The Talking Wall

It was called the talking wall because people who had something to say seemed drawn to it. The wall was not even three feet high and a talker could put one foot on it, or stand or sit on it. The afternoon sun felt good and the air, thanks to a mild breeze, was crisp and clean. There were trees and grass to off set the blacktop and dull looking bungalows. Fifty cents got you a fairly generous portion of spice cake which went well with coffee, or you could have a bagel and cream cheese.
By the time I started my second semester at Valley Junior College I had figured out that a substantial amount of higher education happened outside the classroom. While my U.S. History instructor and my Psychology I instructor were predictable and motionless talking heads, outside I attended rallies and listened to Dick Gregory, Eldrige Cleaver and Caesar Chavez, among others who were anything who were energizing and had passionate convictions. There was always something going on; the air was charged with excited talk. Could anyone believe Nixon’s claim, “Peace is at Hand” after the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam? Were women oppressed and treated as 2nd class citizens? What about Golda Meir? Was the Apollo program significant or pointless? Was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars the next direction in music?
I had been on a spice cake streak the week before and had switched to a bagel and cream cheese on an unusually pleasant Southern California winter afternoon talking to Paul, a fellow sufferer of that U.S. History class that met Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It was only the third Monday of the new semester. We were standing by the talking wall but we weren’t talking much; an hour of straight lecture from a dull man who was merely rehashing the public school fairy tale version of American history had put us in a kind of stupor. I was about to ask Paul what he thought of the J. Geils concert album when I saw someone emerge from the snack bar had head straight toward us.
“You know this guy?” I asked Paul.
“Oh yeah, man. Here comes your entertainment for the day.”
His head was bobbing, his stride was wide, and his shoulders seemed to be stitched to the sides of his neck. He had curly black hair which was not quite an Afro as much as it was just not tended to. His nose was sizeable but thin and his eyes were shiny black marbles. He wore an army jacket.
“Hey, Aaron, this is…”
“The fuck, man.”
“…Jack.”
“Uh, how you doing?”
He seemed to be distracted by something neither Paul nor I had noticed yet.
“The fuckin’ warpig is dead!” he exclaimed in triumph.
He nodded his head in affirmation of his declaration.
“Kissinger?” Paul guessed.
“Johnson. Lyndon Fuckin Baines Johnson.”
“Johnson’s dead?” I said.
“Hey, I’ll get you a program, ok? Yeah, he’s dead. A heart attack. Warpig. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” He was twitching, nodding his head, and blinking his eyes as if he had just squirted them with lemon juice.
“Calm down, man,” Paul said, “he’s out of office, and the Voter’s Rights and Civil Rights bills, those were his.”
“War on Poverty,” I added.
“Oh, right, war on poverty. That makes sense. Gonna shoot up them poverty soldiers. He’s a fuckin’ War Pig, ok? What’re you, deaf? Children, women, old people, kill ‘em all. You dig that shit, man?” He was shouting out his frustration.
“No, but Nixon’s not doing any better. Dropped a ton of bombs and napalm,” Paul said calmly.
“They’re both pigs, they’re all pigs. Doesn’t matter what party. Don’t you get it? They’re making money and they’re betting you won’t give a shit longs as it’s not in your backyard. Or they sell you on some shit; they tell you shit’s gold and they got you waving the flag or thinking they’re selling democracy over there.” He wasn’t looking at either of us; he was waving his arms manically and seemed to be addressing a tree that stood a little to the right of Paul. It was quiet for a while. All I could hear was the cars zooming down Coldwater Avenue.
“Well,” I said, “I gotta beat the traffic.”
It was only 3 o’clock, though.
“Me, too,” Paul said.
“He didn’t do nothing but kill people. Sick, twisted, fuck,” Aaron said, sensing he was being brushed off. He stood rocking back and forth from the waist.
I had much to think about as I made my way to the parking lot. Was Aaron a vet? There was the jacket, but then anyone could get one at an Army Surplus store. Was he on amphetamines? Seemed plausible; he was awfully animated. Was there truth in his impassioned rage? It seemed that there was. At first I thought that he was overreacting to the situation but later I thought maybe his response to the war was reasonable if we were to allow ourselves to be empathetic on the issue, and a supposed reasoned response was not reasonable behavior when people were killing and being killed by the thousands. Did base behavior in one area negate noble behavior from the same person in another area? Negation didn’t seem right; it was ironic but irony is unavoidable among humans. Was he celebrating someone’s death? Was it justified if the person is perceived to be evil? I didn’t believe it was right.
All that was left to ponder was his rage. What happened to that? Where did it go? His whole style and verbiage seemed dated. Johnson had been out of office only four years but it already felt like some other lifetime. What once was boiling had been bought to a simmer. What happened? How had most of us learned to disassociate so neatly; why hadn’t Aaron learned the trick? Which of us would be better off? Would succeeding generations be even more passive?
I found my car, unlocked the door, got in and sat rubbing the steering wheel for a while. I was hoping that when I started up the engine and turned on the radio, the right song would be on. It took much button pushing—“You’re so Vain” was among the rejects– but finally, just as I was passing through North Hollywood into Burbank, the radio gave me the song, “Dialogue Parts I & II” by Chicago. When I punched the button I heard, “Don’t it make you angry the way the war is dragging on? Well I hope the president knows what he’s into, I don’t know, ooo, I just don’t know.”
Despair poured over me like anointing oil, and I jammed the accelerator against the firewall, racing down Burbank Boulevard at 60 miles an hour, trying to escape it.

