I know grief. He and I are on a first name basis, his is George. We are always talking about some weird shit or the other.

    "Hey, George. How you doing today?"

    He always shrugs first thing. It drives me nuts. He always looks at me all serious like Jason Robards looked in All The President's Men. He shrugs, then attempts a sad ass smile that ends up looking like he just bit through the sugar coating of dog turd. He then raises his hand up sideways and shakes it twice and says, "Meh."

    He stands behind me when I shave, frowning like I'm doing something wrong. He is the single most, stupid ass, lying, conniving, piece of shit, sorry excuse I know, and in this pandemic era where your willingness to lie can make you the leader of the free world, that's setting the bar pretty fucking high. But I can't ever seem to break it off because every so often he reveals the truth in ways that no-one else can.

      This morning I got up and started reading Joan Didion's novel Play It as It Lays which one critic described as being a ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s. The book is about the main character's relation with her own grief. She gets up in the morning and relentlessly drives the highways around Southern California  in search of things to make her forget the fact that her mother died alone in a car wreck and was partially devoured by coyotes before they discovered her body. The main character was partying with a rich boyfriend when it happened.

    I've done that, not the rich boy friend partying, but the relentless driving. My father, and my wife had died and God punished my failures as a husband by giving me tinnutis, a classroom full of kids lacking self-control (okay that was the admin's contribution), and a sense of hopelessness that often resembled a tear-stained photograph of a Martian landscape. 

      That's the thing. Grief always hangs out with these two wormy little fucks named Guilt and Self-Loathing. They always show up late and ring the door bell and wave around an empty bottle of Champagne and say let's party while they're standing there in your doorway, but the moment you let them in, they gang up on you and make you feel like shit.

     One summer, I drove from Tehachapi to Merced along the eastern edge of the valley, sometimes with my mom in tow, trying to keep from thinking too much, always hoping that what I discovered on such journeys would be so new and important that it would wipe away the bloody footprints and chalk outlines of the past. The road trips never did help that much, but the demands of the  unknown road ahead sometimes kept me from staring too hard at the image in the rear-view mirror. 

     This morning I got up feeling more than a little discouraged. I read the book I mentioned for an hour and only put it down when the insanity of the main character's outlook on her grief filled life started sounding too suspiciously like my own. I went to get another book from the back seat of my car and I found a funeral announcement from a funeral I had recently attended and spoken at. I saw the date under the picture; she was barely 30 years old and was known throughout our small community as someone who had decided to fill her short life with as much love, live, and purpose as she could muster.  I think of her like one of those movie characters who put way too much stuff in their suitcase, then have to sit on it to try to make it shut. Her attitude was summed up in the term Beast Mode.
      
     I saw her smiling in the picture and got pissed off at myself for feeling down just because I pretend to have the luxury to waste my time that way. I went in the house and did a sink full of dishes, cleaned my toilet bowl, and washed and vacuumed my car, things I had been neglecting to do. It helped. Doing the things you need to do are often just as vital as love and laughter. Feeling sorry your self is not.

     I read now with the same urgency like I once drove across the valley floor in an endless search of shit that I can use to blot out the memories of my shortcomings, my flaws, and my mistakes. Someday, I would like to get to the point in the story where on some lost, desert highway I come face to face with a long-haired, bearded stranger drinking water from a burlap covered jug, and smoking a Salem. Someone who sounds a lot like Sam Eliot.

        I would pull over and park along side the car, look over at my mom and tell her I needed to talk to this fella, and that I would  be right back. Then I would get out and walk over to where he sat on a rock covered with a Navajo blanket, and I say,

        "What can you tell me, man. I've come an awful long way. I wouldn't even have even known which way to come, but I saw the mark you made on that stop sign back at the four corners. I could really need some help, Man."

         The man would look me over, take a long drag off his Salem, exhale the smoke making it form a series of concentric rings and then take a drink from his jug, and I would notice that it looked like water coming out of the bottle's mouth, but turned into a dark, red wine as it seeped out of the corners of his mouth. He would burp and mumble, "That's some good shit," and drag his sleeve over his mouth to wipe it. They he would tell me,  "You got every thing you need in that there car, son, your mama, a good book, and a tank of gas. I can only assume you got a CD player playing Kind of Blue and a good GPS app?"

        I would get mad, "That's it? After all that driving. All the searching. After all the reading. That's all you got to offer?"

           He chuckled as he pulled a strand of long white hair behind his right ear, "One other thing; you gotta get rid of those three  little assholes you've been hanging with a lot."

            "But how? How do I do that?"

         He reached down on the other side of the rock and pulled out a dust covered, white painted board. He blew the dust off and handed it to me, "Hang this sign over your door."

           I looked at the sign; in big blue letters it said, " Beast Mode Thinking! Get your sorry ass to stepping!"

           I would look at the sign, think about it a bit, and come to a unique understanding. That's when I would notice that it was the the Monday after Easter Sunday, and I would smile and nod at the guy, and run quickly back to the car, carrying the sign, eager to show it to my mom.

        


   

     Sometimes I fall into the mistake of thinking that I haven't been writing lately. I have, but I haven't been sharing a lot of it. I have developed such a deep distrust of a lot of the media platforms because of the blatant dishonesty they put on full display at the end of the year.  I was looking back at some stuff and while pleasantly surprised by some of what I did write, I also noticed that it was also full of so much longing and regret.

The View From Mt. Fuji

"I knew you guys would come. Or, I knew someone would. I figured the universe couldn't be so cruel as to leave me standing there with my thumb up my ass in front of a prison where I was locked up for five years."

           The van was old, rusty and noisy, and they had to raise their voices in order to talk. Lola took a deep last drag off of her Salem and flicked it out the window and then slowly exhaled the smoke out of the window too. "That's where you wrong, sonny boy. The fucking universe would have let you stand right there until the guards came and locked your goofy ass right back up. It was your mother who picked you up. Remember that. I ain't gonna lie though: it was Carla reminded me. Otherwise, I woulda just gone down to Hanratty's and gotten drunk like every other day. Not that I wouldn't have come, of course. I had just forgot."

Old Dudes Fishing

   The shiny, new Lexus backed out of the parking slot and straightened its wheels so that Rodney, sitting in the back seat, was level with where Geezer and Pancho were standing. His head and shoulders were slumped over, and his head was barely above window level; he looked up sadly and barely raised his hand and waved as the car pulled forward.

             Pancho and Geezer stood right where they were and waved long after the car turned left on Derry and drove out of sight toward the outskirts of town.

           After a long while, Geezer turned to his friend and started to say, "Maybe Big Larry's right. It might be good for. . . ," he then noticed that Pancho was crying, "Are you crying? You damn crybaby. Two tours of duty as a helicopter gunner in Nam just to come home and start bawling outside a shit hole restaurant.. Knock it off, Pancho. We ain't freaking snowflakes! We real men remember. The last of a dying breed and don't you ever forget it!"

           Pancho turned toward Geezer and smiled through his tears, "Said the same dumb ass fool who cried all night when Jerry Garcia died. I'm gonna miss that fool, Geezer. He didn't talk dumb shit all the time like you."

So You Want to Shag a Movie Star?

    "Do you honestly mean to tell me that you think that your answer was appropriate for a high school literature class?"

   "That's a different question. I answered the question he asked me, and I answered it honestly. It's not my fault that Mr. People's is a hypocrite."

    "So, your deepest desire is to sleep with a Hollywood movie star?"

       "There you go to changing the question again. I didn't say it was my deepest desire. My deepest desire would be to be able to function in a society where I didn't have to lie or modify my truth in order deal with the inability of others to accept it as such. In response to your question, I would just say, how could it be otherwise? That's why those stars exist, to create desires where none existed before. They use our desires against us, to sell us stuff, including false realities and untruth."

        Ms. Stephens started coughing at that point.

The Languages of Trees

   The memory of Petey's death strangely made me think of the image of my dad kneeling down and scratching the words, "Petey Our Beloved Puppy," into the wet cement slab he had placed on the dog's grave and then just as quickly, that old memory morphed in the newer memory of my brothers and I standing at the side of my father's grave. I had thought of Petey's funeral on that day too, wondering who had etched the words into my father's headstone. It was a cold, breezy day the middle of an unusually warm Autumn.  My brother Cody had selected Elvis's Peace in the Valley as the music marking the end of the ceremony.

       My childhood friend Hobo, real name Larry, came up afterwards and hugged me tightly. He whispered, "Did you pick out that damn music?"

       "Naw. That was Cody's idea. He loves Elvis, man. He'd sang it hisself if we'd let em."

       Hobo pulled back and said earnestly, "Good fucking choice though. I always said that if'n the King can't break you down, you can't be fucking broken down."

          I laughed, "Shit, fool. Don't be making me laugh. It's my dad's funeral for Christ's sake." I then thought about it a minute then said, "Hell, the song was a lot better than that damn preacher though."

         "Ain't that the damn truth! Where did you guys get that mealy mouth motherfucker, out the Yellow Pages? Sound like he was trying to sell us a car."

           I laughed again, "Knock it off, I said. Damn, dude. Jennie said that if we used Old Penrose she wouldn't even come. Glen came up with this dude."

           Hobo pulled a package of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, lit a one, and exhaled slowly, "Well you know what they always say. Same shit, different suit."

The Man With Half a Heart

   And, oh yeah, she took half of him with her. The left half. He suddenly felt a lot lighter, so he looked down and noticed that she had sliced him neatly in two, starting at the top of his head and exiting below his crotch area. He was just starting to wonder just how the f**k she could done the thing so neatly and so swiftly when he remembered that Delia wielded words like a highly trained samurai wielded a katana blade, and she also had a natural gift for turning his own words into weapons that drew blood.

        As far as the people eating at the surrounding tables knew, he was okay. Sure, they had witnessed the tossed napkin and the storming out, but to the outward vision, he was still in one piece. He played along with the charade, paid the bill, and slowly made his way into the restroom where he stood before the marble counter and carefully surveyed and listed the real damage.

        Anybody knows that possessing half a heart is damned near as worthless as having no heart at all. But a lot of people do not understand that the heart is also a seat of memory and the hub of all emotional activities. So, all of his emotions now entered in a limbo after discovering the hub was missing. They wandered about the halls of his consciousness lost, lonely and confused, sometimes hooking up with the half baked ideas that were still being emitted by the still intact right side of his brain. This resulted in a lot of strange behavior on his part. Sometimes he fell in love with an episode of CSI, at other times he would rage at the sight of cute squirrel eating a peanut in the park.

Mourning in April

  I started thinking that life comes at people like a fastball thrown by a hall of fame pitcher while we are looking for the curve. The ball gets up on us so quickly that we swing weakly and miss it by a mile. We know we can't quit though, it wouldn't be right, so we tell ourselves on the way back to the dugout that that motherfucker gotta wear out sometime, and sooner or later, he'll  hang that curve right over the plate. Trick is being in the batter's box when he does and still having your team close enough for it to mean something. I was of the mind that after striking out three times, I was fixing to get pulled for a pinch hitter anyway.

      
     It's been over twenty-five years since that star flew across the moon that night and almost the same amount of time since Gladys crushed my hopes like a bug on the first day of seventh grade year.

      You'd figure that those two events should have been deeply buried in the sediments by now, far enough beneath the surface of the water, rusted and forgotten, that they couldn't possibly affect me anymore. But you'd figure wrong.

