We’ve seen too many movies not to recognize what happened. So many that we can tick them off on our fingers. A gigantic corporate entity recognizes a threat to its existence emerging on the horizon and starts taking increasingly diabolic steps to eliminate the threat. In the movies, the final solution usually involves eliminating anyone and anything that stands in the way.
 
I remember as a teacher, we once had to use this program that required us to present our lessons in a certain way in carefully regulated chunks of time. We actually had administrators standing in the back of our rooms with stop watches signaling us when we went over the allotted time for each segment. We were later criticized for not sticking to script.
 
Every year, the people from the program would show up and teach us what we had to do. They always worked in tandem like those people who sell air-friers, and always had nice, shiny teeth and big, fake-ass smiles. But the essence of their teaching was always to do things EXACTLY the way they told us to do things.
 
In the comments they solicited after the day and a half of indoctrination, I wrote, “You are not Jesus Christ, and nothing that you said should ever be inscribed in stone.” I said this because I could envision the day that they brought stone obelisks into our rooms. I also advised them that if they opened it up and told us to run with the good things, they could come back the next year and reap a harvest of the creative re-imaginings of what they had presented to us.
 
It made me wonder why they didn’t. Then I suddenly knew. They were afraid of their ability to keep up with the change and preferred to defend their territory via intimidation and force rather than the expose the short-comings of their brand. It also amazed me at just how willing our own administration was to do the dirty-work of this enforcement for them.
 
This led me to the realization that Jesus was not killed for what he taught. He was crucified because he damaged the brands of the Pharisees and the Roman Empire. He could speak the truth all he wanted as long as nobody began to realize that he was saying there was a better way to organize their spiritual and political lives. It didn’t matter that Jesus said to give unto Caesar, that which was Caesar’s, he’d undercut the branding of the two largest corporations in Judaea at the time.
 
Charley Kirk was murdered because he did the same thing. The modern left has failed to grasp the reality that their brand is crap and most people have figured it out. They keep pretending that we don’t notice that they kept adapting Soviet style news tactics instead of admitting their mistakes.
 
 Now, they keep putting on ever ridiculous performances pieces and staging increasingly dumb pranks. The American people have eyes and ears, and it makes me wonder at what point they are going to start demand that the rest of us wear blinders and ear plugs in lieu of sending out candidates that don’t look and act like insane cartoon characters?

Not to mention, they’ve also gotten so use to their own flatulence that they can’t even smell the stench of what they promote. What will they do when someone points it out, demand we wear clothespins on our noses?
 
And I’m not going to say that the Conservative leadership is that much better. Well, I am kind of, but only because the Left is has become so stinking bad. All I can say, that if the Conservative leaders actually did what they said they would do, things would never have gotten this bad. Instead of showing us videos of all the obese, purple-haired, nose-ring wearing triggered women screaming, they could have actually done something to stop all the bad stuff while it was happening instead of waiting until the statute of limitations has run out. They’ve become the biggest bunch of whiners in the history of the Republic and remind me of all those Scottish nobles in the movie Braveheart who got William Wallace murdered.
 
Charlie didn't get killed because of what he said. He got killed because the kids listened--brands were being damaged.

    Now if I'm going to be honest, it would probably be best starting out by admitting that Izzy Morrison and Strat Parson were never in their wildest dreams ever going to be rocket scientists, or even lab technicians for that matter. The best they could ever hope for in that regard would probably be as participants in consumer product testing.

Truth is they were fired from every fast food place that was foolish enough to hire them in the first place, Izzy once got fired from a Burger King in LaBrea for telling a customer, "If you knew what was in that burger, you'd never eat it." And Strat once took off from his job as a fry cook for over week and returned thinking his job would still be there waiting. In that one, the manager had to fill in and was so angry at having to actually work he threatened to kill Strat and got fired too. The duo still studiously avoids the area around Disneyland because they worry about running into the man.

     Not the sharpest tool in the shed is a phrase that doesn't nearly do justice to the level of ignorance these two lovable dimwits manifest. It would have to be adjusted to say something more like, Not the sharpest tool in a Home Depot warehouse that specialized in something like manufacturing sponges.

    But both had valid excuses. Izzy's parents were functionally illiterate members of a cult that required an oath never to ever learn to read, write, or ever use any formal logic. Truth be told, in a just universe, they probably should have been prohibited from marrying. The official slogan of the cult was 'Ignorance is Bliss.' One member, and only one member, of the cult was exempted from the requirements and given the task of memorizing the slogan because nobody else could spell the words, or read them for that matter. The cult was named The Followers of Oral Commandments.

   Strat, on the other hand, was named after his dad's third favorite guitar. He had a brother named Gipson and a sister named Epiphone. His dad Geezer was fired from the LA based heavy metal band Lucifer's Loogie because he couldn't remember the three word choruses he was required to sing and kept mumbling things like 'Feel Me, Satin" that put him at odds with the rest of his band-mates. The band's back-up singer Raven Moskewitz went with him mainly because she liked how he looked in his Ozzie is Not God T-shirt (the word God crossed-out).

      Raven only found out she was pregnant with Gipson after one of her groupie friends told her that the PH test strips she had bought at a local Target were supposed to be used for testing the water of fish tanks and had very little, if anything, to do with determining pregnancy. Geezer and her had a lot of arguments over it because he was convinced that the mistake was part of huge government conspiracy, she, on the other hand, believed it was just a misunderstanding.

    It didn't help matters that they also smoked a lot of weed.

    In their role of doing consumer testing, Izzy and Strat got chosen to participate in a survey that sought to discover why Hollywood tourism had fallen over thirty % during the Covid years. Teams of two were sent out to visit several carefully selected areas and institutions such as Grumman's Chinese Theater. The flier that came in the mail told Izzy and Strat that their job was to visit the somewhat obscure Hollywood Museum of Celebrity Underwear. Strat was disappointed because he really wanted to put his hands in those hand prints at the theater. Izzy told him, "Screw that, man! We could have got the Whiskey or the Troubadour."


   The Hollywood Museum of Celebrity Underwear was located not exactly on the strip but rather on a side street and had to be accessed by going down an alley between two  deserted looking brick warehouses. It was easy to find though because the huge red letters on the side of one of the buildings read, 'HOLLYWOOD UNDERWEAR' with an equally large red arrow pointing in the direction of the museum. The Museum was created in 1952 by a German refugee named Lars Kommando. He later laid claim to being the person who first coined the term 'going commando," but when he asked his wife Lois to validate the claim, she used to say, "You're full of crap, Lars. You always were."

   On entering the building, the boys quickly discovered that Lars was an absentee owner; at ninety-three, he and Lois had retired to Palm Springs, leaving the actual running of the iconic institution to their rather slack-jawed son-in law, Luther, a cretinous looking moron if there ever was one. For one thing, the grimy, muscle shirt he was wearing when they came in, was a couple of sizes too small, exposing a hairy and rather disconcerting looking belly-button. Another off-putting trait Luther possessed was the fact that he was a chain-smoker's chain-smoker, and that he was permanently surrounded by a nicotine cloud. On the folding table that served in lieu of an actual ticket booth, there was a large Folgers coffee can full cigarette butts, so many butts that it gave the illusion that Luther was collecting them for some unknownreason.

    "That'll be twenty dollars," Luther spat at them as they entered, sounding kind of mad, like he was little bit perturbed by their presence as if they had interrupted his smoking.

      "Sign says 10% off for two," Strat said pointing at the sign behind Luther."

        Luther sneered, "Just my luck, someone who could read." He reached into the cardboard box with a Nike sign on the side, and selected two singles and made quite a show of handing one each to the guys.

         Izzy explained why they'd come and pulled out a little blue note-book from his back pocket. He then rummaged around in one of his front pockets and came up with a stub of a pencil.  "For the sake of our reporting, I need to ask you whether or not you guys sell concessions here, you know, something like pop-corn or hot-dogs."

        Luther stubbed out a cigarette before answering, "This is an underwear museum, dude. People don't come here to eat pop-corn or hot-dogs. They come here to see underwear. Now, we do have some water bottles in that fridge over there that we sell for a dollar a pop. He pointed at refrigerator in the corner of the room that did, in fact, have a sign on it that said, "Water $1.00' Then he added,"For some reason, looking at underwear makes people thirsty. Never had no one asked me for some pop-corn though. Can I interest you in a water?"

         Izzy and Strat declined. Luther taking no umbrage, just mumbled, "Don't say I didn't warn ya."

       They entered into the large room where the museum formally began and immediately noticed a pair of white tidy-whites in a large black frame. To the left of the framed undies was a smaller picture of Tom Cruise as he looked in the famous Risky Business dance scene.

     Izzy was the first to point out, "Lookie there, Strat. That's a genuine certificate of verification. That means these are the real deal." He then pulled the note-book back out and wrote something in it.

        "Damn it to Hell, Iz. They're in a museum ain't they? What do you think they was going do, just hang up any old pair of shorts up there? People in Los Angeles would catch on to that scam pretty damn easy if you ask me."

       The rest of the wall was covered with pictures of famous scenes from Tom Cruise's other film roles.

        "Hey, Strat, I wondered what kind of underwear do you think Jack Reacher wears?"

        "Can't say. I bet ya they'd be pretty comfortable though. I wish they had something from Interview with a Vampire."

         "Me too. That would be cool."

       On the wall next to the Cruise exhibit was the framed underwear that Marilyn Monroe wore in the movie The Seven Year Itch surrounded by several pictures of the blonde bombshell.

         "Dang, I bet they paid a pretty penny to get them drawers. I heard Joe DiMaggio had them checked for JFK's fingerprints."

       "No doubt. I wish Geezer was here. That dude loved him some Marilyn Monroe." 

       The two of them continued through the museum, going from room room occasionally calling out to each other to make sure that the other noticed every discovery.

        "Look Phoebe Cates, Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

        "Technically, dude, those are bikini bottoms."

        "Hey look, Strat! Rocky Horror! Take my picture!

        "Damn! That's the chick from Alien!"

    "Oh man, the girl from Empire Records! That's Aerosmith's daughter"

      They came to a stop when they stood in front of a picture of a braces-wearing Anthony-Michael Hall from Sixteen Candles. Strat even genuflected and Izzy went completely speechless for a moment. They were talking about how Molly Ringwald's famous underwear from the movie were probably going to be the highlight of the entire museum, and mainly because Anthony Michael Hall was one of their biggest heroes; they ranked him right up there with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. But as they were talking, a skinny man in a black hoodie came out of room to their right and shook his head and said, "Get's better in there."

     So, they hustled over to that room which was darkened, and they had to part some curtains in order to enter. When they went in they saw the light was focused on a large frame that appeared to contain no underwear at all. Confused they noticed a neon sign over the entrance to the room that read IMPLIED. And as they got closer to the frame they saw pictures of Mel Gibson wearing a kilt and a sign that said the frame contained the non-underwear that Gipson wore in the movie Brave Heart. 

       Strat was starting to voice his confusion, but Izzy cut him off with a curt, "Shut-up fool, everybody knows that them Scottish dudes never wore nothing under them kilts." That admonition stopped Strat in his tracks. Then when they turned to leave, they noticed that there was another empty frame on the opposite wall.

