By Brad Willis © 2010
Culver Stockton held his cigarette between his middle and ring fingers. It trembled until the snake of ash fell off the end and onto the ripped black vinyl seat. Culver didn't notice—didn't brush it off the seat or even move his thin legs to the side. Instead he sucked hard on the butt, let his eyes narrow, and then pointed at nothing with the smoldering end.
"Vietnam," he said, and waited for one of the three men in the booth to say anything. None of them did. They each grabbed for their sweating bottles of Bud and took a drink simultaneously. If there had been an Olympic event built around synchronized consumption, these three men would have taken the gold.
"No? Not fucking veterans, are ya?" Culver said and used his index finger to snub the cigarette into pile of butts in the plastic ashtray. "Well, fuck yeah. That's what I say. Can't trust a man who lets himself get humiliated and then kills to make up for it. Fuck that."
Another cigarette. More trembling. This time in the corner of Culver's mouth.
"Drugs then." Culver was pointing again, this time with the whole cigarette, a barfly baton conducting one of the motliest orchestras Greene County had ever assembled. "Meth heads. Tweakers. Speed freaks. You're truckers, whore fuckers, over-the-road bastards of the asphalt. Fucking drugs, man. Right on."
The bottles came off the table and the men held their tongues. Another drink, another stab with the cigarette.
"No, that's not it either," Culver said and let his eyes drop to the table.
The bar was a Quonset hut with smoke-blackened carpet, a jukebox that played the Outlaws, and a waitress who divided her stomach with a pinch of Levi denim. It was her arrival that snapped Culver from his concentration. She sat down three more beers and an Old Crow for the old man. She didn't say anything and then walked away.
"Fupper," Culver whispered. "Fat Upper Pussy." He pointed at the woman's bulge below the waist. "It's the beer. And the fried mushrooms, I think. Still, sorta sexy, don't you think??
This time the men didn't drink their beer. They said nothing. The small one checked his watch.
Culver Stockton—Culley to his couple of friends—squinted. He poked at a liver spot on the back of his hand. He sighed and looked sad. The old hand shook as it pulled the bourbon up to the crooked mouth. When the smell hit his nose, Culver's eyes exploded with recognition.
"Bikers!" he shouted. He knocked the ashtray across the table. It came to rest against the big one's belly.
None of the men spoke, but it was understood that Culver had finally hit his mark.
"So, where are you colors? What? Hell's Angels? Warlocks? What?"
The men didn't look at each other. The medium one — the only one who had given his name, Laurence — finished his beer. "Was the Angels, but Harvey didn't make it because his mom's a Mexican. So, we all went Mongols. Then they found out Harvey's dad was a Jew—'
"And a fucking Fed," said the little one.
"And a fucking Fed," Laurence nodded. "So, we left. We're sort of on our own now."
"We're The X-Men," said the big one, who Culley just assumed was Harvey.
"That hasn't been decided," the little one screamed. "You don't decide Harvey. You aren't the decider."
"So," continued Laurence, "we'd appreciate if you don't use phrases like Spic, Taco Jockey, Hymie—"
"Cholo is fine," Harvey said.
"Cholo is fine," Laurence said.
"You aren't the decider!" the little one screamed. "Just because you want to be Thor doesn't mean we all have to be X-Men. I mean, who the fuck am I going to be?"
"Thor was Marvel comics," Harvey whispered.
"Sammy," Laurence began.
"Fucking Samuel," the little one said. "If I'm going to call you Laurence, Larry, you're damned well going to call me Samuel. Fucking X-Men."
Samuel turned to Culver. "We're not the X-Men. If you have to call us something, we've been trying out the Knights."
Laurence leaned in. "That's Knights with a K, not an N."
Harvey snorted, "You don't have to explain X-Men. You don't have to say, ‘That's with an X and not a Q'."
"Harvey, if you say X-Men one more fucking time, you're out of the fucking Knights!" Samuel stood up and looked across the table.
"X," Harvey said.
Laurence stopped him.
"Mr. Stockton, we're just here to help. You told Mr. Weinstein that you needed our help, and we're here."
Culver Stockton lit another cigarette off his last and shook his head.
"I was sort of expecting some fucked up truckers with an amphetamine problem," Culver said.
"I snort crank on Saturdays," Samuel said, and sat down.
"That do?" Laurence said.
Culver studied them and inhaled deeply on his smoke. "I guess it will have to."
The four men looked at each other across the table like a spider web of tired stares.
Culver pointed his cigarette at each of them one at a time and then said quietly, "You boys ever buried a body?"
Brad Willis is a writer from Greenville, SC.
Showing posts with label Brad Willis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brad Willis. Show all posts
September 04, 2010
June 05, 2010
One guy, One Cup
By Brad Willis © 2010
I was nearly out of gas and still 45 minutes from the deposit point. I looked at the bag in the passenger seat and wondered if I should put it somewhere less conspicuous. I imagined a tanned South Carolina trooper peering in the window and asking, “What’s in the bag, son?”
It was white plastic with the words “Bi-Lo” stamped in red on the outside and its contents were more valuable than anything inside my car. Time was an issue, but there was no way I’d get there on the last few vapors of unleaded in the tank. I pulled over at the Chevron and filled the tank.
While the gas pumped in, I looked around the interior of my car. It was littered with an empty potato chip bag, three empty diet soda cans, and the detritus of a man who usually rolls alone. I remembered the advice of drug buddies past: “Cops are more likely to search a messy car.”
Be a man, I told myself. Just drive. Don’t be stupid.
I got on the interstate and watched my speedometer closely. I breezed by overturned red car and a collection of emergency workers, then a city cop harassing a Hispanic guy, then a DOT cop running with his lights flashing. I exhaled.
I had to be there by 4:00pm or what was in the bag would be worthless. I thought about it and almost pulled the passenger side seatbelt across my cargo. One quick stop—or heaven forbid, a wreck—and there was the potential for a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer.
While I was considering the implications of a crash and the mess it would cause, I pulled off on the wrong exit and got stuck in a traffic jam. My chest tightened and my fists gripped the steering wheel. Even Ira Glass’ voice on the radio couldn’t calm me down.
This is what it’s like to drive with a plastic cup of your own semen in the passenger seat.
* * *
The discomfort that goes along with having a vasectomy doesn’t end after the operation. There’s the soreness afterward, the awkward memory of the lady who looks like Joan Cusack rubbing antiseptic on your penis, and the scent-memory of cauterized vas deferens drifting up in the smoke from your scrotum.
Then, there’s the humiliating task of ejaculating into a specimen jar. Unless you have some pretty refined fetishes, there is nothing sexy about a plastic cup, and in the end, it feels more like a medical procedure than such a practice really should. The self-critical stare hopelessly into the cup and ask themselves, “Is that too much? God, what if it’s not enough?”
All of this ran through my head as I extricated myself from the traffic jam and got back on the highway to the office. One in the lobby, I clutched my specimen in my hand. A pretty blonde woman with a little girl stood beside me. They cooed at each other, and I was sure they knew I was holding. The elevator dinged and donged, but didn’t arrive before a pregnant nurse sidled up beside me.
She knew. I knew she knew. It was like that scene in “Reservoir Dogs” with the doper walking into a bathroom full of narcs. I nodded at the nurse and clutched the bag even tighter.
Look casual!
I couldn’t. She knew.
The lab was on the fifth floor. I wore my sunglasses all the way up and walked directly to the lab desk. A pretty girl stood at the counter.
“I need to drop off a specimen,” I said, my voice betraying the confidence I tried to put on my face. This was almost an intimate moment. The rules of the game require the specimen be dropped off two hours from the…point of production. That means, unlike anybody else I would meet on this day, this girl knew exactly what I’d been doing an hour or so before. It was almost like she was imagining it while she looked across the desk.
“Do you have your chart?” she asked.
My chart.
I’d forgotten the rules. I was supposed to stop at the front desk and pick up my chart before going to the lab. I tried to play it off.
“You’re telling me you just don’t let random guys drop random stuff off with you?”
“No,” she said, clipping the “o” like she was French, and raising her eyebrow in a way that I was sure said, “You sure you did everything else correctly?”
I walked to the front desk and put bag on the counter. I was more brazen now. I took off my sunglasses and asked for my chart.
“Please take a seat and I’ll bring it to you in a moment,” the brunette behind the desk said as she stole a glance at the Bi-Lo bag.
I sat in the waiting room with my bag. A redneck sat across from me talking about the dangers and immorality of underground parking garages. “They shu’n’t even have’em,” he said. “I mean, they got cameras…”
“All the cameras is gonna see,” said a fat lady beside me, “is some guy slitting my throat and stealing my pocketbook.”
All the while, my semen sat beside me.
It had been six months since the doctor had cut open a part of me I never expected to be cut open, cut in two pieces of my body I’d hoped never would be cut, and then seared those pieces with the medical equivalent of a soldering iron. If I hadn’t been on a pretty high dose of tranquilizers at the time, I probably never would’ve been able to speak of it again. When I left, I was told I should have no unprotected sex until I had a zero sperm count. Hence, the benefits of having a vasectomy had eluded me for half a year afterward. It was as if I’d had myself mutilated just for kicks.
The lady at the desk called my name and handed me my chart. I walked back to the lab where I put the chart and the bag on the counter. It occurred to me that there may no more personal item you can give to a woman. Your grandmother’s engagement ring? That came from your grandmother. A jar of semen? That comes from you, brother.
“When should I call back?” I asked.
The lab tech took my bag like I’d delivered her groceries and smiled. “Some time after 4:00,” she said, and then quickly disappeared into the lab. She popped her head back out.
“Would you like to take another cup with you?” she asked.
Another cup. This one I’d just handed over had been sitting in my bathroom drawer for six months. It had smeared toothpaste on the side and the label was wrinkled from some spilled water. I’d looked at it every day when I’d brushed my teeth and thought, “Someday, I’m going to ejaculate into this cup and give it to a woman who doesn’t know my name.”
I looked at the woman in the eye and said, “Yeah. Give me another one. Just in case.”
Brad Willis is a writer from Greenville, SC.
I was nearly out of gas and still 45 minutes from the deposit point. I looked at the bag in the passenger seat and wondered if I should put it somewhere less conspicuous. I imagined a tanned South Carolina trooper peering in the window and asking, “What’s in the bag, son?”
