She was supposed to be green forever, but shook her head, turning richly brown as earth under the rain. They scheduled time for a youthful blush; she blended into vivid garnet hues. She is Errant Autumn, changing into every color they never expected, never wanted. Flowing like warm ink under skin, there are too many curves and golden veins of her own selection to make everyone else happy.
So she falls, fluttering down under all the âwrongâ trees, but keeps the brightest leaves on upper branches, vivid at the edges of her mind.
Errant Autumn has a patch the color of witch's blood, pumpkins of a strange mother, spilling tartly orange from the center (or simply meshing with the sweet potatoes, skin milky and white). She takes this time for herself to breathe in with satisfaction the same chilled air that makes anothers lungs hurt and nose run, lighting a bonfire to burn bright in the night and absorbing into her hair, so she is the scent of her own season.
Heather Stockwell Takes a Job by David Seaman
The first time I saw Heather Stockwell was at my kitchen door on a cool Saturday morning in October. She stood, not quite five feet, just inches from the backdoor screen and greeted me with hands in pockets and Marlboro between her lips. She spoke as though she'd forgotten about the cigarette and I watched it dance as words and smoke came from her mouth.
"I'm here about the job," she said. Her eyes met mine with a firmness that made me feel as though she was more informed than I.
"Job." I was confused.
"Ad in the paper said you needed a handy man. Odd jobs. Electric, carpentry, some glasswork."
She wore jeans and a sweatshirt and I could see that her boots looked as though they'd seen some hard work. Her hair was cut short and was the same color as the filter of her Marlboro. She looked to be about twenty-one or so. I noticed the ash on the tip of her cigarette fall to my porch and I remembered my wife saying she'd run an ad for someone to come in and take care of all those things that I'd been planning to "get to" for years.
"Oh," I said, "My wife ran the ad. She's still upstairs in bed."
Still. I looked at my watch. It was 6:30 and of course Judy was in bed. I was the one who cherished the solace of early morning and lingered with the New York Times over my coffee in our big kitchen. It was a peaceful time of day that belonged to me.
"You'll want to wake her, then?" The girl hadn't moved at all nor had she introduced herself. So I made a quick decision.
"Would you care to come in?" I asked without touching the door. I was feeling guilt over my discomfort. She was, after all, such a tiny young woman.
"That'd be fine." She took hold of the screen door herself with one hand and with the other hand flicked her burning Marlboro out into my yard. "My name is Heather Stockwell."
She accepted the coffee I offered as well as the seat at the kitchen table. I thought about waking Judy, but realized that this was an unusual situation and wondered what had possessed Judy to put our address in the local paper. We live in a small Maine town about forty miles from the coast and though everyone in the town knew who we were and where we lived, the town was prone to drifters, those passing through, particularly after apple season, as they made their way back south.
"Tell me, Heather Stockwell, do you have a copy of the ad?" I sat down across the table from her and slid the half-pint carton of cream across the table for her coffee.
"I take it black, thank you." She was handing me a section of newspaper as she picked up and sipped from the mug of coffee. Her face remained unchanged by the hot coffee.
I looked at the ad. She had circled it in blue pen and it said only, "HANDYMAN NEEDED for small farm in Cromden Village. Odd jobs, maintenance and repairs. Fall into Winter. Payment negotiated. Judy. 397-0754"
"How did you find our address?" I asked this as I sipped at my own coffee, my actions intended to cover up my feelings of insecurity. This young woman had managed to find us and I almost felt stalked.
"Reverse directory." She placed her cup squarely on the table and then looked around the kitchen. "What sort of work do you want done? I can get started right away. Got my tools in the truck." Her head jerked toward the road where I assumed she had left her truck and her tools.
"Well, my wife ran the ad, so I think maybe you should speak to her." I didn't really know what to say. She was certainly not what E.B. White would have described as a handyman, yet there was something about her demeanor that caused me to believe that she could raise a barn in a single day.
"That's fine. I'll talk to your wife," said Heather. She lifted her mug then and drained it. "Good coffee. Thanks."
I rose from the table and stalled. "I'm pretty sure that one of the things she wanted fixed was that broken step you crossed over to get up onto the back porch. But I bet there's a list and she'll want to talk to you. Let me go upstairs and wake her." I stood behind my chair and thought about leaving Heather Stockwell alone in our kitchen. I didn't know this girl at all, but there was something about her; she was so solid; so self-assured, even with her rough edges and her short hair and cigarettes.
"Yeah?" She said this with one eyebrow up.
"Help yourself to more coffee while I'm gone," I said as I started out of the kitchen. On the way down the hall and up the stairs I thought of what I would say to Judy. This was a bizarre situation. Who, after all, would use reverse phone directory to answer a job ad that listed only a phone number?
Well, Heather Stockwell, for one.
Throughout our brief conversation, Judy was fairly simple with her words. For a woman of sixty-two, she was remarkably spry, but at 6:45 in the morning, she was not a woman who could think quickly. And, because of our guest downstairs, it wasn't likely that she'd have the benefit of coffee this morning.
"Reverse directory?" Judy wasn't the one who used the computer, considering it to be on a par with Pac-Man and all video games. She was not aware that the Internet was the way most people were navigating the world. Judy managed just fine with the yellow pages and the telephone and she wrote long letters by hand to our four children, now spread across the country. I would print the kid's e-mails for her so that she felt as though they'd written back to her. In this way she felt terribly tolerant of my foolishness with the computer.
"It's where you type in a phone number and it gives you the address and full name." I said this at the same time that I heard the sound of a car door slam coming from the front of the house. I walked to the window and watched as Heather Stockwell carried a large black toolbox around the side of the house.
"Judy, you'd better hurry because it looks to me as though she's ready to start work."
By the time Judy had dressed and we were down stairs, Heather's cup had been rinsed, placed in the dishwasher and she was finishing up with the repair to the back step.
"Good as new," she said as she stood on it and bounced up and down just a little bit. "The color will gray to match the others in time. After a year, it'll need to be sealed, but I'd give it a full season."
So it was with this that Heather Stockwell came into our lives. She arrived each morning shortly after I'd risen and long before Judy did. She would complete those things that Judy or I had requested and then she would do odd tasks that she found on her own. At the end of each week she'd figure a sum in her head and we'd pay her in cash, which she preferred, and we found her price to be more than reasonable considering that she spent all day with us. She always arrived in her truck and was often in the same clothing. Only the color of the sweatshirt changed. The outside work was done with a Marlboro in her hand and the inside work was done with the perfume of her cigarette smell filling the house. She was indeed quite handy and there seemed to be no job that intimidated her.
The first week of October brought snow. Heather arrived as always and was working on replacing the rotted two by fours that touched the concrete on the frame of our garage. It was cold that day and I remember thinking that it was odd that Heather didn't have a coat. A little before Judy woke, I took Heather a cup of coffee. Black. I always remember how people take their coffee.
"Do you need a coat, Heather? It's pretty cold out."
"Naw," she said as she tapped a two by four into place and then stood to accept the mug of coffee. "I keep warm just fine. All this moving around, I'd have it off again in no time."
She leaned against my truck and took a sip of the coffee. This sip was slow and careful and she closed her eyes as the steam from the cup rose to her face. For the first time, she seemed to be relaxed with me and I was sorry that I had not brought my own coffee with me.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" I asked her gently, but with the same forward manner that she had shown us over the past month.
"What's that?" she asked. Her eyes rose to meet mine over the rim of the cup though the cup did not move.
"What is your story? Where are you from?" I began to wish for a cigarette and thought of asking her for one of hers, but I'd quit back when Jimmy Carter was in office and to pick one up now was dangerous. Still, I wished for a prop. "I mean, we know most of the folks in town and one day you just showed up. It's like you don't have a past." I could see in her eyes that she trusted me. Even with her lips on the rim of the mug, her eyes were smiling. She waited a moment, saying nothing at all.
"Or a future," said Heather finally as she put her coffee down on the hood of my truck. She walked to the pile of wood and picked up another two by four. For a moment I thought there were tears in her eyes, but I saw that she was almost smiling, so it couldn't have been tears. She went on, "My story's pretty much the same as everyone else's. I'm getting by. Once I finish up with you folks I'll move on. I aim to make it to Virginia before Christmas."
"What's in Virginia?" I asked as I leaned against the truck and watched her work. I was relieved that what may have been tension had turned out to be nothing more than a measurement of my worth. I was pleased that I measured up.
"My family," said Heather. She placed the new two by four against the old one and with a pry rod began to chip away at the rotting wood that was there. "I would like to be there before the baby comes."
"Baby?" I couldn't take it in at first because she seemed so sexless that the thought of her being pregnant didn't make sense to me. "You're pregnant?"
As she pulled the rotting two by four out she grunted, "Yup."
"Wow," I said. "I have to tell you I'm surprised."
At this she stopped and turned to look at me. "Surprised?" she asked. "Why are you surprised?" I can't say if she was offended or if there was even a trace of chip-on-the-shoulder in her voice. I decided to be honest with her.
"Because you don't seem like the type." I said.
"The type? What type is that?" Now there was a chip on her shoulder.
"The type to have sex at all. You seem so-I dunno, straight to business." I knew I was not being careful enough.
She laughed, though. "Yeah, well, that's exactly what it was."
I waited a minute and she turned back to her work before I asked, "Where's the father?"
"The father?" She lined up the top of the pale yellow fresh wood and as she tapped the bottom into place and toenailed it in. She said, "I imagine he's right where I left him."
Judy is the one who found out that the baby was due in March and that the father was a fifty-year-old paper mill worker from somewhere northwest of Bangor. They'd spent that afternoon in the basement reorganizing shelves for storage. Judy would talk about what she'd need and then hold one end of a board or simply chat while heather created shelving for the boxes that Judy had amassed over the years and that we would someday leave to our four daughters to clean out.
"Fifty," said Judy that night in our bedroom as she unfastened her bra beneath her nightgown. "Can you imagine that?"
"No," I said. "I can't imagine any of it. She seems so down to earth. So capable. Did she tell you anything more?"
