Trees
10,066 wds
This story is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Barrett – 1954-2004
The town was a mid-nineteenth century Sioux trading post first, then it grew into an army post, a stage coach station and a railroad hub used for cattle transport, mostly. Ninety percent of the state’s agrarian export is beef. Automobiles multiplied and the roads beneath them spread. An interstate highway system now crosses the southern portion of the state. After being made the state capital, the city advanced one house at a time until the invention of the tract home. Then the city grew in lumps in every direction except south. South, the oil refinery and Union Pacific rail yard discouraged residential progress. Beyond the refinery, rail yard and poor, stunted worker’s neighborhood near it stretched prairie all the way to the Colorado border. Beyond that border was more dusty brown grass, farms and ranches. Instead of south, growth of the town was projected east, west and north all held tight by a beltway.
Our father taught history at a high school and dabbled in historic parallels. He compared suburban developments in the post-World War Two United States to the Army and Navy's tactic of 'island hopping' in the Pacific theater. Islands not necessary for the advancement of supply depots or air power or where avoidable determined resistance was met were by-passed. Cut off from supply lines, the enemy troops starved. Built quickly, these neighborhoods had no time to grow old before the next was begun. And so the prairie sod first fenced for cattle or split by the plow for wheat and corn was planted in houses and lawns. When we moved to this town there were many new houses for sale and our father could have bought one with a low interest loan from the Veteran's Administration, but he didn't know how long we would live there, how long his job would last, and didn't want to bother with property. We lived there for ten years.
Moving to this western state with harsh winters and short summers was a difficult change for me. We moved there from Hawaii. It was a difficult change for all of us and i made sure my parents knew it was a serious blunder. Leaving paradise for the stony summits of the West i thought the very zenith of stupidity. “Try to make the best of it,” my mother said. Since then my view has softened as i have become a parent. Now i know they blundered not because they were scheming and stupid but because they were afraid and unaware. My parents lacked foresight. From time to time everyone lacks foresight. They also disliked Asians. My mother, by profession a nurse, had friends in the Far East murdered by the invading Japanese and some of my father’s army buddies were also killed by them.
At the dinner table our father loved to talk about the plains Indians, the Red Man, Real Americans, the First People, he called them. I believe Native Americans is the preferred name now though First People is also used. When i asked him what to call them in these modern times he replied that historically they were called “Suckers.” He thought merely renaming a group of people useless; it didn’t erase the bigotry. He also said some very beautiful things about Native Americans, especially when he was drunk. For a veteran and career military man who had served his country well and honorably in two wars, our father was remarkably scornful of the President, Manifest Destiny, The Winning of the West, and the American Dream.
“So much for the New World creating a New Man,“ he told us. “They came here and stuck a plow in the dirt, just like they would have in Europe had some baron or count not run them out. Some of those high dollar peasants were driven out by a king, a real piece of royalty, by God! Hitler had the same idea in killing the Jews. Sweep them aside, first blame them for all the problems and then nuke them, burn them up. He would have nuked them, too, if he got the bomb first. He would have tested it on one of those camps. We don’t want to think of that, of the big If or complications in our own life either. We just want to sweep the board clean, paint right over those bugs!”
Then he would blubber a bit and then leave the table for his bedroom where he kept the liquor bottles locked up.
“I worked as a painter once,” he continued when he returned. We listened. We shoveled in food. “I painted the walls in a restaurant kitchen for one of these guys who was real proud of his ancestors who won the west. It was a rush job so we painted right over food stuck to the wall and not just tiny pieces hard to see. I personally painted over half a pound of sausage that had fallen behind a stove and clung to the wall. Go ahead and butter a piece of bread and stick it to the wall, we’d paint right over it. We pulled the stoves and free standing cabinets away from the walls and shook out the rats. They were indignant. The name of that muck hole was The Frontiersman.
“Sure enough, sure enough, “ he paused, we took a bite, “the owner of that place traced his ancestors back to the pioneers who swept across this land, making themselves a new life. A new life, just like the old one in England or Germany! You never hear about French pioneers do you? No! They cut off their king’s head and stayed at home. Those are intelligent people. The others? The old world spit out these fools and they made a fresh catastrophe here. They should have stripped to their underwear and chased buffalo. Pioneers! They cut down the trees and made a dustbowl. They were no pioneers to come here and turn this country into another Europe. That’s all this country is, a shadow of Europe, we have the same language, same form of government, all the same shit. They didn’t stand up for their rights in Europe so Herr Field Marshal Von Schiessenstump put them on the boat! They got kicked out, came here and pretended they had guts. They had rifles and the Red Man had arrows.”
Pause. Food.
"The people they wiped out, or enlightened, would be better off without us, better alive and ignorant of the glories of civilization that trapped them in alcoholism."
That was our father on stage. We had our own dinner theater at home and it was interesting and instructive until he started seeing Japanese soldiers looking n the windows and started throwing plates at them and hitting us and the food flying off of them. Or he blasted us with Socratic style oratory. We were required to pay more attention to the subtlety of Greek philosophy than our food. On a troop ship crossing the Pacific Ocean he read a book by Socrates, but he made it sound like he had studied and absorbed all of Greek civilization at Harvard and Yale. Later we discussed his opinions. He was scornful of Europe, but had he ever been there? He grew up in Texas and had wandered around the western part of the United States and except for his service in the South Pacific (he could sing a few songs from that musical) and Japan (accompanied by tunes from The Mikado) he had never been anywhere. What could he know? Yet some of his opinions sounded very good despite his inexperience.