It was white plastic with the words “Bi-Lo” stamped in red on the outside and its contents were more valuable than anything inside my car. Time was an issue, but there was no way I’d get there on the last few vapors of unleaded in the tank. I pulled over at the Chevron and filled the tank.
While the gas pumped in, I looked around the interior of my car. It was littered with an empty potato chip bag, three empty diet soda cans, and the detritus of a man who usually rolls alone. I remembered the advice of drug buddies past: “Cops are more likely to search a messy car.”
Be a man, I told myself. Just drive. Don’t be stupid.
I got on the interstate and watched my speedometer closely. I breezed by overturned red car and a collection of emergency workers, then a city cop harassing a Hispanic guy, then a DOT cop running with his lights flashing. I exhaled.
I had to be there by 4:00pm or what was in the bag would be worthless. I thought about it and almost pulled the passenger side seatbelt across my cargo. One quick stop—or heaven forbid, a wreck—and there was the potential for a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer.
While I was considering the implications of a crash and the mess it would cause, I pulled off on the wrong exit and got stuck in a traffic jam. My chest tightened and my fists gripped the steering wheel. Even Ira Glass’ voice on the radio couldn’t calm me down.
This is what it’s like to drive with a plastic cup of your own semen in the passenger seat.
* * *
The discomfort that goes along with having a vasectomy doesn’t end after the operation. There’s the soreness afterward, the awkward memory of the lady who looks like Joan Cusack rubbing antiseptic on your penis, and the scent-memory of cauterized vas deferens drifting up in the smoke from your scrotum.
Then, there’s the humiliating task of ejaculating into a specimen jar. Unless you have some pretty refined fetishes, there is nothing sexy about a plastic cup, and in the end, it feels more like a medical procedure than such a practice really should. The self-critical stare hopelessly into the cup and ask themselves, “Is that too much? God, what if it’s not enough?”
All of this ran through my head as I extricated myself from the traffic jam and got back on the highway to the office. One in the lobby, I clutched my specimen in my hand. A pretty blonde woman with a little girl stood beside me. They cooed at each other, and I was sure they knew I was holding. The elevator dinged and donged, but didn’t arrive before a pregnant nurse sidled up beside me.
She knew. I knew she knew. It was like that scene in “Reservoir Dogs” with the doper walking into a bathroom full of narcs. I nodded at the nurse and clutched the bag even tighter.
Look casual!
I couldn’t. She knew.
The lab was on the fifth floor. I wore my sunglasses all the way up and walked directly to the lab desk. A pretty girl stood at the counter.
“I need to drop off a specimen,” I said, my voice betraying the confidence I tried to put on my face. This was almost an intimate moment. The rules of the game require the specimen be dropped off two hours from the…point of production. That means, unlike anybody else I would meet on this day, this girl knew exactly what I’d been doing an hour or so before. It was almost like she was imagining it while she looked across the desk.
“Do you have your chart?” she asked.
My chart.
I’d forgotten the rules. I was supposed to stop at the front desk and pick up my chart before going to the lab. I tried to play it off.
“You’re telling me you just don’t let random guys drop random stuff off with you?”
“No,” she said, clipping the “o” like she was French, and raising her eyebrow in a way that I was sure said, “You sure you did everything else correctly?”
I walked to the front desk and put bag on the counter. I was more brazen now. I took off my sunglasses and asked for my chart.
“Please take a seat and I’ll bring it to you in a moment,” the brunette behind the desk said as she stole a glance at the Bi-Lo bag.
I sat in the waiting room with my bag. A redneck sat across from me talking about the dangers and immorality of underground parking garages. “They shu’n’t even have’em,” he said. “I mean, they got cameras…”
“All the cameras is gonna see,” said a fat lady beside me, “is some guy slitting my throat and stealing my pocketbook.”
All the while, my semen sat beside me.
It had been six months since the doctor had cut open a part of me I never expected to be cut open, cut in two pieces of my body I’d hoped never would be cut, and then seared those pieces with the medical equivalent of a soldering iron. If I hadn’t been on a pretty high dose of tranquilizers at the time, I probably never would’ve been able to speak of it again. When I left, I was told I should have no unprotected sex until I had a zero sperm count. Hence, the benefits of having a vasectomy had eluded me for half a year afterward. It was as if I’d had myself mutilated just for kicks.
The lady at the desk called my name and handed me my chart. I walked back to the lab where I put the chart and the bag on the counter. It occurred to me that there may no more personal item you can give to a woman. Your grandmother’s engagement ring? That came from your grandmother. A jar of semen? That comes from you, brother.
“When should I call back?” I asked.
The lab tech took my bag like I’d delivered her groceries and smiled. “Some time after 4:00,” she said, and then quickly disappeared into the lab. She popped her head back out.
“Would you like to take another cup with you?” she asked.
Another cup. This one I’d just handed over had been sitting in my bathroom drawer for six months. It had smeared toothpaste on the side and the label was wrinkled from some spilled water. I’d looked at it every day when I’d brushed my teeth and thought, “Someday, I’m going to ejaculate into this cup and give it to a woman who doesn’t know my name.”
I looked at the woman in the eye and said, “Yeah. Give me another one. Just in case.”
Brad Willis is a writer from Greenville, SC.
August 02, 2008
Capistrano
By Brad Willis © 2008
I can't swallow food. I don't know why. It could be cancer of the esophagus. It could be acid reflux. It could be that I've eaten as much as I should in one lifetime. Either way, I'm probably going to die. I haven't bothered going to a doctor, because he will only tell me if I'm living or dying. If I'm dying, as I suspect, I might as well go on living while I go about the dying. If the doctor says I'm living, he obviously is lying or seriously misguided. If he tells me I'm living, I'm going to laugh and tell him he better get busy dying for me, because somebody fucking has to.
Because I can't eat, I'm drinking. It will kill me too, but I won't feel it so pointedly. It's a smooth death. Like dry downing in a wet county, and certainly better than wet drowning in a dry county. If I went to a doctor, he would tell me that the drinking isn't going to do anything to help the dying. He'd try to get me to drink more water. I'd say something about my body and the earth being made up of 80% water and how they are already both shot straight to hell. He'd give me a doctor look and ask me again if I wanted some antidepressants. I'd take the script, fill it, and leave the full bottle in my cabinet until it expired. Just like last time.
There is no getting around the downer of having your throat closed up. It's just another version of writer's block. When you want to eat and can't, it feels like when you want to write and can't. Nothing sounds good--the words suck, the food smells like a Pulitzer, and the booze is just a way to pass the time until you finally call it a day. No matter, though, because anti-depressants are worse than booze. At least after six or twelve good drinks, I can feel how much it sucks to be completely fucking void of focused talent and think about how I'm wasting what little amount of skill I have. Anti-depressants are a quick trip to feeling nothing all the time. I'd rather hate myself than feel okay with everything.
So, fuck going to the doctor. Last time I saw him, it was because I thought my brains were trying to eat through my skull. I laid awake in a fetal position until I nearly cried. I went to the doctor and he told me he couldn't find anything wrong. I must be crazy, he thought. He didn't say as much. "Have you been stressed?" he asked, wrote on a pad, and gave me pills. Even the trip to the emergency room got me stoned and made me think I was in love with a chubby nurse who shot my ass full of hard core narcotics. An Indian doctor with a sigh in his eyes and a ready prescription pad was never going to win my love, no matter how many times he stuck his finger in my ass.
Brad Willis is a writer from Greenville, South Carolina.
I can't swallow food. I don't know why. It could be cancer of the esophagus. It could be acid reflux. It could be that I've eaten as much as I should in one lifetime. Either way, I'm probably going to die. I haven't bothered going to a doctor, because he will only tell me if I'm living or dying. If I'm dying, as I suspect, I might as well go on living while I go about the dying. If the doctor says I'm living, he obviously is lying or seriously misguided. If he tells me I'm living, I'm going to laugh and tell him he better get busy dying for me, because somebody fucking has to.
Because I can't eat, I'm drinking. It will kill me too, but I won't feel it so pointedly. It's a smooth death. Like dry downing in a wet county, and certainly better than wet drowning in a dry county. If I went to a doctor, he would tell me that the drinking isn't going to do anything to help the dying. He'd try to get me to drink more water. I'd say something about my body and the earth being made up of 80% water and how they are already both shot straight to hell. He'd give me a doctor look and ask me again if I wanted some antidepressants. I'd take the script, fill it, and leave the full bottle in my cabinet until it expired. Just like last time.
There is no getting around the downer of having your throat closed up. It's just another version of writer's block. When you want to eat and can't, it feels like when you want to write and can't. Nothing sounds good--the words suck, the food smells like a Pulitzer, and the booze is just a way to pass the time until you finally call it a day. No matter, though, because anti-depressants are worse than booze. At least after six or twelve good drinks, I can feel how much it sucks to be completely fucking void of focused talent and think about how I'm wasting what little amount of skill I have. Anti-depressants are a quick trip to feeling nothing all the time. I'd rather hate myself than feel okay with everything.
So, fuck going to the doctor. Last time I saw him, it was because I thought my brains were trying to eat through my skull. I laid awake in a fetal position until I nearly cried. I went to the doctor and he told me he couldn't find anything wrong. I must be crazy, he thought. He didn't say as much. "Have you been stressed?" he asked, wrote on a pad, and gave me pills. Even the trip to the emergency room got me stoned and made me think I was in love with a chubby nurse who shot my ass full of hard core narcotics. An Indian doctor with a sigh in his eyes and a ready prescription pad was never going to win my love, no matter how many times he stuck his finger in my ass.
Brad Willis is a writer from Greenville, South Carolina.
September 06, 2007
Diary of a Rubber-less Traveler
By Brad "Otis" Willis © 2007
Chicago did not get its nickname because of its stiff breezes. In fact, it had not been too many months since I'd encountered windier cities on the American landscape. San Francisco was dutifully windy. Florence, Oregon, too, was gusty. Its breeze carried the curious odor of a million dead creatures that came to shore purple and turned white upon their death. A Cannon Beach hotel clerk told me later that the creatures were of some jellyfish descent. Their wing-like structure tended to a sort of left or right-handedness, as if these globs were actively deciding which hand to write with or how to face the Padres' new leftie. If the tide washed a certain way, the left or rightness of the potentially doomed creatures would determine whether they were whisked further out to sea or to their demise on the west coast beaches. On this trip it seemed nothing could save these creatures and they washed up by the thousands onto the beach, died, and sent their stench into the breeze. I called the smell "crab ass" because it stunk as I figured it might if I shoved my nose directly and unforgivingly up the bum of a wayward and dying crab. I used the phrase too much during my week on that shore.
