DisappeARINGSELF

Walking Chactow by Ed Parker

Walking Choctaw by Ed Parker

The subject, and therefore the question, comes up more and more frequently of late. The subject being somewhat delicate, the question involved, I’ll skip over both. Answering that my interests are more internal and reflective than social, and then, I read a lot, listen to music, late night moody music.

I look out my window at the valley below, wondering what stories the passing cars hold. Curious, yet I prefer them there, distant and hard shelled. Peopling their speeding forms with histories and personalities, loves and fears mingled and confused, lives in transit, to work or shopping, following the call of life’s demands. Normal people doing normal things, I suppose. Things I find somewhat difficult, having this reluctance to leave the house. Not fear, not as fear is known. No fear is, not quite the word, not what holds me close to familiar things. No, it’s more; call it procrastination, of putting off for another time, a better time, one more convenient to the moment, to the mood. And then I have no answers for peoples’ questions, that particular question: “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you get a job? Get out and meet people?”

Choctaw will have none of it, caring nothing about that. Aloof to all explanations, reasons, excuses, he dances paw to paw, rolling his head, yawning, impatient to leave, too dignified to whine, to polite to bark. He looks at the door, at me, at the door. There’s no reasoning with him, no putting him off. He wants to go.

There’s speculation that there might be some connection between the Lab and the Newfoundland breed, second cousins perhaps, distant enough for the relationship to be politely ignored. Choctaw ignores it, looking bored when the question is raised, giving just the tip of his pink tongue in a gently derisive raspberry. A look some mistake for interest. Still, the similarities are striking, the way he hold’s his head, black and jowly, an image surfeit with brown-eyed, pink tongued concern. A papered Lab, grandson of champions, or so we were told the day my daughter picked him out. I remember how she held him up by his fat round belly, frowning down, aiming him out and safely away, how his little pink tongue gave him an oddly contrite look as he peed. Truth be told, he reminded me of my grandpa, having something of Jim about him. Jim was Grandpa’s Christian name, the name he was assigned at missionary school. I suggested Choctaw, after my grandparents’ tribe, earthy people, solid and quiet, at least Grandpa was. Katie thought it over, and agreed. My wife shrugged, willing to humor me if it was alright with Katie.

Grandpa and Grandma were old when I knew them; neither had any teeth, and spoke with a loose billowy cheeked drawl, a ball of chewing gum rolling along their empty gums, tossed absently from check to check as they spoke. Neither seemed to notice it, not as much as I did, talking around and over it. Grandma, truthfully Grandma was a moody woman. A difficult, woman, subject to sudden, unpredictable changes, given to swooping down, catching you outside the root cellar door just as you thought you was home free. Light and wiry in her youth, she could jump a six foot fence standing next to it, never bending her knees, or so I was told. Truthfully it was my father who told me that, he was no fan of Grandma and known to extend a point of fact beyond reason. His credibility suffered from his effort to capture the essence of the subject, small loss in the larger sense. He thought, “Hell on wheels,” captured Grandma’s essence nicely and often said so albeit at a distance from the old darling and quietly.

Grandma had bulked up by the time I knew her, becoming a short, round woman, whose athletic ability was confined to glares that could peel paint, sulking louder than a passing twister. I swear her silences shook the house; they shook me. I remember biscuits winging by, smashing into the wall by Grandpa’s head; she still had the arm, if not the eye for it. Yesterday’s biscuits, mind you, or the day before: the Great Depression left a heavy mark on Grandma and Grandpa, nothing was wasted. Grandpa would hunch his shoulders, that little ball of pink chewing gum showing bright in his dark sagging cheeks. His sad martyr eyes having that, “what now look?” A look that personified his tribe. It was that particularly perplexed expression that made me suggest calling that sad eyed pup, Choctaw.

Choctaw’s a hundred and nine pounds, according to the vet’s scale. “Well, he’s heavy boned," I says, "has a large frame.” The vet eyed me as one would a child beater, heavy eyed, trying not to let his feelings show. “He needs exercise.” More and worse went unsaid. Anyway it got me thinking. That first walk was short, both of us puffing, looking sore footed, happy to be home. The next walk was a little longer. Now Choctaw likes to walk, both of us coming alive on our walks through Manito Park.

I feed him a half hour before we go, by then we both need to go, I, mentally, he physically. He takes affront when I put him outside now, those days when we can’t walk, when something comes up, or it’s snowing or raining. He considers it unjust, his look saying he’s a member of the pack, in good standing too, no reason to be treated like this. I can see the accusation in his eyes. The backyard holds no purpose for him; he has nothing to say there, no one to say it to. Peeing is a social thing with dogs and he longs to introduce himself every few feet, dashing from post, to tree, to bush, tugging impatiently at the leash, eager for news, having something to say. He has no pretensions, no fear. He is happy to see everyone. Well, maybe not that gang of small, long haired, yappy dogs down the street, all that nervous excitement puts him off, I think.