My own head filled with wonder about what Wyoming looked and felt like without towns and roads, white people coming in wagons, hunger and hope in their faces, killing the buffalo and shipping the Native Americans, who tried to be friendly, most of the time, out to meatless, treeless, dry, rocky places. I dreamed of the prairie covered with shaggy herds, streams clear enough to drink from, sage grouse so thick you could walk up and knock them in the head with a stick. No sense wasting a bullet! And no telephone wires roping the sky or jet vapor trails indicating high levels of pollution.
But with this freedom comes danger. At any moment a young Sioux brave might ride up to me and count coup by stoving in my skull. Those were dangerous times and strong people, full of love for nature, rich in talk of the elders, an existence that recognized the impermanence of life. This proved true, their life and their culture was impermanent. Now instead we have these new, dry neighborhoods, safe, story-less, heavy with fears. How long will they last?
We drove out to one of these neighborhoods where everything was crisp and normal looking, except the old lady with the sign. This new community was east of town. A name? I don’t remember it. The old lady wore a sandwich board sign protesting a lack of trees. There had been no trees on the brown grass of the plain before the houses were built, yet she believed that since there were houses now they should be shaded and protected from the wind. The city, or the builder, she told us, should plant them.
“I’m not talking about no Lombardy poplar nor no sugar maple nor no weed trees, nuther,” she said, “I’m talking about cottonwoods and pines, the kind that likes the weather here.”
“You’re not from these parts, are you?” my friend Pat asked her. I liked the way he casually used the expression ‘these parts.’
I ain’t. My granddaughter lives here now.”
“But won’t the wind blow the trees over?” i asked.
“It might! There’s a lot of wind out here!” By her accent i judged she was from the old south. She grinned and her face was so weathered and wrinkled her smiling created no new wrinkles. I was eighteen and fond of old people who were not my parents. I calculated how long my life might be and decided to aim for age ninety-one or ninety-two.
We had come to see Debbie and Dennis in their new home and the old woman with the sign met us as we tumbled out of the car. Until we saw her all we cared about was fun. My brother Art drove and parked his car at the very white new curb on the very black asphalt road. The house was on a corner so we could look four ways and see new homes. Their only alternating feature was the shape of the front porch. The lawns, except for a rare patch regularly watered and shining green, were light tan and many showed squared lines of new laid sod. Along with my friend from school, Pat, our crowd included my brothers Art and Dan. Both were older than me, Dan was oldest.
The old woman carried a petition requiring the mayor, city council or the building contractor to plant three trees per house. Instead of going door to door and knocking, intruding, she told us, she was walking through the neighborhood in the bright sun, trying to catch people coming and going. There were about ten signatures on her neatly typed paper. Her sandwich board sign, also home-made, hung from her thin shoulders and was unreadable from any distance. Two sheets of newsprint were thumb-tacked to unpainted quarter inch plywood tied over her shoulders with nylon cords and the words WE WANT TREES! penciled so thin on the paper the letters were obliterated by the glare of the sun.
Dan snorted and walked to the front door, mumbling something in a sour tone. Art pulled out a can of beer.
“Oh, no, never touch the stuff.”
Art said, “Have it your way, “ and walked after Dan.
Pat and i read the petition and signed it. “More trees sounds good to me,” Pat said.
“How old are you?” i asked.
Pat laughed. “You’re not supposed to ask that!”
“Old enough to know better and glad i don’t,” she said. Her smile was a fence with many pickets gone and an open gate in the middle. “Cain’t you get them boys to sign?” Dan and Art were standing on the small slab porch, had knocked and at that moment Dennis opened the door.
“I reckon they can’t read, “ Pat said.
I said, “They hate shade.”
“Hate shade? Why, they oughta like shade!”
We thanked the old woman, wished her good luck and walked to the porch.
Dennis welcomed us to his home. There were only a few pieces of furniture on the new wall to wall carpet, the odor of cigarettes and fresh paint. Dennis was short, muscular and smiling. He had driven a tank in the US Army and worked in a restaurant now. He was twenty, like Debbie, who was taller than him ~ they had always known each other, had played together as babies. They were two years older than Pat and i Charles and the same age as Art. Dan was four years older than Art and Dennis. In school Dennis was held back several years and would have graduated with Pat and i but he suddenly joined the army. While in the army he earned a GED degree, so they said he served his country in high school and in high school he was a soldier. Debbie sat on their couch smoking a cigarette and watching Lisa, about a year and a half old, stacking and knocking down bright wooden shapes. The child looked up at us coming in, said nothing and continued playing.
Debbie greeted us with a smile, without getting up and my brother Dan looked around the place and said, “Glad to see no one around here is anal retentive. “ This was his way of saying, “what a mess!” Debbie looked at him. I knew her from school, a simple, sweet woman who may have had a limited vocabulary, but i knew she understood Dan’s tone.
“What’s that mean?” Dennis asked Dan. He did not smile.
“Oh, nothing.”
Dennis looked at Dan silently for a long moment and then smiled. For the rest of our visit he ignored Dan.
One of Dan’s conversational flaws, a habit he must have mistaken for wit, was to overuse a phrase or word. At that time ’anal retentive’ was popular. It referred to a vulgar though necessary part of the body and the second word had a highbrow complexity. Whatever its clinical meaning might be, to Dan it meant excessive neatness and therefore fear of or control by forces tending to produce neurotic responses. Dan would use an expression like neurotic responses or anal retentive until his listeners were thoroughly disgusted or until chance cast another verbal bauble his way.