     And it's always those deep, forgotten, rusty things that hurt the most.  

The Secret of the Sliver Moon

   Lazarus Russell died all alone on outskirts of Concord, a small, judgmental town full of people who often carved their presumptions out of stone, yet had a hard time scratching the surface of the obvious. Lazarus had lived there so long that he had become to seem of no more substance or meaning than a barely noticed tree, or a warning sign posted on a certain corner that no one ever heeded.

       It was cold and bitter the night he died lying on a dirt embankment beneath the railroad bridge along State Route 23. He looked up at the  slight, blurry, sliver of silver hanging in a dark black sky then lowered his gaze toward the brackish water pooled below the railroad bridge and saw the same slivered moon undulating lightly on its surface. He then closed his eyes, mumbled something toward the shadows, exhaled and surrendered.


Matchsticks

   Kevin Cash ran through life like his tail was on fire. looking back, I often wonder if he didn't have the right idea. Life is like a big assed blanket and if we stand still long enough, or worse, just sit and watch, it will eventually smother us all.

     Standing there by his grave, all his friends were gathered at one end, clustered in between a flower arrangement that spelled out 'Go for it!' in red roses at one end and one that said 'Tell Johnny I Said Hello' in yellow roses at the other. The picture his sister Sharon took of the sad looking group looked like the after picture of the whole Sixties era, and, in perfect truth, captured the essence of those confusing times as they played out in our dusty, little town in the great San Joaquin Valley. I can't help but wonder though how many other such photographs exist and how many 'What the Fuck?' responses they would one day engender.

       We laughed that there was nothing inside that shiny walnut box but the ass end of big joint in a roach clip. We joked about it because we had all seen it coming, and, each in our own way, had tried to warn him. We always presented ourselves like a stoic bunch of sad-eyed losers but a little bit deeper down, underneath the thin layer of epidermis we passed off to the public, our hearts were drowning. It was like being at the funeral of Icarus. All of us got a little sunburned, but it was always Kevin who flew the highest.

The Ride

    "Pop, is there anything about your God forsaken life that you actually regret?"

     I saw that the question hit him right between the eyes, and he flinched for just a second. For as long as I had known him, my dad had never, ever looked backwards. He even told me once that he had taken the rearview mirror out of the first car he owned. When I asked him why, he surprised me with his answer.

    "A old man I knew, Guy Mitchell, used to be a Professor back in Arkansas, once told me a story about a mule sitting equal distance between two bales of hay. He said that damn fool mule couldn't make his mind up which bale to eat and starved to death. There's only one way to go, Son. Forward. And because life is hard on your ass trying to run you down you gotta move fast, so you got no time to sit cry in your fucking beer."

     "Regrets, Pop? You got any?"

     He looked out the window as the town he had lived in for over sixty years flew by like the moving back drops in the old Western movies he loved so much. After a minute, he turned back and looked me in the eyes. He wore thick lenses, and they magnified his eyes so that I could see that his bottom lids were damning the flow of the only water I had ever seen in those eyes.

   This man had cracked jokes at my mom's funeral. He complained so much about her cooking, that I had to threaten to kick his ass if he didn't shut up. It was only now though, in sudden flash of insight, no doubt helped along by the shock of seeing those damn tears welling up, that I realized the jokes and the complaining was all facade. I knew that he was hurting, maybe even feeling guilty as we sat there by the side of my mother's grave.

    "You can't live life the way I"ve done and just up and start feeling guilty or ashamed. It wouldn't be honest. My old man use to beat my ass every day. Right up till the time I took his belt away and turn the tables on him. The way I see things, I only have two regrets anyway."

   Pop stopped mid thought. I waited and waited and the answer didn't seem to be forthcoming. "And?"

   He then gave me the saddest look I had ever seen, "I regret in taking the pretty offa your mama. She was the prettiest girl in this county at one time. . . . . .then she had the bad judgement to take up with me." He chuckled sadly, "I used to parade her up and down this very street like I was toting peacocks."

   With that, he grew silent and turned and looked back out the window. I could tell though that what he was seeing in his head sure wasn't really out there now.
​
    "Pop, you said you had a second regret?"
The words came out simply, hard, fast and resigned, "My greatest regret is turning that belt on my daddy. I should never have done that."​




  

     I was 10 years old when I first thought about death. I was standing in the darkened kitchen of our old house on the Southside of Corcoran, looking through the doorway into our fully lit living room when my mom and dad returned home from my uncle Raymond's funeral. They were dressed in black and I instinctively knew that something serious was happening. I wasn't quite certain what all it involved, but I knew that I would never forget that moment as long as I lived.

    Then the day after school ended my sixth grade year, my best friend at the time drown while swimming in an irrigation canal out by where the prison is today. I heard the news from a kid that I didn't want to see at that moment for whatever reason. When I heard that he was looking for me, I ducked beneath my neighbor's grandpa's truck and was lying facedown in the dirt in the darkness staring out at his sunlit feet when he told my friends to let me know that Billy had drown. I had a dream that night that Billy was running through the hallways of Mark Twain School calling for me to come out and hang with him. Then I woke up into the extremely bitter realization that he was gone forever.

     About a year later, there was a thunder and lightening storm that hit Corcoran, and my mother in a rush to pick my brother and I up from his football practice, forgot that our beloved family dog Pepe often slept in a rut behind the left rear tire of our family car. In the darkness my brother Tim and I didn't even notice that my mom was crying until we walked out of darkness of the night into the house and saw my dad sitting in the middle of the couch crying with his head haloed by a ceiling light coming from the kitchen through the same doorway that I had once saw them coming home from my uncle's funeral.

     My dad, trying to spare us the grisly knowledge of death had hastily buried Pepe before we had even got home. We made him dig Pepe up and place him in a wooden coffin lined with an old towel, and we held a ceremony for our pet the next day and placed a headstone on the grave that is still there to this day.
   
       I learned that time that it is inevitable and certain that all the people and things we love will one day pass away, and that is a heavy knowledge to place upon the shoulders of someone young, or for anyone for that matter. Throughout my life, I've often caught myself holding back and keeping my loved ones at arm's length in the hope that death won't notice my love for them and spirit them away.

      I'm certain that everyone who reads this can substitute their own images of death that they will never forget for as long as they live. And I believe that if they search their memories that they will also notice the role that the demarcation beneath darkness and light play in their memories too, for Death is the great illumination that most clearly defines our very existence. So often, it pulls us up out of the darkness and our sleep and thrusts us into the harsh light of reality. REALITY. As in the world as it really is.

       We humans often resort to such ridiculous measures to avoid the certain  knowledge of our own impending death. Most of us, if we are being perfectly honest, would be more willing to watch every stupid ass show there is on Bravo in an endless loop than to ever take the time to carefully examine those acid-etched memories in an effort to squeeze out every ounce of possible meaning that we could gain from such an effort. We would rather become diehard Detroit Lion fans, or even pretend to love the music of a dip-shit like Marilyn Manson rather than sit for a minute alone with the deafening silence of the simplest most enduring Truth of our existence.

       Recently, a young lady I knew and loved passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. She was given a timeline that pretty much told her when her life would come to an end. Her response was to try and prove her doctor's wrong. And the thing that was most amazing was that she always had a smile on her face right up until the very end. People my age live in daily fear of receiving such knowledge. And I don't even want to speculate on how well I would handle such news.

         I read a quote the other night in a book that I was reading to learn more about another book I had already read. The author was trying to come to grips with the tragic death of a close friend, and it said, "It is a parent's job to love a child into the belief that life is worth living." I was struck by the stunning truth of that haunting sentiment. How different our lives could be if all our schools operated on the belief that it was their job to love a child into believing that life had meaning, or if all of our politicians understood that it was their chief responsibility to give us hope instead of behaving like the silly twits to which we have become accustomed.

        What a great parent this young lady surely must have had to have her believe so strongly that life, no matter how bad it might seem, was worth the living. What a lesson for us all, not in how she showed us how to die, but in how she showed us how to live.
         

      Johnnie 'Buddha' Aguayo walked out of the prison gate with no expectations. He had put absolutely zero thought into figuring out what would happen upon his release. His mom knew he was getting out, so he figured she might be the one who showed up to pick him up, but over the years he had learned many painful yet valuable lessons, each slightly varied in their particulars, yet all with the same theme; it would be totally insane for him to place his trust in his mother. So, he left it up to the universe to deal with, the same mental practice that had helped get him through most of his childhood and the five years he had just served.

     He just stood there adjusting the backpack from time to time, a tall, well built, light skinned Mexican-American with a graying goatee,  staring off at the horizon. He had reddish hair and a light scattering of freckles across the skin of his nose. It had been the one thing that he had missed the most while locked up, a clear, unfettered look at the horizon, one that didn't have the walls of the prison obstructing the view.

      Johnnie stood perfectly still for at least ten minutes, not saying anything, or displaying in any way that he was impatient or the least bit anxious. The guards watching his every move would never be able to understand how much his mind was calmed and comforted by just seeing the horizon from outside of the walls.

      In the distance, a solitary cloud of dust appeared to be following the single road that led toward the front of prison. After a while, it became apparent that the cloud of dust was being created by Johnnie's mother's van. He could tell by its purple coloring and yellow trim. His mother Lois was the leader of small tribe of diehard Laker fans and nearly everything she owned exhibited the same color scheme. The van also had a wheel-chair lift on the side that distinguished it from most other vans. It sped by the first entrance and slammed on the brakes only after passing the second entrance by about fifty feet. It backed up, turned into the driveway, and came to a sudden, grinding halt facing the way that it had come surrounded by the aforementioned dust cloud and announcing its presence with the cacophony of a heaving bucket of rusty bolts. The rear door  opened and Johnny threw his back pack in and jumped inside climbing over the rear seat. The door slammed, and the dust cloud began its journey back to where it had originated.

         Lois, a heavy-set, heavily made-up woman with long gray, braided hair, turned in the driver's seat and questioned, "Hey, Mijo, you starting to get worried? We woulda been here earlier except your fucking dad had to stop and pee at the 7 Eleven." She looked over to where his father Big John sat in the passenger seat across from his son.

        His dad's nickname was a lie. Big John had never weighed more than a hundred and sixty pounds in his whole life, and he was only five foot six. He was a passive man who had labored in the fields on the outskirts of the city until his back had given out and dealing with the escapades of his wife caused his last testicle to wither up and die. He rarely spoke unless in response to a question, and his most worthwhile contributions to his family's fortune was his silence, his stoic sensibilities and the disability check he received once a month. He turned his gaze to his son, smiled, and nodded.

      "Hey, Pop. Long time no see," Johnny said. Big John first smiled, revealing he had lost his front teeth, and shook his head sadly.

     "Hi, Johnnie, we're glad you're finally out. You're mom's been making tamales for your first meal home." This last statement came from Carla, his mother's girlfriend. She smiled at him, looking somewhat like a cartoon raccoon with the heavy black eyeshadow she always wore. Her hair was dyed black but her blonde roots were showing adding to the raccoon look. Carla was Anglo and had grown-up in a well-to-do family in Pacific Palisades, but she had left home at sixteen when her parent's drinking had gotten completely out of hand.  She had dropped out of college and ended up dancing at a strip club where Lois was dancing too. Johnnie had been fully prepared to hate her when she first showed up at the house, but her natural goodness had won him and his brother over.