       They approached it with caution. 

        "Sharon Stone! You gotta be kidding!"

       They stayed in that room for a while and emerged star struck and wonder-eyed.

      "Man Strat, I gotta admit that when we first got this assignment I was worried it might be a rip-off?"

       "Me too. I didn't want to say nothing though."

        "Look, dude. There's one more room. Let's check it out."

       The room was even darker than the previous one. They had to push open a heavy oak door. A spot light mounted on the center of the ceiling shined down on two small frames each containing a fig leaf.

        "Oh Man! Oh Man! You gotta be kidding me, Strat. I heard about these. They were the first underwear ever. This has been here in Hollywood this whole time?"

      "That's stupid, where else would they be? This here city is home of the Angels remember?"

       They approached the frames reverently with caution. Izzy told Strat, "Be very careful how you breathe on them, man. They gotta be at least a couple hundred years old."

 Three fifteen-year-old friends were leaving the theater in Butt Hole, CA, a small agricultural community in the Great Central Valley roughly mid-way between Fresno to the north and Bakersfield to the south. The town is not really named Butt Hole, but the three friends named it that because one of the three, Gooch, considered the dimmest of the friends, couldn't wrap his lips around that soft ph sound of word 'sphincter' which was what his friend and science-fiction reading buddy Eddie wanted to call it.

     The marquis over their head announced the week-long engagement of the classic, coming-of-age John Hughes film Sixteen Candles. The movie starred Molly Ringwald as the birthday girl and Anthony Michael Hall, in his break-out role as the geeky and cheeky, braces-wearing Ted Farmer.

   Danny, a skinny, long-haired, Mexican-American kid looked back at the marquis then back at his friends and said, "That movie ought  to get an Academy Award. If it don't, it just proves the whole damned system is rigged."

   The more studious looking, glasses wearing Eddie nodded and remarked, "Anthony Michael Hall should get the Best Actor Award too. His comedic timing is genius level. He didn't miss a lick."

    Gooch, the quietest of the three, was the pudgy brunt of all their adolescent teasing. When they looked at him, it was usually a sign for him to agree with whatever they were saying. It took him a moment to collect his thoughts because he needed to be careful as his fiends always seem to point out every flaw in his logic, "It was a good movie. The only thing I thought was weird was that they only charged a dollar for their friends to look at Molly Ringwald's underwear."

     Danny was the first to attack, "What was weird about that? You wouldn't pay a dollar to look at Molly Ringwald's underwear?"

      "I don't know, it just seems like they could have charged more, I mean it being Molly Ringwald and all."

       Eddie was next, "Gooch, you idiot. They didn't know it was Molly Ringwald in the movie. She was playing a role. Her name was Samantha in the movie."

         "I'm confused. It wasn't Molly Ringwald?"

        Danny was weirdly exasperated at Gooch's ignorance, "Damn it Gooch, It was Molly! But it's like she was an ordinary person and not a celebrity."

          "An ordinary person? You mean like somebody paying a dollar to see Eddie's underwear?"

      They were walking down Main Street and were already a block away. and Danny and Eddie stopped just so they could shake their heads at Gooch's naivety. Then Danny added, "Gooch, no one in their right mind is going pay a dollar to see Eddie's underwear. That's not even the point  they were trying to make."

      Eddie quickly objected, "Now, I wouldn't go that far. I'm sure there would be somebody at our school who would fork out a dollar or two to examine my underwear."

     This caused Danny to come to another abrupt stop, "Please, Eddy if you know the identity of anyone of our classmates who would trade a dollar bill for the opportunity to see the skid-marks in your drawers, I would greatly appreciate you keeping that information to your self. Don't even tell Gooch because he'd let it leak out by accident."

      Eddie was more than a little annoyed by his friend chastising him especially because he did it in front of Gooch. "Just saying. You said it like I had a disease or something, like I was the most unattractive boy in our grade level whereas everybody knows that would be Harold Lesley. You implied that my underwear was worse than Harold Lesley's acne."

        "I did no such thing. I just plucked your name out of the thin  air, cause you were right there and Gooch asked such a stupid question."

       Now, it wasn't so much that Eddie was satisfied with the answer as much as he saw a way to beat a hasty retreat by shifting things in the direction of Gooch. "Yeah, Gooch; you shouldn't ask such stupid questions." 

      The friends walked along silently for a while. Gooch pulled his head down between his shoulders like a turtle and looked down at the sidewalk being careful not to step on the cracks. Danny seemed to be mulling the whole thing over in his head, and Eddie was thinking of something to say that would take the focus off of the desirability or lack thereof of his underwear.

    It was Eddie who broke the silence. "How about that party though? That was out of control!"

    Danny jumped on it immediately, "Wasn't that something! How cool would that be to go to a party like with all that beer, and pretty rich girls crawling all over the place!"

    When Gooch didn't volunteer his agreement, the other two turned on him to coax him back into orbit.

    Eddie asked, 'Whadda you think, Gooch? Don't you wish you could go to party like that?"

     The Danny questioned, "Yeah, Gooch! Would that be the coolest thing ever? They even had a whole keg of beer."

      "I was thinking if I could go to party like that, I would take a five-gallon gas can."

       Danny and Eddie chimed together in disbelief, "A GAS CAN!"

     "Yeah. Like the one my dad has in our garage at home."

     Danny was astounded, "Your dad keeps gas for his lawn-mower in that can, Gooch. You gonna put beer in a can your dad keeps gas in? I hope you empty it out first. At Least!"

       "Not that one, I would bring a new one."

     Eddy laughed loudly and high-fived Danny, "Gooch, what the hell you thinking? What kind of knuckle-head would take a five gallon gas can to a keg party?"

       They quit laughing just long enough for Gooch answer, thinking they could quickly pounce on his response with another good joke.

        "I meant so I could fill it up with beer, then bring it back here, so we could drink it together."

        And for a moment, on an uneven sidewalk, right next to the wide paved, pot-hole plagued main street in a dusty little town often referred to as the sphincter muscle of California by some of its more jaded, younger denizens, you could have heard a pin drop.

        

     I do this silly thing. Whenever I pull into a four-way stop at the same time as another car, I always wave the other car through, but not as a simple matter of courtesy. I've developed this notion after noticing how enjoyable it was to see the driver of the other wave in acknowledgement, that I was giving the other person an opportunity to perform a simple act of gratitude.

     I've read many things about the effects of gratitude over the years. Including one research study by a Nobel winning Japanese scientist who lists it as one of the things that can actually alter our DNA for the good. In the last years of my teaching career, I used to try to incorporate one or two of the things on his list into the openings minutes of every class to make sure the kids had a daily dose of something positive. (You'd be surprised at how many didn't.) I would show videos of amazing deeds, great natural beauty, and things that would provoke a sense of awe in the hearts of most human beings. I noticed though that a great many of the kids, as young as they were,  were already so jaded and seem to lack the ability to know how something as simple as a few moments of silence where you breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly could strengthen your resilience, or even, in a small way, to affirm that living life was even worth the effort.

       I've been obsessed lately in discovering small things hidden in my past. For example, I used to play whiffle ball in my front yard every night with the kid the across the street. This went on for a couple of years. Then one night I went inside, turned off the porch light, and never played whiffle ball again. Instead, a few months later, I woke up in an alley at night after huffing some cleaning fluid with a couple of buddies from school. I remember their eyes when I awoke. They looked like little dots of light, alien like. We staggered up and walked to the end of the alley where the street light was, and I stood there for moment in the light, knowing I had done something very profound and that I had come out into a different reality than the one I occupied when I had entered the alley

       About half the guys in our neighborhood soon followed me off the cliff. I can remember thinking how tragically unhip the ones were who didn't. They didn't know how to roll a joint, or how to listen to Jimi Hendrix the way I did. I also know that they had a similar, yet opposite opinions about me and my friends whenever they saw us, shaking their heads sadly and mumbling something to each other as we passed.

     When I see those boys now as men, I often want to tell them how sorry I was for passing judgement and how much I admire those who held their ground against the cultural tsunami that swept across the continent during the Sixties and which has since steadily eroded away the consensus we once shared about what constitutes right and wrong, good and evil. The thing is, I've never had to apologize, and neither have they. In our old age, the things that used to divide us have simply vanished and have drawn us even closer in some mysterious way.

     I have been trying to read C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity for the longest time, and it is not that long, or difficult a book to read. It's seems that every time I pick it up, I want to start at the beginning, and then I can't read more than a few pages before I have to put it down and think about what it says. Then I'm off and running coming up with extrapolations on my own, trying to squeeze every bit of meaning out of those words like a NBA owner trying to milk their fans out of the nickels in their kid's piggy bank.

     Lewis was an atheist who found his way back to the presence of God. There is something about that which speaks volumes to a boy who once exchanged the joys of playing front yard whiffle ball for the pleasure of waking up hung-over with a futile hope that I wouldn't be able to remember what I had done the night before.

     The book is collection of speeches that they asked Lewis to give to RAF members at the beginning of WWII, many, if not most, of whom, were fated to die in the ensuing conflict and the effort to defend the what was most valuable of what we know as Western Values against the evil of the Nazi regime. It was basically an intelligent, good humored, account of the importance of knowing the difference between right and wrong. Lewis didn't think the battles taking place in the killing fields of Europe at the time were any more important than the daily battles that each and every one of us faces when we get up in the morning and must confront a life that always seems to be 'getting on our last nerve.' That, and, of course, the need to pass out hope in face of the daily bombardment.

    There were no ordinary people in Lewis's universe. In his eyes, we are all children of God; some more rebellious than others but each deciding, in the battlefields of our own hearts what kind of human being we want to be. In the words of Kathleen Norris, who wrote the brilliant forward to the edition I'm reading, Lewis believed that in Christianity as he understood it, "we open ourselves to imaginatively transform our lives in such a way that evil diminishes and good prevails." To me that seems to say that far from trying to be perfect, "we ride that horse that we rode in on  as far as we can," and all that God requires is that we do the best that we can.

      I watched my Dad as he got older engage in the practice of bringing out the light. My mom would send him into a store for bacon and eggs to cook breakfast, and he would emerge thirty minutes later after talking to every person he knew in the store. Dad told some of the dumbest jokes I ever heard, and he always blew the punch line, and it constantly amazed me just how willing and happy most people were to smile at them dumb jokes. It was like they were just waiting for someone to pull it out of them. Then, it always made me think, that two of the saddest things in the world must be an unused smile, or a laugh being held in reserve.

     I've never been a garrulous person. My name actually means Dark Water referencing someone who always looks beneath the surface of things and has proven to be a strangely prescient assessment of my character, but I'm making the effort to talk more to the cashiers and the servers, and the people I run into as I go about my day. I've learned to believe that most people like to engage, most people like to smile, and most people like to feel and receive gratitude. I don't mean I'm emptying out my list of grievances or dumping all my problems out on them in a space of five minutes. Just saying 'how are you", or 'hello in there'.

      And I always say 'thanks' and 'you're welcome' because I like it when people tell me 'thanks' and 'you're welcome.' I believe that teaching common courtesy in school would be one of the best things we could do to began to solve America's educational problems. 

