The Clock and the Gun

May 1982

Somehow or other Matt, an old church friend from high school and college days came to visit on Memorial Day weekend. I hadn’t seen him in several years, and my LA friends, it turned out, weren’t all that inclined to make the trip to Fresno.

Grace left us alone to freely tell stories of the old days, the BG—before Grace—days she and I called them. But Matt started off on the present days, all the way up to the very moment he was standing there on the front porch. Maybe that’s what prompted me to take us back to our past.

“This is nice.”
“Thanks.”
He took off his sunglasses and turned away from me and surveyed the front yard, then stepped inside and nodded approbation at the modest kitchen.
“Real nice.”
“Yeah.”
“You never said a word.”
“What?”
“You never said a damn thing.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I had a real job way before you. I started buying stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“I had stereo equipment. I was buying five records a week. Guitars, amps. I bought a car.”
“I had a car.”
“Your mom’s station wagon.”
“The Torino!”
“You were never jealous.”
“Why would I be? I was happy for you.”

It was true that I never said anything, and it was true that I was happy for him. He got the first real job and was living at home and started buying stuff. It did give me that panicky feeling, even in my early 20’s, about what I was doing with my life. But I didn’t connect that to Matt.

“Damn you, Chavoor. You never had a jealous bone in your body.”
“Well, thanks. I don’t…I’m not…I don’t know.”
“Not a single bone. You never said a word. Not even a pinkie finger bone.”
“I don’t understand you, man. I mean, I don’t know.”
“Now you got a house, man. A freakin house!”
“Oh well, you know. Thanks. Uh.”

It wasn’t difficult to be modest. After all, the down payment came from Grace and she met the first 3 or 4 payments while I was stumbling my way into employment—job hunting, subbing and finally getting a job, albeit at adult school, which wasn’t my first choice.

“Show me the back yard.”
“Sure. Here, come on. This way. The grand tour.”
“Wait a minute now. This backyard? It’s huge!”
“Yeah? Thanks. That’s a apricot right there. And nectarine over there.”
“Just like your old man.”
“Every Armenian has at least one apricot tree.”
“True.”
“It’s a fact of life. Birds, bees, and Armenians with fruit trees in their back yard.”
“Yeah, really.”
“Don’t you mean Reah, yilly?”

There was a whole language the group of us spoke. Tired old puns and routines they may have been, but it was like holding up your membership card, and membership in your 20’s is a very important thing. Now, creeping up on 30 we bantered with the old phrases, like holding up the same souvenir.

“Farm out, man!”
“Right arm!”
“In the grove!”
“Who started that anyway?”
“What?”
“Reah, Yilly.”
“You know what, Chavoor? I’m pretty sure it was YOU!”
“Oh, yeah. No, I think it was you. Or maybe Robert.”
“Robert?”
“Maybe his brother, then.”
“Guess what? When you get right down to it, who knows?”
“Yeah.”

I got up and got a couple of beers from the fridge. I was going to say something like “Sorry, all out of Michelob,” the beer of choice in the old days, but I gave him an Anchor Steam beer without commentary.

“So what are you listening to these days?” Tom asked.
“Nothing. There isn’t anything.”
“There’s always something, Chavoor.”
“Yeah. I’m into bluegrass. And even some classical.”
“What?”
“Ok, ok. It’s not a big deal. There’s Warren Zevon.”
“You were in to that guy.”
“He’s got a song on the new album. It’s called Gorilla you’re a desperado.”
“Nuts.”
“Yeah and he escapes from the LA Zoo but the lifestyle makes him depressed.”
“Actually, bananas!”
“And the Eagles sing the harmony on it.”

The Eagles singing a parody of their own song; I was sure he’d like that.

“The Eagles suck, let’s be honest.”
“Yeah, the Byrds were a much better band.”

But there was something else. He sat up straight and changed his tone. I didn’t know where he was going but I knew I wanted to sidetrack him.

“I tossed my Eagles albums,” he said with much gravitas.
“Did you melt them in the oven like the Deep Purple albums?”
“Ha-ha. You remember that?”
“Heck yeah, man. It was your brother’s idea if I recall.”
“Yeah.”
“That was awesome.”
“But the Eagles, I just chucked their stuff.”
“Before you upchucked.”
“Seriously though, they’re promoting darkness.”
“What?”
“Hotel California? Know what that’s about?”

I had heard that the song had some kind demonic connection but I hadn’t meant anyone who actually believed it.

“Yeah, death of the spirit of the 60’s.”
“Stabbed it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast,” Matt said, as if this made it obvious.
“Exactly. The system gained back the control. It couldn’t be killed.”
“The beast. See it? Those guys were into Satan.”
“What? The Eagles?”
“I’m telling you.”
“I don’t know, man.”

“Believe it.”

“But it won’t be hard to not listen to them. I don’t like them much. I heard Tom Waits called them the Lettermen of the 70’s.”
“See? That’s how it goes. You don’t suspect anything. But there’s a darkness in them. Maybe they don’t even know about it.”
“Well….”
“Just look at the album cover some time. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep.”
“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you! And I ain’t paranoid. Just awake.”
“Awake?”

Had he become a Jehovah’s Witness? Where was Matt? What was happening?

“Yeah. Like you use Procter and Gamble products, right?”
“I guess.”
“Sure you do. They own everything. Tide, Crest, Prell shampoo.”
“Grandma Ruth loved that Prell shampoo.”
“But did you ever look at their logo?”
“Logo?”
“The moon and the stars.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“The man in the moon has a beard and in the beard you can see the numbers 666, and the top of his head you can see devil horns.”
“Ah come on, man.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s just like, a, a coincidence.”
“Stay asleep, then.”
“So, like, you got rid of all Procter and Gamble products?”
“Yep.”

I waited for a while to see if he was going to erupt in to laughter, point at me and say “Got you good that time.” That was something he would do. He didn’t say anything though, just nodded almost imperceptibly.

“What about rock and roll? Did you get rid of all your albums? They all do stuff that you don’t do anymore.”
“No. Music will always speak to me.”
“Except there aren’t any great new bands, not like the old bands.”
“There’s Van Halen.”
“I’m not into them.”
“They are badass, Chavoor.”
“They’re from Van Nuys.”
“No they’re not! Where’d you hear that?”
“I don’t know. So they covered You Really Got Me. Big deal. Dave Davies didn’t even like it.”
“From Van Nuys, come on! Eddie Van Halen. One of the greatest guitar living guitar players.”
“They’re kind of hedonistic.”
“Also called rock and roll!”
“Not all of it. Depends on the lyrics.”
“Depends what you’re listening for. Eddie Van Halen plays the guitar like no one else.”

I thought we had all been on the same page. It was all about the lyrics, right? Apparently not. And how could a relatively new band have a great guitar player? All the great guitar players were already playing. Or were no longer with us.

“There’s still Santana.”
“He’s into jazz now.”
“Heard something by them that was not jazz. I hated the album Lotus. But this was more rock. They got a new singer.”
“You don’t always need to sing. Take Neil Young for instance!”

I was so glad he alighted on Neil Young. He was not just the favorite of the gang; he was a family member.

“I know you won’t toss any of his albums.”
“No way.”
“Those three albums, Tonight’s the Night….”
“Zuma!”
“Yeah, and On the Beach.”
“So many great songs in those three albums.”

We breathed out the lyrics, back and forth, like blowing on embers when out of wood on a cold, cold night.

