19.08.15 Thursday
Pleasant Dale, patio with dogs
Listening: Only in 3’s
The Breeders are cascading
back and forth angling
across horizon dark milky blue
green or somewhere
less obvious slowly guitar
sometimes bass and her from
where did she lonesome
wandering ghost stopping by
the fire there is no fire come her
voice approaching raw and beautiful
song written on sky
Late interjection. I have found I write best after I drink two beers, but I can’t have two beers often or I get fat because my legs told me to quit running so damn much, and I’m not really a half-ass kind of guy, which leads to all sorts of reasons why drinking two beers too often is not good for me. I’ve had two light beers now. Usually I drink the stuff that makes me pucker about as much as I can pucker and still enjoy it. I’ve always loved heavy beer, nothing crazy like some of my friends, double IPAs. Two of them is more than I need. Two IPAs is more than I need, but I prefer the double. Again, you can see the pattern. I know it is good I can see it too, and know that it is good that my wife and my children are sometimes too vigilant, but better safe than sorry. Two beers a night is too many for me. I’m not one that’s into judgment. I think I’m in the majority, and I’m not being political. I promise. I did not set out to be political this evening. Maybe this is where I should end it, just to be safe. Let it settle tonight. Leave it at two beers, two light beers, and cash in early. I think I’m in the majority. Most of the Nebraskans I know, especially those in rural areas, love hearing the good stuff about Nebraska, not all the political slurs coming from all directions. We built this state by arguing a little bit while working together. Let’s work together. That will be my only political comment. Ever. If you take anything else that way, like I said before I added this, you’re reading me wrong. Get over yourself.
Now, errors of mine are another matter. It’s late. I have to get to sleep. I don’t want another light beer. I’m in no mood to proofread, which better judgment usually leads me to do. If you are offended by my grammar, sentence structure, spelling, or punctuation, or if what I write simply makes no sense, I apologize. I mean it. I’m trying to write cogently. Trying to tell a story. That’s all.
All that said, the lawyer in me jumps out for one final word. If you don’t like the story, please tell me the reason. I want to improve. I am glad to talk and ask questions and answer about what I have written. If, for example, you take offense, let me know. If something made you mad, tell me why. I may not always agree with you, but as long as you don’t get mad at me, I won’t get mad with you, and if I get mad with you, I’ll either get over it or move on. Sometimes, it’s best to move on.
From Quarantine the Past, Pavement
I wrote this tonight. I’d say to anyone of you, if you take offense, you’re reading it wrong. I don’t care who you are.
I set out to write something that was not political. All the time the friends to my right and the friends to my left from one issue to the next were hucking insults like cowshit at one another’s throats, like Jose did to his younger brother, when we were cleaning out the trailer in the North Platte Valley. Our dads had bought the place, so we could goose hunt in winter. Some of my fondest memories are hunting geese on the North Platte, but no time for them this evening. I set out to write something that was not political, even if it is a non sequitur. For my non-lawyer friends, that means there’s no connection between statements. In other words, nonsense. Jose hucked nearly fresh cow dung at his little brother Eduardo’s throat, and it stuck. Eduardo hollered, and their dad hollered, and all the rest of us, including my dad, laughed.
We stayed overnight in the trailer on cold nights in December and January, and some of my best memories are there, but the best was walking out to the pits in the middle of a night, snow on the frozen ground, the hidden breath of the river dancing across our young faces. I was with Jose’s older brother Miguel, who i later grew close to playing high school golf. Miguel, and Alan, Doc, Crews, Turk, Sig Ep Sam, Tirdball, and all of the others. Alan’s dad had a place across the river with Dr. Malone, but Alan and Kelly weren’t much for hunting. But no time for golf stories. I set out to write a book that was not political. There was Miguel and a few other kids. We walked out to the pits. Geese were honking spooky all around us, and I don’t think I could’ve heard Miguel if he’d have said something loudly, and he was only a couple feet away. You could hardly hear the snow crunching under our boots. We stood out by the reserve for a while. We didn’t know our way around there, and it was dark. The river valley bottom was no place to take chances with nature. Something out side of us spoke into the darkness, and we all listened, and walked back to the trailer. We have never talked about it since.