    And I know we're not going to win the war against evil by always arguing with our neighbors. That, in fact, is one of the diabolical acts of evil ever conceived, turning us against each other over the most trivial of things.

     I do, however, think, and maybe little naively though that we might have a better chance if we convert people one smile at a time, and that small acts of kindness would be a good place to start.

     

     Danny Wilson stood transfixed on the sideline of Concord High School football field. He was watching his little brother Scot's practice. He loved watching his little brother play football; Scot was a good little player, the team's quarterback. But another reason he liked it so much  was a sense of regret that they didn't have sixth grade football when he had attended Mark Twain two years before.

     Occasionally a drop of rain from the approaching storm would interrupt his rapt attention, and he would look up and take notice of the foreboding sky. Then suddenly the whole sky would rumble with loud thunder and a sharp whip of lightning would light up  piece of the night way to the south. It wasn't unexpected, Danny had to talk his mother into letting them attend practice in the first place. The local weatherman had made her waver on letting them out of the house, but he had also mentioned that the storm would arrive in the area at a much later time.

      Danny and his family lived not even a mile to the south of the stadium.  Him and Scot had made their usual trek through the alley ways between their home and the high school. It always made the trip a lot more interesting and even slightly menacing, like they were walking through a dark forest inside a fairy-tale. In the summer, after baseball, there would be a lot of fruit trees overhanging the back fences, and they and their friends would help themselves to plums, grapes, or apples. Tonight, the journey home would prove a lot more troublesome if it started raining like it looked like it was  about to do.

     Danny watched as Coach Bobby Anthony, a local football legend, huddled his small charges around him and gave them directions on how to run a play. When the ball was snapped, Scot tucked it and ran around the right side for a seven yard gain. The sky thundered again, and Coach Anthony looked up at the sky, took stock of the situation and finally waved his arms to indicate that it was over. Danny immediately started making plans in his head on how they were going to handle the trip home as he saw Scot take off his helmet and start jogging his way.

      He yelled, "Great run, Scot. Now get your butt over here, and see if you can run that fast going home!"

     Scot just laughed and yelled back, "See if we can get these guys to chase us."

      As soon as they turned and headed for the gate on the east side of the field, they spotted their mom parked and waiting. They gave out a roar of relief and signaled for Dean Jones, who lived three houses down from them, to join them. They were so happy as they piled in they almost forgot to tell their mom thanks.  When they got home, Danny was the first out of the car and he ran into the house in order to beat Scot to the bathroom.

    But as soon as he entered, he saw something that knocked the wind clear out of him, his father sitting in the middle of the couch that faced the door, with the light from a bulb in the kitchen forming a halo about his head, and he was crying, and Danny knew his dad never cried.

    Scot came running in the door right behind Danny and such was the abruptness of Danny stopping, that Scot's forward motion almost knocked them both over. Then Scot looked up and saw his dad too. Both boys turned immediately to look to their mother for answers, and it was the first time they even noticed that she was crying too. It took more than a moment for their Dad to get the story out, he choked on the words a lot. There weren't that many of them to tell, but every one of them seem to weigh a ton, and put together one after another they were enough to alter the history of their small family forever.

     Danny and Scot's mother worried about her boys being caught out in a lightning storm after hearing one clap of thunder too many and rushed out of the house to go get them. In her haste, she forgot that the family's beloved dog, a shaggy little poodle named Pepe liked to sleep in a rut behind driver's side rear wheel. She only remembered when she felt the sickening thud that brought it to her attention.

    Mr. Wilson, was a Dirt Bowl Okie, a battle hardened man who held the highest degree in Dirt Bowl Okiedom, a man who squeezed every dime as though his family's very survival depended on it, a man who never wasted a motion or even an emotion if it could be avoided. Danny never told his father this, but when he sat in church back then and listened to the lectures about the severity of Jehovah's judgement, it was his father's face he usually saw. On that night, he would have been hard-pressed remembering the last time he had seen his father smile. But he had never seen his father cry.

   He had heard stories about his father being informed of the death of his baby sister in a car wreck while he was in basic training, but he had only thought about how the news had effected his Grandpa Joe who had reluctantly let her attend a barn dance that fateful night.

     When his wife had came inside crying frantically, Danny's dad had acted swiftly and decisively. He calmed her down by reminding her that her sons were still in danger of being caught in lightning storm, and told her that it was over and done, too late to change the tragedy into something else. Then when she left, he grabbed a shovel and an old towel, dug a hole in corner of their lot, wrapped the body and buried the past swiftly without so much as a wasted stroke.

     Danny and Scot weren't having none of it though. They both knew their dad was just trying to shield them from the gruesomeness of the night, the sight of death incarnate, but the wounds were far too deep, the pain far to real to shunt aside like it was just a bad dream. It was decided later that night when everyone was all cried out that nothing short of a proper burial would do. Their dad told them that he would exhume the body the next morning after it stopped raining and they would give Pepe the funeral he deserved. That night, as they sniffled in bed, the boys could hear their dad sawing and hammering as he constructed a coffin. They could hear the soft sobs of their mother, cutting up a blanket to sew into a proper shroud.

    And it did stop raining and the Sun surprised them al by rising as if nothing had ever happened, so they gathered in the north-east corner of the yard in front of a small hole in the ground. Their older brother Glen helped their dad place the tiny coffin into the hole and Scot and Danny help shovel in the dirt.  Their Mom read a passage from the Bible and then their dad mixed up some cement in his wheel barrow. He had already created a wooden form to pour the cement into. Then after it had set a while, he gave their mother one of his sharp tools, and she scratched the words Our Beloved Pepe and the date he died into the headstone.

     Many years later, Danny asked his mother about how bad she had felt that night. She had responded that it was the worst moment in her life and was made even worse when she looked in the family Bible and found out that Scot had taken a red crayon and written in the date that, "Mama Killed Pepe!" Then they got to talking about the past, and she told him  about the one time that his father had struck her after she had a knocked a glass of whiskey out of his hand in front of his brother.

    "I told him if he touched me again, I'd leave him. He never did. Looking back, I was as much to blame as he was. He had just gotten home from the war, and I was a just a silly little girl craving attention." She went on to relate how that night had changed her husband, "He cried the whole night. Something broke loose inside of him. He got religion right after that, quit drinking, the whole bit.'

   "Dan, hey Danny? You done there? Or, you want another one?"

   Danny's reverie was broken by his friend and bartender Frank Loo. As Frank waited for Danny to answer, he wiped down the bar in front of Danny with a rag.

   Danny looked at his half-filled glass of Coors Light and determined that he was done for the night, "Naw, Panch. I'll drink the rest of this one and head on home."

   "Man, you were out of it there for a long while, like you were staring off in the distance. Anything you need to talk about?"

    Danny shrugged, "Man, it's just this weather, Frank. Whenever I hear thunder and lightning, I go back in time to the night my mom ran over my dog Pepe."  

    A long awkward pause ensued with Frank wiping at the bar before speaking, "Danny, I can't tell you how sorry I was to hear about you and Jennie. I know it don't help none, but I been there, know how it feels."

     "Yeah, I know. Shit, you had to deal with that and what your own damned brother did."

   "You got that right! That broke my family into pieces. Even my mom and dad took different sides. Phil was always such a mama's boy. I don't think my dad ever spoke to him again. My mom had to threaten to divorce Pop if he didn't go to Phil's funeral." Then after another pause, "How long were you guys married, if you don't mind me asking?"

    "Thirty-one years, if you can believe that. Came home one evening, and she said she didn't love me. After she left, I found newspaper ads six months old that told me she was looking for a place way back then, working up the nerve, I guess. Least the girls were gone by then."

     "That's good. I was wondering about that."

     "Yep, Maria's in Freeburg and Annie's in San Diego."

     "See 'em much?

     "Funny you should ask. I just back from talking to Maria. I went to see her because she was thinking about moving to Portland and wanted to talk to me about it.  When I left the house, I was pretty anxious about what I was going to say. Then, I got two miles outside of town and had to pull over. I had this feeling, an epiphany come over me all of sudden, and I understood about five, six damn things in a flash."

      "Like what?

     "Well, first of all, I knew not to worry, that no matter what I told her, it would be the right thing to say, as long as I spoke the truth, words from the heart."

     "What did you tell her?"

    "I said. move if you gotta, but don't take Freeburg with you."

    "How did she respond to that?"

    "She started crying. I think she had already decided but wanted to bounce it off of somebody."

     "You said, you understood other things, like what?"

    "Oh, yeah, mainly literature things.  You know I taught The Hobbit for thirty years in my class. Well, I was always disturbed by the fact that the wizard dude shows up out of nowhere, at  random, at Bilbo's door. It ruined the whole damn book for me. Well, I suddenly understood that there wasn't anything random about it. He told Bilbo. 'I come to bring you what you wanted.' Thing is Bilbo had never said he wanted that adventure. He'd never said a thing to anybody about wanting to go on a trip much less a hero quest."

    "Then how'd the Wizard know?"

    "Bilbo didn't have to say it. It was just assumed. You see, Frank, we all want our live's to mean something more than we think it does. Deep down inside, we all want to find a pot a gold and overcome a dragon."

    Frank mulled over what his friend was saying for a moment, "Even when the pot of gold is reconciling with your ex-wife, and the dragon is punching that big fucking bully George Porter in the nose?"

   Danny smiled ruefully and shook his head, "Especially then, Frank. Especially then." Then he stood up, stretched his legs, slapped the bar and headed toward the door. Frank was already heading toward the opposite end of the bar where the predatory and perpetually angry Mitchell sisters had staked out their usual spots.

   He heard Frank call out, "And how about you ladies? Got time for one more?"

   Danny opened the door, looked out at the rain, zipped his coat up and stepped out into the cold, windy darkness. He heard a voice come out of the shadows, "There you are. I've been waiting for while."
   

​I've had problems with church people right from the very start; one of my Sunday School teachers told me I was going to burn in hell, and at the time my biggest sins had been stealing penny candy and noticing that one of the teachers at Mark Twain Elementary School had a pair of pretty nice legs. I’ve always tended to favor the writings of someone like C. S. Lewis over listening to some slicked-haired preacher in a cheap suit who comes across more like a used-car salesman than a man of God. And don’t start lecturing me by saying they’re not all like that; I realize that, but it’s been my experience in life that’s there’s far too many that fit the description for it not to be a thing. And I consider myself a pretty tolerant person who has never completely written any man off for having a few flaws. Even my dad had flaws, and he was one the kindest men I’ve ever known personally, and he wasn’t always that way. I witnessed his religion turn him into someone who went into hospitals to pray with hundreds of people who were well on their way to see if their preconceived notions of the afterlife were true. You got to believe in something pretty strongly to do something like that.
 
 C.S. Lewis was an agnostic, and maybe even an atheist at one point; he came by his religion the hard way, by personal experience and revelation. That’s the way I learned it too.
 
But I didn’t come here to talk about religion, I come here to talk about the recent demise of the self-crowned Prince of Darkness, Ozzie Osbourne. 
 