“It’s so good to be here, asleep on your lawn! Remember your guard dog, I’m afraid that he’s gone!”
“I’m not going back to Woodstock for a while, though I long to hear that lonesome hippie smile.”

He was our spokesman, our lens for looking at the world.

“Remember that song with the line Burnouts stub their toes on garbage pails.”
“Ambulance Blues. Yeah, man.”

It was a bleak, pessimistic vision, but if we couldn’t fix the world, we sure were going to say what was wrong with it.

“You’re all just pissing in the wind…”
“You don’t know it, but you are.”
“There was even a line in there about Nixon.”
“Never met a man, who could tell so many lies. Had a different story for every set of eyes.”
“How can he remember who he’s talking to? Cause I know it ain’t me and I hope it isn’t you.”
“I think that what Dylan was to the 60’s, Neil Young was to the 70’s.”
“Yeah, now the 80’s. Who knows?”
“But they say he made a statement in an interview that he supported Reagan’s defense policy.”
“Everybody changes, Jack.”
“He’s Canadian, what does he care?”
“He’s been in LA most of his musical career.”
“Yeah.”

It was as if he was a peer I was mad at.

“Don’t forget his early stuff. Don’t let it bring you down…”
“It’s only castles burning.”
“On the 4 Way Street album he says, Here’s a song called don’t let it bring you down, guaranteed to bring you down.”
“I remember you used to say that all the time. And there was that other one. You’re underneath the stairs, giving back some glares.”
“Sugar Mountain.”
“How about I’m singing this borrowed tune….”
“Too wasted to write my own.”
“Ha-ha. Yeah.”
“I tell you what man, I lived all that shit.”
“I know.”
“I was one of the best dealers in the Valley.”
“Whatever you get into Matt, it’s whole-hog.”
“Had some close calls.”
“I’m glad you got out of it.”
“There was that day though that you showed up on the front porch.”

This was the story he like reviewing most of all.
“Hadn’t seen you in a while.”
“I opened the door.”

“It was like…”
“I was just staring. Like a zombie.”
“I saw why John was calling you sphinx-head. Your hair was like a triangular Afro.”
“It’s why Armos can’t have long hair!”
“It was cool though. You were probably the first guy to have an Armenio!”
“You know what? You’re right!”
“All you needed was gold chains, an open shirt and multiple rings.”
“Standing in front of my auto-repair shop with a pack of ciggies in my front pocket.”
“Perfect.”
“Ha-ha. That’s right. We gotta call out our own stereotypes before the odars. That way they can’t get to us.”

He had been the president of our high school church group. Then something went wrong at a convention and he got the blame. So he quit the church and leaped into a life quite the opposite. When I realized no one in the church group was thinking about Matt at all, as if he never existed, I decided to go visit him.

“I remember that day on the porch though. You opened the door and just stood there.”
“For like five minutes. Finally I said, Chavoor.”
“You must have been stoned.”
“Hung over, maybe.”
“Then your dad invited me in and brought me a beer.”
“That’s right.”
“No adult had ever brought me a beer. I thought he was the coolest guy ever.”
“Yeah. And we talked a long time. After Dad left.”
“Not too long.”
“But it got me thinking. And I started to change after that. Maybe not because of the visit but it’s like a marker or something.”
“I’m glad.”
“Yeah. Almost everything changed.”

“Yep.”

We raised our beers and drank. We were quiet for a while.

“Hey, did you ever watch Gene Scott?” Matt asked.
“The crazy guy who smoked pipes and wore crazy hats and yelled into the camera for people to hurry up and send their money?”
“Yeah! That’s him!”
“Couldn’t even understand what he was saying half the time.”
“But if you listen enough times it starts to make sense.”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what he had in that pipe!”
“He does that just to be entertaining. But when he gets into it, it’s pretty good.”
“I think it’s local. They don’t broadcast it here. He’s like from Glendale, right?”

He was staring at a spot on the floor. Then when I saw there was nothing there I figured he had zoned out thinking about something.

“I gotta get something from the car. Come on.”
“What is it?”
“It’s for you and Grace. A house-warming present.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to get a …”
“Oh, shut up, Chavoor. You got a house. You’ll like this, I’m just know it.”

It was a grandfather style wall clock. He was right. I did like it. It was old fashioned, and old fashioned, but not antique, equaled cool to me in those days.

“Wow, man. I really like this. Thanks.”
“There’s a story that goes with it.”

We came back to the house, sat down in the living room there and he unleashed the strangest, most convoluted, craziest tale I had ever heard. Grace joined us in time to hear and it was so out there that at the time we had no choice but to believe it. And the teller of the tale was a close friend; I met him when I was 17 and he was 15, and there is something magical about friendships at that age or younger. There is no lying, not on a subject as serious as the clock story. We repeated the story—most of it— several times afterwards to friends and acquaintances.

I was sure I would remember it forever. But like dried leaves on patio furniture on a blustery March day, the story is gone. There are bits of it, which include a threat from some very bad, ruthless people, a kidnapping, a long drive in a large white van, Long Beach, blindfolds, the clock, more threats, why the police were of no help, and the escape, getting back to the Valley but the rest of it is as they say, in the wind. If you need to hear it another way, the story just didn’t have a shelf life. It was a dazzling, over the top story, which cost all the coins that friendships could spend on a given story. And with the clock story, Matt tapped out. No more credibility coins. It was Memorial Day weekend and we were going to have a barbecue and a couple of beers the next day. I wanted to host a Memorial Day gathering every year and invite my LA friends. I wanted them to meet my Fresno friends. He sat slouched on the chair, his index finger dabbed his mustache while he scanned the room, maybe wondering where I’d put the clock, the clock that had been a factor in the craziest episode of Matt’s, or anyone’s life.

“Oh, I forgot something else in the car, I’ll be right back.”
“All right.”

He came back, holding a revolver low and close to his hip. He tried to look nonchalant, as if I wouldn’t notice or say anything if I did notice.

“What is that, man? What are you doing?”
“These are different times, Jack.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I’m not afraid. It’s for my security. I will protect myself wherever I am. Anything could happen anywhere.”
“You…”

We stood in the kitchen, face to face, having our own showdown.

“That’s just how it is. I hope you respect that.”
“Well, I respect your right to own a gun.”
“Thank you.”
“I have never in all my life felt the need to carry or own one. And I can tell you that my father never had or wanted one.”
“That’s cool.”
“Yeah, and when I was a kid and every kid in town had a Fanner 50 cap gun, my dad said no, I wasn’t having one, because why would I play at something I should never do?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and then I found a picture taken around Christmastime before I was born, and my brother had a cowboy hat, a vest, a badge, a holster and two toy guns. I was confused and upset.”
“Your Dad looked at it one way for a while and then changed.”
“I wanted a Fanner 50 real bad. I was hurt and angry. But you know what, by the time I was in junior high I was over it; nobody was into it anymore and if I wanted things to make a noise I would buy a roll of caps and bash the entire roll with a hammer or buy some firecrackers, and by the time I was in high school I could see that Dad was, like, well he had a philosophy and he put it into action and it was very cool to me and it still is.”
“I hear you, man.”
“As far as I know Dad’s dad didn’t have a gun. So, see, the thing is, you are a guest in my house and there’s no threat here. If you feel you can take the chance of spending one night without your gun in my house, you are welcome here. But there just aren’t goona be any guns in my house.”
“Are you asking me to put the gun back in the car?”
“Yes, I am. I am respecting your right to have a gun, and I am asking you to respect my right not to have guns in my house.”
“All right, man. I will do that. Because, well, because it’s cool what you said.”
“Thank you.”
And he went back out to the car. He might have looked a little annoyed, but I wasn’t sure and at the time I cared more about the principle than accommodating my friend of many years.
The comfort, security of the communal feeling that we all have just before we pair off or otherwise go our own way—to make harder, more personalized choices— goes away with passage of time. But we eventually arrive at something better; we stand on what we have learned and what we believe to be true. Along the way we get wise in our own eyes, anyway that’s how it is at the beginning. But with luck, prayer, struggle, and experience we level off and realize our own system is as good or as bad as most and the learning curve extends for the entirety of our lives.
The Neil Young song we never talked about much may have been the most instructive. He recorded it when he was 33 years old. “Comes a time when you’re drifting. Comes a time when you settle down… Oh, this old world keeps turning round. It’s a wonder tall trees ain’t laying down. There comes a time.”
It’s funny that I remember the story of the gun better than the story of the clock. Maybe not, though.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsWrmJjD2eY