Larkins and Mencia

Mom talked to him for a while and then waved her hand at me to indicate it was for me. I liked Reverend Paul, but I had no idea why he would call me at night in the middle of the week. When I looked at her to ask why, she shrugged.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Great.”
“Uh, how are you?”
“Oh, great, great.”
“Great.”
“Well I called to tell you that Larkins Mencia is here at our church.”
“Who?”
“Larkins Mencia. The famous rock and roll band. They’re here in the gym. They needed a place to practice.”
“Oh.” How famous could they be if they needed to practice in a church gym?
“So I thought you might like to know. You can come down and watch them rehearse if you like.”
“Oh yeah, that’s great.” I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“Well, I was pretty sure you’d like to know.”
“Oh yeah, that’s uh, very cool. Thanks a lot.”
“You’re Welcome. I’ll see you in church Sunday morning.”
“Yeah, ok. See you there.” I hung up, confused.
For a second I thought he was quoting a Stanley Brothers song but then I remembered they wanted to meet you in church Sunday morning. While trying to figure the difference between meeting and seeing, the correct name of the band came to me.
“Loggins and Messina!” I shouted, startling Mom.
“What? What is it?” She looked up from a bowl of potatoes she was peeling.
“Nothing.” I started dialing. Dale wasn’t home. Neither was Lenny. I really wasn’t thinking clearly because my third phone call should have been my first. Bud Sharpe was into soft rock before it was a sub genre. He liked Poco. He liked the Eagles before anyone had heard of them. He thought John Denver was real. He thought Seals and Croft were as good as Simon and Garfunkel. He had even been to a Carpenters concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Worked like a charm with the girlfriend he had said, but then he confessed that they were actually pretty good and that Karen Carpenter was a good drummer. And he was a huge Loggins and Messina fan. The phone rang ten times but I wasn’t going to give up on him. I wasn’t going to see Loggns and Messina without Buddy Lee. I sat counting rings and twisting the phone chord. Finally, on the 25th ring, he answered.
“What?!!?”
“Buddy Lee. What’s going on?”
“I was taking a crap, ok?”
“Dropping a load or stabbing the cat?”
“That’s your department,” the smile came into his voice, “As for me, I’ve got a date.”
“It’s Thursday.”
“That’s right and I’ve got another on Saturday. I got seven women on my mind.” He started singing.
“Dream on. You’ve never been to Winslow, Arizona.”
“Yeah well, I’m on my way out the door. “
“Wait a minute; you’re hanging out with me tonight.”
“Let’s see now, Sheri or a hairy Armenian? Tough one.”
“Sheri or Loggins and Messina”
“What?”
“Loggins and Messina are rehearsing at my church.”
“What?”
“No lie.”
“I’m on my way.”
By the time I got my jacket and put on my shoes, Bud was honking the horn. We roared off in his ‘69 Datsun faded maroon pick up truck with “Consequently, So Long” playing full blast on the 8 track. We covered the six miles to Hollywood in five minutes.
“Relax, Bud. They’re not just going to practice for two minutes.”
“Don’t want to miss anything.”
“Don’t want this bucket of bolts to fall apart.”
“This puppy is indestructible.”
“Yeah, right. Like the Japanese know something about trucks.”
“Like you know anything about trucks.” He had a point there. We pulled into the parking lot and went around back.
“They let white guys in?”
“Loggins and Messina are Armenian?”
“Right.”
We jogged from the parking lot to the doors of the gym until Bud put his arm out and stopped me.
“We don’t want to look like we ran into the gym to see them. We need a strategy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well we don’t want to look like some dorky fans.”
“Ok.”
“So what is it?”
“It is a gym, you know. We can just go in and shoot baskets.”
“That’s good. That way I can whip you at hoops and see them at the same time.”
“You can’t beat me, man. I got the skyhook.”
“A skyhook doesn’t work very well if the shooter is only three inches off the ground.”
“I have been working out, you know. I can currently get four inches of elevation.”
“I’m scared now.”
“I should thoroughly thrash you for your bad attitude, but we shouldn’t play a full on game, too distracting; we should just shoot around.”
“Good idea, actually.”