By all accounts Ozzie was a kind and gentle man, a cultural icon whose shadow has loomed large over our culture for several decades. The tributes pouring in from every corner of the world, strongly attest to that fact. Mark Groubert, one of my favorite podcasters, said that, in his opinion, Ozzie was the nicest man he ever met in the entertainment industry. Ozzie’s music struck a chord with many of my generation. I can remember the first album I owned by Black Sabbath, and also remember being more than a little discomforted by the very name of the band and the things they sang about. It never stopped me from smoking another joint and putting the needle down in the groove. And that’s what I want to talk about.
 
I’ve been more than a little obsessed lately with discovering what it was about my life back then that caused me to go so far off the rails, back when I was young when life, was supposedly, all shiny and new. And I can guarantee, it wasn’t the fucking image of a baby devouring Satan, holding onto a pitch-fork while flames licked his feet with the unholy screams of dispossessed souls burning in their personal hot-tubs full of boiling oil that led me astray.
 
The image of the Satan who lured me away from realizing my true potential was more like the one described in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, one of the most chilling descriptions of the devil ever, not a horned, cloven-footed beast, but a personable, articulate, disillusioned bureaucrat. He appears to Ivan Karamazov in a fevered hallucination. Nowadays, that would be a drug induced dream. This kind of devil doesn’t judge; he just drones on and on about his world-weary frustration with things as they are. He doesn’t project evil, but justifies its existence, seeking to normalize it, “I’m a slanderer by instinct,” he says, “a rogue—and a useless one at that.” He is tediousness personified, and it’s his banality that is most dangerous, it doesn’t threaten; it corrodes. This type of evil doesn't need to use monsters, it can employ the services of the nicest people to perform its services, people who are completely unaware of the bad that they have done. People like me. People like you.

I read an awful lot, and I know that offering my opinion unsolicited all the time, can be tedious too.  I’ve slowed down a lot, and I’m working hard not be judgmental. But when Mark Groubert and his partner immediately leaped to Ozzie’s defense for biting the head off of that bat by declaring it an accident, seeking to justify it; it struck a chord. I know many people, some who I love greatly, who try to justify one their friends or idols committing a heinous crime by it declaring it, “a bad decision on a bad day.” Groubert went on to talk about a musician friend of his who bit the heads off of mice in his concerts in homage to his idol. A bat flying into your mouth, might be some kind of weird accident, the chomping down, not so much. That’s a statement that would have made Dostoyevsky envious to the point he would highlighted his description of the devil and pushed delete.
 
In my journey of self-discovery, where I’ve had to search through all my personal myths, pull them out and take them apart to examine them more closely, I found out that much of our culture back then was being manufactured by sinister forces, both tangible and real, not merely abstractions.  

The author Ken Kesey who created the Acid Test Concerts which gave the world The Grateful Dead, Light shows, and vats of Kool-Aid spiked with LSD, was among the first of the social influencers given LSD to sample as part of a government sponsored program. His retelling of how it led to the Acid Tests is probably myth. The Grateful Dead’s lyricist Robert Hunter was another participant in the program. Does it make Jerry and Boys evil. No, I don’t think they even knew. I think that they truly believed in what they were doing, and also believe they helped some people cope with the great stresses that life bestows on so many of us. But I also think it would be the height of foolishness to deny that those Acid Tests did not produce their share of misery too. Only the Beat poet Alan Ginsburg, another participant in the drug study seemed to catch on that there may have been something else going on behind the scenes, something sinister. Does this information challenge their intelligence, or their sense of awareness of things? I’m afraid to say it does, theirs and also the millions of other people in this world who prefer to stick their head in the ground and not witness the truth of the world as it swirls around them, those who prefer for things to be as they wish, and not as they really are those who would even lie to themselves for it to be so.
 
I go to Las Vegas every year to attend a basketball clinic. In the last few years, the event has coincided with this music event known as the Electric Daisy Festival, where many of the attendees (I’m talking tens of thousands) wait till dark, swallow their Ecstasy (or drug of choice, enter into a universe of pulsating, flashing neon lights and the steady drone of techno music and dance till dawn at which point they stream back into the Casino hotels like weary vampires. I’ve seen girls come crawling in wearing thongs so small that you can’t see the thong and having only pieces of tape covering up their nipples. Some, not all, trudge through the casinos with an arrogance that dares someone to even look at them askance, an arrogance that seems to say to an old dumb fuck like me, “Why don’t you just hurry up and die. You’ve fucked this whole world up enough, don’t you think?”
 
Anyone born prior to the 1960s, would have recognized the festival for what it was at once, a revival of paganism, a rebellious, hedonistic, Luciferian outlook that teaches that there is little more to life than eating, drinking, fornicating, and defecating, one that promotes a nihilistic view of existence that leads to lonely grave on a piece of rock that’s so small that in the grand scale of the universe it probably doesn’t even exist. A view that denies anyone who embraces it the slightest iota of having hope that there is something sacred and divine about our existence.

Anyone who has read the truth about what happened back in the Sixties, would recognize these events as a continuation of the government sponsored Acid Tests which were designed  to promote the use of LSD in order to manipulate and control rebellious youth, to normalize banality, to undermine a belief in Christianity, and to create a permanent class of immature citizenry, so that someone or something, who so desired, might slip past them any degree of insanity whatsoever with great ease.
 
And while I don’t want to pass judgement on any man or woman, especially someone gentle and nice and someone revered by millions of adoring fans. I loved Ozzie, the man. Black Sabbath not so much.

There are a lot of things in this world I can’t bring myself to justify though, not even a little. I don't believe that God is going to judge anyone too harshly for petty things like appreciating a pair of nice legs or stealing penny candy, however, I think he may be compelled to draw the line at nihilism, or maybe God would just let the nihilists draw that line themselves.

     
August Riley selected an expensive European cigarette from a silver case and lit it with his diamond encrusted lighter from the Four Seasons Toronto and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling window, thirty-two stories above the city. His dark blue eyeliner was smudged from the night before, his pants were fashionably torn, his fingernails chipped black, but the Gucci boots and silver skull ring screamed money. He had bags beneath his eyes. He was tired — not the kind of tired you fix with sleep, but the kind of fatigue you wear like a second skin.

Sitting across from him in a velvet armchair and flanked by an untouched carafe of coffee, was Sir Dean Langdon, the rock critic whose pen could still move cultural tectonics. It was Langdon whose recent story about The Bushwhacker Boys had brought the band's decades long indulgences and misogynist hijinks to a screaming halt. But, he was tired too. He had finally reached a point in his long career where he was tired of interviewing rock stars, their managers, and their hangers-on.

His frustration was brought to his attention when his younger daughter Abby, writing for a college course, had asked him the most important thing he had written in his long career. He told her about all of his famous interviews for Rolling Stone and of the time his ten-thousand-word interview with Mick Jagger had been printed in the New York Times winning him a Pulitzer Prize.

She had said, “I know about those, Daddy. I mean like Shakespeare, or Steven King.”

Dean Langdon had reached that point in life that the European romantics had referred to as the Blaue Blume, or blue flower, a time you began questioning if anything you had ever done had any real meaning. He waited until August was situated, glanced at the voice recorder and asked with a smirk, “So, August… you ever worry your fans might actually catch on?”

August looked at wryly, exhaled slowly. “Catch on to what, man?”

“That you think they’re total morons.”

August chuckled, deep and dry. “They are total morons, Dean. That’s the point.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You know how we started out? Playing cheap bars, rural town halls, opening for metal tribute acts with names Motley Brew or MetallicB in cities that didn’t even have a Dairy Queen. We were just four broke nobodies from the sticks — no money, broken down gear, holes in our boots, and our only plan was to make enough money to get high, drunk and laid and be able to make it to the next gig.”

He tapped ash into an $800 tray. “But one day Mitch — our bassist — got drunk and angry and just screams into the mic: ‘You people are so f---ing stupid!’ Crowd went wild. Chanting. Chanting, man, ‘We are Stupid, So F—ing Stupid!’ We thought, 'What the hell?' So we did it again the next night throwing in even more insults and outrageous comments. And again. And the more we insulted them — the dumber the lyrics, the more hatred and bile we spewed — the more they worshipped us. I mean Worshipped. If Mitch spit on one they would fall into an orgiastic state and demand, not ask, that he do it again. It made us a ton of money; beautiful girls would throw themselves at us, urging us to debase them in the worst possible ways. I mean, when you’re young, all that stuff has a certain lure. Some of us learn that it comes at a cost though. You start losing track of who you really are.”

Dean nodded slowly. “And Moronic Rock was born.”

August shrugged. “Our first album Imbecilic went triple platinum in a week. The song I wrote to tell them how disgusted they made me ‘Sick of You’, hell, they played it yesterday at the hockey game. They paid us a fortune to use ‘Aghast’ in a soda commercial. ‘When UR Gone’ — people played it at funerals, Dean. Funerals.”

Dean quoted: “’I feel such great delight / when I know you're not around / I fantasize your enemies / have run you into ground.’”
​
“Poetry,” August sighed before raising his coffee like a toast. “For the brain-dead.”

“But how about now?” Dean probed. “The money’s still good, the fame, the private jets, the posh hotels? Still feel like screaming bile into the void?”

August’s face softened for the first time. “No, they can keep all that. I smoke these damn cigarettes because I’m contractually obligated to only smoke this brand. The lighter was a gift from Elton John, you can have it have it if you want it.” Then he admitted. “My wife, Clara… my daughter, Ruth… they wrecked me in the best way. I can’t write that garbage anymore. But the label owns us lock, stock, and barrel. We’re all in debt up to our eyeballs for the houses and the cars, and the jets that our managers bought to promote our rock start image. We owe Black Sun Records three more albums under the ‘Moronic Rock’ clause.”

“So, you’re essentially trapped.”

“Trapped in a mansion, yeah. Cry me a river, right?” August snorted. “But I hate it, Dean. I hate who I am when I perform. The leather, the screaming, the fake nihilism — it's all theater for people who don't want to feel anything real. And as a musician, you hate to rip off the fans by not doing your best during a concert, but it’s hard to wrap your head around it all because you also hate your fans. You lose a bit of yourself every time you step in front of that crowd.”

Dean tilted his head. “Why not just flip the script? Put an image of cross on the next album cover. Sing about Jesus. That’s a guaranteed controversy.”

August paused. “I not going to lie and say I’ve never thought about it. But I’ve got no beef with God or Jesus.  They’ve been more than good to me, much more than I deserve. Saved me, even, in a way. So, no — I won’t fake that. That’d be the worst lie of all.”

Part Two: Berlin

Six months later. Berlin was a cold warehouse venue half-filled with hostility. A thunderous guitar riff rang hollow as August stepped onto the stage.

Twenty-five fans! That’s all who showed up. And they came armed — not with devotion, but with moldy fruit, middle fingers, and guttural rage. Rotten pears. Soggy peaches. Avocados that reeked like betrayal.
The small crowd screamed: “Traitor!” “You’re supposed to hate us!” ”We Want Your Rage!” “Stick This Sunshine Nonsense Up Your Ar###!”

They hurled their savage insults and fruit with equal force. August and the band never flinched. Bulldog Johnny even stood up as he played his drums. Mitch the Bitch kept smiling throughout, and Sal played his organ and wiped the tomatoes from his brow as he played his instrument as sweetly as imagined doing when he was taking lessons from his grandmother Anya, a refugee from Russia.