Thoughts and Voices

 

Teachers read faces because we have to know what’s coming. When I looked into the face of Moses though, I couldn’t quite tell. I knew it was something bad or sad but it was more intense than “Grandma’s very sick” or “My girlfriend dumped me just before the prom.” It was deeper, more frightening. I had to skip the prelude banter.
“What’s wrong?”
But he didn’t answer. He stopped and turned to face me, his head moving as if by remote control with weak batteries. He waited a beat and then shook his head slowly, as if it hurt to do it. His eyes were lifeless, black dots.
I retreated to my desk, took roll manically, looked at Moses when I called his name and saw that he was far away somewhere. It was poetry week and I was taking them to the library to hear the featured poet. Anxious to get another chance to talk to Moses, I rushed them through my expectations for them while in the library. They headed for the door and I waited for him, pretending I couldn’t find the key to the door.
“Come on, man. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, ok, all right. I get it.”
I had no idea what it was, except that it was bad.
“I need to talk to somebody.”
“Yeah, that’s good. Let me get a piece of paper.”
I grabbed a stray paper off my desk, found a pencil and began scribbling. Date, time… In my panic I couldn’t think of his name though and trying to concentrate made it worse. I blanked out on his name and couldn’t retrieve it.
“I gotta talk to somebody. Somebody who can…I gotta talk to somebody.”’
“All right, let’s go. We’ll do that, come on.”
“Good, good.”
I locked up, turned off the lights and we headed toward the library. I looked at him and he seemed pensive but not doomed as he had a few minutes earlier. We didn’t talk. I kept looking at the paper hoping the name would be there somehow. We lagged behind the others, walking in silence. I wasn’t sure whether to try and find out what was going on or not. The morning sun was incandescent; the cloudless sky made me feel small, helpless, as though I were falling in to it; just falling and falling and falling.
“Mr. Chavoor, do you ever have bad thoughts?”
“We all have bad thoughts, OK? We just don’t…”
“No, I mean real bad thoughts. Bad things that you, you shouldn’t have.”
“I…What do you mean?”
“Ok, like, I see a hammer.”
“Yeah?”
“I see a hammer and I see my brother. He’s just sitting there watching TV or something.”
“OK.”
“And then the thoughts. Bad things, you know?”
“Are you angry at your brother? Has he done something?”
“No. That’s just it. I love my brother. He hasn’t done nothing. Never.”
“Uh, well.”
“And that other one. The other one.”
“What’s that?”
“I see a car and I just want to jump in front of it.”
“What?”
“Jump in front of it. Like while it’s still moving.”
I looked to see if he was being straight. He was. We were right in front of the library doors. My throat was tightening and my ears were ringing.
“OK I’m gonna come with you to the counselor. I’ll walk with you over there. Come on.”
“OK, good. That’s good.”
At that moment Ms. Ibarra, the librarian for reasons I didn’t know, came to the doorway.
“Can you watch my kids? ‘Cause I gotta situation here.”
I pointed at Moses, and then cursed myself for pointing at him, for reducing him to “a situation.” He didn’t seem to take offense though; he nodded. I still couldn’t think of his name, and he was a nice kid, a kid I like talking to.
“Ok, sure. No problem, ” she replied, smiling.
I saw in her eyes that she realized it was something serious and I was distressed. I tried to calm myself, tried to “think cool thoughts” as Kareem Abdul Jabbar once said.
“Then when things are taken care of I’ll come back.”
“That’s fine.”
I turned to Moses who stood like a man without objection to being fired from a job that he liked.
“Come on man, let’s go. We’re gonna go straight to your counselor.”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s your counselor?”
“Mr. Xiong.”
“Ok. I think he’s in the main office, right? He’s not in East Hall is he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. Ok.”
I resumed trying to fish his name out of my mind’s murky pond. How could I forget his name? I liked this kid. How could I speak to his counselor not knowing his name? I was forgetting more names in the last few years, including kids with whom I had a daily, amiable rapport. I tried to rationalize it and told myself that I had met 5000 teenagers over the years, but that didn’t work; I felt old and ashamed. The wheels had not only come off, they were nowhere in sight.
We entered the main office and I moseyed down the hall, passing posters promising exclusivity and an increased sense of one’s own personal status for kids in exchange for giving their lives over to the military. What was Moses’ sense of status? Who or what had flattened it? Or did he do that on his own? Or was his predicament something organic? Something that could be corrected with medication instead of therapy. How is that even possible? How could something sinister materialize in someone’s innocent, healthy mind like some kind of cancer? Was it something spiritual? Or maybe someone should grab him by the shoulders and shake him and tell it’s all in his head. I wasn’t going to take that chance. I didn’t think it was adolescent hyper-drama; I had seen plenty of that, and this was different. I saw that Mr. Xiong’s door was open, but he was on the phone, writing something down, and a student was seated in a chair in front of his desk. I turned and faced Moses.
“I’m gonna talk to Mr. Xiong a second.”
“Uh-huh.”
I was afraid to leave him in the hall, so I leaned into the doorway and got Mr. Xiong’s attention. He held up his hand but I mouthed the words, “suicidal” and jerked my head in the direction of the hall. He cut the call short and I signaled for Moses to come in.
“This young man would like to speak to a counselor, I mean like a SAP counselor or perhaps the school psychologist.”
“Yes, yes.”
He picked up the phone and dialed, looking at me and then Moses and then me again.
“Ok, man, go back to the hall for a second. We’re gonna get you somebody real quick.”
He shuffled out.
“Yes, Ms. Kukowski? I have…I have a student here who is in crisis. Are you available right now? Well he… I’m going to email my answer to that right now. Check your email. Yes. Did you see it? That’s correct…Oh I see. I’ll do that then.”
The girl sitting in front of his desk was staring at a calendar to her left and then abruptly looked up and stared at the ceiling as if it contained some explanation.
“So?” I said.
“She has a student right now who is in crisis. She wants you to take uh, take the young man over to the nurse and then she’ll pick him up there when she can.”
So we went to the nurse so Moses could wait for Ms. Kukowski, the school psychologist who is always overrun with students in crisis. Ms. Arletas, the school nurse, is always upbeat and cheerful, and the news that Moses was suicidal and homicidal did not change her demeanor for a second. I thought this was astounding and I admired her for it because I had that emotional trembling throughout. When he saw Ms. Arletas he put his head up and raised his hand and that’s when I remembered his name, Moses.
“This is Moses,” I said, relieved.
“Well, all right Moses, I got a room for you right over here.”
“The executive suite,” I said.
A smile came to him for half a second.
“Yes, sir, that’s right, Moses. My own office. That way you won’t catch the flu or a headache from these others,” Ms. Arletas said, patting him on the back.
“All right, man. Here you go. I’m going back to the library now.”
“OK. Thanks.”
I looked at him to monitor where he might be in his head. We have to second guess; we have to stay ahead. No one blames you if you miss something but I am accustomed to blaming myself. I hadn’t seen anything; missed everything, or maybe he hadn’t put out any signals until just a half an hour earlier.
I came back to the library and the poet was reflecting on pain, turmoil, anguish, and broken relationships. The students twisted and turned in their chairs impatiently. I began to feel fluttery inside and paced back and forth in the back, behind the last row of chairs. It was Friday; the thought came to me in equal portions of relief and despair. The despair was the 64 hours before I would find out how Moses made it through the weekend.
The following week I got to work early, came to my room, turned the computer on and then set out to find the school psychologist. I went straight to Irene in the East Hall office; she knows everything, as many office managers do. I poured myself a cup of coffee and waited for her to look up.
“How are you, Jack? Is there something you need?”
“Yes, Irene. Where are they stashing the school psychologist these days? They keep moving her office around.”
“Ha! She’s right there,” she said, pointing a woman just to my left.
“Oh! Oh, hello. I’m Jack Chavoor.”
She was dressed in jeans and an oversized windbreaker. I had mistaken her for a student.
“Jean Kukowski,” she said as we shook hands.
“Ms. Kukowski, I’m the one who sent Moses your way.”
“Oh, yes. I couldn’t get to him right away. I had another student who needed immediate attention, but I did go pick him up.”
“Oh, thank you. I don’t know how much you can share but I…he hadn’t shown any indications…”
“He had a lot on his mind. Most of it, he told me, he already shared with you.”
“He’s a good kid. Well, I mean, he seemed ok.”
“I contacted Mom. She’s aware of the situation.”
“He’s going to get counseling?”
“He declined.”
“Declined? He wants to beat his brother with a hammer.”
“Yes, but without his ok there’s nothing we can do.”
“He’s a minor.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“He’s hearing voices. Don’t they have like medication for that? Can’t they at least get him a physical?”
“He has thoughts; he’s not hearing voices.”
“What?”
“There’s a difference.”
“Amounts to the same…”
“If he said he heard voices we could intervene more directly.”
“Uh.”
“I did talk him down from where he was when I got him. These are apparently moods that he goes through.”
“Uh-huh.”
“His mother says it comes and goes and that it has for quite some time.”
The next day he was gone and then on Thursday he was back. I said something funny three times just to see where he was and three times he laughed. Later when they were working independently I walked by him and patted him on the shoulder. He looked up and nodded. I didn’t know what to say or whether to say anything at all. He wore sunglasses but I let him keep them on. Monday he was gone again but after that he was not absent again. As each day passed, Moses came along until he was right up to speed, well his speed anyway, which was always leisure if anything, his thoughts apparently under control. The sunglasses came off and he had the face of an adult: the baggage, buried, if not behind sunglasses, then behind a stoic face.
Maybe there is a difference between thoughts and voices: the former we control better than the latter. Why would we give voices, anything external, more power than our own thoughts? Was Moses really better because he had bad thoughts as opposed to bad voices? I didn’t know. I began to consider Moses day to day. Each day something could go wrong even if he looked and acted right; on the other hand he might never have bad thoughts for the rest of his life. Who’s to say? The same’s true for anyone, for any of us.
“Think cool thoughts.” Good advice, I’d say.