        "I knew you guys would come. Or, I knew someone would. I figured the universe couldn't be so cruel as to leave me standing there with my thumb up my ass in front of a prison where I was locked up for five years."

           The van was old, rusty and noisy, and they had to raise their voices in order to talk. Lois took a deep last drag off of her Salem and flicked it out the window and then slowly exhaled the smoke out of the window too. "That's where you wrong, sonny boy. The fucking universe would have let you stand right there until the guards came and locked your goofy ass right back up. It was your mother who picked you up. Remember that. I ain't gonna lie though: it was Carla reminded me. Otherwise, I woulda just gone down to Hanratty's and gotten drunk like every other day. Not that I wouldn't have come, of course. I had just forgot."

            Johnny raised his chin and almost shouting said, "Thanks, Carla. You too, mom. And you too, Pop."

           Lois was happy that he had included her, but she couldn't stop herself from asking, "Whatya thanking him for? He never does nothing but smile that same stupid ass smile all day, and you gotta drag every word he says out of his ass with a pair of God-damn vice-grips."

          "Yeah, well then I'm thanking him for smiling everyday and not saying shit." After he that, the conversation died stopped. They drove back to city with no-one saying anything. Lois was listening to radio KRTH and her and Carla would sing along every time a song came on that they liked. Johnny looked at his dad who was looking straight ahead out of the front windshield but also seemed to be looking into a different dimension. It reminded Johnnie of the times when he was younger, back before his brother Eddie got shot, when Big John would be staring at the television set but looking straight past it and seeing God only knows what.

        It was late afternoon when they finally got to the house that Lois had bought with the money she was awarded from a lawsuit she had brought when she was injured at a packing plant. It wasn't painted purple with yellow trim when she had bought it, but she persuaded her boy friend at the time and his brothers to paint it for her. Johnny walked in and went straight to the bedroom he had shared with his younger brother Eddie. He could tell that his mom, or probably Carla, had recently cleaned it.  Even the record he had left on the turntable the day he had last walked out of the room had been dusted and shined. He threw his backpack in the easy chair by the door and walked over to the twin bed he had slept in, took his shoes off, and lay down.

    He couldn't keep from thinking about how eerie it was that how little it was unchanged from the times when he and Eddie would lie in bed and talk into the wee hours of the night. He looked up at the ceiling and was pleased to discover that the poster of Mt. Fuji that Mr. Cyrus, his seventh grade English teacher, had given him on the last day of seventh grade was still there. He recalled the many hours he had stared at the picture and pretended that he was standing on the top of the mountain where he received the special magical powers that would transport him to any place in the world that he wanted to be. He also thought about how Mr. Cyrus was the only teacher who ever said anything nice about him.

       "Johnny, you got a gift with your reading ability. You need to nourish it and it will do good things for you."

        "I don't know about that Mr. Cyrus. It's a rough place where I live."

           "I'll let you in on a little secret; it's rough everywhere."

        "It don't look too rough on the other side of the freeway, Mr. Cyrus. Them people got their own swimming pools."

            "I know, but I live by some of them people who have swimming pools. They are some of the dumbest people I know. I mean it, they are some seriously screwed up people. I grew up poor myself. My dad was executed by the state of Arkansas right after I was born. I could read though. I earned a scholarship to go to college. I've taught here for the last thirty years. I've faced up to the fact that most of the kids I've taught didn't learn much. I'm retiring this year. Tired of talking to myself. My brother-in-law is an investment banker; he makes fun of my teaching career. You know what I tell him?"

             "Whad da you say?"

            "May not be much for you, but it's enough for me."

           Before Johnny got locked up, he had heard that after Mr. Cyrus's wife Beatrice died from Ovarian cancer, he had ran a garden hose from the tailpipe into the cab of his blue Chevy 150, put Miles Davis's Kind of Blue on the stereo, and sat there till he died; the paper had used the word asphyxiated.

           Johnny slept deeply for two hours then awoke to the sound of Carla and his mom preparing his welcome home dinner. The TV was on in the kitchen and they were laughing over a joke someone had made. He got up and walked out the back door onto the patio. Big John had just finished spraying off the concrete and was keeping busy by trimming the ivy which had clearly taken over the yellow wooden lattice work that separated the patio from the vision of pedestrians walking by. The patio furniture his mother had bought on her forty-fifth birthday was still there. There were four metal scalloped back chairs with white legs. The chairs were once red, blue, green and orange, but she and Carla had painted them purple and yellow. Everyone in the house except Johnny got to pick a number of their favorite Laker to paint on the front of the seat. His brother Eddie was real artistic and made the numbers look real. There was #23 for Lois's favorite Magic Johnson, #42 for Carla's favorite James Worthy, Big John's #33 for Abdul-Jabbar, and #21 for Eddie's choice of Michael Cooper. Johnny hated the Lakers and often wore a Piston jersey with Joe Dumar's #4 just to piss his mother off.

       He walked over to the set and pulled the #21 chair out and sat down. A rush of memories flooded over him. He remembered the nights of a patio full of neighbors and friends drinking, arguing, and laughing loudly. He conceded that while life for the most part growing up had usually been a real shit show; it wasn't always bad.

         His mom, or more likely Carla, had pulled out all of the stops for dinner. There were tacos, carnitas, enchiladas and tamales. There was even fresh baked pumpkin pie with whip cream, his favorite. There was  a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles iced down in a cooler on the kitchen counter. Lola was drinking one of her Laker Bombs, a concoction she had created consisting of a bottle of Jose Cuervo mixed with Grape Kool-Ade and slices of lemon. Johnny could tell by her flushed face that his mother had been drinking them for a while

            She slapped her hand on the table and said, "Hey everybody, I want to make a toast to my boy being home."

         They all drank the toast. They all made made a toast to Johnny's homecoming, even Big John managed to mumble something out.

           After Carla's toast, Lois added, "I only wish Lil Eddie could be here to see this." 

           "Amen," said Carla.

         The statement from his mom triggered something in Johnny that had been building up for six years; he sat his beer down on the table, "Maybe he could have, mom, if you hadn't had him standing out on that corner where they shot him."

         There was a very tense moment of silence, and Johnny saw the always present smile on his dad's disappear."

        His mother finally understood the gist of what he what he said and exploded in anger, " What are you saying? That I caused him to get shot that night? He was my son. I loved that kid. I didn't do nuthin."

         "You beat up Pedro Verdado's grandmother because she said something about Carla. You put the old lady in the hospital with a concussion, and then you threatened their whole family saying that your boys would take care of them."

          "Fuck that bitch. She deserved what she got; she called Carla a puta. She told me, 'your fucking lezzie whore thinks I owe her some money.'"

         "And then later that night, Pedro and his cousin Felix shot Eddie who was down on the corner telling everybody he was looking for Pedro. So, I then had to shoot Felix."

          Carla was trying to run interference for Lois, "Yeah, but it was self defense what you did."

         "Naw, that's what my lawyer said, and the jury believed him. I had to shoot him first because he knew I was Eddie's brother."

            "Then how's that my fault, Johnny. I fought her with my fists. Besides, me and Yolanda had bad blood for years. I beat her ass up at least three times before that night. Eddie had go out there acting all bad."

             "Yeah, but he was doing it for you, you put him up to it, trying to please you and show you how tough he was. That wasn't really him. That was never him. All he really wanted to do was paint and draw, but you always called him a sissy for wanting that."

            "He needed to be tougher, Johnny. He wouldn't survive out there unless he got tougher."

            "Tough enough to get shot, I guess."

            His mom hurled her beer bottle at him. It missed and exploded on the wall behind him. She stood up and pointed at him in anger, "I didn't do it. You think I wanted him to get shot down like that, like a dog in the street. He was my baby boy. I loved him the most! You're just jealous." She collapsed back down into her chair and put her head down on the table sobbing. Carla tried to comfort her. Big John had already slipped out of the room like he always did whenever tempers began to flair.'

           He sighed deeply and slowly exhaled, "I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to put it like that. It's just that I had too much time to think about that night. I read a lot of books and it took me a while, but I learned to understand that most of our troubles start when we are too young to know how things really are. I know how tough you and my tias had it growing up. I understand that you did things you probably wouldn't have done if your dad had been a real man instead of some Irish, asshole drunk. But there are consequences, Mom. There is always a price people got to pay for not playing by the rules. Sometimes, you don't pay it yourself and someone else has to pay it for you. I realized that maybe your dad had it rough too, and probably his dad before that and on and on. It made me realize that our lives are mapped out years before we even get a chance to live them, and unless something happens where the universe decides to throw us a rope, we live out our destinies paying for the mistakes of all those who came before us."

             He got up from his seat and went and kneeled before his mother and placed his head into her lap. She stopped sobbing after a while and leaned over him and placed her head on his and her hands on his back."I'm so sorry, Johnny. I never meant to hurt you guys. I ruined it all for you and you were such a smart kid. You could have been a doctor or a lawyer." Her words made her start sobbing again, "It's crazy. I love you guys so much, but I do such stupid shit. I don't even think before I do it. I even love your dumb-assed dad, wouldn't know what I'd do without that goofy bastard."

          That night, lying in bed and staring up at the poster hanging on the ceiling above him, Johnny summoned the magic from the picture and took himself back to the night where he and Eddie had talked about the future. He told his brother he had wanted to be a writer and to write a book like Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, his favorite writer. He related the outlines of the story to his brother. Then Eddie had told him about his wish to become an artist.

         "Keep it on the down low, dude. I don't want them assholes like Julio and Ernest laughing at me like they do with Joey and his wish to be an architect."

          The week before, Eddie had finished painting a mural of Magic Johnson driving for a lay-up inside the taqueria of one of Lois's friends named Hercule Perez. He had also painted a picture of an Abdul-Jabbar skyhook on the outside wall facing the busy street. On the inside wall, behind the counter, Eddie had painted a picture of Napoleon's flagship The Orient burning and sinking after the battle of The Nile River.
            
           "Why? Why the hell would you do that?" he had asked his brother.

          "Because Hercule gave me my choice, a hundred a fifty for both paintings, or a wall to paint what I wanted. He got mad when I finished  because it didn't match the theme, and he tried to pay me to cover it up, and I told him, "Fuck you, Dude, we made a deal, so he let it stay up. People liked it too."

          The very next night, he and his girlfriend drove up on Eddie lying bleeding on the corner of Fifth and Galveston in front of Hercule's place, then later that night he hovered over the body of Felix Garcia lying at his feet facedown in the gutter in front of Mercury Liquor with the puddling red blood from his head wound reflecting the colors of the traffic light. He remembered setting the gun on the ground and standing there and waiting for the police to arrive on the scene. The night and the street corner was noisy as hell, but the only sound he remembered hearing was the broken breathing of his girlfriend Cathy crying as she stood beneath the streetlight. She married his best friend Benny while he was locked up. He had given her permission.

      The next morning came bright and early. Johnnie rose  feeling refreshed and took a free shower where he didn't have to keep his butt cheeks clenched and his eyes in the back of his head. He borrowed his mother's van and took Lois, Carla , and Big John to Denny's for breakfast. His mom went without the customary  heavy make-up she always wore in public. He kissed his mom and Carla and hugged his dad before they entered the place.

        "Damn, Ma. I think this is the first time I can ever remember you going outside without your make-up. It's a good look for you, especially  going without all that purple eye-shadow."

