’re alone together.

Wag naps in the afternoon.

 

     Darla’s got some classic Django Reinhardt playing on the reel-to-reel this afternoon.  ‘St. Louis Blues’, ‘I’ve Found A New Baby’, ‘Bolero’.  Good stuff.  Like listening to an antique Victrola in the parlor of an old Victorian.  Lady of the house serving brandy and finger food, priming the guest for a private dance and some good lovin’, like he might expect to find after hours up on Nob Hill, or buried casually in a very good dream. 

Darla’s fun to try and figure out.  Always setting these moods that have got to, in some way or another, reflect her own disposition.  Or maybe she just really enjoys how a particular music affects the mood and attitude of her afternoon clientele.  I kind of consider it to be her gift to us.  Yesterday it was The Byrds.  Amazing albums from the 60’s and early 70’s.  ‘Mr. Tamborine Man’, ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’, ‘5^th Dimension’, ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’.  I think her choice of music influences my writing.  Maybe all of us.  In a way, Darla could be considered a pretty significant contributor to the work.  Speaking of the work, I haven’t been getting much done on my novel lately.  ‘Wilderness’ has taken a back seat to some observational poetry, and a few other frivolous endeavors.

 

 

Three.

Arizona

 

     Timothy rounded the corner and pulled sharply into the driveway of Kelly’s house.  He jumped from the car, ran to the front door, and burst through like an actor in a practiced home invasion.  His car rolled slowly back down the driveway and out into the street, barely missing some kids on their bikes before coming to rest across the street, one back tire crushed against the curb, with the other having hopped it, coming to rest up on the grassy strip between the top of the curb and the sidewalk.

   “Kelly,” Tim shouted, as he exploded up the stairs, “They found your father . . . . . . . . . . they found your father.”

Kelly screamed as she fell into Tim’s arms at the sound of the good news.  Tim embraced her as if it was he who was seeing her for the first time following his own disappearance.

   “Listen Kelly,” he said, “I don’t have all the details, but someone found him wandering in the Gila Bend Mountains just north of the reservation.  The sheriff said he’s in relatively good shape, considering the ordeal he must have endured.  Very dehydrated, some cuts and bruises, pretty hungry, but in good spirits.  They’ve taken him to the hospital in Phoenix.  We can be there in about an hour.”

Tim’s words had burst forth like a blown fire hydrant on a scorching summer day.  Kelly began to cry, softly at first, but then she began to sob uncontrollably with gratitude and relief.   She had held closely to the hope that her father would be found, but at the same time had entertained a deep and turbulent fear that he would not.  Tim stroked her hair and kissed her face while she exorcised the emotion that had been building so deep down inside her belly for the past four days. 

She stuttered in her expression, “I love you Tim.”  It was the first time she’d said those words outside of the context of church and Christian love.  She meant it this time in a very personal way.  The moment she spoke them she felt honest and relieved.  Tim took the expression at first as a thank-you for the news of her father, but as he digested the words for a few seconds he became more acutely aware of their deeper implication.

 

     Kelly, her thirteen-year-old brother, Christian, and their mother and father, Irene, and William Shoop, had been to church on Sunday.  It was an uneventful morning, much like their usual Sunday.  The family met up with Timothy’s family for coffee at Denny’s restaurant before service at the Redemption Holiness Church in Wickenburg, about 60 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix, where both of the families had been living for the past eight or nine years.  William worked a steady job, made a good living, good enough to afford the two story suburban house on North Ashby Ave. that he and his family had been living in since moving to the area.  He had a very comfortable life, scripted, very predictable, but comfortable.  William liked it that way, as did his family.  They knew what time their father left for work in the morning, what time he came home, and when he went to bed.  They knew that when he was finished with dinner each evening he would calmly and deliberately push his chair away from the table, stand up and say “Thank you dear, it was a very nice dinner.  God has blessed me with your goodness.” 

Then he retired to the living room to read the paper and watch religious programming on TV while Kelly and her mother finished up the kitchen.  Christian usually went off to do homework in the den.  At 10 o’clock William would join his wife in bed to read from the Bible together before going to sleep.  In the morning he would get up and do it all over again.  By all appearance, his was not a life of spontaneity, or of surprise.

 

     And yet, after hearing Pastor Blauer’s sermon about Jesus in the wilderness that Sunday morning, William took a step so out of character that his family, and ultimately the rest of the congregation, wondered if perhaps William’s disappearance could be attributed to something as profound as an act of obedience.  There was no question in their mind that it was connected to the sermon.  It had to be.  The only question was whether or not he had misinterpreted the extent of his Pastor’s call to faith.

 

     When the service was finished, William casually left the church with his family.  They gathered in the Fellowship Hall with the other parishioners to discuss the morning sermon, catch up with each other’s lives and reaffirm their sense of community.  These gatherings, perhaps more so than the service itself, united the church as a collection of like-minded people.  They used the same terminology in their conversation, greeted each other with the same salutations, and carefully avoided discussions of any real consequence.  The relationships developed through these gatherings were communally solid, but individually superficial at best, and the development of continuing relationships was obviously based on that initial superficiality.  They had no real life connection based in hard reality that they could rely on in times of doubt or psychic trauma, but they did have each other, regardless of the depth of the connection.  Obviously, the people, and the relationships were not all like that, but it was the most common method of operation for members of the church community.  Most were afraid to reveal weaknesses, shortcomings, failings, or for that matter, even political leanings.  Too risky.  The Holiness Church prided itself on being a beacon, a shining example of right living, of unquestioned faith and obedience to the teachings of the Word.    

Obviously, Pastor Blauer was, by teaching, and by example, the foremost proponent of this theology.

 

After about an hour of this Sunday morning social exercise William gathered his family into the car for the drive home.  Upon arrival there, and as Irene, Christian, and Kelly, were opening the doors to get out, he blurted out rather clumsily to no one in particular, but to everyone collectively, “I’m going out into the wilderness.”

William’s family heard him, but it did not register what was really going on.  They stepped out of the car and closed the doors, then William calmly, and to their surprise, backed out of the driveway and made his way quietly down the street.

 

     “And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water:  and, lo, the heavens opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:  And lo, a voice from heaven, saying ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.

      Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.  And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward ahungered.  And when the tempter came to him he said, ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread’.  But he answered and said, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’.”

 

 

Four.

California

 

     Mickey’s here today.  I call him Mickey because he reminds me of Mickey Rourke, the actor.  Kind of a tough guy, suave and self-assured.  Doesn’t seem like he really belongs here in the afternoon.  He’s also younger than everybody else.  Late 30’s maybe.  I’ll admit I’m a little jealous of him because he seems to have Gina’s attention.  She at least seems to brighten up a bit when he comes in.  They don’t really talk, but he always acknowledges her, and she responds with much greater enthusiasm than she ever does with me.  Her response to me is always a bit more coy and reserved.  A nod of the head accompanied by the slightest, almost undetectable, little Mona Lisa smile.  Mickey doesn’t really talk to her much, but it’s obvious he has singled her out for recognition.  More likely, she singled him out and he’s just responding to her accessibility.  That seems to be more how things usually go.  In any event, it makes me a little anxious.  I suppose I harbor some secret desire to know Gina more intimately.  Yes, of course I do.

 

     Jesse’s here alone today behind the counter.  Has on his brown corduroys, desert boots and rumpled long sleeve pullover sweater with the sleeves pushed up above the elbows.  Always looks a bit lost when Collette’s not with him.  Doesn’t have any problem doing the job, and is always comfortable with the customer interaction, but something’s just a little off when he’s alone.  I think it’s a reflection thing.  Like he finds himself, somehow, in Collie.  Or like he becomes himself with her, or something like that.  But Collette looks past Jesse.  She’s playful, indulges him, but seems to come more alive with a broader range of attention.  Gathers it in from everybody, no matter what they’re age or persuasion. 

Jesse asked if I’d like a bagel, or something, with my coffee.  He knows I eat lunch before coming in.  He knows I usually just get coffee.  That’s what I mean about him seeming a little lost without Collie.  He even sounds just a bit off center.

 

     Darla’s not here today, and Jesse’s got Mingus on the speakers.  ‘Jump Monk’ and ‘Half-Mast Inhibition’.  Damn, would not have expected that from Jesse.  That’s goin’ low down. 

Gotta love that kid.

 

     Kevin shot me a knowing grin, his eyes lit up like lightening, presumably in acknowledgment of the music.  I returned the smile with equal recognition of the nature, and impact, of the music.

I read earlier in the men’s room:

 

 

     I’ve been stuck

between a pillow

and a soft place.

 

Comfort quietly

killing me.

 

 

     That had to have been Kevin.  Could be life’s been a little too lazy for him lately.  Nothing that a good dose of Mingus won’t blow the cobwebs from.

 

Mickey dresses better than most of us.  Likes beige.  Slacks usually, well polished black shoes, a brown leather jacket over a stylish sweatshirt and a beige baseball cap.  Takes the cap off occasionally.  Hair even seems beige, but is actually light brown, kind of deliberately scraggly.  An expensive haircut.  Looks like he stepped out of a magazine.  Usually has about a two-day growth.  That’s part of the Mickey Rourke association.  I think he’s probably a very nice guy.   But I don’t want him to be.  Green eyes.  I want him to have brown eyes.  I want to dislike him, but I don’t.  He usually does some kind of business while he’s here.  Not really a writer like most of us.  He works on what looks to be legal drafts, or business plans, or something of that nature.  Carries a stack of manila folders.  Never a briefcase or shoulder bag.  That’s part of the casual elegance of the guy that makes me uncomfortable.  He’s confident enough to just carry his stuff, and not have to have it tucked away in some nice leather bag, or bohemian knapsack.  Always orders a small coffee to go and then drinks it here.  Never has a refill.  Sits inside the front window facing into the café with his back to the street.  Very unusual for that table.  Usually, whoever sits there does so because they like to watch the street life.  Gina follows him with her eyes when he orders his coffee or goes to the washroom, or for whatever other reason he may have for moving around the room.  They don’t acknowledge each other when he leaves, only when he arrives.  That seems kind of deliberate and contrived, like secret lovers not saying goodbye to each other when one of them leaves a party.  Like everybody doesn’t know they’re going to meet up later.

 

     It’s cold in here.  The door’s usually open, good weather or bad.  It’s actually too cold to rain.  It’s been a very long winter.  The only time the door gets closed is when it’s really windy and the rain blows in.  On those days we all tend to sit and watch the weather rather than write or read.  It’s as if the force of nature captures our attention to the point of collective hypnosis.  The subtle acts of communication between us are lost to the sound and fury.  The intense quiet, the nervous silence is gone, and it’s forgotten for the moment.  The rain brings some welcome relief in that respect.

 

     I hope the weather warms up a bit overnight.  It’s Thursday, and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow morning.  I’ll be taking Marty, a woman about my daughter, Raina’s, age, thirty-six, out to explore the shores of Lake Sonoma in my canoe.  I’ve been running a little Friday/Saturday/Sunday Adventure-guide business for several years now, called ‘Into the Mystic’.  Canoe excursions, hiking, camping, fishing, that sort of thing.  It’s provided me the opportunity to derive a second income doing something I love.  There are a lot of people living in the City who welcome an introduction to the outdoors, the wilderness, by someone who knows the ropes and can make it enjoyable for them.  I usually take people in pairs, or small groups, but I particularly enjoy it when it’s just myself and one other individual, depending on their personality of course.  It doesn’t really matter much to me if it’s a man or a woman, as long as they’re easy to be with, and appreciative of the beauty that we, invariably, find ourselves immersed in.  That being the case, the conversation and relationship usually tends to come naturally.  Nature itself seems to encourage a kind of casual, but honest, intimacy missing from the usual patterns of daily life. 

Well, I guess I am a little partial to taking women out because they seem to be more invested in the experience, whereas men tend to want to own it.  Occasionally there’s an alpha-male conflict with a man, but not that often.  Actually, the worst of all possible experiences is when there’s an alpha-male conflict with a woman.  Fortunately, I can count those disasters on a couple of fingers.  For the most part, I love it.

 

     But the thing about tomorrow is that Marty actually reminds me of my daughter.  Raina finished college and then traveled the U.S with a boyfriend for about a year before settling down in San Diego, working as a Regional Manager for the California Conservation Corps.  She’s been re-evaluating her location, preferring to be somewhere in Northern California, maybe Monterey Bay, Marin County, or Tahoe.  I was hoping she’d think about coming north.  I miss her a lot, and these Nature-guide excursions I do always remind me of the years we spent exploring the outdoors when she was a child.  Many of the places I take clients today are the same places we used to enjoy together.

 

     Marty will be coming by at 5 a.m.  We’ll throw the canoe on top of the Jeep and be in the water by 7:15.  A couple layers of clothes, a thermos of coffee, some binoculars, and a good lunch.  Doesn’t get any better than that.

Gina’s got on a skin-tight thin beige cotton sweater beneath her open jacket.  It outlines a skimpy, delicate, bra that attracts my attention from across the room, calling me like a mother calling her little boy to come home for dinner.  Damn.

      Roberta Flack provides the soundtrack.

     “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

 

 

 

 Five.

Arizona

 

     Although an ordinary looking man, and kind of socially inept, Pastor Blauer is a pretty charismatic preacher.  He’s about 5’6” tall, with a cheap haircut, and usually wearing a powder blue suit.  Sometimes he wears a brown polyester suit, kind of shiny from age.  Makes him look upholstered, like an old hide-a-bed, or a couch you might keep out in the carport. 

When he’s in the pulpit he can sing and shout, and bring you to his own conclusion as if it were your own.  You’ve seen and heard him a thousand times in the faces, and voices, on Christian television, in the movies and in the satire of the more irreverent comedy shows on TV.   These guys flourish in the little neighborhood churches in the deep South, and Southwest, while more sophisticated versions of them lead congregations in California and throughout the Northwest.  But when Pastor Blauer had you in the pew as a captive audience he was at his very best.  He espoused doctrine like most people exhale their own breath.   And he could weave a spiritual lesson for you from any verse of the Bible he might choose to turn to.

 On this past Sunday he chose Jesus’ Wilderness experience.  After the requisite number of hymns and testimonies leading up to the offering, Pastor Blauer jumped with both feet into the lesson.  His approach was that until one has a sanctified wilderness experience, like Jesus had, he is not really equipped to resist the temptations of daily life that the devil so cleverly places in one’s path.  He challenged the congregation to seek their own wilderness, to test their faith and to conquer their own inclination to succumb to temptation.  Not a bad admonition, but the message was peppered with very forceful intimations concerning the possibility of falling short of holiness, and leading ultimately, and unequivocally, to eternal separation from God.

 

     It was this sermon that had prompted William Shoop to head out alone into the Gila Bend Mountains to test himself.

 

     What nobody knew was that Pastor Blauer was not simply what he, so certainly, seemed to be.  Oh, he was that, but much more than that as well.  As a minister in the Holiness Church, he was deliberate, he was predictable, and that’s how the congregation knew him.  But the newly scripted lunch breaks he was taking away from the office were now beginning to be what defined him in his own eyes.  One hour out of twenty-four in a day, and that hour began shaping his self-identity.  For better, or for worse, only he knew.  Lunch was now, twice a week, consisting of activity other than the typical catch-up, or the occasional errand.  Pastor Blauer had begun stepping outside of his visible sphere of conformity and responsibility. 

 

Her name was Margot.  His first connection with her was at a stoplight on Second Street, not far from the church.  He remembers it was at lunchtime on a Tuesday.  She’d solicited him from the curb, and did so on several other occasions.  As many men would do, at her enthusiastic insistence, he eventually acquiesced.  Wanted to connect with her the first time she propositioned him, but resisted, then drove back by that same corner each day at lunchtime just to keep the connection.  Finally he relented.  He rationalized that his behavior was mostly of her making because, after all, she kept insisting.  He was fine with that.  He knew he would eventually indulge himself.  And, of course, he did.

 

     The first illicit encounters started out in the car behind the Quick Stop Food and Liquor store.  He was nervous at first.  It amounted to nothing more than a quick jack-off while Margot sucked him to help it along.  Twenty bucks and he was back to the office, no worse for the wear.  But it drew him back like an adolescent’s first discovery of pornography.  Started out on a Tuesday, but he soon began dedicating his Tuesday and Thursday lunch hours to the forbidden indulgence.  He was abstaining five days a week, and that seemed like a reasonable compromise to him.

 

     The car soon became unsatisfying, and much too risky.  Pastor Blauer was getting increasingly paranoid, so Margot began meeting him at the Riverside Motel.  She would get the room, #104, at the hourly rate of $15 for a half-hour.  He would arrive on foot, having parked his car down the block and around the corner.  He paid her $20 for the room, and now $25 for her services.  She made $30 on the deal. Pastor Blauer was not requiring much more in the way of service than he was used to in the car.  He had a behavioral ceiling, and if he remained beneath it he was still able to deflect much of the anxiety.  The sex was always fairly routine.  He would put four quarters in the magic fingers, lie down on his back, undo his pants and pull his business free of their encumbrance.  He would always begin handling himself first, and then Margot would slowly involve herself.  It somehow made him feel better that she was responding to him rather than directing him.  Some kind of control thing, maybe.  After all, he was a pastor. 

 But I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist.

 

     Margot would lie on her right side next to him on the bed and undo the buttons of her blouse. She fondled and stroked him slowly and sensually, together with his own hand, until he was suitably excited.  Then she would put a condom on him and lean down to take him fully into her mouth.  He would slip his left hand inside her blouse and caress her warm breast while fondling himself with the other hand.  Margot brought him to orgasm within a couple of minutes.  He characteristically repressed any audible response to the pleasure.

 

     She kissed him on the forehead before removing the rubber and cleaning him up with a washcloth from the bathroom.  It was the subtle kiss he most enjoyed.  They each buttoned up, straightened their clothes and sat on the edge of the bed.  It was that simple.  It was clean.  Margot tied a knot in the condom and put it in her coat pocket to discard later on the street.  They hugged each other awkwardly, and Pastor Blauer left.  Margot waited a minute or two, and then left behind him.  The Magic Fingers were still vibrating the bed like a cheap thrill ride in a fading carnival. 

The congregation didn’t have a clue.

 

     It was Thursday evening.  William Shoop had been gone for four days.  Timothy, and Kelly, William’s wife, Irene, and youngest son, Christian, all piled into Tim’s truck for the drive to the Hospital.  Christian and Kelly squeezed into the extra passenger compartment in the back. They were anxious to see their dad, but a little nervous.  They didn’t know why he went out into the desert, only that he had taken some action that was very out of character for the person they had known him to be for so many years. 

As they pulled out on to the Highway 89 Junction towards Phoenix, Irene broke the silence by saying, “The Lord has watched over your father, and will continue to do so throughout his recovery.  It’s very important that the rest of us give him the support that he needs.  I’m sure God has been directing him in His own mysterious, yet miraculous way.” 

Kelly confessed that she was afraid her father would not be found.  Her mother said that it is in one’s darkest hour that the Lord, through His divine love and light, is most able to reveal Himself.  She encouraged Kelly to open her heart to that revelation, just as her father had done.  Christian, being five years younger than Kelly, was just naive enough to see a slight incongruity in this theology.  He was not, however, considered old enough to have a firm grasp of his own faith, so he remained silent.  Tim suggested they say a collective prayer that William’s recovery would be a speedy one, and that the whole ordeal would be used by the Lord to further unite the family, and bring testimony to the goodness of God. 

Irene and Kelly closed their eyes and bowed their heads.  Christian watched his mother and sister, while Timothy watched the road.  Kelly led a quiet, yet reverent, prayer for her father.

 

     Highway 89 soon became Route 60 into Phoenix, and it was not long before they were pulling into the parking lot at the Medical Center.  Their anxiety was now turning to cautious excitement.  They stopped at the information desk in the lobby and were directed to the fifth floor.  The elevator just wouldn’t arrive, and then when it finally did it was a brief lifetime before the door opened.  The four of them stood aside to let some hospital staff exit, stepped in, and then back off again on #5.  The Charge- nurse gave them William’s room number.

 

     He was lying on his back in bed, IV tubes indicating that he was being cared for.  The family had not yet received any specific diagnosis of his condition, only the general condition that had been communicated to Timothy earlier.  When William was found, the sheriff had first called his wife, but when they couldn’t get through to her he had them call Tim’s house, just four blocks away.  William looked embarrassed to see his family.  Christian was the first to speak, and said, “Dad, what’s the deal, takin’ a little family vacation without the family?”

 Typically, both smartass and cute, the kind of comment you’d expect from a thirteen-year-old.  William smiled.  Kelly couldn’t speak, just leaned over him in tears, hugging her father as if she were saying, ‘good-bye’, rather than ‘hello’.  Irene pulled a chair up next to the bed and began touching her husbands face, kindly, gently, with a combination of sadness and joy.  Tim stood back and observed the family dynamics.  At nineteen-years-old, and because of his relationship with Kelly, he was well integrated into the family.  He was trusted, and he was loved.  This was a time for him to assert his growing position as a man in the family.  In fact, quietly looking ahead towards marriage to Kelly, he had already begun personal ‘transitional’ counseling towards that end with Pastor Blauer.

 

 

     William Shoop is the day manager at the Country Kitchen in Wickenburg.  It’s a job he takes a lot of pride in, but it’s also a job that causes him grief on an almost daily basis.  He runs the establishment in an orderly fashion, very similar to the way he operates at home, but, unlike his family, not all of his customers seem to feel the same obligation to show him the same kind of respect.  He does garner respect from most of them because he treats everyone with pretty much the same measure of kindness, but there are always the few throughout any given day who feel it to be their duty to interject some measure of chaos into his, otherwise orderly, life.  Usually teen-agers, an occasional loudmouth complainer, or petulant mother who allows her kids free run of the restaurant.  William deals with it quietly, maintaining his dignity, but it does tend to put him on edge by the end of every week.  Lindy Burrell, his lead waitress, has been with him at the restaurant for about five years now.  She reads him like a Readers Digest, knows his moods, sees through the appearance of calm, down into the troubled waters he begins carrying around in his belly.  She brings a comforting word, a knowing smile, or an assuring hand on the back, at, seemingly, the most significant moments.  She has the ability to reduce his stress, renew his disposition, and to, somehow, extract the deadly poison that had been creeping quietly into his, otherwise, untroubled demeanor.

 

     William’s kids, Christian, and Kelly, come by for breakfast every Thursday morning on their way to school.  Sometimes Tim comes with them.  William likes it when they come in.  Gives them a different impression of their father, another perspective.  And it makes him feel proud, like he’s not just a day manager of a restaurant, but something more significant, more important, something deeper. 

A father.

 

     Lindy makes sure his kids get extra bacon, or sausage.  William’s wife, Irene, spoke to Chris DeLong, the business owner, and explained that her husband had gone missing.  Along with the family, Chris had become very worried about William also.  Liked William a lot, and was very appreciative of him, and his management skills.  Profits from the business have risen about 25% since hiring him six or seven years ago.  Chris has been managing the restaurant in Will’s absence.  Was relieved to hear that William had been found.  Irene told Mr. DeLong that, as it turns out, her husband, on a whim, and without telling his family, went out for a day hike, got lost, and, well, the hospital should be releasing him in the next day or so.  Didn’t feel it necessary to mention the religious aspect of the whole experience.

 

     Lindy knew, intuitively, that Chris was not getting the full story.

 

 

     Six.

California

 

     Marty showed up right on time.  We loaded things into the Jeep, then headed north over the Golden Gate, through Marin, and Sonoma Counties, on Highway 101.  We had easy, and interesting conversation, pretty much all the way up to the lake.  She had me laughing about her mother, who still insists that Marty will never meet a good man canoeing, or traipsing around the mountains on the weekends.  Mom says all the good men are in church, or out on Breast Cancer Awareness walks, or helping build houses with Habitat for Humanity.  Thinks Marty should learn to pound a nail, or at least volunteer in some administrative capacity.  Could maybe get some nice young man to take more than a casual interest in her. 

Even Wag, sitting up in the back seat with his tongue working overtime, seemed to have a good laugh about that.

 

     By 7:30 we were out on the water at Lake Sonoma, Marty seated in the front of the canoe, Wag acting like a nautical hood ornament, and me guiding the whole affair from the rear.  The setting couldn’t have been more perfect, with fog resting low to the ground, settled in the adjoining canyons, and just a light mist kissing the surface of the lake like frosting.

 

     It was just beginning to get light.  Marty poured coffee from the thermos for each of us as we glided slowly and peacefully through liquid glass, just offshore.  Ancient, barren trees whispered quiet secrets, poking up through shallow water, having arranged themselves indiscriminately like cactus grown, forgotten, through sparkling sand on an Arizona desert.  Moss hung phosphorescent green, soft and philosophical, where leaves once clung to branches now bare from winter rain and cold.  Tree trunks and appendage limbs, reaching wide with squeaks and groans, rubbed lightly against each other beneath the weight of their own ambition.  A haunting, eerie sound, privy only to the early risers, the ones to whom the morning really is the beginning of the day.

 

     There was little need for words in this place, and there were very few spoken, especially at first.  Just the sighs, the ooh’s and aah’s, the exclamations of grandeur, of beauty uncompromised by any intrusion other than our own.

 

     I paddled the canoe from the rear, steering as I paddled, while Marty bathed in our surroundings.  Huddled in front, bundled from the cold, she was at home here, like an old soul, but also like a lover in the comfort of her own familiar bed.  I felt the same, just being with her.  I had to remind myself that we were not together, that we were only enjoying a common experience.  Having only recently met her, I had taken to her rather quickly.  So had Wag, who was now cuddled up warmly in her welcoming lap.  I found myself wishing he and I could just change places.  The thing about Wag is that he’s always known a good thing when he finds it.  I had a convoluted thought that, with these new feelings, I was somehow betraying Gina back at the café.  I dismissed it as quickly as it arrived, knowing that my attraction to Gina was purely physical, while this was something deeper.

 

     We cruised the shoreline for about three and a half hours, taking our time, savoring the environment.  As the morning fog was lifting, and with the sun breaking through like a lantern, we watched osprey flying deliberate and well-traveled patterns in the sky overhead.  Magnificent birds, scanning the surface of the lake for breakfast, diving for fish, occasionally coming up empty, but usually with a nice trout gripped firmly, but deadly, in their fierce and merciless talons.  They would fly the catch back to old nests atop tall trees where they’d step on the fish with one foot to hold it down while tearing tasty morsels of fat and flesh from its now dying bones.  A feast, to be sure.  Our binoculars allowed Marty and I the privilege of practically being seated at the table.  We eventually pulled into shore, threw a blanket on the ground, and spent an hour and a half enjoying our own meal.  Fresh fruit, French bread, cheese, and salami.  Lunch never tasted so good.  Wag ran around exploring the area, wherever his nose would take him, intermittently running back to our blanket to check in, collect some pets from me and Marty, and another round of handouts.

 

 

     I’d noticed the two men from early on working the shoreline from their fancy bass boat, casting the shallows, the coves, and beneath the embankments that hung out over the water.  It was the only other boat I’d seen that morning.  It was winter, a cold Friday, even with the sun melting some of the icicles, and our own inhibitions.  We’d put in at Yorty Creek, a no-trailer launch site on the northeast end of the lake.  They must have launched by Warm Springs Dam on the other side of the lake, and then motored through the Dry Creek channel over to the Thumb Creek camp section that we were enjoying.  It’s a fairly remote area with narrow fingers of water framed by rising hillsides of pine, oak and manzanita.  Occasional meadows stretch out to the lake, morphing progressively from grass into a mixture of soil and sand, on down to a gradual shoreline.  The whole area provides a sense of privacy and solitude.  Very canoe friendly. 

A very nice place to be.

 

     For about a half-hour before stopping for lunch I’d been aware that the bass boat was slowly following the same route we were taking.  They were fishing along the way, but kept moving in our direction just across the narrow, and about a hundred yards behind us.  It’s quite common for bass fishermen to remain on the move, trying this spot and that as they make their way along the waters edge.  But something didn’t feel natural about this particular boat.  Most linger in some spots, and move quickly through others, depending on their luck, or even just a feeling they might have about a particular place.  But these guys just seemed to keep a steady pace, not gaining too much ground on us, or falling too far behind.

 

     When we pulled into shore for lunch they remained across the water, but discontinued their movement along the shoreline.  They stayed there, fishing, but restlessly moving around and about the boat.  They’d turned off the little electric trolling motor and, for the first time, anchored in place.  As we enjoyed our meal on a blanket on the ground we could hear their voices across the water.  They were far enough away that I couldn’t really make out what they were saying, just tone of voice, inflection, and pattern of speaking.  I could see them well enough to know they were watching us with binoculars, but at the same time trying to disguise their actions.  They were far enough away that I could not actually see the binoculars, but having used them myself for years, I’m very much aware of the body posture, and even body language, of someone who is using them.  To mask their intentions, as they held them up to their eyes they held their elbows in close to their bodies, rather than in the more natural, traditional posture with elbows extended wide for balance.  This was a little disconcerting, but I tried to not let it interfere too much with the enjoyment of the time I was having with Marty.  I don’t think she had any awareness of my concerns.  For one thing, she didn’t know me well enough to be aware of any indicators.  And I’m pretty certain she was oblivious to the fishermen.  She never mentioned them, and I think, in her mind, they would have just been enjoying a little fishing trip.  I wanted to check these guys out with my own binoculars, but did not want to risk them seeing me watching them.  Some kind of convoluted primitive self-protective measure I’ve always found it hard to shake.  In any event, as we were packing up to leave, and with dark clouds just beginning to gather overhead, the roar of their motor brought a new, and immediate, slant to the situation.  Within a minute they’d come across the channel and were now idling about ten yards offshore just in front of us.  They called out the usual, ‘Hey, how ya doin’s?’, a comment or two about the weather, the fishing, and a compliment about my canoe.