"Not a thing," Judy said as she slipped under the covers beside me and patted down the comforter around her body. "Not a thing at all."
Heather Stockwell's last day with us came as quickly as her first. She arrived at her usual time and took a cup of coffee with me in the kitchen just as we'd grown accustomed. Then she said, "It's time I finished up with the electricity in the barn. You got some dangerous wiring out there and a fire could take the building before you had a chance to call anyone." I nodded and filled in three letters on the Times crossword. Heather Stockwell stood up and rinsed her cup out at the sink. "I should be finished up before noon dinner," she said. She'd taken to accepting my offer to join us each day and we chatted, the three of us, about nothing it seemed, but Heather Stockwell had become as comfortable at our table for me as Judy was. It had begun to feel like the old days when our own girls were around. Once we'd learned of Heather's condition we'd begun to keep an eye out for her, making sure she ate well. She'd never let us in on where she was sleeping and taking her evening meals, but we knew that she had a good breakfast and noon meal at our table. The talk was comfortable and we knew what not to say to Heather and somehow she knew not to ask about our own children, whom she'd never heard a thing about during her months with us.
This caught me. "Finished up?"
"Yeah." She leaned against the sink and lighted a Marlboro, the only cigarette she ever smoked in my house. "It's time for me to head on south. I don't intend to be in Maine for Thanksgiving." Her hand moved absently over her belly and she looked at me for a moment in silence. "I have to ask something of you. A favor, I guess."
"What's that?" I said. I let the paper drop to the table. I thought about this young girl and how she'd arrived into our lives like a stray dog and how, just like a stray dog, she'd changed things so much.
"I need to leave something with you in case somebody comes looking for me. It's just a note. I'm not even sure that anyone will come." She took a long haul off her cigarette and then ran it under the faucet of the sink. She tossed the nearly full cigarette across the room and into the pail. Heather Stockwell was not the type of woman who would ever miss. "If no one comes before April, toss it out."
I wanted to so badly, but I didn't ask her. I simply nodded my head. She went outside to the barn and I sat alone with my thoughts. Her departure that afternoon was as fast as her arrival had been. Once she'd left, it felt like we'd lost a daughter to the real world all over again. You spend your life teaching then to fly and when they do, it hurts. But Heather Stockwell was one we hadn't planned on. It almost seemed unfair.
Winter passes slowly in Maine and Judy and I are not part time Yankees who escape to Florida, so we wait it out. Judy busies herself with suet and seed for the birds and I read. I enjoy evenings almost as much as mornings, so an evening that comes early is fine with me. We stay warm by staying in and if a Nor'easter comes in and buries us in snow, we can wait several days for George Deveraux's plow to come by. That particular winter was a tough one. We took more than one hundred inches of snow between November and May and by April even I was getting anxious to see some soil and sun.
By June 12, I noticed that the top step at the back porch was starting to look a little more like the others; that the color of the wood was starting to gray, like everything in Maine does after enough time in the elements. The thought of the step logically made me remember Heather Stockwell and then I remembered my promise to her on that last day. I thought of the thin white envelope she'd left with me before moving on. Virginia, she'd said. That's where she was headed.
Judy was in town at the time, filling up her car with flats of flowers and bags of mulch. I had put the envelope in the copy of "Come Along With Me" and since I was the only one who ever touched the books in the den, it was easy to find.
I sat with it in front of me at the kitchen table. I had promised Heather Stockwell that if no one came for it that I would destroy it. The envelope was very thin, no writing on the outside and I might well have vowed that it was empty. I sat tormented for a while. A man wrestles with his morality from time to time and though he wants to do the right thing, he also wants to do the wrong thing. I had made a promise to Heather Stockwell and though she was just a young pregnant girl who passed through our lives during the fall, I felt that my word was my word.
But who would know? She said that if no one came looking for her that I should throw it away. She didn't specifically tell me not to read it. I went on like this, back and forth inside my head, trying to convince myself that it was an ethical thing I wanted to do.
Judy found me, just as I was, sitting at the kitchen table. The open envelope was in front of me and I was simply staring straight ahead. She tells me now that she called me a dozen times from outside, but I don't remember hearing anything at all. I just remember seeing her pretty face as she picked up the letter from in front of me and read it out loud:
"Daddy, the man who gave you this letter is a good man but he knows nothing. He thinks my name is Heather Stockwell and he thinks I am headed for Virginia. The baby's father doesn't know I'm pregnant and doesn't really know me that well anyway. You won't find me, but to save you time of trying, my baby is due in mid-March and by April first I'll be a different person with a legally different name and far away from you. The baby will be in the home of a stranger with a new name and a better chance at happiness than you ever gave me. Thank this nice man who knows nothing and then turn around and go on home."
Judy was in shock, just as I had been. The letter fell from her hands back onto the table and she sank into one of the chairs. She said nothing. I began to weep. Big wracking sobs took over my body and all I could think of was my own children, spread out over the country, sending e-mails but never visiting. I thought of how easy it would have been to have Heather Stockwell become one of my own kids; how Heather Stockwell really did for a period of about four months when she was running from an empty childhood toward the hope of a real life. I wept for the sacrifice she made for her baby, for herself and maybe I even wept for myself for the ignorance and safety I enjoyed during the summer and autumn of that year when we had the chance to be a mother and father one last time.
How Scant the-Sheaves by Bryant McGill
Reflections of a Distance Traveled by Carey Parrish
Sitting alone, in the quiet of the night, listening to Diana Ross' Blue album, I find my thoughts drifting backward to times less content. Episodes of the past, which are dead and gone, illuminate themselves in my mind like spectres of a life lived long ago. The roads I have traveled. The hurts I have endured. The pain I have overcome. Ghosts from the recesses of my mind materialize slowly, steadily, until they are all around me. Not haunting me. No, haunting is too strong a word. Remembrances are a better description. Some vivid, some shadowy. They each reflect a time and a place where I have been and where I am thankfully no more.
The time I see, in my mind's eye, is a span between the late seventies and the early to mid eighties. A time when my family was prosperous and outwardly happy. Appearances are indeed deceiving. I am a teenager in this reflection. I am still at home. My father is slipping into a years long affair with alcohol. His moods shift as easily and as recklessly as waves on the ocean. He sees me as the outlet for all the pains he endured when he was a child. Namely a mother who didn't love him enough. He uses me as a verbal punching bag. He vents all the frustrations of his own young life at me. His words echo over the years like sharp daggers from their own time. No longer can they hurt me, and yet they deliver a sting in my recollection of them. "You don't fit in.""You're stupid and you'll never amount to anything.""You're a disappointment to me.""This diabetes you've foisted on us is an embarrassment to me.""You're weak and you don't have any guts." Why do I remember these things so clearly? I knew it was the alcohol but he honestly seemed to hate me when he was like that. Why didn't anyone come to my rescue? Now, in my clarity as an adult, I see that people did come to my rescue but at the time it was like I had been abandoned; at the mercy of a mean drunk who hated me. I finally escaped when I left home for college. Years would pass before I could let that old hurt go and live my life in the manner that I so desired. Cycles are hard to break indeed.
Another reflection looms before me. College. Harding University. Searcy, Arkansas. A happy time in my life after leaving the brutality I suffered at the hands of my father at home. My best friend from high school, Kevin, is my roommate at Harding. We shared an apartment off campus that our parents rented for us. No more was I verbally abused on an almost daily basis. I went to class. I studied. I partied. Kevin was the fraternal twin I had always wished I had. Although I would have wished the abuse I had endured at home on no one. Those happy years went by all too fast. I was content. The innocence of youth is a cliche that is all too familiar as I remember this time in my life. A time that was destined to end. One can't stand still. Life doesn't unfold in that manner. Standing still would be the equivalent of a living death. No, I couldn't do that. College ended. Kevin and I went our separate ways. Into our futures. Did I tell him how much he meant to me? I hope so...
I am ending my marriage in the reflection which now floats into my mind. I am happier than I have been in a long time. The future looks bright for the first instance in a long while. I am shedding a heavy weight that was bearing down on me like Atlas' rock. I shrugged first this time. Shook up my entire way of life. It was a good shake. A necessary shrug which threw off a few years of unhappiness and made my path into the future a clearer, brighter course to travel. This is a nice reflection.
I was on my own and doing just fine. The hurts of the past seemed like distant memories. Life was good. My career was sailing along. I had everything I wanted. I was happy. This reflection is suddenly marred by the intrusion of cancer. It didn't seem fair. It wasn't fair. I had spent many years living with diabetes, overcoming the hauntings of abuse, reveling in the end of a marriage that was stifling. I had it all together for the first time and then cancer barged in, changing everything. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with my cancer. All I knew was that I had to do whatever I had to do. I was too young to die. I wanted to live. I dug in with both heels and a firm resolve battle it out to the end. Chemotherapy and radiation followed suit. Baldness. Radiation burns. Chemo sickness. Wasting syndrome. Anemia. I ran the gamut of the complications of cancer treatments. I went through this four times. Each episode was worse than the one which preceeded it. Cancer was like a wolf running after me, always at my heels, and I had to keep charging ahead to outdistance it. I learned a lot about myself during this dark journey. Nary a recess in my soul was left unexplored. By the time it was all over, after the fourth round of treatments, followed by a bone marrow transplant for which my own brother was the donor, I had emerged as a new person. This me was a different creature than the one who had come before. This me was grateful for every moment. This me was ready to love everyone. This me was more than able to lay down all the pain of the past and move forward. Holding on to pain is a futile and useless waste of time. Cancer ravaged my body but not my soul. My spirit flew after its departure. This reflection, as dark as it promised to be, was lightened by a brilliant flash of grace from God. This reflection is how I know that there is a God.