          Lois turned and flipped him off, but it was clear that the remark made her happy. Her eyes smiled more so than they had ever had in all of his memories. Big John agreed, smiling broadly and nodding, "She's pretty, huh?"

          When he dropped them off later, Lois asked him where he was going, so he answered, "Going to see Eddie. What else?"

          "Well, don't do anything stupid, Johnnie. Think about yourself first, son." He turned his hands inside out on his lap. He meant it to be a reassuring gesture, but Lois notice the sharp red outline of a scar that ran all the way across his left palm.

             It was a long drive from one end of LA to the other, but it gave Johnnie some time to think. It was a beautiful, sunny day and he cruised along at highway speed with the window down and one arm hanging out, the wind rustling his hair. He thought about how many times he had driven down this stretch of road and had taken the freedom for granted. He put the radio on and War's classic Slipping into Darkness came on. He helped with the chorus.

            It was about an hour later when he turned into the long, oak lined driveway that led into the pastoral grounds of the Heavenly Home for Assisted Living.  He saw Eddie as soon as he stepped out of the van. His brother was sitting in his wheel chair in the middle of group of other wheel chair bound artists. He was the exact opposite of their father. Even in his chair, he looked tall and his mother's Irish side stood out more in his face and complexion. Eddie was showing his wheel chair bound audience how to paint oak trees, easy to see because he was in front of huge easel with a large canvas with a beautiful sketch of the tree before which they were seated.

        Fifteen minutes later, after carefully securing Eddie and his wheelchair into their mandated slot, Johnnie and his brother were flying down the highway toward a third destination. For the first ten minutes neither said a word. It was only when they flew by the Now or Never Amusement Park they used to frequent as kids that Eddie spoke.

            "Member that place Johnnie, the go-karts?"

        Johnnie shook his head sadly before answering, "I remember Diego getting us kicked-out?"

          It was Eddie's chance to shake his head sadly, "That poor fool never had a chance? It was wrong what his mom did, pure fucking evil?"

             It grew silent again, except for the road noise and the forced wind whistling by Johnnie's open window, and for about as long as it took for the brothers to rethink the fate of their long lost friend.

              Another five minutes flew by, "You bring it, Johnnie?"

            Johnnie answered Eddie by nodding toward the glove box.

         "He urinated on me Johnnie. While I was lying there, he took his dick out and pissed on my fucking head."

            "I know. And Felix laughed too, and he told Pedro to leave it to him and he would take care of Mom and her little lezzie friend." He looked back at his brother, "I made you a promise, Eddie. You don't have to worry about me."

            "Never have, brother. I always known that I could count on you. But I'm sorry about how much shit I've put you through."

           "Don't be, Eddie. Fate, DNA, or whatever put me into the role. We can't pick our parents. Neither could they. Besides, if I hadn't been fighting with Ma, I'd probably been there instead of you, and we woulda probably switched places. Are you sure you wanna go through with this? Looks like you got yourself in a sweet set-up back there. I mean all things considered."

         "I'm in a fucking wheelchair, Johnnie. There's nothing sweet about it. Besides, Lucy was there in the car laughing as he did it."

          "Word was he had her killed too."

         "I know. All the more reason. She was my girl first. Then he got her strung out on that shit." Eddie paused for a moment and traveled back in time for a bit. "You know, as much as Ma and I usta fight, you'd think that shit he said wouldn't have bothered me so much."

             "Maybe if he hadn't spray painted it across your mural?"

             Eddie chuckled lowly and smiled grimly, "Maybe so."

          "You do know, don't ya, that Ma started the whole thing over some comment that Pedro's grandma said about Magic Johnson." 

           "I didn't know it for reals; I just assumed," Eddie answered as he took the pearl-handled .38 that his brother handed him and placed it into the pocket of his Laker jacket.

           They found him sitting outside of Azule's Sky Bar holding court with a bevy of young ladies. Word was that him and his partners were buying out the whole area with a view for gentrifying it.

         Afterwards, when the deed was done, they waited by the van for the the cops come.

            "How's mom going to get the van home?" Eddie asked.

            "She'll figure something out; she always does."

         A long black SUV slowly rolled up, and two tall, serious looking types in black uniforms got out. They weren't cops, but the Uzis they were carrying and the earpieces they wore signified something else.

            The one in the passenger seat, a six foot, well built, young black guy spoke first, "You guys really shouldn't be hanging around here. That dude you smoked has a lot of friends."

             Johnnie was confused but before he could wrap his head around what the first guy had said, the huge, bald, Caucasian partner added, "I know you're displaying a handicap sticker on that thing, but I assume that you can load this dude up and get the fuck out of the area."

               Eddie started to say, "But what about.....?"

              The first guy shushed him, "We'll handle it, don't worry. Dude was a scum bag who had a lot more enemies that he had friends. Let's just say you beat us to the punch and leave it at that."

        "Johnnie's mouth tried to work, "But the women, the. people...?"

         The giant shushed him too, "Get your ass in the van and scram, Dumb Ass!"

           Johnnie got the message and started wheeling Eddie toward the access ramp. The SUV started up and pulled around to where they were. A darkened window slid down and the man driving called out, "Ain't that @Lois#1Lakerfan's van?"

          Johnnie shut the side door, took a deep breath and muttered, "My mom."

        The driver looked at his partner and nodded. The window slid back up into place and the SUV rolled away across the parking lot like it was being driven by an older couple looking for a place to eat. Johnnie started the van, put his sunglasses on and drove off slowly.

             

    "Look over there. That's Danny Dozier. That man ain't been right in the head since Jeannie died four years ago."

     "Damn, Judy. He still look fine though."

     "It's them jeans, Karla. Every man looks good in Wranglers and boots. Who's he think he is with that long hair?"

        "Member back in the day when he always wore his hair long?"

        "Hmph. Just trying to look younger than he is."

        "Well, you might not like it, but it's working for me. You just mad because of that one night you were trying to flirt with him, and he left with Jeanne."

        "Damn it, Karla! Why you gotta go bringing that up? It happened almost fifty damn years ago. Besides, I just have never cared much for him. Too damn, opinionated for one thing."

          "Hell, I remember when all you did was talk about him!"

           "Well, Penny Kayser, I don't remember inviting you into this discussion. This here's between me and Karla. She's been telling everyone for years that the only reason I don't like him now is that he jilted me at the homecoming dance and took off with that mousy little Jeanne."

              "Saw it with my own eyes!"

            "If you don't mind, I like to add my two bits to this story."

             "You know your contributions are always welcome, Deena. Hell, God knows that you are the only one of these girls who actually makes some sense."

             "F**k you, Judy!"

             "Yeah, f**k you. There ain't never  nothing ever come out your mouth but gossip and innuendo."

           "All I want to say is that I warned you not to make friends with him. Once a boy regards you as a friend that's all he'll ever see you as."

             "I lived next door to him for eighteen years. It's kind of hard to become friends with your neighbor. Besides, what you said ain't necessarily true. Bernard has been my best friend ever since we married."

              "Ugh! Like making love to your brother."

           "Ain't that the truth. I bet on Bernie is as reliable in that regard as one of them oil rigs, up down, up down, up down." 

            "Shush now! How we been friends all these years is beyond me. You only say that because it's your own failure of imagination how doesn't allow you to supply the twist and turns that'd turn your own husbands into world class bull riders."

          "That's cause we're still ladies, Judy, unlike some women I could name."

               "You're lucky I don't slap your face Karla. If it wasn't for the fact that you've been my best friend since we were in kindergarten, and that I know you're lying about being a lady, I'd still might."

               "Or maybe the fact that I'm at the other end of the table and you'd have to get your fat ass up to do it."

            "You guys quit your bickering! Danny's coming this way!"

           "Well, hello ladies, Judy. I was sitting over there talking with Slim and I couldn't help noticing that you were looking over at us and smiling. So, I thought, well, hell, I could use something to smile about, so I came over to see if you would share a smile with me."

           "Well, me and Penny were just remarking about nice your butt looks in them Wranglers. Just like the old days."

            "That's right, we were saying that maybe we needed to do  your workout for ourselves."

            "Well, I do believe you ladies done made me blush. How bout you, Judy, you don't think my butt still looks good?"

              "Well, it ain't your derriere that matters now is it? You always did have a too high opinion of yourself Danny, and you know it. I was telling that it was wonder to me, how your head could still fit into that hat. It's only holds ten gallons, don't it?"

         "There's my smile; now that's the Judy Villa that I remember. I was talking about you with my dad about you just the other day." 

                "Me? Now, that presents a conundrum; what could you and JT possibly have to say about me?"

                 "We were tearing down his back fence and replacing it. We got back to the part that was in the back corner, remember the place that was just behind your window. My dad told me, 'I don't know why, but I never could keep them three boards right there in place. I was always nailing them sumbitches back up, but I'd come out the next morning, and they'd still be hanging there loose. Made me think of you for some damned reason."

                "Well, maybe my daddy didn't like the ascetic of them loose boards no more than your daddy did."

                 "Shit, you know better, that whole damn fence coulda fell down without Gus ever noticing. Well, look at that. It's already one o'clock. I have to run. You ladies have a good day. I'd tip my hat, but I'm afraid I couldn't get back on this big old head of mine."

                 "Well, I hate to see him leave, but he sure looks good walking away."

                  "I was just about to say..."

                 "SSH! If you two, old biddies say another f**king word, I'll stab you with this here fork!"


                 

               

                  

   A shiny, new Lexus pulled into the parking lot of the Breakfast Kingdom, Concord's best and only breakfast place. Geezer Jennings with his long gray hair pulled back into a pony-tale was sitting next to the large window that faced the parking lot, pointed the car out to his buddies, "Somebody got money. That there Lexus right there cost at least $80,000."

    Big Larry, sitting across from Geezer, twisted to get a look and whistled, "Damn, that's a lot of money for a car."

    From behind him, Geezer heard Rodney Bennett say in almost a whisper, "Ah man, they're here already."

       Geezer turned ready to ask Rodney who he was talking about when he saw the expression on his friend's face. It was beyond sad.

        Geezer was going to ask Rodney what was wrong when his next door neighbor and life-long best friend Pancho Romero said, "Dang, man, ain't that your boy Donnell, Rodney?"

        Geezer whipped his head around and sure enough, a tall, well built young black man in an expensive looking tailored suit got out of the car followed by his elegantly attired and very pretty wife Daisha.  "Damn, that is Donnell and Daisha. Hell, Rod, I ain't seen them since Marlys's funeral. What they doing here?"

         Rodney didn't answer. Instead, he waited until his son and daugther-in-law entered  the dining room. Pancho was the first one up to greet them, jumping out of his seat and embracing them both, "Damn, Donnell, you get bigger and better looking every time I see you. And who is this, your daughter? Hell, I thought you were married to that old hideous looking ragged looking Roberts woman?" 

          Daisha flashed him a huge smile, "You know perfectly well who I am, Coach and don't try to butter me up with all that daughter crap." She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. He had coached them both in the intricacies of baseball and softball once upon a time.

      There were lots of hugs, handshakes, smiles all around. Geezer noticed though that even though Rodney was smiling, he didn't look very happy. There was a immense sadness behind his eyes. Donell waited for the small talk to die down before asking his father, "It was great seeing guys, but we got to travel. I have a big meeting tomorrow. You ready, Pop?"