There are few people out, there seldom are on late afternoons, when he takes me out of the house. He looks at me strangely, and sighs when I tell him to heel, to not sniff passers by. We both know I’m being unreasonable. I might as well tell him not look at them, not to hear their voices. Of course he’s going to sniff them. Smell is a dimension to him, like up and down, near and far, tells him things I can never understand. Some times we meet nice people, others I apologize to over my shoulder, walking quickly on. Smell makes up for his attitude toward time, he has no use for time. Time is now, and he doesn’t put anything into it that’s not already there. I can’t understand smell like he does, but I am hoping someday to share his sense of time.

He was confused at first, curious, when I started taking greater responsibility for him and his impact on the lawns and sidewalks in the neighborhood. It’s embarrassing to think how long I shirked that duty. A red faced woman in a minivan set me straight on the subject one afternoon, saying: “That dog yours?” I could only look at her dumbly, Choctaw being on one the end of the leash and I on the other. What am I to say? “Well, so is that,” she says, tossing me a plastic bag. And so it was. Now Choctaw watches me, his head cocked to the side, as I clean up behind him. He seems to take great satisfaction in my work, in my carrying that warm, round plastic bag. He thinks it some bonding thing, a ritual peculiar to humans, or so I surmise from the way he carries his tail, his pleased, self-satisfied look.

A gray squirrel lives in the trees behind our house, drinking out of Choctaw’s bowl, eyeing his food. Choctaw circles nervously in front of the patio door, wanting to defend his water bowl, not wanting to go outside, hating all squirrels. Raccoons worry him, being uncertain as to their intentions. They seldom came around, acting superior when they do. He runs out onto the deck, staring down at them when they take a shortcut home through our backyard. He wrinkles his forehead and gives a quizzical little woof, as if unsure if more or less is required, opting for less. At least he did until that night when he woke me up, panting with excitement. He took me to the patio door and stood there shuffling from foot to foot, looking at me, looking outside. Outside on the patio were two big raccoons were trying to work the combination on his dog food bin. One waved a paw at me as if to say he didn’t need the porch light, thanks anyway. Hissed at me when I poked him with the mop handle, puffing up the way they do, looking like little grizzly bears in war paint. Choctaw peering around my leg, looking at those two bruisers, hesitant to go outside, concerned that I might leave him out there. Behind me, my wife laughs at both of us, at how we peer around the corner of the door to see if those two hooligans had gone, calling us cowards. She didn’t see the size of them, or hear the way that one hissed. Good sense is seldom recognized in husbands or watch dogs, our motives so often being misunderstood and maligned.

Manito is the main park on the south hill, in Spokane for that matter, though there are smaller neighborhood parks every few blocks. South Hill is an older part of town with older, well tended houses, Tudors and two story bungalows, rich houses and those of more modest means standing side by side. Sam lived just up the street until he died of cancer, a black Lab like Choctaw though they didn’t like each other: Choctaw peed in Sam’s yard, it’s a dog thing. And there’s this Golden Retriever, more red than gold, that lives on the other side of Cedar. Cedar is one of those streets that keep changing names, a common problem in Spokane. Just up the road it’s High something, further down, it’s Maple. Streets begin and end for no particular reason in Spokane, a matter of whim, apparently. Anyway that Golden Retriever has a weird sense of humor, pretends to be asleep on the porch until you’re close, then goes berserk, barking and growling, scares the hell out of Choctaw, me too. One day I poked it in the nose with the tip of my cane, not hard, just a quick bump, gave me an odd reproachful look, now he ignores me, turning his head when Choctaw and I pass by.

The South Hill is a neighborhood of tree lined streets, pine, maple, chestnut mostly. There is a pine tree in my front yard, another in the back yard, most houses seem to have one or two. The maples and chestnuts grow between the sidewalk and the street, pushing up the sidewalk in places, making you watch your step. Choctaw watches the trees looking for squirrels, pointing them out to me, expecting me to shoot them I guess. I see his shoulders tense, his ears cock up and fold forward, preparing to lunge in some forlorn hope of catching a squirrel. I tell him to heel, seeing him slump with despair, but only for a moment, being an optimist. A trait I admire in dogs and find tedious in people.