But folks call Chicago "windy" for other reasons. If memory serves, it had something to do with the tall tales the city folk could spin. My grandpa, a man once jolly with life and drink, used the word a lot.
"He's windy, ain't he?" he'd say if I got to telling stories. Grandpa is still alive, but when he laid down the Busch beer for a healthier life, his jolliness seemed to go with it. Still, the smile is there, even if the beer gut isn't.
When I landed in Chicago's O'Hare airport for my connecting British Airways flight to jolly old England, I didn't expect to experience wind, natural or unnatural. I expected to whisk myself through the terminal, maybe use one of those neat motorized walkways, and just catch my seven-hour trans-Atlantic flight. Leaving South Carolina, I fell victim to airline trickery. As is their wont, in an effort to keep their on-time departure rating, the people at American Airlines pushed back from the gate knowing full well that O'Hare had no interest in us flying there. The remnants of one of America's hurricanes were settled over the upper Midwest and the flights were having a hard time finding the ground in a timely fashion.
And so we weary travelers who had not yet traveled a mile from our destination sat on the tarmac and listened to a redneck father mutter "Jesus" every time his toddler daughter cried out in frustration at, too, being the victim of American Airlines' trickery. Those cries came regularly each time the second hand of my watch crossed the 12. When an hour passed and the snarky flight attendant told me I couldn't listen to my iPod (electronic devices must be turned off until the flight has reached cruising altitude, dontcha know), I nearly snapped, punched the Jesus-muttering redneck, corked the toddler with a pacifier I keep with me for just such occasions, and wrapped my iPod earphones around the neck of the steward until his face turned purple.
Of course, I didn't. I read airport trash fiction with terrible adjectives and adverbs and too many uses of the phrase "shot back" to refer to a character's inevitable snappy response his foil's insults. And then I went to Chicago.
***
I judged my chances of making my gate in time for the flight at a healthy 75%, barring any unforeseen difficulties, such as not knowing where Terminal 5 is, not knowing one must take a train to get to it, and not knowing that going to said terminal would require leaving the secure area and, as such, being forced to go back through the metal detectors. Further, I did not account for the Mexican man in front of me with the lizard skin boots, giant belt buckle, and the unbuttoned Virgin Mary shirt. He had a hard time speaking English and a harder time getting his boots off. There was a time, I remember, when a man could wear his boots as he walked through the security checkpoint. Those were the days when you could carry a flamethrower through, just so long as you promised not to use it to light a cigarette in the lavatory during the flight.
These are different days, and on this one, I was nearly sprinting to reach my gate on time. I say nearly because I had no sense of direction and looked more like a dog chasing a butterfly than an experienced traveler trying to make his flight. I ended up outside, and that's when I discovered, Chicago was, indeed, windy. My hair, already mussed from three hours of pulling on it on the American Airlines flight, became a rats nest. I thought it might make me look more European, which would only serve me well if I actually made it to the gate in time to actually fly to Europe.
Breathless, confused, and sick to my stomach, I arrived at the British Airways gate and looked at the departure board.
The flight was delayed for an hour.
This is how I travel. I run to nowhere to fly to somewhere where I see little, do much, and find myself asking questions like, "Why do they sell condoms in airport bathrooms?"
***
The flight was unremarkable, and any regular traveler knows, that means the flight was damned near perfect. British Airways provides its trans-Atlantic passengers with eye masks, socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and earphones to listen to one of eight movies that will air on the seatback screen in front of each traveler. The head-wings on each side of the passenger's ears don't only fold out, but down, so you can adjust them perfectly for sleeping while sitting up. My movie choice was "The Interpreter," which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I had red wine and chicken for dinner. It wasn't as good as it sounds, but, being airplane food, I didn't have to tell you that.
My experience was only marred by the guy sitting in the seat next to me. He was quiet for six hours before discovering the girl in the seat next to him was on her way to his destination: Spain. He went on to regale her with stories of what he called his "pre-retirement" and how, after ten years in the corporate world, he was taking off as many months as he needed to study.
"What are you studying?" the girl asked. Over the next couple of years, I would see countless versions of this girl. Trapped by her own actions or simple consequence, she succumbs to the wiles of a guy who would normally make her experience acid reflux. I knew she was trapped when she didn't laugh-didn't even blink!-when the guy answered.
"Flamenco guitar," he said. He was taking "pre-retirement" and taking as many months as it took to study flamenco fucking guitar.
The girl was wearing workout pants that sagged enough to show her Victoria's Secret panties (red, like my wine). I could hear Flamenco's libido and pre-retirement blood pumping. It chugged on to a an silent chant of, "Your panties are red and I'm a bull. A Spanish bull! A flamenco guitar playing Spanish bull!"
Before we'd landed at Heathrow, the guy had talked her into spending her layover with him in some museum. I'd finally discovered the real reason they sell condoms at airport bathrooms.
It was a question that had been bothering me for quite a while. Why was a "Gentleman's Kit" (complete with Sheik condoms and whatever lube you might need) on sale in the men's room in an airport. This was before the widespread revelations about airport bathrooms becoming the new rest stop for the gay male set. I couldn't conceive at the time of many good reasons for rubbers to be readily available to air travelers.
I can say this, though. The simple availability of such items had an odd effect on me. Seeing the condoms—sick little devices that I detest and abandoned upon finally getting married—made me randy. For years I thought I was afflicted with a Mile High Club fantasy. Then I discovered it's difficult to even withdraw my none-too-impressive man-part in the lavatory. I decided it would be impossible to properly bend over the college girl in the tight blue jeans.
If anything, that's probably what gets me going in airports. Girls don't wear tight blue jeans on long flights. These days, all the girls wear velour track suits or just their underwear for their flights. Especially international flights. They want to be comfortable, after all. All those lonely women in loose-fitting clothing just begged for a virile man to take them into the first class lounge and show them what first class really means.
But, even that is just a married man's rambling fantasy. That is not why they sell condoms in airport bathrooms. The rubbers are for the flamenco guitar students who have layovers with nubile co-eds on their way to partake in a Spanish masters program in classic languages. Given they can talk their way into the girl's pants by wheels down, they might have a chance at spending some of their pre-retirement money on a room at the airport Marriott. I suppose the gift shop at the Marriott sells Trojans, but in case it doesn't, the men's room supply will work just fine.
I disembarked and skipped the bathroom in lieu of a quicker cab ride to a hotel where it's so nice the bellmen steadfastly refuse to let you carry your bags any further than the entry way, The London Times is hung on the door knob every morning, and the room service girl looks just like she stepped straight out of Vogue. When she shows up with my club sandwich, she always asks, "May I come in, please?" Every night, no matter how many times I've welcomed her in, she always asks.
Once, when she again politely asked me to sign the receipt, I almost asked her if she knew anything about flamenco guitar.
And then I didn't.
Brad "Otis" Willis is a writer from G-Vegas, SC.
Chicago did not get its nickname because of its stiff breezes. In fact, it had not been too many months since I'd encountered windier cities on the American landscape. San Francisco was dutifully windy. Florence, Oregon, too, was gusty. Its breeze carried the curious odor of a million dead creatures that came to shore purple and turned white upon their death. A Cannon Beach hotel clerk told me later that the creatures were of some jellyfish descent. Their wing-like structure tended to a sort of left or right-handedness, as if these globs were actively deciding which hand to write with or how to face the Padres' new leftie. If the tide washed a certain way, the left or rightness of the potentially doomed creatures would determine whether they were whisked further out to sea or to their demise on the west coast beaches. On this trip it seemed nothing could save these creatures and they washed up by the thousands onto the beach, died, and sent their stench into the breeze. I called the smell "crab ass" because it stunk as I figured it might if I shoved my nose directly and unforgivingly up the bum of a wayward and dying crab. I used the phrase too much during my week on that shore.
But folks call Chicago "windy" for other reasons. If memory serves, it had something to do with the tall tales the city folk could spin. My grandpa, a man once jolly with life and drink, used the word a lot.
"He's windy, ain't he?" he'd say if I got to telling stories. Grandpa is still alive, but when he laid down the Busch beer for a healthier life, his jolliness seemed to go with it. Still, the smile is there, even if the beer gut isn't.
When I landed in Chicago's O'Hare airport for my connecting British Airways flight to jolly old England, I didn't expect to experience wind, natural or unnatural. I expected to whisk myself through the terminal, maybe use one of those neat motorized walkways, and just catch my seven-hour trans-Atlantic flight. Leaving South Carolina, I fell victim to airline trickery. As is their wont, in an effort to keep their on-time departure rating, the people at American Airlines pushed back from the gate knowing full well that O'Hare had no interest in us flying there. The remnants of one of America's hurricanes were settled over the upper Midwest and the flights were having a hard time finding the ground in a timely fashion.
And so we weary travelers who had not yet traveled a mile from our destination sat on the tarmac and listened to a redneck father mutter "Jesus" every time his toddler daughter cried out in frustration at, too, being the victim of American Airlines' trickery. Those cries came regularly each time the second hand of my watch crossed the 12. When an hour passed and the snarky flight attendant told me I couldn't listen to my iPod (electronic devices must be turned off until the flight has reached cruising altitude, dontcha know), I nearly snapped, punched the Jesus-muttering redneck, corked the toddler with a pacifier I keep with me for just such occasions, and wrapped my iPod earphones around the neck of the steward until his face turned purple.
Of course, I didn't. I read airport trash fiction with terrible adjectives and adverbs and too many uses of the phrase "shot back" to refer to a character's inevitable snappy response his foil's insults. And then I went to Chicago.
***
I judged my chances of making my gate in time for the flight at a healthy 75%, barring any unforeseen difficulties, such as not knowing where Terminal 5 is, not knowing one must take a train to get to it, and not knowing that going to said terminal would require leaving the secure area and, as such, being forced to go back through the metal detectors. Further, I did not account for the Mexican man in front of me with the lizard skin boots, giant belt buckle, and the unbuttoned Virgin Mary shirt. He had a hard time speaking English and a harder time getting his boots off. There was a time, I remember, when a man could wear his boots as he walked through the security checkpoint. Those were the days when you could carry a flamethrower through, just so long as you promised not to use it to light a cigarette in the lavatory during the flight.