I have to say goodbye to my Granny. This is where I am now in my sole journey through the distance I have traveled. Granny was my best friend. She gave me a refuge when I needed it the most. She was the one I could tell everything to and who would love me in spite of anything I might reveal. Granny was one of the safest places in my entire life. She had been declining for several months. Stomach cancer was finally named the culprit for the ailment which was taking her away from me. I watched her get weaker and smaller. I watched her suffer and hurt. I saw a proud woman slowly give up the will to live. She had no choice. Her independence went first. That was the worst of it. This climactic act in the play of her life was not her decision to make. She accepted her path as I had accepted my lot in life. When the curtain fell on her final performance, it was with a sense of relief that I watched her go back to God. All her pain and suffering was at an end. I could grieve for myself and the loneliness I felt without her, but I could never grieve for her. Reflecting on this is a dance with two distinct partners. One mocks me while the other comforts me. I embrace each of them, as I embraced the loss of Granny, and I compel them to become one.
He has died now. My father has died. The recollection of this reflection is still so fresh in my mind. It only happened a tad over a year ago. He went quickly. A heart attack. The last several years had brought a closure of sorts to our past together. We just never talked about it. His drinking had ebbed. He was mellowing in his encroaching old age. His idea of dealing with the past was to ignore it; to behave as if it had never happened. I played his game because he would never play mine. He wasn't the type of man to ever apologize for anything. No matter how wrong he may have been. He saw himself as entitled to do whatever he did, and that was that. I played his game because forcing him to play mine would have resulted in both of us losing the prize. I looked down at him, laying in his casket, a life over, and I forgave him everything. I didn't forgive him for his sake. I forgave him for mine. I needed it all to end. And so it did. Mercifully, it did.
The ghosts are receding now. The reflections are slipping away into the mists of my mind. I have laid my soul bare. Again. For these images have come to me before...and they will come again. I know they will come again. I welcome them in a sense. I embrace them for all the knowledge and all the lessons they have taught me. They no longer bring pain. I have learned to appreciate the contributions they make in my life. Their incorporation in my psyche is a large part of the tapestry that is me. The distance I have traveled to reach the place where I am now would be incomplete without them. I accept them for the simple reason that I cannot deny them, and I would not be the person I have become without them.
Where I came from, who I once was, and how I got from there to here...these are the spectres of the life I have lived. These reflections of a distance traveled are like a chapter I have closed, and yet can revisit on a whim. I know more clearly with each visitation that nothing entirely leaves us.
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." --William Blake
The Bum by Chase Von
Simon was a bum, but a loveable bum. In the harsh neighborhoods he prowled pushing his shopping cart in search of bottles and cans, local gang members would smile and remember following him as kids and asking him what he was looking for. That of course is when he talked more and told them that he was looking for cans and bottles, and that one man's trash, was another man's treasure. He rarely said more then "Hello child!" And thank you and god bless you! Because even after they were grown, they helped him get bottles and cans by handing him the forty ounces they had just consumed or the Pepsi bottles that were lying in the back seat of their cars on the floor- boards. They told younger children in the neighborhood that tried to be mean to Simon to leave him alone and no other gang could make a bigger mistake then to come into their "Hood" and harm him.
Simon wore the same Army Jacket for as long as any of them who knew of him could remember.
No one knew where Simon really slept at night but it was rumored he slept under a bridge overpass.
No one knew Simon's real last name but they did know...
He was a Vietnam Veteran.
The Congressman of the city thought it was a great idea by his lower aids to insure his reelection, by pretending to pick from the audience three people at random. Three people that had already been coached what to say about what their concerns were, he also already had memorized his answers to show how much he cared about what their "Supposed concerns were...."
It wasn't the aids fault that Simon got picked to speak. The one that was supposed to be in the chair Simon sat in got a cell phone call that dealt with the tragedy of a loved one and didn't bother to tell anyone that she was leaving...
Simon was looking for empty bottles and cans and thought that a gathering of this magnitude would produce a virtual mother lode of them. He didn't have his cart, in truth he was casing the area to see what amount of cans and bottles might be discarded... And would then come back later with his cart when everyone had left the park.
People that knew Simon smiled in remembrance of the sweet soul he had always been.
People that didn't know him looked at him in disgust and showed with their eyes they wished he was in another world, other then their own, or at the very least, not in the same space they were currently occupying.
One of the disgusted ones told Simon he was blocking his view of the stage and the least he could do was sit down so others could see. Simon unknowingly but always kind and willing to oblige, sat in the chair the previously placed person was suppose to be in but had left vacant.
Simon had mistaken the mans rudeness for kindness, he was always thankful that who most people considered ruffians, would always help him in the search for bottles and cans when they could but he couldn't remember the last time anyone had said to him.
"Sit down, and join us!"
It brought tears to his eyes...
From the stage that had been constructed in the park the Congressman said with a practiced flourish of his arms. (It was in fact practiced in front of the mirror countless times, just as he had practiced kissing the damnable baby doll thing that was made of a plastic that seemed to leave the horrible smell of it on his lips for days)...
"I was greatly blessed by being able to serve this great city for a full term! I seek another term because I want you to know, that your concerns are my concerns! Your worries are my worries! What you desire is what I want, and I will be honored to again do it for the next few years if you will have me! I also want to prove that by asking three of you randomly picked what your most current concerns are! So I can answer those three concerns immediately!" But do know also, that if reelected, I will listen to future concerns from all of you in this great city and address them as well!!!
Cameras flashed...
The pre coached high school half Asian half American student girl came to the microphone, and voiced her concern about the drug problems.
His answer drew a thunderous applause from the crowd...
The pre coached white middle class looking American male, came to the microphone and voiced his concern about taxes...
Again, the crowd applauded and the Congressman tried to look humble after his response...
Then Simon came to the stage, and security was already asking questions because it was briefed that the one that would ask the last question was suppose to be a Hispanic woman.
They figured out the mistake too late.
Simon stepped to the microphone, and suddenly a feeling hit him who rarely said few words and the words poured...
This... Is what he said... "Hear me my brothers and sisters! Hear me my brethren! Hear me! My friends! I stand upon a mountain of sorrows... And words might fall like tears from my lips! But my eyes... Are eyes! That have witnessed more then perhaps... A single soul should have to bare!!! And these words come from a scarred and shattered spirit! But one... That still stands... I do not know when eternity... Will swallow my humanly body... But I seek to leave a part of me behind... That time cannot diminish... Space cannot effect... And ignorance cannot conceal!!! In short... Words... For all that man, as we know it... Can expect to know of immortality... Are gifts... Gifts that breathe of hope, pain, despair, compassion, Tenderness, forgivefulness, loneliness, and yes Love... The human body may die... But gifts that touch humanities soul... Are always remembered... And all note worthy gifts... Whether it be paintings... Poetry... Exceptional far-reaching thoughts captured That all should be able to share... Or song... Live on... Because god has touched it... And what god chooses to bless... Cannot be undone... But it can be corrupted by the wicked!!! To paint... Is to capture a moment... But a moment captured... That inspires only hate and covetousness... Is destructive to all who lay eyes upon it... To write poetry... That is dark and destructive... And teaches none who read it... A lesson that leads... To the betterment of their soul... Is a creation by one that seeks and delights... In planting weeds to strangle the flowers... In another souls garden... To capture and record great thinking... That is uncommon to the masses... And use it to feed... An under privileged country... And by doing so... Feed god's children... Is a blessed thing... To use the same thinking... To create a better weapon of mass destruction... And employ it against more of his children... Is work that is done... By cursed souls... And no man or woman no matter how long... They live on god's green earth... Yes, in the world he created... Is anything but a child to he... Who has no beginning... And he who has no end... And to sing songs that make... The very angels take leave of heaven... So they too might draw near... To hear them... Is soul stirring... And fruitful to the spirit... To sing songs... That increase an anger... And promote violent behavior... Or acts of hatred... On fellow humanity... Makes the demons flock... Those with black hearts... And already banished souls... Smile... I stand upon this mountain of sorrows... With no desire to seek immortality... But to explain to men and women that have ears to hear my words... There are but two gifts... The gift of the light... And the gift of the dark... In this complex and turbulent world... Where no one knows what to expect next... I only seek to make you who still have ears... To hear me... Aware... That there is still a choice... If you choose light... You will see the face of God... If you chose darkness... Remember whatever fate that awaits... In that darkness... Is one that will last for an eternity... There is still a choice... My brethren... There is still time To choose..."
The red faced Congressman, said, I don't understand the question Sir...
Cameras flashed...
Simon said...
Excuse me Sir?
"But I do not believe we have met, and I am just seeing how many cans and bottles might be left over after everyone leaves".
Security escorted him off the stage and as they were questioning him the gang members showed up and said that he was one of their own and if they didn't stop immediately, things were going to get real interesting...
One of the security guards cell phone rang and the voice from higher said with surveillance cameras they had picked out the insignias on his jacket, ran his picture and also discovered his identity and that prior to him being released from the military, he had been in a mental institution to recover from a really terrible battle that had occurred in the Me Kan Delta...
He may be crazy...
But the Congressman is probably not going to get reelected...
So simply release him...
Unknown to the security, the reason the man on the other end of the line really knew all this information was he was his former Commander...
They released Simon and the Gang members helped him pick up cans and bottles after all the stunned people had left the park...
The Bum...
Can still be seen occasionally walking with his shopping cart... Picking up bottles and cans...
And local neighborhood kids are still helping him, because he is really old now and doesn't see as good as before...
To find them...
Part two...
The ending to this story, all things are connected whether we can see it or not in gods universe...
Simon should have been given a hero's welcome when he returned from his third tour in the war.
Simon hadn't got shot, or stabbed or hit with shrapnel... He didn't leave a body part behind like an arm or a leg on foreign soil...
But in his time, he was a well seasoned, and accomplished warrior.
It was rumored he could shoot the eye out of a mosquito from the length of three football fields or some said four away...
It was said he could disappear into the land right before the most seeing eyes...
Simon was once ...
A sniper...
But he did leave something behind in the war besides a highly impressive body count...
His sanity...
After leaving the Veterans Administration Hospital that was shabbily run, and terribly under manned, it didn't help his recovery much that he got spit on and called baby killer by what Simon considered the "Haves"...