We entered the gym and they were up on the stage with a full compliment of equipment and musicians. They were having a discussion about a passage in a particular song. The gym was empty and there was not a basketball in sight. Bud was busy striking alternate poses of indifference and awe. He remained in that state for a nearly a minute, then he turned abruptly and headed straight to the opposite end of the gym toward the storage closet, as if he had known where it was and he was a regular at United Church. I was about to tell him that the basketballs back there are usually flat when he emerged with one that appeared to be new and he came dribbling back toward the stage, the ball ringing out each time it hit the floor. Then someone counted off, “1,2—1,2,3,4!” and the band kicked in to something a little slow but funky. Bud had finally loped his way to the stage end of the court and took a shot that hit the rim and nearly hit me in the head. I chased the ball down and threw it to Bud who was waving me over to come guard him. The band stopped but only to talk about problems they were having with the song.
I trotted over toward the top of the key but Bud launched one before I got there; he swished it.
“Nice shot,” Loggins observed.
“Comes naturally,” Bud replied. I toss the ball back and went to guard him again.
“Comes natural, my ass,” I muttered to Bud, “You couldn’t make that shot again if Sheri said she’d…” He banked a flat-footed 25 foot hook before I could finish the sentence.
“Hey, wow! You play for your high school?” This time Bud got the attention of the keyboard player.
“We’re out of high school,” Bud answered, as if it should have been obvious. We were six months out.
“Nice shot, anyway.”
“It’s easy when the defender is weak.”
I flung the ball hard at him. He caught it, tucked the ball under his arm and walked toward the stairs leading to the stage; I followed.
We ended up closest to the drummer.
“What’re you guys doing here, anyway?” Bud asked.
“We’re going on the road pretty soon. Couldn’t get our usual places; Michael got us this place, he knew somebody.” We nodded, not wanting to reveal our ignorance about who Michael might be.
“I got a question.” I wasn’t going to let Bud have all the glory.
“Shoot.” He seemed genuinely interested.
“Well, my friend Robert, not this dumb-luck guy here, another friend, we argue all the time about who the best drummer is. I say it’s Ginger Baker; he says it’s Keith Moon. So, like, which do you think?” He didn’t say anything for a while; I thought I had offended him. I was prepared to offer my defense of Ginger Baker. After all, Baker had recorded the only listenable drum solo while he was with Blind Faith.
“Actually, I’m on the road a lot. I don’t get to hear much. But if you ask me the drummer who plays with Aretha’s road band, now he’s great.”
“Great.” Of course being 19 I was convinced that he didn’t know what he was talking about. I had half a dozen back up questions for him, including how Creedence could be so popular when their drummer was so lousy. And for Bud’s sake I wanted this drummer to explain how Karen Carpenter didn’t have any chops at drums. But the band was now in the process of packing up their stuff.
“Where you guys going? Practice over?” Bud cut in, looking at me like I was being a dorky fan.
“Yeah, we’re going to a concert actually.”
“Who is it?” I jumped back in hoping to return to the Karen Carpenter issue.
“The Stones are at the Forum tonight.”
“Oh yeah for Nicaragua, huh?” Bud said.
“Yeah.”
“You guys gonna like hang out with them after the show?” Dorky or not, I couldn’t resist asking.
“Nah, I don’t think so.”
“Well, that’s pretty cool, going to the Stones concert.” I couldn’t help imagining that they got free tickets.
“Yeah, Santana is opening. Now, they’ve got a righteous rhythm section.
“Yeah, well, nice talking to you,” Bud said.
“Good luck with your basketball career.”
“Luck is all it is,” I said.
We turned and came down the stairs. Bud made like a bowler and rolled the ball all the way to the opposite end of the court where it stopped just three feet shy of the closet door. As we headed out to the parking lot a light rain was falling. Bud put his arm on my shoulder.
“You’re all right, Chavoor. Thanks for calling.”
“No problem, Bud.” We drove back to Burbank slowly, not talking. Bud didn’t even play the 8 track. We had crossed paths with rock stars, which was all the stimulus we needed for the time being.