Raining Apricots

There is no such thing as too many apricots. Armenians know what to do with them. We make pies, cake, fruit leather, and jam, but most of all we take them right off the tree and eat a few right there smelling the dust and the sap and the leaves and fruit itself and even the fallen, spoiled ones on the ground. We eat them—standing under the warm, loving sun—first one half, then the other, as if breaking them in half doubles their value. Then we chuck the stone of the apricot and listen to it hit the earth, or make a bright, clicking sound as it hits the pavement.
I’m not sure if the two trees Dad planted were different varieties. I think they were the same, Royals most likely. One was by the garage and the other was right outside the kitchen window. The apricots on the tree by the garage got ripe a few weeks before the one by the kitchen window, but wait was always worth it. The fruit tasted better on that tree and was bigger, more elegant and grand. The top half of the tree was well above the roofline of the house and its branches arced from north to south, from one end of the house to the other. Many of its branches rested on the roof, which made picking apricots easy once one was old enough to ascend the ladder to the patio roof and then scrabble across the roof. I would nest inside the branches, reaching up as casually as I could for an apricot. I loved the mixed feelings—the tranquility resting there and the tension and fear that the pitch of the roof might send me rolling off the edge.
In May though, the apricots are green. They are brutally hard and bitter. If she needed any, they could serve as Mother Nature’s bullets. As a young teen I was once hit in the head with a rock, and on a different occasion I was hit right below the shoulder blade with a green apricot, and that apricot hurt more than the rock. No one wants anything to do with apricots at that stage, except for Lenny.

“Gimmie some apricots,” he said, one breezy Saturday morning.
“No, they’re green. They taste like grass. Worse.”
“I like ‘em like that.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I like ‘em better green than when they’re ripe.”

He jumped up, grabbed a few, and gobbled them down, discarding the stones as if they disappointed him.

“You’re gonna get sick,” I said.
“Get me a bag and let’s go on the roof.”
“What for?”
“That way I’ll have a steady supply.”
“What about your sunflower seeds?”
“I can have those anytime.”

So we went to the garage found the ancient, wooden, a-frame ladder, stood it next to the patio roof and made a shaky ascent. From there we got to the roof and moved across it, looking as if we were trying to walk on marbles.

“I’m gonna kill myself up here so you can have some green apricots?”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell your mom and dad it was your idea.”
“Thanks a lot.”

We plunked ourselves down, sitting amidst a tangle of branches.

“Hey,” Lenny said, “let’s hit those kids.”
I looked and saw three boys under the age of 10 walking together amiably.
“Nah.”
“Come on. Watch.”

He moved to a spot where there was an opening and threw a handful.

“Hey, who is that? What’re you doin?”
“Guess it must be raining apricots!” Lenny yelled, throwing another handful.

They cussed at their unseen tormentor, tried to throw some apricots back in our direction and then ran off. Lenny laughed.

“Raining apricots!” he said, throwing a handful.
“They’ll come back with their older brothers,” I said.
“Relax, Jack. I just got another brainstorm.”

What I’ve learned in life is that dumb ideas tend to escalate. The raining green apricots were an early lesson.

“What now?”
“We throw them at cars.”
“What?”
“Not hard or anything. We just lob them.”
“No way.”
“See that car there?”

He threw an apricot in a high arc but missed it.

“You gotta lead it a little,” I suggested.
“Yeah.”

An old green Buick made a right turn fromVerdugo and began crawling north up Catalina. “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” with its military march beat, poured out of the car radio. Lenny timed it perfectly and hit the roof, square in the middle.

“Bull’s-eye!” Lenny cried.
“Nice shot,” I said.

The car stopped and Lenny and I crouched under the branches. In a few seconds the car moved on.

“The Israeli gunner takes out an Arab stronghold!”
“Yeah, but let’s not press our luck.”
“Come on, one more.”
“Ok.”