And up front, August took the brunt of the crowd’s displeasure never missing a single beat. They played through every track from the band’s new, unreleased EP titled Grace Notes — a quiet, melodic collection about early mornings with his daughter, about learning to love oneself after a lifetime of self-loathing, and songs about dancing in the kitchen with Clara while the world was asleep.

After the final note, after the crowd ran out of brutally sarcastic commentary, bereft of rotten vegetables and fruit, the warehouse fell silent but for the squelch of crushed fruit on the concrete floor.

Backstage, Dean Langdon reappeared, eyebrows raised. “Damn, what the hell did I just witness?”

August peeled off his leather jacket — the last he’d ever wear it on a stage. He knew that at some time in the future he might take the stage again, but he reasoned to himself that he’d buy a new jacket, something less rock starrish for the occasion. “That,” he said, “was more like it.”

“They hated it. They hated you. They hated your band.”

“Mostly they hated themselves,” August replied. “They came for bitterness, and we tried to give them something better.”

Dean leaned up against the wall, notebook open. “So August, …tell me how’d it feel? I mean the invective, being pelted with the fruit?”

August grinned, wiped avocado pulp off his cheek. “They brought the fruit to smear on themselves. Me and the mates just filled in for them.”

He winked, “I’ve never felt better in my life.”

      Sixth grade year was a very stressful period in the life of young Danny Wilson. In the same year, President Kennedy was assassinated, and at the end of school year, in fact the day after school had ended, his best buddy, Billy Christian drowned in a irrigation canal south of town. It was probable too, that his upcoming matriculation from the sixth grade, made Danny anxiously aware that in the following year, he would be leaving behind the safe confines of Mark Twain Elementary located in the Southside neighborhood where he grown up and traveling all the way across town to a junior high in more affluent north side of town.

     The Beatles also came in that year and washed over the North American continent, which included the small, dusty farming community of Concord, California,  like a tidal wave pregnant with meaning. For some unexplained reason, the admixture of the young, handsome president getting his head blowed off in Dallas, followed closely afterwards by the often televised insanity of hundreds of thousands of young females screaming for the mop top quartet, produced a fertile surge of creativity in America, but more importantly, for this particular story, at Mark Twain Elementary School.

        It might have just been the arrival of Miss. Elenor Franklin, the new fourth grade teacher and drama coach. It was Miss Franklin who introduced the lunchtime Chubby Checker Twist-off where  a hundred students or so gathered at the basketball courts at lunch time and would "twist again like we did last summer" knowing full well that none of us had actually twisted last summer. Then sometime in February, after the Ed Sullivan show introduced the Beatles to America, Miss Franklin unceremoniously threw out all her Chubby Checker records onto the dustheap of history and replaced them with the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and suddenly us lunchtime kids went from swinging our arms and hips back and forth in a relatively controlled fashion,  and started gyrating like a bunch monkeys having a seizure, while totally oblivious to the fact that nobody was actually holding anybody's hand.

       Miss Franklin in her effort to introduce a little bit of culture into the life's of the children of farmworkers who inhabited the Southside neighborhood that surrounded the school, decided to put on a play based on Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairytale The Emperor's New Clothes. If you are familiar with the story, you know that it was about a very vain Emperor obsessed with his clothing and who was swindled by a couple of conmen who pretended to weave him a suit made out of a fabric that was invisible to foolish people or persons who were unqualified for the jobs they were hired to do, naturally there was no such fabric, and gullibility of everyone around the emperor, including his subjects, help to sustain the hoax.

      Nobody knows if Miss Franklin chose that play in order to take a snide jab at the McCarthy era shenanigans, like so many of her erstwhile peers liked to do back in the day, but if she did, she would have had to write it out and rent  billboard space because the people on the Southside of Concord back in the day were too busy working for a living to put much stock in the use of ordinary allegorical interpretations much less ones used to make political points. Nobody had ever thought to ask her if those were her intentions before she packed up her classroom and moved along to another school in a bigger city where presumably she could stage a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible without all the 'splaining.

      Danny badly wanted the role of the Emperor because it would have allowed him to walk around in the parade scene in his long john underwear, but Miss Franklin's pet Ronnie Rexroth got that role. Then he tried out for one of the two swindlers and failed again because Miss Franklin, in his opinion, had it in for him. He had to settle for the small role of the child who points out that the emperor was out there walking around in public in his underwear. During the pre-production meeting, Danny suggested that the play might actually be more successful if the emperor played the role au natural. All Danny got for his effort was a very stern look from Miss Franklin, who sat at the head of the table silently mouthing, "I'll tell your mother," some giggles from the girls, and the pleasure of seeing butt kisser Ronnie blushing. Oh yeah, and Billy falling out of his chair laughing.

      Danny had some problems with his lines which was a little strange considering he only had to say five words in the whole dang play, "He's not wearing any clothes!" It probably had more to do with stage fright and maybe a little to do with the timing, considering those words came at the climactic moment. Him and Billy also giggled a lot during rehearsals, particularly when Ronnie would walk around in his long john underwear with a slightly embarrassing protuberance; Ronnie was only eleven at the time, so it wasn't nearly as embarrassing as it might have been say he was in high school, but more like something that most people, being completely honest, would find amusing even today, sixty years later in these infinitely more sophisticated times. But Miss Franklin wasn't having any of it, and often made poor Danny wish he hadn't got involved with these dang theater people at all. 

       One day, after rehearsals, Danny and Billy went outside for a smoke and were met, at this large enamel sink where ten kids could wash their hands at once, by these two fifth grade sisters named Charlotte and Darla Mathews. Billy knew both girls very well and a conversation quickly arose about the use of the F word, yeah, that one. Danny was totally amazed and way over his head because at the point in his life the extent of his knowledge of cursing was limited to the phrase "Damn it all to hell!" that his dad would occasionally mutter when he hit his finger with the hammer, and for which his mom would quickly admonish him.

     Danny was also spending a lot of time in Church activities back then. Admittedly, he was having some problems adjusting to their views about how a person should behave in public. Sometimes, for instance, when Bertha Bohanan, his Sunday School teacher, would be droning on  and on about the fishes and the loaves for the hundredth time, he would go to the restroom, lock the door, climb out the window, run across the alley to the Food Mart and steal a couple pockets full of penny candy. Then he would surreptitiously pass the candy around to his classmates mistakenly thinking that he was kind of allegorically reenacting what Jesus was doing with the fishes. Mrs. Bohanan not only did not see things the same way, she took it upon herself to tell the whole class that Danny was more than likely going to be spending eternity in a vat of boiling oil. Danny often used the incident, and the unfairness of the penalty involved, to explain why he was so put off by organized religion and church goers in general, saying, "I don't need to be associating with people who believe in boiling kids in oil for sucking on a jawbreaker."

      Charlotte and Darla were pretty cute girls, and them explaining the many different ways that the F word could be used, made them look a little bit sexy which was another concept Danny hadn't previously given much thought. Thinking it over, he didn't feel like any of the girls in his class had much potential for sex appeal, then he stopped in mid thought and said to himself, "Well, maybe they do, but I just don't know it yet."

    Billy, on the other hand, seemed very knowledgeable about the word and comfortable in its use, reeling off whole sentences marvelous in their use of alliteration, and illustrating how to use the word as a noun, an adjective, a verb, an exclamation and even as a preposition. Danny's head was whirling, and he was soaking it all in like a sponge, nervously glancing over his shoulder, instinctively understanding that by merely listening to the exchange,  he was participating in something equally, dark, forbidden and mysterious.

    Later that same night, Danny's mother let him watch the famous scene from The Streetcar Named Desire where Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski started screaming "Stella! Stella!" in the middle of the street. It was probably not one of her better decisions, but she was only  trying to encourage his fledging interest in theater, telling him, "See that, Danny? That's how real actor's do it."

      The last run through for the play took place during school hours, and Danny had a lot of stuff on his mind, and Danny missed his cue making Miss Franklin blow her top.

          "You can't do that tonight, Danny! You only have five words, but they are the most important words of the whole play. They contain the whole meaning of life in a nutshell, people just cannot go along with the crowd just because they are afraid of looking different! It's like Prometheus bringing fire down from the mountains, stolen from the very  Gods themselves to hand down to the people below." At this point, she threw her hands up in frustration and finished her comments, "I don't know what I was thinking putting you in that role!"

      Danny, by that time,  had finally heard enough and brazenly replied, "You put me in the role because you thought I was so stupid I would screw things up if you didn't keep things simple." Then he pointed his right index finger at her face, "Well, I got news for you.You don't have to worry bout me, Miss Franklin. I ain't stupid. Remember, I'm the only one in this play who notices that Ronnie over there ain't got no stinking clothes on.  I got this." And just like that, he stormed out of the final rehearsal leaving Miss Franklin to explain herself to the other cast members and the angry glare of Billy Christian who was seriously thinking of following Danny's lead with an outburst of his own.  Danny, who lived around the corner, went home and asked his mother who was Prometheus was. She told him, but she left out the punishment part.

    Of course, that night Miss Franklin gave Danny a perfunctory apology but turned it into a teaching moment where she reminded the whole cast, but particularly Danny, about the need to project their voices and to put some fire and emotion into their performances. There was a small hallway just off to the north side of the stage in cafeteria where the play was being performed. The hall way was being used as a staging area that night, and just before Billy went out, he noticed Danny's nervousness and came and put his arm around his friend and said, "The whole school thinks that me and you are a couple of screw-ups, Danny, but tonight!" he assumed a Shakespearean pose, "Tonight we are kings!" Then after a moment, he added, "And our pee pees aren't poking out our underwear like Ronnie's. Don't worry, Danny. You got this." Danny looked at Ronnie and giggled pointed it out to Juan Ortega who giggled and started a chain reaction of giggling in the hallway.

        At the beginning of the final scene, with the lights down, Danny and the other members of the crowd took their seats in the actual audience; Danny sat in the first row closet to the aisle. Other cast members were seeded throughout the audience, to rise as the procession led by the Emperor in his state of undress passed them, and shout out their praise for his wonderful new garments, hopefully encouraging the members of the audience to join in. The parade began at the entrance to the cafeteria and proceeded down the center aisle. Danny was to wait until the last of the procession passed him by and mounted the stairs to the stage. While he waited, he looked down to the end of the row where he was seated and waved at his mom and dad at the other end.

       Finally, the parade passed him and the Emperor was just getting ready to sit down on his throne strategically located right smack dab in the center of the stage. Just before he sat, Danny rose up from his seat stepped out into the front of the the stage where a dedicated spot light found him, and yelled in his best Stanley Kowalski voice," "Wait a f#@king minute, motherf@#ker! You ain't wearing any f@#king clothes!"

      It wouldn't do any good to describe the total chaos that ensued. Someone, (me actually) had the good sense to cut the stage lights. Miss Franklin's planned remarks with which she obviously thought she was going to use to explain allegory to the assemblage, were scratched. And if you were standing near the front exit of that cafeteria that fateful night, you would probably have heard the phrase, "Well, I never, " a record number of times, along with the related question, "What the hell was that all about?" But there were some of us among that crowd that got it. Bill Christian, for example, became a doting acolyte of all things Danny Wilson until his own untimely death a few months later.