The "Haves" were given cars for birthday presents, went to the finest schools, and had all kinds of supposedly deep philosophical opinions that were worthy of further contemplation but had only been under god's great sky in the real world on camping trips...
They had never become the jungle and so undetectable that even the creatures that lived there, didn't know you were there...
But he continued to wear his "Colors" the old army fatigue jacket despite that because Simon didn't or couldn't break loyalty with those he had served with and some that had died in his very arms before his very eyes...
As he held them...
It wasn't in his eyes something...
That was right...
He had to maintain loyalty to all his comrades and especially those that had crossed over...
The only one's that showed Simon love, were the gangsters from the "Barrio".
Or more precisely, the "Have Nots"...
The woman that was suppose to ask the last practiced question got a cell phone call that her daughter had been hit and was in route to the nearest hospital...
A drunk driver had hit her...
Who had continued going on his merry way and was later caught...
He was the Congressman's son...
He was one of those people that in their own demented way thought...
He was doing the "Have Nots" a favor when he threw trash out the window of his car onto the face of mother earth, which sometimes included...
Bottles of Jack Daniels...
Simon had picked up more then his share of cans and bottles that were there because of people that shared this boy's same philosophy...
The girl that was also pregnant survived, and so did her child...
The boyfriend of the girl was in jail and in later years would commit suicide because he couldn't deal with the fact that now...
Some other man was being called Daddy... By his little girl...
He was in jail next to rapist and murderers, pedophiles and car thieves, and people that had ate human flesh because he had sold a little weed to help his then girlfriend up the social ladder by using that money to pay her way through dental school. He hadn't told her where the money was coming from until he couldn't deny it when he got caught.
But previously he had tried, really tried, and no respectable place would hire him...
He was one of the little children that use to follow Simon around and help him in his search for bottles and cans...
The Congressman's son that was caught, got a great lawyer and despite the fact the Congressman did lose the election...
With the best representation that money could buy, walked free without one day in jail and a really short probation period... To celebrate the victory he was bought another car by his father, the once Congressman, which he then drove without a license and continued to throw cans and bottles and cigarette butts and whatever fast food he had had the munchies for at the time, out the window of the car on the face of mother earth to help the "Have nots"
Until he wrapped the car around one of mother earths trees and made national news for dying...
When Simon heard the news that the boy of the man he didn't know, but had met briefly, on the stage he couldn't remember walking to...
Had died... Blaring over the radio at the Radio Shack as he passed by...
He fell upon the trash filled streets he was walking on, enroute to the local supermarket that had a recycling station...
And...
He wept...
At almost exactly the same moment, a gang member in another part of town said...
"This is fucked up Homes, this is really fucked up!"
Another gang member said...
"He had a good heart, he had a really good heart!"
Another gang member said...
"Remember that time he took that bullet for your dumb ass Rico down on Crenshaw?"
(They all laughed)... Another gang member said...
I remember that time he tried to join the Marines but couldn't get in cause his rap sheet was too long from fucking around with us....
Another gang member said...
With tears in his eyes...
"You know Homes, SA would have laid down his life for any of us standing here!"
Another gang member said...
I still remember when Homes use to make us follow him around picking up bottles and cans...
To help Simon...
Tiny Gems by Jennifer Kirkpatrick
My children love me so! Each day I receive offerings Of such honest gifts Pure of stained motives Large sheets of whiteness Covered in splashes of purple Blossoming roses wrapped in tissue And little fists thrusting today's pickings At me. From the garden of my own Eden Sketches divine, refined by instruction Compliments abound like dandelion fluff Around my head and my heart like Fairy dust and stories told of sailing the sea These tiny gems endeared to me.
White Button Down Dress Shirts by Mark Gardner
I take a deep breath and pause before responding. I make every attempt to remind myself that, by nature I am a diplomat. I fully understand that it is possible to tell a man to go to hell in a hand basket and have him be happy to pack his bags and be on his way. I've done this before, my brother can attest to it. He has seen me do it. Still, some assertions have been made here which cannot be entirely true, and now there are more then 50 people who agree with it and argue against me.
It was stated that "everyone can chose to be happy."
I make my arguments using neurological studies that I find on the web. They continue with these assertions, and then claim the studies are false. I inquire if any would chose to be happy if a spouse were to pass away. This is a big joke. One of them tells me that if his wife were to pass, there wouldn't really be any other choice but elation. It sounds to me like he's miserable with her, or maybe its the other way around? He retreats slightly and claims that it was all in good fun, it was simply another jest. We're all so damned enlightened. I bet they always walk around with their heads held up high, knowing that they have chosen to be happy. I watched the news this evening. They no longer comment on the Katrina victims, the price of gas is going to go up again, one in twenty home owners are having their houses repossessed, they are still shipping the dead bodies home from Iraq, and I hope they're happy. Assholes.
I remind myself that I am a diplomat, before I accept the fact that I am about to completely fail in this role. I've had a really bad week and I am growing tired of this. I have been trying to avoid doing this, but I feel that I have no choice in the matter. I fully intend to clarify the issue, right here and right now. It was stated that everyone can chose to be happy. By using the term 'everyone' we leave no room for exception. One example is all that is required to prove this assertion to be false. I mentioned this before, yet they still feel that this truth holds. I have plenty of examples that will illustrate my point, and none of them are pleasant.
I'm taking my gloves off.
I was first introduced to Jonathon on a Tuesday morning at 10:00AM. He had a 10:15 appointment with a psychiatrist and I had been designated to take him as his regularly assigned staff had been in a car accident and was not going to be working again for several months. Upon seeing Jonathon, I was filled with a sense of disgust. His head was severely deformed. His brow was jutting forward as if it were designed with wind resistance in mind. He literally had no forehead. The area of his face that should contain his left eye was filled with a set of skin flaps that must have been once been eyelids. They were carelessly sown together and nearly resembled a second mutated mouth. To make matters worse, his right eye was caked with sleeping sand and his nose was running like a spigot. He was carrying a stuffed rabbit and I tend to think that the brown fur it bore was once a pristine white. He held it to his face and made noises into it. The animal functioned as an unintended snot rag. It took me a moment longer then it should have to realize that the noises he had been making were sobs. He was crying.
I introduced myself to him and explained that I was there to take him to his appointment. I was the new guy, and was therefore novel. He dropped the stuffed animal and hugged me. In doing so, he buried his face into my shoulder and soiled my clean white dress shirt with his sobbing. I stood as firmly as I could and briefly tried to remove his hold on me. My efforts were to no avail. I felt my skin crawling and it took nearly all of my concentration to keep from noticeably gagging. My disgust moved to anger as I realized that I would spend the remaining ten hours of my day wearing someone else's mucus. I pull myself together, and pull him off of me. On the way out the door, we passed the coffee machine. I explained to him that I had been running late and hadn't had my morning coffee yet. I put 35 cents into the machine and it drops a wobbly styrofoam cup onto a little black platform. The coffee steams as it drops into the cup. Coffee condiments are located on a small table next to the machine. I add cream and sugar and then I take him to his appointment. He never stopped crying.
My day passes along what seems an endless line up of people determined to remind me that my shirt has been soiled. By the time I arrive home I feel filthy. I don't want to touch anything, I just want a shower, some clean clothes and a few beers to stop my head from spinning, or to at least get it spinning in the opposite direction. I breath a small sigh of relief as this was a one time gig. Next week, someone else will take him, and he will no longer be my concern. My first week on the job does not exactly go so smoothly. There are points that force me to consider if I am in the right place, if I shouldn't perhaps be working somewhere else.
The following Tuesday I arrive to work at 9:00AM. I go through my list of appointments for the day and begin to process some of the paperwork that I have accumulated. The phone rings at 9:30. I pick up the receiver, state my name and ask "can I help you?". Its my supervisor. She wants to know if I can take Jonathan to his 10:00 AM appointment again. I hesitate. I tilt my head downwards to gaze upon what I already know, once more, I am wearing a white button down dress shirt. I tell her that I have a 10:00 appointment already. She tells me that Robert will cover my 10:00. I have that sinking feeling in my chest as I realize that there is no way out. She has already thought about this, and she has already planned for anything that I may or may not state as an excuse. Then she adds "Jonathon has been asking about you all morning." My heart sinks and I agree to take him.
I grab the keys for the transport vehicle and I walk to the program. When I arrive I see Jonathon standing near the corner. He's still sobbing into that stuffed animal and he's holding a styrofoam coffee cup. Its contents have spilled over the edges making the cup appear almost as brown as the stuffed rabbit. His day staff approaches me and he tells me that Jonathon has been asking for me all morning. He typically arrives at the program around 8AM, and thats when he started talking about me. He insisted upon buying me a cup of coffee at 8:05 AM. He has been holding that coffee for nearly two hours while waiting for me to arrive. I ask if he ever stops crying. The staff cooly tells me that he has been working with Jonathon for the last ten years, and in all that time he has never seen him stop. He further tells me that when Jonathon was 3 years old, he spilled juice on his father's new carpet. His father punished him by literally beating his brains out with a baseball bat. I feel sick.
Jonathon sees me and rushes over. He hands me the coffee cup and tells me that we're running late before proudly telling me that he bought it with his own money and that he added the cream and sugar all by himself, which explains why the coffee has the consistency of syrup. He hugs me and tells me that he missed me, and once more my white button down dress shirt is soiled by his sobbing. I have to peal him off of me again. He points to the cup, "try it, I did good."
I look at the cup again. The rim is covered with a mixture of coffee like syrup and mucus. I don't think I can do this. I really don't think I can do this. The door is 30 feet to my left, I could leave. I could run for the door and I could never come back. Anything would be better then this. He is still looking at me and he insists that I drink the coffee that he purchased for me and he is so proud of himself. I repeat to myself that I am not going to vomit, I am not going to vomit...I am not going to vomit, as I place the cup to my lips and attempt to ingest its contents. My mouth is instantly coated with slime and the coffee slowly rolls onto my tongue. I force myself not to gag, and then I swallow the mixture. I am going to be sick.