Pat sat beside Debbie on the couch. I sat beside Pat. Dan occupied the overstuffed chair by the tv, which Debbie got up to turn off. Art put his bag of beer on the coffee table and sat on the floor until Dennis brought in two folding chairs and he and Art opened them in front of the coffee table.
Of my two brothers the oldest, Dan, disliked cigarettes and would groan when someone lit up, then, reluctantly, he would give in and ask for one. My other older brother, Art, loved cigarettes and beer and always had plenty of both. We thought Art would die from his bad habits and often told him so. He was unmoved. We never showed him how being healthy was more fun. Art rarely criticized anyone for anything, even for giving advice. At the moment he was looking for a match.
“You guys want to light up this joint?” asked Dennis. When he smiled his eyes were almost closed and his face all happy curves and teeth. Debbie was very quiet by comparison and her husband’s jollity made her seem moody. ’Willowy’ was how Debbie was described in the high school year book. Being with Debbie made a person kinder while Dennis might get you into a wrestling match.
We looked at Dennis holding up the freshly rolled joint and Pat said, “I’m glad you asked, pard. Let’s get this show on the road!”
Debbie held the little girl on her lap and fed her from a bottle. Art put one of his boots on the coffee table.
"Art, were you born in a barn?" Dan asked him. Art looked at Dan and raised the offending foot and Debbie quickly said, "Oh don't worry about it, take it easy." Art looked at Debbie and Dan, his foot still in the air, then put it down where he had originally placed it, among the cups and glasses, stray socks, baby things, a rolled newspaper, half an inch of candle in a brass holder and a football. The coffee table, being the only flat surface in the room above the floor, was crowded.
Before the joint reached her Debbie left the room with the baby.
"Is Debbie cool?" Pat asked.
"It's Lisa's nap time, " said Dennis. "Sometimes Debbie lays down with her, gets her started. It's convenient."
The joint burned down and as it grew smaller Dennis rolled another one, "just like the other one," he said and held it up. We broke out in song;
Roll another one,
just like the other one,
This one's burned to the end,
and i sure would like a hit.
Don't Bogart that joint, my friend,
Pass it over to me . . .
and because the pot had increased and changed my thinking i followed the melody all the way to the end of the lyrics. This concentration on the song instead of the conversation separated me from the others and when the music in my head stopped i had to wonder what had been said while i was away. Pat was on the other end of the couch where he had moved when Debbie and Lisa left the room. Dan sat on my right in the big chair, Art and Dennis hovered slightly above our level in the tan metal chairs beyond the coffee table. In addition to listening to them i wanted to examine the items on the table, especially the football and the newspaper. The dirty laundry, cups and glasses, and baby toys had no interest and in daylight the candle was unnecessary. It was strange to think of the newspaper full of odd, spotty people who often looked like they were waiting for their photograph to be taken. They were people important today, not tomorrow. I could feel the bumpy skin of the football and heard it in the air a moment before the leather slapped into my hands and then, turning my shoulder and arm swung down and up to the wrist twisting, throwing, the whisk of it in the air as my wrist snaps, fingertips pointing the direction of flight.
Pat, Dennis and Art talked, leaving me and Dan out of it. I felt trapped, frozen with Dan and didn't want to hear his voice. Fortunately, Dan took no interest in talking to me.
Dennis described his job as a 'kitchen grunt' at the Diamond Spur, a supper club north of town. He enjoyed the work and the camaraderie and high energy in the crowded kitchen, plus the cheap meals. The staff could dine on prime rib cut steak, baked potato, salad, soup and a non-alcoholic beverage for two dollars. If the Diamond Spur was uncrowded they had time to eat it. Dennis didn’t get along with some of the Mexicans he worked with ~ they didn’t speak the same language, but after work they had a few beers and it was better
This set me onto a line of thought too fast and chaotic to describe and since i had studied Spanish and loved the language, some of my thinking was in that lengua. Ideas flooded and sunk me, i struggled to remember the verb for ‘to sink.’ I had lost the power to slow my thinking to a reasonable, communicable pace and in addition to being speedy, the thoughts were artistic, musical, cultural, so i wondered if these guys would be interested. I didn’t have the experience or practice in saying general, neutral things just to keep the conversation oiled and moving. I shut up. I tried to remain calm. If someone spoke to me i responded slowly and sometimes they said, “He’s coming back now, he’ll be here soon, ’ or ’never mind, he’s lost in the ozone.’ My mind was not blank, but tangled in complexities. I thought too much, not too little. The word ozone itself was new then and recently recognized as part of the atmosphere. I had never looked it up and didn’t know precisely what it meant. Judging by the way others used it, they thought it was a part of the brain used rarely and for exuberant thinking. Being unfamiliar with this part of the brain, one is easily lost in it. Just as a person struggling to keep a wildly careening vehicle on a narrow road would not be concerned with how the engine works, the anatomy of the brain was to me, at that moment, unimportant.
My thinking followed a wavering line through the middle of my knowledge of European culture, of which American culture is a vigorous off-shoot. My ancestors are German, but of German contributions to civilization i knew of none but beer, the Volkswagen and death camps. Most of what originates in Germany and in Northern Europe is considered technologically superior to anything from the Iberian Peninsula. Yet how can concentration camps and the bombing of Guernica and all the horror and death that followed from a culture full of austerity, nature worship and self-loathing be better than another full of wine, dancing and a national sport involving the ritual slaughter of a farm animal? It was clear that one people over compensated for their flaws while the other put their craziness out in the sunlight and that cured them, until they got sick again. These thoughts were vivid, but distant. They had nothing to do with the people who sat in that room with me.