I acknowledged them perfunctorily, rather than to encourage more conversation, but was not overly dismissive of them, a little concerned about pissing them off.

I could tell that something just wasn’t right.

 

     A sudden gun of the engine and the boat lurched forward almost to shore.  The taller man of the two, with his left hand on the rail, and in one swift motion, vaulted from the deck, over the side of the boat and into ankle deep water cocking a sawed off shotgun as he hit the shore.  Fuck.  He put the barrel in my face before his eyes even found the terror in my own.

   “Sit your funky butt down on the ground, asshole”, he said.

I backed up against a dead oak, hoping it would steady my legs, and slid slowly down the length of its trunk to a soft mound of earth gathered at its base.  I exhaled, but immediately wished I could have caught the breath I was releasing, feeling I might need it when the breath I had left was gone.  Reading my fear, Wag ran over to make sure I was all right.  He licked my hands, and climbed up to lick my face.  The guy with the shotgun snarled at him.  Wag sat down beside me in a protective posture and began a low level, but serious, growl intending to send a message to this guy that he now had two of us to deal with.  Size be damned.  Marty stood ten feet to my right, unmoving, unable to really, afraid to speak, afraid to scream, afraid to breathe on her own.

 

     The smaller man shut the motor down, brought the boat the rest of the way in and tied it off on a root running down to the water.  Then he joined his friend at the party.

 

     Marty looked at me longingly, helplessly, frightened to her bones.  Her eyes pierced mine like fire, but also with a knowing, soft and saturated depth I’d seen only once before, as a friend of mine lay dying years earlier in the AIDS ward at San Francisco General.  It was a look that encompassed all that life had been up until that moment, but all that would be missed from that time on as well.  Looking into her eyes was like reading a private letter while sitting on the back staircase of my old 3^rd-floor-walk-up in the City.

 

     The guy with the 12-guage continued to focus on me, the gun leveled menacingly at my shrunken body beneath the tree.  The shorter man appeared to not be armed, but I wasn’t sure.  At least I couldn’t see a weapon.  He had dishwater blond hair thrown back, hanging unkempt around his steroid thick neck.  He had muscles in his face even, eyes that laughed out loud at Marty’s vulnerability, and hands that clenched themselves with intimate aggression.  He wore Levis and a Raiders jersey.

 

     As Marty faced me the man stood off to her left, just forward a bit so that she was between us, but not fully.  He shot a vicious look my way, then looked back to Marty, and with the voice of a brutal stepfather snapped, “On your knees cunt.” 

I could see Marty’s soul slump within her body.  Mine raised up within me.  Marty began to shake like a cold puppy.  I found heat, and a searing passion, a volcanic energy emerging like lava from the bowels of an angry god.  The man took two steps forward and stood above Marty as she continued to tremble.  Enveloped in grief and fear, ashamed of her own compliance, she looked up to hear him say, “Unzip it bitch.”

Marty slowly unzipped her down vest.  She heard him say, “Now unbutton the rest”. 

Devoid of the wherewithal to resist, she unbuttoned the wool shirt she was wearing beneath it.  As she shyly tried to hold the shirt closed with one hand, he reached in, knocking her hand away, grabbed the center of her bra and yanked it with brutal and alarming force.  It ripped from her body like an old rag in the grip of an angry pit bull, leaving her breasts fully exposed to all of us, and to the ugliness at hand. 

   “Now mine”, the man said.

Marty glanced at me helplessly as she raised her hands and began undoing the buttons of his jeans.  She whimpered like a child.  She cried inside for the world to be as she once used to know it.  With a twisted mouth, choking on contempt, he forcefully commanded, “Now unwrap the candy darlin’ and let yourself in for a treat.  I know it’s a lot to eat at one meal, but you’re a big girl now.  Something for you to suck on while daddy does your hair.”

 

     Marty heaved with anguish, a groan did its feeble best to provide her some comfort, and as she reached inside the devils BVD’s the guy holding me at bay turned his head about 45 degrees to watch, dropping the shotgun barrel towards the ground as he did.  In the longest moment I have ever lived I reached behind my back to the holster strapped on my belt, hidden beneath my coat, gripped the handle of my Smith & Wesson short-barrel 357 Magnum, pulled it free of its holster and leveled a deafening shot to his chest.  It knocked him back like a sledgehammer, flattening him on the ground, eyes gone dark like sin, arms spread wide like a deranged man making snow angels in the sand, unexpectedly interrupted by his own untimely death.  In the same brief moment I swung my arm a quarter turn to the right and put a slug in Mr. Happy’s neck, the hollow-point bullet expanding as it passed through bone and flesh, blowing out the other side like a screaming red geyser, leaving him dead on his feet with no time left to even realize that this was as tall as he was really ever going to stand. 

A gaping wound the size of a large walnut gurgled crassly as he toppled to the ground.  A terrified young woman knelt frozen in place, afraid she’d not wake up from this relentless and uncompromising dream, her eyes, already filled to overflowing, now becoming springs of living water.  I helped her to her feet and she collapsed into my arms.  She fell apart while I did my best to hold myself together.  I lowered us slowly to the ground, still holding her close as we found comfort in the warmth of one another, in our still-beating hearts, and in the stunning realization that we were both alive.

 

     Wag moved around us, rubbing up against us, just wanting to be close, trying to integrate himself with the tangle of limbs and bodies that we had suddenly now become.

 

     I wished I were back at the Café watching Darla thumb through catalogues, observing Jesse and Collette doing their little mating dance, and listening to Van Morrison, with his Band and Street Choir singing, ‘Lord, if I ever needed someone, I need you’.

 

     Reality slapped me hard across the face.  We had to get out of there fast.  The situation was as real as it gets.  It was not going to get any less real than it was, and it was not going to go away.  I wasn’t too worried about someone hearing the gunshots because public land surrounded the lake.  It was specifically designated for hunting and other forms of recreation, and it was not at all uncommon to hear hunters firing guns, even down close to the lake.  But I was worried that somebody would wander by, either on foot or in a boat.  It was not common for hunters, or boaters, to find dead people laying about on the shoreline of the lake.  I told Marty we had to pull it together.  I told her we had to leave this place quickly, and quietly, but as if nothing had ever happened.  I did not want to rely on the courts to understand this situation accurately.  Too many innocent people, caught up in a nightmare beyond their own control, have spent too many years in prison because some politically correct social savior wanted to send the message that you cannot go around killing people just because they are threatening your life.  I’d never fired this gun before, except at pinecones lined up on a log for target practice, and even then, only a couple of times up in the high country.  I always carried the firearm with me in case of an encounter with an angry bear, a mountain lion, or a couple of bad guys with nefarious intentions.  But like losing your brother to a fatal illness, you just never expect it to happen.

 

     I was still stunned, as I know Marty was.  I helped her up as I was rising.  She was trembling, even more profoundly than a few minutes earlier.  She stood on unsteady legs, her hands were shaking uncontrollably, as were her arms.  I quietly buttoned up her shirt as she cried.  And then her vest. 

I helped her into the canoe, lifted Wag into her lap, and then gathered up the remains of our lunch, the blanket, Marty’s bra, and the few things that were left scattered about.  When I momentarily glanced back at Marty she was hugging Wag, clinging to him like a traumatized little girl might cuddle with her most beloved stuffed animal.

 I picked up several fist-sized rocks to take with us.  I pushed the canoe a few feet out into the water, then returned to shore, grabbed a pine branch and roughed up the mark the canoe had left in the sand where we’d pulled it up onto the shore.  I went around and did the same with our footprints, Wag’s included, as many as I could find, then dragged the branch over my steps as I walked back out into the water.  I reached down and scooped a handful of mud from the lake bottom and climbed into the canoe.  I grabbed a large handful of moss hanging from the branch of an old tree we glided by on our way away from the nightmare.  When we got about a quarter mile back out toward the main channel I calmly dropped the 357 into the beckoning depths of Lake Sonoma, picked up the moss, mixed it with the mud, and vigorously washed and rubbed my hands to rid them of any lingering trace of gunshot residue.  I asked Marty for her shoes, removed mine as well, stuffed the largest rocks down into the toes, tied them up snugly and tossed them overboard.  Felt like I was walking away from trouble,

but also away from myself in a way.

 

     We’d left the Gregor bass-fishing boat with the 200-horsepower- Evinrude outboard motor where it lay, now abandoned, and needing to find its own fucking way back to the goddamned dock.

 

 

Seven.

 

     When we finally got back to the parking lot it was still pretty empty, just a couple other vehicles that were already there when we’d arrived earlier that morning.  Our feet were pretty cold by now and sandals were all either of us had in the car.  I always keep an extra pair of socks and sweats in the back just in case I need some dry clothes.  I gave Marty the socks and sweatshirt, and I took off my wet jeans and put on the sweat pants and sandals.  We loaded the canoe up on top of the Jeep, strapped it down, dumped the gear in the back, and Wag in the back seat.  On the way out of the lot I stopped at the parking fee deposit box and, using a couple of twigs like chopsticks, fished my parking registration envelope back up through the slot where I’d dropped it earlier that morning.  As if we’d never been there. 

As if we never had been there.

 

     Driving back down Hot Springs Rd. from the lake the clouds all but exploded, cracking loud with thunder.  Water rained down from the sky like divine forgiveness.  I thanked a merciful God for washing clean the scene of my iniquity.

 

     Marty and I were in no hurry to get back on the freeway with its three-lane traffic into Marin County and the San Francisco area.  We, instead, decided to take our time getting back, spend some quiet time in the truck, unwind from the horror of our encounter, and assess the circumstances as best we could.  We headed down 101 for just a short distance, and then caught 116 straight over to the coast along the Russian River through Guerneville, Monte Rio, Duncan Mills, and eventually arriving at the Coast Highway just north of Bodega Bay.  It rained all the way.  Wag slept like a rag doll in a hammock.  We stopped in at Inn at the Tides and had hot brandy’s at the bar, trying to feel normal, trying to blend in with life as it had been before this horrendous turn of events shook up the status quo for both of us, probably for the rest of our lives.  We talked about how it feels, how it felt as it was happening, how it will probably feel in the future.  It was good to get so much of it out right away, together, before it set in too deeply, before it got lost in translation, and in the cavern of our own isolation.  Neither of us, however, had any expectation that it all got talked out.  That would take years, we both knew it at the time, and time will prove us right.

 

After leaving the bar we continued south on Highway1, past Tomales Bay, then cut back over to the coast to the small town of Bolinas.  We decided to get a room for the remainder of the afternoon, and in anticipation of a very long night.  We checked ourselves into Smiley’s Schooner Saloon Hotel, off the main street of town, just back up behind the Saloon.  Marty immediately hit the shower while I collapsed on the bed like a batter getting hit in the head with a Randy Johnson fastball.  I woke up about thirty minutes later and Marty was still in the shower.  I called to her but there was no answer.  I called once more, but still no response, only the sound of the shower.  I knocked at the door, then again, but a little harder.  I opened it slowly, stuck my head in and saw Marty bent half-way over, shivering, gripping her abdomen with both arms, hair falling down over her eyes like a shadow, while freezing cold water rained down on, and all over, her sad and slumping body. 
   ”Oh my God, Marty.”

 

     I quickly shut off the faucet, grabbed a couple of towels, stepped into the shower with her, dried her off, wrapped her up with the towels, and in my arms.  I led her to the bed, pulled the covers back, cocooned her in a soft blanket, covered her with the extras, then went over and cranked the wall heater all the way up to the max.  I lay down beside her on top of the bedspread.  She was still shaking.  I had begun to shake as well, from my own grief, but more so for her.

   “David,” she stuttered, “Will you please come in here with me?  I need you, please, to come in here with me.”

   “Of course Marty,” I said.  “Of course I will.” 

I undid the layers, lay down beside her and re-wrapped the cocoon for the two of us.  She began to take deep breaths, and her shaking eventually stopped, as did mine.  She fell asleep in my arms while our hearts abandoned their own rhythms to join together in one.

Wag watched intently from the floor in front of the heater.

 

     In the morning Marty and I lay in bed for a very long time, not speaking, not moving, just relaxed, I guess.  Kind of numb.  We could not seem to even untangle ourselves from one another.  Didn’t really want to.  I didn’t want to think about the day, didn’t want to remember the day before, didn’t want to get up, couldn’t go back to sleep, wouldn’t even want to because it would mean having to eventually wake up again.

After what seemed like a brief eternity, a faint, whispered voice breathed lovingly in my ear, “Thank you David.”

I turned my head to look at Marty and said, “You were so cold Marty, so frozen.  The hot water must have been gone for ten or fifteen minutes.  I’m just glad you didn’t get hypothermia.”

   “No,” she said softly, “No, no . . . . . . thank you for your courage, David.  Thank you for being willing to kill a portion of your own soul yesterday to protect mine.  I love you for that.”

My eyes welled up like sponges as subtle, distilled tears ran slowly down my cheeks, pooling quietly in the crevice of my quivering chin.  Marty gently wiped my face with her hand and kissed my eyes with lips as soft, and as warm, as the words she whispered.

 

“Two Men Found Dead On The Shore Of Lake Sonoma”

“Shot to death under mysterious circumstances”

 

     That was the Saturday morning headline in the San Francisco Chronicle.  The story went on to say, “ . . . . . the two men were found shot to death after an apparently hostile encounter with hunters in the vicinity of Thumb Camp in the northeast area of the lake.  A new bass fishing boat, believed to have been owned by one of the victims, was left on shore at the scene.  The boat was strewn with beer cans and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.  Nothing more is yet known about the men.  The Sonoma County Sheriffs Department, as of now, is investigating the crime as an unexpected confrontation, most likely a territorial dispute provoked by the usual insults and macho posturing of inebriated males.  Hunters in the area are being questioned.  Parking registrations are being checked to determine who else had been boating on the lake yesterday . . . . . . ”

 

     Marty and I decided not to return home yet, but to remain in Bolinas another day or so to continue decompressing.  Sunday evening would come soon enough.  We both had to be back at work Monday morning, me in the classroom, and Marty in her office.  She’s the Student Activities Director at City College of San Francisco.  Had been there now for about five years.  Working with a developmentally challenged population, like I do, allows for days when I’m not fully at my best.  My students intuit it quite profoundly, but if necessary I can, on occasion, tailor the class to accommodate my diminished energy.  Marty, however, consistently needs to be at her best.  She’s always booked up solid with appointments and needs to be mentally sharp.  College kids don’t really let you slide.  Everything is immediate with them, always an emergency, and they’re quick as a muleskinners whip.

 

     We noticed the Bolinas Fire Dept. was holding its monthly Saturday morning pancake breakfast down the street, about a half block from our motel.  We were both famished, and with the exception of bar snacks in Bodega Bay, had not eaten since lunch the day before.  Five bucks got us each a short stack with bacon and scrambled eggs.  But it was the coffee that brought the light back into our eyes.  We lingered there, each savoring a second, and then a third cup.  I think a big part of the enjoyment was in just being part of a larger picture, sitting around the fire station at a community event, taking us, even for a short while, out of the isolation of our secret, which lingers like a bad dream, or the smell of a critical care cancer ward in any hospital in the world. 

After the coffee was gone we stopped by the general store for toothbrushes, toothpaste, dog food, and some other rather unremarkable incidentals.  We dropped them off in the room and headed down to the beach for a walk with Wag.

 

     It’s kind of a secluded beach in the winter, a bit off the beaten path, and the kind of place, at this particular time, where we would not expect to find respite from the lingering ordeal.  The beach, on Bolinas Bay, looks back across the lagoon towards Stinson Beach.  A beautiful view, but I realized, before my feet even hit the sand, that things were out of focus.  Not necessarily for somebody else, but certainly for us.  No people here, just a host of twisted driftwood totems.  Sculptures of the soul, some would say.  Tributes to the vague hallucinations of infatuated hippies wishing to embrace the esoteric, and wanting to believe themselves to be the next Picasso.  Some of these creations, however, possessed a true beauty, a rare sensibility, beyond even their own uniqueness.  But we could not be comfortable here alone.  We could not embrace the uncertainty of such an isolated place.  It’s possible that we never would again.

 

     We left the beach and chalked it up as just a good idea at a very bad time. We simultaneously came to the same conclusion, that we needed the security of our room, some cuddle time with Wag, and that fortuitous wall heater to warm our bones and shivering souls.  Logically, these seemed to be the most essential elements for warding off any further deterioration of our mental health.  We’d deal with the rest of the day when there was less of the day left for us to have to deal with.

 

     The late morning and afternoon disappeared into itself, a seamless series of moments stretching into, and through, the night.  No sense of time passing, or, for that matter, even existing at all, just an uninterrupted fabric like fog hovering in the room.  We did not get hungry again that evening, and we did not have a pressing need now for conversation.  We lay together once more, side by side, this time just listening to water dripping from the nozzle in the shower, its persistent, and rhythmic, drip-drop, a kind of hypnotic ticket to mental oblivion.  Neither of us minded falling temporarily under its mesmerizing spell.  I wondered how the planets must have aligned, and with what kind of intention, to have brought us to this place.  I wondered, also, if I would be able to remain quiet about this ungodly turn of events.  And if I did, would it eventually eat me alive inside.  I wondered about Marty, even though she’d thanked me for the courage with which I acted, would she ultimately resent me for having found herself in such a horrific situation.  I hoped not.  And I wondered if she could carry the secret herself.

 

     In the morning, as we lay there, in that place, on that bed, I thought back on our arrival the day before.  I thought of Marty in the shower, her nakedness, the beauty of her vulnerable body, even though cold and shivering.  I thought of our cocoon, the tenderness we found in one another, the natural blending of our bodies, and the beating of our merging, and emerging, hearts.  But I also thought of Marty on her knees, lovely pale breasts hanging innocent in the soft light, hand reaching in the jeans of that pathetic and deranged stranger.  I thought again of that disturbing scene and, because I found the thought of it exciting, I was ashamed.  I remained awhile beside her on the bed, and unable to shake the image from my mind, as I had before, I began to listen once again to the drip-drop of that liquid metronome, so deliberate, and so reassuring, keeping time behind the bathroom door.

 

     It was Sunday, and we both knew that we needed to return home.  I’d not called anybody to let them know I would be away longer than just the day at the lake, but no one would have missed me in that short time anyway.  Same for Marty, the friends she had were not the check-in-with-each-other-every-day kind of friends.  They all had lives, and the maturity to live them independent of each other.  Would catch up with one another as time allowed, or when one of them wanted to get together.  Late morning we cleared out of the motel and climbed, again, into the Jeep for the brief drive through the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and back over the bridge.  Arriving in San Francisco was kind of cathartic really.  Felt like an emersion from the hostile grip of a convoluted journey.  Felt like home was the best place to hide.

 

     As I turned off Park Presidio onto Lake St., I heard the unmistakable sound of a lone siren, checked the rear view mirror to find a squad car following me through the turn and getting up on my bumper close enough that the canoe on the roof, extending off the back of the jeep, was actually overhanging the hood of the squad car.  I thought, “This doesn’t feel good.  This just doesn’t feel good at all.” 

Marty had a look of near panic.  I’m sure I looked the same.

She took a long breath and said, “We’ll be OK, David.  We’ll be OK.  Whatever happens, we’ll be OK.”

 

     I pulled to the curb, the police car stuck to me like a mechanical conjoined twin.  My heart was pounding like an ancient talking drum, with some primordial warning of impending doom.  The officer exited his car, appearing cautious, but confident, deliberate, in control of himself and his surroundings.  He approached my window, stopping just short of the door.  I had to turn my head back to see him, so I did.  With his left thumb tucked in his utility belt, and his right hand patting the side of the canoe on top of the Jeep, he said,

   “Is this your canoe?”

   I said, “Yes officer, it is.”

   He said, “This your Jeep?”

   I said, “Yes sir, it is.”

   He said, “How far you plan on going with that canoe on top of your Jeep?”

   I said, “Not far sir, I just live up California on 5^th Ave.”

   He said, “Well I suggest then, that you do one of two things.  Either paddle it home from here, and admittedly that would be difficult to do, or tighten up that back roof strap that loosened up on you.  Now you two have a nice day.”

 

     My sigh of relief must have been heard back across the bridge, although the officer ignored it, probably figuring I was relieved to not be getting a ticket.  He didn’t ask my name, or where I’d been, or check my license, registration and insurance.  He did not do a dashboard computer check on the Jeep, and most importantly of all, he did not arrest me for the murder of two drunken bass fisherman the day before yesterday at Lake Sonoma.

Marty took my hand, squeezed it lovingly and repeated, “We’ll be OK, David. We’ll be OK.”

 

     After we unloaded the canoe in my garage, Marty threw her things in her own car, and then tried to put herself in also.  She was having difficulty with that.  It was difficult for me as well.  There was a magnetism that did not want to allow our separation.  Those who have experienced long ‘good-byes’ after tragic events know what I’m talking about.  It’s as if there are no words to close the story.  And in fact, there are no words.  Marty and I just clung to one another in the driveway, car door left open like a line of credit.  After a brief lifetime of silence she slipped behind the wheel and closed the door.  Wag jumped into her lap from the passenger side and licked her face like it was sugar.  She laughed, fluffed up his shaggy head and handed him back to me through the window.  She put the car in reverse and halfheartedly rolled back down the driveway.

Wag and I slept up on the roof that night.  It was cloudy, and I felt very much alone.

There were eleven stars in the sky.

 

 

Eight.

 

     In the morning we headed back up to Sonoma County for work, Wag and me.  I was pretty out of sorts to be going up there again already.  I’d just spent the worst day of my life at a lake just a half-hour ride from where I work, and it was doubtful that I would be able to be so close without reliving the nightmare.  It seemed way too soon for that.  It just seemed way too soon.  But seeing my class brought joy to these tired old eyes.  Wag ran around greeting the students like a visiting dignitary, but without the phony smile.  He regards my students as his friends, their wheelchairs as his ride, and their laps as the main source of his connection.  It’s a beautiful thing to see.

 

     There’s a ramp that runs from the back door of my classroom down to a landing just above the creek, and then a short ramp down to the water from there if we want to get to the water’s edge.  But even though it was not a particularly warm day, we bundled everybody up, and went down to watch, and listen to, the creek.  I talked to them about nature, pointed out various birds, a visiting deer, and tuned them into some particularly remarkable sounds.  Turkeys moving steadily about just over the bank on the backside of the creek, their incessant gurgling, gobbling, giving away their location as they scoured the ground for bugs, seeds, whatever they could find to eat.  The caw of a lone crow in the high branches of an old redwood, the high pitched screaming of a hawk off over a distant meadow, all extraneous sounds mixed with the melody, and the rhythm, of water rushing, flowing, even dribbling over rocks.

 

     I have ten students, with various irreversible conditions, physical degenerations, and some major mental retardation.  Oddly enough though, each of them understands the things I say, it is something I have no doubt about.  Some know from my body language, and tone of voice, but some clearly understand the spoken words.  I know this mostly by observing their individual sense of humors, the laughter at silly comments I make, or their response to the teasing I incorporate into our relationships.  I believe that, even with the conscious, and dedicated, medical staff available at the Center, we still underestimate the extent of their individual capacity, and capability.  These folks are commonly referred to as developmentally disabled, or developmentally challenged.  I object to both labels really.  I think they’re based in political correctness.  If an automobile is disabled it doesn’t work.  It doesn’t run.  You can’t say that about the people I work with.  They are functioning people, in their own ways, and at their own level.  Their development is not disabled, it is retarded.  And developmentally challenged?  Hey, we’re all developmentally challenged, just in different areas of our own development, so why do we insist on applying the description only to them?  I believe the original term, retarded is actually the most accurate portrayal of this broad and varied population.  Retarded simply implies ‘restricted in the pace of ones development’.  It doesn’t mean shut down, or not able, as disabled does.  I don’t need a dictionary to know that.  I don’t think, however, that my take on the terms is going to have any big impact on anybody.  It’s pretty well ingrained in our consciousness now.  No one’s going to re-visit the issue just because I feel very strongly that it does a disservice to the people carrying those labels.  It does, however, make the people using them feel good about themselves.  I guess that’s what matters.  Go figure.

 

     The unit that I work on has twenty-four residents, with just under half of them attending my recreation and mobility class.  The residents live on the unit 24/7, with a rotating shift of Psych/Techs to look after them and care for their basic needs.  It’s a humbling and inspiring environment.  My classes consist of various social/recreational activities, including the creek, gardening, low key concerts, rickshaw rides, and quiet times on the grass beneath the summer shade of magnificent oak, and pine, trees.  There are a myriad of activities too long to list, and the indoor recreation is stimulating and engaging, but the outdoors brings gladness to their souls, and regeneration to their minds.  Smiles come easy outdoors, and laughter rings louder.  It’s always my favorite time with them.  I designed, and had the wheelchair shop at the Center build, what I call the Rickshaw.  It’s a kind of wheelchair-accessible-mini-trailer that is stabilized, and fortified, to accommodate a chair being pulled behind a bicycle.  They’ve custom fit it with bumpers and straps to insure the safety of the student.  Has a little ramp that pulls down in the back to load the chair and rider, pretty awesome, really.  Kind of like their own personal chariot.

 

     Cameron is my twenty-one year old Teaching Assistant (TA).  Although he works as a weekend roadie for his brother’s rock band, he has a passion for hip-hop and live-electronica music, and has been educating me on the genre, bringing CD’s in for us to listen to in class.  Sometimes he sends me home with them.  I’ve been educating him on some of the classic artists of my generation, Van Morrison, Pink Floyd, Dylan, Otis Redding, those guys.  It’s a symbiotic relationship.  Cameron’s a pretty cool kid.  I’ll frequently send him out with a student for a ride on the bike around the grounds of the campus.  He’s a strong young man, and loves to do it.  Takes his music on the ride with him.  Always pedaling to the beat.  I’ll occasionally take a student in the rickshaw myself, which I love to do as well, and leave Cameron to run the class, but more often than not he has the pleasure of the ride.  There are lots of bicycle paths that follow the creek, weave in and out of the gardens, and work their way, eventually, around the entire perimeter of the one hundred and fifty acre campus.  It’s probably the favorite recreational activity for each of our students.  They’re always together on the unit, and this gives them some independent time, out and about, to think their own thoughts, to indulge in their own experience, wind blowing through their hair, and all that. 

Yeah, wind blowing through their hair!

 

 

     In the warmer weather, late spring through the summer, we spend a great deal of time at the creek.  We have a large truck-tire inner tube with an attached net that we’ll put different students on to float in one of the knee-deep pools that form in the creek.  We’ll also use a big inflatable mattress to lie some of them on.  The sensation of floating creates an indescribable, almost surreal, emotion in each of them.  A freedom from the weight of their own bodies, from the confines of their beds and chairs.  A liberation, a kind of resurrection for them.  Wag splashes around like a three year old in a puddle.  I love it.  We all love it, and look forward every year to the opportunities.  There’s a lot of lifting involved for Cameron and myself, which can get a little wearisome, for me especially, being a lot older than he is.  And we have to be incredibly attentive and alert to every participant.  But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  Neither would any of the students.

 

     When not engaged in recreational activities Cameron and I get the students up in custom designed walkers to facilitate their need for movement and exercise.  Being in wheelchairs all day, and in bed at night, encourages over time the onset, and generation of, atrophy.  Their walkers are each designed and built to the individual, conforming to the particular irregularities of their bodies, providing support for the weaker areas of their structure, enabling them to trust standing, walking, with the confidence that they will not be hurt.  We walk with the students, steadying them, encouraging them, coaching them, close by in case of possible misfortune or mishap.  They feel such strength and dignity when they’re upright, looking eye to eye with the rest of us.  They love it.  I might love it more.

 

     Denver is a fairly young man, about twenty-eight, who has been in my class since I started work at the Center for Creative Living ten years ago.  He can’t speak, as is the case with each of my students, at least not intelligible English.  He does make sounds, however, which are, without any doubt, his attempt at communicating in English.  In his mind, I know, he is speaking clearly, the rest of us are just a little challenged in our ability to understand him.   Denver can’t walk, even with his mobility device, although he can stand in it with the straps and all.  And he can’t eat without assistance.  His arms can extend forward a bit, but cannot bend inward adequately enough to reach his mouth.  He cannot care for even his own most basic needs, but still he has a spirit about him that is undeniable, and as far as I can see, unmatched in the usual world of the able-bodied. 

 

    Denver’s family was in an auto accident when he was just a young boy.  He was the sole survivor and has been at the CCL ever since.  He’s really an interesting fellow.  I noticed about eight years ago, that when I’d read a book to him he would always follow the words on the page with his eyes.  He knew where I was on the page, and when I was about to turn the page.  When I’d inadvertently substitute a word, stumble over a word, or mispronounce it, he would blink, or flinch, or scrunch his face.  I realized that he was reading along with me.  Remarkable.  I’ve been reading to him as much as possible since then, and I have Cameron do the same.  We’re currently re-reading John Steinbeck’s, ‘Travels With Charlie’, one of his all-time favorite books.

He’s lovin’ it.