Susie

Susie was 90 years old and driving herself to Wednesday night choir practice. Everyone loved her, and who wouldn’t? She was 90 and there was nothing dotty about her. Well there was the parking of the car, but she would simply say, “Richard,” when she joined and hand him the keys, and the barrel-chested tenor would go out and park the car properly, with all four wheels on the street, instead of two on the curb and two on the street. She knew our names and she would initiate conversations. Sometimes she would swap out our name for “kid,” which was fair because I guess if I should be so lucky to be here into my 90’s well, everyone else around me will be comparatively kid-like.
One night Susie strolled in to the rehearsal room, handed Richard the keys and looked at me and smiled.
“Hey kid, what do you know?”
“Not much, how about you?”
“Still kicking!”
“That’s good.”
“Beats the alternative.”
“Yep.”
“I been meaning to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
“What you do think of this Bush fella?”
“The President?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, just between you and me, I don’t like him.”
“How come?”
“For a lot of reasons, but we’re only here for two hours.”
“Ha-ha, that bad huh? A lotta folks like him.”
“That’s what makes America. He seems to be a guy you either like or don’t.”
“And you don’t. You sound like my daughter. She goes on and on about him.”
She didn’t appear to be into politics as much as she was into seeing how people responded to politics, just out of curiosity. It was the first time I ever realized what huge amount of energy many of us burn pointlessly to be on one side or another of something.
“Hey, I was gonna ask you if you remember the lyrics to a song.”
“What song?”
“In the morning, in the evening….”
“Ain’t we got fun?”
“Not much money….”
“Oh but honey, ain’t we got fun!”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“You know that song?”
“Sure.”
“You’re all right, Kid!”
“Thanks. You’re the cat’s pajamas, Suzie.”
“Ha! You bet!”
We got our folders and settled in on the business of choir practice. I between I would glance over at her, admiring her style and her love of life and how nothing would really derail her, certainly not something as silly as partisan politics. She was always in the moment. Whenever I spoke to her I would try to place her in the deeper parts of my memory. She was my hero, my role model. I planned to go to Barnes and Noble and buy a music book from the 20’s. I had seen it but I didn’t buy it at the time. There were more songs that I knew than I realized— of course there was “If You Knew Suzie,” but also there was“Side by Side,” “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” “April Showers,” and one that my mom used to sing, “The Prisoner’s Song.” I was going to take her to lunch, or go to her house and give her the book and say, “I don’t when your birthday is but happy birthday, either early or late. “ She would laugh and say, “You’re too much, kid,” and we would go through the book and sing songs.
But I had my set routine and I was tired most of the time, mentally and physical wiped out. Even being at choir practice was a challenge. A teacher is a person who is continually pulled in four directions, the kids, the administrators, the parents and the idealistic expectations of the teacher himself. It wears you down. Sometimes at choir practice I would just close my eyes and the world would turn blue like a cool spring evening with the stars and all of it, and the troubling world, the things pulling on me, like a cartoon character trying to run with someone on hanging on each arm and on my back, that would start to recede until I started to think that if I could close my eyes long enough I could go back far enough and regain the original energy required to do my best as a teacher and a father and a husband and a friend. But the choir director would always call us back to the business at hand, which wasn’t unfair because that is what we were there for anyway, and I liked to sing, I liked hearing the words of hope and comfort in four part harmony and voices of my friends, but it was still tiring somehow.
“Hey, Jack,” Suzie said when the director gave us a 10 minute break.
“Yeah?”
“You said one time your Mom grew up in Fresno?”
“Yeah. Well, she came to Fresno when she was 13. Graduated from Fresno High and then Fresno State.”
“Huh. What was her name?”
“Frances.”
“Frances?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait a minute, now. I know her. She went to Pilgrim Church, right?”
“That’s right.”
“She’s the same age as me.”
“Well, she passed away. It’s been 10 years now.”
“Eighty’s pretty good, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess.”
“I’m lucky to know you.”
“Me too.”
“More like a blessing.”
“Thanks, kid.”
“So you knew Mom?”
“I remember Frances all right.”
“Yeah?”
“She was WILD!”
“She….”
“She was always stirring things up! The boys were definitely interested.”
“What do you mean? Dad said he married a church girl.”
“Ha!”
“What’d she do?”
Her eyes were closed and she shook her head.
“I can’t tell you!” she staged whispered, raising her hand as if she were in court.
The choir director called us back to the task before I could respond, but when she stopped us a few measures in to speak to the bass section I turned around to see Suzie smiling at me.
“What did….”
“They don’t call it a rumble seat for nothing, kid!”
I pretended I didn’t hear her and turned back and thumbed through the music.
Suzie was the greatest storyteller I ever met. Her head shaking and eyebrow raising and double takes and timing were superb. Everything about her was real and that made all the joking all the better. She lived to be 99 years old. I never bought that book or took her to lunch or paid her a visit. But I sure wish I did. She is still my role model, should I be so blessed.