His staff laughs at this before saying "you might just make it after all."
"...In the job?" I ask through a sugar coated throat.
"No, as a human being" he states.
I am angered by this, not at the staff and not at Jonathon, but at myself. I have been self absorbed. I have been an asshole. Later I find out that Jonathon's average weekly paycheck is just over a dollar and a half. That cup of coffee was nearly a third of his wages. He spent a third of his wages......on me.........
A large portion of Jonathon's brain was damaged inside of a few moments with an angry father and a baseball bat. He has been crying non stop for well over two decades. He receives artificial tears at various points during the day as he drains his tear ducts faster then they can replenish themselves. Nearly every drug known to man has been attempted to curb his depression. None of them work on Jonathon. He sees counselors twice a week to talk it through. If asked he will tell you that he would like to be happy. He would give anything to be happy. He just cant get there. We have tried everything that we can think of, and when new treatments are placed on the table as options, we try those too. To date, nothing has worked. There are people who chose happiness. Honest to God I wish I could agree with these assertions. I'm sorry, but choosing is not enough.
Every Tuesday I walk down to the program and every Tuesday Jonathon is waiting for me, holding a cold cup of coffee syrup. Every Tuesday I drink that damn coffee syrup. Its the most vile experience that you can imagine. Its also the best cup of coffee that I have ever had.
The next time you call someone a retard, the next time that you stare at someone who doesn't look normal, the next time that you accuse someone of riding the short bus to work, the next time that you want to make fun of someone who you assume to be lesser then you......I want you to remember that you are one baseball bat and thirty seconds away from being just like Jonathon.
Happiness is not always a choice and I never wear white button down dress shirts on Tuesdays.
Featured Treaty Signers
Errant Autumn by A.D. Gaspard
Winner of the "Who Are You" poetry contest
She was supposed to be green forever, but shook her head, turning richly brown as earth under the rain. They scheduled time for a youthful blush; she blended into vivid garnet hues. She is Errant Autumn, changing into every color they never expected, never wanted. Flowing like warm ink under skin, there are too many curves and golden veins of her own selection to make everyone else happy.
So she falls, fluttering down under all the âwrongâ trees, but keeps the brightest leaves on upper branches, vivid at the edges of her mind.
Errant Autumn has a patch the color of witch's blood, pumpkins of a strange mother, spilling tartly orange from the center (or simply meshing with the sweet potatoes, skin milky and white). She takes this time for herself to breathe in with satisfaction the same chilled air that makes anothers lungs hurt and nose run, lighting a bonfire to burn bright in the night and absorbing into her hair, so she is the scent of her own season.
Heather Stockwell Takes a Job by David Seaman
The first time I saw Heather Stockwell was at my kitchen door on a cool Saturday morning in October. She stood, not quite five feet, just inches from the backdoor screen and greeted me with hands in pockets and Marlboro between her lips. She spoke as though she'd forgotten about the cigarette and I watched it dance as words and smoke came from her mouth.
"I'm here about the job," she said. Her eyes met mine with a firmness that made me feel as though she was more informed than I.
"Job." I was confused.
"Ad in the paper said you needed a handy man. Odd jobs. Electric, carpentry, some glasswork."
She wore jeans and a sweatshirt and I could see that her boots looked as though they'd seen some hard work. Her hair was cut short and was the same color as the filter of her Marlboro. She looked to be about twenty-one or so. I noticed the ash on the tip of her cigarette fall to my porch and I remembered my wife saying she'd run an ad for someone to come in and take care of all those things that I'd been planning to "get to" for years.
"Oh," I said, "My wife ran the ad. She's still upstairs in bed."
Still. I looked at my watch. It was 6:30 and of course Judy was in bed. I was the one who cherished the solace of early morning and lingered with the New York Times over my coffee in our big kitchen. It was a peaceful time of day that belonged to me.
"You'll want to wake her, then?" The girl hadn't moved at all nor had she introduced herself. So I made a quick decision.
"Would you care to come in?" I asked without touching the door. I was feeling guilt over my discomfort. She was, after all, such a tiny young woman.
"That'd be fine." She took hold of the screen door herself with one hand and with the other hand flicked her burning Marlboro out into my yard. "My name is Heather Stockwell."
She accepted the coffee I offered as well as the seat at the kitchen table. I thought about waking Judy, but realized that this was an unusual situation and wondered what had possessed Judy to put our address in the local paper. We live in a small Maine town about forty miles from the coast and though everyone in the town knew who we were and where we lived, the town was prone to drifters, those passing through, particularly after apple season, as they made their way back south.
"Tell me, Heather Stockwell, do you have a copy of the ad?" I sat down across the table from her and slid the half-pint carton of cream across the table for her coffee.
"I take it black, thank you." She was handing me a section of newspaper as she picked up and sipped from the mug of coffee. Her face remained unchanged by the hot coffee.
I looked at the ad. She had circled it in blue pen and it said only, "HANDYMAN NEEDED for small farm in Cromden Village. Odd jobs, maintenance and repairs. Fall into Winter. Payment negotiated. Judy. 397-0754"
"How did you find our address?" I asked this as I sipped at my own coffee, my actions intended to cover up my feelings of insecurity. This young woman had managed to find us and I almost felt stalked.
"Reverse directory." She placed her cup squarely on the table and then looked around the kitchen. "What sort of work do you want done? I can get started right away. Got my tools in the truck." Her head jerked toward the road where I assumed she had left her truck and her tools.
"Well, my wife ran the ad, so I think maybe you should speak to her." I didn't really know what to say. She was certainly not what E.B. White would have described as a handyman, yet there was something about her demeanor that caused me to believe that she could raise a barn in a single day.
"That's fine. I'll talk to your wife," said Heather. She lifted her mug then and drained it. "Good coffee. Thanks."
I rose from the table and stalled. "I'm pretty sure that one of the things she wanted fixed was that broken step you crossed over to get up onto the back porch. But I bet there's a list and she'll want to talk to you. Let me go upstairs and wake her." I stood behind my chair and thought about leaving Heather Stockwell alone in our kitchen. I didn't know this girl at all, but there was something about her; she was so solid; so self-assured, even with her rough edges and her short hair and cigarettes.
"Yeah?" She said this with one eyebrow up.
"Help yourself to more coffee while I'm gone," I said as I started out of the kitchen. On the way down the hall and up the stairs I thought of what I would say to Judy. This was a bizarre situation. Who, after all, would use reverse phone directory to answer a job ad that listed only a phone number?
Well, Heather Stockwell, for one.
Throughout our brief conversation, Judy was fairly simple with her words. For a woman of sixty-two, she was remarkably spry, but at 6:45 in the morning, she was not a woman who could think quickly. And, because of our guest downstairs, it wasn't likely that she'd have the benefit of coffee this morning.
"Reverse directory?" Judy wasn't the one who used the computer, considering it to be on a par with Pac-Man and all video games. She was not aware that the Internet was the way most people were navigating the world. Judy managed just fine with the yellow pages and the telephone and she wrote long letters by hand to our four children, now spread across the country. I would print the kid's e-mails for her so that she felt as though they'd written back to her. In this way she felt terribly tolerant of my foolishness with the computer.
"It's where you type in a phone number and it gives you the address and full name." I said this at the same time that I heard the sound of a car door slam coming from the front of the house. I walked to the window and watched as Heather Stockwell carried a large black toolbox around the side of the house.
"Judy, you'd better hurry because it looks to me as though she's ready to start work."
By the time Judy had dressed and we were down stairs, Heather's cup had been rinsed, placed in the dishwasher and she was finishing up with the repair to the back step.
"Good as new," she said as she stood on it and bounced up and down just a little bit. "The color will gray to match the others in time. After a year, it'll need to be sealed, but I'd give it a full season."
So it was with this that Heather Stockwell came into our lives. She arrived each morning shortly after I'd risen and long before Judy did. She would complete those things that Judy or I had requested and then she would do odd tasks that she found on her own. At the end of each week she'd figure a sum in her head and we'd pay her in cash, which she preferred, and we found her price to be more than reasonable considering that she spent all day with us. She always arrived in her truck and was often in the same clothing. Only the color of the sweatshirt changed. The outside work was done with a Marlboro in her hand and the inside work was done with the perfume of her cigarette smell filling the house. She was indeed quite handy and there seemed to be no job that intimidated her.
The first week of October brought snow. Heather arrived as always and was working on replacing the rotted two by fours that touched the concrete on the frame of our garage. It was cold that day and I remember thinking that it was odd that Heather didn't have a coat. A little before Judy woke, I took Heather a cup of coffee. Black. I always remember how people take their coffee.
"Do you need a coat, Heather? It's pretty cold out."
"Naw," she said as she tapped a two by four into place and then stood to accept the mug of coffee. "I keep warm just fine. All this moving around, I'd have it off again in no time."
She leaned against my truck and took a sip of the coffee. This sip was slow and careful and she closed her eyes as the steam from the cup rose to her face. For the first time, she seemed to be relaxed with me and I was sorry that I had not brought my own coffee with me.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" I asked her gently, but with the same forward manner that she had shown us over the past month.
"What's that?" she asked. Her eyes rose to meet mine over the rim of the cup though the cup did not move.
"What is your story? Where are you from?" I began to wish for a cigarette and thought of asking her for one of hers, but I'd quit back when Jimmy Carter was in office and to pick one up now was dangerous. Still, I wished for a prop. "I mean, we know most of the folks in town and one day you just showed up. It's like you don't have a past." I could see in her eyes that she trusted me. Even with her lips on the rim of the mug, her eyes were smiling. She waited a moment, saying nothing at all.
"Or a future," said Heather finally as she put her coffee down on the hood of my truck. She walked to the pile of wood and picked up another two by four. For a moment I thought there were tears in her eyes, but I saw that she was almost smiling, so it couldn't have been tears. She went on, "My story's pretty much the same as everyone else's. I'm getting by. Once I finish up with you folks I'll move on. I aim to make it to Virginia before Christmas."