 

Shortly after my discovery of Denver’s uncanny ability to comprehend (follow) my reading, I found myself scouring thrift stores in search of an old computer with keyboard, something he could poke at, pound away on, and in essence, just discover the pleasure of creating letters and symbols on a page.  I found a Mac tower, one of the early ones, at the Salvation Army down on Geary, not far from where I live.  I also came home with an old Royal typewriter.  I brought them both to work, readied the computer for Denver in the classroom, and gave him a few quick demonstrations on the keyboard.  Essentially, I typed a few things for him, and guided his hands in a way that he could find the keys to kind of replicate my pedestrian efforts. 

It’s funny, how Denver only kind of half-heartedly participated in the experience.  He’s usually fully engaged in whatever activity he’s being connected with.   But the interesting thing is that, while I was trying to work with him, he kept looking anxiously over at the old Royal I’d left sitting on the shelf by the door.  I know he’d seen me playing around with it when I first brought it to class, but, for some reason, I thought he’d like the computer. 

Wrong.

When I set up the typewriter for him, and rolled in a fresh piece of paper, Denver came alive like a fish that’d just flopped back into the stream after being stranded for too long on the bank.  He loved the sound of the keyboard.  He loved the pressure the keys required to engage them.  He loved the return bar, and the rollers.  His eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning, his senses aroused like he’d wandered into a brand new world, one that he would, most likely, never want to leave. 

When I set Denver up at the typewriter I spent some time acquainting him with it, trusting that he understood what I was trying to communicate.  Then I left him to his own pleasure while I engaged the rest of the students in various other activities.  At the end of class I moved to put the typewriter back on the shelf, and ran smack into some pretty severe displeasure on the face of my favorite student.  In no uncertain terms was he ready to relinquish the old Royal.  It was very apparent that he was not finished with what he was doing.  I needed to close up the classroom and deliver the students back to their living quarters, but Denver was exhibiting a stubbornness I’d never really seen in him before.  He kept looking into my eyes and then glancing back at the paper in the roller like it had a significance that I was not yet comprehending. 

I moved behind Denver, bent down, peered over his shoulder at the paper, and read,

 

I  h a v e  b e e n  s o  m a n y  y e a r s  w i t h o u t  a  v o i c e 

t h a t  I  h a r d l y  k n o w  w h e r e  t o  b e g i n .

The Alligators rise from the swamp, tearing at my flesh like I belong to them.  They thrash frantically and violent.  I disappear quietly.  There is no cause for my concern beyond the abiding belief that I surely must deserve it.  I am meat in the food chain.  I am strength for the iniquitous.  I feed the dominant, the more aggressive, the un-empathetic.  I am dragged down by their hunger.  I shrink at their teeth.  Their gums bleed.  The blood mixes with my own.  I am mangled beyond reason, beyond recognition.  I succumb to this violence in the murky dawn, not given time to scream, or even breathe.  That’s what it feels like sometimes.  That’s how it is.  My remains linger here long after the alligator has gone.  Long after dark . . . . . . .deep into the frigid grip of winter.

 

I  h a v e  s e e n  t h e  f a c e  of  e v i  l .

B u t  I  h a v e  a l s o  s e e n  t h e  f a c e  o f  l o v e.

 

I was speechless.

 

     Driving back to San Francisco after class, I realized I hadn’t had a single thought about the lake while I was working with my students. 

A Godsend, to say the least.

 

     I fixed myself some lunch, and, as is his usual habit, Wag collapsed on a throw-rug in the kitchen for a lazy afternoon nap.  In an attempt to keep life as normal as could be expected, I went down to the café to try and pick up where I’d left off working on my novel.

 

 

Nine.

 

It’s only been four days since I’ve been here, but it seems a lot longer.  Jesse and Collette are still doing their usual dance behind the counter.  Funny how it’s the strongest mental image I had while at the lake, wanting to just be back in the security of The Last Café.  Am glad to see so many of the regulars again.  Feels like home.  Everyone here has some sort of secret life, at least everybody’s lives are secret from everybody else.  But something’s different, very different for me.  I actually really have a secret now, a big secret.  And it makes me wonder if the other people here have, beyond the usual privacy, very big secrets of their own.  I don’t like thinking that.  It’s kind of melancholic, kind of dark, kind of fatalistic.

 

A trip to the restroom found Kevin’s artistry, again, on the proverbial wall.

 

Everything is as it seems.

But nothing is how it appears.

 

     Damn, Kevin, kind of scary, especially in light of my circumstances.  He’s here today.  We made eye contact and exchanged nods while I was seating myself at my usual table.  I’m glad he’s here, he warms up the room, and I need some of that warmth.  It’s colder than usual, but maybe that’s just me.  I want to go sit with him, formally introduce myself, break the silence.  Actually, I want to go give him a big hug.  I don’t know why, I just want to.  He’s writing, has got on his green baseball sleeves today, same old overalls, so familiar, so comfortable.  Kind of invites a hug.

 

 

     Darla’s not here yet.  She’s actually the one person I was hoping would be here.  But her presence is strong, and it’s a soft welcome mat for me today.  Reel-to-reel wafting an angel on acoustic guitar out over the café, Joni Mitchell singing, ‘Michael From Mountains’.  Melt my heart why don’tcha?  Collie’s hanging on Jesse’s shoulder, teasing him, arms encircled around his neck, both hands, fingers intertwined, resting on his other shoulder, sad passionate eyes looking deep into his own discomfort, lip-syncing along with Joni like Jesse was the gentleman of her dreams.  Jess hung with it for a minute, but turned a dozen different shades of red and had to break the connection to keep a little bit of his own dignity intact.  Gina was laughing from across the room.  She knows she has that same affect on men when she wants to.

 

     She’s got her usual penny-loafer thing going again today, the dangling shoe routine, and all that.  Has a sparkle in her eye, don’t know if she came in with it, or if she picked it up being here.  Doesn’t really matter, it lights the back corner of the café like a candle.  I’ve never seen her in a turtleneck, but she has one on today, skin tight, no bra, and although the shirt elongates her neck in a very sexy way, rather than my eyes following it up to her face, they take the more natural, and preferred, route down to her breasts.  But, of course.  Knowing she has my attention, Gina takes a slow, deep, and deliberate breath that prompts those lovely breasts to stand up and say, ‘hello’.  Coat’s hanging on the back of her chair, so I already missed the daily unveiling.  I’ll catch the next one.  Gina’s an enigma.  She knows the effect she has on me, she knows I know she knows, she knows I would never approach her, even if I had the courage, and still she throws all those body innuendos in my direction as if she were tossing bread to a duck.  Come to think of it, maybe I’m the enigma. 

 

     In any event, having become so integrally connected to Marty over the past weekend, now I feel a little guilty even being distracted like this by Gina.  Even though Marty and I had not become lovers.

 

     I didn’t notice until I sat down with my coffee, but all those abstract pictures of the school buses are finally gone.  Thank God.  Walls are bare again, beige, like Gina’s turtleneck, but not nearly as interesting.  There’s a stack of frames standing on the floor leaning up against a wall in the back near the storeroom.  All facing the wall, can’t see what’s in them, but they obviously must be the new art for the café.  I’ve always enjoyed watching Darla hang the artwork, and hope she comes in today to do it.  Am anxious to see what we’ll be living with for the next few weeks as well.

 

     I sat down to write, but have been welcoming every distraction imaginable in order not to.  I don’t know, maybe I’m not ready to get back to the Wilderness project.  Maybe William Shoop, and Margo, and Pastor Blauer can take a back seat to my real life here for a while.  After all, they’re not going anywhere without me.  Maybe I need to just process this past weekend more fully.  Digest it in its own time, rather than in mine.  I understand the necessity of that, but can’t help feeling I might be better off just getting lost again in the day to day, in the sights and sounds, if you will, of my regular routine.  Maybe I should talk to Darla when she comes in, or just get up, go sit down with, and introduce myself to Kevin.  I don’t think he’d mind.

One thing, however, is for certain. I really miss Marty.

I really do.

 

     There’s a couple here that I haven’t seen before, kind of huddling together over against the side wall.  They look like they’re having a private time, like none of us are really here.  Pretending actually, that none of us are really here.  Feels kind of parochial, as if the rest of the café is the big world and they’re their own little neighborhood.  It’s a little un-nerving, for me anyway.  Everybody’s always alone in here, that’s part of the comfort of the place.  This is our little world, and I don’t like the idea of them making it their larger one.  It’s hard not to watch them.  They know that nomadic eyes sweep past them every few seconds, but they actually seem to like that.  I don’t like that.  Makes me feel as if I’m being used for their amusement.  I want to pay a visit to their table to tell them that we don’t allow couples, or public displays of affection, in here.  Except, of course, the kids behind the counter.

 

     It really bothers me.  It’s like going to Rome, and not doing as the Romans do.  I didn’t realize I was such a conformist beneath my cloak of independence.  That bothers me even more.  OK, I’m going to call them Brad and Angelina, they’re fair game, and that way I can continue to dislike them without feeling too bad about myself. 

 

     Angelina’s biting the skin between Brad’s thumb and forefinger.  He’s whispering things in her ear that are making both of them laugh.  OK, fine, but y’know, this is not the giggle house.  As has been said many times before, and by many individuals much more profound, and eloquent of speech, than I am, “Get a fucking room, will ya?”

 

     I notice that Gina looks a little displeased.  She shoots me a knowing glance that seems to say, “There goes the neighborhood”, or something like that.  I acknowledge the sentiment with raised eyebrows, and we both smile.

Joni Mitchell continues to bathe the room in soothing sound, the kind that can rock the cradle, or calm the nerves of a terrified man.

 

     I’m trying to imagine Marty at work today, entertaining college students who are hoping she can be the solution for their most pressing needs.  Getting approval to hang posters for the ‘Take Back The Night’ rally, things like that.  I don’t think she’ll have a problem authorizing that particular promotion.  I know she’s meeting with the Student Council today also, to discuss a request for establishing a Caucasian Student Union.  Sounds like a spoof, a mockery of sorts, but it’s not, and it’s something she told me she’s been really agonizing over.  There are a lot of political implications to this request.  The reality is that City College of San Francisco is made up primarily of Asian, African American, and Hispanic students.  There is a group of Caucasians who, feeling the weight of being a minority, are very seriously interested in creating a club where they can find support and camaraderie.  Every other demographic has their school authorized meetings, including all the different sexual-orientation groups, and some in the white demographic have some pretty strong feelings about having their own as well.  Marty wants to do the right thing, but knows that the right thing will be seen through many different ideological lenses.  I feel for her on this one, especially after what she’s been through.  She doesn’t need any more personal grief.  Not now, not at this time.

 

I don’t really have much of a take one way or the other on the issue, but I’ll probably be giving it some thought.

 

     An article in today’s edition of the SF Chronicle indicated that the two men killed at Lake Sonoma last week were shot with a handgun, and although it was most likely done by a hunter, or hunters, the Sheriff’s office is expanding the investigation to include interviews with those working on the trash-disposal, and recycle, crew who boat around to the various camp and picnic sites to empty the trash cans and clean up the grounds.  They’re on the lake early in the morning, and if their involvement can be ruled out, at least they might have seen something, another boat, some other people etc.  I didn’t see the disposal crew last Friday morning, and am assuming they must have been working down on the west end of the lake.  At least I hope they were.  The article indicated the authorities are also looking into the possibility that there were actually more than two men on the boat before the killings, friend(s) or acquaintance(s), and that perhaps the murder was done by one of them.  With the miles of trails around Lake Sonoma and the adjacent hills, it would have been easy for the assailant to walk away from the crime scene and hike back out of the area without ever being noticed.  Cab company records are being checked for pick-ups within a five-mile radius of the lake.  The fishermen’s associates are being questioned, particularly those with an inclination for fishing, or a history of violence.

None of this is making me any more comfortable in my own skin.

 

     Kevin stopped by my table to say, “Hey, my name’s Keith, been wanting to make your acquaintance for quite some time now.” 

   How bout that?  Friggin’ how about that?  He offered his hand like one would a gift.  I took, and shook, it firmly, but respectfully, like one would return a kindness.  We both smiled and I said, “Damn, Keith, I had you pegged for a Kevin.” 

   He laughed, and said, “Oddly enough, my parents were going to name me Kevin, but settled on Keith at the last minute.  Named me after my uncle Kevin, whose middle name is Keith.  Didn’t want me to have the same first name as him, but liked the idea of me having his middle name.  Life’s weird like that, isn’t it?” 

   Then he said, “Since I’ve been Kevin to you, between the two of us, I’m good with that.” 

   I said, “My name’s David, I was named after my younger brother.”  Understanding the fallaciousness of that statement, he laughed that wonderful belly laugh I’d heard on just a couple of other occasions.

 

     I had to ask Kevin if he was the bathroom-wall-pencil-poet.  He kind of brushed it aside shyly, and said, “Ah, that ain’t real poetry, it’s just some stuff to get people thinkin’ about things.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I always erase it after a couple of days.  Don’t want Darla feelin’ like she’s always gotta be cleaning the walls in there.” 

I told him I always look forward to the thoughts, and pretty much figured it must’ve been him.  I told him that I hope he doesn’t become reluctant about future expression now that he’s no longer anonymous.  He said, “Don’t yet know about that, we’ll see.” 

I asked him to sit down and spend a minute, told him I’m working on a novel, but am not too inspired today.  He said, “I knew you were working on something serious because, eventually, you always drift off to some other place.”  Then he said, “Is it something you think I might pick up to read if I found it in one of those bargain bins down the street at the Green Apple bookstore?” 

I told him I’d probably put a pretty girl on the cover to insure that guys like him would want to read it.  He laughed.  I told him the book was about being lost; in life, inside one’s self. 

   He said, “Sounds like it’s about the wilderness.”

   “Yeah.”

   “I’ve been there,” he said.

 

     Kevin and I seem to have a pretty compatible sense of humor, and kind of an easy amity.  It felt good to be laughing.  Kevin already seemed like a long lost brother, or an old friend.  Been a long time since I’ve felt something like that.

 

     Brad and Angelina finished their foreplay, rose from their chairs to leave, then weaved their way slowly around the room towards the door.  They took the most indirect route possible to ensure themselves maximum exposure.  They left their cups, dessert plates, trash and utensils, on the table.  No one does that here.  Everybody busses their own stuff.  We’re kind of anal like that, or considerate, however you prefer to think of it.

 

     Kevin said he’d heard I was running a little adventure business on the weekends.  Darla’s the only one here who knows that about me, so I presume she was the source of his information.  I don’t mind him hearing it from Darla since she doesn’t ever really mean to get in anybody’s business.  She must’ve known I’d be OK with it anyway because she’s usually pretty protective of her clientele’s privacy.  I think I’ve even mentioned to her how much I like Kevin, even though I’d never formally been introduced to him.  Anyway, I told him a little bit about what I do.  He was genuinely interested, asked some very insightful questions, and commented that it’s something he’d love to do with me sometime.  He said he doesn’t drive, and that because of a brain injury a few years ago, he remains at risk for seizures.  Lives in the neighborhood, takes the bus everywhere he needs to go in the City, but never gets the opportunity to see the high country, the foothills even.  Golden Gate Park is the best he’s been able to do for a while.  Spends time at Stow Lake, or in Mountain Lake Park, and gets out to Baker Beach occasionally, but San Francisco’s an island of sorts for him, and he said he definitely feels the constraint. 

I told him it’d be fun, and that we’d have to get something together sometime soon.

     We agreed to talk about it later in the week after he’d had time to think about what kind of an outing would be good, and I’d had time to deal with some other pressing issues.

Stepping just outside the door of the café, Kevin hopped the Clement St. bus to get home.  I’d see him in the next day or so.

 

 

 

    Ten.

 

Arizona

 

 

                 William Shoop was back to work at the Country Kitchen, but he wasn’t talking much about his sojourn into the desert.  Chris DeLong, the owner, was glad to have him back, but felt some distance that was not really there before the ordeal.  Nevertheless, he turned the management duties back over to William, dropped in casually for the next few days to assure himself that everything was back to normal, and then resumed his schedule of ‘every-other-Friday afternoon’ coffee with Will at a booth in the back to catch each other up on business.  Many of the regular ‘Kitchen’ customers had noticed William’s absence, and most who attended his church were aware of his disappearance, but, initially, like Chris, had no idea he’d been wandering around in the wilderness like Jesus, or John the Baptist.

 

                 Because Pastor Blauer had the whole congregation praying about William’s disappearance, Will had not been back to church yet.  Everybody eventually knew his business, and that is not a very comfortable position for a man to find himself in.  He had not been up to facing the questions, shaking the hands, or pretending even, that it was all a misunderstanding.  It actually was all a new understanding, rather than a mis-understanding, and he couldn’t even yet understand what it was that he supposedly misunderstood.  He knew he just had to leave everything alone until it was ready to sort itself out.  That might be another week.  And it might be never.  He didn’t know.  Nobody did.

 

                 Pastor Blauer was quick to visit Will at home one evening shortly after his return.  It was kind of a frustrating call for the Pastor, being that between the two of them, only one of them wanted to talk.  And it wasn’t William, that’s for sure.  Will’s wife served coffee, and some of those tasty macaroons.  Pastor Blauer devoured the little cookies like manna from heaven, and then asked Irene if she’d mind bringing a batch of them down to the church next week for him to share with his staff.  He mentioned how much they would be appreciated.  Irene was flattered, as she always was to be singled out by the pastor, for anything really.  “I’d love to,” she said, “I wouldn’t mind at all.  Anything I can do to help, to show my appreciation for all of you.”

              “Great,” he said, “That would be nice.  Would Monday work for you?  I’m occupied the rest of the week, but I’ll be having lunch in the office on Monday.”

              “Monday would be just fine, Pastor,” she said.  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you and William to your conversation.”

 

                 As she backed away from the two of them, William shot her a look of displeasure, something he was not, otherwise, in the habit of doing.  He didn’t appreciate his wife’s acquiescence to the Pastors flattering invitation, and he was not real excited about being directed back to a private ‘conversation’ with Pastor Blauer.  William just wanted him to leave, but having been habituated to not hurt anyone’s feelings, he didn’t want to suggest that the conversation was over.  William, for the first time, perhaps since becoming a Christian, was experiencing the embarrassment, and accompanying displeasure, of having one’s personal life made public under the auspice of being in need of prayer.  There was no cause for it.  After all, he had told his family that he was going out into the wilderness.  He felt that he had been used by Pastor Blauer for the purpose of displaying ‘Pastoral concern’, and as a vehicle for unifying his congregation around a common cause.  It reeked of disingenuousness, and William didn’t really appreciate being the object of the Pastor’s personal agenda.

 

                 William endured the pastoral visit until the man took it upon himself to end the little sit-down and be on his way.  Will showed him to the door, giving a vague response to Pastor Blauer’s expectation of seeing him back in church again on Sunday.  Christian, Will’s thirteen-year-old, having been witness to the past half-hour from the doorway of the den, walked into the living room with a Cheshire-grin and, in his own inimitable, smug, and sarcastic adolescent way said, “God dad, you didn’t make the Pastor feel very welcome here.  I guess he won’t be dropping by again, but at least he got a date with mom out of the deal.”

            His father, as was to be expected, didn’t find it very funny.

 

                 Later that night, as William and Irene were retiring to the privacy of their bedroom, he asked her if, for their nightly reading, she minded if they re-read the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  She was good with that, in fact she hoped it might enable Will to open up a bit and discuss with her some of the thinking that led him out into the Gila Bend Mountains for, as Christian has already called it, his little ‘family vacation without the family’.  William is not the kind of man who shares his feelings too willingly, or responds well to someone digging too far beneath the surface, but he is someone who, after processing things on his own, is generous, and magnanimous, enough to include his wife and family in his inner workings.  Irene knows that sometimes she just has to wait for it to come forth on its own.  She has, however, developed a few techniques to accelerate the process, but only tends to use them if something feels like it might be reaching a kind of critical mass inside him, much the same as Lindy has learned to do with him at work.  To anyone privy to both of these relationships it would appear as if they might have even compared notes.

 

     The two of them prepared for bed, and after sliding in next to each other, backs cushioned with pillows against the hard oak headboard, legs beneath a light mauve comforter, William leaned over, gave Irene a warm kiss on the cheek, and turned in the Bible to the passage he wanted to share with his wife.

 

     “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.  And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward ahungered.  And when the tempter came to him he said, ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread’.  But he answered and said, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’.”

 

 

Sunday came, and William, once again, failed to attend church with his wife and family.  It was beginning to become a point of contention with his daughter, Kelly, and there was an exaggerated silence developing, a loud silence if you will, between her father, and her boyfriend, Tim.  Not an animosity, but rather, a silence borne of confusion.  Kelly’s little brother, Christian, just didn’t get the whole church thing anyway, thought it was all pretty silly, so nothing really seemed any different between he and his dad.  But William, his daughter, and her boyfriend, Tim, always had a very close, connected, and satisfying relationship, much of it based on, and built around, church.  Her dad had been pretty quiet about church lately, as if he wasn’t sure where he fit anymore, or even what he believed.  It had been uncomfortable, to say the least.  Things were changing.  Kelly was uncertain what was going on, and it bothered her.  Tim was beginning to feel that his role was changing, that he was being kind of thrust into a position of spiritual leadership in the family, and it wasn’t, officially even his family yet.  He, and Kelly, were still a couple of years away from getting married.  Tim had not been given any mantle of authority by William, it had just fallen on him, by virtue of circumstances, so to speak.  He was hoping to speak to Pastor Blauer about it later in the week when he sees him for his counseling appointment.

 

                 On Monday, at around noon, Irene stepped through the door of Pastor Blauer’s office when she heard the upbeat invitation to “C’mon in.”  She carried the tin of homemade macaroons in her left hand, and, as the Pastor rose to greet her, she reached her right one out to shake his hand.  He casually brushed it aside, lightly embraced her with both arms, pulled her close to his own body, and gave her a warm, paternal kind of embrace, lingering a little longer, however, than she was particularly comfortable with.  It was an awkward moment for her, but she tried not to let on that it was.  Pastor Blauer suggested that she stay to enjoy some lunch with him.  He had a small veggie pizza that he insisted was more than enough for the both of them.  There were some drinks in the refrigerator of the outer office, ‘if she would be so kind as to bring them in’.  Irene declined the lunch invitation, but after the Pastors practiced dismissal of her opposition, she relented, reluctantly, but gracefully, and grabbed a couple of 7Up’s from the fridge to have with the pizza.  Something inside her was not feeling right about all of this, but, with the Pastor’s animated personality, she was having a difficult time paying attention to her own unease.

 

     The Church staff was off, as they are every Monday following the Sunday going’s-on.  Pastor Blauer usually takes Monday’s off as well, and Irene wasn’t really sure why he was at work today.  She knew he had a wife, although she’d only met her once, and very rarely saw her at the Sunday, or Wednesday evening, services.  In fact, she’d actually never seen her on Wednesdays.  Nobody seemed to know quite what was up with the marriage, not that anybody knows much about anybody else’s relationship. Things did seem a little odd, though.  Traditionally, Pastors wives are a big part of Church life, usually organizing children’s programs, leading women’s groups, etc., but Mrs. Blauer was kind of an invisible figure, just showing up for brief periods of time, not really connecting with the other parishioners, pretty much avoiding them, really.  Irene always thought that some of the distance was because of her broken English, and the difficulty that it presents for fellowship.  She seems like a nice lady, Asian, probably Philippina.  In fact there’s been kind of a standing joke around the church that she’s Pastor Blauers ‘little mail-order bride’.  Irene had heard the comments on several occasions, but thought them to be bigoted, or at the very least, insensitive, and didn’t pay them much attention.  There was a consensus, however, that she was out of town a lot, and people were thinking she was probably gone to visit her family overseas, presumably in the Philippines.  Nobody really knew, and no one ever had the temerity to inquire of the Pastor.

 

     While sharing lunch, Pastor Blauer prodded Irene for a few minutes about her husband, his ‘mental’ condition, re-adjustment after the Gila Bend experience, the hospital, and all that.  She kept the information to a minimum, wanting to protect her husband’s privacy as best she could.  The Pastor smoothly moved on to how she was doing.  Irene was taken by surprise.  He wanted to know if she was getting enough support at home, with her husband somewhat withdrawing from the community as he has, with them beginning to lose the common thread of their church life.  He wanted to know if she needed anything, if there was anything he could do for her, if she needed to talk, or even meet with him regularly.  Irene said things were good with her and William, and told the pastor that she felt a bit funny entertaining his concern.  She said, knowing that he wouldn’t, that if it was a concern of his, perhaps he should take it up with her husband.  She then excused herself from the lunch, and, leaving a half-eaten piece of pizza on a paper towel, made her purposeful exit from his office.

 

                 Pastor Blauer called his wife at home to let her know that he was just going to be a little while finishing up at the office.

 

     William was dealing with the lunch crowd down at the Country Kitchen, not his favorite time of the day.  Lindy was keeping a protective eye on him of late, knowing that he was still not back to his usual self.  She was very protective of him, like she would be of her father, or of her best friend.  Irene loved that about Lindy.  Although William was her boss, she knew he loved her, not in a threatening way to his wife, but in a quiet way that spoke more in support of his character than in opposition to it.  Irene stopped by the restaurant briefly on her way home just to give her husband a kiss, and to let him know that she loved him.  They ducked quickly inside the alcove near the restrooms, and found Lindy grinning from ear to ear as they emerged a moment later, faces flushed red like teen-agers caught necking by their parents on the sofa.  Irene had always had an enormous appreciation for Lindy, and paused briefly to embrace her as well on her way back out the door.  Lindy stepped outside with her, and with a compassionate tone to her already comforting voice, said, “He’s going to be alright Irene, he’s coming back around.”  

Irene knew exactly what she meant.  She smiled and walked across the parking lot to the car.

 

     A half-hour later, down on Second Street, Margot slipped easily through the passenger door of Pastor Blauer’s brown Ford Econoline. 

   “What are you doing down here today, Rev?” she said.  “It’s Monday, we going to make it three days a week now?” 

The pastor smiled a little smirk, like he was better than she was, but she let it pass without comment.  It was the first time she’d seen that kind of condescension from him.  He’s usually a little more humbled by his particular need for her.  Not a problem, he was an easy man to handle, and she was used to him.  Once he put the quarters in the ‘Magic Fingers’ he’d lay back and become the proverbial putty in her magic hands again.

 

                 On the following Thursday, late morning on her way to class, Kelly dropped Tim off at the Church office for his counseling session with the Pastor.  Pastor Blauer was just finishing the rough draft of his sermon for the following Sunday.  A man possessed by habit and routine, he always had the rough draft finished on Thursday, the final draft on Friday, winding up with a good two hours of rehearsal (in the pulpit) on Saturday.  Only then did he feel prepared to deliver the message to the congregation on Sunday.  He would not even look at the sermon on Sunday morning until he actually placed it on the podium to begin.  And even then, he had the message memorized, and would only use the manuscript as a reference.

 

     Pastor Blauer gave Tim a firm handshake, and even before being seated, asked him how things were going with he and Kelly.  Tim just kind of shrugged, and made a face of disinterest and resignation, like it wasn’t really important.  As Tim settled into the same chair that Irene, his future mother-in-law, had occupied during lunch earlier in the week, the Pastor continued his inquiry, asking Tim if the discomfort of William’s spiritual silence was beginning to affect his own faith.  And was it placing an undue strain on his relationship with Kelly?  Tim was unusually quiet, not his usual friendly and magnanimous self.  It was as if a great depression had descended upon him, enveloping him in a kind of primordial darkness, a cloak of sadness, an unspoken pain.  Wanting to break the negative dynamic they’d already quickly established, the Pastor asked Tim if he’d care to take a drive, indicating that they could talk in the car if he’d like, rather than there at the office.  Tim acknowledged the suggestion with a perfunctory, “Sure, whatever.” 

He was feeling the confinement and discomfort of the room, and didn’t really want to be there anyway.

      

                 Pastor Blauer tossed Tim the keys to the Ford, suggesting that he might like to drive.  Tim pulled out of the church parking lot, out onto the main boulevard, drove a couple miles south, then moved into the left-turn lane, stopping at the light on Second Street.  When the green arrow finally illuminated he made the swing out onto Second, continuing down the road in silence, looking straight ahead, seeming to be oblivious to the activity going on around him, as if the Red Sea would part before him, enabling him to move through it, and just about anything else, entirely unmolested.  Tim made a quick right turn on Adobe Rd., past the Quick Stop Food and Liquor, drove another block and a half, pulled into the parking lot of the Riverside Motel, slid the car into the space in front of room #104, put it in park, shut off the ignition, looked over at Pastor Blauer, and said, in an uncharacteristically petulant, and spitefully sarcastic voice, “So, Pastor, how are things going with you and your wife these days?”

 

 

 

Eleven.

California

 

     Marty returned my call almost as soon as I hung up the phone.  She’s in the habit now of not answering calls because of a pervasive fear that it might be a detective on the other end of the line.  She always seems relieved to hear from me.  It’s funny, but since the incident at Lake Sonoma a couple of months ago, and our subsequent time disappearing together in Bolinas for that weekend, Marty and I each feel like we’ve been lost on our own desert islands, feet on the ground, as it were, but with the ground having been cast adrift on a vast sea of uncertainty.  I haven’t seen Marty since that fateful weekend.  When we do connect on the phone now it’s like somebody saw our SOS signal in the sand.