There’s Cannon Park, a grassy neighborhood park with trees and ducks and a big pond. A true benefactor to the community put a doggy poop mitt dispenser there to advertise their pooch shampoo business. One of those do it yourself affairs with a million kinds of shampoo, more or less, each with a different scent I expect. Scents less interesting to Choctaw, but more acceptable than what he would prefer to roll in, given the opportunity, interesting to Choctaw being something sufficiently dead, so very dead, as to be unidentifiable other than by DNA, or perhaps another dog. Flea shampoo would come in various essences of road kill, if dogs were given a choice. I’ve been promising the wife to take him there, the doggy shampoo place, but then, I get busy and Choctaw doesn’t press the subject. We go through Cannon Park on our way to Manito Park, sometimes circling the pond, going by the mitt dispenser twice. Choctaw doesn’t bark at the ducks, watching them out of the corner of his eyes, not wanting to frighten them into flying away, wanting me to shoot them. He’s never touched a feather in his life, but seems to in his dreams, laying on his side, paws working in his sleep. He makes the oddest sounds then, little muffled woofs, like he has a mouthful of wet duck. Sometimes it wakes him up, he looks around, sighs, his head flopping dispiritedly back to the floor.

We don’t eat meat, not red meat, Choctaw doesn’t complain, even tries to show enthusiasm for the carrots we give him, but his hearts not in it. Sometimes I catch him licking his jowls, staring off into space, looking wistful, knowing he is not thinking of carrots. He looks forward to Manito Park, sometimes when no one is around, I let him off his leash, he likes to run. A scofflaw, I know, but he seems so pleased, bouncing around, sniffing stuff, stuff in another doggy world. Still, I keep a sharp eye out for other people letting their dogs run, other scofflaws. The kind of selfish inconsiderate people I raise a righteous eyebrow to when Choctaw is on the leash.

There are not many people out in the winter, not when it’s raining or snowing. I won’t go out then either, and so Choctaw mopes, sprawling on the floor, his jowls spreading out like some basking elephant seal, eyes all droopy. Choctaw’s got too much hair to take him out when it’s wet; it takes two, three towels and ten minutes of hard rubbing before I can bring him inside. Deep down, I think he is convinced the weather is just another excuse for me to sit on my butt. He seems indifferent to the rain and sleet rattling our windows, not seeing the problem, accepting his fate like a unjustly condemned hero. He seems to know when he can win and when it is hopeless. Truth is, I like walking in the winter, when the Cannon Park pond freezes over and all the deciduous trees are covered in white and crystal. I’ve never gotten used to winter fairyland scenes where the decorating and flocking is left to nature.

I was raised behind the Redwood curtain in northern California, where a cold winter is a skim of ice and maybe a heavy frost, gone by mid morning. Here snow can lay on ground from November to April, not deep, but persistent. Ice makes walking tricky, someone told me about these crampon things you wear over your shoes. I haven’t bought them thinking my life can use a little danger.

Manito Park is always different, being a showplace place of seasons, of buds and blossoms. There is always something showing color and life in Manito Park, except in winter, then it is white and white holds every color. In winter, there is the show of snow and ice of perfect puffs of snow on bare white limbs, delicate ice crystals casting tiny rainbows, white powder clinging thick to dark green branches. The snow hides a multitude of sins in the hope spring will find them more bearable. One of the swans died a few months ago, a natural death they said in the paper, ruling out foul play, I suppose. Swans mate for life and now there is only the one. The Manito Pond is larger than the one in Cannon Park, having an island where the swans used to nest. The population of ducks ebbs and flows, geese stop by for a visit, and seagulls, but now there is only one great white swan. Two swans gliding together seems grand and majestic, one seems wrong somehow, unnatural.

We turn in at the Japanese Garden, it’s closed in the winter and Choctaw’s not allowed, no dogs, not even those with a doggy poop mitt. I snuck him in once anyway, to look at the Koi cruising languidly under the arching wooden footbridge, in the shadows. He didn’t seem impressed, getting a drink from the re-circulating stream, looking like he’d rather leave. The trees there are evergreen, spruce, juniper, and pine sloping down to the west and north toward smaller flowering trees and bushes. In the spring it’s worth sneaking your dog into see.

The loop road is closed in the winter to the drive by people and I wish it were closed all year, so does Choctaw. The loop road loops around behind the Japanese Garden, behind the Rose Garden, over the stone bridge, around and back by the Lilac Garden and under the stone bridge. People should be encouraged to get out more; you can’t see much inside a car and the air smells different outside, clean. Dogs like being outside, they like leaving notes on snow covered bark.

In the winter, once we cross the stone bridge, I let Choctaw run, whistling when he goes too far. He always comes back, checks in, takes off again. I watch for other walkers while Choctaw runs, following his nose. He’s in a different world, I know, one I can barely imagine. A doggy world filled with autobiographical statements, bold statements, intriguing hints, lingering innuendos, each having some meaning, some fascination. Something like when my wife and daughter spend a day at the mall, I imagine, seeing what’s going around. It’s the best I can do. The joys of shopping are as mysterious to me as Choctaw’s world and far less attractive. Choctaw comes to me when I grow impatient and call, only fatigue returns my wife and daughter, proudly dragging boxes and bags behind them.