"What's in Virginia?" I asked as I leaned against the truck and watched her work. I was relieved that what may have been tension had turned out to be nothing more than a measurement of my worth. I was pleased that I measured up.
"My family," said Heather. She placed the new two by four against the old one and with a pry rod began to chip away at the rotting wood that was there. "I would like to be there before the baby comes."
"Baby?" I couldn't take it in at first because she seemed so sexless that the thought of her being pregnant didn't make sense to me. "You're pregnant?"
As she pulled the rotting two by four out she grunted, "Yup."
"Wow," I said. "I have to tell you I'm surprised."
At this she stopped and turned to look at me. "Surprised?" she asked. "Why are you surprised?" I can't say if she was offended or if there was even a trace of chip-on-the-shoulder in her voice. I decided to be honest with her.
"Because you don't seem like the type." I said.
"The type? What type is that?" Now there was a chip on her shoulder.
"The type to have sex at all. You seem so-I dunno, straight to business." I knew I was not being careful enough.
She laughed, though. "Yeah, well, that's exactly what it was."
I waited a minute and she turned back to her work before I asked, "Where's the father?"
"The father?" She lined up the top of the pale yellow fresh wood and as she tapped the bottom into place and toenailed it in. She said, "I imagine he's right where I left him."
Judy is the one who found out that the baby was due in March and that the father was a fifty-year-old paper mill worker from somewhere northwest of Bangor. They'd spent that afternoon in the basement reorganizing shelves for storage. Judy would talk about what she'd need and then hold one end of a board or simply chat while heather created shelving for the boxes that Judy had amassed over the years and that we would someday leave to our four daughters to clean out.
"Fifty," said Judy that night in our bedroom as she unfastened her bra beneath her nightgown. "Can you imagine that?"
"No," I said. "I can't imagine any of it. She seems so down to earth. So capable. Did she tell you anything more?"
"Not a thing," Judy said as she slipped under the covers beside me and patted down the comforter around her body. "Not a thing at all."
Heather Stockwell's last day with us came as quickly as her first. She arrived at her usual time and took a cup of coffee with me in the kitchen just as we'd grown accustomed. Then she said, "It's time I finished up with the electricity in the barn. You got some dangerous wiring out there and a fire could take the building before you had a chance to call anyone." I nodded and filled in three letters on the Times crossword. Heather Stockwell stood up and rinsed her cup out at the sink. "I should be finished up before noon dinner," she said. She'd taken to accepting my offer to join us each day and we chatted, the three of us, about nothing it seemed, but Heather Stockwell had become as comfortable at our table for me as Judy was. It had begun to feel like the old days when our own girls were around. Once we'd learned of Heather's condition we'd begun to keep an eye out for her, making sure she ate well. She'd never let us in on where she was sleeping and taking her evening meals, but we knew that she had a good breakfast and noon meal at our table. The talk was comfortable and we knew what not to say to Heather and somehow she knew not to ask about our own children, whom she'd never heard a thing about during her months with us.
This caught me. "Finished up?"
"Yeah." She leaned against the sink and lighted a Marlboro, the only cigarette she ever smoked in my house. "It's time for me to head on south. I don't intend to be in Maine for Thanksgiving." Her hand moved absently over her belly and she looked at me for a moment in silence. "I have to ask something of you. A favor, I guess."
"What's that?" I said. I let the paper drop to the table. I thought about this young girl and how she'd arrived into our lives like a stray dog and how, just like a stray dog, she'd changed things so much.
"I need to leave something with you in case somebody comes looking for me. It's just a note. I'm not even sure that anyone will come." She took a long haul off her cigarette and then ran it under the faucet of the sink. She tossed the nearly full cigarette across the room and into the pail. Heather Stockwell was not the type of woman who would ever miss. "If no one comes before April, toss it out."
I wanted to so badly, but I didn't ask her. I simply nodded my head. She went outside to the barn and I sat alone with my thoughts. Her departure that afternoon was as fast as her arrival had been. Once she'd left, it felt like we'd lost a daughter to the real world all over again. You spend your life teaching then to fly and when they do, it hurts. But Heather Stockwell was one we hadn't planned on. It almost seemed unfair.
Winter passes slowly in Maine and Judy and I are not part time Yankees who escape to Florida, so we wait it out. Judy busies herself with suet and seed for the birds and I read. I enjoy evenings almost as much as mornings, so an evening that comes early is fine with me. We stay warm by staying in and if a Nor'easter comes in and buries us in snow, we can wait several days for George Deveraux's plow to come by. That particular winter was a tough one. We took more than one hundred inches of snow between November and May and by April even I was getting anxious to see some soil and sun.
By June 12, I noticed that the top step at the back porch was starting to look a little more like the others; that the color of the wood was starting to gray, like everything in Maine does after enough time in the elements. The thought of the step logically made me remember Heather Stockwell and then I remembered my promise to her on that last day. I thought of the thin white envelope she'd left with me before moving on. Virginia, she'd said. That's where she was headed.
Judy was in town at the time, filling up her car with flats of flowers and bags of mulch. I had put the envelope in the copy of "Come Along With Me" and since I was the only one who ever touched the books in the den, it was easy to find.
I sat with it in front of me at the kitchen table. I had promised Heather Stockwell that if no one came for it that I would destroy it. The envelope was very thin, no writing on the outside and I might well have vowed that it was empty. I sat tormented for a while. A man wrestles with his morality from time to time and though he wants to do the right thing, he also wants to do the wrong thing. I had made a promise to Heather Stockwell and though she was just a young pregnant girl who passed through our lives during the fall, I felt that my word was my word.
But who would know? She said that if no one came looking for her that I should throw it away. She didn't specifically tell me not to read it. I went on like this, back and forth inside my head, trying to convince myself that it was an ethical thing I wanted to do.
Judy found me, just as I was, sitting at the kitchen table. The open envelope was in front of me and I was simply staring straight ahead. She tells me now that she called me a dozen times from outside, but I don't remember hearing anything at all. I just remember seeing her pretty face as she picked up the letter from in front of me and read it out loud:
"Daddy, the man who gave you this letter is a good man but he knows nothing. He thinks my name is Heather Stockwell and he thinks I am headed for Virginia. The baby's father doesn't know I'm pregnant and doesn't really know me that well anyway. You won't find me, but to save you time of trying, my baby is due in mid-March and by April first I'll be a different person with a legally different name and far away from you. The baby will be in the home of a stranger with a new name and a better chance at happiness than you ever gave me. Thank this nice man who knows nothing and then turn around and go on home."
Judy was in shock, just as I had been. The letter fell from her hands back onto the table and she sank into one of the chairs. She said nothing. I began to weep. Big wracking sobs took over my body and all I could think of was my own children, spread out over the country, sending e-mails but never visiting. I thought of how easy it would have been to have Heather Stockwell become one of my own kids; how Heather Stockwell really did for a period of about four months when she was running from an empty childhood toward the hope of a real life. I wept for the sacrifice she made for her baby, for herself and maybe I even wept for myself for the ignorance and safety I enjoyed during the summer and autumn of that year when we had the chance to be a mother and father one last time.
How Scant the-Sheaves by Bryant McGill
Reflections of a Distance Traveled by Carey Parrish
Sitting alone, in the quiet of the night, listening to Diana Ross' Blue album, I find my thoughts drifting backward to times less content. Episodes of the past, which are dead and gone, illuminate themselves in my mind like spectres of a life lived long ago. The roads I have traveled. The hurts I have endured. The pain I have overcome. Ghosts from the recesses of my mind materialize slowly, steadily, until they are all around me. Not haunting me. No, haunting is too strong a word. Remembrances are a better description. Some vivid, some shadowy. They each reflect a time and a place where I have been and where I am thankfully no more.
The time I see, in my mind's eye, is a span between the late seventies and the early to mid eighties. A time when my family was prosperous and outwardly happy. Appearances are indeed deceiving. I am a teenager in this reflection. I am still at home. My father is slipping into a years long affair with alcohol. His moods shift as easily and as recklessly as waves on the ocean. He sees me as the outlet for all the pains he endured when he was a child. Namely a mother who didn't love him enough. He uses me as a verbal punching bag. He vents all the frustrations of his own young life at me. His words echo over the years like sharp daggers from their own time. No longer can they hurt me, and yet they deliver a sting in my recollection of them. "You don't fit in.""You're stupid and you'll never amount to anything.""You're a disappointment to me.""This diabetes you've foisted on us is an embarrassment to me.""You're weak and you don't have any guts." Why do I remember these things so clearly? I knew it was the alcohol but he honestly seemed to hate me when he was like that. Why didn't anyone come to my rescue? Now, in my clarity as an adult, I see that people did come to my rescue but at the time it was like I had been abandoned; at the mercy of a mean drunk who hated me. I finally escaped when I left home for college. Years would pass before I could let that old hurt go and live my life in the manner that I so desired. Cycles are hard to break indeed.
Another reflection looms before me. College. Harding University. Searcy, Arkansas. A happy time in my life after leaving the brutality I suffered at the hands of my father at home. My best friend from high school, Kevin, is my roommate at Harding. We shared an apartment off campus that our parents rented for us. No more was I verbally abused on an almost daily basis. I went to class. I studied. I partied. Kevin was the fraternal twin I had always wished I had. Although I would have wished the abuse I had endured at home on no one. Those happy years went by all too fast. I was content. The innocence of youth is a cliche that is all too familiar as I remember this time in my life. A time that was destined to end. One can't stand still. Life doesn't unfold in that manner. Standing still would be the equivalent of a living death. No, I couldn't do that. College ended. Kevin and I went our separate ways. Into our futures. Did I tell him how much he meant to me? I hope so...
I am ending my marriage in the reflection which now floats into my mind. I am happier than I have been in a long time. The future looks bright for the first instance in a long while. I am shedding a heavy weight that was bearing down on me like Atlas' rock. I shrugged first this time. Shook up my entire way of life. It was a good shake. A necessary shrug which threw off a few years of unhappiness and made my path into the future a clearer, brighter course to travel. This is a nice reflection.