 

“Marty,” I said, “Would you come over for dinner up on the roof this evening?  The sky is supposed to be clear, I’ve got a couple of lamb chops we could barbecue, and a bottle of Bundschu red.  Gundlach Bundschu is a great little winery, relatively unknown, hidden back up in the foothills a couple of miles East of the Sonoma Square.  I know you like Merlot, but you’re going to love this Cabernet.  And, by the way, Wag misses you a lot.  I can tell by the way he acts when he knows you’re on the phone, like he wants to jump through the line, up into your lap to lick your face.  He’d really love to see you Marty, but I’ve got to confess, not nearly as much as I would.”

   

          There was silence on the phone.  A cringe of nervousness crept around from the back of my neck to the corners of my mouth.  My lips began to quiver like in the initial stages of hypothermia.  My breath held itself deep in my lungs, afraid to rise for fear of betraying my rapidly shrinking confidence.  It was the first time talking to Marty that I’ve felt myself subject to such abject fear, so thoroughly ensnared in such a helpless, and hopeless, state of suspended animation.  I did not even recognize myself in my own physical response to such a simple inquiry of someone I care so very much about.

 

And then I heard the faintest of sounds, somewhere between a whispered cry, and a muffled sob, like a puppy whimpering in her sleep.  I remained silent, partially by choice, but mostly out of fear.  Marty slowly gathered her composure, quietly inhaled a conclusive sniffle, and said, “If I come for dinner, David, I will have to stay for breakfast.”

 

I swallowed with tremendous difficulty, but my lips stopped quivering, and my initial breath was welcomed like the unexpected return of the Prodigal Son.  Then, as I realized what Marty had actually said, I experienced an overwhelming anticipation that mixed itself in, uninvited, with the next few breaths as they struggled to find a rhythm.  I actually felt confused in my breathing, almost as if I couldn’t remember how it’s actually done.

 

“That’s great, Marty,” I said.  “I was afraid you’d be as nervous as I was.” 

She assured me that she was, and that seemed to provide some much needed relief for both of us.

 

This being a Saturday, I would not have to be back at my job up at the Center until the following Monday.  That made breakfast not only doable, but an occasion to plan for as well.  Marty said she’d be by at about 4:00, and that she’d pick up some treats for Wag on the way over.  An incredible woman, just two-thirds of my own age, but with twice my emotional courage.  I liked that about her.  I liked that a lot.

 

Yesterday, Friday, I finally got to take Kevin out of the City for the day. We’d discussed several different destinations, and he settled on going to the river.  He didn’t really care what river, just so long as it was rocky, with tumbling rapids, deep languid pools, and cascading falls that splashed without provocation, only the natural gravitational pull of water falling compliantly from the heights to the depths.  He didn’t want to go to one of those rivers that are just like moving lakes, wide and deep with no rocks, where you can’t even tell if the water is moving or not, unless a tree branch, or some other anomaly happens to float by on an invisible current.  And he wanted it to be somewhere that had an easy to moderately difficult trail running alongside so we could explore as much of the river as the length of our day would allow. Kevin wasn’t asking for much, just a little piece of paradise on a day trip out of the City.

 

Even though he has always been an outdoors person, because of his risk of seizures, Kevin’s world has been significantly reduced.  But the river beckoned him now, like those fabled virgins beckon the delusional Muslim martyr, or like the Muse beckons a young mans imagination.  He was like a kid on his first Cub Scout camping trip.  Like a giddy 7^th-grade girl on her first unsupervised trip to the mall.

I enjoyed every minute of our time together.

 

But Marty was coming over this afternoon, and I had a lot to get done on the rooftop in preparation for her arrival.  In order to focus on the details, I temporarily curtailed my mental review of our day on the American River.

     That would have to wait until another time.

 

Marty came a little early, and although I was not fully prepared for her arrival, because of the casual, and accepting nature of our relationship, I was as ready as I really needed to be.  I had the charcoal set to go in the Weber, had the chops marinating in garlic, rosemary and cabernet, a little table for two, covered with a nice tapa cloth, set up on the roof, a couple of candles, and all the requisite table settings for a quiet evening of low-budget fine dining.  Potatoes were wrapped in foil and waiting by the grill.  I had shoelace-thin-fresh-cut-carrots swimming in a glass bowl of cold water in the ice chest, and a green-leaf cashew salad tucked away in a Tupperware container waiting to be tossed just prior to sitting down for dinner.

 

Marty was pretty impressed with the whole set-up.  Her attention was quickly drawn, however, to the air mattress and couples sleeping bags I’d zipped-together, and turned down like a goose-down comforter on an antique bed in a classy old Nob Hill Bed and Breakfast.  In fact, she moved straight to the bed, laid back and exhaled like she was glad to finally get off her weary feet after running her usual four and a half miles around the old Kezar Stadium track, or shopping all day down around the Marina. 

 

Wag began bouncing on the bed like a three-year-old kid jacked up on happy juice, jumping back and forth over Marty’s outstretched body, then jumping off the bed to pull on the cuff of my pants in an animated attempt to drag me over to the party.  Marty just laughed, then held out her arms and said, “David, come and give me a little something of yourself for just a minute.  Something to make me want to lay here with you for the rest of my life.” 

She looked at me with deliberate eyes, with dancing eyes, with eyes that made it clear we were not just a couple of strangers who happened to find themselves alone together on an isolated rooftop somewhere in the City.  She had a smile smeared across her face like it had been applied lovingly, but excitedly, with the best finger paints that a discriminating woman’s money could buy.  I just looked at her, and felt a tremendous love for her.  How could one not?

 

I picked up the brush that was poking out of her overnight bag, sat down on the throw rug I’d laid over the flat concrete roof beside the bed, took a handful of her soft hair in my free hand, and began to brush it gently, as one might caress the virgin breasts of the blessed Mother of God.  Marty closed her eyes and kind of purred in acknowledgement of the pleasure.  I said to her, “Does this make you want to lay here for the rest of your life?” 

She grabbed my wrist in mid-stroke with one hand, and wrapping the other hand around the back of my neck, pulled my head down to her own.  She kissed me quietly, first on the forehead, and then on the cheek.  She kissed me lightly on the nose, and finally pressed her lips against mine for just a moment; just a moment, but long enough to let me know that I could kiss her whenever I wanted to.

 

I got the charcoal going and poured the wine.  We settled into some casual conversation about Spring Training, and the beginning of the Giants baseball season.  It was now early spring, with baseball in full bloom.  Marty and I are both San Francisco Giants fans.  Not the kind of fans where the quality of our day, or our mood, for that matter, depended on whether or not the Giants won their game the previous night; but more casual fans who just enjoy the games, even following the team in the paper, or on the internet.  I discovered that Marty goes to three or four games a year, about the same number that I usually end up attending, and that she enjoys an afternoon game on the radio as much as, or even more than, a Saturday afternoon matinee at the Kabuki theater over in Japan Town.

 

As dusk approached, and the lights began coming on in the neighborhood around my flat, our conversation turned to the invisible lives of those neighbors.  From our vantage point on the roof we could see people moving around in their houses and apartments, preparing food in the kitchens, putting dinner on the tables.  We could see the flickering of televisions turned on, not surprisingly, in most of the residences within our field of vision.  We weren’t really spying, per se, just kind of casually observing the activity before, and around, us.

 

Tom and Tracy Morgan, two flats over, are a pretty interesting couple.  We know each other from just being out and about in the neighborhood, but I actually know them a little better than they know me.  I like Tom a lot.  He’s a congenial guy with a quick laugh, always ready to make light of even his own misfortunes.  Doesn’t seem to take the world as serious as some.  I appreciate that about him.  Tom likes to laze around the house naked.  He doesn’t know I know that about him, but I do.  And I know Tracy likes to have the shades open.  Tom might like them open also, I’m not sure, but I’ve frequently seen Tracy opening them after the blinding afternoon sun has moved on for the day.  With little concern about the lights coming on, and her husband on full display to anyone who might find the whole situation of some prurient interest, she’s quick to let some of the outside world in to share the privacy of their lives.  I would not say my interest is prurient, but rather, curious.  Sometimes I come up onto the roof for some alone time in the late afternoon/evening after returning home from the café.  I’ll do some reading, or maybe listen to some music on my IPod.  I’ll often have a pre-dinner snack and a beer while watching the sunset.  Wag will run around, just happy to be out of the house.

 

I don’t intentionally watch the activity in Tom and Tracy’s house, but I do admit to the occasional glance over there.  It’s pretty hard not to.  OK, I confess, it’s very difficult not to watch.  It’s a relatively futile exercise in the practice of restraint, and integrity, but I’m happy to say that I pass that test more often than I fail it.  I must admit, however, that if it were Tracy walking around the house naked I might fail the challenge much more regularly than I ever do now.

 

I kept Marty entertained with my accounting of all the interesting scenarios in the houses and backyards of the neighborhood.  In fact, she expressed hope that Tom Morgan would make a little cameo appearance for us during the evening.  Tracy had not yet opened the shades, but the anticipation of her doing so was keeping us even more amused than we might have been, had Tom already been on display.

 

Our leisurely, romantic meal was just what the doctor ordered, for both of us.  The chops were cooked to perfection, the wine loosened our inhibitions, the conversation had been free and easy, and the titillating sunset enabled us to remember the color that has been so conspicuously absent recently from our, otherwise, fortuitous lives.

 

We watched the coming-out party in the black sky, as stars appeared brilliant, one by one, until they covered the night like the grace of God brings light to a heart of perpetual darkness.

 

About midnight me and Marty, and, of course, Wag, tucked ourselves inside the now rumpled sleeping bags like cold hands slip gratefully into warm leather gloves.  The three of us snuggled up as close as we could possibly get, then floated off to find our own particular dreams, satisfied, each of us, that we were leaving behind a day that could not have been lived even just a little bit better than it was.

        “I feel safe, David, and I feel loved.”

The last words Marty spoke before drifting off to sleep.

 

     I slept peacefully through the night with the whisper of those words lingering in my head like the scent of warm cinnamon wafting up from the kettle on a wood-burning stove.

 

 

 

Twelve.

 

We awakened in the morning to the sound of my next-door neighbor, crazy Harlen McCoy, raking the leaves in his back yard.  Inquisitively, Marty crawled out of bed and peered down over the concrete barrier on the edge of the roof to check it all out.  It wasn’t even dawn yet, but Harlen had his back porch light on, and was working diligently in the partial darkness.  She whispered back to me, “David, he’s raking up a bunch of invisible leaves, pretend leaves.  What’s up with that?  What the heck is that all about anyway?” 

   “I know,” I responded, sitting up in bed, scratching Wag’s upturned belly, “Not a big deal.  Harlen’s been doing that every morning between 5:30 and 6:00 o’clock for several years now.  Doesn’t matter what time of year, doesn’t matter if the yard’s frozen, if it’s raining, muddy, or what.  He’s always out there.  When I talk to him over the fence, or out front on the sidewalk, he always offers to come over and rake my leaves in the evening.  He’s a crazy old bird, but such a lovable character it’s hard for me not to just let him indulge himself.  I always end up telling him, ‘Thanks, but I do the job myself every day just before dinner’.  That seems to mollify his concern, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually entertain the idea again until the next time he sees me.  I gave him a new rake last Christmas, with those cushioned handle grips, and, judging by his ebullient response, you’d think I’d given him the secret to the Fountain of Youth.  I love that old guy.” 

Marty would love him too if she ever got to know him.  I think she probably will.

 

I moved over to the edge of the roof and called down quietly to Harlen that he missed a few leaves back up in the corner of the yard.  He tossed a generous smile my way, thanked me for my keen eye, mentioned that he had some coffee brewing in the kitchen, and ‘why don’t I come on down for a hot cup when he finishes up what he’s doing’? 

Harlen didn’t question my appearance on the roof because he knows I spend a lot of time up there.

   “That would be great, Harlen,” I said.  “Be OK if I brought my friend, Marty down with me?” 

   Marty leaned her head a bit further out over the edge of the roof and gave the mysterious leaf man a friendly little wave of the hand.  His smile jumped off his face even broader than the first one had, as he said, “Sure thing, David, that’d be even better.  Can’t have too many pretty girls helpin’ to keep our hearts warm.”

Marty and I both laughed, then, while Harlen finished with the leaves, we set about the task of neatening things up from last nights little dinner party.

 

Harlen met us at the front door holding out a cup of coffee for Marty. “Specially prepared,” he said, while I was expected to pour my own cup in the kitchen.  That’s just Harlen.  I had to smile about it.  He’s a very emotionally generous man, and very welcoming, even to those he doesn’t yet know.  Someone I could learn a thing or two from, to be sure.  We sat around the kitchen table and Harlen inquired about the nature of our relationship.  Marty was quite forthcoming in describing it as a ‘developing love’, one that seeks it’s own path, and it’s own parameters, apart from the usual expectations.  I was flattered and impressed by her mature, but romantic, assessment of our friendship.  I gave her hand a little squeeze as she reached for my widening eyes with her own.  Harlen nodded approvingly, as a proud father might in his understanding of the depth of his own daughter’s affection for her boyfriend.

 

The three of us laughed and chatted about nothing in particular, but it was fun, and it was good to get to know Harlen a little bit in his own comfort zone.  I’d never been inside his house before, and likewise, he’d never been in mine.  We had not really been that kind of friends, just neighbors really.  He’s probably twenty years older than I am, seventy eight, or eighty even, and because of the age difference I guess it never even really occurred to me that we could actually be friends.  We’d each, at different times, offered gestures of friendship, but never reached out too terribly far towards one another, guarding our lives, and our privacy, more than availing ourselves of what each of us might have to offer the other.  Marty’s presence, somehow, made us both feel like old friends, the kind that enabled a rare vulnerability, the kind that comfortably embraced one another’s humanity.  She had that particular effect on me as well, even apart from Harlen.

 

While Harlen was pouring Marty a second cup of coffee, she asked him about raking the leaves in the back yard.  I kind of cringed, feeling that she was treading on a little patch of crazy ground here.  In my contact with Harlen over the past couple of years, he’d never seemed at all off to me, except when he was focused on his invisible leaves, or asking me about my own.  That’s where the crazy came from.  Every other interaction with him had seemed perfectly reasonable, and perfectly normal.  I was a little concerned that Marty had the inclination to bring up the little bit of insanity I have witnessed since making his acquaintance.  But she felt perfectly comfortable in asking, and, as it turned out, Harlen was perfectly comfortable answering her.  He might not have been with me, but who knows.

 

Harlen related how, several years ago, his wife, Grace, woke up early one morning, and unable to get back to sleep, put on her house robe and went out in the back yard to rake the leaves.  He said she just wanted to be outside, but didn’t want to wait for the sun to come up.  Harlen said he was aware of what she’d gone out to do, but then fell back to sleep himself.  He woke up a couple of hours later, he said, but his wife had not yet come back to bed.  He didn’t find her in the house, and went out in the back yard to see what she was doing.  He found her laying on the grass, on her back, eyes dim and lifeless, her body cold from the morning chill, but more so from the cruel, and unexpected, visitation of death.  Marty gasped audibly as Harlen continued.  He said that after realizing his wife was gone, her heart having failed her, most likely even a couple of hours earlier, that he remained there, crouched over her lifeless body, himself now frozen in shock, denial, and absolute disbelief.  He said he doesn’t know how long he knelt there with her, but that he eventually picked up the rake and rose to his feet to finish gathering the leaves so that his wife, knowing that the job would be completed, could rest up until she began feeling a little bit better again.  He said his son found him, still in the back yard, still raking leaves, about 10:30 that morning when he came by the house to take him to the dentist.

 

I was crying, and Marty was now holding Harlens hand, as he went on to say that, since that day, he has gone out every morning, early, before the sun comes up, to insure that his wife does not ever have to rake the leaves again.

 

I finally understood.  Harlen isn’t crazy.  Not by any means.  And he never has been.  Lovesick, and grief-stricken, for all these years?  Sure.

But crazy?  I don’t think so.

Why he wants to rake my leaves, however, I’ll probably never really know.

 

After spending another twenty or thirty minutes with Harlen, Marty and I excused ourselves with heartfelt hugs, and promises to check in on him periodically.  We thanked him for the coffee, and the honesty, then headed back next door to my place to re-group for the day.  We’d intended to have breakfast in bed, and spend a lazy morning laying around in the crisp morning air while San Francisco slowly woke up around us.  We’d planned on enjoying the breaking of dawn together, and the swelling warmth of the sun as it rose over the rooftops of the neighborhoods off to the east.  Because the Richmond district is considerably elevated from the downtown area of San Francisco, from my rooftop we could see all the way across the Bay to the Berkeley Hills.  It had shaped up to be a brilliant beginning to a Saturday, and, had it been necessary, I would have gladly given up a weeks pay for the privilege of being so wonderfully indulged.

 

Since we already had a good start on the day, Marty and I decided to go see the buffalo over on the west end of Golden Gate Park, and then take a leisurely walk out to Ocean Beach, and the Lands End trails from there.  We threw Wag in the Jeep, jumped in behind him, and hit the still quiet streets of San Francisco.  Because hardly anybody else was even out of bed yet, we felt like bandits in the process of stealing the best part of everybody else’s day.  We stopped in at Royal Grounds, on Geary Blvd. at 17^th, for orange juice and bagels, then just a couple of minutes later pulled quietly off the road near the buffalo enclosure in the park.  Marty had never been out there before, but it has been a regular destination for me for several years.  I’d always go in the early morning, although every once in a while I’d stop by in the late evening.  I’d usually ride my bike, or run, if I felt particularly energetic.  It always helped me work out accumulated stress, and I really enjoyed the personal interaction with these magnificent creatures.  There was never anyone else around.  In all the time that I’d been visiting the bison I might have encountered other people fewer times than I could count on the proverbial fingers of one hand.  It was the best-kept secret in all of San Francisco, and I felt good to share it with Marty.

 

She was breathless as we walked up to the pasture, and as the buffalo began calmly migrating over towards us she whispered to me that she hoped she doesn’t pee her pants.  She was beside herself with awe, and a not-too-well-concealed excitement.  I pointed Napoleon out to her.  He was the smallest male, but had the biggest self-identity.  Ego, if you will.  In his mind he was Sasquatch, he was Moses on the Mountain, he was the Sun God, he was Geronimo, and Chief Joseph too.

     I never knew his real name.  Might even be Napoleon, for all I know.

 

Silent half-snorts of warm breath in the cool morning air made the scene more of a surreal painting, than a private gathering of man and beast.  These were creatures that looked you in the eye when communicating with you, unlike many of the two-legged variety I encounter throughout the regular course of my usual day.  There is an ancient wisdom actually visible, a soul behind the eyes that is unmistakable in these animals.  There is a sadness also, and an expectation of understanding that few other creatures would have of you.

 

We extended our hands through the fence.  A couple of them licked Marty’s fingers, and she said she wished she could hug them.  She said they possess such incredible warmth, and such accessibility for being such magnificent animals, and that she really had no idea they were so enormous.  We interacted physically with them as best we could, then became quiet, both of us, transfixed really, as we spent another half hour just looking, just speaking with them silently, as one would commune with oneself, or with an angel of God, on top of a very sacred mountain.

 

We left feeling different, as I always have after time in the company of the buffalo.

     Marty said she understood why I’ve always come here.

She said she’d like to come back with me again, as soon as we possibly could.

 

Walking from there to Ocean Beach enabled the two of us to have the kind of conversation that walking always seems to inspire.  A kind of casual, rhythmic exchange that feeds itself like sunlight feeds a garden.  Very unlike sitting across a table from someone, trying to maintain interest, and eye contact, but feeling like a foreigner trying to interpret the other persons unusual language. 

 

We stopped in at the Cliff House for an Irish coffee, and a breathtaking view, then walked to the Lands End trails, and explored the cliff-side, while winding our way down to the beach.  Wag was not shy in finding, and interrupting, the mid-morning trysts of a couple of different gay couples engaged in their own private Idaho.  Unfortunately, it comes with the territory when hiking around Lands End.  I guess the area is pretty well known for its reputation as a place for a man to make another like-minded man’s casual, but very personal acquaintance.  There have been several times in my exploration of the area, when I’ve been followed, even propositioned; and while hiking there, I have chanced upon men providing sexual favors to one another, more times than I care to recall.  I’ve always found it annoying.  I don’t really care what they’re up to, that’s their business, but I wish they would be a little more discreet about it.  I’ve even come upon men pleasuring each other right on the path.  I find that to be a little rude and inconsiderate.  There are plenty of private places they could move to with very little trouble.  Women and children use these trails.  There’ve been many times I’ve considered abandoning my walks at Lands End, leaving the area to the machinations of desperate men, but each time I entertain the thought I get a little angry, and settle on the principal that it is not fair, nor is it right, for such pathetic public displays of promiscuity to push other people away from the innocent enjoyment of such a place, perhaps the most beautiful place in all of San Francisco.  I make a point now to not allow my plans to be altered by the possibility of having to navigate such socially perilous terrain.

 

Marty and I did enjoy our exploration, even though I had to pull Wag away from those couple of situations where he, obviously, did not belong.  Marty was only moderately bothered by the awkward encounters.  She shook them off like water off the back of a duck.

     She’s like that.

 

We spent a couple of hours on the beach discussing family, the future, and the uncertainty of the, still-unsolved, killing on the shore of Lake Sonoma.  In all honesty, the greater the distance between us, and that ugly situation, the better I actually feel about how I handled it.  The more time that’s gone by, the more grateful I’ve felt that it was those two men left lying on the ground, rather than us.  They had been, initially, void of conscience, and are now, unfortunately, void of life.  The longer I’ve had to digest what happened, the more blessed I’ve been feeling to have survived.  Marty has a very similar assessment to mine, but has been having a greater difficulty reconciling the intellectual acceptance with the reality of her feelings.  She’s been hard pressed to not blame herself.  Typical survivor’s guilt, to be sure.  ‘If she had not been there’, she reasons, ‘none of it would have ever happened’.

 

We took the bus back through Golden Gate Park to where we’d left our car by the buffalo enclosure.  It afforded us one final look at those remarkable beasts before heading home.  It had been a day crammed full of meaningful, and satisfying, moments.  It felt familiar, like our first morning together in the canoe, before all of this extraneous shit hit the fan.  There’s something about the company of this woman that makes me feel in stride, makes me feel in context with myself, makes me feel connected to a greater goodness than just my own feeble attempts at living honorably.

 

When we arrived back at my flat, Marty collected her things, pulled Wag up into her arms for a smothering hug, and then embraced me as if I were the last living man left on the planet.  She backed away for a moment, found my eyes with her own, then kissed me with a quiet, loving sensitivity, an unspoken gesture of love, like a mountaintop meadow might be kissed by the sky.

 

As Marty drove away I felt my heart being dragged slowly down the street behind her.  But rather than going back up into the house, I went over and knocked on Harlens door.  And when he answered I said to him,    “Y’know, Harlen, I’ve been thinking all day about you raking up all those leaves in the back yard every morning.  And it occurs to me that you never even get a day off, a day to sleep in and just relax.” 

   He smiled humbly, and said, “Yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do something like that.  But, you know how it is, David.  I can’t get behind on things or I might never get myself caught up again.”

   I said, “Listen, neighbor, I’m up early four days a week to go up to Sonoma County for work.  How ‘bout on Sunday nights you leave the gate unlocked for me, and I’ll come over, early, every Monday morning to rake up the leaves before I head out of the City?  I usually have some extra time to kill in the morning anyway.  I just waste it on the Internet waiting to leave, so let me just do that for you Harlen, OK?  You could use the break.  What do you say?”

   Harlen looked as if I were crazy, then said, “Jeez, David, that’d be really nice of you, are you sure you’d want to do that?  Are you sure you wouldn’t like to think about it a little longer?” 

   I said, “Hell, you’re always offering to rake my leaves, Harlen.  And besides, I could use a little morning exercise.  I’m getting to be such a lazy bastard I can hardly get out of my own damn way anymore.”

Harlen laughed, acquiesced appreciatively, and said he’d leave the gate unlocked, and the rake I gave him would be leaning up against that big old avocado tree. 

   “You know the one”, he said.  “You can’t miss it.”

I smiled, gave Harlen a friendly sock on the arm and said,

   “When you get up, my friend, you won’t find a single friggin’ leaf left on the ground out there.  And that’s a promise.”

 

 

 

Thirteen.

 

A beautiful Monday morning heading up north for work.  I’m taken by the dramatic change in my own disposition after having had some really meaningful time with Marty, as well as with my neighbor, Harlen, over the weekend.  I did get up early and go next door to move Harlens rake away from the avocado tree where he’d left it for me.  There aren’t any leaves on the ground this time of year, but he doesn’t differentiate between leaves, and no leaves.  His brain is still stuck on leaves.  I just moved the rake, leaning it up against the fence so that he’d know I’d been there.  I felt pretty good realizing that he was enjoying a morning off from his daily routine, and he’ll feel good when he looks out the window to see that the work’s been done.

 

I’m having a difficult time reconciling my relationship with Marty.  Although she makes me feel alive, and has invited me into her personal world, and although I know I’m falling deeply in love with her, I can’t help entertaining the idea that she’s twenty years younger than I am.  And then there’s the question of the killings.  If we were not entangled in such a notorious event, would we have the same feelings for one another?  Would she have the same feelings for me?  It’s impossible to know.  Circumstances of the past always set up the future, in one way or another, and this is really no exception.  Marty is my daughter’s age, and I’m not really sure how I feel about that.  I guess if I had Raina’s permission to be with her I’d be less inclined to ruminate over things.  Maybe I could accept it as ‘just the way life is sometimes’.  Funny how that works.

 

When I took Kevin to the river the other day it was like spending the day with my best friend, even though my best friend has been gone for several years.  Monte drove his motorcycle over a cliff up on the North Coast of Oregon.  The Sheriff’s investigation determined it was an accident, but I’m really not so sure.  He’d been pretty despondent for a few months before his death.  He’d lost his job as a Park Ranger when he misread the affections of a co-worker as an invitation to pursue a relationship with her.  When he returned her interest she backed off, and, thinking she was just playing hard to get to spark further interest, he continued to pursue her, with a quiet determination, but with every good intention.  She never clarified the meaning of her initial affections, or the distancing, leaving Monte confused and frustrated, pretty much unable to determine up from down with her.  She ended up filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against him, and a lawsuit against the State for encouraging a hostile work environment.  He was put on temporary leave from his job while the legal process played itself out.  Ultimately, the case against him was dismissed, as was the case against the State, and although Monte was not fired, and could have been re-instated in his job, he was emotionally unable to return to work.  The whole sordid affair left him psychically depleted, discouraged, and depressed.  He was not the same after that. And he was as gun-shy of women as a man could possibly get.

 

Monte ended up working part time as an environmental activist collecting signatures (for legislation) at festivals, street fairs, and shopping centers around the Bay Area.  He hated it, knowing that much of the movement was working against the interests of those who truly understand the relationship between man and nature.  He used to say he felt like he was working as a puppet for the environmental movement, and marching in the parade of the most rapidly growing fascist regime on the planet.  It was what he was doing until he could get his feet back on the ground, but he hated that he was living in such compromise of his own values.

I don’t think the motorcycle flight he took out over the rocky cliffs of the Pacific Ocean was an accident, by any means.

I miss Monte.  I miss him a lot.

 

Being with Kevin, however, was like hangin’ with the old Monte, before the ordeal he was, ultimately, subjected to.  Monte was, as is Kevin, fresh, positive, excitable, even exuberant at times.  I loved that about him.  We’d known each other since Jr. High School.  He was the best man at my wedding, and the one man who was there for me when I was going through the pain of my divorce.  As Kevin and I were talking in the Jeep on our way out to the river, I felt, somehow, like I had my old friend back.

 

The South Fork of the American River, rushing down the mountain, through the canyon, like a freight train in places, and in other places, calm, collected in reflected pools, deep enough to jump from overhanging rocks, or float around in on a lazy summer day.  But it was just early spring, still cold, so we were not going to be getting wet, at least not intentionally.  About twenty minutes up out of Placerville, we parked off of Mosquito Rd., just the other side of an old suspension bridge that connects a population of rugged individualists living back in the hills to the conveniences of a moderate sized civilization in, and around, the Placerville region.  A lifeline kind of bridge on a dangerous curvy road that has always kept the ‘out for a Sunday drive’ kind of folks away from the area.  It’s a pretty steep walk down to the river on a narrow trail, maintained only by the nightly procession of deer, raccoon, and other animals, making the trek down the precarious hillside for a drink of cold, clear, refreshing mountain water.

 

This wasn’t Golden Gate Park, and Kevin was like a free man in paradise, if just for this one day.  After reaching the water we continued to explore up-river alongside the ever-changing landscape.  That’s the thing about these rugged mountain rivers, every fifty feet, or so, they’re a completely different environment, a different terrain, a different topography, a different setting.  The rocks change, the water changes, the current changes, the view changes, as does our relationship to it.

 

Like teen-agers on peyote at an amusement park, we were scanning the shallows for crayfish, salamanders, trying to catch fish in the shallow pools with our hands, turning over rocks to try and find garter snakes curled up, undisturbed, until our rude intrusion settled unsuspected, and unwelcome, upon them.  We watched dragonflies in aerial acrobatics, frivolously courting, what seemed like no fly in particular, and scanning the surface of the water for bugs to bring home to their main squeeze for supper.  We watched a beaver intently gnawing logs on the shore up-river as if he had to get his shelter built by the end of the day, or his partner might shack up with the old guy further up-river in the bigger house.  In the blue sky overhead, Turkey Vultures circled a decaying carcass, floating lower to the ground with each pass around its lifeless body, eventually landing like a glider would, gently touching the ground, but then standing around waiting for the flock commander to sample the first hors-d’oeuvre of the morning meal.  A red-tail hawk watched from the highest branch of the tallest tree, content to do his hunting solo, and for game that still might have a fighting chance.