Beyond Vietnam

http://4amoreperfectunion.blogspot.com/2011/01/rev-martin-luther-king-jr-april-4-1967.html

Superman’s Unconscious Pathology

The conference was requested by a parent and set up by her daughter’s counselor not for something the student did but for something I did, or rather, didn’t do. One of my students in my 8th grade Language Arts class who sat in the back of the class, one seat from the window, was not reading the story I had assigned. She had placed comic book inside of the textbook and whenever I looked in her direction, she appeared to be reading from the book. Her mother somehow or another got a confession out of her. She had done something in her math class as well because her math teacher was in the conference room with all the rest of us. I was so nervous I could feel my heartbeat in my eyeballs. It was my first conference.
“Mrs. Clark,” the counselor, Mr. Theisen began, “why don’t you begin. Tell us about your concerns.”
“I would think that my concerns are your concerns as well, inasmuch as my daughter is a student here.”
She was dressed like she was going to church. She wore a blue dress, black pumps, was wearing a lot of makeup and was heavily perfumed.
“Of course.”
“Well,” her eyes went back and forth between Don Katz, the math teacher, and I, then settled on me, “in Susan’s English class she was given an assignment to read a story from what I assume was the anthology. When I asked her to describe the story though, she could not, and upon further questioning, it came out that she had not read the assignment at all but instead had actually slipped a comic book in front of the book and was reading that instead.”
I started to chuckle but held it back and looked at Susan; she was sitting with good posture I hadn’t seen in her before and she had both hands flat on the table. She did not look at anyone or anything; it was as though she was in the process of hypnotizing herself.
“And, Mr. Chavoor, can you offer us your perspective on the matter,” Mr. Theisen interjected.
“Yes, well,” I hesitated; there was really nothing to say, and Mrs. Clark’s perfume was making my stomach roll, “she had me fooled, that’s for sure.”
“For nearly two weeks? “
“Well, if that’s what she’s telling you. I…”
“Are you saying she’s lying?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“What on earth would be her motivation to lie that she had done it on consecutive days?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
I looked at Dan Katz: he had both hands on top on his balding head; he was slouched to the side and he was staring out the window.
“Now that’s no surprise. But yet and still how can a grown man, an educated man, a credentialed teacher, supposedly in charge of his class overlook such a thing. I mean, Lord, she’s back there with a comic book for pity’s sake!”
“Of course I wouldn’t allow it if I knew about it, but like I said, I just, I didn’t see it.”
“I can’t believe it. Maybe you were thinking Poor little black girl. She can’t read anyway, no sense bothering her. A comic book is as good as she can do.”
“I said I was fooled. I couldn’t have been thinking any of that because I thought she was reading the book. Her race was not a factor.”
“Of course you would say so. I’m just pointing out the pathology of your thinking. I don’t care if it’s conscious or unconscious.”
“Mrs. Clark, I am sorry I didn’t see Susan reading a comic book. I am glad you are concerned enough to arrange for a conference, but you can’t decide what I was thinking, consciously or unconsciously.”
Susan’s eyes flickered and showed life for a second.
“Well let me tell you something Mr. Chavoor….”