As i thought of the old woman outside with her cause heavy upon her shoulders a solution came to me. She was right, people need and deserve trees, no matter who might have to pay for them and plant them, even if the mayor or city council or building contractor with all the force of authority say, “ There weren’t no trees there before we built the houses! Hey, that's why we chose the site, so we would have minimum of site preparation. Even an egghead can understand that!"
The answer was vigorous and easy to understand, but trying to match words to it and shape it, make a picture in the smoky air fell short of my grasp. I had to puzzle it together for myself and when i thought of the people in the room ~ kaboom! The light went out, the feeling was gone. Could they understand how useful beauty can be? It rests the mind and body.
Earlier in the day Pat and i talked about the ugliness of these row houses. His thought was casual and direct; “People have to live somewhere.” I had mentioned wanting to find a job in the country full of fresh air, and he said, “That’s not where the jobs are.” The existence of people in numbers creates an undeniable right whether they got there decently or legally. I would be part of the system, like it or not. Pat had a practical way of thinking and may have lacked imagination, but he did posses clarity. I trusted him, he was positive and happy and he compelled me to think in a different way, whereas, my brothers were suspect. One day i opened an old novel and read one sentence; “They used me ill.” The feeling stuck; i was used and was made sick. They were my bothers.
Dan flatly dismissed my opinions instead of reasonably refuting them, all of them, and Art was scornful of anything that might bog down the party. I think Dan was waiting for the world to recognize his genius and afterwards he would blossom into kindness. He read this, he said, in his astrological chart, that he would not achieve his full potential until after age forty, or fifty, or later. Art brushed off this idea by saying, “That means you have only fifteen more years to get high.” In my opinion Dan would not go far because he didn’t get outside himself. He took no risks. As i spoke to him, when he consented to listen, he didn’t seem willing to leave the limits of his own opinions. Given his limitations, how could i possibly tell him what i thought would improve him?
Two months before we gathered at Dennis and Debbie’s new house an event occurred in the south of France that changed me forever; the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso died, age 91.
On the day i heard Pablo Picasso had died i was smoking pot with Greg Lentz in his car parked beside our high school. The news was on the radio, an interruption of the rock and roll, that's how important he was. Greg Lentz looked at me and said, "Pablo is dead?" and turned up the volume. But there was no more about him. The voice making the announcement hurried on to more important matters, like what you fools out there might buy if you work hard enough while everyone who is cool gets it for free. That’s what commercial radio always sounds like to me.
"Pablo is dead." Greg said in the flat tone stylish in his school clique. Another item of style developed by that clique which i liked and wanted to be part of was calling famous people by their first names, as if they were friends, saying, “Have you seen Paul and Robert’s new movie?” Paul and Robert being Paul Newman and Robert Redford. As a counterpoint to this, they addressed friends formally, as in saying, "Good morning, Mr. Lentz," or "How are you, Mr. Fullenwider?" bowing very slightly, perhaps lightly clicking the heels.
Greg Lentz started his car, a Rambler station wagon, and we drove through the neighborhood. I said, “ He was about 90. I guess he lived long enough,” which i thought sounded good and might comfort Greg.
We took familiar roads east of school among quiet homes and as he drove Greg reached under his seat for a heavy book called A Survey of Twentieth Century Art. It was full of Picassos. Greg knew them all, he knew the whole book very well, had studied it closely. One hour of conversation with him in his car slowly meandering through a neighborhood near our school illuminated modern art more than all my hours in art class or any casual, solitary study. Greg put a new face on what i had come to think of as a subject known only to me, my brother Dan and lots of people in New York and Europe.
I didn’t know Greg Lentz had an interest in creative art and before then never suspected he ever had a fresh, unregulated idea. I befriended him so i could buy pot. Until then Greg Lentz was just an athlete/entrepreneur with energy and a winning smile. To him i must have been just another customer. We were united by the news of Pablo’s sudden, sad passing.
But it was not good for a young man like Greg, a star of the football and basketball teams, making excellent grades and involved in the best society to associate with a student like me. I was contrary; i carried lots of books probably full of complex, unnecessary ideas instead of one or two trim volumes and kept none of them under the seat of my car. I had no car, another flaw. I was known as perhaps a promising pianist but too eager, even desperate to talk about vague beautiful things, like books and classical music.
I resented limits, i rebelled against the short, unspoken list of acceptable subjects and grew sarcastic and intruded, violating codes with intent to disrupt, saying stuff about stuff nobody heard of which i knew would puzzle my listeners. Then i would smile, for my knowledge made me the possessor of mystery. This behavior made me a bad fit in the social plan of Greg Lentz and others like him. Years later i understood the depth of what he meant that day when he said, “Proportion in art is vital and essential in other areas in life. Proportion is key.”
He was right. Years after leaving high school and getting a college degree in something, Greg Lentz developed the formula for a very popular sugarless chocolate malted ball, went into business manufacturing and selling them and became very wealthy. I have heard he is now the biggest sugarless chocolate malted ball producer in the Midwest.
A month and a half after Pablo Picasso died i graduated from high school. Though unrelated, i connected the events. I had long been curious about Picasso, along with a few other painters still alive and in the idleness of the last few months of school when so little is expected, i satisfied my curiosity. Leaving school, the diploma ready to frame and hang, was a release from tedious work that had lasted all my life. I had no memory of being out of school. At age three i was placed in nursery school, as day care was then called, and had been in school every year since then.