I was on my own and doing just fine. The hurts of the past seemed like distant memories. Life was good. My career was sailing along. I had everything I wanted. I was happy. This reflection is suddenly marred by the intrusion of cancer. It didn't seem fair. It wasn't fair. I had spent many years living with diabetes, overcoming the hauntings of abuse, reveling in the end of a marriage that was stifling. I had it all together for the first time and then cancer barged in, changing everything. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with my cancer. All I knew was that I had to do whatever I had to do. I was too young to die. I wanted to live. I dug in with both heels and a firm resolve battle it out to the end. Chemotherapy and radiation followed suit. Baldness. Radiation burns. Chemo sickness. Wasting syndrome. Anemia. I ran the gamut of the complications of cancer treatments. I went through this four times. Each episode was worse than the one which preceeded it. Cancer was like a wolf running after me, always at my heels, and I had to keep charging ahead to outdistance it. I learned a lot about myself during this dark journey. Nary a recess in my soul was left unexplored. By the time it was all over, after the fourth round of treatments, followed by a bone marrow transplant for which my own brother was the donor, I had emerged as a new person. This me was a different creature than the one who had come before. This me was grateful for every moment. This me was ready to love everyone. This me was more than able to lay down all the pain of the past and move forward. Holding on to pain is a futile and useless waste of time. Cancer ravaged my body but not my soul. My spirit flew after its departure. This reflection, as dark as it promised to be, was lightened by a brilliant flash of grace from God. This reflection is how I know that there is a God.
I have to say goodbye to my Granny. This is where I am now in my sole journey through the distance I have traveled. Granny was my best friend. She gave me a refuge when I needed it the most. She was the one I could tell everything to and who would love me in spite of anything I might reveal. Granny was one of the safest places in my entire life. She had been declining for several months. Stomach cancer was finally named the culprit for the ailment which was taking her away from me. I watched her get weaker and smaller. I watched her suffer and hurt. I saw a proud woman slowly give up the will to live. She had no choice. Her independence went first. That was the worst of it. This climactic act in the play of her life was not her decision to make. She accepted her path as I had accepted my lot in life. When the curtain fell on her final performance, it was with a sense of relief that I watched her go back to God. All her pain and suffering was at an end. I could grieve for myself and the loneliness I felt without her, but I could never grieve for her. Reflecting on this is a dance with two distinct partners. One mocks me while the other comforts me. I embrace each of them, as I embraced the loss of Granny, and I compel them to become one.
He has died now. My father has died. The recollection of this reflection is still so fresh in my mind. It only happened a tad over a year ago. He went quickly. A heart attack. The last several years had brought a closure of sorts to our past together. We just never talked about it. His drinking had ebbed. He was mellowing in his encroaching old age. His idea of dealing with the past was to ignore it; to behave as if it had never happened. I played his game because he would never play mine. He wasn't the type of man to ever apologize for anything. No matter how wrong he may have been. He saw himself as entitled to do whatever he did, and that was that. I played his game because forcing him to play mine would have resulted in both of us losing the prize. I looked down at him, laying in his casket, a life over, and I forgave him everything. I didn't forgive him for his sake. I forgave him for mine. I needed it all to end. And so it did. Mercifully, it did.
The ghosts are receding now. The reflections are slipping away into the mists of my mind. I have laid my soul bare. Again. For these images have come to me before...and they will come again. I know they will come again. I welcome them in a sense. I embrace them for all the knowledge and all the lessons they have taught me. They no longer bring pain. I have learned to appreciate the contributions they make in my life. Their incorporation in my psyche is a large part of the tapestry that is me. The distance I have traveled to reach the place where I am now would be incomplete without them. I accept them for the simple reason that I cannot deny them, and I would not be the person I have become without them.
Where I came from, who I once was, and how I got from there to here...these are the spectres of the life I have lived. These reflections of a distance traveled are like a chapter I have closed, and yet can revisit on a whim. I know more clearly with each visitation that nothing entirely leaves us.
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." --William Blake
The Bum by Chase Von
Simon was a bum, but a loveable bum. In the harsh neighborhoods he prowled pushing his shopping cart in search of bottles and cans, local gang members would smile and remember following him as kids and asking him what he was looking for. That of course is when he talked more and told them that he was looking for cans and bottles, and that one man's trash, was another man's treasure. He rarely said more then "Hello child!" And thank you and god bless you! Because even after they were grown, they helped him get bottles and cans by handing him the forty ounces they had just consumed or the Pepsi bottles that were lying in the back seat of their cars on the floor- boards. They told younger children in the neighborhood that tried to be mean to Simon to leave him alone and no other gang could make a bigger mistake then to come into their "Hood" and harm him.
Simon wore the same Army Jacket for as long as any of them who knew of him could remember.
No one knew where Simon really slept at night but it was rumored he slept under a bridge overpass.
No one knew Simon's real last name but they did know...
He was a Vietnam Veteran.
The Congressman of the city thought it was a great idea by his lower aids to insure his reelection, by pretending to pick from the audience three people at random. Three people that had already been coached what to say about what their concerns were, he also already had memorized his answers to show how much he cared about what their "Supposed concerns were...."
It wasn't the aids fault that Simon got picked to speak. The one that was supposed to be in the chair Simon sat in got a cell phone call that dealt with the tragedy of a loved one and didn't bother to tell anyone that she was leaving...
Simon was looking for empty bottles and cans and thought that a gathering of this magnitude would produce a virtual mother lode of them. He didn't have his cart, in truth he was casing the area to see what amount of cans and bottles might be discarded... And would then come back later with his cart when everyone had left the park.
People that knew Simon smiled in remembrance of the sweet soul he had always been.
People that didn't know him looked at him in disgust and showed with their eyes they wished he was in another world, other then their own, or at the very least, not in the same space they were currently occupying.
One of the disgusted ones told Simon he was blocking his view of the stage and the least he could do was sit down so others could see. Simon unknowingly but always kind and willing to oblige, sat in the chair the previously placed person was suppose to be in but had left vacant.
Simon had mistaken the mans rudeness for kindness, he was always thankful that who most people considered ruffians, would always help him in the search for bottles and cans when they could but he couldn't remember the last time anyone had said to him.
"Sit down, and join us!"
It brought tears to his eyes...
From the stage that had been constructed in the park the Congressman said with a practiced flourish of his arms. (It was in fact practiced in front of the mirror countless times, just as he had practiced kissing the damnable baby doll thing that was made of a plastic that seemed to leave the horrible smell of it on his lips for days)...
"I was greatly blessed by being able to serve this great city for a full term! I seek another term because I want you to know, that your concerns are my concerns! Your worries are my worries! What you desire is what I want, and I will be honored to again do it for the next few years if you will have me! I also want to prove that by asking three of you randomly picked what your most current concerns are! So I can answer those three concerns immediately!" But do know also, that if reelected, I will listen to future concerns from all of you in this great city and address them as well!!!
Cameras flashed...
The pre coached high school half Asian half American student girl came to the microphone, and voiced her concern about the drug problems.
His answer drew a thunderous applause from the crowd...
The pre coached white middle class looking American male, came to the microphone and voiced his concern about taxes...
Again, the crowd applauded and the Congressman tried to look humble after his response...
Then Simon came to the stage, and security was already asking questions because it was briefed that the one that would ask the last question was suppose to be a Hispanic woman.
They figured out the mistake too late.
Simon stepped to the microphone, and suddenly a feeling hit him who rarely said few words and the words poured...
This... Is what he said... "Hear me my brothers and sisters! Hear me my brethren! Hear me! My friends! I stand upon a mountain of sorrows... And words might fall like tears from my lips! But my eyes... Are eyes! That have witnessed more then perhaps... A single soul should have to bare!!! And these words come from a scarred and shattered spirit! But one... That still stands... I do not know when eternity... Will swallow my humanly body... But I seek to leave a part of me behind... That time cannot diminish... Space cannot effect... And ignorance cannot conceal!!! In short... Words... For all that man, as we know it... Can expect to know of immortality... Are gifts... Gifts that breathe of hope, pain, despair, compassion, Tenderness, forgivefulness, loneliness, and yes Love... The human body may die... But gifts that touch humanities soul... Are always remembered... And all note worthy gifts... Whether it be paintings... Poetry... Exceptional far-reaching thoughts captured That all should be able to share... Or song... Live on... Because god has touched it... And what god chooses to bless... Cannot be undone... But it can be corrupted by the wicked!!! To paint... Is to capture a moment... But a moment captured... That inspires only hate and covetousness... Is destructive to all who lay eyes upon it... To write poetry... That is dark and destructive... And teaches none who read it... A lesson that leads... To the betterment of their soul... Is a creation by one that seeks and delights... In planting weeds to strangle the flowers... In another souls garden... To capture and record great thinking... That is uncommon to the masses... And use it to feed... An under privileged country... And by doing so... Feed god's children... Is a blessed thing... To use the same thinking... To create a better weapon of mass destruction... And employ it against more of his children... Is work that is done... By cursed souls... And no man or woman no matter how long... They live on god's green earth... Yes, in the world he created... Is anything but a child to he... Who has no beginning... And he who has no end... And to sing songs that make... The very angels take leave of heaven... So they too might draw near... To hear them... Is soul stirring... And fruitful to the spirit... To sing songs... That increase an anger... And promote violent behavior... Or acts of hatred... On fellow humanity... Makes the demons flock... Those with black hearts... And already banished souls... Smile... I stand upon this mountain of sorrows... With no desire to seek immortality... But to explain to men and women that have ears to hear my words... There are but two gifts... The gift of the light... And the gift of the dark... In this complex and turbulent world... Where no one knows what to expect next... I only seek to make you who still have ears... To hear me... Aware... That there is still a choice... If you choose light... You will see the face of God... If you chose darkness... Remember whatever fate that awaits... In that darkness... Is one that will last for an eternity... There is still a choice... My brethren... There is still time To choose..."
The red faced Congressman, said, I don't understand the question Sir...
Cameras flashed...
Simon said...