         Rod looked like he wanted say something to the guys but couldn't. He turned back to his son, "Ready as I'm likely to be. Gotta swing by the house to pick up my bags.

       "Bags? Ready for what? You guys going on a trip. can I go to too?" Pancho blurted out. Tall and lanky, Pancho was always the impulsive one, the joker, the one who would always say what was on his mind. Although he had meant his words as a joke; it didn't take a genius to notice that they were much too heavy to float.

         Donell looked surprised, "You didn't tell them, Pop?"

    All the eyes swiveled and fell on Rodney who was looking at his shoes. There was a long tense pause.

        Geezer broke the silence, "Something wrong, Rod?"

      Rod slowly straightened his shoulders raised his head, "This is it, boys. I'm out of here. Donnell and Daisha have graciously invited me to come live with them."

       Pancho blurted, "In Oakland?" Donnell looked at him and shook his head yes.

       "I know you guys been looking after Pop and driving him to the doctor and all, and we're grateful and everything," at that point he started choking up, " The optometrist's office called us and let us know that some of the issues with his vision are going to get worse, and......I.., uh,.. we just need to have him closer."

        Daisha added, "Donell got a big promotion, and we've moved into a bigger house that has a small apartment in the back. This way he can watch his grandkids grow-up, play sports, and all that stuff. Besides, with Donnell's new job we aren't going to be able to get down here as much." Although, all of the men present loved Daisha and Donell, her words didn't move them much. They were too stunned.
 
      Big Larry spoke first, "Damn it Rodney. You should have said something. We coulda had a party or something."

       Rodney just stood there looking chagrined. These men were his life long friends. When his beloved Marlys had died of a heart attack while Donell and Daisha were out of country on a business trip. It was Pancho and Geezer who had handled everything till they got there. When he couldn't pass the driver's test and lost his license, it was Geezer who made sure Rodney didn't miss a doctor's appointment.

      Pancho walked over to him and gave him a big embrace, "Damn, Amigo. I ain't gonna lie, this shit don't even feel real. Hell, we been eating breakfast here every Wednesday for what twenty- five years, hell, every weekday morning for the last five. Don't seem real."

         Rodney struggled, "I know, Panch. It don't. It sure doesn't seem real."

        Geezer was up next. He threw both his arms around his old friend and spoke lowly, "Hell, Rod, you should have said something, gave me some time to process this and all. Who am I going to fish with now? You know, I really looked forward to driving you to Hartford so I could flirt with that little fat nurse."

          "I know, Geez. I just couldn't though. I couldn't even say it to myself without wanting to cry, and know I you start bawling like a little girl bout nothin."

        Geezer held his friend at arm's length and looked into his eyes. "This here ain't about nuthin, Rod. This here's some deep shit. Sides, you know I ain't never cried."

       Rod laughed sadly, "You a lie. You cried last week when the Dodgers beat the Giants. Didn't he Pancho?"

           "Hell with you both. I was crying about that twenty-dollar bill I lost. I don't cry when it matters. Do I, Larry?"

           Larry was too busy stuffing the last of his fries into this mouth and didn't answer. Daisha smiled grimly, "Sorry guys." She walked over and took her father-in-law by the arm and started to walk him out. Donell, overcome with emotion, had already gone out to the car. Rodney paused at the door and said, "You guys got my number. Call me and I'll give you my address, and we can write or something."

         Geezer couldn't resist one last joke, "Rodney, what in our history makes you think that Pancho and Larry could write a damn letter?" Rodney smiled.

       When the door swung close behind them, Big Larry offered, "Might be for the best, guys. Rodney's lost lots of weight lately, and I bet he ain't shaved in at least three days. Remember when Marlys was alive; he was always the sharpest dressed man in this town."

        Geezer was too busy watching Rod walking toward the car and didn't answer, so it was up to Pancho to tell Larry to shut up," Be quiet, Dumb Ass. Rosie'd woulda kill me if I didn't see that he was eating regular, and who gives a damn if Rodney missed a shave or two? I do that shit myself." 

         Geezer couldn't take it and got up and quickly walked out the door and stood on the curb. Pancho was right behind him. Larry stayed behind and polished off his food. Benny the Bugle, another friend of theirs who had been listening in, ran and slid over to seat by the window and watched.

       The shiny, new Lexus backed out of the parking slot and straightened its wheels so that Rodney, sitting in the back seat, was level with where Geezer and Pancho were standing. His head and shoulders were slumped over, and his head was barely above window level; he looked up sadly and barely raised his hand and waved as the car pulled forward.

             Pancho and Geezer stood right where they were and waved long after the car turned left on Derry and drove out of sight toward the outskirts of town.

           After a long while, Geezer turned to his friend and started to say, "Maybe Big Larry's right. It might be good for. . . ," he then noticed that Pancho was crying, "Are you crying? You damn crybaby. Two tours of duty as a helicopter gunner in Nam just to come home and start bawling outside a shit hole restaurant.. Knock it off, Pancho. We ain't freaking snowflakes! We real men remember. The last of a dying breed and don't you ever forget it!"

           Pancho turned toward Geezer and smiled through his tears,
"Said the same dumb ass fool who cried all night when Jerry Garcia died. I'm gonna miss that fool, Geezer. He didn't talk dumb shit all the time like you."

      Geezer took the insult in stride and gave Pancho a grim smile,"Hell, I know. I'm going miss him too. Hell, we all been sidekicks since we were in first grade. When Arlene left me for that preacher dude, and I wouldn't come out of house, it was Rod that coaxed me into going fishing. Probably saved my life by doing it."

        As they turned back to the comforting embrace of the Breakfast Kingdom, Pancho put his arm behind his friend's back and said, "If I remember right, I tried everything I knew to get your ass out of that house."

          "Yeah, you did, but you're a damn Dodger fan, so that shit don't count."
             
       Later toward evening, Geezer stepped out on his front porch to smoke a cigar and saw Pancho sitting outside on his own porch. He lit the cigar and headed that way.

          Pancho saw him coming and called out to him, "I thought you were going to come over and listen to the game last night."

            "I planned on it. Then my son-in-law came over and wouldn't leave."

              "The dumb one?"

           "They're both dumb Panch; you know that. You gonna have to be more specific."

               "Jenny's guy. What's his name, Roger?"

         Geezer shook his head, "Yeah. That's him. Wanted to talk politics all night. I hate that shit. He thinks like just Jenny do. Hell, I wouldn't doubt she tells him who he gotta vote for."

        They looked at each other and didn't say nothing for a bit before Pancho said, 'I was thinking about this one night with Rodney. We were at bar uptown when Ferdie Jenkins came over where we were and sat down. You knowed that dude ain't never liked you."

            "Well, I never liked him a lot more than he never liked me."

          "He started telling me and Rod why we hung around with you. Said you was stupid, two faced and a bunch of other shit."
 
            "That fool never got over the fact that Ceecee Moore liked me more than him.'

              "Rod got mad and held his hand up and said, 'Don't ever come over here and be starting shit when they're ain't none."

            Geezer took a long drag off the cigar, blew it out, and said.  "Screw you, Panch. You told me that before, and you're just telling me that shit now trying to get me to cry. You gonna listen to the game tonight or what?"

              "You'd think I'd miss the Giants getting their ass beat? It's your turn to the bring the beer, remember."

           "Shit, glad of it. That way I don't got a drink that horse piss  you drink. My cousin gave me a couple of Cubans. We'll smoke them up." He started to walk away but then turned back. "One night my mom started to worry about me, and she sent her preacher out to talk to me. Me and Rodney had been out fishing all day. He got here as Rodney was leaving. We sat down out on the porch, and the preacher started to saying a bunch of shit about me being with Rod. I was shocked. I mean this was supposedly a man of God and stuff, but I told him in no uncertain terms to go fuck himself, and I got up helped him off the porch." Geezer waited a while to see what Pancho was going to say, then added, "Damn it! I Almost got ya! Your eyes are kind of wet."

         Pancho shook his head and laughed, "You didn't get nothing. I ain't ashamed to say I cried all that shit out already. Tell me something though did that really happen?"

           "Yeah. It happened, and if he'd said another word, I'd choked the living shit right out of him."

           "Damn. I'd liked to been there when Mama Alice found out you told her preacher to go fuck hisself?"

         "Shit, she went to church that night, walked right up the aisle to where he was standing and kicked that fool in his nuts. Caused a big mess, man. Damn near got herself arrested. I had to go down to the church and help straighten that shit out." 

         Pancho was bending over, slapping his knees and laughing hard, so Geezer kept going, "When the cops finally showed up, they asked me what mama's side of the story was, so I told him what had happened. He looked at his partner and told him, 'I don't know George, but kicking a slime ball preacher in the testicles hardly sounds like much of crime to me.' His partner looked at him and said, 'I know. It seems like she should a got a medal.'"

       Later that evening when the game ended, and after Geezer had gloated for a full ten minutes over the Giant's victory, Geezer and Pancho, drunk on Modelo Reserva, sat silently in the dark, smoked a couple of Cuban cigars, and tried to not be too obvious as they cried a little for their missing friend.

         About twenty minutes later, Pancho snubbed his cigar out in the the green neon, glow in the dark, ash tray that sat on the  small wooden table at the side of his chair. "You know, Geeze, they're right. He needs to be close to Donell and Daisha."

         "Don't make it any easier though. What's next for us. It'll be you or me next. What'll either one of us do without a true friend. I mean you got Rosie, and she's great. I ain't got nobody else. There's the girls, but I'd just get in their way. Least with you guys around, I can make some kind of stab at having some kind of life. Without you guys, it'd just be Bingo and wheelchair polka at the home." He drained the bottom of his last beer and took a last hit off the cigar. He started stoking his beard. Pancho knew his friend was elsewhere when that happened. An old memory of Geezer doing it back in 1972 just after his Dad died flashed into his mind. They had talked all night when that happened, Geezer, Rod, and him. It was great night that cemented their bond forever. They had talked about all the deep issues that no-one ever seems to talk about anymore. They shared their intimate thoughts and feelings and discussed their fears and the things that caused them anxiety. They were still awake and talking, sitting on the rear gate of Geezer's dad's 1957 Chevy pick-up, when the sun rose up over the horizon.

         "We got go see him. Give him a month to get adjusted and then go up there to see how he's doing."

          "Oakland, Pancho? You forgetting that neither of us is that great a driver. It's been a while since either one of us has driven on real freeway. You think maybe we oughta fly, or take a bus?"

          "No screw that. Me and you on the road to help a friend out. Like the old days. Think of all the shit we could see and do. Think how good it will make Rodney feel."

            Geezer stopped stroking his beard, "You know I ain't got no-one to talk me out of doing something this stupid, so you better be serious. What about Rosie? She's gonna kill you."

          Pancho laughed, "No, she'll be so glad to see me when we get back she'll forget all about killing me. We'll have to take your car, so she don't catch on though."

            "No problem, but we'll have to stop when I need a bathroom break. None of that handing me bottle over the back seat and telling me to fill it up like you guys used to do."

        For one brief moment, the fires of youth and friendship reanimated the men's ever shrinking imaginations.  A little jolt of energy created by anticipation flowed through their aging systems. Geezer, sitting on the porch step, turned and looked at his buddy.

       "Hey Pancho. Do you remember the night my Dad died?"

       Pancho laughed, "Funny you should mention it; I was just thinking about that night."