I emerged into sunlight wondering where to go. The short biographies of Picasso in newspapers and magazines inflamed my imagination. Much of what I had dreamed of doing for years now appeared possible. The world was full of exciting places and people, particularly women. Picasso had a good job and plenty of women, people loved and respected him. Unfortunately, i couldn’t draw very well, so i decided to smoke cigarettes and pose with intensity. Picasso had such intensity. Here in this western state full of cowboys, mines and sage brush i would have a long wait. I yearned for Paris or the Cote d’Azur and in the meantime i could smoke and talk about art.
One story about Picasso that moved me concerned his near death at birth. This narrow escape, according to reports, inspired him to live intensely, to take risks, to create bold, fresh images. I thought the same thing had happened to me or at least i remember my brothers making fun of me for being a ’blue baby’ born with the umbilical cord around my neck, choking me, turning my face blue. Until reading about Picasso almost dying at birth being a blue baby was shameful. Now i was excited about it. It felt good to be haunted and driven by death. Nothing had haunted and/or driven me before and now i had a vital experience, a connection, a dynamic umbilical unto past glory.
One day, still elated over almost dying at birth, i was at home in the kitchen being intense around my mother. I told her i felt moody, restless, perhaps it was the fact that i had almost died at birth. My mother calmly said, probably not wanting to alarm me, that my birth had not been so bad. Not so bad? Had i not been born choking, blue in the face, in a state of strangulation? Was the cord, the noose, not bound tightly around my neck?
“Sure, but lots of babies are born that way,” she said. “The discoloration is natural. The cord was around your neck and it unwound pretty quick. Being born was no big deal for you, you came out kicking and screaming and you haven’t lost your appetite since.”
My mother often said a good appetite is a sign of good health.
My intensity withered. My mother said it; it had to be true.
The voice and face of Dennis came through smoke. He said, "I guess they're all right. I just like to mess with them."
"That's army training, i bet," Pat said.
Dennis had been talking about his Hispanic co-workers at the Diamond Spur north of town. Everyone Hispanic in those days we called Mexican. In school they were the most beautiful girls and the toughest guys. One of them was a short, square headed, barrel-chested wrestler with a permanent scowl. I sat reading on the back steps of the school one day when he looked over my shoulder and said, "What's that shit?"
"A play by Shakespeare."
"He's dead, ain't he?"
"Yes, he is."
He snorted with contempt and walked away. So much for Shakespeare. I tried to continue reading, but had lost the connection. Despite my dislike of the wrestler, he had thrust me into the newspaper present and Shakespeare was not a part of it.
Smoking pot, everything became strange and familiar at the same time. I felt i had little experience, yet what i had experienced was very vivid. It was all i had. I thought my lack of communication skills stemmed from basing all i said on books and music. I was told that hard lessons direct from the harsh world are better than reading, if they don't kill you. It seemed to me that reading is a better source of knowledge than digging holes. Could it be possible to effectively combine study and raw life?
After graduation i briefly worked on a construction crew carrying lumber and enjoying the physical activity in the open air and even driving a nail or cutting a piece of wood when one of the carpenters let me. The work was new, interesting and the pay inspired me to dream of buying a electric keyboard, or of places i could go. I was getting relaxed enough to really talk to the other men, when, for me, the job ended. Our crew leader often shouted and one of his favorite expressions was, "All i want to see are asses and elbows!" He was very skinny and nervous and he didn't expand much when inhaling prior to bellowing, yet his blasts were tremendous. I thought of him as a perverse phenomenon more than a man and wondered why he was always irritated and what he was upset about. One day while spreading gravel in the foundation of a house before hauling tongue and groove flooring and building the first floor deck, curiosity overwhelmed my good sense, I set aside my shovel, walked over to him and said, "Excuse me, sir. What exactly do you mean by shouting 'All i want to see are asses and elbows?' "
"Hey Shit for Brains, you can hit the bricks!"
"What? What bricks? What are you talking about?"
"Hit the bricks, beat it, you're fired! " he screamed in my face. In the shock of the moment i seemed to see his hair standing up on his head like a halo.
"What for am i fired?" I choked out before someone stepped between us.
"Get off the job, fuggaid!" he screamed as i was pulled away.
This was a stunning exercise of power. In Dennis and Debbie's living room i was equally stunned. Objects and people, all well known and understood, were now strange. Dennis and Art were involved in the world without the assistance of music or books, unless the book was a Chilton's manual, and the music rock and roll. Yet they were enthusiastic and looked happy. Not having a book began to look normal. Pat, to my left, was in harmony with the conversation. He was interested, involved, yet i knew he would later say the talk was “bullshit, mostly.” His family was large and friendly, his parents were liberal and that is to say, intellectually and emotionally generous with him. He rebelled by
being crude, by touching lightly on the ultimate vulgarity, racism. On the other side of me Dan, our oldest brother, was in all ways dissonant. He had not gone to our school, was in college and had not decided what to study or what he would do after getting his degree, if he got one. Dan did not make friends easily so he knew no one in our society or any other, I felt sorry for him. At the same time me too much.
Too many ideas crowded in on me, because of the pot, but mostly because my thinking was disorganized and i could put aside no idea, even for a short time, so the multitude flooded in, all shouting for attention now.