We stood up to fire on a Ford Falcon, forgot where we were, lost our footing and hit the roof with a thud. We were skidding to our doom but got stopped by the branches.

“Shit!”
“Take it easy, Jack. We survived didn’t we?”

We got down from the roof and put the ladder away. I thought that would cure him from lobbing anything at anything but the following Saturday Lenny was ready for more.

“We’ll just carry them with us.”
“What, in a bag?”
“No that would look suspicious. Just in our pockets.”
So we loaded up and took a stroll west down Verdugo. We passed on several potential targets, mostly because they were moving too fast. But then we saw a black Volkswagen puttering its way toward us.

“I got this one,” Lenny said confidently.
He took a handful and dropped back like Joe Namath.
“Namath,” Lenny said, calling out his play, “looking deep! He sees Maynard. He fires!”

Three or four apricots dotted the car on the windshield and the hood. The driver slammed on his brakes. The door swung open and a middle-aged man in brown pants and a white v-neck t-shirt came toward us like an enraged Brutus marching toward Popeye. Instead of running we stood motionless.

“Gabe! Remember your heart!” a woman’s voice cried from the car.

The man, red-faced with rage, then grabbed Lenny with both hands at the throat and began choking him.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” the man yelled.
“Hey,” Lenny managed to gurgle.
“Gabe! You’ll have a heart attack!”
“I’ll kill ya! Son of a bitch.”

Lenny waved his arms. I was coming out of a kind of shock and panic and was trying to think of something to do when Gabe abruptly let Lenny go, marched back to his car and sped off.

“Fuck!” Lenny exclaimed.
“No shit,” I said.
“The guy’s crazy.”
“Yeah.”

Without talking it over we had turned around and were heading home.

“Where the hell were you?”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“Thanks a lot, Jack.”
“I, it was like being frozen.”
“That guy hasn’t seen the last of me,” Lenny said.

I thought nothing of it at the time, but in fact, the Gabe Gilleman war went on for over a year and a half.

Lenny somehow found out where he lived, right on Verdugo about a block from Verdugo Park, and we egged his house on Halloween and called out his name or threw dirt clods whenever we walked by. Some days he would come out and cuss at us and we took off, running and laughing. One time we thought we heard his wife call from inside the house, reminding him of his heart.

When he poured fresh cement on his front walk, Lenny got a stick and wrote “Remember the Gabe Gilliman War,” on it. That seemed to satiate his craving for revenge. The inscription remained for decades. Every time we walked to the park we would reflect on the “good old days.”

We were kids imitating the kind of gods who were mischievous. We wondered what power was and where it was and what we could do with it. We had been told what was fair and unfair; what was nice and what wasn’t, but we had to test it out for ourselves. Our brand new hormones were telling us to assert ourselves but we had no idea how. We were green and unseasoned, but it was the season for doing those goofy, foolish things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yIqbVDf3OU

To Protect Her From Harm

From the Journal of my last year teaching:

The final for the Individuals in Society class was making a story out of a proverb, a story that thematically supports a given proverb. I gave them a list of over 20 of them. I picked a bunch that they might be familiar with and we went over them together.
“Many hands make little work.”
“Quarrels end but words spoken never die.”
“Like father, like son.”
“Smile now, cry later.”
“Cheaters never prosper.”
“What goes around comes around.”
These were the ones they chose.
“Like father, like son,” was a popular choice and the stories ranged all over the place: the son of a rage-alholic father becomes a rage-aholic himself; in another, a man’s father is a sheriff in the wild west who is murdered by bandits, but his son becomes a sheriff himself. The lazy part is that they will relate their story in a six panel cartoon strip. I have run this marathon and I am exhausted. So this is how it’s going to go. Many of them did a very nice job as a matter of fact.

After school three students came in to make up work. The third one saw his decent C drop suddenly to an F when he was absent the last couple of weeks or so. He came today and took the final and asked four or five times if I was going to be around after school.

“Yes, Mario. You can stop asking, now. I will be here after school today. No problem.”
“Cause I need to make up that one test.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And I think there was another.”
“That’s fine then, I’ll be there.”
“But I gots to make up tests in other classes.”
“Ok. Let’s see.”
“Yeah. I gots to catch up in lots of classes. Oh, man.”

But when I looked at my computer screen there was a note from his counselor, explaining that he had missed classes for the last few weeks because there had been a domestic violence situation and he felt he had to stay with his mom to protect her from harm.

“All right,” I said, now armed with new information, “why don’t you come in at lunch?”
“All right. Cool, Ima do that, then.”
“Good.”
“You gonna be here?”
“Yeah. Well, I’m just gonna go to the cafeteria and buy my lunch and come back. So, you know, I’ll be here about 10 minutes in.”
All right.”

At lunch though, he didn’t show. I ate my salads standing, feeling very nervous. Nothing tasted good and I wasn’t hungry but I ate everything anyway.

Mario walked into my room about a half an hour after my last class.

“Where were you? I was waiting for you.”
“I went to my other classes.”
“Ok, come on. You have two quizzes and a Great-8 sheet from that article like almost a month ago.”
“I got problems, Chavoor.”
“I know. Your counselor told me a little about it.”
“She did?”
“Just enough to know why you missed school. Family problems.”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“I bet.”
“My Dad, he…”
“Yeah, I know.”

I didn’t want to go through it with him. It’s not easy to listen; it’s painful. He is a nice young man. Big smile, high energy. Likes to joke around. I wanted to keep it that way; I was just about to finish finals and wanted to move over to that ain’t life grand mode.

“I mean, he’s a good dad and everything. But sometimes he drinks too much.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wine, you know?”
“Yes.”
“Like two, no, three weeks ago,he was sitting on the porch, drinking, and my mom said go out there and see what is he doing.”
“Right.”
“He said I’m ok, son, go back inside. I’ll be in there right now.”
“He just wanted to be alone and think.”
“No. He wanted to finish that bottle. It was a big fat-ass bottle, too.”
“Ok.”
“But when he came in you could tell something bad was in him.”
“Oh no.”
“I ran into the kitchen and told my mom watch out, cause he gets like real mad.”
“Hmm.”
“Then my mom and Dad get in a argument and next thing I know he grabs her by the face and tosses her across the room.”
“That’s awful.”
“She flew across the room and slammed her, like her back and shoulder on the wall and slid down.”
“Mario, I don’t know…”
“Then he’s screaming at her and she’s sitting there out of it you know, so I’m saying why you doing that Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he’s rushing her so I tried to tackle him around the legs, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“He throws me off and I hit my head on the counter and start bleeding all over the place.”
“He’s big.”
“No, Chavoor. He’s like this high. Shorter than me, like barely taller than Mom, but when he’s drunk it gets bad.”
“Ok.”

I’m wondering why the counselor didn’t contact CPS.

“My friend’s there, right? Watching all this. So I tell him take Mom and go to her sister’s house.”
“That’s a good friend.”
“Yeah, he is. But I’m bleeding and everything and Mom don’t wanna leave.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My friend finally convinces her to go with him and after a while, after a really long time, well Dad like fell asleep and when he woke up he was like oh I’m so sorry that won’t never happen again.”

I was quiet for a long time. Mario waited.

“Huh.”
“Yeah I go don’t put hands on mom no more, that’s all.”
“Yeah.”
“He told me how his dad was hard on him and how it was for him growing up.”

I was quiet again. Waiting and praying for the right words.