​        "That old thing drove like a tank."

          

                  

                  
               
               
          

      While Destry Lewis was sitting in the administrative office hallway of Robert Bellarmine High School, he stumbled upon his reflection in the door window of the counselor's office at the end of the hall. He looked small and lonely, even a bit broken which for him was highly unusual. Normally, he was generally known for his confident manner and defiant attitude. Most of the kids who knew him would probably say that he was overly confident and too defiant. He looked at the reflection and at once knew that it perfectly captured the small, old man who lived inside his head, the one he was always at pain to hide from everybody else.

        He was also thinking about the imminent discussion with this father that would most likely occur about five minutes after his expulsion from the school, his third in two years. 

         He didn't have long to contemplate on the subtleties of the reflection as he heard the sound of footsteps approaching and turned to see their source. As he feared, it was Vice Principal Lorinda Stephens, a large formidable looking African-American lady who possessed all the stature and the gravitas of one of those old large majestic  ocean-liners of the past. For a second, Destry looked beaten. Ms. Stephens rarely smiled in public, and it was perfectly plain that this was not going to be on the rare moments when she did. He looked back down the hall and saw his defeated reflection and quickly straightened his back and arched his shoulders, and when he did, some of the fiery personality that he was known for returned.

         She didn't say anything as she walked past him, just extracted her keys from her coat pocket, unlocked her door, opened it, and gestured for him to enter. He didn't exactly sneer as he walked past her, but it was close enough. She beckoned him to take the seat in from the large dark oak desk sitting in the rear of the office.

        He walked slowly toward the chair, back and shoulders straight, and sat down and crossed his legs. He admitted to himself watching her walk to the throne-like chair behind the desk that the lady radiated sobriety and rectitude. It was a rare thing for him to acknowledge, as, in all his other experiences with administrators, he was much more accustomed to sensing the unctuous quality of people only pretending to actually possess any real solemnity of manner. He dialed his defiance back a notch accordingly. It was the very first time.

         He watched apprehensively as she picked up his file, placed her glasses on the end of her nose, and looked over its contents.

         "Mr. Lewis, it says here that you stood up in class and loudly announced your desire to "shag a movie star"? Is that the case?

            "To be honest, Ms. Stephens, I didn't use the word 'shag'. Mr. Peoples probably put that it that way in the interest of being slightly more decorous than I was. But, yeah, basically it was what I said."

             She sat back into the chair, "So, you admit to the intent?" He nodded, and she continued, "Why on earth would you do something like that?"

         Destry took a deep breath and fought off the the involuntary inclination of shrugging before speaking, "Well, it was part of the assignment."

             "Mr. Lewis, I'm fairly certain that Mr. Peoples, who I have known for over fifteen years, did not have an assignment which instructed his students to openly share their hidden sexual desires."

               "I didn't say he intentionally intended it be so, but he did ask us to relate, to stand up and relate that is, something that we really wanted to do but that most people didn't know about."

                "And you thought it was appropriate to say what you said?"

               "Like I said, maybe by his standards it wasn't appropriate, but then he shouldn't have ask such an open question. If he didn't want complete honesty on my part, he should have said so at the start."

                "So, you were just being honest?"

               "Absolutely. You see we are studying Cyrano de Bergerac in class. And I like that dude a lot, Cyrano, not Mr. Peoples, he sucks as teacher. Cyrano, on the other hand, values personal honesty and courage more than anything else."

                "Yet, he lies to Roxanne."

          "Yeah, but that's what the play is about; that's where the dramatic tension comes from. Here he is the bravest of the brave, yet he can't master the self doubt he has because of his appearance and because of love."

           "And Mr. Peoples was what, asking the class about hidden desires?"

              "In a very clumsy, offhanded way he was trying to get us to think about how our inner self is different from the image we present to the public."

                "What compelled you to say what you said?"

             "I think he signaled me out because of this reputation I have  of  being brash and self-confident. He was trying to say I was a phony. So, I decided to answer him honestly using the first thing I popped into my head."

           "Do you honestly mean to tell me that you think that your answer was appropriate for a high school literature class?"

                "That's a different question. I answered the question he asked me, and I answered it honestly. It's not my fault that Mr. People's is a hypocrite."

               "So, your deepest desire is to sleep with a Hollywood movie star?"

                  "There you go to changing the question again. I didn't say it was my deepest desire. My deepest desire would be to be able to function in a society where I didn't have to lie or modify my truth in order deal with the inability of others to accept it as such. In response to your question, I would just say, how could it be otherwise? That's why those stars exist, to create desires where none existed before. They use our desires against us, to sell us stuff, including false realities and untruth."

           Ms. Stephens started coughing at that point, and Destry got up and darted to the water dispenser and brought her back a paper cup of water. She drank and nodded her head in thanks. When she recovered from the coughing spell she asked one final question, "I'm going to give you one last chance to convince me not to expel you. I'm looking at your record here, and I have to say, it is troubling. Why should I trust you to not be continually causing these kinds of disruptions in the future?"

             "I've been expelled from two other schools. But no one has ever taken the time to really examine my so-called crimes. In one school, my history teacher asked my opinion about the Cold War, and I gave it to him, but it wasn't the 'my opinion' he wanted, so he picked a fight with me. I don't back down in such situations. It would probably save me a ton of grief if I did, but I can't. There is this father issue I have. You'll meet my father, and you'll see what I'm talking about. He's a politician in every sense of the word. I don't think he's never said a honest word in his entire life. If he told me the sky was blue, I'd have reason to doubt it. At the last school, I was reprimanded several times for giving honest answers to dishonest questions. Let me ask you, what would you do if someone asked a question and you knew that they wanted the answer that they always get and not the answer that you want to give? It happens everyday in my world. We sit there like prisoners all day and listen to them blather. Then they ask us questions that have no meaning and expect us to spit out only the words they want to hear, but not the words we want to say. Then they get mad. Frankly, I'm sick of all the lies and pretense. I couldn't care less if I'm expelled. At least, I won't have to listen to Peoples butcher Cyrano."

          She leaned forward and started to answer but stopped and sat back in her chair. She thought about what he had said for a long while. She then thought about all of the polite answers she had given in order to get where she was, and she also thought of all the people with the big fake smiles who had asked them. Destry stared at his hands while he waited. After a long while, she picked up a pen from its stand and wrote him a pass back to class.

              "Here, take this pass and get back to class. Tell Mr. Peoples I'll talk to him later."

               He stood up and took the pass from her hand, "He's going to have a sh.., I mean, he's going to be very angry, Ms. Stephens."

                "You let me worry about him. You need to worry about how you are going to start answering people honestly without making them angry. It's a little thing called tact. I suggest you learn how to use it. Now, you can get out of my office, Mr. Lewis."

            He started to leave, but turned back at the door, "Thank you, Ms. Stephens. That the first time I ever had the chance said those words to anyone in a school setting. Usually, it's just 'So long'."

            When the door closed behind him, she allowed herself a small smile and wondered what it would've been like to tell one of her teachers what she really desired. She reflected on what it meant that none of them had ever asked. Then she wondered what it would have been like to have told her father the same.
         

      "You know what, Dad? I don't want to talk about that shit. So, either you don't talk about it, or I'm leaving!"

       The people all around us in the Mexican restaurant where we were dining turned to see what the fuss was all about. I stared back angrily at each intruding pair of eyes until they turned back and pretended to fiddle with the rice and beans on their plates. They were still listening though, their ears on the side of their head that faced us were clearly sending out little radar signals as their spouses nudged at their feet beneath the tables.

      We had been having good time reminiscing about things. Then Deja told me about a conversation that her sister Casey had had with their mother before her mother passed away. Deja told me that as her mother lay dying she had made Casey a promise to contact her somewhere from the great beyond. Casey had her doubts of course and expressed them to her mother. Jennie was very close to the end, but had managed to squeeze her hand and hoarsely whisper, "I love you and your sister so much, I know that I can do it."

       Casey was weeping when she told Deja about the incident, "I asked her, 'How, Mom? How you gonna do it? What if you can't write or phone me; what if they don't have phones there, or paper?"

     She then said that Jenny had thought about it a while before she answered in another hoarse whisper, "The lights, honey, I'll do something with the lights."

       I was thinking about the possibility of communicating across the great divide when a well-known political figure appeared on the television on the wall behind Deja's head. I absentmindedly said something derogatory about the politician. I had forgotten the one rule we had about conversing which was never  talk about politics. We were both tired after coming from the hospital and visiting my mom who had fallen and broken her hip. In a matter of seconds, we went from talking and laughing amicably into a full scale political argument.

    I looked at the fire burning in Deja's eyes and instinctively tried to calm her down. I got six words in, really just two,  'calm down' repeated three times, before my own fire roared to life. I stood up, pulled a hundred dollar bill out of my wallet, and slammed it down on the table.

        "I'm your father. I brought your ass into this world, and it wasn't so that you can tell me in a crowded restaurant at the top of your damn voice, what I can and I cannot say. . . . Be safe going home." And just like that I was out of there but not before unleashing my ire on the fat, bald headed man staring through the colorful flowers and the green ferns that sat upon the divider wall, "Eat your Goddamn beans, asshole."

         I slowed down while walking toward my car on the other side the dark parking lot hoping that she would hurry out and stop me. She didn't, so I unlocked the door and threw myself into the driver's seat. I sat there in stunned silence for a second, leaned backwards into the seat, relaxed my shoulders, and took two long centering breaths, exhaling each slowly. I started the car and looked into the mirror, still hoping to catch the image of her running toward me, or at least coming around the corner looking somewhat sad and remorseful.

        I heard the tires crunching on the pebbles mixed with dirt when I put the car into drive and pulled out onto the road heading for home, a house once so full of life, but now that Jennie had left and the kids moved off often seemed as dark and forbidding as a dimly lit parking garage. I turned the stereo on; I had been listening to Boz Scaggs Loan Me Dime when I had parked a little over an hour ago; I turned the volume up to fifty and drove away, staring at the white lines in the road and at the inroads that my headlights made into the darkness while trying hard not to think about anything. 

        There was the part of the long guitar solo in the song where Duane Allman pleads with the all-mighty Deity to take notice of his plight down here on earth. Every time I hear that guitar plead it causes me to shudder. I knew it was coming up soon, and it would be the perfect soundtrack for where my head was at, a muddled state where I was begging for God or anybody else to loan me a fucking dime if the dime was a metaphor for some simple peace of mind. Lord knows I ain't had much of that since Jennie had left. Then one night she up and died on me, and well before I had had time to adjust to living without her. Maybe that dime that Boz Skaggs was crying about represented some kind of personal salvation, and I could use some of that shit too.

     The shudder happened while I was passing under the overpass on 10th Street, and emerged on the other side with the contents of single fucking tear collecting in the corner of my right eye. I caught it just in time and pushed it gently back into place just below the rim. I don't know why I always prided myself on such stupid shit, but keeping my facial features free from moisture while the storms raging inside my head were erasing coastlines and threatening all my structures and sanctuaries, is a trait that I've always held as a high, if somewhat meaningless, priority.