I took refuge in the simple images of the Spanish painter. I saw the faces in this new suburban home half the world away from Spain as simple lines from the master's hand. My musical training provided a scale upon which their voices rose and fell, but the deeper meanings of their tones wavered mysterious and unreadable. I felt the pressure on the surface of their skins. It was blood on the inside of their skins holding their bodies inflated. Only when they all looked at me at the same moment did i know it was my turn to speak and i had nothing to say. I nodded, i smiled. I heard words like 'lost in the ozone, 'visiting the other side' or 'stoned puppy' and nodded and smiled. It later occurred to me that my smile must have resembled a twisted gash.
Only Dan threatened to push lumps into the smooth flow of talk. He soon fell silent when he noticed the other three ignored or dismissed him. I felt him there, like an explosive, and i was powerless in his shadow. When the bomb went off i would go with it, so i kept my face turned to the others, who dampened him. I was unable to act. If i turned to him i would have to use language and he was the master of language. I might have to defend myself. I didn't want to fight.
Dennis told us about drinking contests with his co-workers after they closed the Diamond Spur. After six to eight hours of frenzied work and clean-up they were too excited to merely go home and sleep, especially when they could go behind the bar themselves when they needed a fresh bottle and make a mark by their name on the tab sheet and sometimes slip and put the mark beside someone else’s name. This is how to stay up drinking for free until sunrise.
Debbie returned without Lisa and heard the end of the story. “Sometimes he comes home just when we’re waking up,” she said.
“I don’t do it that often.”
“Yeah, but i worry about you driving.”
“At sunrise the cops are still at the doughnut shop,” said Art.
Everyone laughed, including Debbie. I didn’t turn to look at Dan.
All this talk about beer made Pat thirsty, as i knew it would. We were all thirsty now but Pat most of all because of his Irish ancestry. He was always ready for action, to drink beer, play football or basketball, smoke pot. After Art’s bag was emptied Dennis brought out a few cans of the cheap stuff and we finished them off. It was not enough for men restless and dry. It would be necessary to make a ‘beer run.’
They quickly decided to go and collected money, a few dollars from each of us. Dennis and Pat left with Art in his car and Debbie said, “I’ll go check on the baby,” and didn’t return. It happened quickly, leaving me and Dan. I relaxed. Now all the conversation, if there was any, would happen between two people and be less complicated. I didn’t want to talk to Dan, so i continued to silently look away into the empty room where the others had been. This period of silence lasted about five minutes, until i felt like smoking a cigarette. I took out my pack and shook one out.
“Mind if i get one of those?” Dan asked.
I handed him the pack and lit mine, shaking out the match and tossing it into the ashtray on the coffee table. Dan said nothing. I inhaled.
“Got a match?”
“Oh, sure.” I was tempted to say, “Need me to kick your ass to get your lungs started?” but Dan was my older brother. I said nothing and tossed him the matches.
It seemed to me then, as we smoked, that we had arrived at some kind of equal status or solid footing. I searched my mind for something insightful and important to say. I wondered if he was doing the same or waiting for me to say something he could latch onto.
He spoke. “Thanks,” he said and tossed the matches
on the table.
Eventually we talked about art because we couldn’t talk about anything else. Now i could express myself, now i could unfold, but Dan was a tough audience. In the middle of one of my opinions on oil painting Dan said, “Have you started smoked hard core now?” and indicated the Camel filter-less cigarette in my hand and his own. I smoked this brand because it was as close as i could get in style to a Galloise, Picasso's brand of cigarette.
“I don’t know, “ i said.
After another spurt of my enthusiasm he said, “So what happened to music, what about Grieg and Copeland and those guys?”
“The music is there in the energy, in the motion of the colors. Each key produces a color, are you aware of that concept?”
“Or each color produces a key? Does it work that way, too?”
“That could be so. This key/color concept is new to me and i haven’t thought it all the way through, but C major, for instance, would be yellow, a honey sound and color, a warm kitchen. Green would be D major, growing thick and entangled. And so a canvas has a collection of colors revealing a melody or harmonious tone. Picasso, working with the fewest and most basic colors could be said to write folk music.”
“But, you know, Picasso produced a lot of trash.”
“Maybe, in his later years, but anyone with his unstudied, spontaneous style is bound to violate academic codes.”
“And he was so egotistical. Look at how he treated his wives and children. He had mistresses and each time he got one knocked up he moved on to the next.” Dan’s familiar half-snort/laugh indicated critical pleasure.
“I don’t know anything about his private life. All that remains is the art. That is all that should matter.”
The discussion declined and i should have known Dan was tired of the subject when he told me of a tv show he had seen wherein an acquaintance of the late artist chatted over and about the master. Dan mimicked this International Celebrity, from which country was not clear, who seemed unaware that they pronounced the artist’s name ’pig asshole.’ I should have changed the subject immediately, but i was too excited. Dan had to abuse the name four or five more times before i felt stung and shut up. Pigasshole.
The silence following grew deeper and deeper and one of us would have to speak (it would be me) when Dennis, Pat and Art returned with the beer. They bounced into the room laughing and Debbie came out to greet them, a finger between the pages of a book she left on her way in the kitchen. They had had an adventure at the liquor store and had obviously avoided discussing the art of Pigasshole. When they saw Dan and i their enthusiasm never wavered even though by our looks they must have thought we were in the darkest corner of our own blue period.
Our gloom was non-transferable. Opening cans of beer moistened the dry scene, Dennis rolled a fresh joint and the show got back on the road. Seated again where they had been before, Debbie returned from the room where their daughter slept. The story of the liquor store adventure exploded into the air.