These are different days, and on this one, I was nearly sprinting to reach my gate on time. I say nearly because I had no sense of direction and looked more like a dog chasing a butterfly than an experienced traveler trying to make his flight. I ended up outside, and that's when I discovered, Chicago was, indeed, windy. My hair, already mussed from three hours of pulling on it on the American Airlines flight, became a rats nest. I thought it might make me look more European, which would only serve me well if I actually made it to the gate in time to actually fly to Europe.
Breathless, confused, and sick to my stomach, I arrived at the British Airways gate and looked at the departure board.
The flight was delayed for an hour.
This is how I travel. I run to nowhere to fly to somewhere where I see little, do much, and find myself asking questions like, "Why do they sell condoms in airport bathrooms?"
***
The flight was unremarkable, and any regular traveler knows, that means the flight was damned near perfect. British Airways provides its trans-Atlantic passengers with eye masks, socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and earphones to listen to one of eight movies that will air on the seatback screen in front of each traveler. The head-wings on each side of the passenger's ears don't only fold out, but down, so you can adjust them perfectly for sleeping while sitting up. My movie choice was "The Interpreter," which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I had red wine and chicken for dinner. It wasn't as good as it sounds, but, being airplane food, I didn't have to tell you that.
My experience was only marred by the guy sitting in the seat next to me. He was quiet for six hours before discovering the girl in the seat next to him was on her way to his destination: Spain. He went on to regale her with stories of what he called his "pre-retirement" and how, after ten years in the corporate world, he was taking off as many months as he needed to study.
"What are you studying?" the girl asked. Over the next couple of years, I would see countless versions of this girl. Trapped by her own actions or simple consequence, she succumbs to the wiles of a guy who would normally make her experience acid reflux. I knew she was trapped when she didn't laugh-didn't even blink!-when the guy answered.
"Flamenco guitar," he said. He was taking "pre-retirement" and taking as many months as it took to study flamenco fucking guitar.
The girl was wearing workout pants that sagged enough to show her Victoria's Secret panties (red, like my wine). I could hear Flamenco's libido and pre-retirement blood pumping. It chugged on to a an silent chant of, "Your panties are red and I'm a bull. A Spanish bull! A flamenco guitar playing Spanish bull!"
Before we'd landed at Heathrow, the guy had talked her into spending her layover with him in some museum. I'd finally discovered the real reason they sell condoms at airport bathrooms.
It was a question that had been bothering me for quite a while. Why was a "Gentleman's Kit" (complete with Sheik condoms and whatever lube you might need) on sale in the men's room in an airport. This was before the widespread revelations about airport bathrooms becoming the new rest stop for the gay male set. I couldn't conceive at the time of many good reasons for rubbers to be readily available to air travelers.
I can say this, though. The simple availability of such items had an odd effect on me. Seeing the condoms—sick little devices that I detest and abandoned upon finally getting married—made me randy. For years I thought I was afflicted with a Mile High Club fantasy. Then I discovered it's difficult to even withdraw my none-too-impressive man-part in the lavatory. I decided it would be impossible to properly bend over the college girl in the tight blue jeans.
If anything, that's probably what gets me going in airports. Girls don't wear tight blue jeans on long flights. These days, all the girls wear velour track suits or just their underwear for their flights. Especially international flights. They want to be comfortable, after all. All those lonely women in loose-fitting clothing just begged for a virile man to take them into the first class lounge and show them what first class really means.
But, even that is just a married man's rambling fantasy. That is not why they sell condoms in airport bathrooms. The rubbers are for the flamenco guitar students who have layovers with nubile co-eds on their way to partake in a Spanish masters program in classic languages. Given they can talk their way into the girl's pants by wheels down, they might have a chance at spending some of their pre-retirement money on a room at the airport Marriott. I suppose the gift shop at the Marriott sells Trojans, but in case it doesn't, the men's room supply will work just fine.
I disembarked and skipped the bathroom in lieu of a quicker cab ride to a hotel where it's so nice the bellmen steadfastly refuse to let you carry your bags any further than the entry way, The London Times is hung on the door knob every morning, and the room service girl looks just like she stepped straight out of Vogue. When she shows up with my club sandwich, she always asks, "May I come in, please?" Every night, no matter how many times I've welcomed her in, she always asks.
Once, when she again politely asked me to sign the receipt, I almost asked her if she knew anything about flamenco guitar.
And then I didn't.
Brad "Otis" Willis is a writer from G-Vegas, SC.
June 13, 2007
Three Men Leaving
By Brad "Otis" Willis © 2007
Randy
"It's one of those nights," she said. She was lighting a menthol off the end of a smoking butt. The cash register hummed underneath the buzz of the overhead fluorescents. Together, the noises almost masked the sounds of the crickets. Their little love song sang through the open door and it was getting on Little Liza's nerves.
"Crickets again, huh?" That was Randy. He never offered much in the way of conversation, but he certainly knew what the midnight crickets sounded like and he certainly knew how Little Liza felt about it.
"It's like they forgot to start coming on to each other when the sun went down," she said through a cloud of spearmint gum and Menthol smoke, "and now they're waking up all horny."
Daddy didn't call her "princess" for nothing.
His tired mind had somehow conjured up a picture of a cricket with morning wood and he wanted to laugh. Still, he knew if he opened his mouth, the picture would spill out in words and he would be embarrassed as only a 34 year-old married man can be.
Teresa, Randy's wife, didn't know that her husband's first stop on his way to work was the Hot Spot on Highway 29. She knew he had to buy coffee somewhere, but she never asked where and she never asked who he bought it from. She thought pretty highly of her trusting nature. She considered it a virtue above most others. And if some little slut came on to Randy, well, he certainly knew better than to come back on. He was married, after all.
"I figure it this way..." Randy could hear the girl continuing as he walked to the coffee machine. Past the frappa-whatever, past the latte, past the frothy-milky-whatizt and straight to the tarry stuff on the far right.
Liza’s voice carried over the potato chips. "The big lights at the diner go on about the time the sun goes down. Then the diner closes at eleven. Hank shuts off the lights. By the time midnight rolls around, they feel like they've missed half their night, and they're screaming for some lovin'."
"The crickets or the people at the diner?" That was the best Randy could do as he put the lid on his coffee.
"What do you think, Smarty?" Little Liza had laid her cigarette in an ashtray by the register and turned to the wall of smokes behind her. "Need them tonight?"
Did he ever. The wife had sucked out his breath tonight as he was getting ready for work and Randy couldn’t think of anything better than smoke to fill his lungs
"I stopped by the Hot Spot this morning," she had said. "That Liza Gamble was there."
Randy continued brushing his teeth and grunted in time with the flush of the toilet. Teresa walked out of the bathroom, talking as she went. "I don't think she's a very nice girl."
Teresa opened the daycare in Boone five days a week. She went in around 6 am, a few hours before Randy got off, and about the time Liza Gamble was getting ready to go home.
Randy was spitting in the sink when Teresa poked her head back in the bathroom, "You know who she is, don't you?"
"Um...no, I don't think I do." As he wiped his mouth, he looked around a room for a razor to cut his throat. Damned mouth spoke before he could think. What the hell did his mouth know, anyway?
"Little girl, about 5'3" or so? Smokes those menthols and puts her elbows on the counter like a little girl?"
Think, goddammit.
"Jesus, honey. It's almost midnight." Randy rushed past her and out of the house into the driveway.
As he shoved the key into the ignition, he would've sworn he heard his wife call out from the porch, "I think she's a slut!"
That had been ten minutes ago and Randy still couldn't breathe.
"Hard pack right?" Liza Gamble looked over her shoulder with her hand on the row of Camels. "One or two?"
"Two." Randy fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a ten.
"So, you figure they like to get it on or it's just a nature sound? Six ninety." She barely looked at her fingers as they punched in the prices.
"What do you think?" Randy laid his ten on the counter and watched her take a drag off the cigarette.
"I figure it's a little of both. Three ten's your change." Exhale, menthol smoke slipping under Randy's hat and into his hair. He'd smell it there two hours later and be forced to take one of the three smoke breaks he was permitted during his shift.
"I guess you're probably right," he said taking the three singles and dime from the counter. He stood one half-second longer then he'd planned to, then turned on his boot heels and walked for the open door.
"Your wife stopped in."
Randy tried not to stop like a cartoon character, boots squeaking and coffee leaking out from underneath the lid. He was not very successful. How casual could he possibly be?
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah, acted sort of strange. Said she thought her husband came in here every once in a while. Asked if I knew you." The menthol was almost out.
"Oh, yeah?" Randy could think of no more to say. He almost made a joke about cricket morning wood just to change the subject.
"Yeah. I told her I didn't think I'd ever seen you. Maybe you stopped at Elliot's Exxon or something."
"That right?" Randy was trying to hear the crickets over the breath in his chest.
"Yeah." Little Liza lit another menthol off the butt of the one she was smoking. "See you tomorrow night."
The air outside was warm and made his coffee cup seem warmer. Randy's truck engine was still ticking when he got back to his parking space. Inside, Liza put her elbows on the counter and looked out the window toward him.
Like she did every night the crickets sang their midnight song.
* * * * *
Ford
"You usually don't sit and eat."
The waitress was the kind who had a story all her own, but she wouldn't tell it while standing at the counter. If she told the story again, the three old men watching the old TV would complain. They were watching the Braves get shelled again. They certainly had heard her story before—a shuffled bit of fiction and reality TV fodder that would never be the great American novel or a one-hour special on FOX. She didn't mind telling how she ended up working the counter at Nick's, but the old men had heard it all before. As I usually didn't sit to eat, I had never listened to the story before. I almost wanted to hear it, but I wouldn't.
"I'm usually supposed to be somewhere," I said. It was hoping it would serve as an explanation, but it came off sounding like I was trying to be mysterious. The pile of green beans on my plate had been cooked down to slightly less than a ham-flavored, dark green mass. I loved them that way, but poked at them nonetheless. Grandma cooked them for me a long time ago and miles from this little place. I remember when I left her town, too.
"Not tonight?" the waitress asked. It was a question thrown over her shoulder as she poured another cup of coffee for the last guy at the counter. He was in the middle of a long diatribe about endorsement contracts and those damned Cubans. I gathered he wasn't talking about cigars.
"Not tonight."
I didn't feel like offering much more. If she cared—and I caught a look in her eye that indicated she just might—she probably didn't want to hear the whole story anyway. At any rate, she wouldn't believe it.