        Danny told me that he and Billy had sat out in the swing sets at Kindergarten Corner and talked for hours about what lay ahead for them that last day of sixth grade. He said Billy had asked him to go swimming at this bridge that spanned an irrigation canal a mile south of town. Danny told him he knew his mom would throw a fit and that he was trying his best to get back on her good side, so he couldn't. When Billy left, he ran and jumped, grabbed the top part of the fence and flipped over and landed on his feet like a circus acrobat. Then dropped down in a pose in the middle of the street and yelled, "Wait a f#$kin minute!" Then he laughed, and ran out of Danny's life forever.

        
          One night we were drinking beer, and I asked Danny how his mom and dad felt about what he had done, he laughed and said, "It was the strangest thing, Doug. My mom scolded me and whipped my butt that night, but I could tell that deep down inside, she was secretly proud, like she couldn't believe that I came out of her womb, and Dad? After my mom went to sleep, my dad, the Deacon of Seventh Street Baptist Church,  snuck into my room, bent down and whispered, "Danny, that was the funniest f#@king thing I ever saw." And on his way out, dressed in his wife beater and tidy-whities, he did the Stanley Kowalski, "Wait as f@#kin minute!"

        I can't speak for all the grown-up townspeople. It was a different time back time, but as far as the kids were concerned, Danny became as big as the Beatles. He was the pride of the Concord High class of 1970, and 1969 tried to claim him too, said that he was held back a year. He dropped out his senior year though and volunteered to go to Vietnam, where he served as a helicopter gunner, winning a bronze star for his actions in saving a downed copter's crew. He came back on leave once, landed in San Francisco, and was spit on and cursed at by a crowd of protesters. He immediately re-upped and was killed in action during his second tour. It's a local legend that Danny's headstone contains the only profanity permitted in the Concord Cemetery.

    There were enough people who remembered Danny fondly to encourage the city council to put up a bronze plaque above the water fountain in the cafeteria where a comprise solution resulted in the words Wait a minute being engraved under the mention of his medal for bravery. 
 
     At their 15th reunion of the class of 1970 and every reunion after, the class would stage a contest in the Mark Twain Cafeteria to see who could best act out those lines. It became a tradition until the reunion of 2020. It was the Covid year and only fifteen signed up. At the meetings, someone noted that the use of the particular word in question had lost most of the impact it once enjoyed with kids telling their parent much worse and students cussing out their teachers with much more elaborate phrases. It was agreed, that that truth would have made Danny very sad. Right before they voted to put an end to the tradition, someone suggested that instead they continue it with the original words of the play restored.

    "He's not wearing any clothes!"

​     The resolution passed unanimously.


        

​          

    I was up well before dawn the next morning and headed toward Fitz's for some coffee and advice. Hortensia made the best mocha coffee I've ever tasted, so I was looking forward to that as much as I was the advice I needed from Fitz. He had shut down our work at the warehouse for the time being, feeling it would be too hard to keep our eyes open to all the threats and still do good work at the same time.

   He was still keeping me on payroll though, and told me it was justified as we were still working for the long-term success of the business.  The lights were off when I got there; they were keeping them off in an effort to project the idea that any interlopers would sense that there was some kind of a trap awaiting them if they rushed in half-cocked. He told me that they'd been awakened one night by a loud scream, and when he went to investigate the source , he found a piece of boot and a large  puddle of blood next to one of the bear-traps he had placed by an entrance at the rear of his property. Another night there was other screaming and when he went to check it out, he discovered some torn blood-stained clothing on a strand of barb-wired fence he had strung two-feet from the ground across the trees behind his shop.

      "I've put up enough No Trespassing signs to make all the people in this area aware, and every one of those traps are well within my property, so no should be out there without permission." Then he gave me a signal I should use to announce myself when approaching the house and showed me where the booby traps were in case I needed to get something out of the shop. Then I explained what had happened at Lennie's school the day before.

      "The wolves are starting to circle. I need to figure out how I'm going to handle things. No more lolly-gagging, Fitz, I need to get things done."

      "I don't know how much more busier you could be, Lad; you've been putting in full days already, as I see it."

    "Maybe it's a matter of degree then. I might just need bigger explosions.

         The tone of my voice caught him by surprise and made him laugh, "That last explosion took down a whole house, what are you shooting, for a mountain?"

       I grinned despite myself, "More like a Devil in a red car."

      "Why didn't you say so? Follow me into the shop, be careful where you step though."

       About an hour later, I was hiding inside of a old, broken down house that was located about seventy-five yards uphill from where Hector's mom lived. There were some trees behind it which would cover-up  my coming and going from the place. All the windows were broken out and almost all of the roof was gone. Nobody had lived there for several years, and it was where Rosa had hidden out when Johnny was looking for her the night she had fled. Broken glass was scattered all across the floor, and several large spider webs were strung across all the rafters and window frames. One of the windows faced Guadalupe's house and looked out across a large expanse of weeds and dirt. The window had been boarded up but one of the smaller boards had been pushed in giving me a perfect view of what was happening at the house across the field.

        I had been in waiting for about fifteen minutes when a suddenly red, Ford sedan pulled up into the yard in front of the house, and a tall, very thin man got out and stretched. I could see why Rosa had called Johnny 'the one-legged man'. He was so thin that when he stood with his both his legs together, he looked like a single stem emerging from the ground. Using the binoculars I had gotten from Fitz, I could easily see that it had to be him. His face was very bit as sinister looking as she and the school guard had described.
 
       Five minutes after he pulled in, two Los Angeles County Sheriff Department cars pulled into the yard beside him and a total of six uniformed officers emerged from the cars. Two of the officers went immediately to the rear of the first car, opened the trunk, and pulled out two shovels. Johnny went to the front door and knocked and his mother Guadalupe came outside dressed in some blue pajamas and a purple robe. He asked her something, and she got very agitated and was saying something to the effect of, 'I don't know nothing, I don't know," and gesticulating wildly which was exactly what I had told Rosa to tell her to do. I could tell that Johnny wasn't very happy with the performance, so he pushed her away from him, and he and the officers started briskly walking toward the shed at the back of the property.

     The two officers with the shovels went into the shed followed by another officer who appeared to be their leader. The other three officers stood outside with Johnny and his mother. Guadalupe appeared to be crying, and even as far away as I was, I could faintly hear her saying, "Why? Why are you doing this to me?" One of the officers took out a pack of cigarettes offered them to the others and soon every one but the mother was smoking.

      About twenty minutes after they had gone into the shed, the leader came out, and it was obvious, he wasn't very happy. He went straight up to Johnny and grabbed him by the shirt and started screaming in his face. Johnny got angry and started shoving back and had to be restrained by the others, then the two men with shovels came outside and carrying what looked like the decaying remains of a dog, maybe a Border Collie.

      There was a heated discussion. Johnny's mom quit crying and started laughing uncontrollably. The two guys with the shovels carried the corpse of the dog back in the shed and reburied it. The heated discussion between Johnny and the leader continued, but I had no interest in sticking around and watching the fireworks. I had a pretty good idea where Johnny was going to head next, and I needed a head start. 

       The red-headed stranger's name turned out to be Aubrey O'Toole and he owned a up-scale barber shop in Glendale. It was situated on the  outskirts of the city in a building that was a little isolated from the city proper. It was located next to another larger building. The two buildings shared, a large paved parking lot between them. The signs on the other building told that it had once been a furniture store, but was now vacated and boarded up. Red's Barber Shop took up the larger portion of the building it was in; but shared frontage on the main road with Dottie's Sunshine Cafe. In the rear of the old furniture store there was a cinderblock enclosure where they had once stored all the broken down cardboard they used in the business. I had parked Fitz's truck in the parking lot of  another abandoned building a block away from the barber shop and rode my bike from there to where I was hiding and awaiting the arrival of one very angry Robert, who I was betting, would be headed back toward where he had gotten the information that his brother was buried in his mother's shed.

     And I didn't have to wait long. The red Ford sedan slid into the parking lot at a high rate of speed and came to a screeching halt. Robert slammed the door open and leapt out. I watched him reach back inside the car and pull out a chrome pistol and stuff it into the back of his waistband. He had shut the motor off but was in such a hurry, he left the door wide open which made my job a whole lot easier.  I had told Red that I needed at least fifteen minutes; I felt that ten would probably do but wanted to give myself a little extra for nerves. He was naturally nervous and upset and protested he could only guarantee thirty seconds if Robert took the notion to shoot him before asking any questions.

      I assured him that wouldn't happen because if Robert did that, he wouldn't be able to find out what had happened to his brother. I told Red that after he after he convinced Robert to spare his life, to go call a number I had provided and ask whoever answered the phone what the heck had happened. I knew that the voice on the other end would just start laughing and answer, "Tell them fat, lazy bastids to dig the hole a little deeper, the dog was a distraction!"

      By the time Hector got that news, I was already putting my bike in the back of Fitz's truck. I couldn't resist the urge to drive by the front of the barber shop and see how the plan was working. I turned the corner onto the street just as Robert was forcing Red into the passenger side of his car. I hadn't foreseen that occurrence. I was hundred yards down the road when I heard the explosion, looked in the mirror and saw car parts flying through the air.

       I didn't have time to feel too much guilt, if any, about what had happened to Red because right when I heard the explosion, I suddenly remembered what it was about the voice of the masked man on the night we blew up the house; it was my brother Pete's voice I heard.

      When I got out of the truck at Fritz's house, I immediately called out the signal.

          "That you, Errol?"

        "Yep, and I have to tell you, I feel pretty stupid having to yell out, "Polly wattle doodle all day."

           Fitz stepped outside chuckling, "That's why I picked it. Come on in Errol, we have some guests waiting inside."

          The whole back side of Fitz's house was a large closed-in patio which even had a fireplace and barbecue pit. In the middle of room there were several expensive outdoor chairs surrounding a large low  circular oak table. There were several men sitting around the table, Old Man Lee was there, next to him sat Johnny Luna a life-long friend of his, Ernie was there to Johnny's right, Big Mike Garcia was next to him, then there were three empty chairs, so I took a seat next to Big Mike, and Fitz sat down beside me. I was nodding to acknowledge all of the guys when the back door to Fitz's house opened and out came Hortensia with a tray of glasses followed by my brother Pete carrying the large green bottle of very expensive Scotch that normally sat as the center piece of the top shelf of Fitz's well stocked bar. He was holding on to the bottle with both hands, but nodded toward me.

       "Errol."

       "Pete." I didn't have time to ask him what the heck he was doing there because Fitz stood up and cleared his throat as Pete uncorked the bottle and poured it into the glasses. When he was done, he took the first one over to where Hortensia was standing and handed to her in spite of her protestations.

        Once every one had a glass, Fitz started talking, "As spiritually minded folk, we would have to acknowledge that it would wrong on many levels to drink a toast to celebrate the taking of a life. However, it would equally egregious to fail to acknowledge a major step in a man's progress in becoming a truly serious man. And where it is undeniabley wrong in the wanton taking of a life, there are times when truly serious men must sacrifice their conscience in order to prevent the pervasive spread of unchecked evil. Today, our good friend, Errol has made such sacrifice." It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever toasted me. When everyone had set their glasses down, Fitz added, "We have some things to tell you, Errol, which I think might help you deal with the mixed emotions that you might be feeling. Pete, I'll let you start it off."