I always wait until we have crossed the bridge before letting him run, at least I do now. The railing on the stone bridge, the parapet, whatever they call those things, is about two feet thick and waist high made of the same lava rock as the rest of the bridge, taller than Choctaw’s head and he is a curious fellow, always wanting to look around. It was my fault; I let him go earlier than usual, before I should have. It had been snowing and the day was gray and cold, about a foot of snow on the road, the bridge was covered in snow and ice; no one was around. It seemed like a good idea, not that I examined it too closely, Choctaw was dancing with excitement, wanting to go, though that was no excuse. He had crossed the bridge and was fast disappearing, when I called him back, being a worrier. And being in high spirits Choctaw came bounding back, looking like a teenager. About half way across the bridge he takes a leap for the bridge rail, changing his mind when he sees what is on the other side, going into a four paw skid. Every thing seemed to slow down then, like it does in movies, watching him slide on that ice covered edge. Somehow he clawed his way down from there. It was over in an instant, a long instant as instants go, feeling something like eternity. The other side was a long way down and Choctaw doesn’t bounce like he once did, when he was younger and lighter. My heart restarted as he got down from there, though it was racing by the time he reached me, by then I was breathing again. I put him back on the leash and walked him carefully over the bridge. I seem to be the only one who remembers it anymore, Choctaw doesn’t give the bridge a second thought, though he’s no longer curious about what lies on the other side.

Spring is a time of pastels, when trees bloom in off-whites, touched with soft pink and green, of milk white skies. Pastels speak of becoming, of emerging life. Today, across from Cannon Park is a tree much like a willow. Buds, round, pale pink and milky jade, hang heavy from its drooping limbs. In a day or two, a week, it will be something else, something darker, more vibrant. Life is simply a state of transitions born of some eternal something, part optimism, part defiance. Choctaw enjoys pointing these things out to me, forgiving me for being so slow to catch on. He lives without hesitation or reservation, a proponent of just now, with a few exceptions.

Spring makes Choctaw think of squirrels. Most thing do, though truthfully they seem to be everywhere, out and about, busy with their squirrel business. Business must be slow in the spring when your business is seeds and nuts. What do they eat in the spring, or the summer for that matter? And why do they blow raspberries at Choctaw? Teasing him with the intricate movements of their tail, something like a sine wave gone berserk, whipping about like a Chinese dancer’s long ribbon of silk. It must mean something, something derogatory to dogs. Perhaps, it is simply that dog tails have a lateral way of tail phrasing and squirrels whip theirs up and down, in and out. People have gone to war over less.

Walks of a late summer afternoon are grand affairs, quiet times though people are out working in their yards, children playing in the streets. Something about the softness of the air has that effect, I have no idea why. Flowers demand your attention, pale apricot roses, yellows, every shade of red. Manito Park has a formal garden, and English garden with flowers laid out just so, and a couple of cement fountains, water bowls for Choctaw when it’s hot. Being a practical dog, when it’s hot, he has been known to climb inside them and sit there in the falling spray, smiling back at the children.

Children like Choctaw, they like his big black bear face and great pink tongue. Sometimes they join him there and sit beside him in the fountain. Their parents glare at me for setting such a bad example, though it wasn’t my idea. No matter how far we walk he’s still wet when we get home.

In the autumn, afternoons take on a crispness, leaves turn to vibrant yellow, red, all the more dramatic shades of goodbye. Signs of Halloween appear, pumpkins glowing on the porches. Soon it will snow.

Call it guilt, or noblesse oblige, His motivation doesn’t matter. I am thankful that Choctaw has taken me out into the world, filling me with his joy and appreciation for all that’s there. And as our feet grow sore brings me home again having tasted with him, a sense of dignity and being. What more can any being do for another?

The Gift by Ed Parker

There is nothing in this world on which we can rely except the truth of impermanence. It is an old Buddhist teaching, one of oldest, if that matters.

I first experienced the slippery nature of existence when I was four years old. We lived in Texas then, about as far south as you could go on the gulf side and still be in Texas. And as I recall, it was hot even when it rained. I suppose air conditioning had been invented, it may even have been common somewhere else, some where the need was less desperate. I doubt I had even heard of air conditioning, quite certain I had never experienced it; I would have remembered. No, it was hot and we lived with it, taking a certain amount of pride in our misery. Being barefoot poor, we had little refuge from reality.

My mother earned a little money taking care of an old man named Captain. He lived in a small row house, one room; what you might call a motel, or would, if it had been larger, or if anyone there had had a car. She would visit him, bring him food, do his laundry, things he wasn’t well enough to do for himself. I wasn’t real clear on this last point, having no concept of being old, or memory of being ill, well not personally. My father was a fisherman like the Captain, or was before he broke his back one night in a storm. I figured my mother was in the business of taking care of those broken by the sea and didn’t give it much thought. Anyway, one day she took me with her to see the Captain. Now it is possible I went with her every day and this day was simply the only one I remember. It is hard to say, it was long ago and most of what I remember was likely lies I heard later, except my mother was there and she was Pentecostal and short with liars.