Excuse me Sir?
"But I do not believe we have met, and I am just seeing how many cans and bottles might be left over after everyone leaves".
Security escorted him off the stage and as they were questioning him the gang members showed up and said that he was one of their own and if they didn't stop immediately, things were going to get real interesting...
One of the security guards cell phone rang and the voice from higher said with surveillance cameras they had picked out the insignias on his jacket, ran his picture and also discovered his identity and that prior to him being released from the military, he had been in a mental institution to recover from a really terrible battle that had occurred in the Me Kan Delta...
He may be crazy...
But the Congressman is probably not going to get reelected...
So simply release him...
Unknown to the security, the reason the man on the other end of the line really knew all this information was he was his former Commander...
They released Simon and the Gang members helped him pick up cans and bottles after all the stunned people had left the park...
The Bum...
Can still be seen occasionally walking with his shopping cart... Picking up bottles and cans...
And local neighborhood kids are still helping him, because he is really old now and doesn't see as good as before...
To find them...
Part two...
The ending to this story, all things are connected whether we can see it or not in gods universe...
Simon should have been given a hero's welcome when he returned from his third tour in the war.
Simon hadn't got shot, or stabbed or hit with shrapnel... He didn't leave a body part behind like an arm or a leg on foreign soil...
But in his time, he was a well seasoned, and accomplished warrior.
It was rumored he could shoot the eye out of a mosquito from the length of three football fields or some said four away...
It was said he could disappear into the land right before the most seeing eyes...
Simon was once ...
A sniper...
But he did leave something behind in the war besides a highly impressive body count...
His sanity...
After leaving the Veterans Administration Hospital that was shabbily run, and terribly under manned, it didn't help his recovery much that he got spit on and called baby killer by what Simon considered the "Haves"...
The "Haves" were given cars for birthday presents, went to the finest schools, and had all kinds of supposedly deep philosophical opinions that were worthy of further contemplation but had only been under god's great sky in the real world on camping trips...
They had never become the jungle and so undetectable that even the creatures that lived there, didn't know you were there...
But he continued to wear his "Colors" the old army fatigue jacket despite that because Simon didn't or couldn't break loyalty with those he had served with and some that had died in his very arms before his very eyes...
As he held them...
It wasn't in his eyes something...
That was right...
He had to maintain loyalty to all his comrades and especially those that had crossed over...
The only one's that showed Simon love, were the gangsters from the "Barrio".
Or more precisely, the "Have Nots"...
The woman that was suppose to ask the last practiced question got a cell phone call that her daughter had been hit and was in route to the nearest hospital...
A drunk driver had hit her...
Who had continued going on his merry way and was later caught...
He was the Congressman's son...
He was one of those people that in their own demented way thought...
He was doing the "Have Nots" a favor when he threw trash out the window of his car onto the face of mother earth, which sometimes included...
Bottles of Jack Daniels...
Simon had picked up more then his share of cans and bottles that were there because of people that shared this boy's same philosophy...
The girl that was also pregnant survived, and so did her child...
The boyfriend of the girl was in jail and in later years would commit suicide because he couldn't deal with the fact that now...
Some other man was being called Daddy... By his little girl...
He was in jail next to rapist and murderers, pedophiles and car thieves, and people that had ate human flesh because he had sold a little weed to help his then girlfriend up the social ladder by using that money to pay her way through dental school. He hadn't told her where the money was coming from until he couldn't deny it when he got caught.
But previously he had tried, really tried, and no respectable place would hire him...
He was one of the little children that use to follow Simon around and help him in his search for bottles and cans...
The Congressman's son that was caught, got a great lawyer and despite the fact the Congressman did lose the election...
With the best representation that money could buy, walked free without one day in jail and a really short probation period... To celebrate the victory he was bought another car by his father, the once Congressman, which he then drove without a license and continued to throw cans and bottles and cigarette butts and whatever fast food he had had the munchies for at the time, out the window of the car on the face of mother earth to help the "Have nots"
Until he wrapped the car around one of mother earths trees and made national news for dying...
When Simon heard the news that the boy of the man he didn't know, but had met briefly, on the stage he couldn't remember walking to...
Had died... Blaring over the radio at the Radio Shack as he passed by...
He fell upon the trash filled streets he was walking on, enroute to the local supermarket that had a recycling station...
And...
He wept...
At almost exactly the same moment, a gang member in another part of town said...
"This is fucked up Homes, this is really fucked up!"
Another gang member said...
"He had a good heart, he had a really good heart!"
Another gang member said...
"Remember that time he took that bullet for your dumb ass Rico down on Crenshaw?"
(They all laughed)... Another gang member said...
I remember that time he tried to join the Marines but couldn't get in cause his rap sheet was too long from fucking around with us....
Another gang member said...
With tears in his eyes...
"You know Homes, SA would have laid down his life for any of us standing here!"
Another gang member said...
I still remember when Homes use to make us follow him around picking up bottles and cans...
To help Simon...
Tiny Gems by Jennifer Kirkpatrick
My children love me so! Each day I receive offerings Of such honest gifts Pure of stained motives Large sheets of whiteness Covered in splashes of purple Blossoming roses wrapped in tissue And little fists thrusting today's pickings At me. From the garden of my own Eden Sketches divine, refined by instruction Compliments abound like dandelion fluff Around my head and my heart like Fairy dust and stories told of sailing the sea These tiny gems endeared to me.
White Button Down Dress Shirts by Mark Gardner
I take a deep breath and pause before responding. I make every attempt to remind myself that, by nature I am a diplomat. I fully understand that it is possible to tell a man to go to hell in a hand basket and have him be happy to pack his bags and be on his way. I've done this before, my brother can attest to it. He has seen me do it. Still, some assertions have been made here which cannot be entirely true, and now there are more then 50 people who agree with it and argue against me.
It was stated that "everyone can chose to be happy."
I make my arguments using neurological studies that I find on the web. They continue with these assertions, and then claim the studies are false. I inquire if any would chose to be happy if a spouse were to pass away. This is a big joke. One of them tells me that if his wife were to pass, there wouldn't really be any other choice but elation. It sounds to me like he's miserable with her, or maybe its the other way around? He retreats slightly and claims that it was all in good fun, it was simply another jest. We're all so damned enlightened. I bet they always walk around with their heads held up high, knowing that they have chosen to be happy. I watched the news this evening. They no longer comment on the Katrina victims, the price of gas is going to go up again, one in twenty home owners are having their houses repossessed, they are still shipping the dead bodies home from Iraq, and I hope they're happy. Assholes.
I remind myself that I am a diplomat, before I accept the fact that I am about to completely fail in this role. I've had a really bad week and I am growing tired of this. I have been trying to avoid doing this, but I feel that I have no choice in the matter. I fully intend to clarify the issue, right here and right now. It was stated that everyone can chose to be happy. By using the term 'everyone' we leave no room for exception. One example is all that is required to prove this assertion to be false. I mentioned this before, yet they still feel that this truth holds. I have plenty of examples that will illustrate my point, and none of them are pleasant.
I'm taking my gloves off.
I was first introduced to Jonathon on a Tuesday morning at 10:00AM. He had a 10:15 appointment with a psychiatrist and I had been designated to take him as his regularly assigned staff had been in a car accident and was not going to be working again for several months. Upon seeing Jonathon, I was filled with a sense of disgust. His head was severely deformed. His brow was jutting forward as if it were designed with wind resistance in mind. He literally had no forehead. The area of his face that should contain his left eye was filled with a set of skin flaps that must have been once been eyelids. They were carelessly sown together and nearly resembled a second mutated mouth. To make matters worse, his right eye was caked with sleeping sand and his nose was running like a spigot. He was carrying a stuffed rabbit and I tend to think that the brown fur it bore was once a pristine white. He held it to his face and made noises into it. The animal functioned as an unintended snot rag. It took me a moment longer then it should have to realize that the noises he had been making were sobs. He was crying.
I introduced myself to him and explained that I was there to take him to his appointment. I was the new guy, and was therefore novel. He dropped the stuffed animal and hugged me. In doing so, he buried his face into my shoulder and soiled my clean white dress shirt with his sobbing. I stood as firmly as I could and briefly tried to remove his hold on me. My efforts were to no avail. I felt my skin crawling and it took nearly all of my concentration to keep from noticeably gagging. My disgust moved to anger as I realized that I would spend the remaining ten hours of my day wearing someone else's mucus. I pull myself together, and pull him off of me. On the way out the door, we passed the coffee machine. I explained to him that I had been running late and hadn't had my morning coffee yet. I put 35 cents into the machine and it drops a wobbly styrofoam cup onto a little black platform. The coffee steams as it drops into the cup. Coffee condiments are located on a small table next to the machine. I add cream and sugar and then I take him to his appointment. He never stopped crying.
My day passes along what seems an endless line up of people determined to remind me that my shirt has been soiled. By the time I arrive home I feel filthy. I don't want to touch anything, I just want a shower, some clean clothes and a few beers to stop my head from spinning, or to at least get it spinning in the opposite direction. I breath a small sigh of relief as this was a one time gig. Next week, someone else will take him, and he will no longer be my concern. My first week on the job does not exactly go so smoothly. There are points that force me to consider if I am in the right place, if I shouldn't perhaps be working somewhere else.
The following Tuesday I arrive to work at 9:00AM. I go through my list of appointments for the day and begin to process some of the paperwork that I have accumulated. The phone rings at 9:30. I pick up the receiver, state my name and ask "can I help you?". Its my supervisor. She wants to know if I can take Jonathan to his 10:00 AM appointment again. I hesitate. I tilt my head downwards to gaze upon what I already know, once more, I am wearing a white button down dress shirt. I tell her that I have a 10:00 appointment already. She tells me that Robert will cover my 10:00. I have that sinking feeling in my chest as I realize that there is no way out. She has already thought about this, and she has already planned for anything that I may or may not state as an excuse. Then she adds "Jonathon has been asking about you all morning." My heart sinks and I agree to take him.
I grab the keys for the transport vehicle and I walk t