She started to get out of her chair.

“We may be going off topic here,” Mr. Theisen said.
“I disagree,” Mrs. Clark said, sitting back down.
“We’re all on the same team, Mr. Theisen said, “and we all want Susan to read the textbook and not read comics in class. I’m sure Mr. Chavoor is fully aware of the situation now and will be more vigilant in that regard. Mrs. Clark, I know you and Susan had a lengthy discussion last night on this matter and I’m sure you’ll be checking for comic books before she leaves the house.”
Mrs. Clark begrudgingly accepted Mr. Theisen’s attempts at negotiating a refocusing of the issues. Susan, now fully out of her trance, made a face and rubbed the back of her head. Mrs. Clark turned her attention to Dan Katz, who had removed his hands from his head and now sat, still slouched, with his arms
folded across his chest. His crime was not catching Susan passing notes to Tisha, her best friend. There was no mention of his “pathology of thinking.” He agreed to be more watchful.
“I will say that while both of these teachers were negligent in their duties, at least the young man here,” she nodded at me ever so slightly, “had enough decency to sit up when I was speaking to him.”
“Well I think our conference has been productive, don’t you think?” Mr. Theisen said to no one in particular.
“Huh,” Mrs. Clark said, and muttered something none of us heard.
“Susan is there anything you would like to say?” Mr. Theisen asked.
“No,” she said in a surly tone.
“Anyone else?”
“Yeah,” Dan said, “What was the comic book?”
“Oh for the love of God!” Mrs. Clark exploded.
“I’m just curious. I’d like to know,” he continued, ignoring Mr. Theisen’s raised hand and bugged out eyes.
“Sometimes Batman and sometimes Superman,” Susan put in, amused at the scene.
“I think we’re done here,” Mr. Thesien said, standing.
“I’m sure you will be speaking to both your teachers after I leave.”
“I preferred Superman, myself,” Dan said.
“I assure you I will speak to both of them, Mrs. Clark,” Thesien said, trying to marshal us all out.
“Bye, baby.” Mrs. Clark kissed her daughter with a tenderness I was beginning to image she did not possess. They went out the door and turned in opposite directions. We waited behind.
“What was the comic book? Are you kidding?” Theisen shook his head.
“Just keeping things on the light side. She’s a kid with comic book.”
“Wonder what Superman’s unconscious pathology is?” I exclaimed, still annoyed.
“Just keep your eyes on the girl; now get back to the trenches.”
Dan saluted, and when we left, he was singing the Kinks song about Superman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U56vPV2wqs0