I remember the unpainted wooden step, the screen door, and the sound of flies coming from the darkness inside. He lay unseen on a high bed against the wall. From the darkness his voice rumbled, dry as a dusty paper bag. I didn’t understand much of what he said, speaking as he did in a long rumbling wheeze. I think young children accept the world around them pretty much as they find it, when it doesn't seem to require anything of them, being full of themselves with little room for others. I mean I can't say that I was paying much attention beyond that inside it was dark and somewhat cooler while outside it was glaring, and hot. My mother bent down to me and whispered that Captain wasn't feeling very good and wanted an ice cream cup from the store.

The store wasn’t far, just round the corner. I held her hand as we walked back; watching the brown paper sack in my mother’s other hand. It was a small sack with a flat bottomed, round paper cup of vanilla ice cream inside, the kind with a round paper lid. I watched my mother reach across the store counter for it, watched as she dropped it into the paper sack. I pulled on my mother’s arm trying to make her hurry. It wasn’t far, still, I was worried about that ice-cream melting, harboring a fantasy, hardly a hope, of the smallest taste. She seemed oblivious of my concern, walking in her slow stately way, saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” She said it slowly, over and over in that reverent southern Pentecostal way.

We had not been gone long, though time passes at different rates, and to me, it seemed like forever. However long it was, it was long enough, because by the time we got back, Captain had died. My mother said something like, praise the Lord, something like that. The she gave the ice cream to me, pushing me outside as I hesitated, not believing my good fortune. I remember my disbelief more than any sense of elation, I mean, ice cream? My mother said it was alright, the captain wouldn’t be needing it. So I found that flat wooden spoon, and dug carefully into the hard whiteness. It was a bright, hot south Texas day, still the ice cream had been frozen hard and we hadn’t walked far, for only the surface had softened. Ice cream, and well named to my mind, being cold and creamy sweet. It may have been the first ice cream I ever had; it was certainly the first I remember. I gouged at it, pushing through the softness to the cold hardness below, catching the creaminess against the rounded side of the cup, tasting the coldness and the sweetness. I can still remember the smell of artificial cold, the smell of artificial vanilla. I remember being terribly conscious of the thin feel of the empty paper cup in my hand, at how quickly life can change. Looking back, I think Captain was a kind man.

A Good Pig by Ed Parker

A Good Pig or Ethics of the Market By Ed Parker

See this guy is passing by a farm yard when he sees this pig with a wooden leg. So he asks the farmer, "Hey, how come this pig has a wooden leg? And the farmer says, "Well son, this here pig ain’t no ordinary pig. He saved my daughter from being ran over by the tractor, pulled her out of the way, liked to got ran over himself. Saved my wife when the house caught fire, dragged her to safety through the smoke and flames. Saved me too, that time I had a heart attack, ran all the way into town to get the doctor. Ya see son, this here pig is a kind pig, a noble pig, a brave pig and a hero, smart as a whip too. Just wouldn't be right to eat a pig like that all at once."

I’ve spent a lot of time waiting, waiting for someone, for approval, a counteroffer, a deal, waiting - listening to jokes like, “The Pig with a Wooden Leg.” Union Stewards tell such stories to fill the void, working on you, trying to soften you up. Telling meaningful stories, stories with a message, a moral, taking care to explain why the pig had a wooden leg: who cut it off, who ate it, going on at some length about trust, loyalty. There’s a talent to waiting. It’s all about learning to deal with the tension, the pause before the punch line. You learn to talk of small things, more interesting things: basketball, the “Cats” getting to the Final Four, fishing trips, the best way to make biscuits, leaning away from work and shop politics, though not entirely, never entirely. It’s hard on people who want to get things done, people with things on their mind, other things that desperately need doing.

Engineers hate grievance hearings the most, I think. They struggle with the logic of it, fidgeting impatiently, talking of duty, responsibility, things they should be doing, useful things. The engineer wants to get to the issue, never getting that it’s not about the issue, at least not about the facts, not as he knows them. Managements facts are cold lifeless things, no one cares about management’s facts, not on the shop floor. The shop floor is about opinions and beliefs, history and stories, about personalities: about the Good Pig, it’s why engineers suffer so in grievance hearings.

There’s no shop floor in a mine, not in the traditional sense, still it exists in those times and places where employees come together, in the cages, on the man trains, in the shower rooms, change rooms, break rooms, cool rooms, lunchrooms, places where they shoot the shit. It’ exists in that state of mind reminiscent of high school, has that pathos and drama, everything is personal there, no slight forgotten, or forgiven. Old grudges are kept alive there 'til retirement and death, told and re-told as the real story behind the Good Pig’s wooden leg. The union lives there, in that passing confluence of opinion and attitude, playing to the unseen audience of the membership in grievance hearings, parading the Good Pig - beating the drum. Reputations are made there, elections won and lost. Sometimes the union leadership forgets that, thinking they’re pulling instead of being pushed. They say every employee has the right to grieve, to be heard, it's what unions are all about. The union leadership forgets that at times, forgets who they serve, getting wrapped up in their sense of importance. No one gives a damn about facts.