"It's the Dominicans you're talking about." Old guy number two was snuffing out his third cigarette since I sat down. He stressed the "min" on "Dominicans" harder than I thought most people of the Caribbean would find appropriate. The sun setting through the plate glass windows caught the cigarette smoke and made the old guy look like he belonged in Hollywood.
My truck—the new red one that sat out near the road—probably hadn't cooled off yet, but the sure tick of the still-hot engine might as well have been a stopwatch. Even the diner on the edge of town wasn't quite far enough away.
"New truck out there." The waitress was on her elbows a couple of feet down from my near-finished plate. She was small-town pretty and her elbow-balance made her more so. The unspoken question mark in her tone made me wonder if she wanted to ride shotgun. Made me wonder if she cared that the only destination was Away. Made me wonder how she would react when I left her, too.
"Don't ask if it's got a Hemi. It doesn't."
I was trying to be funny, but realized the joke was four years old and would've been lost on her anyway. Old "Cuban" Guy looked over his shoulder in the direction of the truck, but didn't say anything.
In six or seven bites I would be on my way out to the truck, having neglected to ask the waitress if she could get off early, having neglected to explain to the old guys what was really wrong with American sport, and having forgotten to tell anybody I knew in the whole damned town that I was never coming back.
I ate slowly before tipping the woman enough to thank her for letting me go so easy.
* * * * *
Jimmy
Cope didn't say much. If we asked him a question, he'd answer, always with a "yessir" or a "nossir." Beyond that, he sat silent in the back seat, staring out the window and wiping runners of sweat from his neck.
"Okay back there, Cope?" I asked. My hands were wet on the steering wheel. If the car had been going any faster than three miles per hour, I would've been worried about holding on. As it was, there was a greater chance I'd dehydrate and die before I ran the car into one of the pine trees on the side of the interstate.
"Yessir," the kid said. "One-one-one."
Papa had been quiet, too, but Cope's unusual elaboration pulled the old man out of his daydream. "What's that, son?"
"One-one-one," Cope repeated, pointing at the mile marker sign. It was faded green with white letters, bent on the top right corner, and tilting slightly toward the grove of trees on the east side of the road.
Papa nodded. "That's right son. Took us half an hour to get from one-one-zero to one-one-one."
"Twenty-eight minutes," Cope said and turned back to the window.
Cope was no more Papa's son than Papa was my father. Papa was actually PawPaw, my grandfather. Ten years ago I changed the way I said it--not the way I thought it, though.
I watched the thermometer on the dash as it teased the red line on the far right. I figured we didn't have much longer before the old Monte Carlo would give up. At the speed limit, the breeze--even at 90 degrees outside--cooled the engine block. At a standstill, we could've grilled our peanut butter sandwiches on the manifold.
"We're going nowhere fast," I said, if only to see if I could pull Cope back into conversation. He'd been with us for about eleven months. He was polite, helpful, and never lazy. He helped clean, he always folded his sleeping blankets on the couch in the morning, and he only cried at night when he thought I was asleep.
"Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere," Papa hummed. His voice was deep, smooth, and darkened by 40 years of Camels.
It was a game we'd been playing since I was old enough to talk. I'd say something and Papa would sing it. He always kept his head turned when he sang the first line. He waited for me to give him something else to sing. This day, I was hot, worried, and not much in the mood.
"Cope, you put the guitar in the trunk, yeah?"
"Yessir," he said, a little brighter this time. Cope loved when I played. He'd tap his foot and clap quietly with the beat. "One-one-two."
I looked to the roadside. That mile had gone a little faster, but now traffic had stopped. I could feel the engine's heat trying to push through the dashboard.
"Rollin' down the road, going nowhere, guitar packed in the trunk," Papa sang. Cope leaned up and put his chin on the back of the seat.
The last time traffic had been like this had been the last time Cope had seen his mother. It was the last time a lot of kids had seen their mothers, in fact. The guys on TV had called it a Cat 5. Papa just called it, "The Big One."
I craned my head out the window and saw nothing but stopped cars. Thousands of them shimmering in the heat, half of them with heads looking out the window to see why we weren't moving. Five more minutes and I knew the Monte Carlo would be dead. I killed the engine and prayed it would start again. As the idle went silent, people started to get out of their cars. Some looked at the sun, some looked their cars, but none of them looked back South.
Last time, a lot of people tried to stay home. No one--not Papa, not me, and certainly not Cope's mama--believed the Big One. Now, the TV men were talking about a Cat 2. It wasn't the Big One, but the people on the road were acting just as scared.
"Will you play, Jimmy?" Two weeks before, we had cut Cope's hair down to nearly nothing with some clippers Papa kept in the bathroom. Now, I could see the sweat beads on shimmering against Cope's brown scalp. Would I play?
"Cope, now's not the best time."
"Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere," Papa hummed.
He was right. Something had happened up the road and the line of cars was stopped, ten thousand cars long, and nature chasing us all away. It's hard to be chased when you're facing a wall, though.
There was a young family in an SUV in front of us. Dad had turned off his engine and was pulling Sprites out of a cooler. I was getting a little worried about Cope and Papa. It was Mississippi July hot.
The roadside climbed up on our right to a square patch of pine tree shade.
"Cope, you think you could carry my guitar up that hill?"
Instead of answering, he held out his hand and waited for me to give him the keys. I looked at Papa who merely sang, "guitar packed in the trunk."
I had a jug of tepid water in the back floorboard. I helped Papa with one hand and held the jug in the other as Cope ran over the pine needles and up into the shade. Above, a television news helicopter hovered, its hemispherical camera shifting from right to left, panning the immobile cars.
Papa and I weren't planning on leaving. It was sheer luck our little house survived the Big One. Together, over a cold beer on the front porch, we had decided if the structure could make it through a Cat 5, it would scare the hell out of a Cat 2.
The next morning, though, we found Cope in front of the TV watching a storm swirling off the south Florida coast. His shaking hands and empty eyes meant Papa and I didn't have to talk about it anymore. We were leaving.
Papa and I never discussed how Cope came to live with us. We never talked about whether it was a good idea, about how it might look for two white men to be living with a little black boy. We didn't talk about how my mama was gone or how Papa had lost his only child. No, we didn't talk about that either.
At the top of the hill, I handed the jug of water to Papa. He took a pull and handed the jug back.
"You thirsty, Cope?" I asked.
A small black hand pushed the guitar into mine and reached for the bottle. Cope took a sip and looked at me over the top of the water.
"Take a seat," I said to no one in particular and planted my behind on the pine needles. "How did that go, Papa?"
Papa's mouth curled into a smile. "Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere, guitar packed in the trunk."
My fingertips were sweating, even in the shade. They slid across the steel strings, tinny, bluesy. I could hear the song in my head. "Sing it again."
"Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere, guitar packed in the trunk." Papa was patting his knee with the beat. Cope's hands were clapping silently. The line hit me in time with the music.
"Somewhere around mile marker one-twelve," I sang, "Papa started humming the funk."
The SUV family, all with Sprites in their hand, had walked to the side of the road. They stood listening as Papa and I sang, trading lines, and driving Cope to make more noise with his hands.
The cars still weren't moving and the far-away whipping of the new helicopter suggested nobody was going anywhere for a while. It seemed many drivers had come to the same conclusion. Engines went silent and faces appeared through the heat. Families, old and young, and come in search of the shade we'd found. Some sat, some stood, but they all were listening.
Papa and I had run out of spontaneous lines and had taken to humming along with the steady blues beat. I watched the faces. A captive audience, I thought, but kept playing.
Papa told me once that he had played guitar for my mama. He said she smiled and pretended to play an imaginary guitar on her lap. He said she had loved me more than he could ever say. Papa hadn't said much after that.
"Take me home."
The "o" on "home" was drawn out, a note across eight beats. It was a high voice, perfectly in tune. "Take me ho, oh, oh, home."
Cope was still clapping quietly, but now his lips were in a circle, as he sang it again, the chorus to a song none of us had ever heard. "Take me ho-oh-oh-home."
A 12-year-old SUV kid was next. His voice sounded like it was about to change and it made for a roadside harmony that I couldn't help but enjoy. "Take me ho-oh-oh-home."
I played two more bars before half the assembled audience was singing along with Cope and the SUV kid, 20-part harmony at mile marker 112.
It was over before I had a chance to paint the memory picture in my head, but I can still hear the sound. I can still hear Cope's voice.
[Note: The final vignette is based on the Marc Broussard song, "Home."]
Brad "Otis" Willis is a writer from G-Vegas, South Carolina.
Randy
"It's one of those nights," she said. She was lighting a menthol off the end of a smoking butt. The cash register hummed underneath the buzz of the overhead fluorescents. Together, the noises almost masked the sounds of the crickets. Their little love song sang through the open door and it was getting on Little Liza's nerves.
"Crickets again, huh?" That was Randy. He never offered much in the way of conversation, but he certainly knew what the midnight crickets sounded like and he certainly knew how Little Liza felt about it.
"It's like they forgot to start coming on to each other when the sun went down," she said through a cloud of spearmint gum and Menthol smoke, "and now they're waking up all horny."
Daddy didn't call her "princess" for nothing.
His tired mind had somehow conjured up a picture of a cricket with morning wood and he wanted to laugh. Still, he knew if he opened his mouth, the picture would spill out in words and he would be embarrassed as only a 34 year-old married man can be.
Teresa, Randy's wife, didn't know that her husband's first stop on his way to work was the Hot Spot on Highway 29. She knew he had to buy coffee somewhere, but she never asked where and she never asked who he bought it from. She thought pretty highly of her trusting nature. She considered it a virtue above most others. And if some little slut came on to Randy, well, he certainly knew better than to come back on. He was married, after all.
"I figure it this way..." Randy could hear the girl continuing as he walked to the coffee machine. Past the frappa-whatever, past the latte, past the frothy-milky-whatizt and straight to the tarry stuff on the far right.
Liza’s voice carried over the potato chips. "The big lights at the diner go on about the time the sun goes down. Then the diner closes at eleven. Hank shuts off the lights. By the time midnight rolls around, they feel like they've missed half their night, and they're screaming for some lovin'."
"The crickets or the people at the diner?" That was the best Randy could do as he put the lid on his coffee.
"What do you think, Smarty?" Little Liza had laid her cigarette in an ashtray by the register and turned to the wall of smokes behind her. "Need them tonight?"
Did he ever. The wife had sucked out his breath tonight as he was getting ready for work and Randy couldn’t think of anything better than smoke to fill his lungs
"I stopped by the Hot Spot this morning," she had said. "That Liza Gamble was there."