Dave, the Walker

In the morning his gait was wide and hurried, as if the weather or some other unseen force was pushing him along. In the afternoon it was slow and labored but still steady. It was not relaxed like the rest of who felt as though we had won our lives back and from 3 o’clock until dinnertime, when we could do whatever we pleased. Dave’s stride suggested there was no time that belonged to him; that things just went from bad to worse. His head was down as if he hated being the tallest kid in town. Either that or it was as though even God had little regard for him and was reaching down from heaven and straight-arming the top of his head as a primitive kind of amusement. His shoulders were set as if he never intended to use them. His hands hung uselessly at his side, although it was said that he had once flipped off some kids who had not just harassed him but thrown stuff at him. He had wavy hair that he combed back with something, some kind of hair cream. His eyebrows were pronounced but stagnant. When we got close enough to him you could see greyish rings around his eyes, but my friend Lenny insisted we keep a safe distance, so I don’t know if his eyes always had those rings or not. He was otherwise pale except for his red cheeks that made him look like a three year old whose parents had taken him, against his will, to the snow for the first time. He had a transistor radio in a brown leather case that he kept in the front pocket of his brown Pendleton shirt. You could see the thin vanilla colored wire that led to his ear. He did not appear to move or nod his head to whatever he would listen to, but I couldn’t stop wondering what it was. Rock? Country? News? Why wasn’t it interesting or moving to him? And why did he wear the same clothes—blue jeans, white socks, black shoes, and that Pendleton—everyday?
“Who is that guy?” I asked Lenny one morning on our way to school.
“Boo Radley.”
“What?”
He took the next two blocks to recount To Kill a Mockingbird, explain the importance of the Boo Radley character and compare the movie to the book.
“That’s why I call him Boo Radley.”
“His dad locked him in the basement?”
“That’s all you got out of it? I told you the whole thing, you know?”
“No. I get it, I guess.”
“What’re you, dense? Weren’t you listening?”
“Nobody likes him. Everybody makes up stories about him.”
“But…”
“But they don’t really know who he is and if you ever get jumped by an old crazy guy with a knife, he’ll come out of nowhere and save you but he’ll be like, shy about it.”
“Not all that other stuff, but that people don’t know. They look at him and their imagination makes a bad story. But maybe he’s just had a bad luck life.”
“Like what?”
“Jack, not everybody lives a Leave it to Beaver life, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“So there’s stuff you don’t see inside people’s houses. You just see them outside.”
We were silent for a couple of blocks.
“Is he retarded?”
“See? You did it already. Made up your own bad stuff. Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He frowns a lot. He’s old for going to school.”
“Why are you thinking of him like that? He’s just a guy who feels he doesn’t fit in. Maybe he doesn’t want to fit in. Maybe he grew up learning that’s how it is. You should just accept it the way he is. If he wants to tell you something he will.”
“I guess.”
“Did you ever say hi to him?”
“No. Did you?”
“I’m not the one asking stupid questions.”
“But you still could have said hi to him. Then you ask me if I did.”
“What if he wants to be left alone? I think maybe he feels better that way, so I leave him alone. You want to know stuff about him, want to know if he’ll talk.”
“You’re the one who said we need to keep a half a block behind him. That he might go crazy.”
“You don’t know how he sees you. You think you’re a normal, nice guy. What if he looks at you and thinks you’re a bad guy?”
“Why would he think that?”
“How would I know? I just know he’s looking at everything different from how we look at it. That’s what not fitting in means.”
“What’s he doing anyway?”
“He’s walking, duh.”
“He walks on Saturday and Sunday, too.”
“He’s got stuff to think about. He’s Boo Radley, the walker.”
“So what’s his real name?”
“Dave, I think.”
“Dave, the walker.”
A few weeks later, Lenny was sick and I walked to school alone. I didn’t see Dave. I was heading east on Clark when he suddenly popped up on on Frederic Street. As he approached Clark he saw me and dropped his head lower than it already was and started to cross to the opposite side of the street.
“Hi,” I said, adding a delayed, awkward wave of the hand.
He was in the middle of the street moving in a disjointed fashion, like someone had thrown a firecracker at him. He stepped up on the sidewalk; maybe he felt he was far enough away to reply. He looked back at me, then turned away, picked up the pace and said something that was either “Hey,” “Hi,” or “Huh.” By the time I got to Jordan Junior High though, I lost track of him and I couldn’t see where he went or when he went out of view.
Next time I saw Lenny I told him what happened. His mind went into a spin cycle of ideas and possibilities about what it meant or might have meant. Maybe I scared him. Or maybe not. Maybe no one ever said hi to him. Or maybe everyone who ever said hi to him did him wrong.
We all have a little bit of Dave in us. Stuff we carry around. Stuff we don’t disclose. Stuff that scares us that we can’t explain. Sometimes we can’t be heard. Sometimes we don’t speak loud enough. I remembered Dave because I’ve been walking a lot the few two or three years. Sometimes I look down and just watch my feet. Sometimes I put my hands in my pockets; other times my hands just dangle uselessly at my side. Sometimes I listen to music; other times I listen to the wind. Sometimes my mind is blank; other times I have a lot of things on my mind and bounce from subject to subject until I’m not sure where my thoughts are headed and sometimes I’ll see someone else walking or on a bike and I’ll be looking at them wondering whether they mean me harm or whether they’ll ignore me, or maybe they’ll  say hi and if they hi what do I say? Sometimes I wonder what they’re doing on my walk. But it’s not my walk; we’re all on this walk together, aren’t we?