It is important to remember who you’re speaking to in a grievance hearing, how you’re coming across. Labor Relations people are spoken of on the shop floor, in management meetings, and judged harshly by all. It takes a special person to do this kind of work, listening to problems no one really wants to solve. You have to believe in what you’re doing, that what you’re doing is right, and in industrial justice. You have to keep in mind that industrial justice lives in doing the right thing, following the contract - being fair, being reasonable. Arbitrators look for that.

Pete’s a Union Steward and former Raise Miner turned Battery Motorman. Tall and thin and proudly Hispanic with a great black mustache that covers his lower lip, most of his chin, wears expensive ostrich skin cowboy boots, drives a red pickup truck about ten feet high, keeps a half can of snoose between cheek and gum, spits into an empty Pepsi can. A pretty normal guy, a nice guy, quiet by nature, probably helps his wife around the house. Ah, but in a grievance, he’s a slayer of dragons. He waits, smiling, talking of issues with no importance, waiting for an opening, the smallest crack of an opportunity, and then he is on you with obfuscating innuendo, with tearful wheedling, fiery demands, and indignant, flaring eyes, soulful eyes. It’s the dance of denial and Pete’s the matador, the great seducer of corporate America, defender of the good pig, the humble pig, the terribly wronged and abused pig. That’s what Pete’s doing now, setting me straight about Martha. He knows I don’t like having to do this. He knows I like Martha, not that it matters. The grievance isn’t about right or wrong, not anymore, or even about Martha. It’s about the graceful kill, the sword through the heart as the cape drops to the sand, bowing to the crowd, victorious. We have done this before, I carry the scars.

Martha has cleaned the offices at the mine for the past twenty-six years, a warm, smiling, square looking woman; every one's mom. She comes from an old mining family, related to half the county, the rest she knows, or knows of - everyone knows Martha, everyone loves her. She always manages a sympathetic, interested look when miners, young and old line up to tell her their troubles, and for the cookies, the brownies and tamales she brings to work every Monday. Well OK, if not Monday, then Tuesday, usually Tuesday, Mondays being difficult for her, which is why we’re gathered here today.

“She’s been a dedicated employee, a hard worker and loyal. A mother with five children, for God’s sake, four, by the way are working here, one being a supervisor, but that’s not her fault. The other three are union members in good standing, two are Stewards.” Pete’s hunched forward across the table, not quite standing, not quite sitting down, like a runner waiting for the gun. “Ramon, her husband, you remember Ramon? Sure you do, Eddy. He can’t work, what with his back. Unloading those timbers by himself, trying to get a little more footage before the end of shift. Doing too much, always doing more than he had to, now he can’t do nothing at all, being all broke down and disabled, totally disabled. When you gonna retire him, give him his disability, Eddy? When you gonna schedule that hearing? Let him have his disability?” His hands are on the table holding it down, his eyes narrowed, squinting. He sighs, overcome by the callousness of it all, of me, especially me. “Now, now you want to fire his wife?” He shakes his head slowly, speaking softly under his breath in Spanish, of saints and blessings, doubtless. Turns his back on the bull, the cape barely moves, silence falls on the arena. He sighs deeply; his eyes full of sorrow. I know what is coming and refuse to accommodate him. I am a tired old bull with too much pain from the barbs in my back. I sigh, waiting for the long, narrow blade behind the cape.

“She could be your mother. You have a mother, don’ya, Eddy? OK, maybe not. You’re a cold piece of work, you know that, Eddy. How do you live with yourself? She’s a twenty-six year employee, Eddy, twenty-six long years, hard years. Employee of the Month, three times. She’s given her best years to the company, doing a good job, day in day out. How many times have you come to work sick, Martha?”

Martha looks surprised, not knowing what to say, glancing down at her hands. Pete clears his throat, picking up his diatribe in mid-sentence.

“Ah, she takes pride in her work, yes pride in her work, however humble. Now she needs the company’s help, a little understanding, a second chance, Eddy?” He has that ‘let’s be reasonable’ look, a slight wrinkling of the forehead, eyebrows squeezed together. I've been told he practices it in the change room mirror, gets a lot of laughs. He has others, outrage, innocence, outrage, being my favorite.