      Fitz sat down and Pete stood and started talking, "Errol, there were a lot of times recently when I wanted to spare you the responsibility of today, but I couldn't. When Pa died, Grandpa had wanted to get Cousin Joe and go take deal with the sheriff that allowed Eddie Tudder to cheat Pa that night. He told me that our sweat Mama had ordered them to wait until I got a little older, and include me in on whatever took place. So, on the night of my sixteenth birthday, Grandpa came told me what I had to do.  He also informed me that Tudder and the sheriff were involved in kidnapping a lot of poor girls in Oklahoma and Arkansas, holding them out on Tudder's farm and then when the got enough, transporting them down to Tupelo Mississippi where they sold them to the bordellos around that area. So, on night I waited outside a brothel for three hours in a driving rain until Tudder came outside for a smoke. I shot him right between the eyes with Daddy's rifle. Then, I waited until the sheriff came outside to see what the noise was all about. He was still buttoning up his pants, when I shot him too. Granda and Joe was waiting in the trees, and on the way home, Joe pulled out a pint of Grandpa's white lightning from his overalls and even let me ride in the window seat for the ride home."

        As soon as he finished, Old Man Lee stood up, "I was twelve years old. My mother took in washing and ironing to save up money to open up her own restaurant. She gave it to a man in Sacramento who offered to sale her his restaurant. He not only didn't give her the restaurant, he raped her in his office, cut her throat and dumped her body in the river. He was getting a shave in my barber shop and laughing after telling  unfunny joke when I cut throat."

       Luna just said, "My mother was murdered by her brother over a twenty dollar gold piece." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold coin and flipped it on the table, "This gold piece."

        Big Mike kept his story short too, he just said, "The priest in our village had a thing for young boys. The people complained of course, but nothing ever changed. Went on for years until one day, my little brother Tomas came home crying from school."

        Ernie was so emotional about his part in this bizarre tell-all that he couldn't even talk. He looked liked he was somewhere a millions miles away. It was Fitz who broke the silence and told Ernie's story, "Ernie's whole family were murdered in Turkey. He was only one of his immediate family who survived a massacre by hiding beneath a bed that contained the bodies of his three brothers. Someday, you should ask him to show you his collection of Turkish knifes that he keeps in the room behind the bar."

     It was Fitz's turn to share his story, but he was silent. It was like he wanted me to ask first, but instead, I asked, "How do you know my brother, Fitz?"

      "Pete did me a big favor. That's how I met him."

      I was more than a little confused, "Yeah, but Pete just recently came out here same as me, and I'd just randomly met you just few weeks ago, and he ain't been nowhere around."

     Fitz chuckled, "I warned you about the dangers of assuming things when I first met you, Errol. I never said he did me a favor in Los Angeles."

      That confused me even more, "Not Los Angeles, then the only other place I've ever been is ..."

      "Tulsa, Oklahoma, he answered before I even finished the thought. "I had a daughter, a beautiful young lady named Sienna. He mother was half Shawnee, the daughter of a chief. I met her when she visited Boston. She never told me about being pregnant, she was afraid Sienna he might want to go live with me in Boston. I didn't even know about her until she was twenty-one years old. She grew living with her mother in the northeast corner of Arkansas. When her mother died, I got a letter telling me the story and that Sienna had moved to Tulsa to live with her uncle. Me and Hortensia went back east to meet her and were arranging things to have her come visit us to see how she liked it out here. Unfortunately, she went out to a bar in Tulsa and met a man named Eddie Tudder. She died in a bordello in Tupelo Mississippi from the drugs that they kept her on to keep her under their control.

      At that point, he reached inside his jacket and took out a folded document and placed it on the table in front of me. I picked it up and unfolded it. It was insurance policy taken out on me naming Elsie as the benefactor. Fitz started up again, "Your wife Elsie and her lover were waiting for the right moment to take you out. Pete didn't think he could get close enough to the man without he being recognized as your brother. He mentioned the problem one night when I was back in Oklahoma visiting Sienna's grave. I was more than happy to be able to return a favor. It was me, not your brother, who put that monster on that lamppost in case you were wondering. And it was me that advised Pete to come out west, and as long as we are sharing secrets, even our meeting on the side of the road where I was wrestling with that sofa wasn't random."

      I was confused but also a little angry that there didn't seem to any kind of randomness in my life, and that others were planning everything without my knowledge."Well, what if I hadn't stopped to help you that day?"

     "Pete told me how you were going to give up your job because you didn't feel that you were giving fair value to your employer. I told him that I very much wanted to meet someone who would do such a thing. It was test that I had contrived; I had set that old, sofa on that road myself, and one I was pretty certain you would pass. And in answer to your question, if you had sailed on past and not offered to help, you probably wouldn't be sitting here, and your sweet Rosa would already be suffering for your lack of foresight."

      Pete got involved at this point, "I think you need to know that Hector, Giancarlo, and Jimmy DeLeo are or were not as mesmerized and desirous  of Rosa's beauty as you believe. She's uncommonly pretty, but they were all more concerned with how money she could make them, even Hector was planning on selling her to DeLeo so DeLeo could send her out to his off shore casino where he also runs a bevy of the best looking ladies that Giancarlo and his goons can kidnap and deliver. Of course, DeLeo would more than likely have sampled her wares before shipping her out." 

      Then not satisfied that I fully understood the gravity of the situation, Fitz took out a second document from inside his jacket and tossed it on the table. "Just case you were feeling that the punishment meted out to the man who talked your wife into taking out an insurance policy on you was a bit extreme, here's the one that I took out of his briefcase before I hung him up on that lamp post." I opened it up. It was an insurance policy taken out on Elsie listing her lover as the beneficiary.

     Pete drove me home a little later. It was quiet in the car for a few minutes before he opened up, "I'm sorry about not telling you about all this earlier. The truth is, I was hoping I would never have to tell you most of it. Mama left it to me, but she did say that there would most likely come a time when I have to do to you what she and grandpa did to me."

    I thought about it for a minute before answering. "That's kind of a cynical outlook on life, wouldn't you say, Pete?  I never got a sense of Mama ever being that cynical to."

     He was looking out of the window as he answering, "Naw, she was never that cynical. She looked on everything as being practical, doing things that needed to be done. I guess it come from dealing with all of Dad's inconsistencies. But, she weren't ever cynical. Mom could be standing knee deep in a swamp and see nothing but potential. She was always an optimist, Errol. She would look at all this craziness we are going through, and consider them as speed bumps on the highway to heaven." He flashed me a grim smile.

     "Tell me, how was it, Pete, standing out there waiting to shoot Tudder and that fat sheriff?"

        "Well, the way I figured, there was never anything going to be anything worse in my life than seeing Pa hanging from that tree limb. Once I done it, I felt kind of relieved. You'd figure I'd feel kind of guilty about taking a man's life, but I never really did. When grandpa told me about everything Tudder and sheriff was up to, I didn't consider them as men. I looked at them like they were monsters who needed stopped. Grandpa didn't say a whole lot to me that night, but he started treating me like a a full grown man from that point on. How did you feel when you heard that explosion?"

       "I felt like I'd crossed a line of some sorts, and, tell the truth, after listening to those men, I kind of feel like I ain't never had any say in my own life, like it was movie script, with no random lines. It felt like something I was destined to do. Feels strange like maybe life ain't got meaning or real purpose."

       "Mama always saw beauty in the mystery of life. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her standing out front of the house looking up at the stars. I remember watching her reading that damn poetry book and seeing tears welling up in her eyes. You want some random? That gal of yours and that boy, what part of the script was that?"

        "I don't know, even her. The first time I looked in her eyes, I felt electricity run all through me. I was in middle of a card game, and I went speechless. It was like I'd known her a thousand years, and had lost her somewhere along the way. You ever have that feeling about a woman?"

        He laughed, "Funny you should ask. I just got married."

        



          

     I was dead tired by the time I finally got home. I noticed that Rosa's kitchen light was still on, so I knew she had been waiting up. It was getting close to sun up, so I didn't want to bother her in case she had fallen asleep which I believed was more than likely since she had to get Lennie off to school.  Tired as I was, I was glad I had the good sense to take a shower before I crawled into bed. I got a few hours of deep sleep before I was awakened by the sound of somebody using a key to unlock my front door, and then, several seconds later, Rosa slipped into bed beside me. I raised my arm so that she could snuggle in close, then we both fell asleep for a couple more hours.

      She woke me up my nibbling on my ear, "Good morning, Love, how is your appetite?'

     I sat up grinning, "My appetite is as good as any man's."

     She giggled and gently slapped at my face, "Are you hungry? I was thinking that I could cook you up a good breakfast."

    "I could eat a horse. I don't remember eating anything at all yesterday. I'm truly starving. Oh, I forgot, I don't have anything on hand but some yoghurt, some walnuts, some berries, and a couple of bananas."

    "I've got some eggs and bacon at home, I'll just run over to my house and get some."

     I started to get up, "Do you need help?"

     She was already up and pulling on her housecoat, "No, you stay, I'll be back in a jiffy." She was true to her word, and by the time I had gotten out of bed and dressed, she was back and setting the victuals on the kitchen counter.

      Before she started cooking though, I pulled her into the living room and down upon my lap as I sat in the one good easy chair that I owned."  missed you so much yesterday. Let's talk a bit first. There's a lot that you need to know."

      "Did you do the thing that you had to do?"

      "Yep and a few other things too." I didn't mention about blowing up the house, but I told her about the red-headed stranger and the things that he'd said at the card room. I mentioned some of the lies and half truths I had told him with the purpose for him passing them on.

      She listened intently occasionally frowning or nodding. Then she asked,"Do you think it was wise to let him go like that?" I knew that she would most likely ask me that question, but I was still woefully unprepared to answer it. I think because, it was the same question that I was having the hardest time answering for myself.

       "I'm not sure it was the wisest thing. Fitz kind of advised against it. Heck, all the other guys at the card room were against letting him go. The only way I can explain it is that I'm going to anything and everything to protect you and Lenny, but I'm going to try to keep the blood on my hands to a bare minimum."

      The answer wasn't entirely satisfactory for either of us, and it created an awkward silence as we thought about the possible ramifications of the decision. Finally, she broke the silence by asking about all of my books as she looked around the room, "All of these books are yours?" When I nodded, she walked another question," Have you read them all?"

        "Pretty much! I didn't do much socializing as a kid, mostly I read. It was a way to escape from reality. My mom used to take all of us kids to the library every Saturday morning. Walking into a room full of books is still on my favorite things."

        "You too? My Tio Juan, my mom's brother, used to bring us books to read and take us to the library. He was a teacher. My brother used to read us that one," she said pointing to my mom's favorite book.

           "Walt Whitman? That's my mom's book. Your brother read it? I didn't even know you had a brother."

           "I had two brothers and two sisters. My older brother Robert was angry all of the time, just like my dad. My younger brother Ezekiel, or Zeke as we called him, was a poet. He loved that book especially."

                "I contain multitudes."

             She laughed, "Yes, that one. He loved that one saying the most. When he would get depressed by something awful my father did or said, he would until my dad left and then smile and say, 'I contain multitudes'. I never did understand it, but it still made me smile."