       Driving, I began to realize that I didn't really know when or where the cultural divide between my daughters and I began. I guessed it was probably when they were born. It seemed to me that each successive generation felt that it was their responsibility to point out the flaws in its predecessor's actions and point of view. I remember several loud arguments at my parent's kitchen table when I believed that I was right about the Vietnam conflict and was equally as certain that my father was wrong. I still don't think that we got it right. we just tired of the argument. I also remember just how wrong I was about a lot of things that I thought were true at the time. I listened to a lot of people who  felt no shame about telling me lies rather than to listen to my parent's who I knew, rightly or wrongly, always had my best interests at heart.

       I remember read a quote somewhere that basically said that what we lose as we age is not so much our physical strength  and dexterity as it is our illusions. I witnessed this as my own parents aged. They took to going to McDonald's everyday where they sat and laughed and conversed with people from every different persuasion, people they  never socialized with before. They all had differences too, mainly about religion and politics, but they had also decided to put aside the things that made them different and concentrated on the things that made them similar, and came to value each other's presence more than anything else.

         I admit that I worry a lot about my daughters and their generation. On the whole, they seem to be a lot less forgiving than we were. All people are flawed, it is the nature of our being, but we also overcome our flaws as we age. This seems to be the purpose of human life. I know that there are just as many good people in every generation, and that things will most likely all work out in the end. Yet, I also think that are a damn sight more snakes crawling around in the the Garden of this modern age than there were in the days of Adam and Eve and look how that turned out.

         Most people like to talk and a great many of them like to lie as much as they talk. There are those who have been tainted by the actions of their fore bearers, and and somehow that stain got written into their code. A lot of us have spent lifetimes working to erase and rewrite the code, but others, could care less, and just go with what had been written. These are also those whose ability to empathize has been broken by the time, setting, relationships, and obstacles which prevent them from achieving the desired wholeness that can only be accessed by gaining true knowledge of the self, people without hope, driven to hurt others by a pain inside that they can never seem to soothe.

         I was sitting at the intersection of Arboles and Laguna waiting for the light to change, six blocks from home when I thought that all I really wanted is for everyone I know, to beware of those who will only use their goodness for their own evil ends. The snakes are out in force; they are multitudes, starting from those who thirst for political power down to neighbors or friends who are slightly jealous of the fact that you might have a better lawn than theirs.

        I remembered the Sixties when we were always told not to trust anyone over thirty. It was one of the more ignorant commands ever uttered. Yet, the media trumpeted it until it echoed in the furthest corners of the world. Any causal survey of the people and the voices who repeated this phrase ad nauseam should have been more than enough to make us aware of our foolishness, but it didn't. We never even considered then that the people behind the fraud, the ones whispering the phrase into the hungry ears of the impressionable young were probably evil, mad with power and considerably over the age of thirty. I guess in a way it's only Karma that the young don't want to listen to us now. It is also sad because many people my age paid high price to overcome our gullibility, as we learned to place more trust in the words of a scarred and filthy homeless person than a shiny new penny, freshly educated, looking for a place to bellow.  The main flaw of life is that it often takes so long to for us to see if new ideas truly function any better then those that came before. 

      I have this little mantra that I repeat over and over in troubled times. I start with the beginning of the Lord's prayer up till the part where it says that God's will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Then I add my own part where I ask for forgiveness of all the sins clogging up my heart and brain and then ending it with, "Lord, please grant peace, love happiness, and freedom from pain and suffering to all who I have sinned against." It's mandatory that I say it three times perfectly to evoke its power and then as many times as needed until most of the violent winds of the raging storm are spent. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. This night, I had repeated the mantra some fifty-two times before I got home and walked into my front door.

       Walking straight into the kitchen, I fixed myself a Scotch and water, took it into the den, sat down in my leather recliner, kicked off my shoes, and turned on the TV. I didn't want to focus my thoughts on anything particular, and TV is the perfect tool to achieve that state. An old Pentecostal neighbor I had as a kid once told me that TV antennas were the sign of the devil, 'The Devil's Cross' he used to say. I used to  laugh at the notion a lot. Nowadays, though, I'm not so sure. In these days of sorrowful thinking and searching for meaning, I sometimes worry that the process of me gaining entrance into Heaven wherever that might be, could involve taking the amount of time I've spent in front of a TV screen watching pure stupidity unfold and dividing it by the times I actually did something good.  I was five minutes into watching a repeat of an episode of Two and Half Men when my mind grew hazy and stumbled upon a memory of a dog, the only animal I had ever loved, a poodle my aunt had gave us that she had named Peter after an old flame.

       Me and my brothers quickly renamed him Petey; he was a small black, shaggy little thing, but a purebred poodle, a type of dog that was about as out of place in the shabby little neighborhood we lived in on the south side of Concord as I would be standing on the Champ de Elysees picking my nose. 

      My aunt had to move from one apartment to another where pets were not a part of the plan. When she dropped him off, he looked like a little sissy ass poodle with his sides all perfectly trimmed and little puffs of hair on his hips and shoulders, the top of his head, and even on his tail. My dad, a dust bowl Okie, wasn't much on spending money on what he considered unnecessary things, such as hair styling for pets. My brothers and I eyed the dog anxiously and thought to ourselves, "Damn, Petey, you going to have to get used to another style."

      He did though. It was like that damn dog had read himself some Darwin. It was kind of like he knew that if he waltzed around the Southside of Concord like he did at my Aunt's fancy apartment in Bakersfield, he was going to get his ass chewed cleared off and made some required adjustments. Hell, none of them other dogs out there even knew what a poodle was, or anything about hair styling for dogs for that matter. Our previous dog for example, only had one good eye, the other had been damaged in a fight and looked like a big slimy purple marble. Other kids, while walking home from school, would often pull up to our fence and stare at Mikey the Bulldog like he was a circus freak. 

       Mikey didn't want to do nothing but play catch, and once you threw him that saliva covered, chewed-up, green tennis ball, you were going to have to keep throwing it until you went back in the house. He would go fetch it and drop it at your feet and wait, staring at you with that big ugly eye until you picked it up and threw it again. I used to look out from the picture window when he got back from chasing the long throw I used to buy time to scamper into the house and see him sitting in front of the door with the ball at his feet waiting for me to throw it again.

       It was the first lesson that I learned in life about the importance of misplaced trust. Well, maybe not the first. We had a green and yellow parakeet once also given to us by the same aunt who had given us the poodle. We had sure had a lot of fun with that parakeet and thought that he loved being with us enough so that we could trust him to fly about the living room while we cleaned his cage and not fly out the door the first time it was opened. I've often wondered about what happened to the parakeet, but in the back of my mind, I've always realized that a brightly colored parakeet of independent thinking had about as much a chance of finding true happiness on the south side of Concord as a fancy poodle with his hair all did.

     It wasn't real long though before Petey the Poodle took over the neighborhood.  He was kind of like that dog Tramp in the Disney movie. Or, maybe even more like Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Elvis or somebody in one of those teen movies where they would put the main character in the middle of a place where the all the other boys didn't like him at first and the girls were all curious about where he got his fancy moves and hair done. Then before long all the girls were clamoring for his body and he did something like won a game of chicken or something that wins all the boys over. Before a month was out, Petey came home with some dog buddies and the all of the girl dogs on the block started sashaying by our yard swishing their tails like they were chasing flies. 

          I'll tell you straight up and up front that Petey the Poodle was the only pet I've ever loved. I know this says a lot about me too. A lot of people go through many dogs in a lifetime. Not me. It was way too much of an emotional investment. It was like the idea of me remarrying. I don't think I could ever love like that again.

      Petey wasn't just any dog though; he was my confidant and someone who never criticized me even once, and he was always there when I needed him. All the other people living on the block liked him too. I would come out of the door and look down the block and see him sitting outside with Mrs. Sears as she shelled peas and talked his ear off, or hear old Pancho Rios chasing him off while yelling "Pinche pendejo,  Petey!" whenever he caught Petey flirting with his beloved chihuahua Rosie.

       At the rear of our house there was a single step leading out of the back door unto a large six by eight foot plain concrete slab. Petey and I used to sit there on Saturday mornings and watch the sun rise over the line of tall ash trees that dominated our neighbor's large lot. The sunrises of my youth were glorious mixtures of pinks, oranges, blues, and yellow that reminded me a lot of the vibrant colors used in cinematography of The Wizard of Oz movie with Judy Garland. We would just sit out there, just the two of us, basking in the warmth of the morning sun as contented as we could be.

       On some mornings, we would flip the script and sit in the shade in the front of the house. I would put my shoes on and start to plan my day. Petey's buddies would start coming and try to get him to go do some dog things, but as long as I was there, he was cool and would just nod at them as if to tell them, "I'll catch you later. I'm hanging with Danny right now."

      And when I left, he would go about his business and not wait outside like Mikey did when he would sit and wonder who was going to throw his tennis ball. That always impressed me about Peter, I mean the way that he always had his own shit to do and didn't have to depend on anybody else. He would come rolling back home about the same time that I did every evening when I returned from the playing fields of the nearby elementary school. Then we would eat and watch TV. Petey usually sat on the couch next to my mom, and sometimes between her and dad.

      My parents were never very demonstrative when it came to showing their affections. At least, that's the way it seemed to me at the time when I started noticing such things. It never occurred to me that there was any history involved in the matter. I never once thought about all the roots of all things, of the painful lessons or the joys, or the wounds and the scars, or the shattered bone or the even the delights of holding someone in the dark and knowing that you were not alone in the world. It seemed to me that life was always being shaped mainly by the exigencies of the here and now and the demands that the future placed upon it. I never did learn how to be demonstrative in love.

      My mom ran over Petey one night, killing him instantly while he was sleeping in a rut behind the left rear tire of the family car. My brother Cody and I got the news when we walked in the front door of the house and found my dad sitting on the sofa crying. My dad never cried. I will never hear the phrase, "There was great weeping and a gnashing of teeth," without thinking about that horrible night. Dad buried Petey in the northeast corner of our yard and placed a small concrete slab over his grave to mark the spot. The slab is still there. It has aged badly.

       I learned in one swift, violent, stroke, that the things you love the most always pass away. It was such a brutal knowledge to thrust upon the shoulders of a skinny, twelve year old just beginning to come into his own. My life began in earnest that day. All the Saturday sunrise mornings disappeared, or maybe I just simply started to feel had I didn't have any time to waste on such things; I can't remember which. I do know that it's really a pretty fucking sad thing to realize that you haven't silently sat and watched the sun come up since you were twelve years old. It's kind of like not having a memory of playing catch with your dad, or having developed a fear of deep water because your best friend drowned the summer before you crossed town to attend middle school with a bunch of kids you didn't even know at the same time that you were also learning what a jockstrap was and how unruly facial blemishes behaved. Life dropped a whole shitload of stink bombs on me when I was young. Surviving adolescence was a hard and often mythic experience, a hero quest where the hero wore a mask of painted cardboard, wielded an imaginary sword, carried a dented shield made of youthful sarcasm and was driven only by a steadfast determination to get the hell out of that forest before the wolves ate him down to the bone. I had a lot friends who never stumbled out of the forest, eaten by wolves I can only assume. 

      I have since come to believe that that period of my life explains a lot about all of my relationships afterwards. I always held the people I loved the most at a short distance afraid that life would catch them sleeping in a rut behind the left rear tire. When Deja and her sister Casey were changing from toddlers into awkward young girls, I was inwardly confused and conflicted because even though I knew it was only a natural transition, there were such sweet parts of them being left behind in the process. They were such beautiful babies and are still very much the same beautiful people that they have always been, but life moves on much in the way of how rosebuds turn to bloom. I have to squint my eyes at times and dig down deep into the shadows of the past in order to remember for only the briefest of moments that perfect innocent beauty of the bud before it bloom. I say briefly because it hurts way too much to linger.