 

We spent the morning exploring, up and down the riverbank, both sides of the river, rock-jumping back and forth across the water like fresh cadets on a Boy Scout obstacle course, feeling more like fifteen, than mature men in mid-life.  We joked about how ‘you can make a man out of a boy, but you can’t necessarily ever take the boy out of a man’.  Life gets pretty serious, at times, in the grind of the day-to-day, but when you get out on the river, or the mountains, or the lakes, there is a restoration that occurs inside, a re-coupling of the natural world with the nature of man, a returning to the simplicity of a less complicated life, a re-unification of one’s body with one’s perpetually dormant soul.  It is something I experience every time I get away.  Every time I get away.  And it is something I don’t ever take for granted.

 

Kevin brought his fly rod, and hand-tied flies, and I brought my spinning reel, lures and salmon eggs.  He’d been making his own flies for a couple of years, and using the casting pool in the park to develop his technique.  As men are inclined to do, when preparing to get away together without women, we brought the fishing gear, a small cooler of beer, and some pretty good cigars, but, typically, neglected to bring any food.  It’s funny, when I take a female on one of these kinds of outing’s, food is the one thing I make doubly sure I don’t ever forget.  I’d rather leave home without my pants than to forget to bring some lunch for the lady.

But with it being just me, and Kevin, I wasn’t hungry when I was getting ready to go, so I didn’t even think about food.  I guess Kevin wasn’t hungry either.

      So, if we wanted to eat, we were going to have to catch some fish.

 

We both did pretty well, catching little eight-inch brook trout, throwbacks usually, but the beginnings of lunch for today. I usually catch and release unless the fish is a good twelve inches, or more.  Then it’s called dinner.  I caught one fourteen-inch rainbow.  That would serve as the main course.  As men do with many things, the day was shaping up to be a friendly competition on the river.  The unspoken fishing creed among men has always been, ‘the guy with the biggest fish has the biggest dick’.

On Kevin’s last cast, just before quitting, he hooked a relatively good-sized trout, probably a little bigger than mine, and began to calmly reel it in.  I’d noticed the bald eagle down-river, sitting on an old dead oak branch, surveying the canyon, watching us playing in his once-exclusive back yard.  The fish was putting up a bit of a struggle, breaking the surface and diving back down.  Kevin was taking his time with it, wanting to be sure of not losing it.  With my fourteen-incher waiting, I’d been kidding him about “What’re you gonna eat?”  This was his answer to my relentless taunting.

 

As I was watching Kevin work his rod, out of the corner of my eye I noticed the eagle take a kind of jump up off of the high oak branch, then go into a brief freefall, before lowering his head into a dive, and leveling out like an arrow shot from the bow of a skilled archer.  He exploded up the canyon, above the water, silently fixed on target, as if that archer were a single-minded assassin intent on accomplishing the completely unexpected.  The bird skimmed the water, just above the rocks, and, as his size increased exponentially with every foot nearer to me that he came, I just stood there holding my breath, unable to even speak.  The eagle extended his talons, like daggers pulled from a dozen different sheathes, grabbed the fish as it broke the surface of the water, tore it from the grasp of Kevin’s hook, and was gone as if it had never even happened.

 

Kevin, too, was breathless.  He just stood there, awestruck, questioning in his own mind what he had just actually seen.  After an interminably long silence, catching our breath, and digesting the moment as best we could, we looked incredulously at one another until Kevin finally, quietly, and humbly, opened his mouth and mumbled, “Nobody’s ever going to believe this.”

Not being one to miss an opportunity, I stood up straight, spread my feet wide apart, put my hands on my waist, elbows out, and with my best John Wayne impression said, “Well, has there ever really been any question that my fish is bigger than your fish?”

Kevin laughed, indulging me like Monte used to do back in his better days.

 

We cleaned the remaining fish, built a small fire, put sticks through the mouths of some pretty nice trout, and roasted them, one at a time, like you would cook a hot dog on a typical family camp-out.  Best lunch a man could even imagine.  Best experience a man could ever have.

 

We took it kind of easy in the afternoon, content that we had already lived the best part of a pretty remarkable day.  I did some writing.  We sat around and rested, reflected, listened, and observed the amazing display of natural motion around us. The light and shadow changing shape on the water, the rainbow spray of mini-falls tumbling over boulders, the sound of water finding its path, winding its way down river, around rocks and logs, fighting cross-currents even, to establish its own direction.  The sound of unknown animals moving around, and through, the brush up the hillside behind us; the continuing sight of that one lone red-tail hawk, unmoved, and undisturbed, by all the unusual activity on this remote, but emotionally accessible river.

Kevin and I drove home in relative silence, content to let the day speak for itself.

 

 

 

Fourteen.

 

I pulled my Jeep into the parking lot at the Center for Creative Living.  It was a stimulating ride up Highway 101 as I replayed, in my head, my river experience of a couple days earlier with Kevin.  I had some pretty incredible visual images to dance around with.  Wag seemed content to be back in his routine, snuggled up in the passenger seat, anticipating some good lap time with some of my students.  Darcy, one of the medical staff, was getting out of her car about the same time I was, and shot me kind of a funny glance, unusual for her, unusual enough that I didn’t know quite what to make of it.  She usually greets me with a magnanimous, larger than life smile, whether in the parking lot, or inside on the Unit.  But this was a smirky, smiley, mysterious sort of gesture, an odd subtle little moment of connection between two people who might share the same secret.  I was a bit confused, but the moment passed as moments do, and I was on with the rest of the day.

 

It was Indigenous Peoples Week at the Center, and today would be a big outdoor communal celebration.  The staff had decorated our Unit with Native American reflections, most of it, I must admit, kind of kitschy, to say the least.  But really, it’s the intent that matters.  Hopefully none of the indigene would be offended.  Units all over the campus had done the same, presumably, but I would guess, a little more tastefully than ours.  Later in the morning the entire campus would gather in the meadow for the annual Commemoration Fire.  There would be music, dancing, food, and demonstrations of various kinds.   Sonoma, County has a rich Native American history, and part of the continuing education of students, and staff, is the acknowledgement of that history.  The Center does the same with various other cultures.  Four tribes would be participating today, the Pomo, known particularly for their skillful basket weaving, the Coast MiWok, with their rich tradition of music and dance, the Patwin, keepers, and tellers, of stories and myths, and the Wappo, hunter-gatherers, whose baskets are well renowned for being able to hold water.

 

The schedule says that the MiWok, skilled hunters and fishermen as well, will be demonstrating their dance and music rituals.  They were the highlight of the festival last year, both mesmerizing, and contagious.  The Pomo, and the Wappo, will bring various kinds of baskets, and explain the many uses of each.  They will also be making baskets throughout the festivities, educating everybody on the materials used, and the manner of assembly.  A few staff, and some of the more capable students, will participate in the endeavor with them.  The Patwin will tell stories handed down from their beginnings, their ancient ancestry, liberally sprinkled with various myths to communicate life lessons, or a particular aspect of their culture.  Their Shaman will tell of speaking with the dead, and healing the infirmities of the tribe.  The Coast MiWok, and the Wappo, being hunters, will also show off the clothes, tools, and weapons they make from the animals they would track and kill.  The MiWok will demonstrate their own techniques of hide tanning.

 

Plywood ramps and walkways had been laid down on the grass to enable all the wheelchairs to make their way out into the field, where staff helped arrange them in an enormous semi-circle around the fire and dance area.  It’s a major event on campus, and one everybody looks forward to each year.  There are always surprises.  Each staff member is in charge of one student for the day.  Those students whose more fragile medical condition require a shorter period of participation are shuttled back in to the Unit and exchanged for another student of a similar condition.  That way all the students, no matter how fragile, have the opportunity to participate in the event for at least a short time.  As I was getting Denver ready to take outside Darcy came by, and with that same mysterious smile she’d flashed at me in the parking lot earlier, said, “So David, I guess you heard by now that you’re a wanted man.” 

   My confused response to her was, “Huh?” 

What immediately struck me was that maybe she had some inside information that some woman on the Unit, or on Campus, had some kind of romantic interest in me.  But when I asked her why she would say that, she responded, “Didn’t you see the Press Democrat this morning?  You know, those killings up at Lake Sonoma a couple of months ago?  Well, the article says that the sheriff is looking for a white Jeep Cherokee.  A landowner/rancher just below the lake came forward and said that he was out on his land above the road the morning of the killings.  He said he remembers seeing a white Jeep Cherokee drive down the hill from the lake.  He said it must have been late morning.  He said the Jeep had a canoe strapped on top.  He remembers because there was really no other traffic coming down the hill that morning. 

Stunned, though, hopefully, not visibly, and knowing the answer to my own question, I asked Marcy, “So what does that have to do with me?” 

   She smiled again, and said, “Well, isn’t that a Jeep Cherokee that you drive?  And it is white.”  Then she said, “But you probably don’t have a canoe though, do you?” 

I smiled nervously, and just kind of laughed it off without really answering the question.  Marcy said that everybody on the Unit was joking about it this morning, “You know”, she said, “having a celebrity fugitive right here at the Center, and all that.”  She also said if I gave her a shoulder and neck massage for a few minutes every day before I left work that she promised she wouldn’t turn me in. 

   Then she laughed, and I let her know I’d be happy to do that anyway, and said, “But why would you want a fugitive killer’s hands so close to your own neck?”

She laughed again, but this time her laughter was intended to let me off the hook.  As I continued getting Denver ready to go outside I was moderately relaxed in the knowledge that I’ve always kept my non-work life private, relieved that no one at The Center knows of my weekend Nature-guide business, and certain that no one here even knows that I own a canoe.  I’m sure there will be a lot of teasing because of the Jeep, but I’m pretty confident it won’t go any further than that at work. 

 

     Then I remembered the cop who stopped me coming back into San Francisco because one of the straps on my canoe had come undone.  I got a sudden lump in my throat, like a blood clot in a main artery, felt a wave of nausea wash over me, and experienced a degree of internal panic that could easily have registered itself on the Richter Scale.  Suddenly I wasn’t feeling too terribly confident that this wouldn’t catch up with me back home in The City.  I’m hoping the connection between that SF stop, and the lake, will never be made, but who knows.  I do remember that the cop didn’t check my drivers license and registration, didn’t call the stop in, he never made an entry on his dash-mounted computer, and I didn’t see him write anything down, so maybe it would all be lost in the business, and the busy-ness of his own life over the past few weeks.

   I crossed my fingers, thinking, ‘Only time will tell’.

I remembered Marty’s comforting, and assuring, words at the time.

   “We’ll be Ok, David,” she said, “We’ll be OK.”

 

 

I stayed late at work, enjoying the festivities like everybody else.  On these kinds of special occasions staff tend to put in the extra time, to go the extra mile, as it were, to ensure that the residents/students have a stimulating and memorable experience.  Denver, my charge for the day, was as animated as I’ve ever seen him, mostly in his eyes, and in his breathing.  His eyes light up like the morning sky, and his face will glow like the reflection of fire on the water.  He’ll hold his breath with excitement, and then release it like a geyser.  He and I have a bond like a father and son might, although, in this case, I’m not really sure who fulfills which role.  Sometimes I feel like the child is father to the man.  Denver is a deep well of knowledge and experience.  Not the kind you or I might have, but his relationship to the world around him is as a keen observer.  He cannot speak, or interact physically with most of his surroundings, but he is a sponge, and probably takes in more information, even of the most intricate detail, than any collection of half-a-dozen other people might.  He is someone I would love to have by my side as I make my way through this cumbersome life.  He is a living, breathing barometer, he is a Geiger-counter, of sorts, and he is a windsock on the tarmac of this airport we call Planet Earth.

I call him ‘Quiet Boy’.

 

Denver’s eyes danced fluidly as the MiWok danced freely around the raging fire, as the fire, itself, danced around the fringes of the pit, as the flames disengaged from wood to find their freedom in the open sky.  He’d watch the movement with tremendous intensity, like it were the first time he’d seen magic, or the last time he would be this close to the surreal, or the sublime.  I enjoyed the activities as well, but more so through his eyes, even, than my own.

 

Wag absorbed the whole celebration from the comfort of Denver’s lap, safe from the possibility of being trampled under-foot, content to be connected to the animated pulse of this sentient man of articulate silence.

 

It has been a very full four days, and as much as I’ve been enjoying the beginning of Indigenous Peoples Week here at the Center, I’m very anxious to get back to The Last Café, back to working on my novel, back to the folks in Wickenburg, Arizona, the imaginary lives of Pastor Blauer, Margot, William and Irene Shoop, Lindy, Tim, and Kelly.  I find them to be a great escape.

I’ll welcome getting back to the relative anonymity of my routine as well, back to being around familiar faces at the café, but without the expectation to engage.  Gina, Jesse, Collette, Darla, Kevin, and even Mickey.  I’m also anxious to see if Brad and Angelina will be back for a second act.  My guess is that their relationship was quick to ignite, and will probably extinguish itself even quicker.  Now that I’ve gotten to know Kevin pretty well, life won’t be quite as solo for me in there, but our comfort level with each other is such that there is every confidence our boundaries will continue to be respected.

 

Shortly after noon I returned Denver to the Unit, and, as I was wrapping things up to leave for the day, I took, from the staff, the requisite, and fully expected, teasing about my Jeep having been seen fleeing the scene of such a, seemingly, iniquitous crime.  The Recreational therapist even asked me for my autograph.  I understand the need to engage in that kind of good-natured play, but I thought her request was maybe just a little bit over the top.  I obliged her, however, by drawing on her notepad, the mark of the Zodiac, the notorious late 60’s, through mid-70’s, Bay Area killer whose crimes remain unsolved even to this day.

I put Mississippi John Hurt in the CD player for the ride back to San Francisco.  ‘Ain’t No Tellin’, ‘Stack O’ Lee’, ‘Blue Harvest Blues’, ‘Blessed Be The Name’.  He took me out of my own worries, and into the groove of that sweet down-home regeneration.

 

 

 

Fifteen.

 

Walking into the café towards the end of the afternoon, the first thing I noticed was that Gina still had her coat on.  Her habit, however, has always been to unwrap herself shortly after arriving, unless it’s particularly cold outside.  Today was beautiful, however, like an Andrew Wyeth painting, or something done by his son, Jamie.  I took a quick glance around the room and noticed who was there.  My table was vacant, as it tends to be sometimes, even when I’m sitting at it.  Gina watched me rearrange the chairs, and as I got settled in, she rose to remove her coat.  I wondered if she had actually waited all afternoon for me to be present for the ritual, or if she, too, had just recently arrived.  It didn’t matter.  I paid attention as, rather than pulling one arm out, and then the other, she, instead, kind of simultaneously pulled the shoulders of both sides of the coat up off of her own shoulders with her hands, then let it drop behind her, sliding down both arms, and catching it before it hit the floor as if it were a silk robe being slipped out of just before a sensuous, candle-lit bath.  But that was just Gina.  I had a little chuckle over the elaborate disrobing, and was caught by Gina in mid-smile.  She kind of threw the smile back at me, but with a lingering toss, as my face flushed red with shyness and embarrassment at having, again, been caught watching.  Then she laughed, and sat back down.

 

I hung my own coat over the back of my chair and excused myself to the invisible guests at my table, then made a quick beeline for the restroom in the back of the café.

 

 

 

Written on the bathroom wall (in pencil).

 

Life is like fruit.

Got to enjoy it before it goes bad.

 

 

Kevin has been here.  I smiled, relieved my screaming bladder, washed my hands, and headed back to my table to resume wasting the rest of the afternoon.  Jesse and Collette are both here today.  There was a coffee waiting for me on the counter as I walked by.  That, for some reason, made me feel like a million bucks.  The most simple acknowledgement can sometimes mean more to a person than all the awards in the world, or all the platitudes collected at those phony cocktail parties we’ve all been forced into attending.  I paid Jesse for the coffee and commented on the music he had leaking out into our heads from the ceiling-mounted speakers.  Peter Tosh, the granddaddy of raggae.  Not many people know that.  I know a little bit about him, and gave Jesse a brief history lesson.  His story is really pretty remarkable.  Tosh’s real name was actually Winston McIntosh, but he was always called ‘Steppin’ Razor’.  Step was born to a couple of kids in Jamaica, and, because they were too young to care for him, he ended up living with his aunt.  As a teen-ager he met Bob Marley, and Bunny Wailer.  They developed their music playing on the streets of the Jamaican slum, Trenchtown.  McIntosh really developed the guitar style that later became known as raggae.  Bob Marley eventually came to the States, ended up working in a Chrysler factory, but, ultimately, returned to Jamaica to rejoin McIntosh, and Bunny Wailer, to become ‘The Wailers’.  The rest is history.

 

In 1987 Winston McIntosh (Peter Tosh) was murdered in a home invasion robbery in Jamaica.  A pretty sad story behind such an extraordinary, and magical, style of music.

 

Jesse said that Darla put the music on before she left this afternoon, but that it was the first time he’d heard it, and that he’d really been getting into it.  He said he assumed it was Bob Marley, and appreciated knowing who it actually was.  Collie came over to add to the history of Peter Tosh.  She said that he actually became Peter Tosh with the release of his first solo album, shortly after leaving the Wailers.  Since Collie was so young, I was kind of astonished that she knew anything about him at all.  She said her dad was a big raggae fan, that Tosh was his main music squeeze, and that ‘Can’t Blame The Youth’ was actually her ‘birthing song’ over at San Francisco General.  Ironically, Collie had grown up to his grooves since the day she was born.

 

Wow!  You just never know what’s inside of somebody until you actually find out for yourself.  It sure gave me a connection with Collette that I never had before.  Now, knowing that Collie is into raggae, wide-eyed, and love-struck, Jesse will, more likely than not, become a new disciple of the genre.

 

I was actually hoping to see Darla today.  She’s a very grounded, and level headed, woman.  She’s been through a divorce, like I have, and seems to have some pretty good insight about life.  Over the years she’s seen a lot of people come and go through the doors of The Last Café, and has an uncanny sense of people, and how life and people fit together.  Kind of like a bartender might.  I wanted to talk to her about Marty.

Well, about myself, really.

 

My novel continues to write itself, but I’ve not had the mind, or the time, lately, to express it in writing.  ‘Wilderness’ is actually beginning to become just that inside of me, a deep entanglement of the known, and of the unknown.  A place to wander through, to explore, to be lost in at times, but without a compass, and without a map.  A place where there are no warnings, where there are no roads, or fast-food restaurants.

 

There’s a new guy here today sitting over near Gina.  I already don’t like him because of that.  But at least I recognize that about myself.  Things being what they are, he’s probably a pretty good guy, as are most of the people who find this place.  He looks like a Levi to me.  Has kind of an Old Testament sensibility about him, an internal wisdom, if you will. I’m not really sure if it’s a natural outgrowth of actual wisdom, or if it’s something he cultivates for the sake of image.  People decide what they want to project the same way they might decide what they want to wear for the day. 

Some people, however, are just wise, they project it from their inner core, and they couldn’t hide it if they wanted.  I don’t know yet about Levi, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him, and he does have a more modern appearance that, somehow, betrays the impression of depth, and age.  He’s wearing a long-sleeve madras shirt, un-tucked over clean blue jeans, ironically, not Levi’s, but a more stylish brand name that I probably wouldn’t even recognize.  He has soft ankle-height, dark brown leather half-boots, a professor kind of look about him, with John Lennon glasses, not fully round, but not really oval either.  I wouldn’t know what you’d call that particular shape.  His beard is close-cropped, dark, ‘Just For Men’ kind of dark because he’s about sixty, and there’s not even a touch of gray breaking through.  Well-groomed eyebrows.  Those are the more modern parts, and, more significantly, the parts that have really caught my attention.  Although he has a very wise demeanor about him, I just don’t associate wise men with well-groomed eyebrows and dyed beards.  It seems very dichotomous to me, like Julia Roberts with Lyle Lovett.  I associate that look more with pseudo-sophisticated men with pompous accents.  But what do I know?  I’ve probably seen too many pretentious European films down the street at the Lumiere theatre.  He has kept just a whisp of gray brushing the temples, but the rest of his hair is pretty much out of a bottle, pulled back tight in a short ponytail.  One of those guys. 

Now, I’m just a little bothered by groomed eyebrows, and I don’t really care if men color their hair, or wear pony tails, or what, but please, if you do color your hair you just cannot wear a ponytail.  That shouldn’t even be allowed. 

And if, however, you do wear a ponytail, you cannot, I repeat, you cannot” also groom your eyebrows.

 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t really know yet what to think of this guy.  But I do know that, as he offered to get Gina a coffee refill, I felt a little pang of jealousy shoot through my, otherwise, well-guarded ego.  Anger, too.

I felt better when she declined his offer.

 

The coffee’s good this afternoon.  I don’t normally drink this much of it this late in the day, but coffee is the habit I’m in when I’m in the café.  Nothing else feels right, other than an occasional St. Pauli Girl.  Best German beer imaginable.  Call it a Pavlovian response to my environment, I don’t care, but I really like this coffee.

 

Darla has the windows of the café open today, letting in some of the street sounds; the traffic, bits of conversation from passers by, an occasional siren off in the distance, your classic urban sound track.  But, there’s a guy set up outside, just next-door, a street musician, playing acoustic guitar, and singing in perfect sync with the Peter Tosh songs that are drifting out from the café windows.  His voice and guitar are wafting back in to mix dramatically with the same tape I’ve been tapping my foot to since first sitting down here this afternoon.  I can’t see him, but it’s a mesmerizing confluence of sound.

 

Collie’s wondering if this is a dream sequence from a Luis Bunuel movie, and has taken some money out of her, and Jesse’s, tip jar, and gone outside to reward, and listen more closely to, the author of this remarkable musical partnership.

If I don’t get any writing done on my novel today I’ll be satisfied that at least my soul has been fed, fully and unexpectedly.

 

People I’m not used to seeing here have begun drifting into the café.  I’m already starting to feel like a stranger in my own hometown.  The early afternoon crowd, most of them anyway, were already gone before I arrived today.  Just a few stragglers linger, but their familiar faces enable me to remain.  The place is changing over to the evening regulars.  My comfort zone is collapsing around me without even an acknowledgement of the dilemma it creates.  It’s as if it doesn’t matter one way or another.  And, of course, it doesn’t.  A café’s clientele has no regard for its own collective makeup.  Why would it?  There is usually no such collective awareness in such a place, only individuals, affected, or not, by the others in their surroundings.  Collective awareness seems to be reserved for church, or rock concerts.  But I happen to be someone who is affected.  It’s just the way I’m put together.

 

Gina stood, I thought to leave, but rather than reversing the ritual with her coat, she just gathered up her things, draped the coat over her arm and came over to say ‘hello’.  She asked if she could join me, and I stumbled over myself trying to get some intelligent response out of my, suddenly bumbling, mouth.  I felt like I’d just been to the dentist, with Novocain lips, and a brain struggling feebly on stand-by.  Her forwardness, most likely, was more a result of the shifting sands in the café than of anything else.  And like me, she must have felt the impending threat of some random stranger asking to sit at her table.  I was glad she asked to join me, and I could sense her relief in my clumsy acquiescence.

 

After sitting down, the first thing Gina said was, “I like to take my coat off for you.  I know you like it.”  It left me even more speechless than when she’d asked to join me at the table.  At least I was able to respond to that request, albeit more like an adolescent boy might respond to a girl asking him to put suntan lotion on her back at the beach, than a middle-aged, mature, adult male in a casual, familiar, and no-expectations kind of environment like the one I’m in.  Her statement, however, created such an obvious chink in my demeanor that Gina actually apologized for embarrassing me. 

   She laughed and said, “I’m just flirting with you, my name’s Gina.” 

   I swallowed hard, and said, “Yes, I know, and I’m David.” 

She must have assumed that somebody told me her name, but the realization that I’d intuited it made me feel like this was some kind of fantasy playing itself out, apart, even, from me knowing of my own participation in it.  It’s true, I had fantasized about Gina, and I’d given her more prominence in my private thoughts than I had ever intended to.  In my imagination I’d moved her fingers from the delicate stroking of her eyebrows to the sensual massaging of her increasingly erect nipples.  And I had been caught up in the image of a shoe dangling from her foot beneath the table as the rhythm of its movement pulsated through my own loins in a faint, but obvious, response.  And I did turn the removal of her coat into a sensual disrobing for a warm bath, imagining that I would be bringing her white wine and oysters.  But I never really consciously created the fantasy life that has, now, physically manifested itself at my own table.  I’m beside myself with a very awkward anxiety.

 

I changed the subject as quickly as humanly possible, and asked Gina how she ended up at The Last Café.  Asking a question like that reminded me of the clichéd opening line the socially inept always end up using when trying to pick up a woman in a bar.  “Come here often?”  I think Gina flashed on the same scenario because she started laughing again before I even finished asking.  So, let’s see now, she’s been at my table for five minutes, and she’s been laughing at the nature of our connection since she first sat down.

 

She said she’d been looking for a place away from home to call home, someplace to spend quiet afternoons, undisturbed, to think, to write, to gather her focus, someplace out of her own neighborhood in order to avoid the constant small-talk interruptions from neighbors and acquaintances.  I told her I’d always wanted to introduce myself, but hadn’t for the same reasons she’d already mentioned.  It changes everything when the anonymity is lost.  When one becomes too familiar of a figure, or when those around you begin to feel like friends, it’s time to find another nameless situation, someplace to recover, and reclaim, your valuable invisibility.  Just in the past few weeks it’s begun to feel like that for me.  It has, however, been an odd, dichotomous, phenomena.  I’ve felt the need for more anonymity, but have, on the other hand, enjoyed the developing social aspects of my relationships here at the café.

 

Gina went on to say that she was looking for a flat in the neighborhood when she wandered in for an early afternoon break, liked the way it felt, and has been coming back here ever since.  She said her living situation over near Lafayette Park had changed, and she ended up staying in her apartment.  She said she had a roommate from hell, someone she couldn’t get rid of, so decided she was going to make a move herself.  During her hunt for a Richmond District flat, however, the woman ended up being arrested on an open warrant out of Las Cruces, New Mexico.  It seems that she had abandoned her seven year old daughter a year and a half earlier, and has been a fugitive ever since.  Just didn’t pick the girl up from school one day, and disappeared without a word, or a trace.  Took the authorities all that time to catch up with her in San Francisco.  “One of those situations,” Gina said, “where you think you know somebody, or at least have a good feel for them, you let them move into your apartment, but then soon find out that they are not even close to being who they had initially portrayed themselves to be.  Causes you to begin doubting your own judgment in all matters relating to other people.  Not an easy thing to recover from.  Not a good thing,” she said,  “and particularly not in my line of work.”

 

I asked, and Gina said she works the night shift as a Psych-Assistant at St. Frances Memorial Hospital down on Hyde, between Bush and Pine.  Facilitates the evening groups, and, under the direction of a Psychiatrist, conducts follow-up, casual, impromptu, counseling sessions with patients.  Informal check-ins, if you will.  She also co-ordinates with the Social Worker in addressing the pressing family and financial needs of the patients.  Matches people with programs, that sort of thing.  She believes she should have been able to read her former roommate like the back of a breakfast cereal box.  “Unfortunately”, she said, she still hasn’t fully recovered her own confidence.”

No confidence?  Could’ve fooled me.  I’m the one who’s been tripping all over myself in her company.

 

We chatted for about half an hour, and, as Gina was rising to leave, she smiled at me and said, “Can I put my coat ON for you now?” 

   I laughed out loud, and suggested, “Please, in fact it would be my pleasure to help you with it.”

We completed the little dance without me stepping on her feet, and as she turned towards the door, she looked back over her shoulder and said, “It’s been a pleasure, David.  Don’t be a stranger.”

I nodded my head goodbye, and in acceptance of her request, then she stepped out onto the sidewalk and was gone.

 

Dylan’s, ‘Most Of The Time’, from the Oh Mercy album was filling the café with some powerful, and haunting, self-analysis, the kind only Bob can bring.

“Most of the time I’m clear focused all around

Most of the time I can keep both feet on the ground

I can follow the path, I can read the sign.

Stay right with it when the road unwinds

I can handle whatever I stumble upon,

and I don’t even notice that she’s gone.

Most of the time . . . . . . . . .

 

. . . . . Most of the time I can’t even be sure

if she was ever with me, or I was ever with her.

Most of the time, I’m half-way content.

Most of the time, I know exactly where it went.

I don’t cheat on myself, and I don’t run and hide

Hide from the feelings that are buried inside.

I don’t compromise, and I don’t pretend . . . . . .

Most of the time.

Most of the time.

     Wag would be ready for his dinner, and I was ready for some down-time up on the roof.

 

The neighborhood was beginning to entertain some evening shadows.  The sun was barely visible now, falling in the sky like a yellow helium balloon slowly floating to the ground, probably exhausted from a long day fighting, unsuccessfully, the unrelenting pull of earth’s gravity.  The sun, it seems, loses that eternal battle every day that it, again, decides to rise anew in the eastern sky.