It’s coming. I feel it coming, hell, I can see it coming, starting to feel resentful. I really hate the Joint Union Management Committee, or JUMC. I sat through all the meetings, never raising my hand. I was never fond of horse shit, and the JUMC is horse shit. Not that the idea is wrong, we should work with the unions. We all need our jobs. I just hated the packaging, the hoopla, the Madison Ave lying bullshit. Why can’t we just be straight with them? Tell them we have to make this work, cut costs, improve productivity, whatever it takes to keep the mine open. The price of copper is down. Everyone knows the price of copper, knows the price is down. We live and breathe the price of copper. The JUMC meetings are about the contrivances of consultants, the hand holding, the endless kumbaya, and like glazed donuts; after about the second or third, they just make your teeth hurt.

“We’re all in this together, Eddy, all on the same team. You’ve heard of JUMC, haven’t ya, Eddy? You go to the meetings. We’re partners here, Eddy.” And there it is, the JUMC blade through the heart, he briefly looks ashamed, but only briefly, biting back a half smile. The JUMC crack comes after three hours of reviewing Martha’s attendance file, re-arguing every absence for the last twenty-six years, getting nowhere, not that it matters. We both know there’s going to be a deal and this, this is politics and theatre. Pete’s up for re-election.

I squeeze my eyebrows together, wrinkle my forehead and gently sigh, the sigh of the wronged, the misunderstood, the long suffering, and wait patiently, politely for him to finish. Knowing he’s a showman, knowing there is no need to speak, to rebut. He’s a good guy, only saying what he has to say, except for that JUMC stuff. No, this is theater, the accusing looks, the concerned, sad, watery eyes. I’ve done it before myself, once or twice. Martha will be crying in a moment. I hate that. Then Pete will ask for a caucus. Then we’ll wait. Soon George, the President of the largest Local, the one representing the miners, will take the Mine Manager aside. After a few minutes they’ll wave me and Pete over.

It’s a typical third step grievance meeting, since JUMC, less violent perhaps, less shouting, less name calling. Now each side shows a little more give, more things get settled. Still this talk of togetherness, of cooperation feels awkward. We dance around the Good Pig, throwing little jabs like boxers, each waiting for the other to throw the first low blow. Hell, once we were warriors, now we're just whores, I see it in Pete’s eyes, see it in my own. Too much money is being spent on this JUMC thing. It feels wrong, like a scam, a hustle. Still, it’s for our future, isn't it?

The union knows there’s going to be a deal. It’s no secret Martha’s the mother-in-law of the supervisor who fired her, the cousin of the Mine Manager, the sister of the Vice President of the local, and a fine pig, a Good Pig. You could lead a parade with such a pig. Everyone wants to help her. Hell, I want to help her. Pete looks forward to the parade, to leading her on a golden chain toward the next elections.

George, the Union President, passes a can of snoose to the Mine Manager, nodding toward the old dear. The Mine Manager takes a pinch, packs his lip, grunts, and passes it back. There is a ritual to this, most of it non-verbal, the offering of the little round can, sometimes tapping the can with a forefinger and pointing. You can either take the can or raise your palm and spread your fingers, to say, 'no thanks'. I wave it away. Vile stuff, snoose, like a course, wet grade of snuff, flavored or wet down with a shot or two of Jack Daniels, or worse, Southern Comfort. We go outside and talk for ten, twenty minutes, about other things, mostly. There isn’t much to say about Martha. It’ll be a non precedent setting, final, final, no shit final, never to be spoken of again, final agreement: a twenty-eight day in-house rehabilitation program with a new attendance record. The paper work is there in a file folder on the table. No one wants to fire her. No one wants her to kill herself either, which she’s doing, drinking like that. It doesn’t work all the time, not for some problems: theft, sabotage, assaulting management, that kind of thing - unacceptable things, adversarial things. Things we’ll always go toe to toe over. Still, most things can be worked out when the Good Pig’s paraded. When the cooler heads, wiser heads, fill their lip and spit into empty Pepsi cans, speaking of other things to the clack of that pig’s damn wooden leg.

There’s a map of the mine on the wall on the mine conference room, just behind Pete. It shows the Draw level, the main drifts, the panels, grizzly raises and draw points, most of which I don’t understand, not being a miner. They must have had a meeting in here earlier about ore production, there’s numbers written all over a flip chart, notes about panels taking weight, something about the Undercut.

The Undercut is where the ore is mined, the muck. I was in an undercut for about a minute once, instantly sweating like a pig, glasses fogged over. All I could see, when I could see at all, was air swirling thick and gray in the light of my hard hat, feeling a heat, a moisture, just short of rain, like taking a steam bath in dirty clothes. I left pretty quickly. The muck goes from the Undercut down raises to the Draw level where Shoe Tappers, Chute Tappers, work in unlit panels, downsizing boulders with long arching blows of eighteen pound hammers, the pieces of rock, the ore. the muck, has to fit between the bars of the grizzly, pieces smaller than, say a basketball. The muck goes through the grizzly, down into another raise dropping sixty feet, to the Pony Set. The Pony Set fills the ore cars on the Haulage level where a DC locomotive drawing six hundred amps from a bare copper wire pulls twenty-two cars at a time to the ore dump at the hoist. Every day fifty thousand tons, tons, of muck are skipped three thousand, nine hundred feet to the surface. Underground is a different world, worth seeing, worth saving.