Randy continued brushing his teeth and grunted in time with the flush of the toilet. Teresa walked out of the bathroom, talking as she went. "I don't think she's a very nice girl."
Teresa opened the daycare in Boone five days a week. She went in around 6 am, a few hours before Randy got off, and about the time Liza Gamble was getting ready to go home.
Randy was spitting in the sink when Teresa poked her head back in the bathroom, "You know who she is, don't you?"
"Um...no, I don't think I do." As he wiped his mouth, he looked around a room for a razor to cut his throat. Damned mouth spoke before he could think. What the hell did his mouth know, anyway?
"Little girl, about 5'3" or so? Smokes those menthols and puts her elbows on the counter like a little girl?"
Think, goddammit.
"Jesus, honey. It's almost midnight." Randy rushed past her and out of the house into the driveway.
As he shoved the key into the ignition, he would've sworn he heard his wife call out from the porch, "I think she's a slut!"
That had been ten minutes ago and Randy still couldn't breathe.
"Hard pack right?" Liza Gamble looked over her shoulder with her hand on the row of Camels. "One or two?"
"Two." Randy fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a ten.
"So, you figure they like to get it on or it's just a nature sound? Six ninety." She barely looked at her fingers as they punched in the prices.
"What do you think?" Randy laid his ten on the counter and watched her take a drag off the cigarette.
"I figure it's a little of both. Three ten's your change." Exhale, menthol smoke slipping under Randy's hat and into his hair. He'd smell it there two hours later and be forced to take one of the three smoke breaks he was permitted during his shift.
"I guess you're probably right," he said taking the three singles and dime from the counter. He stood one half-second longer then he'd planned to, then turned on his boot heels and walked for the open door.
"Your wife stopped in."
Randy tried not to stop like a cartoon character, boots squeaking and coffee leaking out from underneath the lid. He was not very successful. How casual could he possibly be?
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah, acted sort of strange. Said she thought her husband came in here every once in a while. Asked if I knew you." The menthol was almost out.
"Oh, yeah?" Randy could think of no more to say. He almost made a joke about cricket morning wood just to change the subject.
"Yeah. I told her I didn't think I'd ever seen you. Maybe you stopped at Elliot's Exxon or something."
"That right?" Randy was trying to hear the crickets over the breath in his chest.
"Yeah." Little Liza lit another menthol off the butt of the one she was smoking. "See you tomorrow night."
The air outside was warm and made his coffee cup seem warmer. Randy's truck engine was still ticking when he got back to his parking space. Inside, Liza put her elbows on the counter and looked out the window toward him.
Like she did every night the crickets sang their midnight song.
Ford
"You usually don't sit and eat."
The waitress was the kind who had a story all her own, but she wouldn't tell it while standing at the counter. If she told the story again, the three old men watching the old TV would complain. They were watching the Braves get shelled again. They certainly had heard her story before—a shuffled bit of fiction and reality TV fodder that would never be the great American novel or a one-hour special on FOX. She didn't mind telling how she ended up working the counter at Nick's, but the old men had heard it all before. As I usually didn't sit to eat, I had never listened to the story before. I almost wanted to hear it, but I wouldn't.
"I'm usually supposed to be somewhere," I said. It was hoping it would serve as an explanation, but it came off sounding like I was trying to be mysterious. The pile of green beans on my plate had been cooked down to slightly less than a ham-flavored, dark green mass. I loved them that way, but poked at them nonetheless. Grandma cooked them for me a long time ago and miles from this little place. I remember when I left her town, too.
"Not tonight?" the waitress asked. It was a question thrown over her shoulder as she poured another cup of coffee for the last guy at the counter. He was in the middle of a long diatribe about endorsement contracts and those damned Cubans. I gathered he wasn't talking about cigars.
"Not tonight."
I didn't feel like offering much more. If she cared—and I caught a look in her eye that indicated she just might—she probably didn't want to hear the whole story anyway. At any rate, she wouldn't believe it.
"It's the Dominicans you're talking about." Old guy number two was snuffing out his third cigarette since I sat down. He stressed the "min" on "Dominicans" harder than I thought most people of the Caribbean would find appropriate. The sun setting through the plate glass windows caught the cigarette smoke and made the old guy look like he belonged in Hollywood.
My truck—the new red one that sat out near the road—probably hadn't cooled off yet, but the sure tick of the still-hot engine might as well have been a stopwatch. Even the diner on the edge of town wasn't quite far enough away.
"New truck out there." The waitress was on her elbows a couple of feet down from my near-finished plate. She was small-town pretty and her elbow-balance made her more so. The unspoken question mark in her tone made me wonder if she wanted to ride shotgun. Made me wonder if she cared that the only destination was Away. Made me wonder how she would react when I left her, too.
"Don't ask if it's got a Hemi. It doesn't."
I was trying to be funny, but realized the joke was four years old and would've been lost on her anyway. Old "Cuban" Guy looked over his shoulder in the direction of the truck, but didn't say anything.
In six or seven bites I would be on my way out to the truck, having neglected to ask the waitress if she could get off early, having neglected to explain to the old guys what was really wrong with American sport, and having forgotten to tell anybody I knew in the whole damned town that I was never coming back.
I ate slowly before tipping the woman enough to thank her for letting me go so easy.
Jimmy
Cope didn't say much. If we asked him a question, he'd answer, always with a "yessir" or a "nossir." Beyond that, he sat silent in the back seat, staring out the window and wiping runners of sweat from his neck.
"Okay back there, Cope?" I asked. My hands were wet on the steering wheel. If the car had been going any faster than three miles per hour, I would've been worried about holding on. As it was, there was a greater chance I'd dehydrate and die before I ran the car into one of the pine trees on the side of the interstate.
"Yessir," the kid said. "One-one-one."
Papa had been quiet, too, but Cope's unusual elaboration pulled the old man out of his daydream. "What's that, son?"
"One-one-one," Cope repeated, pointing at the mile marker sign. It was faded green with white letters, bent on the top right corner, and tilting slightly toward the grove of trees on the east side of the road.
Papa nodded. "That's right son. Took us half an hour to get from one-one-zero to one-one-one."
"Twenty-eight minutes," Cope said and turned back to the window.
Cope was no more Papa's son than Papa was my father. Papa was actually PawPaw, my grandfather. Ten years ago I changed the way I said it--not the way I thought it, though.
I watched the thermometer on the dash as it teased the red line on the far right. I figured we didn't have much longer before the old Monte Carlo would give up. At the speed limit, the breeze--even at 90 degrees outside--cooled the engine block. At a standstill, we could've grilled our peanut butter sandwiches on the manifold.
"We're going nowhere fast," I said, if only to see if I could pull Cope back into conversation. He'd been with us for about eleven months. He was polite, helpful, and never lazy. He helped clean, he always folded his sleeping blankets on the couch in the morning, and he only cried at night when he thought I was asleep.
"Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere," Papa hummed. His voice was deep, smooth, and darkened by 40 years of Camels.
It was a game we'd been playing since I was old enough to talk. I'd say something and Papa would sing it. He always kept his head turned when he sang the first line. He waited for me to give him something else to sing. This day, I was hot, worried, and not much in the mood.
"Cope, you put the guitar in the trunk, yeah?"
"Yessir," he said, a little brighter this time. Cope loved when I played. He'd tap his foot and clap quietly with the beat. "One-one-two."
I looked to the roadside. That mile had gone a little faster, but now traffic had stopped. I could feel the engine's heat trying to push through the dashboard.
"Rollin' down the road, going nowhere, guitar packed in the trunk," Papa sang. Cope leaned up and put his chin on the back of the seat.
The last time traffic had been like this had been the last time Cope had seen his mother. It was the last time a lot of kids had seen their mothers, in fact. The guys on TV had called it a Cat 5. Papa just called it, "The Big One."
I craned my head out the window and saw nothing but stopped cars. Thousands of them shimmering in the heat, half of them with heads looking out the window to see why we weren't moving. Five more minutes and I knew the Monte Carlo would be dead. I killed the engine and prayed it would start again. As the idle went silent, people started to get out of their cars. Some looked at the sun, some looked their cars, but none of them looked back South.
Last time, a lot of people tried to stay home. No one--not Papa, not me, and certainly not Cope's mama--believed the Big One. Now, the TV men were talking about a Cat 2. It wasn't the Big One, but the people on the road were acting just as scared.
"Will you play, Jimmy?" Two weeks before, we had cut Cope's hair down to nearly nothing with some clippers Papa kept in the bathroom. Now, I could see the sweat beads on shimmering against Cope's brown scalp. Would I play?
"Cope, now's not the best time."
"Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere," Papa hummed.
He was right. Something had happened up the road and the line of cars was stopped, ten thousand cars long, and nature chasing us all away. It's hard to be chased when you're facing a wall, though.
There was a young family in an SUV in front of us. Dad had turned off his engine and was pulling Sprites out of a cooler. I was getting a little worried about Cope and Papa. It was Mississippi July hot.
The roadside climbed up on our right to a square patch of pine tree shade.
"Cope, you think you could carry my guitar up that hill?"
Instead of answering, he held out his hand and waited for me to give him the keys. I looked at Papa who merely sang, "guitar packed in the trunk."
I had a jug of tepid water in the back floorboard. I helped Papa with one hand and held the jug in the other as Cope ran over the pine needles and up into the shade. Above, a television news helicopter hovered, its hemispherical camera shifting from right to left, panning the immobile cars.
Papa and I weren't planning on leaving. It was sheer luck our little house survived the Big One. Together, over a cold beer on the front porch, we had decided if the structure could make it through a Cat 5, it would scare the hell out of a Cat 2.
The next morning, though, we found Cope in front of the TV watching a storm swirling off the south Florida coast. His shaking hands and empty eyes meant Papa and I didn't have to talk about it anymore. We were leaving.
Papa and I never discussed how Cope came to live with us. We never talked about whether it was a good idea, about how it might look for two white men to be living with a little black boy. We didn't talk about how my mama was gone or how Papa had lost his only child. No, we didn't talk about that either.
At the top of the hill, I handed the jug of water to Papa. He took a pull and handed the jug back.
"You thirsty, Cope?" I asked.
A small black hand pushed the guitar into mine and reached for the bottle. Cope took a sip and looked at me over the top of the water.
"Take a seat," I said to no one in particular and planted my behind on the pine needles. "How did that go, Papa?"