               "It means that we humans are much, much bigger than we appear. We are the sum total of every thought, every action, every word we've ever heard, every thing we've ever seen, every sound, and every feeling. Every human being is actually a universe to him or her self. My mom used to read that poem to us after my dad died. Where's Zeke at? How come he hasn't come to see you and Lenny?" 

            I wished immediately that I could have taken the question back before I finished asking, the look in her eyes was so sad and painful, her face frozen in a slight grimace. "My brother was the one great thing in my life, the most colorful bird, always laughing, always gentle. My father couldn't stand having a son so gentle, so he always said things to hurt Zeke,  always compared him to my brother Robert who was more a like a snake. One night, after a real brutal experience with my dad, Zeke climbed to the top of a telephone pole in front of our house and hung himself. My dad was so angry and embarrassed that he left him there, and it was only because my mom and my sisters kept crying that he finally made Robert cut him down."

           "Dang! There's an awful lot of people hanging themselves in our lives. And you, Rosa? You didn't cry."

          "I was way past crying by then. I don't think I ever talked to my dad after that day. And I do feel bad for that. The night, after Zeke died, they laid out in a home made coffin in the back yard, there wasn't any yard, it was all dirt. They strung lights from the trees so it was all lit up. My mom's church on the corner loaned us some wooden benches, and my mom put out some Kool-aid and wine for the grown-ups along with some cold cuts and cheese. Me, I couldn't sleep so I went outside and I climbed up in the fork of this big china berry tree in the shadows. It was very late, after every one was gone, I heard the back door open and my father came out and kneeled down by Zekie's coffin and started sobbing. It was the only time I had ever seen him cry. I think he knew deep down inside that he had, gone too far, and that he needed Zekie's gentleness and soft ways, but he couldn't find a way to ever tell him, otherwise to let anybody else know."

     "What did your dad do for a living?"

     "He took care of horses in Mexico, he was well known in his village for how he handled horses. When he came to LA there wasn't much work for him in that field, so he became a mechanic and worked on cars. He hated working on other people's car. His family gave us the money to take him back to bury him in his village. They still called him 'the boy who knew horses'."

         "Dang."

         "That's not all. I stayed up in the tree all night. After about an hour after my dad went in, my brother Robert snuck outside. My grandpa had given each us of kids a big Mexican coin to pay to cross the river."

        "Cross the river?"

      "You know, like in the Greek stories, to pay the boat man, to take you across the river, to go to heaven. We all kept our coin and carried it everywhere we went for good luck. I saw my mom place Zeke's coin into his pocket before they laid him in the casket, and I saw my brother Robert take it out of his pocket that night."

          'What? Did you call him out?"

         "No, he was too big, and it would have shamed my family even more than the nature of Zeke's death. After he left, I climbed down, and replaced the coin with my own."

          "So, you don't have a coin to pay the crossing?" She looked down and shook her head no. I stood up and set Rosa down in the chair, and  went to the shelf and pulled out the book of poems, "Here, I want you to have this. It was my mother's favorite book."

           "I can't take that, Errol. It's your mother's."

          "Mom would understand. I know that she would want you to have it. Open it up and see." She took it from my hand and gently opened the book. Lying in the middle was an old gold coin. Rosa gasped when she saw it."

          "What is this, Errol?"

       "It's how I know that the book was meant for you. When mom died, we gave all of her possessions away. My sister got her diary, my brother Pete took her Bible, and I got this book of poems. When I unpacked it to set it on that shelf, the book opened to that coin. I never even knew it was in there. Look what she underlined."

          Rosa read the passage, "He sees eternity in men and women; he does not see men or women as dreams or dots." She closed the book and clutched it to her chest.

           "Someday very soon, Rosa, I hope and pray that you can return it to the same spot on that shelf and yet still keep it at the same time."

      When she realized what I was saying, she stood and wrapped her arms around me tightly. We stayed in the embrace for a long time, until I laughed and told her, "You can still cook me breakfast though.

       I was just wolfing down the last of the bacon, when Mrs. Cohen came knocking on the front door. I answered it and she looked worried and asked if Rosa was there, so I invited her in.

        "Rosa! Stay calm, stay calm! Lennie is all right, he's OK, but I just got a call from the school and they said some guy tried to take him out of school, but they wouldn't let him. Lennie is ok, but they said they need to talk to you."

      On the way to the school, I tried my best to keep her calm, but she was frantic and kept ordering me to go faster. I could tell that she was on the very edge of losing it. I tried to calm her down by talking, "Rosa, it don't make sense that it would be Giancarlo or those two idiots. It had to be Johnny. I don't know how he found out, but we'll do whatever we have to do, even if it means we move Lennie to a different school, or even us moving away from to somewhere else."

    She only half heard what I was saying, but when the import of the message got through to her it was if she came out of a trance, "I don't want to move. Mrs. Cohen and Miss Mildred are so good for him. Mr. Gomez hires him to wash his car and do chores. This is a great place, I don't want to leave there. It's not fair for Lenny to have to run and hide for something that I did."

     "I don't want to go either. I was just trying to say that I'm willing to do whatever it takes."

     She let that one thought hang in the air for a moment before looking me in the eye and answering, "Anything?"

     I didn't get a chance to reply because we were pulling into the parking lot of the school. When we got into the office, Lennie jumped up and ran across the room into his mothers arms crying, "It was Uncle Louie, Mom, he tried to make me go with him, but I didn't go. I yelled just like you told me, and Mr. Johnson helped me." He pointed to an elderly, gray-haired black man wearing overalls standing silently in the corner the room. You could tell the man was not used to being the center of attention as he kept his hands in his pockets and looked away when Lennie pointed at him. Rosa immediately released Lennie and took two large steps to cross the room to embrace Mr. Jackson.

       The principal of the school, a portly, red-faced, white man with named Dr. Jones sputtered, "Mr. Johnson, our janitor, saw what was happening and ran and grabbed hold of Lennie and wouldn't let him go. The assailant, a tall thin, devilish looking man kept cursing and striking Mr. Johnson, but we all started screaming and running toward him, he  let go and ran and got into a red Ford sedan and took off. We called the police and they are on their way. If, you don't mind, Miss DeLeon, could I get you step in my office so we can get started on the report?"

        Rosa and Lennie went off with him and I stayed behind with Mr. Johnson and the secretary. I wanted to ask him some questions, so I started out by shaking his hand. "I can't tell you how thankful we are for what you done."

         He relaxed a little when it was just the two of us, "No bother, I just did any man should have done in my place."

         "Yeah, but still, you acted, many people would have hesitated out of fear."

         "I could see  why they would too, he was a mean looking sucker. I never seen anyone who looked that mean. If I said I wasn't scared, I'd be lying."

          "If it's who I think it is, his nickname is El Diablo."

          "I can believe that. Is he the father of the boy?"

        "No, he's the uncle. The boy's father has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, his brother is trying to get the boy's mother. He thinks she had something to do with his brother's disappearance. That's all I can say. The mother is just trying to go on with her life."

           "She seems like a real nice lady. I hope things work out for her and the boy. Are you helping her?"

           I shook my head yes, "Trying to keep her and the boy safe, Mr. Johnson."

          "Well, that man was pure evil. You best get your mind right, young man because you'll be fighting with the Devil. I have no doubt that there ain't nothing that man wouldn't do to get his way." He gave me a knowing look with the statement.

          When we got back to Rosa's place, she sent Lennie inside and lingered to talk to me. She told me that people at the school were all great and they love Lennie wanted him to stay at their school. Lennie loves that place too, and he loves it here too. Then, she suddenly grabbed me and kissed me with very fiber of her being. Pulling away, she whispered, "I'm tired of running and looking over my shoulder all of the time.You said you'd do anything to protect us." then she walked back toward her house, turning to tell me one last things before she headed inside, "Go, do anything."

           I stood there for a second, confused by a whole multitude of feelings and emotions. Then I turned and started toward my house when I heard footsteps and turned back around as Rosa leaped back into my arms.

     I whispered as we embraced, "I'm just trying to be worthy of you, Rosa. You deserve someone worthy."

       She whispered back, "I just want to be alive, Errol. I want you and me and Lennie to still be alive and happy and somewhere safe."

      Later that night, alone in bed, I prayed for the first time since my mother died. I had never consciously rejected the idea that there was someone or something (I leaned toward something because it was hard for me to reconcile God being someone like the people I knew) directing this whole earthly drama, but I had gotten so caught up in the fictions and frictions of daily existence that I could hardly think straight about anything but survival. So, I prayed.

        "I'm not trying to be rude or smart." Then after some thought, "I'm just trying to protect Rosa and Lennie, Lord." Then after some more thought, "Please, help guide me, grant me some wisdom," and after more thought, "Please accept my thanks and please forgive my sin." I drifted off another reverie before I even got to the final words, the words that sealed the deal. 

         And in between the words of the prayer which were as sincere as I could muster, I was thinking of the words, "Inch tall." Inch tall was how Elsie always made me feel in those final days of our marriage. Like that night she first showed me the dress she was wearing the day she died, and me knowing that the dress wasn't meant for me, and it wasn't my approval she was seeking even as she asked me what I thought. I had never told anyone else that I knew she wasn't rouging her cheeks or applying that bright red lipstick for me. She knew I didn't like it and did it anyway. Then there was the way she started always compared me to her boss, telling me that I needed to work harder, to have more gumption and develop some vision. And there I was the standing by her grave as her family's preacher told the assembly about what a virtuous, fine young Christian she was turning out to be, and all the people who came and patted me on my shoulder and told me how it didn't seem like it, but time would surely heal all wounds. And I never told anyone, how, when I looked out the window and seen her sprawled out in the middle of the intersection, I felt a little sense of relief as if God himself had stepped in taken the problem out of my hands, knowing that I wasn't up to the challenge. Even when Pete and I were traveling across the country in an effort to put as many miles as we could between us and the source of all our nightmares, I never told him about the doubts, that sense of relief, not even in a whisper, or about the source of my bad dreams.

      Some times we would camp out at night, sometimes we would stay in cheap roadside motels, soon as we stopped for the evening, he would always start drinking himself into a stupor causing us to argue a lot. It would usually get to the point where he would end up  pointing his finger at me and slurring, "You didn't see him hanging there, Errol. You didn't have to climb out on that limb and cut him down. 

      But I would always silence him and end the argument by answering, "Yeah, but I helped you and Grandpa get him off the back of the wagon and carried him inside and undressed him and washed his body. You, though Pete, never looked out of the window and saw your wife sprawled out in the street like a broken doll." Pete knew all about Elsie's infidelities, but he always stopped just short of throwing them back in my face. And it was his silence, as much as anything, that kept me from the wholehearted belief that that it wasn't him who had hung her lover from that lamppost on the hill outside of  Tulsa. I never told him though about those mixed emotions I felt from viewing that scene from on high. And it was that unspoken knowledge that kept the distance between us once we got out to the promised land, the so-called 'Land of Milk and Honey', a place which should have been more truthfully labeled as, 'More of the Same'. 

         And it was then, that I awoke from the reverie and finished the prayer, by stating "In Jesus's name, Amen."