 

Tracy Morgan would be opening the shades soon.  Tom would probably be nude on the living room couch, clutching an end-of-the-day cocktail as if it were a brass ring he’d just grabbed on his final pass around the carousel of life.  I’ll probably watch him from the roof for a few minutes, before feeling guilty and averting my gaze to some more meaningful distraction, like the sunset that that same tired ball of fire will leave for my enjoyment, over the rooftops, as it settles over the horizon of the western sky.

 

 

   Sixteen.

Arizona

 

 

     Pastor Blauer, melting into the passenger seat, parked outside Room #104 at the Riverside Motel, an embarrassed look on his face, just sat there in silence for what seemed like an eternity.  When he finally looked over at Tim, he knew that he better weigh his words carefully.  Tim gripped the steering wheel tightly, both hands at twelve o’clock, with his elbows resting at about eight and four.  His head hung forward like a beat-down prizefighter sitting on his stool in the corner of the ring.

 

     Pastor Blauer opened his mouth to speak, but the words tumbled out clumsily, and without sound.  His lips moved, but the expression was inaudible, his intention known only in the recesses of his own mind.  Silence lingered like the smell of fear after a chance encounter with an armed robber in an alley somewhere.  The silence was palpable.  The kind of quiet that is louder, much louder, than anything else around.

 

     “You don’t understand, Tim,” he said, like a man might speak while spilling coffee on his own lap.  “You’re jumping to conclusions.  You’re nineteen, an age where you think you know what you know, but what you actually know is often only part of what there is to know.  Sometimes a stick looks like a snake, Tim, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a stick.  Do you know what I mean?” 

   Tim took it in, bounced it around in his head for a minute, then finally looked at the Pastor with an exaggerated sense of recognition, and said, “Or like when somebody thinks a snake looks like a stick, but it turns out to actually be a snake?  Is that what you mean Mr. Blauer?”

   “Mr. Blauer?” the Pastor said.  “I’m your Pastor, Tim.”

   “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Tim responded, “but I guess I was mistaken about that, wasn’t I?  I would recognize my Pastor if he were here.”

   “C’mon Tim, lets go back to the Church,” Pastor Blauer said.

Before he even completed the sentence Tim was out of the car door and heading through the parking lot on foot, back in the direction of the boulevard.

Back to the emerging wasteland of his own faith.

 

     Tim caught a bus out of the area and got off near the Country Kitchen, hoping to catch a few minutes with William Shoop.  Mr. Shoop, he knew, would be in the grip of another stressful day managing staff and customers around the preparation, and mass consumption of, pancakes, and omelets.  Every kind of pancake, and every kind of omelet, imaginable.  But Tim felt compelled to see him.  Even though Mr. Shoop was his girlfriend’s father, he trusted him beyond measure.  More so, even, than his own parents.

 

     Lindy, William’s lead waitress, spotted him coming through the door, and moved to greet him with a friendly smile and a brief hug.  She’d always enjoyed it when Tim came in with his girl friend, Kelly, to visit her father.  By the tension in his body she could tell that all was not well with Tim.  She asked if everything was alright, and Tim looked away like a shadow might drift off from its own source.  His eyes came back to hers, but they were suddenly wet with tears, damp like the stones in her terrarium on the shelf at home below her kitchen window.  Tim’s face folded in on itself as he glimpsed the unmistakable fondness in Lindy’s own eyes.  He’d always liked Lindy, too.  He knew she worked for, and also looked after, Kelly’s dad, but when he came in the restaurant she’d always made him feel like he was her own son.  There was a comfort, and a security in the woman that was missing in so much of the rest of Tim’s life.

Even in his relationship with Kelly.

 

     William Shoop came out of the kitchen, spotted Tim, and immediately recognized a deep sadness that had not been visible in the young man before.  At least not to that degree.  William was not normally the most sensitive, or expressive person, but he took a seamless hand-off from Lindy, and embraced Tim like a father might do sometimes, not with a gentle comfort, but with a strong sense of reassurance.  He guided him to an empty corner booth where they could talk.  Tim crumpled onto the seat, looked at this man, kind of a stand-in for his own father, and said in a half-whispered voice, “Mr. Shoop, I need to leave.  It’s time for me to go.”

William paused, and then suggested that it was OK for him to be there, that the job could wait, that Lindsay could handle things with the restaurant just fine for a while so they could talk.

   “No, Mr. Shoop,” Tim said,  “I mean I need to move.  Out of the house, away from home, out of town.  I need to get away from the church, from school, from Kelly even.”

“What’s going on, Tim? William said.  “Have you discussed this with your parents, your Pastor?  Does Kelly know anything about it?  What’s happened, son?  Everything seems to have been going so well for you.”

   “I know that’s how it’s seemed, Mr. Shoop, but things,” he said, “are not always what they seem.  Sometimes a snake looks like a stick.”

 

     William took it all in for a long moment, considered what Tim might actually be saying, and then responded, “I’ve been struggling with life lately as well, son. The experience I recently had in the desert has changed me, and I certainly understand that a man, especially a young man, such as yourself, is going to be faced with challenges, and changes, that he never expected, that he never had an inkling he would ever have to deal with.  I know it can’t be easy, Tim, and although I don’t know the specifics of your situation, I do know that you are man enough to face it, whatever it is, to confront it as Jesus did the devil in the wilderness.  You’ve proved that to me already, Tim, many times over.  I’m not saying that you have to hold your ground and stand up to whatever comes your way, whether it be in your best interest or not, but I am saying that you need not fear the status quo, or the change, the staying, or the leaving, the old, or the new.  Life shapes itself around us, son, and like an old coat, we decide whether or not the coat fits well enough to wear.  I care about you, Tim.  I like who you are, who you’ve been to my daughter, and to our family.  I will miss you terribly if you have to leave.  But I will stand beside you, no matter what happens.”

 

     

     Earlier, after Tim had so abruptly taken leave of their conversation in the car, the Pastor, feeling empty inside, kind of humbled and forlorn, called his wife, and then the Church secretary, from his cell phone to let them know that he would not be coming back to the church office for the rest of the afternoon.  After disconnecting with the secretary he sat there alone in his brown Ford Econoline, in the parking lot, at the Riverside Motel, in front of Room #104, for about twenty long minutes.  Maybe the longest twenty minutes that he could ever remember.

 

     Eventually, glancing in the side mirror, he watched Morgot, with that sexy street-strut she puts on when she’s working, walk up the cracked walkway alongside Adobe Rd., across the motel parking lot, disappear into the office, and emerge two minutes later with the key to #104.  She slid the key into the lock like a cock seeks the shelter of a warm pussy, turned to face the Pastor through the windshield of his car, and with her dark eyes, and ruby-red lips, beckoned him into the shadows with an unspoken, but unmistakable, promise of relief.

 

  

     Back at the restaurant, Tim and William Shoop finished up their conversation, and by ‘finished’, it goes without saying that it was left in a kind of temporary suspension.  Tim knew that he would have to follow up on things with, both, William, and ultimately, his own fiancé, Kelly.  He would not look forward to the conversation with Kelly, and he elicited a promise from Mr. Shoop not to say anything to his daughter until he had a chance to talk it through with her.

 

     William acknowledged the importance of that, then, with the compassion of a man much deeper, even, than he suspected himself of being, rose from the table, put his hand on Tim’s shoulder, and said, “Tim, do what you have to do.  You will always be part of my family.  If there is anything I can do to help minimize your difficulty I am just a phone call away.  Carry that promise with you, wherever you are.”

   Tim said, “Thank you, sir, and thank you for what you’ve always been, and done, for me.”

With that, William Shoop walked away from the table, away from the neat and tidy life he had anticipated for his daughter, Kelly, and back to the more immediate concerns of the Country Kitchen restaurant.

 

     From her waitress station by the counter, Lindy observed a young man straining beneath life’s burden, and although not knowing the source of Tim’s pain, she moved quietly over to his table, put her own hand on his shoulder, bent over, and breathed quietly in his ear, “I’m getting off work in about ten minutes, sweetie,” she said.  “How bout’ you come home with me for a late lunch, and some easy conversation?  I think a little separation from yourself at a time like this would do you a world of good.”

 

     Tim nodded his head in acknowledgement, with thanks, and a modest acquiescence.  Lindy said for him to just sit tight while she took a few minutes to wrap things up around the restaurant.

 

     While Tim waited, he ruminated, fantasized really, about seeing his Pastor that previous Monday coming out of the Riverside Motel with that woman.  Heavy make-up, big teased red hair, skirt hiked up to the bottom of her ass, tall leather spike-heel boots, and a look of nasty painted across her face like a graffiti ‘bitch wanted’ posting scribbled on a wall in the men’s room.  It is what precipitated his encounter with the Pastor earlier today in the car, and it is what has brought Tim to this bitter crossroads in his, still very young, life.

 

     Lindy finished up, checked out for the day, mentioned to William that she was taking Tim to lunch, then stopped by his table to accompany him out to the car.  Like the gentleman his family raised him to be, Tim clumsily opened the driver’s door of Lindy’s 1982, cream colored, Mercedes sedan.  She gracefully slipped in behind the wheel. Tim made his way around to the other side of the car, ducked in the passenger door, and, as the door closed behind him, was immediately overcome with a nervous silence that made him feel more like an embarrassed schoolboy than the confident young man that he had actually become.

   Lindy looked at him, absorbed his fumbling demeanor for a moment, and said, “It’s just us, Tim.  Put your seat belt on.  Trust me now, things’ll be OK.  We’re gonna have a nice lunch.  When’s the last time someone cooked for you, besides your mother?”

 

     Tim took a deep, secret breath, and realized again that he was in some pretty special company.  Lindy had always been so attentive to him when he’d come in the restaurant with Kelly.  With Kelly being her boss’s daughter, Lindy always went out of her way to make sure that Tim was not overlooked when he was there.  She’d see that he had extra strawberries on his pancakes, and, even without his asking, refills of fresh-squeezed orange juice.  She’d always take the tip he left and slide it in the back pocket of his jeans on his way out the door.  Tim had a reciprocal fondness for her that always made him feel alive.  Funny how being shown that kind of affection by someone can make you feel so good, and that feeling equally affectionate back can make you feel the same thing, but even stronger.  ‘loving’ being more profound, even, than ‘being loved’.

 

     Lindy is an unusual, and remarkable, looking woman.  She’s forty-two years old, with the requisite wrinkles one would comfortably accept as evidence of years spent hiking the trails in, and around, the Gila Bend Mountains.  Working the breakfast/lunch shift at Country Kitchen for all these years had enabled her to pursue her passion for the Sonoran Desert.  The early shift had become a gateway to the remarkable beauty awaiting her visitation, just beyond that all-important daily afternoon ritual of punching out.  She relished the late afternoon/evening walks she’d grown accustomed to, three or four days a week, with her Border Collie, Shep.  She liked to explore the Ghost Towns that still clung to a fading remembrance around the greater Wickenburg area, and was still in good enough shape to run practically the entire length of the two-mile trail up to Vulture Peak.   

 

     Even with the evident wrinkles, Lindy had the look of a model, but one that had been raised in the desert, rather than on the runway.  She had a contented, laid-back confidence, a proper, but relaxed appearing posture.  She had cheekbones you might cut your face on with one of those ‘both sides of the face’ embraces so popular in Europe (and in some of the more pretentious circles in this country), had her own face not been softened by a casual disregard for the fashion models typical entrée of green salad and fizzy water.

 

     Lindy had soft, quiet hands, long fingers, but not bony.  She had legs that seemed like they began at the ground and ran up somewhere very high beneath her dress.  Shoulders as expressive as a woman’s lips would be.  Arms that sought to embrace rather than to push away.  The belly of a dancer.  And breasts that beckoned a man’s hands as if they were his own appendage. 

Lindy had an ass to inspire irreverent thought, and eyes to quell the internal ruckus.  She was friendly, sociable, accessible, approachable.  She was a nice person, and that is part of what made her so attractive.

It is also part of what made Tim fantasize that she were his primary companion.

 

 

     Back at the Riverside, Pastor Blauer engaged Margo in a quite desperate fashion, almost as if he needed absolution, or redemption of some sort.  He was in a hurry to engage her physically, but just as anxious to talk.  He couldn’t do both comfortably, so he focused on the physical engagement.  It was not so much the fact that he was meeting Margo in the motel that caused him such distress, as it was the fact that one of his young disciples had inadvertently discovered his personal, and very private, life.

 

     There was no condom this time.  A skin-to-skin relationship, and after only a couple of minutes with minimal stimulation by Margo’s practiced hand, the Pastor’s insides exploded fitfully onto his own twitching belly.  But even though Margo had coaxed the eruption, it embarrassed him to no end, like a boy might be humiliated being caught masturbating by his mother.

He became quiet, almost transfixed, while Margo finger-painted little animals on his stomach with the warm semen.  For her it was a poignant moment, and one she actually wished they would share more often.  It was not Margot who had always insisted on the condom.  It was Pastor Blauer.  He was, usually, just not comfortable with the rawness of such personal interaction in its absence.

 

     Margot lay there next to him for the remainder of the afternoon allowing the Pastor to express his grief, just as he’d expressed that ubiquitous liquid demon onto his own belly when he and Margot had first arrived.

 

 

    Seventeen

 

     Lindy lives in a modest, ranch style house on the outskirts of town.  She’s done well for herself, especially considering that she’s done it by herself, and on a waitress’ wages.  She made out on a couple of investments, and parlayed the purchase of her original starter house into one that she’ll be comfortable in for years to come.  Tim was kind of surprised when they pulled into her driveway.  He’d been expecting an apartment, or maybe a quaint little duplex.  He was immediately happy for her.

 

     After removing their shoes just inside the door, Lindy acquainted Tim with the house, and with Shep, the four-legged man of the house, then put the dog outside and pulled some fresh salmon from the fridge, along with a pot of small red russet potatoes, and a handful of garden-grown snow-peas.  She poured him an iced tea with lemon, sat him down at the kitchen counter, and said she’d like to hear about his sadness.  She said that she could hold part of it for him so he wouldn’t have to carry it all around by himself.  She was ‘good at that’, she said.  She said it might even be her greatest strength.

Any discomfort that Tim had been feeling immediately fell away like the sails on a schooner being unwrapped, and hoisted aloft to catch a fresh breeze rising quietly overhead.

 

     Lindy spread the fish on a grill pan beneath a searing flame in the broiler, splashed with a little virgin olive oil and a quick sprinkle of salt.  The potatoes were ready for reheating in the microwave, while water for the snow-peas was coming to a boil on the stove. 

Tim asked to use the bathroom, more so for the temporary separation than from the need to actually use it.  But he did want to splash some water on his face, clean up for lunch, and maybe just close his eyes for a minute to take in the dimension of this personal time with Ms. Burrell. 

 

     While Tim was in the bathroom, Lindy finished setting a quaint little table for two at the kitchen window.  It looked out on her winter garden, where new plants soaked up as much vitamin D as they could comfortably absorb from the warm afternoon sun.  When he returned from the bathroom she served lunch and settled in next to him to enjoy the meal.  She asked Tim if he’d like a little red pepper on his potatoes, maybe a dab of butter on the peas, and what in his life had changed so significantly for him between last week and today? 

   “No thank you, to the first question,” he said.  “Yes please, to the second.”  And “Wow, that’s a big question,” he said to the third.

   Lindy smiled, and said she didn’t mean to be so blunt, that the first two questions were really just perfunctory social exchange, but that the answer to the big question is very important to her.  She said, “It’s the reason we’re having lunch together.”

   Tim stuttered, stumbled really, as anyone might beneath a question like that, but he eventually regained his composure, and said, “Ms. Burrell, I don’t even know where to start.  It seems like everything has changed.”  He said he’s not quite sure how, or why, but that everything is different. 

   “Everything just seems different,” he said.  “Nothing feels like how it did, like how it’s been, and nothing up ahead looks very clear to me any more either.”

   “That’s the impression you’ve given me, Tim,” Lindy said.  “But what happened?  How did life get so dark for you so quickly?”

 

     Tim was pushing his food around the plate, not because he wasn’t hungry, or because he didn’t care for salmon, but because, when dealing with emotional discomfort, he’s just not able to think, feel, and eat all at the same time.  He’s a person that tends to focus on the most profound element of the moment.  Although very hungry, his hunger was outweighed by the enormity of his confusion.  That being recognized, and so as not to appear ungrateful for the beautiful meal, he asked Lindy if it would be OK to just eat lunch, and resume their conversation when they finished. 

   Understanding his inadequacy in the moment, Lindy smiled a very tender little half-smile, touched his hand with hers, and said, “Let’s enjoy the salmon.”

 

     Tim, relieved of the pressure, between bites began to talk like a man in a Catholic confessional. 

   “I’m nineteen, Ms.Burrell.  I’ve been at the Holiness Church since I was ten.  I’ve known Kelley since I was twelve.  We’ve been planning on getting married since I was fifteen.  I’ve never known anything else.  I’ve never had another girlfriend, or any other plans, or expectations of myself, even.  I’ve always felt like I was living in God’s will, doing his work, following His plan for my life.  My Pastor had always told me, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you’.  We even sing that scripture every Sunday morning at Worship Service.  Well, Ms. Burrell, I don’t even know what ‘all these things’ means.  I don’t know what ‘all these things’ are even.  Or when, or how, they will be ‘added unto me’.  I don’t think I even know what ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God’ means, or what the ‘Kingdom of God’ actually is.  And ‘His righteousness’?  I thought my Pastor was righteous.  I’ve been trying to emulate him, trying to be like him, thinking he was like Jesus.  Trying to please him, trying to please Jesus.  Pleasing Jesus?  Is that what life is about?  How do you please Jesus?  And how do you know if He is pleased?  And if I’m following Jesus, giving Him my time, my money, praying to Him, worshipping Him, shouldn’t He be a little more concerned with how I feel?”

“Please, Jesus!”

“I don’t know, Ms. Burrell.  I’m just talking.  These snow peas are great.  Very tender (pointing through the window), did you grow them out there?  How did you know I like salmon so much?  I think I will have a little bit of that red pepper.

I’ve been with Kelly all these years, and I’m still a virgin, Ms. Burrell.”

Lindy just listened.

   “Would it be OK if I had some more iced tea?  I’m really pretty thirsty.

My mom and dad are pretty quiet about my life.  They just kind of observe it.  They seem OK with me having enrolled in Jr. College.  They’re not thrilled, and they don’t really trust what I’m being taught there, but they’re kind of OK with it.  They like that I worked as a counselor at the Church’s summer camps, and that I still go to church on Sundays with them, but they’d like me to go on Wednesday nights too.  I don’t know, I kind of like being by myself one night a week.  Sometimes I watch porn on the Internet on Wednesday nights.  I just do.  I know they wish I’d go to Bible school, but they don’t really push me, they just hint at it a lot.

I can’t believe I ate all those potatoes.

Kelly and I kiss, but she doesn’t want me to touch her anywhere.  She doesn’t let me.  I usually want to, but I feel bad because I do want to.  I don’t like to feel bad.  She doesn’t touch me either, except kissing, hugs, holding hands, and all that.  She says she loves me.  She wants to wait for marriage, and I know our parents, and our Pastor, want it to be like that too.  Sometimes I’d rather just be alone.  It’s hard having all these boundaries, these restrictions, and all these expectations.  It’s frustrating, never being able to get out of the batters box.  It’s not like I’d ever force myself on her, though.  I want to respect her wishes, and our religion, even if it doesn’t always make sense to me.  Sometimes I think I’d rather not be in the church.  Then I could do different things.  I don’t know what kind of things, just different things.

Oh, Jeez, I didn’t mean to tell you all this, Ms. Burrell.  I’m sorry.  I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

   “Everything’s OK, Tim,” Lindy said, clear and deliberate, with the sound of absolution. 

“You can trust me.”

 

     Looking out the window, Tim noticed that the dog was shadowing a cat as it traversed the top of the fence from one end of the yard to the other.  Shep didn’t bark, or even get too excited.  He seemed to just enjoy watching the cat, probably just intrigued by it being such an entirely different creature than he was.

Lindy was saying very little to Tim, knowing better than to interrupt when he was pulling so many significant feelings out from inside himself.  And by himself, no less.  She sat there, pleased that Tim had tapped into his pain.  In fact, he seemed to be hemorrhaging. 

She just continued to listen.    

   “Pastor Blauer pays somebody to touch him,” Tim said.  “Or maybe he pays to touch her.  I don’t know.  I don’t know much anymore.  I know that Mr. Shoop is a pretty good guy.  Sometimes I’d like to touch somebody.  And I’d like somebody to touch me, besides myself, Ms. Burrell.”

       “Call me Lindy,”  she said to Tim.

   “I don’t want to hurt Kelly,” Tim said.  “I’m going to hurt her, though.  I don’t want to, but I have to.  I have to leave Kelly.  I don’t know where to go,” he said, “or what to do, but I have to go somewhere.  I know I have to go somewhere.  I know I have to leave, Ms. Burrell.”

   “Call me Lindy”, she said again, rising, while reaching both hands out to touch Tim’s face.

 

     Lindy gently placed one palm on either side of his face, and pressed his cheeks with just enough intent to communicate her own appreciation of his difficulty.  “If you’ll excuse me, Tim,” she whispered with equal portions of warmth, and kindness, “I’ll be back in just a minute.  Please finish up that last little piece of salmon.”

 

     While Lindy was out of the room, Tim began to clear the dishes from the table.  As he was brushing the scraps from the plates into the sink he began to tear up, suddenly, and unexpectedly.  Watching the leftover remnants of the meal disappear down the garbage disposal reminded him, exemplified for him even, the impending dissolution of his current life, and relationship.  He was feeling a very large part of himself being abandoned, sucked down the proverbial drain of what looked to be his past.     

 

 

    Eighteen.

California

 

     Indigenous People’s Week is over for me.  There’s still one more day of festivities left, but I’m off work today, Friday, and won’t be there for the closing celebration.  It was an incredible few days for the staff, and residents, of the Center.  I’m glad its over, though, just because it’s always nice to get back to whatever routine you have to leave in order to accommodate the change.  Besides, I’m anxious to get back in the classroom Monday so Denver can reacquaint himself with that old Royal.

    

     Driving back to San Francisco yesterday, Thursday afternoon, I thought about the Mt. Tamalpais hike Darla and I would be doing together on Saturday morning.  She’s been looking forward to it, as have I, really.  It’ll give me a chance to get to know her a little better than just the perfunctory relationship we have here in the café.  By perfunctory, I don’t mean shallow, just time-constrained, like most relationships seem to be these days.  Darla’s a jewel of a woman who takes everyone for what they are.  She doesn’t really project things on to other people.  She allows them to be who they are.  She might prefer that some people were different, but she’s smart enough to know that if she, and everybody else, had the luxury of making other people into what we’d like them to be, that, ultimately, everyone would end up being a variation of the same person, but with different names.  Darla doesn’t make people feel like she’s accepting them, she just accepts them, unequivocally.  It never even crosses their mind to wonder about acceptance with her.  It’s not only a beautiful personality trait that Darla has, but I think it’s a gift as well.  Not everybody can be that way.  I know I have a difficult time with it.  I tend to want to set standards for other people.  Standards are a good thing.  They’re what keep us from flailing through life, and eventually flying off the perimeter into madness.  But standards are for me to set for myself, not for me to set for everybody else. 

Society, however, needs to set standards for the governance of itself.  With a greater collective of people, behavior becomes of greater importance.  The culture determines what is, and what is not, reasonable, and acceptable.  There is no other way to keep a village, town, city, from self-immolation.  Those standards, however, can never be fixed.  Society changes, morphs, if you will, from here to there, from this to that.  New generations come up, and bring with them different ways of doing things.  Standards change to accommodate the new as the old dies off.  What need to be retained are the basic tenants of responsible behavior. 

Don’t lie.  Don’t steal.  Don’t cheat.  Don’t murder.  Don’t screw your neighbor’s wife.  Don’t do harm where harm is not required.   Don’t judge other people. 

And the positives: 

Mind your own business.  Help those in need.  Care for the young and the elderly.  Consider others to be equal to, or greater than, yourself.  If a neighbor stumbles and falls, help to pick him up and get him back on his feet.  Be courteous, kind, and considerate of others.  Be conscious of your own shortcomings.  Love others as best you can.  

Everything else can pretty much be left to ebb and flow with the times.  Everything else can be considered interchangeable, the past for the present, the old for the new, the fading for the rising, the decaying (whether it be a concept, a fad, or an ancient institution), for the emergence of hope.

 

 

     When I arrived home from work yesterday I was, uncharacteristically, greeted by my downstairs neighbor, Kendra, who said that, a Detective Monroe, from the SFPD, had stopped by to talk to me earlier in the morning.  She said he left his card, and asked her to give it to me, suggesting that I give him a call when I got home.  “It really seemed like more of a demand than a suggestion,” Kendra said, “but who was she to speculate.”  Anyway, as she was passing the information on to me I was already trembling inside like I’d just been caught peeking in somebody’s window in the middle of the night, but worse.  My life flashed before my eyes.  I went from that cold tremble to a clammy sweat quicker than a man can even call upon the name of Jesus.  I asked Kendra what he wanted, but she said he didn’t say, just that he’d like to talk to me about a situation. 

 

     Kendra seemed to be as curious as I was, although my feigned curiosity was for her benefit since I was well aware of the implications of a visit from a homicide detective.  My first inclination was to get in the house quick, pack up everything I own, jump in the Jeep, and get outta town.  My second inclination was to just ignore the detective’s request and go about my business as if nothing had happened.  Of course, my third inclination was to call the detective.

And that’s exactly what I did.

   “Detective Monroe, this is David Patterson.  You left a card with my neighbor earlier today with the suggestion that I call you.”

   “Yes, Mr. Patterson, thanks for getting back to me.  I’d like to come out and talk to you in person, if I could.  Will you be home for the next half-hour or so?”

   “Sure detective, I’ll be here.”  And even though I knew what it would be about, I felt it was in my best interest to ask, “What is this concerning, Detective Monroe?”

   “Thank you, Mr. Patterson.  We’ll talk about it when I get there.  I’ll be over in a few.”

I hung up the phone and began pacing my apartment like a death row inmate might do in his cell.  After realizing the utter futility of the exercise, I picked Wag up from his bed by the kitchen table and sat back in my overstuffed chair to try and organize my thoughts, and get my increasing anxiety under some semblance of control.  As he always does, Wag had a very calming influence on me.  My mind slowly began to clear, and, both the enormity, and the complexity, of the situation began to come into focus.  I wrestled quickly with the particular tack I would take with Detective Monroe.  As I had determined much earlier, I would be as honest as I could about as much as I could.  Apart from what I was specifically asked about, I would offer little else in the way of information, just enough to flesh out the answers so it wouldn’t look like I was trying to hide something.  What could directly implicate me in the killings would be left out altogether.  I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared, because I was.

 

     I opened the door just as Detective Monroe was about to knock.  I introduce myself, and said that it was a pleasure to make his acquaintance. 

   He said, “Likewise, Mr. Patterson.”

   “Call me David.  Please, come in.”

I put Wag back on his bed by the table, and the detective and I sat down across from each other.  Without any superfluous chit-chat, he looked directly into my eyes and said, “Mr. Patterson, do you have any idea why I’m wanting to talk to you?”

   “Well, Detective Monroe, at my job this past Monday, a co-worker said that the Santa Rosa Press Democrat had an article about that killing at Lake Sonoma a couple of months ago.  She said that a neighboring rancher reported having seen a white Jeep Cherokee, carrying a canoe on top, leaving the lake on the day of the killing.  I drive a white Jeep Cherokee, and I have a canoe, so I’m guessing that you’re here about that whole situation.  I can’t imagine what else it could be about.”

   “That’s right, Mr. Patterson,” the detective said.   “I appreciate you being so forthcoming.  It’ll save both of us some time.  Now, let me just ask a few questions, and I’ll be out of here before you know it.”

   “No hurry,” David said.  I’ve got as much time as you need.  What specifically would you like to know?”

   “Well, were you at the lake on that day, that Friday, the day of the killings?”

   “Yes, detective, I was,” David said.  “I haven’t come forward because I don’t really have anything to report that would be useful to the investigation.”

   “And if I were to tell you that ‘you’re having been there’ would be useful to the investigation,” Detective Monroe responded, “Would you understand that from my perspective, rather than merely from your own?”

   “I get the point, detective.  I hope my invisibility has not impeded your progress on the case.”

   “In checking the visitors box in the parking lot, Mr. Patterson, we did not find the registration for a Jeep Cherokee.  Did you drive a different vehicle to the lake on that day?”

   “No detective, I was in my Jeep, but it was a cold winter morning.  It was a Friday, and there were just two other cars in the parking lot.  Registration just seemed kind of irrelevant, superfluous even.  On days like that at some of the State Parks, if there’s an attendant at the booth they might just wave me through with no charge.  Kind of an unexpected courtesy.  I guess I’ve grown to take it for granted.  Because it was so cold, I didn’t think we’d be staying for more than an hour, so I didn’t bother to leave a registration, or even pay the four bucks.”

   “We, Mr. Patterson?  Did you say we?”

   “Yes, sir, Detective Monroe, me and my girlfriend.  Well, she wasn’t my girlfriend at the time.  Actually, that day was the first time we’d spent any time together.  She’d hired me for a little nature excursion.  It’s a part-time business I run on the weekends.  Since then we’ve been becoming very close.  She’s kind of my girlfriend now.  Kind of.” 

   “What’s her name?”

   “Marty, Marty Gilmore.”