Papa's mouth curled into a smile. "Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere, guitar packed in the trunk."
My fingertips were sweating, even in the shade. They slid across the steel strings, tinny, bluesy. I could hear the song in my head. "Sing it again."
"Rollin' down the road, goin' nowhere, guitar packed in the trunk." Papa was patting his knee with the beat. Cope's hands were clapping silently. The line hit me in time with the music.
"Somewhere around mile marker one-twelve," I sang, "Papa started humming the funk."
The SUV family, all with Sprites in their hand, had walked to the side of the road. They stood listening as Papa and I sang, trading lines, and driving Cope to make more noise with his hands.
The cars still weren't moving and the far-away whipping of the new helicopter suggested nobody was going anywhere for a while. It seemed many drivers had come to the same conclusion. Engines went silent and faces appeared through the heat. Families, old and young, and come in search of the shade we'd found. Some sat, some stood, but they all were listening.
Papa and I had run out of spontaneous lines and had taken to humming along with the steady blues beat. I watched the faces. A captive audience, I thought, but kept playing.
Papa told me once that he had played guitar for my mama. He said she smiled and pretended to play an imaginary guitar on her lap. He said she had loved me more than he could ever say. Papa hadn't said much after that.
"Take me home."
The "o" on "home" was drawn out, a note across eight beats. It was a high voice, perfectly in tune. "Take me ho, oh, oh, home."
Cope was still clapping quietly, but now his lips were in a circle, as he sang it again, the chorus to a song none of us had ever heard. "Take me ho-oh-oh-home."
A 12-year-old SUV kid was next. His voice sounded like it was about to change and it made for a roadside harmony that I couldn't help but enjoy. "Take me ho-oh-oh-home."
I played two more bars before half the assembled audience was singing along with Cope and the SUV kid, 20-part harmony at mile marker 112.
It was over before I had a chance to paint the memory picture in my head, but I can still hear the sound. I can still hear Cope's voice.
[Note: The final vignette is based on the Marc Broussard song, "Home."]
Brad "Otis" Willis is a writer from G-Vegas, South Carolina.
September 19, 2006
Grandpa Was a Gambler
By Brad Willis © 2006
Grandpa lived in a house that smelled like pipe smoke and old books. His wife, a one-eyed lady named Ruby, sat forever in the corner of the couch, reading and marking out the author's dirty words.
I thought I knew a lot about the couple. I knew Grandpa had a Navy tattoo and had been a small-church minister. I knew Grandma and Grandpa had been married on Halloween and once had hosted a radio variety show. Frankly, I thought I knew everything.
I did not.
Grandpa died last Wednesday at the age of 89. He had died much in the same way Grandma Ruby had. He'd fallen, broken his hip, had surgery, and never recovered from the trauma that surgeries cause old folks. This past weekend, I was supposed to be in Mississippi at a debutante wedding. Instead, I flew through Chicago and down to southwest Missouri to say goodbye to a man I was sure I knew in full.
***
I thought I knew myself. Before I reached Vegas this summer, I knew I was a card player and considered myself a good one. I was sure of my discipline. I had little doubt in my resolve and knew that I was in control of myself and my faculties most of the time. My ability to control my emotions--or the willingness to purposefully let loose of that control--has always been among the traits of which I am most proud.
I enjoyed all of this with the belief that all of the qualities were self-cultivated. While I hold undeniable love, affection, and pride for my family, I was sure that my personality was one I created for myself. My life-perspective, my ability to see things in a rational and purposeful way, they were all mine.
Sometime in mid-July, though, a small amount of doubt began to creep in. Something wasn't quite right. I remember sitting with a friend one night and saying, "Six months ago, I was sure of who I was. Now, I have no idea."
There may have been an unintended amount of hyperbole in my statement, but the simple fact was this: I was lost in Las Vegas. Even worse, I was lost in my own head.
***
Mom was making coffee while I tapped away on my laptop's keyboard.
"You should take a look at those photo albums on the floor," she said.
While I am a sentimental guy, I had made a personal vow to not get sappy while on the road home to Grandpa's funeral. I was there for one reason: to support my dad while he said goodbye to his father. As such, I had little desire to take a five-album walk down memory lane.
I've seen all those pictures before, I thought and continued to peck away at busy work until it was time to go to what was sure to be an uncomfortable open-casket visitation.
After a few minutes, I could see my mom watching me and I felt like I should at least make an effort to look like looking at several hundred pictures was something I really wanted to do.
Five minutes later, I was alone in a world of black and white history that I never knew.
***
Grandpa's jaw was stronger than I ever could've imagined it could be. As he stood beside a beautiful and buxom woman that would someday be my grandma, Grandpa looked like movie star from 1940. His hair was slicked back. He was a young and tough kid raised in the dirt farms around Garza County, Texas. He was to be the eventual father of nine children, one who would die before he saw five years old, and eight more that would outlive their father.
On the face of one picture, a shirtless John Willis painted commercial signs in the hot Texas sun. Written on the back of the picture in pencil were the words, "A way to make ends meet."
I had always thought of Grandpa as a man who had fought in World War II and gone on to live a life of a minister. As it turned out, both of those pursuits took up less than ten total years of his life. He'd been a sign painter, a father, a radio man, a bowler, a lover of beagles, and, at his retirement, a guy who worked at a paper cup manufacturing company.
The pictures told a lot of stories, but none really meshed with what I thought I knew about the man. Much like I believed for 32 years of my life that my father was born in El Paso (I learned two days ago that Dad was actually born in Houston), I also believed my grandfather had been on a Navy ship around Iwo Jima. Lately, I had come to doubt that story and wondered whether my grandpa had done any more than swab the deck of a navy ship in an American harbor.
As it turned out, there hadn't been an Iwo Jima for Grandpa, but he had seen Asiatic action in WWII. And the story of how he ended up there is the one that has me thinking this morning.
***
The black and white photo didn't show much. A lamp lay broken on the floor. The rest of the room was a mess. Unlike most of the photos that showed Grandma looking like a 1940s magazine advertising model, this one was out of place. Written on the back of the photo were the words, "The work of an intruder."
Grandma was living alone in New Orleans. She had some money in her purse and a kid to take care of. Once the intruder left, she only had the child. Her family packed her up and moved her back to Texas. Left unanswered in the picture--and in any stories told to me before this weekend--was the location of my grandpa. As my dad would say as we sweated in a 2006 Missouri heatwave, "He was a good father that did the best he knew how."
It seemed everyone believed that. But, if so, who leaves his wife in the ramshackle confines of one of America's roughest cities to be looted and violated in the middle of the night?
***
The early 1940s were a time of war. It was a time when a man could simultaneously be patriotic and earn enough money to feed his wife and child. Grandpa, like his brother-in-law Grady, enlisted in the military. The black and white photos of the two young men arm-in-arm would make them look like recruitment posterboys. The photos would not show Grady's death at St. Lo, France or the bullet hole through his dog tags.
As Grady made his way toward France's northern shore, Grandpa made his way toward the Navy. He ended up in a shipyard in New Orleans. Combat was certainly a possibility, but, perhaps not a big one. As Grady would die, the simple hope of three generations not yet born would've kept Grandpa on American shores. If Grandpa had run over a dune and into a bullet on D-Day, I would not be here. While that may be no huge tragedy, my son would not be here. That would be depriving the world of something perfect.
I've long known a mischievous grin on Grandpa's face, but it never really made sense to me until my dad ended up telling me the story while my grandpa laid in a casket a few feet away. As it turned out, it was a story that could be my own. The following is not word for word or, perhaps, even all that true. It's how I imagined it as my family recounted the legend. As someone said later in the weekend, "I have full confidence that every story Grandpa ever told at least had its genesis in truth."
***
Can you hear that sound? It doesn't belong on a ship or barracks, at least as far as the man with the stripes on his arm was concerned.
It was a few whispers, a few louder voices, then a tell-tale clicking. One man shouted, a few groaned. Then it all fell silent as The Man walked in.
Kneeling down on the floor were six men. They surrounded a few small piles of cash and two ivory dice.
Maybe they called it craps. Maybe they called it dice. The Man called it forbidden. In wartime, several indiscretions may have been permitted. Among Granpda and his friends, though, there were two forbidden pleasures. They must not fight. They must not gamble.
Grandpa did both.
As the piles of cash found their way to pockets, there were warnings given and promises made. Never again, The Man said. Never again, the men promised.
The next night they did it again. The Man gave another warning and the men offered more empty promises.
The warning eventually seemed just as empty. The Pacific was a world away and the war would certainly be over soon. And, really, would The Man send them away--send them to war--over a few silly games of dice?
Six months later, Grandpa was in the boiler room of the USS Adair as it set out from San Diego and to the waters around a land called Japan.
***
A farm field in southwest Missouri is the last place anyone wants to be in August 2006. It was nearly 100 degrees by 11am and the 40 people standing along the fence were sweating faster than they could dry their faces. It had been more than 60 years since Grandpa's ship had navigated the waters around Okinawa and made it back to American shores. It was a mission for which he would receive several medals, among them, ironically, one for good conduct.
I stood in a ten-year-old suit and stared at the flag-draped casket. In the distance, three uniformed men stood with guns at parade rest.
My sister-in-law nudged me.
"Look at the butterflies."
I turned to my right and looked at the 20 acres of purple-flowered weeds on the other side of the fence. I was still struck by the odd placement of the cemetery, but now I was transfixed. Like ten thousand tiny flags, a swarm of butterflies danced and weaved over the purple blossoms. There was nothing particularly poetic about it. It was simply a 20-acre scene of beauty that could not have been created by anything other than the God my grandpa loved. It was haphazard, hard-working nature. There was just enough randomness to make it exciting. There was just enough control to make it beautiful.
The uniformed men leveled their guns and fired in unison. The mourners jumped at each shot, then bowed their heads as one of the men played taps through the humid air. The men then marched in line to the casket. They folded and presented the American flag to my father.
Grandpa may not have been one of the men to raise the flag at Iwo Jima, but he was an American war hero all the same, at least in the eyes of the people who loved him.
More than that though, I remembered my dad's words: "He was a good father that did the best he knew how."
It was not an epitaph worthy of a headstone, but it was my Grandpa's life.
***
When people die, their life--no matter how mundane--often takes on legendary status. Their stories become bigger than the actual man was in his breathing years. For Grandpa, though, his stories, his tall tales, and his pictures were not larger than life. They were life. From painting signs as "a way to make ends meet," to falling victim to his own mischievousness, to making it back home to love his wife and raise eight children to adulthood, Grandpa lived a regular life of a man who made ends meet until he died at age 89.