It was a night where you walk through fear. You walk through the darkness, careful of your step, knowing there are barbed wire fences and not knowing exactly where you are or which direction you are going. There are no stars in the blackness. Had there been stars, none of us were familiar enough with them to have been capable of following. At times we stumbled into draws, but no one stepped in a slough. That was our biggest worry, which was not terrible. Wet up to the knee, maybe the waist. We were no more than half a mile from the trailer. It would be a cold walk and listening to some dad chewing us out, but nothing more than that. One of us came across the fence, and we figured the reserve had to be on the other side. There was some talk of crossing, but the majority of us thought better of it, and no one strayed alone. But I set out to write something that was not political. It was a night where a young boy silently steps closer to understanding the world well enough to ostensibly survive alone, but not political.
One night Jose stuck his brother’s fingers in warm water and told me to check and see if Eduardo had pissed himself. I politely declined. I set out to write something that was not political.
Another time, it was fall, and we were back cleaning the pits out, and cleaning the trailer. I was in a pit by myself. My dad was standing outside of it doing something, paying no attention to what was going on in the pit. I was cleaning spiders and webs out of the bottom, which was a small round horsetank embedded in the river valley bottom. A wooden box sat on the top of the horse tank. We had the doors open. The doors were board if I remember correctly, boards with holes cut in them so you could stick your head outside the pit and watch for approaching geese. You sat on a chair that was never quite tall enough, and strained your neck looking for geese, which never seemed to come when you were watching for them. Most of the time you squatted and even was uncomfortable when I was a teenager. During goose-hunting season, each hole was covered by a goose decoy that stood on metal legs over your head. The wooden doors rolled on wheels in a metal frame that someone must have found in a scrap yard. They never opened right or quickly enough.
I was standing in the pit bottom, cleaning up the thousands of spiders and eggs, and hating all of them and hoping to God I would not find a rattlesnake when a large snake rolled from the hay-covered lid of the pit, falling, still wrapped heavily upon itself, to the metal base of the pit, where it landed with an almost wet-sounding thud, still coiled.
I leapt. I leapt once, in a way we called bunny-rabbit style, straight up, with no step, hoping to land on the other side of the Armknecht’s concrete fence, which stood like a statement between the front yard of my friend’s house. Ignoring, perhaps oblivious to the volume of the statement, we leapt, hoping to hop over, accepting the assistance of the narrow top of the fence if needed to leap over and retain dignity. If you failed, which seemed to happen most when I was thinking about it, not making it even to the top of the fence, and losing not only dignity, but often the blood of your nose. You leapt with your arms helping you, when it would have been better to keep them out of the way, and you could not use your hands to stop the fall. I did not think about failing. I did not think about falling. I did not think about bloodying my nose, I thought of that snake, and I leapt.
When I was standing on the top of the pit. I landed on my feet, my arms landing almost naturally on the tops of my thighs, just above the knew, and was standing there first taking in the snake, when I realized the snake was wrapped around a large field mouse. You could see the field mouse, but the snake had not relented in its writhing squeeze, and I realized they were eight feet from me.
I had leapt a foot higher, at least, than the top of the Armknecht’s fence, and landed as though I had come down enough to have recovered my balance in flight. Or perhaps I had never lost it. For a moment I was our adopted son, who can leap like no other person I have been around closely. But I did not know of him yet. I was about his age. Fourteen or so. Deathly afraid of snakes, having had two close encounters with snakes that had caused actual emotional scarring. I still hate snakes, but I have taught myself not to fear them, only to be cautious. I watched the bullsnake kill the field mouse, and learned something more about the world.
I set out to write something that was not political. On another occasion, in the autumn, we were younger then, younger than when I had leapt from the snake, and more cruel, and Jose shot at the dirt beneath Eduardo’s feet and made him dance.
I set out to write something that was not political. The worst, and I must admit it was the most sadistic, and probably wrong, was sticking a knife up through Eduardo’s mattress. Jose told me to tell him not to roll over, but I politely declined. This time, Jose didn’t do it himself.
I set out to write something that was not political. And I accomplished my mission. Jose never took a weapon to hurt his brother. He may have scared him, but he taught his brother not to fear. Eduardo is an Army veteran and has told me of killing men in the darkness, not knowing that he has killed, but knowing it was likely. He heard not more gunfire.
I set out to write.
You have my word. I will not be political.