   “How long were you guys at the lake, Mr. Patterson?”

   “For most of the morning, actually.  Even though it was cold, we were enjoying being together.  The time kind of flew by.  We just explored the shoreline, stopped to watch the otters, and osprey.  Drank coffee, talked, got to know each other.  That kind of thing.”

 

     Wag was already bored with our conversation, or the line of questioning, maybe, and got up from his bed on a beeline to the living room.  Knowing I would be occupied for a little while, he took up residence on the couch.  He knows he’s not supposed to be up there unless he’s on my lap, but since my lap was temporarily unavailable he decided he’d just take advantage of the situation.  That’s Wag.  Gotta love him for that rebellious spirit.

 

   “Did you go over to the Thumb Creek area, Mr. Patterson?” Detective Monroe asked.

   “No, detective, I believe that’s northeast from where we put in.  We went the other direction, southwest through Homestead, Falcon Creek, and down to the Broken Bridge area.”

   “Did you see any other boats along the way,” the detective said.

   “Just one, a fairly new bass boat.”

   “What color was it,” Mr. Patterson?  Where’d you see it?”

   “It was kind of a faded yellow, new, but a very pale yellow.  It passed us while we were moving down the Dry Creek arm of the lake.  We were on the west shoreline of the channel, and they came right down the middle.  I remember because it’s the only boat we saw all morning.  About mid-morning, I think it was.  They actually got me a little pissed-off because I could see them watching us with binoculars.  Watched us for about five minutes through the channel.”

   “How many people in the boat, Mr. Patterson?”

   “Two, just two guys.”

   “Did you see, or hear, anything else while you were out?  Any shooting?  Any other people on the shore, in the campsites?”

   “No, just a couple of hunters as we were coming back past Rustler Camp through the Yorty Creek channel.”

   “What do you mean, a couple of hunters, Mr. Patterson?  Did you see a couple of hunters, or hear them, or what?”

   “Oh no, we didn’t see anybody, just heard some shots that sounded like they were back up in the hills.”

   “How many shots did you hear?  What direction did they come from?  What time did you hear them?”

   “I think it was just a couple, maybe three shots.  Came from somewhere north of us.  I guess it was kind of late morning because we were on our way back to the car when we heard them.”

Detective Monroe stood up from his chair, straightening his coat, and said,

   “Mr. Patterson, do you see now why it would have been helpful for you to have come forward earlier?  The men you saw are the same men that were killed over by Thumb Camp.  Probably not too long after you guys left the lake.  Thank you for your time.  I’ll be in touch if I want to talk to Ms. Gilmore, or if I have any further questions for you.”

   “I’m glad to be of help, Detective Monroe.  You know, I thought about contacting the authorities this past week, after hearing about the rancher, but I guess I just didn’t want to muddy up my life.  Please forgive me for that.”

“Not a problem,” the detective said.  “Forget about it.”

David took a deep breath, careful to not let the detective see him stealing it.

As he was moving through the door to leave, Detective Monroe paused for a moment, then turned, and said to David, “Oh, just one more thing, Mr. Patterson.  Do you happen to own a gun?”

   “No sir, detective,” David said.  Guns and canoes are not even usually used together in the same sentence.”

    “Thank you Mr. Patterson.  Goodbye.”

   “Good bye, detective.”

 

     David gave Wag a lamb-and-rice snack, then left a voicemail for Marty on her cell-phone.  “Marty, I know you’re at work.  Can you give me a call when you get this message?  Long story short, I had a little sit-down today with a detective about the lake thing.  Instead of you coming here from work, how bout’ we meet up at Lil’s down in the Marina for an early dinner, maybe some nice chowder, and a seafood platter.  We can talk about it.  I won’t be going down to the café this afternoon, but will be out running errands and will check my messages.  Oh, and I almost forgot, my daughter, Raina, is coming to visit for a few days next week.  Can’t wait for you to meet her.  Bye babe.”

 

 

     I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on some things around town.  I bought a patch kit for my bicycle tire, did some thrift-store shopping for a table lamp, and some books.  Picked up an old copy of The Catcher In The Rye.  Am looking forward to revisiting Holden Caulfield.  I wonder what he’d be up to today. 

Sometimes I just like to get out and bus around town.  This afternoon was a good time to do it because it helped occupy my mind after a stressful meeting with Detective Monroe.  I hopped on the 33 down at Arguello, crossed the Panhandle at the east end of the park, and then headed down Haight St. to Ashbury, the heart of the district.  It’s been awhile since I’ve spent any time over there.  It’s changed a lot, but certain things still remain from the Summer of Love.  The place is still a magnet for disaffected youth, as it was for me, and my friends, way back then.  I wandered around, in and out of the shops, for about an hour, listened to some of the buskers, stopped in for a Ben and Jerry’s, then bussed it back home to clean up and get down to the Marina to meet Marty. 

 

     I left my Jeep at home and caught the #1 California down to the 43, which let me off in the Presidio, just a quick five minute walk from Liverpool Lil’s.  That would enable us to drive home together in her car.  When I’d got on the 43, there was a guy sitting near the back of the bus clipping his toenails.  He had his big ugly feet up on the back of the seat in front of him.  I sat across the aisle, intrigued.  He was hard not to watch.  Kind of a Rastafarian looking guy, but who knows if he had both the look, and the religion, or just the look.  Anyway, he didn’t clip the middle toe on either of his feet, leaving those nails about two inches long.  Bizarre.  I don’t guess he could wear shoes.  Drivers aren’t supposed to let you on the bus without shoes, but they sometimes get a little intimidated about challenging people. 

The guy let the clipped nails fall on the seat in front of him, and left them there when he got off at Jackson. 

 

 

     Marty looked a little disheveled when she ambled into the restaurant.  Not her clothes, or her hair, per-say, or anything like that.  It was an internal disheveled, a windswept kind of demeanor that I’d seen only one other time.  But she was carrying with her the news that I’d been questioned about the killing at Lake Sonoma, and that, I reasoned, would dishevel anybody. 

God, it was good to see Marty again.  I stood to embrace her with a big hug, and a warm kiss that lingered for maybe a moment longer than it probably should have in a restaurant.  We enjoyed some chilled chablis from the Valley of the Moon winery in Glen Ellen.  Through the first glass we talked about Marty’s work, obviously putting off discussion of my meeting with the detective.  But, after ordering dinner, with the second glass, I brought her up to date on the situation.  It’s funny, though, after I described the interview, the tone of the conversation, to Marty, she felt better.  She said she thought it was more about being able to eliminate us as suspects, than it was about trying to implicate us.  I’d entertained that idea intellectually, but, because I was there, and feeling my own deceit, I took it on pretty heavily, emotionally.  Marty was actually a great mitigator of those feelings for me.  She said she hoped Detective Monroe didn’t want to talk with her, but that if he did, she thought she’d be OK with it.  

 

     With the fresh bread and clam chowder we almost didn’t even need to have dinner, but Marty wasn’t going to let me get out of there that cheaply.  The seafood platter was beyond delicious, bordering on sinful.  If I were a foodie I’d say divine, but, thank God, I don’t yet talk like that.  Oysters, fresh from the Tomales Bay Oyster Company, jumbo shrimp, scallops, and calamari, all sautéed in butter and garlic.  A beautiful, steaming, crab leg indulged whatever appetite Marty and I might have had left.  There was certainly no room remaining for dessert.

 

     We walked around Union Street for about a half-hour before driving back to my place for the night.  We fell into bed together, and watched that early Daniel Day Lewis-Julliette Binoche, film, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’.  Pretty sexy, to say the least.  

Marty had to work in the morning, and I planned on sleeping late for a change, visiting a little bit with Harlen, next door, and then getting back down to the café to do some writing.

    Wag secreted himself between us on the bed as we dozed off.

 

 

Nineteen.

 

          The new artwork that had been sitting on the floor near the storeroom in the back is now hanging on the walls of the café for our enjoyment.  I say enjoyment because the work truly is enjoyable.  Abstract dogs and cats.  Acrylics, it looks like.  Not portraits, like artists usually do with animals, but dogs and cats in natural movement, in motion, some in conceptual poses, with personalities and emotion; bodies stretched, arched, and twisted in mid-stride, like if you were to pause a Nature channel DVD, and then paint the screen.  The only thing that’s not natural is the colors.  No grays or browns, no whites, no beige, no yellow labs.  But lots of offbeat colors on offbeat cats and curious dogs.  Reminds me of some of the creatures I’d see with the good acid we used to do back in the 60’s before they started cutting it with Meth, and other sinister additives.  These creatures are truly dancing off the canvas, engaged in full-body celebrations of animal life.  Celeste, an artist whose name I’d never heard, is also an artist I will look for in the future.  You know how every once in a while you’ll find an artist you’d really like to meet?  You may not even know why, just that you’d like to meet him/her?  Well, I’d like to meet Celeste.  I won’t be trying to meet her.  I’m just saying.  But I will ask Darla about her tomorrow.  I’m very curious.  Very curious.

 

     Darla’s got about ten or twelve pieces of Celeste’s work hanging around the café.  I’m struck by the strength of their attitude, casting a frivolous demeanor across an, otherwise, somber afternoon.  Wall to wall brilliance, lifting me like a kind of telepathic elevator, raising me up, it seems, out of my psychic delirium. 

 

     There’s a bemused bloodhound hanging near me on the wall, cerulean-blue belly to the sky, draped unceremoniously across an old chase-lounge on the lawn, blending with it, into it, one back foot on the ground, and three flopping free like a monkey might lay on his back across a branch, or an otter on a rock.  A fuchsia kitten on the sparkling wet ground, pink, tinged with purple, rear end in the air, two front paws having caught the dog’s one earthbound foot as if it were a mouse he’d cornered by the fence.  A second colorful kitten, poking fun, her scarlet nose burrowed deep inside that big overgrown puppy’s ear.  The hound’s other ear is draped soft across his own eyes, protecting them from the blinding glare of a merciless afternoon sun.  There’s an elated look on the old dogs face, a look that anyone might like to wear were it accompanied, also, by the pleasurable feeling that would have inspired it in the first place.

 

     Darla’s put John Prine’s ‘Souvenirs’ album on, and Mr. Prine has been serenading the clientele this afternoon.  Hearing him is like listening to grandpa sitting on a stump outside the barn, telling stories about when life was a little slower, and people were a little more important to one another than they are now. 

His songs put life, and the struggle for equanimity, in a dramatic, but embraceable, perspective.  “Fish and Whistle,” for example.

 

“Father forgive us for what we must do. 

You forgive us, and we’ll forgive you. 

We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue,

then we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven.”

 

They are also the best photographic collection of the human condition that a man could ever hope to find.  Snapshots, all of them.

     ‘Far From Me’ gives an intimate glimpse of many of those humans, concluding that there is remarkable beauty in even the most callously disregarded among us.

 

“And the sky is black and still now

up on the hill where the angels sing.

Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle

looks just like a diamond ring.

But it’s far, far, from me.”

 

     Jesse and Collette are both behind the counter today.  That always makes me happy.  The soul of John Prine permeates the café, casting a subtle, subdued, truth across the room.  People put their pencils down to listen.  They eat their cake, and sip their coffee quietly.  There are no utensils clanging on plates.  There is no mindless chatter.  There is no scuffing and shuffling of feet, just the sound of Prine’s solitary voice,

“ . . . . Don’t let your baby down . . . . . . . ”, and his conspicuous acoustic guitar.  Simple songs, sometimes with bass, accordion, or piano, but not complicated by pretentious arrangements, or unnecessary instruments.  Some people are whispering quietly, but even then, you can tell they’re whispering about the songs, or maybe how they used to wake up every morning lying next to somebody they loved.  Until Marty entered my, otherwise, innocuous life, it’d been about a thousand years since I woke up with somebody like that.  And John Prine reminds me.  He sings,

“. . . . Down on the beach the sandman sleeps,

and time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps. . . . . . .”

 

     Brad and Angelina are here today as well.  They’re usually pretty over-the-top demonstrative with each other, but a couple of songs ago ‘Far From M’  turned even them inward for the time being.  Some people are looking up at the speakers hanging just below the ceiling in the corners of the room.  It’s like people want to see the voice they’re hearing.  I can totally understand that.  And I can almost see his voice when I close my eyes, if you know what I mean.

 

     Collie’s been kind of sway-dancing with herself behind the counter to the ‘Storm Windows’ song.  Jesse looks kind of bewildered, like he doesn’t know whether to dance with her, or go outside for a cigarette until she’s done.  He looks like he’s kind of hoping that someone will come up and order a cappuccino, or something, anything to break the discomfort of the moment for him.  These two really remind me of a much younger version of Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in the movie, ‘Annie Hall’, although Jesse is much better looking than Woody Allen, and he doesn’t have that infernal anxiety thing going on, and, who am I to say, but I would guess that he probably doesn’t sleep with his young adopted step-daughter either.  Not that he has one, but if he did I don’t think he’d pull a Woody on her.  

 

 

 

     Gina looks like a mirage today.  She was here when I arrived.  We nodded to each other, and smiled.  Big smiles.  I’m gonna step over and talk with her in a bit, but first I want to get some writing done.  I have some new inspiration for my novel, and I’d like to just put a few of the ideas down on paper before they get-up-and-go without leaving word as to where I might be able to find them again when they’re gone.  Ideas do come and go like the wind.  It’s important to grab them when they wander by. 

Gina’s wearing, what looks to be a silk blouse, the color of her skin.  It’s hard to tell where her neck ends and the blouse begins.  She’s left the top button unfastened for some room to breathe, and the next one down undone purely for the allure of the look.  I certainly don’t mind.  I can kind of see my own hand sliding in there quietly like it’s done a couple of times before in daydream rehearsals.

 

     Levi, the PI (phony intellectual), has established his own little section of the café of late.  He’s pretty new here, but has been doing his best to interest Gina in his tired little corduroy-professor act.  As far as I can tell, she’s not having any of it, but still, I’m thinking about going over there to let him know that, as far as fantasies go, he needs to be more respectful of the existing pecking order.  To let him know that Gina is my fantasy, not his.  And that, even though I haven’t seen Mickey in here for awhile, he’s still next in line if my little castle in the sky ever crumbles.  Oh yeah, and to say (laughing out loud), “that’s just the way it’s gonna be, bro.” 

   No disrespect to Marty, this is just a harmless little crush.  It’s just mental foreplay keeping the fires stoked for her.  In fact, she knows about Gina, she asks about her, and about my fantasies.  I’ll tell her about Gina’s silk blouse, and the whimsical image I had of sliding my hand in there. We’ll laugh about it, and I’ll slide my hand down Marty’s blouse later tonight.

 

     Collette’s finished her little sway-dance, and wants to know if she can read some of Kevin’s poetry.  He’s settled in at his usual place with his beard resting on the table.  He’s got the gold baseball sleeves on today.  He blushes at the request, and, although it’s a pretty personal request, from what I now know of him, he’s not one to want to disappoint someone like Collie.  I’m not the only one here that has overheard Collie’s inquiry.  Eyes glance around the room, searching for others to connect with, to check in with, and measure the appropriateness of her asking.  There seems to be an unspoken consensus that Collie’s a little over the line with this one.  Some eyebrows are raised, some faces are scrunched, as if to say, “Huh?  What about the privacy?  What about our anonymity?”  But then Kevin raises himself up from his chair, notebook in hand, and says, “Well, Collie, I had the pleasure of watching your lovely little improv dance, so I think it’s only fair that I share something of myself with you in return.”  He said it like a graduate of the Toastmasters Club, or something.  “Here are a few things I’ve written today,” he said, “but bear in mind, that this stuff is all pretty improv as well.”

He handed the notebook to Collette across the counter, and her face became like silly putty, forming all manner of expressions, as she thumbed hungrily through the rumpled pages. 

   “Oh my God, Kevin,” she said.  ‘Just Another Moment’.  Pleeeaaasse, can I read this to everybody?”

   Kevin was kind of stunned, he flushed red in the face, but then said, “Sure, Collie.  Sure.  But just that one, OK?”

   “Hey everybody,” Collie said.  “This is Kevin.  It’s called  ‘Just Another Moment’.”

She Continued: 

  

   Just Another Moment

        You disappeared

   before my eyes,

   before I had a chance

   to say ‘goodbye’.

 

   I stood in your footprints,

   thinking they might give me

   just another moment

   of your company.”

 

   “Kevin, Kevin, that is sooooo beautiful.  Sooooo beautiful.  God, Kevin, it’s so romantic.”

A silent, deafening, reverberation, echoed through the café, followed closely by the muffled sound of dignified clapping rising casually, but deliberately, like the smoke of sweet sandalwood incense would in a room of intimate strangers. 

Kevin was very embarrassed.  He was very appreciative of the gesture, and very humbled, but very, very, embarrassed. 

   Collie said, “I’ll dance for you every day, Kevin, if I can read a poem for everybody when I’m done.”

  Kevin laughed, and said, “Well, I’m flattered, Collie, and I’ll take your offer under consideration, but that’s a lot of pressure.  Now, can I please just get another cup of coffee?”

Darla, the café owner, heard the applause and came out of the back room to see what was going on.  Kevin grabbed her arm as she passed, and said, “Collie thinks she’s discovered the next Rod McKuen.  I tried to tell her that the next Rod McKuen would be better left undiscovered, but you know how Collie is.”

Darla gave Kevin a knowing smile, and continued on to my table for a quick chat.  We’re doing that Mt. Tam hike in the morning.

 

 

 

Twenty.

Arizona

 

     When Lindy returned to the kitchen she found Tim leaning over the sink, quietly, but painfully, choking back tears, his stomach knotted up like a man struggling with the sudden onset of food poisoning.  His breathing was fitful, and laborious beyond words.  His knees appeared weak, barely able to hold the weight of his world.  Although Lindy was not physically connected to his suffering, it was an agonizing, and emotional, condition for her as well.

     Tim is a good-looking young man, normally the picture of strength and virility.  He’s 6’ 4” tall, with the natural movement and demeanor of, what Lindy thought to be, a first-baseman.  As an outdoors person, she had always appreciated that Tim seemed to have a healthy respect for his own body. 

She found herself on the brink of tears. 

It was not the first time Lindy had assimilated someone else’s pain.  She had known her own hurt as well.  Known it very well.  Still does, in fact.  Lindy lost her son to encephalitis following a viral infection, shortly after his seventh birthday.  Little Mason was learning how to play first base on his beloved Little League team, the Wickenburg Rattlers.  Lindy went to work for William Shoop at the restaurant shortly after Mason’s death.  Been there ever since.

 

     She moved gracefully towards Tim at the sink, put her left hand, chest high, under his right arm, reached her right hand around the front grabbing him under the left arm, and pulled him a quarter turn around to face her. 

Lindy then wrapped both hands and arms around his body and pulled him firmly to herself in an embrace that said, “You’re not alone”. 

She held him close in a full body hug, squeezing lovingly, shoulders to knees, transmitting assurance, transferring her love through the confusion he was feeling, deep into his inner soul, his sinking inner man, to hold his bleeding heart above the water. 

Tim was a young man falling apart, and she was a woman unwilling for him to be lost, as her young son had, ultimately, been.  

 

     Lindy slid both of her hands down Tim’s arms, to his wrists, and then pressed her hands into his.  Moving backwards slowly, she pulled him along with her, releasing one hand, and continuing to lead him with the other.  Tim slumped weakly, whimpering like a lost child, but willing to follow the lead of someone who, at least for the moment, was considerably stronger, and significantly more confident, than he was.

 

     They moved together quietly, down the hallway, through Lindy’s bedroom, and into the Master bath, where she sat him down on a beige leather chair placed against the wall near her beautiful old, oversized, claw-foot bathtub.  She’d filled the tub with hot water, and some sensuous bath salts, while Tim was cleaning up the dishes after lunch.  Lindy asked him to just sit back in the chair for a moment and close his eyes.  She took a couple of long deep breaths, suggesting that he breathe with her. 

   “Just be still, Tim.  Try and relax,” Lindy said.

He did, and it seemed to make a slightly observable difference.

 

     Lindy felt his erection growing in the kitchen when she’d pressed her body against his, and she could see it throbbing now as he crossed his wrists over his lap in an attempt to hide the obvious, and save himself the embarrassment that only an uninitiated man might feel.  Lindy knelt on one knee in front of Tim, gripped his wrists with her hands, and uncrossed them.  She asked him to raise his hands in the air, and, as she rose back up to her feet she grabbed the bottom of Tim’s T-shirt on either side, slowly pulled it up his body, and over, and off, his head and arms. 

Tim crossed his wrists again over his lap.

Lindy knelt back down and slid one sock off his foot, and then the other.  She reached between his arms to unbuckle his belt, and pants. 

   Tim said, “Ms. Bur. . . , I mean Lindy, I mean Ms. Burrell, why are you doing this?  I don’t know what to do.”

   “Ssshhhh”, Lindy said.  “Just be here while I’m with you.”

She slowly pulled on the waist of his pants, and said, “I’ll need you to help me here, Tim.”

Tim raised up slightly from the chair while Lindy pulled the pants from under his butt and unpeeled them down his legs.  She was careful to bring his boxers along with them.

 

     Tim crossed his arms in front of his chest to protect himself from his own nakedness.

Uncrossing them, Lindy said she’d help him in the tub.

Tim was wishing his erection would subside, disappear, just go away like it would after he masturbated on Wednesday nights, but it was screaming to be noticed, dancing for attention. 

Tim’s face was flushed with embarrassment.  Lindy helped him settle into the bath.  She leaned him back and lightly brushed her hand down, and over, his face, full length, hairline to chin.  He closed his eyes beneath her hand, and when she lifted it again the flush in his face had vanished like a car gone down the road.

 

     Lindy moved her hand to Tim’s chest, spreading her fingers wide, across skin and bone, flesh and blood, covering his heart with her own tender palm.  She could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, the rhythmic pumping of his blood, while she watched his throbbing cock bobbing, as if in one accord, just beneath the surface of the water.  

 

     Sitting next to Tim at the edge of the tub while he soaked his long, stretched-out body in the warm regeneration, Lindy, slowly, and deliberately, began to move her right hand down from his chest toward his stomach.  At the same time she reached her left hand down to his outside knee, and after pausing there for a few long seconds, began to draw her fingers up his left leg towards the top of his thigh.

   “When I was over at Kelly’s house a few months ago to talk to Mr. Shoop, I walked in on her in the bathtub, Ms. Burrell,” Tim said.  “I didn’t know she was home, and she didn’t know I was there until I walked in the bathroom unexpectedly.  She was touching herself with one hand between her legs, and the other hand on her breast.  I got scared and left real quick without saying anything to her.  I went home and got in the tub and masturbated, Ms. Burrell.  I closed my eyes and imagined that she was still in the tub at her house touching herself just a few blocks away.”

“When we saw each other the next day, neither one of us said anything about it, Ms. Burrell.  It was like it never happened.  I don’t like that we both touch ourselves, but that we can’t touch each other.”

 

     “Ssshhhhh,” Lindy said again, her hands continuing to move towards each other over the canvas that was Tim’s body, her left hand moving up, and her right hand down, his beautifully delineated frame.  He shuddered, shivered, like a man’s body tends to do at even the thought of being touched; her right hand pausing just before his pubic hair, lingering there, rubbing his belly in slow, sensuous circles with the tips of her alluring fingers.  She moved her fingertips into Tim’s curly bush, and began kneading the flesh beneath his hair like a cat might contentedly knead your scalp when sleeping near you on the bed.  Lindy’s other hand continued to make its way up Tim’s leg, moving down to the inner thigh, and pausing there with the back of her hand softly nudging his swollen balls.  She began to slowly flitter her fingers like a fish would its fins, tickling his balls with four fingers, and the whirlpool motion of the water.

Tim tensed his body and held his breath to muffle a groan.  And when he couldn’t hold the pressure inside any longer, he blurted out “I love you, Ms. Burrell.  Lindy.  I love you.”

   “You’re sweet, Timmy,” Lindy said, “It’s OK.  You love how it feels.

You just love how this feels.  Don’t worry about love right now, baby.  Don’t worry about anything.  Like I said, ‘Just be here with me’.  Be here with me, and don’t worry about love.”

She brought her palms together, with the young man’s burning cock and balls pulsating, vibrating, like a marital-aide come-alive between her loving hands.

Lindy held the young man fully in her hands, gathered within the safety of her influential way.  She tenderly squeezed her hands together, and released in syncopation with Tim’s breathing.  Squeeze and release, squeeze and release.  Tim groaned audibly now, he breathed heavily, he arched his back, then slumped down a little lower into the tub.  Lindy moved her left hand under his testicles, and cupped them lightly like a young girl might hold a fresh peach to show her mother on the porch.  She slid her right hand under Tim’s cock and gripped it firmly, but without malice.  She pulled it up towards his belly, letting her fingers slide off its head in a way that left him feeling as if she were still gripping it.  She began massaging his balls, while stroking his shaft with a steady, rhythmic flow, pulling it, elongating it even beyond its own reach, then sliding back down to the base of his cock to repeat the motion again, steady, but with slight variation of emphasis and pressure.  Pull, and slide, pull and slide.  She engaged him, in this exquisitely personal way, to the mesmerizing rhythm of UB40’s ‘Bring Me Your Cup’, as it played quietly, but steadily, in her own amorous, but incredibly benevolent, head. 

‘Oooh, when you’re empty, I’ll fill you up. . . . . . ‘

Tim was ready to confess his every sinful thought to this angel masquerading as a woman, spreading her wings above his ancient purgatorial dilemma, and covering his indignity with her love.  He was ready to be released of his every internal constraint.     

Lindy continued dispensing her remarkable medicine to Tim until she eliminated, expelled from within him, every fiber of every unspoken notion that had been screaming so desperately, and so torturously, for so long, to get out.

With the final stroke of her practiced hand, and without apology, Tim left the sticky fog of his confusion spread across his heaving chest, dribbling over his shoulder, and dripping down the bathroom wall behind him.  His head fell, chin to chest, and he began to sob.     

He knew it was done.  He knew the past had finally passed.

 

     Lindy massaged his neck, held his head in her hands, and kissed his forehead like a mother might kiss a teenage son before sending him off to war.  She gathered the cum from his body with her hand, pulling it down off of his shoulder, across his chest, and into a warm, wet puddle above his tender left breast.  She watched it bubble with every beat of his vigorous heart. 

“My friend, Gina, in San Francisco might be looking for a roommate”,  Lindy said.  “I think you’d like her.  If you want me to, I can give

       her a call.”

 

 

 

Twenty-One.

California

 

     I was up at the break of dawn for the Mt. Tam hike.  I had to leave Wag behind because they don’t allow dogs on the trails over there.  I put him up on the roof where he could run around and watch the neighborhood wildlife in all of the back yards around our building. A bowl of water, a big ham bone, and he’s a happy camper.  He’d have shade lying beneath the short barrier wall, or behind the heating system, if he needed it.  I left my downstairs neighbor a key, and let her know he was there in case there was any emergency.

I picked Darla up at 8:00 o’clock sharp.  She was waiting out front of her flat, pack lying on the sidewalk at her feet, cup of homebrewed coffee warming one hand while the other waved me over to the curb.  

We headed over to Marin County, and stopped in for breakfast at the Dipsea Café in Mill Valley.  Darla had a veggie omelet, and I had eggs poached to perfection on Dipsea’s own homemade toasted sourdough bread.  Fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, a second cup of coffee, and we were on the mountain by 9:30.

     I used to hike Mt. Tamalpais with my daughter while she was growing up.  Mt. Tam, probably more than any other place, is where Raina fell in love with the outdoors.  She caught her first fish at Alpine Lake, and learned to swim at Lake Lagunitas on late summer afternoons when nobody was around.  You’re not really supposed to swim in the Mt. Tam lakes.  They’re the main source of drinking water for much of Marin County.  But what can I say?  Everybody breaks the law once in awhile, you just pick and choose where you do it. 

 

I draw the line at spitting on the sidewalk, and shooting people (Well, depending on the circumstances). 

But anyway, Raina and I would always find a spot at the lake just off the beaten path, and often wouldn’t get back to the car until darkness was just beginning to fall.  I guess you could say that Mt. Tam is also where my daughter and I really got to know each other.  I have a magnetized picture of Raina with her first fish, a nine-inch rainbow trout, on my refrigerator at home.  Kind of corny, I know, but at least I don’t have any old Smiley Faces, except the one I get every time I look at that priceless photo.  I guess I’m lucky to have the kind of memories I do.  Some people don’t have that.  And I will never take them for granted. 

 

     Beginning at breakfast, and continuing in the Jeep on the way up the mountain to the trailhead, Darla was telling me about her lost days as a runaway in the Haight-Ashbury, during the Summer of Love.  She actually ended up staying there for three or four years, she said, long after the big explosion in 1967.  Lived with a bunch of mellow souls that made, and sold, mobile’s, macramé wall hangings, and yarn Gods-Eyes at Hippy Hill (at the end of Haight Street), and at all the outdoor concerts in the park.  She made her own money selling the Oracle, and the Free Press (counter culture papers) on the streets of the Haight.  She said she lived on Fish and Chips that came wrapped in newspaper, sometimes the same papers that she was selling.  That, and the free soup the Diggers used to serve up in the park.  You could get a big order of chips for a quarter, the price of a newspaper.  And the Digger soup was free.  You only got fish with the chips on a really good sales day.  She earned enough money hawking papers to get herself into all the Fillmore shows, and the Avalon Ballroom.  If she came up short on a particular day she could panhandle her way in.  That’s pretty much what she lived for, she said.  The shows.  I sold the same papers, probably on the same corners.  And was at all of the same shows.    