“You know, Mario, here’s what I want to tell you.”
“Ok.”
“You can’t control things that other people in your life did.”
“Yeah, like Dad.”
“That’s right. I mean I know what you are talking about because my dad, he, well he had a temper, too.”
“Really?”
“He didn’t throw anybody across the room but he, he .…”
The tears were coming. It had been a long time since I talked about to anyone about Dad on his worst days.
“You had to deal with it.”
“Yeah the thing I want to tell you is some stuff you can’t control but the one thing you can control is how you live your life when it’s your turn.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Sometimes a parent can teach his children what to do by doing what you don’t want to do.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean sometimes I would go in my room and think like, ok when I’m a dad I don’t want to scare my kids.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I know a lot students say, Mr. Chavoor if you don’t hit your kids they won’t respect you, they’ll be spoiled and do whatever they want. But there’s more than one way to discipline a child. And if you do it by talking then they learn to resolve things by talking and not by force.”
“You’re right, Chavoor. You know why? My cousin had a baby, like my freshman year, and when I held that baby I knew I wanted to be a father some day and do good by my baby. You know? Not hit him or scare him.”
“That’s right.”
“Because I could feel something just holding my cousin’s baby.”
“Exactly.”
“For real.”
I knew in my gut that Mario would survive all of it and come out on the upside of things. I was still worried about not reporting to CPS though. We had a long conversation after that. I told him, just as I have told so many of my students, that he is the captain of his ship and that he had to decide where he was going to steer it, and that the good experiences in his life would tell him where to go and that the bad ones would tell him what to avoid. I told him he chose to protect his mother and that showed he was noble and brave. I told him that if he had an impulse to hit his girlfriend or wife, the problem was with him, not the woman.

I have a good feeling about Mario. It’s not going to be “like father, like son” for him, not the bad stuff, anyway.Sometimes a kid will just absorb the bad stuff from a bad parent; other times a kid will take it as a lesson and do the opposite. Mario’s doing the latter; he put a gap between himself and his primary role model, enough to not just function but to grow. I think he’ll be able to live his life in the present without the darker parts of his past dragging him down. He is a remarkable young man.

Mom’s Reproach

May 1978

 

It arrived in my head early one morning two weeks before I graduated from CSU Northridge: You must mark this passage by consuming large amounts of alcohol. It just plopped in there like a letter arriving through a door slot. My mistake was I kept on engaging the idea, under the guise of rejecting it. Graduating from college was a good thing, something I was quite proud of, something some of my high school teachers and even some of my college instructors didn’t think I would do, something that surely stood on its own, why would I pollute the moment by getting drunk? That would be, as Dad often said, mixing a positive with a negative.

He had told me many times how during the Prohibition his cousin got hold of some illegal booze when they had gone dancing one Saturday night. Dancing for Dad was its own intoxicant but his cousin kept taking pulls on his hip flask. When they headed for his cousin’s brand new car to go home late that night he suddenly felt ill and threw up all over the fresh, clean interior. “Is this what alcohol does?” Dad asked himself rhetorically, and then he took the flask and threw it as far as he could, vowing to never drink alcohol.

I was very familiar with that story and I believed flinging that flask was a noble gesture and I knew for certain that Dad was true to his pledge. I knew Dad’s other conclusion was that if by being drunk one gave up control over his body, if one could not dance, sing or speak as well with it, then no one should ever indulge; there was no need for it, it served no useful purpose.

Dad often held forth on what was logical long before Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, but rather than finish his thought by raising an eyebrow and announcing, “Highly illogical,” Dad’s signature line was, “What for? What is he trying to prove?” I knew all that stuff. I knew the Bible verse, Ephesians 5:18 “Do not be drunk with wine for that is dissipation; instead be filled with the spirit.” But I was still enticed by the notion of marking the occasion of my graduation with inebriation. It was as though I was scripting it.
I had done it once over a girl, well, that was my excuse; now I would have to do it for celebratory purposes. Then everything would balance out and I wouldn’t have to do it again. Don’t ask me where all this bullshit came from; I was 24 going on 19. It would be a celebration, and as such it called for buddies in a bar, hollering and otherwise whooping it up. I called Tom Hazerian up that night.

“Hey, man.”
“Hey.”

Something in his voice was off.

“What’s wrong?”
“Someone died in emergency today.” 
“Bummer.”
“Yeah, man. We had a code blue. I ran down there and two doctors were arguing over what procedure to take.”
“What?”
“Yeah, man. Swear to God. Patient was turning blue but these two ego maniacs decided to have a pissing contest.”
“Did you say anything?”
“Yeah, two or three times. But if you’re not a doc, you’re invisible.”
“That goes on a lot?”
“More than you think.”
“How can you stand working there, or that line of work?”
“You have to block it out. People die, that’s just how it is. But every so often it hits you hard. Like this one. I mean, she comes in choking on something. Could’ve lived, but the people who’re supposed to be helping her are messed up, or otherwise known as human, you know? If you mess up in a regular place, somebody gets yelled at for not turning in a report on time; but here somebody can die. But then you have the next patient and the one after that, so you have to block it out and keep going, man.”
“Wow. So, like, you probably don’t want to go out tonight, huh? I mean, I’m graduating in a few weeks.”
“Actually, that’s sounds good. I just got a kind of promotion as a matter of fact. Time to celebrate. Call John, let’s go to Chadney’s.”
“I don’t have that kind of bread, man.”
Chadney’s, to me, was a steakhouse for old people. I don’t know why he liked it so much. Who needs a guy putting pepper on your salad? Not to mention a bunch of old geezers thinking they’re cool, dressed up and drinking martinis. Besides, I only had two tens to my name and I hadn’t been to a record shop in a while. It was that season in life where I had either a girlfriend or a job but never both at the same time. At the time I was dating Grace, who lived 3 hours away and I had no job. Mom was funding my social life at the time.
“All right, man. Let’s go to El Torito’s. Don’t worry about the money, we’re gonna have a good time.”