      Things always get left behind as rivers flow to the sea, and it gets to a point where we fail to even notice what has been jettisoned upon our journey. Then later, we are told by people, the spiritual ones, the ones who act like they are above the fray, and who pretend to know that it's all just an illusion anyway and the only thing that really matters is that final commingling of waters at the end.

      Though we have this tendency to forget, there is always the history of the roots, the knowing of the sweetness, and the memories of the suffering where great lessons are once explained, painfully learned, and then locked away into darkened places only to be summoned forth in times of our utmost despair. There are always going to be those litanies of scars and shattered bone, and prayers broken by the distractions of daily living that usually emerge in our garbled grumblings, "Our Father who art in Heaven. . . . Damn it! Use your fucking blinkers, Dumbass. ..... Lord, grant peace, love,  happiness, and  freedom from pain and suffering to all who I have sinned against...Get the hell out of the way motherfucker; you ain't supposed to be sightseeing on a highway."

       The memory of Petey's death strangely made me think of the image of my dad kneeling down and scratching the words, "Petey Our Beloved Puppy," into the wet cement slab he had placed on the dog's grave and then just as quickly, that old memory morphed in the newer memory of my brothers and I standing at the side of my father's grave. I had thought of Petey's funeral on that day too, wondering who had etched the words into my father's headstone. It was a cold, breezy day the middle of an unusually warm Autumn.  My brother Cody had selected Elvis's Peace in the Valley as the music marking the end of the ceremony.

       My childhood friend Hobo, real name Larry, came up afterwards and hugged me tightly. He whispered, "Did you pick out that damn music?"

       "Naw. That was Cody's idea. He loves Elvis, man. He'd sang it hisself if we'd let em."

       Hobo pulled back and said earnestly, "Good fucking choice though. I always said that if'n the King can't break you down, you can't be fucking broken down."

          I laughed, "Shit, fool. Don't be making me laugh. It's my dad's funeral for Christ's sake." I then thought about it a minute then said, "Hell, the song was a lot better than that damn preacher though."

         "Ain't that the damn truth! Where did you guys get that mealy mouth motherfucker, out the Yellow Pages? Sound like he was trying to sell us a car."

           I laughed again, "Knock it off, I said. Damn, dude. Jennie said that if we used Old Penrose she wouldn't even come. Glen came up with this dude."

           Hobo pulled a package of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, lit a one, and exhaled slowly, "Well you know what they always say. Same shit, different suit."

         Hobo invited me over to his house to burn a doobie. I remembered looking over my shoulder toward where Jennie and kids were talking with her mother and sister and weighing the consequences awhile before answering, "Hell, if a man can't get a bit twisted the day he buries his dad, what the hell he good for?" To this day, I don't know if it was a valid response. And I mean that in terms of the overall moral value of the decision. All I know was that I didn't want to face a whole bunch of sad looking well-wishers telling me the same damned thing over and over.

         I remember the day mainly though, not because we buried my dad, but because when I pulled up in front of my mom's house about an hour later, twelve-year-old Deja flew out of the front door followed by a tiny Casey and came running down the sidewalk yelling, "Daddy, come quick! Uncle Cody's out back fighting with the preacher!" 
                             
      Sitting there watching television, a lot crazy shit ran through my mind, and in a moment of clarity, I came to an  understanding  that all I really wanted from life was to be living on the same side of the river as all my dearest people before I left this earthly plane and for those I love, who, still fishing in the hurried waters trying to find some deeper meaning in the gifted bread to understand that that little distance I always kept between us was more out of concern for their own safety than my own. 

        I finally fell asleep after midnight and went somewhere altogether different in my head. It was a strange, colorful, enchanted place full of mystery and weird people. I never knew where I was at any time. It looked a lot like the south side of Concord, but had rows  of city trees and skyscrapers and the damned Thames River flowing right through the middle of it all. I remember stopping to get my bearings and to purchase an expresso at a small sidewalk cafe in front of the Eiffel Tower. Robert Mitchum was with me for some reason but not saying a whole bunch of anything when suddenly Pee Wee Herman came up on us and started acting a fool and jabbering at us in French. I was urgently looking around for something and didn't have the faintest clue as to what it might be. Then the phone rang.

         "Hello?"

      "Hi, Dad. It's me Deja. I was worried about you and wanted to check on you to see if you made it home okay."

         "I'm fine, Kiddo. How about you?"

        "I'm good, Dad. It's funny though, ever since I've been home, my dang ceiling light's been acting up."
   
              

  Joseph Campbell warned us older humans that, "We have the comparatively complex problem in educating our young in training them not to simply assume uncritically the patterns of the past, but to recognize and cultivate their own creative possibilities, not to remain on some proven level. . . . . .but to represent a movement of the species forward."

     I have also read somewhere that we have an obligation of determining the best records of what we've done and the best voices and ideas to pass forward, not only to guarantee that the mistakes of the past are not repeated but also to provide the groundwork where the seeds of the future will be cultivated. There's is absolutely no use in learning from scratch every time, especially when so many of the lessons we have learned have been purchased with a tremendous outlay of blood, bone, loneliness, death and suffering.

        John Lewis Gaddis once asked a group of incoming freshmen at Yale what connection that the main characters in War and Peace could possibly have with their very different lives. He was taken by the the answer that some of them shared, "They make us feel less lonely." How truthful is that statement, the knowledge that we are not the first or the last to face the future alone, uninformed, and untested?

       Gaddis also noted that Thucydides echoed much the same sentiment when the historian encouraged his readers to, "Seek knowledge of the past as an aid to understanding of the future, which in the course of human beings it must resemble if it does not reflect it." Gaddis then offered up the idea that future would only become a bad case of collective amnesia and of loneliness amplified to an insufferable degree if Thucydides's words were not heeded.

         Our current problem is not that our hopeful young reject some of our past, or that they offer up exciting new ways of looking at things which in turn engender new possibilities. Our problem is when some of their leaders, usually the least intelligent among them, become addicted to the murmuring noise of the crowd and try to lead us forward into realms they know nothing about, then have to maintain their position with oppression and force.

       They never care to acknowledge that crowds rarely read and usually get their knowledge from those who wish to use them only to maintain some sense of status quo, nor do they understand, that those behind the scenes of their so-called revolution are usually the relatives and offspring of the same people who pulled the strings in the past that they reject.

      This is how a Hitler becomes a Hitler, and a Stalin becomes a Stalin, and a Pied Piper becomes a Pied Piper. The universe has a proven record of putting forward the right people at the right time, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr, or a Gandhi. And even at times, when the whole world needs changing, it offers up someone like Jesus, someone who sacrifices greatly to pay the price for our tremendous stupidity. 

        Left to our own devices though, we will continue to select the truly stupid, the gloriously self serving, or the proven evil in order to maintain conformity. 

     Henry Miller wrote, "Man's greatest dread is the expansion of consciousness. All of the fearsome, gruesome parts of Mythology stem from this fear. . . . . The law of the universe dictates that peace and harmony can only be won by inner struggle. The little man does not want to pay the price for that kind of peace and harmony. He wants it ready-made, like a suit of manufactured clothes." How much evil has humankind endured from those who try to buy a plastic wrapped, store-bought sense of meaning?

         History states that Xerxes the Persian god-king once punished the sea for its failings, and that the Roman Emperor Caligula once waged war with an ocean. Desecrating statues and canceling culture will not bring us down. But the sentiment behind placing sheep into our classrooms in the guise of teachers, of decrying there is no need for history, or even a need to read literature because it's not actual data and can't be used in an algorithm, surely will.       

    There was a joke I read in  Reader's Digest back when I was growing up. It was about Abraham Lincoln and involved a man lecturing his son.

    Father: When Abe Lincoln was your age he was working his way
                 toward becoming a lawyer.

    Son: Well, when he was your age, he was President.

     I waited years for my father to say something remotely related to Abraham Lincoln so I could tell him the punchline. A few years later he did, and I muffed it by saying, "Yeah, but so what? He walked barefoot in the snow to get to school. Big deal. I walk to school everyday myself. Maybe I don't have a cold biscuit in my pocket, but the lunches there are pretty damn yucky, if you ask me."

     It's bothered me for years that the universe conspired to get me the opportunity to look very witty, and instead, I looked both stupid and petty. Looking back on those years I've noticed that around that same time there was a decided shift in how people, no not people in general, in how the fools who were busy brainwashing us at the time, regarded the institution of fatherhood.

      Fathers like Ward Cleaver, Jim Anderson, and Andy Griffith who once populated our culture disappeared and were replaced with the likes of Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, Hal Wilkerson and Peter Griffith. And it was also noticeable, that the positive image of men in general had suffered with the growing cries of "Death to the Patriarchy!" It's very plain to see now, and actually has been for years, that the people who run this world are trying to pass the blame for every injustice and every wrong turn we've made as a species unto the shoulders of the male members. They strenuously object to painting whole peoples with the same brush, except when it comes to men, then they expose their agenda by putting forth the idea that  men like Charles Manson, Hitler, and Harvey Weinstein are representative of our entire sex.

     I've written a lot about how me and my buddies hung out at Pop's Candy Store during our formative years. It was where we tested out new ideas and theories and came to a lot of our conclusions about what life really means. There were no pictures of our fathers hanging on the bare unpainted walls, but if you knew where and how to look, you could see the always present ghostly images of our dad's hovering in thought bubbles above our heads. Our fathers were our first take on how the Old Testament Jehovah played out on a material level, men who told us which wires not to touch, which lies to never utter, and which things to never do. Hardened men of experience who defined the parameters of our existence.

     And far be it from me to say that they were perfect people. They never were. They had their flaws, sometimes a whole shitload of them. But it was always more than a little instructive to see how they took on the traumas of their  past and juggled them with the obstructions of the present and tried to guide both forces into a better future for their families.

     Sometimes they were absent too, and we were supposed to learn lessons about how to function on our own while making crossroad decisions using only the lessons they taught us and the often monosyllabic instructions they left behind.

      My friends and I have our own flaws too, some of them caused, no doubt, by our unwillingness to ask our fathers the questions we really needed answers for. But all of our efforts to repair the damages that life inflicts upon adolescent boys were usually based mainly on the knowledge that we could trust our dads, not only to give us straight answers when we needed them, but also to never to turn their back on us when we really fucked shit up. 

     In literature the absent father motif is often used as a symbol for the absence of God. It was used mainly as a thematic question asking how mankind is supposed to act when God is not around. The modern media though uses it instead to push the belief that there is no God and therefore humanity must learn to rely on the blathering nonsense spewed out the mouths of morons, self-serving narcissistic politicians, and the beneficence of the people who call the shots.

     And none of them are the least bit concerned with the lack of parameters in the world that they are pushing us toward, or the long-term effects of the lies they tell us everyday. And we know that we can't trust any of them to give us straight answers when we need them, and we especially understand that they'll be among the first to shame us if and when we make mistakes.

    What they don't realize though, is that our dads are always around somewhere advising us to be suspicious of preachers with pearly teeth and slick backed hair, not to get involved with women who think credit cards and bon-bons are the crown of creation, or placing our trust in people who constantly bad mouth our fathers.