The Quilt

In the summer of 1963 my brother decided to transfer from Glendale City College to Fresno City College. The news was troubling for both me and for Veronica, my future sister-in-law. Life without my brother didn’t seem possible. He was my guide, my guru, my hero, my other dad. How would I know what to do, how to speak, crack jokes, be cool, think about life and the world and how we fit into it without my big brother?
But he left. I tried to tell myself it was good to have the room all to myself. But I cried instead. I cried more than one time. I would go in my room and close the door and just cry. Sometimes I would just be standing somewhere and think of my big brother and then remember he wasn’t around, and I’d start to cry. I was probably too old to cry, and Veronica scolded me in a gentle, future sister-in-law kind of way.  She loved my brother, so I knew she was smart and I loved her for her smile, energy, laugh and the very fact that she acknowledged me and engaged me in conversation. I caught her crying once after Charles had been gone for a while. She said it was because the song “Navy Blue” had come on but the girl in the song was sad because her boyfriend had joined the Navy and she missed him, so I was confused. I was pretty sure my brother wasn’t interested in joining the Navy, but at the same time I knew the pain of Charles not being around. I went to hug her but she had already pulled herself together.
So Charles started a new chapter for us all. He lived with Grandma Ruth who loved all her grandchildren with rigor and discipline, as though she had no time to waste. Every day was an opportunity for her to dispense wisdom and truth. For Grandma Ruth there was a right way and a wrong way to do, say, think and believe everything. That quality never bothered me, well not until the last year of her life when I was in my early 20’s and believed that I was the one who knew everything. But it did not bother me as it did when I spotted it in others, mostly because Grandma Ruth spoke with such certainty—it was like what it says in the Bible about Jesus teaching with authority.
So when you were with Grandma Ruth, every experience, even commonplace activities, was a learning experience. She told us all how to live and why. She was straight with it. There was nothing doddering or hesitant; it was just all strength, enough strength to bend opinion and faith into sheer fact. Intermolecular forces hold the universe together, but our extended family was held together by the clear vision and fortitude of Grandma Ruth.
One night my brother—spoiled by the balmly winter nights in Burbank and unaccoustomed to the bitter cold winter nights in Fresno—asked Grandma Ruth for some extra blankets. She went to the hallway cabinets a returned with a heavy quilt with patches from old shirts and dresses. They were of different colors and sizes, and some were older, more frail than others.
“Do you see this?” Grandma Ruth asked.
“Yes. It’s a quilt. It’ll do fine,” Charles replied.
“Look at it.”
“Uh. Looks nice.”
“Do you see the different colors?”
“Yes.”
“And the size of the patches are not all the same?”
“Uh-huh.”
“People are like that. They come in all hues and colors, shapes and sizes.”
“That’s true.”
“They are in different passages of their lives.”
“Hmm.”
“Listen to me now.”
“I’m listening.”
“Those diffences all together make one quilt. The different patches all have a common thread. The people of the world, everyone in it, you and me and everyone, we are those patches. The grace of God, creator is the thread.”
“Huh.”
“Always respect those who are different and remember that we all have a common thread that holds us all together. “
“Thanks, Grandma.”
Charles held up the quilt and retired to his room. The night wasn’t as cold as it had been just a few minutes before. And 51 years later, Grandma’s lesson still resonates.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oJag_B4K2k