The drinking age at the time was nineteen and Dennis, age twenty, had left his driver’s license in his car and looked too young. Art was half a year away from nineteen and there had recently been a crackdown on under aged drinking in the city. Pat said at the place where they got the beer Dennis did some fast, hard talking because he had left his wallet here. All Dennis would say for himself was, “I guess I got a little upset.” Pat told us how, “Dennis lost it and got in this old guy’s face about being old enough to drive a tank in the US Army and own a house and have a kid but not old enough to drink beer.” It turned out the old guy clerking in the liquor store, who was only doing his job asking for the ID, had been in the same army outfit as Dennis and right away they were old buddies. That was why it took so long to get back.
“We thought getting old would do it for us,” said Art, “and we can buy beer anywhere, now ain’t that the shit!”
“Yeah, but i’ll go back there,” said Dennis.
“Yeah, that’s the place to go,” said Art.
For the next hour Dennis did most of the talking, prompted by Art and Pat, and this was fine by me. He told us about driving an Armored Personal Carrier through some woods and one of the men in the squad was being a prick so Dennis asked the man to stick his head out the hatch in the top of the vehicle just as he drove under a low hanging limb.
“He was lucky he was wearing a helmet, “ said Dennis, “so the limb only knocked him out.”
I listened and thought nothing exciting ever happens to me, my life has been completely boring. Dennis had a grindingly dull job, a wife and kid he had to put up with, all restrictive burdens, but he made it all sound like fun. In spite of myself and being with my brothers, i began to feel good. I started having fun. My own reactions were surprising. I would think of something to say and then think, no, that is the kind of thing i used to say, i don’t talk like that anymore. According to someone i knew nothing about, a novelist named Gertrude Stein; Pablo Picasso was quiet and used to stare a lot. Like most artists, he had to keep his eyes full. This would be good for me to do, too. If i couldn’t say anything at least i still make my eyes wide and intense.
Until then i only thought i knew these people. Their stories were familiar; two of them were my brothers, after all. I myself was a different person sitting in the skin of someone who used to be me looking exactly like me. I asked myself questions, i thought about what i was thinking about. There are roads all over the country, you can hardly go anywhere without being on a road, all leading somewhere, and very often buildings are built beside them. How true! Have you ever seen a building that was not near a road? Isolated on the couch, the obvious nature of this question came to me and i imagined asking this crowd of five people before me, “Have you ever wondered why buildings have roads going to and from them?”. Would they respond with more than puzzled looks and laughter? I decided not to take the risk.
Inside these buildings, however, every kind of activity goes on. Only the people inside the buildings, and God, if He exists, knows what they do in those buildings. People are dying, making love, being born, all at this very moment! And this has always been happening. No one is out there on the prairie grass popping out a kid, they’re all inside buildings. Only Native American women used to have kids out in the open air. People are killing each other right now, a knife is being stuck into a person’s body, and the one with the knife jumps back so the blood doesn’t get on them. The victim falls. The victim jerks and squirms and dies. Dead! The killer is frantic to get away and right across the street a baby is born. This has been going on for hundreds, thousands of years. Until now it seemed to me no one paid much attention to it, or to having an overall view of it or the whys and wherefores of it. I was taught to see only the narrow page of notes, notation and to listen for the beat one beat at a time, never the whole song at once. No one ever told me what i need to know. I myself must learn, i must teach myself, i must see and hear and think it all out and make sense of it.
The telephone rang.
We heard it ringing in the bedroom, beyond the kitchen. tensed and the rest of us fell silent. Debbie jumped up and ran into the bedroom, returning in a few minutes.
“Mom’s coming over, we’re going shopping, “ she said. “She’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Okay, i’ll be ready,” said Dennis and he started to put away his bag of pot and rolling papers.
“We better split,” said Art and stood up. We had come in Art’s car, so we all had to go with him.
“Oh no, you can stay, my mother-in-law’s cool. I like her. She brings goodies.”
That sounded unnatural to me. I thought mothers-in-law were a torment. We continued to talk and drink beer with the windows and front door open now to clear out the smoke. In fifteen minutes a car pulled up and stopped in the driveway and we heard the squeak of an emergency brake being applied. When the engine stopped the silence was deep. A car door thumped shut. We handed our cans of beer to Debbie and she put them in a cardboard box beside the couch and closed the top.
We waited.
When Debbie's mom came in ~ a stout woman who suddenly and completely filled the room ~ she looked at us and we looked at her. She handed a grocery bag to Debbie who took the bag into the kitchen. Advancing one pace deeper, Debbie's mom looked behind the door and ran her eye along the south wall and up along the edge of the ceiling without saying hi fellas or how's it going men or nice day guys. She looked over us and out the window at the rows of houses and a small patch of prairie. There were no curtains on the windows. It must have concerned her though she said nothing. I wanted to tell her she should not worry because no one was out there looking in; we would see them if they did, but the words stuck in my throat. No, they stuck in my mind and never made it close to my larynx.
From out of that compressed air any movement was sudden. Pat seemed to levitate more than stand instantly and extended his hand to Debbie’s mom, saying, “Hi, Mrs. Rice, remember me?”
She looked at him, expressionless, calm.
“I was in your third grade class, Pat Connolly, “ and when she silently took his hand and shook it she kept looking at his face and he continued, “Remember Paul Lucas, his brother Joe?”