I wrote all of this in a South Carolina coffee shop while waiting for my dog to get out of surgery. In about 15 minutes, I'm going to pick her up and take her home to my son. My dog surviving the surgery and my ability to take her home to someone who will love her unconditionally is the reason I woke up this morning.
I am a gambler. I know that now. And regardless of whether the story of my grandpa getting sent to war over a game of craps is true, it's helping me understand myself. I am a man of mischief that I control less than I thought I could. I am rational, but I am not perfect. Youth, or a mind still set in youth, can be a dangerous thing. Still, it gives us--no, it gives me--time to figure everything out.
When Dad told me Grandpa was a gambler, I only responded, "That makes a lot of sense."
What I meant was, "I understand."
I understand that life is like the field surrounding my grandpa's grave.
There is just enough randomness to make it exciting. There is just enough control to make it beautiful.
Brad Willis is a writter from Greenville, SC.
Grandpa lived in a house that smelled like pipe smoke and old books. His wife, a one-eyed lady named Ruby, sat forever in the corner of the couch, reading and marking out the author's dirty words.
I thought I knew a lot about the couple. I knew Grandpa had a Navy tattoo and had been a small-church minister. I knew Grandma and Grandpa had been married on Halloween and once had hosted a radio variety show. Frankly, I thought I knew everything.
I did not.
Grandpa died last Wednesday at the age of 89. He had died much in the same way Grandma Ruby had. He'd fallen, broken his hip, had surgery, and never recovered from the trauma that surgeries cause old folks. This past weekend, I was supposed to be in Mississippi at a debutante wedding. Instead, I flew through Chicago and down to southwest Missouri to say goodbye to a man I was sure I knew in full.
***
I thought I knew myself. Before I reached Vegas this summer, I knew I was a card player and considered myself a good one. I was sure of my discipline. I had little doubt in my resolve and knew that I was in control of myself and my faculties most of the time. My ability to control my emotions--or the willingness to purposefully let loose of that control--has always been among the traits of which I am most proud.
I enjoyed all of this with the belief that all of the qualities were self-cultivated. While I hold undeniable love, affection, and pride for my family, I was sure that my personality was one I created for myself. My life-perspective, my ability to see things in a rational and purposeful way, they were all mine.
Sometime in mid-July, though, a small amount of doubt began to creep in. Something wasn't quite right. I remember sitting with a friend one night and saying, "Six months ago, I was sure of who I was. Now, I have no idea."
There may have been an unintended amount of hyperbole in my statement, but the simple fact was this: I was lost in Las Vegas. Even worse, I was lost in my own head.
***
Mom was making coffee while I tapped away on my laptop's keyboard.
"You should take a look at those photo albums on the floor," she said.
While I am a sentimental guy, I had made a personal vow to not get sappy while on the road home to Grandpa's funeral. I was there for one reason: to support my dad while he said goodbye to his father. As such, I had little desire to take a five-album walk down memory lane.
I've seen all those pictures before, I thought and continued to peck away at busy work until it was time to go to what was sure to be an uncomfortable open-casket visitation.
After a few minutes, I could see my mom watching me and I felt like I should at least make an effort to look like looking at several hundred pictures was something I really wanted to do.
Five minutes later, I was alone in a world of black and white history that I never knew.
***
Grandpa's jaw was stronger than I ever could've imagined it could be. As he stood beside a beautiful and buxom woman that would someday be my grandma, Grandpa looked like movie star from 1940. His hair was slicked back. He was a young and tough kid raised in the dirt farms around Garza County, Texas. He was to be the eventual father of nine children, one who would die before he saw five years old, and eight more that would outlive their father.
On the face of one picture, a shirtless John Willis painted commercial signs in the hot Texas sun. Written on the back of the picture in pencil were the words, "A way to make ends meet."
I had always thought of Grandpa as a man who had fought in World War II and gone on to live a life of a minister. As it turned out, both of those pursuits took up less than ten total years of his life. He'd been a sign painter, a father, a radio man, a bowler, a lover of beagles, and, at his retirement, a guy who worked at a paper cup manufacturing company.
The pictures told a lot of stories, but none really meshed with what I thought I knew about the man. Much like I believed for 32 years of my life that my father was born in El Paso (I learned two days ago that Dad was actually born in Houston), I also believed my grandfather had been on a Navy ship around Iwo Jima. Lately, I had come to doubt that story and wondered whether my grandpa had done any more than swab the deck of a navy ship in an American harbor.
As it turned out, there hadn't been an Iwo Jima for Grandpa, but he had seen Asiatic action in WWII. And the story of how he ended up there is the one that has me thinking this morning.
***
The black and white photo didn't show much. A lamp lay broken on the floor. The rest of the room was a mess. Unlike most of the photos that showed Grandma looking like a 1940s magazine advertising model, this one was out of place. Written on the back of the photo were the words, "The work of an intruder."
Grandma was living alone in New Orleans. She had some money in her purse and a kid to take care of. Once the intruder left, she only had the child. Her family packed her up and moved her back to Texas. Left unanswered in the picture--and in any stories told to me before this weekend--was the location of my grandpa. As my dad would say as we sweated in a 2006 Missouri heatwave, "He was a good father that did the best he knew how."
It seemed everyone believed that. But, if so, who leaves his wife in the ramshackle confines of one of America's roughest cities to be looted and violated in the middle of the night?
***
The early 1940s were a time of war. It was a time when a man could simultaneously be patriotic and earn enough money to feed his wife and child. Grandpa, like his brother-in-law Grady, enlisted in the military. The black and white photos of the two young men arm-in-arm would make them look like recruitment posterboys. The photos would not show Grady's death at St. Lo, France or the bullet hole through his dog tags.
As Grady made his way toward France's northern shore, Grandpa made his way toward the Navy. He ended up in a shipyard in New Orleans. Combat was certainly a possibility, but, perhaps not a big one. As Grady would die, the simple hope of three generations not yet born would've kept Grandpa on American shores. If Grandpa had run over a dune and into a bullet on D-Day, I would not be here. While that may be no huge tragedy, my son would not be here. That would be depriving the world of something perfect.
I've long known a mischievous grin on Grandpa's face, but it never really made sense to me until my dad ended up telling me the story while my grandpa laid in a casket a few feet away. As it turned out, it was a story that could be my own. The following is not word for word or, perhaps, even all that true. It's how I imagined it as my family recounted the legend. As someone said later in the weekend, "I have full confidence that every story Grandpa ever told at least had its genesis in truth."
***
Can you hear that sound? It doesn't belong on a ship or barracks, at least as far as the man with the stripes on his arm was concerned.
It was a few whispers, a few louder voices, then a tell-tale clicking. One man shouted, a few groaned. Then it all fell silent as The Man walked in.
Kneeling down on the floor were six men. They surrounded a few small piles of cash and two ivory dice.
Maybe they called it craps. Maybe they called it dice. The Man called it forbidden. In wartime, several indiscretions may have been permitted. Among Granpda and his friends, though, there were two forbidden pleasures. They must not fight. They must not gamble.
Grandpa did both.
As the piles of cash found their way to pockets, there were warnings given and promises made. Never again, The Man said. Never again, the men promised.
The next night they did it again. The Man gave another warning and the men offered more empty promises.
The warning eventually seemed just as empty. The Pacific was a world away and the war would certainly be over soon. And, really, would The Man send them away--send them to war--over a few silly games of dice?
Six months later, Grandpa was in the boiler room of the USS Adair as it set out from San Diego and to the waters around a land called Japan.
***
A farm field in southwest Missouri is the last place anyone wants to be in August 2006. It was nearly 100 degrees by 11am and the 40 people standing along the fence were sweating faster than they could dry their faces. It had been more than 60 years since Grandpa's ship had navigated the waters around Okinawa and made it back to American shores. It was a mission for which he would receive several medals, among them, ironically, one for good conduct.
I stood in a ten-year-old suit and stared at the flag-draped casket. In the distance, three uniformed men stood with guns at parade rest.
My sister-in-law nudged me.
"Look at the butterflies."
I turned to my right and looked at the 20 acres of purple-flowered weeds on the other side of the fence. I was still struck by the odd placement of the cemetery, but now I was transfixed. Like ten thousand tiny flags, a swarm of butterflies danced and weaved over the purple blossoms. There was nothing particularly poetic about it. It was simply a 20-acre scene of beauty that could not have been created by anything other than the God my grandpa loved. It was haphazard, hard-working nature. There was just enough randomness to make it exciting. There was just enough control to make it beautiful.
The uniformed men leveled their guns and fired in unison. The mourners jumped at each shot, then bowed their heads as one of the men played taps through the humid air. The men then marched in line to the casket. They folded and presented the American flag to my father.
Grandpa may not have been one of the men to raise the flag at Iwo Jima, but he was an American war hero all the same, at least in the eyes of the people who loved him.
More than that though, I remembered my dad's words: "He was a good father that did the best he knew how."
It was not an epitaph worthy of a headstone, but it was my Grandpa's life.
***
When people die, their life--no matter how mundane--often takes on legendary status. Their stories become bigger than the actual man was in his breathing years. For Grandpa, though, his stories, his tall tales, and his pictures were not larger than life. They were life. From painting signs as "a way to make ends meet," to falling victim to his own mischievousness, to making it back home to love his wife and raise eight children to adulthood, Grandpa lived a regular life of a man who made ends meet until he died at age 89.
I wrote all of this in a South Carolina coffee shop while waiting for my dog to get out of surgery. In about 15 minutes, I'm going to pick her up and take her home to my son. My dog surviving the surgery and my ability to take her home to someone who will love her unconditionally is the reason I woke up this morning.
I am a gambler. I know that now. And regardless of whether the story of my grandpa getting sent to war over a game of craps is true, it's helping me understand myself. I am a man of mischief that I control less than I thought I could. I am rational, but I am not perfect. Youth, or a mind still set in youth, can be a dangerous thing. Still, it gives us--no, it gives me--time to figure everything out.
When Dad told me Grandpa was a gambler, I only responded, "That makes a lot of sense."
What I meant was, "I understand."
I understand that life is like the field surrounding my grandpa's grave.
There is just enough randomness to make it exciting. There is just enough control to make it beautiful.
Brad Willis is a writter from Greenville, SC.
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