John Tokorian was available and he made the trek from Woodland Hills, picked up Tom in Studio City and then I climbed in the back of his VW and we made our willy-nilly way down Catalina Street. We parked across the street, near a shoe repair shop where Dad used to go. My mind wandered through flashbacks of the sweet smelling shoeshine polish and the whirring of motors to Dad explaining how there is no sense in buying new shoes when the old ones could be repaired for one tenth of the price, and thinking about his pragmatism reminded me of his why drink philosophy. Why would I willingly surrender control of my body and mind? What was my purpose? The neon hammer above the shoe shop blinked and hummed its verdict while we crossed the street.
I had already eaten—Mom’s curious rendition of tacos—but Tom ordered up some greasy quesadillas and a few other appetizers, and well, I didn’t want to be rude, so I had my share. We had two or three beers and we were pretty much done. Then Tom had a new idea.
“We’re going to Jason’s.”
“What?”
“Yeah, that’s right, Chavoor. Jason’s. I’m gonna drink your sorry butt under the table.” Tom weighed about 110 pounds. His frame was so small that one time when we were playing a little one on one basketball he got by me so I picked him up and spun him around like a baton.
“No, man, you don’t want to try that.” Then John tried to save our souls.
“Hey guys, we’re good. We’re cool. Let’s split.” Jason’s was a bar with a house band two doors down. We settled up our bill without a final decision on Jason’s.
“Ah come on, John. What’re you, Mother Teresa?” Tom liked stirring things up. We liked to play and we never took ourselves too seriously.
“Well, I guess it’d be ok.”
We strolled over to Jason’s found a table in the middle of the place and Tom ordered up tequilas all around. I wasn’t a big fan of tequila but I went along with it, whatever it was. One round later and John announced he was dropping out since he was driving. Another round later the band took a break but before they did they announced that there was now a special on tequila, two shots for one. I remember thinking of it as a merry coincidence. We drank and drank until I started wondering what the expression “drink you under the table” actually meant. Does one end up sitting under the table? Does it mean that the loser has passed out? I had no idea but every time Tom said it, I slammed another shot, and every time that we did that John would slap his head in despair and say, “Hey, you guys, take it easy.” But John was no longer in the picture, and Tom and I resumed our under the table game.
“You little pencil neck geek!” I hollered. “No, forget the neck part, you’re just all pencil! I ought to spin you around like a baton again!”
“Hey, Chavoor, you forgot something! You lost that game!”
Things got louder and louder. When things get like that common things seem interesting. I suddenly had it in my head to go over to the next table and ask two girls there for a cigarette. I lumbered over there and then John was grabbing my arm pulling me back, apologizing.
“Nah, I didn’t come over here to start anything. Not bothering you. Just wanna smoke, ‘s all.” They seemed startled or maybe scared, but one of them took out a cigarette and handed it to me. She kept her cigarettes in a white clutch. I thought what a pain it was to have one; it would be like keeping your wallet in your hand all the time. I did like the fact that it was white for some reason, and also for some reason I thought that she chose white because she was blonde. I must have been standing there for a while thinking all these things because John pulled me back to our table before I could thank her. I looked at Tom and he was laughing so hard he was about to fall out of his chair.
“You think you’re cool. Talkin to two blondes!”
“Yeah, well, I am cool and I didn’t even talk to them!”
“You know what, man? You’re right! You’re cool. That’s how you got that Kool cigarette.” We both laughed like it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said.
The band resumed playing and I was a little concerned that I couldn’t tell what they were playing. The sounds were coming out but they seemed to be fighting each other and then dying before they could make any sense. I decided maybe if I went to the bathroom I would feel better and the music would arrive in my head in an organized fashion. Tom said the bathroom was straight back and to the left. I sat a while reclaiming the words straight, back and left, and then headed off in the general direction.
I was holding on to the sink, trying to recognize the stranger staring back at me in the mirror. Why was the floor rolling like that? Why didn’t I feel better after peeing? How was I going to find our table on the way back? I tried to wash my face but the water landed on the mirror and my shirt as well as my face.
When I got back the tab had come. There were a couple of sixes on it. I couldn’t believe anyone could run up a tab of that amount. All I had was a ten and some ones. It sobered me a little. I did not like sticking Tom with the tab. Most of it was between the two of us. My share should have been thirty bucks at least. I emptied my wallet saying, “It’s all I got, man. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, man.” Tom was the youngest but he was the first among us to have a serious full time job. I felt bad anyway. I promised to treat him next time. He looked straight at me and said that it had been worth every penny.
“I can’t believe you guys,” John was saying as we crossed Riverside to go back to the car, “this is too much.” The Creedence song, “Ramble Tamble” played in my head. “Garbage on the sidewalk, highways in your backyard, PO-lice on the corner… mooove! Down the road I go! Ramble tamble!” And down the road we went, all crammed in the VW with gas fumes rolling our stomachs like a cup of dice in a Yahtzee game. Everything was funny all the way home—street signals, the sound of the turn indicator, why that girl smoked Kools instead of Marlboroughs.
We got to my house and we all stumbled toward the house. I turned a little too soon though and walked right into the evergreen tree that always stood at attention guarding the front door. I tried to right myself but became deeper entangled in it.
“Look at you, Chavoor, you look like you’re stuck in a gigantic green womb!” We all laughed and they pulled me out, brushed me off and then pushed me in the direction of the door.
Once inside I made it to the bathroom, I stared in the mirror, this time seeing someone who more resembled me than that recently orphaned looking creature in the restroom at Jason’s. I was humming the George Thorogood song from the year before which featured the lyric, “You know when your mouth be getting’ dry, you pretty high.” But in fact, my mouth wasn’t dry at all, my mouth was very watery. I even rinsed to get rid of that watery feeling. George Thorogood was still with me, “That’s funny. I know! Everybody funny, now you funny.”

I went to my room and did not feel anywhere close to normal. I thought maybe if I put on pajamas that would help, but it didn’t. I went back to the bathroom to put my clothes in the hamper but when I got there I had forgotten why I was there. Back I went to my room. I got into bed and I opened the window just in case I told myself, but I wasn’t even sure what I meant by it. I got under the covers and realized I hadn’t turned off the lights. I sat up to get out of bed when my entire digestive system turned into a gallon of chutney, and I suddenly realized what I had meant by just in case.

I puked not once but four times, not a little but a lot each time, and most of the time when a person pukes he feels better afterwards; not this time. The gallon of chutney was on the move, changing every body part to a gelatinous mess. I was grateful for the window but I was afraid to move toward the shower or anywhere for fear of triggering an encore performance. Right about that time I heard the hall light click on.

There stood Mom in the doorway with a surprisingly indifferent look on her face. She stared at me for a beat, maybe trying to figure out what to say. There was puke in my disheveled hair and on the window ledge to which I was hung on so that I wouldn’t tumble over sideways.

“I guess I don’t have to say anything,” she said, and she turned and left before I could even agree with her.

It was her greatest moment of parenting that I can remember, anyway.

The consequences continued the next morning. I was the living butt of Dad’s favorite joke about a drunk who comes out of a bar, gets knocked down by a German Sheppard and then run over by a VW. He then tells the ambulance driver, “The dog wasn’t so bad, it was that damn tin-can tied to his tail!” My mouth was dry all day, and my head felt like a 50 pound bag of sand. That Bible verse was right; the more spirits I put in my body, the more the Spirit dissipated. Dad was right, too; I had not just seen what alcohol can do, I had lived it. I wanted a hip flask to fling. I had relinquished control of my body and mind and I saw that it was not a good thing. The only consolation was I did not throw up in John’s car.

I’m not saying I am as smart as my dad; I still enjoy a drink every now and then and I did get drunk on subsequent occasions but not more than you can count on one hand. It’s not the mistakes we make; it’s how we respond to them.

 Life is uneven, so a college instructor once told me. She went on to add that 80% is about the best we can hope for. That could be because after all, “We see dimly now what we will see face to face later.” It’s in Corinthians. You could look it up. Mostly though there are just some of us who have to learn a truth by experiencing the denial of it. “Life’s a long song,” Ian Anderson once sang, so sometimes it takes a long time to get things right, and the Bible verse that did not come to me that weekend is in Proverbs, “Wine is a mocker; beer is a brawler,” and, well, you’re better off just believing it.

Ultimately though, Mom was right; she didn’t have to say anything because she had already instilled it. You know how musicians sometimes say, “It’s not the notes you hit, it’s the notes you don’t hit”? That’s what Mom did. She didn’t waste any notes. An eight-word reproach was enough said. Today I thank her from here to heaven for her love and wisdom. To all the loving and wise moms out there, Blessings on you All. Happy Mother’s Day.

The Contents of his Wallet

May 2015

I was on my morning walk. I came up Liberty to the canal. I saw a car parked in the shade with a man—asleep, unconscious or dead—inside. The contents of his wallet were strewn  on the ground behind his car. At first I thought no, I shouldn’t pick them up, but then I thought it would be better for me to find his driver’s license or credit card and return them to him. He was seated on the driver’s side. His head was tipped all the way back, his mouth was open and his eyes were closed. I thought he was dead, but I must have not really believed it because I did not feel and dread or fear or pity. His eyes were closed. Wouldn’t they be open if he were dead? I looked at him for a while; trying to observe him breathing but there was nothing observable.