     Darla and I connected pretty strongly around those memories.  In fact, we realized that we knew each other, at least for a while back then.  I always thought she looked familiar.  It was a long time ago.  I called myself Dakota.  She said she called herself, Godiva.  Liked that the name could be abbreviated with two different words, God, or diva.  She wasn’t either, she said, but thought it was kind of trippy at the time.  Most called her Diva, just because people found it pretty weird to call her God.  She laughs about it now.

We remembered doing peyote together.  There were four of us.  Spent most of the day at Ocean Beach, and in Sutro Heights Park on top of the bluffs across the Coast Highway from Louis’ restaurant.  It had a pretty cool view overlooking the ocean, and the ruins of the old Sutro Baths.  We even ventured over to Louis’ for saltwater taffy.  You sometimes just do stuff like that when you shouldn’t.  We got run out of there pretty quickly because we were all borderline incoherent.  But we got the taffy, and it was that experience, more than anything, that enabled Darla and I to recollect our brief time together in the Haight.

I lived there for a couple of years, just about a half-block from where Janis lived.  She wasn’t really Janis Joplin yet, she was ‘Big Brother and the Holding Company’s’ singer.  But anybody that ever heard her sing in those days knew that some day she’d be Janis Joplin.  I used to see her perform in Golden Gate Park all the time, or in the Panhandle.  Talked to her a lot too, sometimes sitting on her front porch.  You could do that back then.  She’d just hang around like everybody else.  I remember how incredibly nice she was, even inviting me to go with her to have a drink up at Maud’s, a lesbian bar up on Cole St., just a few blocks above the Haight.  But I was still a teen-ager, so they wouldn’t let me in, even with Janis.  Funny, how I could smoke all the weed, or do all the LSD I wanted, but I couldn’t get in a bar with Janis Joplin to have a beer.  I remember she told me that she liked my name.  She told Rikki, the owner of Maud’s, that I was her little brother, but they still wouldn’t let me in.  I never told her Dakota wasn’t my real name.

 

     Darla told me she met the man she’d eventually marry while she was still living in the Haight.  Yea, she was a kid, she said, but they saw each other off-and-on for about ten years before getting married.  His name was Jeremy.  Darla stayed married to him for fifteen years.  He worked for Rock Medicine, the medical outreach of the concert culture.  RM set up a medical tent at all the outdoor shows, treated people for overdose, sun exposure, alcohol poisoning, headaches, cuts and bruises, that sort of stuff.  He worked part-time for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic for years as well.  Darla liked that he was such a good-hearted, benevolent soul who gave so much of his time to the service of others.  She didn’t like that he made very little of his time available to her, or that he continued to be a pothead until the day he finally decided to just not come home anymore.  Probably still is.  He had a young girlfriend who worked the shows with him, Darla said, who got stoned with him, and who clung to him like a baby Rhesus monkey clings to her mother’s back.  He liked that.  “Something,” Darla said, “that I could never do.”

 

It was really good, getting to know Darla’s broader experience, getting to understand the life and circumstances that brought her to The Last Café, a little bit of what made her who she is today.   She said that after she left the Haight Ashbury she lived in a commune down the coast in Big Sur.  A lot of the people from that Summer of Love experience ended up on back-to-the-land communes scattered throughout Northern California.  Myself, included, but not in Northern California.  I ventured down to the Southwest, to a commune in Tierra Amarilla, in Northern New Mexico.  That’s actually where I met my wife.  And it’s how I eventually found Albuquerque.  I ended up getting married on the commune, moved to Albuquerque, grew up a little bit, and eventually earned a degree from the University there.  Our daughter, Raina, was born shortly after I’d started school.  When I finally graduated we moved back to San Francisco. After finishing High School, Raina ended up going to college back in Albuquerque, just like her daddy did. 

That’s when my wife finally decided to just ‘not come home anymore’.

Darla and I have a lot in common. 

The circle of life. 

 

 

     We took the Panoramic Highway out of Mill Valley to the East entrance of the State Park, then continued past Muir Woods Rd., up the mountain a few miles to Pantoll Rd. and the Ranger Station, the parking lot, and trailhead for the Matt Davis trail.  This particular trail is, perhaps, the most beautiful hike on the entire mountain.  Marty and I would be hoofing it from Pantoll down to Stinson Beach, and back, about an eight mile round trip.  It’s one of the narrowest trails on Mt. Tam, and that’s one of the reasons I like it so much.  But it also has spectacular views of the coastline, and the gradually rising hillsides that seem to have crept up out of the ocean like lava flowing uphill.  Many of the other hikes are on fire roads, wider, less interesting because they’re carved out of the mountain, rather than worn into it.  Matt Davis is more of a nature trail.

 

     We threw the packs on our backs and set off on the path like a couple of eager kids turned loose at the Magic Kingdom without adult supervision.   About a hundred yards into the hike, a startled doe darted from beneath a grove of beautiful buckeye trees.  She bounded down a gradual slope like, well, like a graceful doe bounding down a gradual slope.  Not a bad way to begin.  For us, I mean, not the deer.

 

     The trail unfolded beneath our feet while my, and Darla’s, lives continued to unfold for one another.  In more hushed tones now, tones more appropriate to the cathedral we were walking through.  She told me that after her divorce the café became her entire focus for a few years.  She put relationships on hold, did not return to school, as so many recently divorced women do, and spent many months of nights alone recording all of her music albums on the reel-to-reel tapes we hear everyday at the café.  The albums, hundreds of them, were the only things of value that she retained from the marriage.  She donated all the furniture, pictures, and knick-knacks that Jeremy left to the Salvation Army.  She said he left all the music out of guilt, but that she was OK with that kind of guilt.  She said the music really is the foundation of The Last Café.  Everything else is built around the music.

I know the truth of that statement like a prostitute knows the needs of a married man. 

 

     About two miles into our hike, halfway to Stinson Beach, we moved twenty or thirty yards off the trail to take a short break, and sit on some rocks alongside the Silva Gulch Creek.  Being the very end of winter, beginning of spring, the creek was quite swollen, the water was high, and moving swiftly, overflowing the banks around every modest bend in direction.  Water was tumbling off the side of a rock shelf about eight feet above the creek, making for a pretty dramatic little falls, and moss clung to the rocks like a sweater wherever rocks rested in the shade.  Darla and I talked about some of the café people, particularly Jesse and Collette.  She loves them like a mother, and was surprised to hear that I have a pretty paternal instinct towards both of them also.  Jesse, especially, because he’s a goofy sort of kid, not in the stupid sense of the word, but more in an engaging, charming kind of way.  I told her about Quiet Boy, Denver, at my work, and a little bit about the things we try and accomplish in the class.  She asked if I could photocopy what he writes so she could see it.  From what I told her, she thinks he could have some pretty remarkable insight, some secrets as well, not necessarily secrets by choice, but by disadvantage.  It’s just a matter of whether or not he can get his thoughts on paper.  I told her that it is a pretty laborious task for him, but that he enjoys the typewriter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he writes a book before I finish mine.

 

     It was difficult being with Darla without touching her, not because of excitement, or lust, but because of endearment.  She’s just such an emotionally accessible person that your natural inclination is to be near her, next to her, rather than sitting off, away from her.  But boundaries are important between people, and I’m someone who tries to respect my own boundaries, as well as those of the other person. 

I’d told Darla I wouldn’t be charging her for this outing.  I’ve considered her a friend because I see her almost every day, even though we haven’t been friends in the more traditional sense of the word.  In response to my gesture she paid for breakfast, will pay for lunch when we get down to Stinson Beach, and wants to comp me on the coffee at The Last Café indefinitely in exchange for a once-in-awhile outing like this one.  That sounds really good to me, although I’m sure I’ll have a hard time not paying for the coffee.  Maybe I’ll just put the cost of it in the tip jar for Jesse and Collette.

 

     Darla and I continued down the trail at a fairly brisk pace, relaxed, in no particular hurry, but vigorous enough to feel our hearts keeping the beat.  Our bodies kept the rhythm, and our lips, the conversation.  There was no loss of words between us.  Keeping an exchange of dialogue going with each other was not a conscious effort, but, rather, a natural outcome of our comfortable connection.  The trail, as it extended itself before us, moved smoothly through various terrains of rock, shady groves, chaparral, grasslands, as well as following steep switchbacks alongside a wide canyon with a spectacular, and breathtaking, view.  Our own conversation seemed to do the same.  We covered everything from Baseball to Bach.

 

     We were aware of the odor before we saw the tracks.  The instantly recognizable smell of decay.  And then we saw the vultures circling overhead.  The tracks were leading into a heavily forested area.  Table Rock Creek was back in there.  I knew that from having spent considerable time exploring the creek.  The tracks were, unmistakably, mountain lion.  The distinct ‘m’ shape of the rear pad of the foot, and the four toe pads, with no trace of the claws.  Unlike coyote, mountain lions keep their claws (nails) retracted when they walk.  They walk lightly, very lightly, on the pads of their feet.  These prints were about the size of my hand, quite large, and quite compelling.  My pulse quickened, as did Darla’s when I told her the source of the tracks.  But, surprisingly, she wanted to follow them to see if we might find a dead lion back in there.  She’d not yet made the connection that it was much more likely we would find a victim of the lion, than a dead lion.  And, I certainly did not want to find a victim, and a lion.  That would be an experience neither one of us was quite equipped to deal with.  

Although Darla appears to be reserved and unassuming, I learned she also has a pretty inquisitive and adventurous side to her.  Knowing what I know, I would not have suggested that we go in and take a look.  You don’t ever want to fight a lion for his lunch.  But she wanted to check it out, and this was her outing.  So, against my better judgment, we followed the prints into the lush, wet, middle-earth overgrowth that the distinctive smell was obviously coming from.  I had my hiking stick, and my Bowie knife was sheathed on my belt, so I was not totally unprepared, but still, it’s always better to avoid trouble than to challenge it unnecessarily. 

A couple of minutes in, and just up from the creek, I spotted a telltale mound with an area of obvious disturbance around it.  A pretty good-sized deer, partially eaten, lay beneath the pile.  Mountain lions won’t usually eat a whole deer, a fawn maybe, but not a large, full grown deer.  After a kill they will usually move the animal to a safe, secluded place, eat their fill, and then cover the remains with dirt, leaves, branches, and whatever else they can drag onto the carcass, much like a dog might hide a bone for later.  The lion will then go off to nap and digest the meal.  He won’t necessarily even return to the body for his next feed.  They often continue roaming, and hunting along the way, all the while trusting that the carcass will be there next time by.  

From the air, this place is pretty inaccessible.  That explains why the vultures had not yet feasted on the remains.  But the scent of death must have been driving them crazy as they circled overhead like sharks swimming around a wounded seal in the water.  Blood stained antlers protruded from beneath the pile of debris reminding me of branches poking out of a compost heap in a suburban back yard.  By the condition of the carcass, and the retched aroma it was clothed in, it was clear that it had been there for at least a few days. 

 Seeing the raw, unmitigated, violence of such a deadly situation sent a sudden, but familiar chill, up, and then back down, my quivering spine.  Looking at Darla, it was obvious to me that she felt the same cold stranger visiting her as well.  Our eyes locked, and it was immediately clear that neither one of us wanted to be there when that mountain lion came back around.        

 

The rest of the hike down the trail to Stinson Beach was fairly quiet and uneventful.  By our own design, I suppose.  We both found ourselves processing what we saw, and what we felt, during those few short minutes at Table Rock creek.  It was one of those brief slow-motion-movies that puts a person in touch with their own mortality.

 

 

     Having completed the hike down to the coast, Darla and I were seated at a window table at the Sand Dollar Café in Stinson Beach.  The SD Café is a Stinson Beach institution, originally built in 1921 on top of three barges over in Tiburon.  The barges were later floated into Stinson Beach and fused together, kind of like what happened to Marty and me as a result of our Lake Sonoma ordeal.

     “David,” Darla said, “I have something to tell you that I didn’t want to mention on our hike.  I wanted the hike to be a pleasant time for both of us, but it can’t wait any longer.  It can’t wait until we get back.”

   “Lets order lunch first,” I said.  “Aren’t you hungry?  You haven’t even looked at the menu.”

Darla had just returned from the restroom, while I was perusing the menu. 

   “This is pretty serious, David.”  She continued, “A Detective Monroe came into the café to talk to me yesterday morning.  About a murder, David.  He came in to talk to me about a murder.  He said he wanted to know how well I knew you, and your girlfriend, Marty.  But you especially, David.  He wanted to know how well I knew you.” 

   “David,” she said again, “are you listening?”

My face dropped, and I felt like it turned white as ocean foam, hearing such piercing, unwelcome words, tumbling so menacingly out of Darla’s, usually friendly, mouth.

We were suddenly interrupted.

   “Hello, my name is Marilyn.  I’ll be your waitress today.  Are you ready to order?” she said, looking at me. 

   “Oh, we’ll need a minute, if you don’t mind,” Darla said, giving me a moment to regain my composure.  “Please, just give us a minute.” 

   “That’s fine,” Marilyn said.  “I’ll just get your water while you take some time to decide.”

When the waitress returned with the water, Darla looked at me and said,    “Do you know what you want, David?”         

  “Yes,” I said, looking up blankly in the general direction of the waitress, but really halfway between her and Darla.  “I’ll have the fish tacos, with avocado, and a Sierra Nevada.”

   “OK.”  Then turning to Darla, Marilyn said, “And you maam?  Do you need another moment?”

   “No, no,” she said, “I think I’ll have the Asian chicken salad with sesame dressing.”

   “And to drink, maam?” 

   “A Corona sounds good,” Darla said.  “A cold Corona, with lime, please.”

   “Oh wait,” I said.  “That sounds even better.  I’ll have a Corona instead of the Sierra Nevada.  Lime for me too, please.”

   “Thank you, I’ll bring the beers now, and the meal shouldn’t be too long.  Will you be needing anything else?”

   “Maybe a lobotomy,” I whispered under my breath.

   “Excuse me,” the waitress said.  “What was that?  Was there something else?”

   “No, not now Marilyn,” Darla interjected.  “Thank you very much.”

 

As the waitress walked away, Darla pulled me back into the conversation that she had initially been trying to have with me.

   “David, what’s up with that detective, Mr. Monroe?” she said.  “He didn’t tell me anything other than that he was doing an investigation of a murder.  Didn’t implicate you in any way, just suggested you might have some information about it.  I asked him why he didn’t just talk to you about it, and he said that he already had.”

      I gazed at Darla, not really seeing her.  It was as if I were looking into space, rather than across the table.  In trying to determine how to tell her about something as complex as the situation at the lake, I found myself unable to speak.  I just didn’t know what to say.  Darla waited, recognizing that I was struggling with words.  Finally I just opened my mouth and began talking. 

   “Yes,” I said.  “Detective Monroe paid me a visit at home on Thursday afternoon.  That’s pretty much why I was not at the café.  It’s a long story, Darla.  I’m not really sure how to tell you, or even if I should tell you.  Sometimes things are better left unsaid, better left unknown, if you know what I mean.”

The waitress arrived with the beers, set them in front of us, and, sensing that we were engaged in a pretty serious discussion, turned and walked away without comment.

   “Well, do you,” I repeated.  “Do you know what I mean?”

   “No, I don’t know what you mean, David” she said.  I’ve never been questioned about a murder before.  Especially concerning somebody I know.  Were you involved in a murder?  Or do you know something about a murder?”

   “I wasn’t, and I don’t.  What I can tell you is that two men were killed at Lake Sonoma on a day that Marty and I were canoeing up there.  As I told the detective, I didn’t come forward to offer any information because I didn’t really have any, and it would have just turned into a big unnecessary mess, anyway, kind of like what’s happened.  I certainly wasn’t going to welcome that, and I wanted to protect Marty from the fallout also.  But again, I didn’t murder anybody.  You don’t know me well, Darla, but I think you know me better than that.  That’s really about all I can tell you, other than that you probably remember seeing the story in the paper.  A couple of boater/fisherman found dead on the shoreline.”

   “Yeah,” Darla responded, “That’s what the detective said.  And I do recall the story.  I was just afraid that it somehow concerned you.  It was pretty scary being questioned about you.”

   “Well,” I said, “What did you actually tell him?  Did you make up a bunch of good stuff about me, or were you pressured into telling him the truth?”

   “C’mon David, I don’t find this very funny.  Detective Monroe is a very nice man, but still, I was pretty afraid to tell him anything.  I kept it to my personal experience of you at the café, but did not relay anything I’d heard about you from anybody else.  I didn’t say anything about Marty, or your Adventure-guide business, or your work at the CCL.  I figured the less I told him, the less chance of contradicting anything you might say.  As it turns out, he didn’t have many specific questions for me, anyway, just wanted to know what I knew about you.”

   “Thanks Darla, I’m sorry you’ve had to have even a peripheral involvement in the situation.  Let’s let it rest and enjoy the remainder of the day.”

   “I’m good with that, David.  Let’s rewind.”

 

 

     The food arrived just as we were wrapping up the conversation.  Although we’d had a big breakfast at Dipsea, I’d worked up an appetite on the trail, and wolfed the tacos down like a ravenous dog.  Well, actually, a little more graciously than that.  More like a famished teen that bursts through the back door after school and chugs down a quart of milk from the refrigerator. 

And Darla took her time enjoying the salad, finding pleasure in every little flavor, and the texture of every bite.  I’ve always been intrigued by that dynamic with women.  How they can, seemingly, shut everything else out, except the taste, and texture, of the food.  The food.  Sometimes, it seems, the food is everything.  This was, understandably, one of those moments for Darla. 

 

     We lingered over a second beer, and then hit the trail for the hike back up the mountain.  We were a little slower going back, partly because it was uphill, and partly because of the beer, but more-so because we stuck a little closer together, moved a little more deliberately, and felt a little more connected than even on the way down.  As if she had one leg tied to one of my legs, like kids do in a three-legged-race.

 

 

About a half-hour into our return hike, on a distant hillside, we observed a pack of coyotes lying in the shade beneath a beautiful old oak tree.  It appeared that four of the creatures were napping, while a fifth remained on alert, presumably looking out for the security of the pack.  With binoculars we could sneak up on them from a distance, and be part of their, otherwise, private world.   It reminded me of a time late last spring when I had been hiking early in the morning in the East Bay hills with a friend, and had the unexpected opportunity to see a pack of coyotes bring down a very young deer. 

 

     It was a similar situation.  Binoculars on a distant grassy hillside.  My friend and I watched a single coyote chase, herd really, a young deer up the hill.  The deer must have been thinking he’d be fine once he got over the summit to some cover, but as he neared the top of the slope, three other coyotes, which had been hiding in the tall grass, surrounded, and ambushed, him.  It was like watching jackals take down a crippled young antelope on National Geographic.  One coyote would dart in, and then back off.  Then another would attack from a different direction, and another, and another, until, ultimately, the coyotes were all attacking together, bringing the deer down to the ground as if it were just another day at the office.  It was brutal.  And it was unforgettable.

Coyotes usually hunt small game, rodents, reptiles, etc. and usually alone, but they will team up for larger game.  It’s a rare occasion to see such an attack.

 

 

Before we even made it back up to the top of the trail I knew I had to tell Darla the truth about Lake Sonoma.  It had been nagging at me since we left the restaurant.  After finishing up the hike, we just sat in the Jeep in the Pantoll parking lot for what seemed like an interminable length of time.  I could tell that Darla suspected there was some important unfinished business between us, and, of course, I knew there was.  I looked at Darla, and asked if she would like to know what really happened at the lake.  She said, “If it’s important to you for me to know, then, yes, I’d like to hear what happened.”

   I told her that she would have to hold the information close, that she would have to guard it like it was the difference between me having a future, or just having a regrettable past.  Darla said that she was all about the future, and that she would protect it at any cost. 

   “You can trust me, David,” she said. 

   “I do, Darla, and I will.”

It’s true, what I said, I trusted her implicitly.  And I knew that if there was anyone who could keep my secret, it was her.

   “I killed those two men at Lake Sonoma, Darla.”  But I did not murder them.”  I said again, “I did not murder them.”

   Darla said, “I’m sorry, David.  However it all went down, I’m sorry you had to be a party to it.  Please, tell me as much as you’d like. 

Or as little.”

I went on to relate to her a general accounting of the rape-in-progress, but made a very distinct point to spare her the unpleasant details.  I described, instead, the moment of decision when I was forced to choose between defending Marty’s dignity (and both of our lives), and allowing those who were visiting unspeakable violence upon her (us) to survive.  I told her about the shooting, the subsequent cover-up, and, of course, our silence.

Darla just began to cry.  “I’m sorry, David,” she said again.  “I’m so, so very sorry.”

 

 

 

     Dropping Darla off at home wrapped up an unbelievable, if not interesting, day on the mountain.  It was, actually, a pretty exceptional time for her, she said, and for me as well.  She’d mentioned how the eight miles was a little more than she was used to doing, but that she felt good, and didn’t expect too much soreness in the morning.  And she mentioned that my secret would be her secret as well.

     Darla thanked me for the welcome disruption in her routine, for the transparency, and said she’d be there for me if the Lake Sonoma thing got to be more than I could carry by myself. 

 

 

 

Twenty-Two.

    

 

     I saw my neighbor, Harlen McCoy on the sidewalk in front of his house as I was pulling into the driveway.  It was late afternoon, and he was raking up the invisible leaves beneath the trees that are planted in that little strip of earth between the sidewalk and the curb.  Of course, the leaves are not invisible to Harlen.  They’re as real to him as the mound of leaves and branches covering the decaying body of that deer up on Mt. Tam was to me.  Because Harlen rakes the leaves in his back yard in the morning, he’s been doing the ones out front in the evening.  This is a new thing for Harlem.  He never used to rake out front.  I’m wondering if, since I’m doing Monday mornings for him now in the back, maybe he’s feeling guilty about not doing enough.  Ironically, I volunteered to rake on Mondays just to give him a little break in the responsibility.  Given the circumstances of Harlen’s loss, his age, etc., you don’t really want to attach words like obsessive-compulsive to him, or to the situation.  He’s just Harlen.  And it’s just how he gets by.  Nothing the matter with that.  His mind hit on something that works for him, protects him from the ravages of his loss.

 

     Yesterday morning, after Marty left for work, we spent an hour together over in his kitchen, just talking, drinking coffee, catching up on things with him, and catching him up on things with me.  I brought Wag with me because Harlen likes the little mutt. 

   “Where’s Marty?”  The first thing he said when I showed up at his door.  Before he even said ‘hello’.  “I saw her car out the window in your driveway,” he said,  “earlier when I got up to do the raking.  Where is that little darlin?  Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

   “Well, Harlen,” I said, ‘that little darlin’ had to go to work.  You know how that is.  She wants to come see you too, but it’ll have to be another day.”

   “Work?” Harlen exclaimed, “Why don’t you take care of that lady, David?  You should marry that girl before she gets away.  “Hell, David,” he said, “If you don’t marry her, I just might.”

   “Sorry, Mr. McCoy,” I said, with a laugh, “But, you, my friend, are just gonna have to find your own chicks.” 

   “Yeah, well then you better take care of her, Mr. Patterson,” he said, “or I will.”

   “No, Harlen, it’s not like that,” I said.  “Most women want to work these days.  You’re showing your age, neighbor.   Are you still watching Bonanza on Sunday nights, too?”

Harlen laughed like what I said was supposed to be funny, but I’m not sure he really appreciated the humor.  Besides, he probably still is watching Bonanza.

 

     Wag jumped down from the chair next to Harlen and began sniffing around the back door like he wanted to go outside.  Harlen took it as an opportunity to say, “Looks like the little guy wants to go inspect my work.  C’mon, I want to show you something out back, anyway.”

Harlen led me out to the back corner of the yard, with a bit of reluctance, pointed to some bushes, and said, “David, I wasn’t going to say anything because you’re doing me such a big favor on Monday mornings, and all, but some of those leaves from the avocado tree kind of hide in there under the azalea bushes.  They work their way in and just lay there real quiet, hoping you won’t notice them.  My wife has always been particularly conscientious about getting in there.  Because the bush grows so low to the ground you have to sort of hold the branches up with one hand while you pull the leaves out with the rake with the other hand.  I wouldn’t say anything, but I’m afraid my wife will notice them and decide to start doing the raking again.  I don’t want her to have to rake anymore, David.”

   “Not a problem, Harlen,” David said, pretending he could see the leaves.  “Glad you pointed that out.  I’ll get those rascals on Monday.”

   “Well, I’m gonna get them again tomorrow,” Harlen said, “but if you’d just look out for them too, that’d be great.  Other than that, you’re doing a fine job.”

 

     While we were having another cup of coffee at the kitchen table, Harlen mentioned that he’d been pretty lonely of late.  He goes in and out of reality where his wife is concerned.  He was now acknowledging the emptiness of her being gone, even though he was still connecting her to raking the leaves.  He doesn’t really ‘think she’s here’ one minute, and then ‘know she’s gone’ the next.  It’s not like that.  He moves between his two realities like water follows the path of least resistance.  It’s sad to watch, but there’s also something so completely lovely about it that it all feels very natural, very enchanting even. 

 

     But, Harlen was saying that he was thinking of trying to find someone to come in and just keep him company a couple of afternoons a week.  “I wouldn’t mind a nice lady living with me, someone I could sort of take care of,” he said.  “But at my age I don’t think anyone would want to be here.  They’d probably have to take care of me, anyway,” he continued, “And who would want to do that?  Maybe just a couple of afternoons a week, though.  Maybe somebody could come over just a couple of times a week.  Maybe somebody could just sit on the sofa with me like Grace used to do.  We could talk, and I could make her some tea, and we could watch her favorite program on TV.  And, if she wanted, she could trim the hair in my ears because I can’t really see well enough to do that.  Even if I could,” he said, “I have a lot of trouble with that whole reverse-image thing in the mirror.  I can never get that right.  And with the funny angles, and all, I always end up poking myself in the ear with the scissors.  But she wouldn’t have to, you know,” he said.  “She wouldn’t have to trim the hair in my ears.  Just if she wanted to.”  

 

     I acknowledged Harlens dilemma with a nod of sympathy, and a look of encouragement, both.  And then I looked him in the eye, and said, “That’s a terrific idea, Harlen.  And I’m sure someone would love to be here with you.  It’d have to be the right someone, but the right someone is out there somewhere.  I mean there are plenty of options.  Big strong, handsome old guy like yourself?  Shouldn’t be too hard to find the right lady.  If you like I could check some things out for you.  Have you given this some consideration, or are you just now arriving at this conclusion?”

   “No,” Harlen said.  “I’ve been kind of thinking about it a little bit, especially in the afternoon.  The afternoons are so long, David.  That’s really when I get the most lonely.  I end up watching Judge Judy, or one of those women’s programs just to have some company.  I don’t know what they’re called, there’s a bunch of those shows.  Too many of them, really.  I get tired of them.  I miss Grace.”

 

  “Harlen,” David said, “I know you do.  Listen, there’s a website called Craigslist that has all these listings for friends, or roommates, or work-wanted, or romantic relationships, even.  All kinds of other crazy things too.  You want a fifty-two-year-old virgin to sit on your roof and whisper sweet-nothings to you down the chimney?  Or a Billy goat that eats avocado leaves?  Or someone to come in and scrub your floors naked while you listen to Mozart?  Or to impersonate Judge Judy in a bubble bath?  They got all that shit on Craigslist, Harlen.  I think we can find somebody that would like to spend some time with you.  I’ll do a little research, if you like.”

   “That would be very nice, David,” Harlen said,  “if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.  Somebody to spend a couple of afternoons a week with me.  Somebody I would like.  I’d like to pay her, of course.  And maybe she’d want to stay with me . . . . . . . if she liked me.  Maybe she’d like it here.  Maybe she’d like the avocados.”

   “I’ll do what I can, Harlen.  Just hang tight for a while.  Can you do that?”

   “Sure, David.  Thanks for the encouragement.  I’ll be OK.”

   “Oh, and David,” Harlen said, “that woman that impersonates Judge Judy in a bubble bath?  Do you think she might like to come over?  Do you think you could find her, David?”

 

 

      Harlen stopped raking the leaves by the sidewalk when he saw me get out of my car in the driveway.  I went over and gave him a hug just to re-connect after the conversation we’d had yesterday morning.  And I knew he was anxious to hear about my hike with Darla.  I was pretty tired, however, emotionally, more than physically.  I just told him things look good.  Looks like he’s been doing a lot of work.  He said, “It’s hard to clean up out here.  It’s not like in the back.  These trees have roots coming up out of the ground, some even through the sidewalk, as you can see, David, and my rake gets stuck on them.  They don’t get enough water.  I just think they don’t get enough water.  Roots are comin’ up looking for a drink.” 

   “I gotta admit,” I said, you’re a pretty damn motivated young man, Harlen.  I admire that in you.  Motivated,” I said, “and I’m gonna find you a female companion that’s going to like that about you too.”

   “Does Marty like motivation in a man?” Harlen said.

   I laughed out loud, and said, “You still thinkin’ about stealin’ my girlfriend?  Well, I’m not gonna turn my back on you for a minute, you old goat.”

   Harlen laughed a deep belly laugh, and said, “Hey David, how’d your Mt. Tam hike go today with that café lady?”

   I just said it was a really good day, and, “Could I tell you