Her face puckered but her voice was flat. “Oh, you were with that bunch,” and i could almost feel her thinking, ‘You haven’t improved as for the company you keep!’ And to my eye this was all that shone through her facial stone.
Dennis said something nice and she said something nice all flat as road kill and she went into the kitchen. Debbie sat across the table from her and they talked. We heard them but not clearly enough to understand the words. Their tone was moderate and unstressed.
We continued our own conversation in lower tones and since i had not been saying anything anyway it was easy for me. The others, the jolly ones, seemed to move with difficulty as against heavy air.
Pablo Picasso would have no use for any of this. He was never put in such a ridiculous situation. He could just walk out, go to his studio and define it all in one or two strokes. Let Dan say they were trash, Picasso would get rid of Dan with a single blob of black. The artist was admired everywhere, all because he could reveal simplicity. I was a musician, but i could still feel the music in the colors, the rhythm in the texture of the brush strokes. All the arts are linked, all are one, so a colorful line is really the same as a musical phrase or a poem.
Outside the old woman carrying the sign reading WE WANT TREES was not being dignified for her age. She wanted to get into the newspapers, start a popular uprising, but the real, true way to make progress is through sincere, creative expression. Show people to themselves and they will do the right thing. Most of what we hear and see today is all about being the perfect looking man or woman and being able to buy a lot of junk. Did that old woman know who she was fighting?
She was fighting money. Did she seriously think she could move the mayor, the city or the contractor who built these tiny castles to plant trees? Good luck, Granny! The pioneers cut down the trees and cleared the land and done it good and by God the land will stay cleared! Listen Granny, you are a tiny speck and even if you were a tiny speck on a thousand dollar bill those politicians and the contractor would laugh in your face. You might
as well be under the dirt. That contractor would cuss and punch the air with his cigar ~ who needs trees? Go ahead, plant ‘em yourself, they weren’t in my contract. It took the trees to make the houses and there were no trees there before so the old hag has no leg to stand on. Here is a man who loves sport and hates his wife. He takes a drink now and then, provides a good life for his family, goes hunting and broods in the forest because his son is not there. This boy; his pride, his future, the main goal of his life, the one who won’t make the same mistakes he made, must be queer, he must be. The contractor can’t stand talking to his son, the damn fool wants to study art!
Picasso was above such as these and many others. He had mistresses and wives, sons and a daughter by a very beautiful young woman and they often went to the beach. People like Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper came to see him. Charlie Chaplin and Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher, were his friends. Both of these last two, like Picasso were vigorous short men. They laughed about being short and knew one day short men would rule the world. No one Pablo Picasso knew was not famous and all were profoundly pure of heart, either purely evil or purely good and no matter what they were he could put them into lines and color pure, simple, child-like and good.
“Where’s the baby’s stroller?”
“Debbie has it,” said Dennis. His mother-in-law stood behind him and looked at him and looked at us and no one said anything and we would have gone on looking at each other until the sun set and we couldn’t see each other any more unless someone turned on a light and if no one turned on a light and the room grew dark we would continue looking at where the faces had
disappeared in to darkness, but it didn’t grow dark just then because Debbie came out of the bedroom pushing the stroller with Lisa in it and when the old woman saw the baby her face rounded up happy as an apple with a big smile. Her whole body got so happy she became someone you wanted to cuddle.
Debbie said, “We’ll call on the way home.” Dennis nodded. “I work at six,” he said. They left and we sat silent until the car engine started and the crunching of the tires on the driveway faded. Art closed the front door, Dennis closed the windows. Pat opened the cardboard box and redistributed our beer and Dennis rolled a joint.
Not much happened until we left, just more talk and smoke. I tried to keep track of what they said. Prospects for the Denver Broncos having a good season if they improve their defensive lineup or the various gaps and pressure requirements in a particular GMC engine or who was in or out at school and what they're doing now. All i remembered was the general idea, a series of categories circulating back to getting high, drinking beer and where are the women? Late afternoon shadows lengthened into the room and no one called. Dennis had to get ready for work. We stood up and said we would get together again soon. For sure, man. I felt like i had grown into the cushions of the couch and when i stepped outside the fresh air and the sun hit me so hard i had to step back. The air was dry and the houses and grass and the sidewalks very bright.
The old lady with the sign was far down the street. Art saw her looking at us and hustled us into his car. She was too far away to catch us even if she ran toward us flat out. I guess Art saw something to fear in her so we got away fast. Art’s car was his refuge and pride and the source of his salvation. We passed her on the way out of the suburb; she lifted and wiggled her fingers off the edge of her clipboard, waving at us. In her other hand was a sandwich.
The top of my head felt ready to fly off. We left the neighborhood, but where it was and which roads led to it i can’t say. It was like a place i passed through a long tunnel to visit, or came to along the bottom of the ocean. Pat and my brothers were not like my brothers or my friend anymore. They looked the same, but this was the outside, the shell. Inside they were very different. I had changed, too. When they spoke to me i stared at them or made a brief reply and they mocked me, asked me if i was busy contemplating my next masterpiece.
Pablo Picasso would never put up with this crap!
But putting up with it was all i could do, unless i wanted to walk, and i was not sure walking was possible. Until i could get away from them i would give them silence, it was all i could do. It was all i had in my head. My only solution was to get away. I would find a way, i would find a place of my own, even if i had to
go out on the sun blasted prairie or to a park, and stretch out on the grass, alone on the earth and feel the dirt and the heat welling up under me. I would escape and rest, I would find some shade.
End of “Trees”