His window was open and I was tempted to poke him on the shoulder and say, “Hey, man. You ok?” But I couldn’t decide whether to say man, bud, brother or dude, and I couldn’t decide what to say after that. Also if I had gathered the contents of his wallet and was holding them in my hand, would he thank me or think somehow that I had robbed him and was posing as the next guy to arrive on the scene.

His dog, a very young mostly Chihuahua, awoke in the back seat, stretched, and came to his window which was also open. He made a sound like a question mark and looked at me. “Hey, little mangy mutt.” I call some dogs mangy mutt. Anyone who read “Death of a Salesman” a couple of hundred times would have a certain number of the lines in the play floating near the surface. The dog made a low growling.

“Don’t worry. He’s just. I think he’s sleeping one off. Pretty sure.”

Hearing that, the dog went back to his spot in the back seat and curled up and assumed the resting position. I wasn’t convinced that it was a Wednesday gone bad with too much alcohol, but I didn’t want the dog to worry.

The car was parked on DeWitt Avenue, just opposite the canal. I’ve seen people park there before. I don’t know why they park there; it’s shady but you can’t see the water. He was asleep anyway. Maybe he threw out everything in his wallet. Why though? Was he in trouble? Had he lost his job? Was he committing suicide? Wouldn’t his eyes be open?

I went to gather his stuff but I ended up looking at a few things and then putting them back on the ground. One was an ID card for his place of employment in a hospital. Another identified him as a member of the military. Another was one of those discount cards for a variety of retail stores. No driver’s license or credit cards. Maybe someone had already taken them. Was I picking through a crime scene, leaving my thumb prints on his stuff? I got spooked and resumed my walk to the bank and then to Jamba Juice.

Nothing happened at the bank. When the clerk asked if there was anything else he could do and I said my usual, “Sure. Do you know the winning lottery number?” And he said, “Why would I give you the number? If I knew it, I’d keep for myself!” So, inasmuch as no one in the last 10 years has answered that way, I guess that’s something, but it’s a sad something.

At Jamba Juice I was hoping that the red head girl would be working the morning shift. She is bright, cheerful and optimistic. But she wasn’t there. I knew then I would walk back to DeWitt on the return trip.

I couldn’t get “Bad Moon Rising” out of my head. My back was aching and my neck was sore. The tempo of the song synched up with my stride. I tried singing some other song; “Driving” by the Kinks or “Gotta Get up in the Morning” by Harry Nilsson, but “Bad Moon” kept coming back.

Hope you got your things together.

Hope you are quite prepared to die.

Looks like we’re in for nasty weather.

One eye is taken for an eye.

Don’t go around tonight It’s bound to take your life.

There is a bad moon on the rise.

Why would Fogerty put such gloomy lyrics in an up-tempo song? Well, it was 1969 and the optimism of 1967 was going sour. A lot of people had believed if we just stopped thinking one way and thought another, everything would change for the better.

It was one of those lessons a lot of people had to unlearn. Institutions, be they political, religious, or educational, were designed for purposes other than governance of, for and by the people, and for purposes other than enlightenment of the spirit and mind. And those other purposes would be served no matter what.

Everything became a commodity, even people, and maybe it was always that way. These days it seems that the only thing all people agree upon is that things aren’t what they used to be and that things will get worse. The only thing left to do is to, as the saying goes, is to,“Be the good you want to see in the world.”

I know I have unlearned expecting things to turn out for the better if we only elect the right president, have the right religious doctrines or the right educational methodology. We splinter off into our group and talk to each other about what is wrong with the other group and how good our group is. We feel good because we’re behind the right cause and others who aren’t with us are sadly misinformed or unenlightened or are without really knowing it, the source of the problem. All a waste of time.

In the end, my dad was right. Keep everything simple. You don’t need to make God difficult: Be good, do good. Be happy, not mopey. If you want to learn about something, get a book and read about it. Or talk to someone who knows about it. Listen to people with different opinions, how else can you learn? Vote for whomever you want, but remember that they are looking to get elected, re-elected or otherwise are out for bid. When someone has a kitten, get a string and amuse the kitten. When there are little kids, play with them. No need to call them up to the world; they’ll get there in time. Meet them where they are and leave it at that. Grow a garden. Bring some tomatoes to give when you go to someone’s house. Plant some tomatoes for them. Tell jokes. Make paper airplanes. Sing songs. Play music.

Dad didn’t wait for the world to meet his expectations; he made peace with the world where he was and with as many people as he could.

In the meantime though, what do I do about this knocked out guy in the car? Who threw the contents of his wallet out of his car? How would he react if I woke him up? Would he feel embarrassed or annoyed or angry? Would he want to be left alone, even if his situation was bad? I crossed the bridge to his side of the canal. I tried to think of a better song and thought of “Trust Yourself.” There is after all, a Dylan song for every occasion.

Well, you’re on your own, you always were In a land of wolves and thieves Don’t put your hope in ungodly man Or be a slave to what somebody else believes.

That seemed to touch on just about everything I had been thinking about but the fact was I had to think about it, instead of it just floating to the top. Maybe it didn’t count.

I couldn’t see his car and thought he was gone. I was at a bad angle though and as I got close to Lane Avenue I saw his car, a grey, worn out Oldsmobile Alero. The paint was faded, the bumper was drooping, and a hubcap was missing. I stood squarely in front of the driver’s side window. There was the faint smell of roses or something sweet in the breeze between us. His chin was now resting on his chest. I took this to be a sign that he wasn’t dead, seeing how he had moved from an uncomfortable way to be asleep to a slightly better one. I again reviewed the possible greetings one might give a stranger asleep in his car. Hey man. What’s up, man? You all right, man? You ok? None of them sounded right. The impulse to speak got as close as my throat but went no further. The dog looked at me with a “Oh, it’s just you” look shook his head and resumed napping. I stood there for a few seconds, mute and wondering. Then I moved on.

I got to Liberty Street and headed west. I told myself that “Bad Moon Rising” was the wrong song because it was 11:00 in the morning. It lingered for a while and then went away. I got home and saw that I was perspiring. It was a hotter day than I thought.

Late that afternoon  I was with Kat, my older daughter. She had just turned 31 and I have been struggling for topics of conversation, not wanting to sound like “Dad” except for the fact that I am. I told her the story of the man in the car. My dad instincts told me she would be interested.

“What did you do? Did you help him?”

“I wasn’t sure how he’d react.”

“You could have helped him.”

“There was a certain amount of risk attached to it.”

“What did you do when you went back?”

“I checked on him and this time his head was down instead of tipped back.”

“That’s good. He was moving anyway.”

We were tracking the story like we used to. Poking a stick at it to see there was something in there.

“Yeah, I was figuring the same. I figured maybe he was sleeping off a really bad night.”

“Yeah.”

“I couldn’t figure about the stuff on the ground though.”

“Maybe he got mad or frustrated.” “Yeah.”

“Maybe he was just drunk and didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Yeah. So I let him sleep.”

“I’ll drive back and check on him on my way home.”

“That’d be nice.” I thought of Kat stopping by and calling out boldly to the guy and addressing his situation in a much more direct manner than I would have. I haven’t heard from her yet though, so I don’t know what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUChZtNO4Ro