Across the conference room on the other wall, near George and the Mine Manager, is a picture of the mine, taken from, say ten thousand feet, showing the offices, change rooms, shops, head rigs, ore crusher, and the open pit. A little of the road and the railroad tracks going to plant can be seen. It’s a big picture, maybe four feet across in an old wooden frame, taken some time ago when the pit was small.

Strange how you remember one afternoon, maybe it was the minty smell of Pete’s snooze, smell has strange memories. I can’t for the life of me remember what started me thinking about Martha, or listening to Pete. Somehow it all comes back, so clear, so painfully clear. Changed, of course, as all things are by time and perspective, details forgotten, like a tapestry unraveling, threads frayed, dropping away, lost, still, the impression, the feeling remains. I enjoyed Labor Relations then, thinking I could do some good, and for a while I did.

The pit started when the surface collapsed above the mine. The mine is a block and cave operation and the top of it just caved in, taking some nearby buildings with it. As cave in’s go it was something of a slow sag, unspectacular except for the result. No one was hurt, though the back of the administration building hung precariously a hundred feet above its foundation. It gave a friend of mine who was working back there at the time a bit of a pause. He looked at what once was, and now was no more, and said softly, “What the hell?”

In the pit, the underground sulfide ore turned to oxide. Oxide ore must be leached, creating a new profit center, although a small one. It happened long ago, well before the trailer was blown up.

There’s a glass case under the picture and against the wall, inside are interesting pieces of copper ore, rocks bright as turquoise, pretty, but too soft to be turquoise, not really copper ore either. Martha went to the restroom; Pete’s telling me how to make tamales, starting with killing the pig. He knows I don’t eat meat, knows I’m ignoring him. We all believed a little then, trying to find answers in the middle ground, where we could. Change was slow, but real, better than the old days, better than what was to come.

Keep in mind these people have been mining, getting muck for generations. Copper mining is a way of life in eastern Arizona and everyone knows everyone, knows who can get the muck and who can't. It doesn’t stop the fighting, the bickering between management and union; nothing does, except weddings and funerals. Even then, one side leaves early, herding their wives, husbands, children toward the door, looking back over their shoulder. The other side stays late, gets drunk and fights among themselves. Both sides speak, or at least nod, when they see each other in town, having been raised to be polite. That’s part of the culture too, politeness, courtesy, honor. And like I said, most of them are related, in-laws, cousins, three times removed, you have to remember who you’re talking to, who they talk to, keeping in mind that what goes around, comes around. And there’s always that distance, that separation, management and union, salaried and hourly. Things have to be done a certain way, and done slowly.

The plant and mine are two different worlds, something like Rome and Constantinople before the fall. Feelings of alienation are stronger at the plant and there’s more separation and none of the grudging respect that comes from working underground. The ties are stronger underground. A sense of, well, not togetherness, not quite, still there is respect for a man's work underground. Underground everyone feels the feels the heat, the wet, the rough grayness of the stone, the dark. Off the main drift, off the man train, you live inside the light of your hard hat. Yellow-white as you leave the cage, it’s a tired piss yellow by the end of the shift. It doesn’t matter who you are, underground you live inside your own light.

It starts in the cages of the hoist. The orderly crowding into the cages, eighty men in mud and sweat stiffened diggers, ten deep, eight across. It’s intimate in a cage, you can feel a belt buckle pressing against your backside, a respirator pushing into your belly. You need the cooperation and consent of the man next to you to scratch your nose, no one scratches their ass. The Cager gives the bell rope a tug and the hoist drops down the shaft, slowing quickly, making you bend your knees. Then a quick up and down as the Cager signals the hoist to line up the doors. This is when it’s trying being in Labor Relations, knowing who has trouble coming to work, and why. You never ask who’s running the hoist. You don’t want to know, taking refuge in the knowledge that most are senior people and steady: one’s running for Union President. You hope it’s him, thinking he won’t screw with seventy-nine voters just to get to you.

The plant is just below the town, looking down, the mill is to the right, a tin building a quarter mile long. In the middle is the flash furnace, and the seven story high smelter with its six hundred foot stacks, behind it is the refinery, further back is the rod plant. They’re all hot, the plant’s all about heat. At twenty-one hundred degrees copper flows like water, sensitive to sudden changes in temperature, sensitive and intolerant. A little moisture in the cold dope used to cool the cauldrons of molten copper acts like an ice cube thrown into a deep fat fryer. Suddenly there is a couple tons of molten copper flying through the crane aisle. The burn marks five stories up in the smelter crane aisle bear witness to this volatility, as do the windows in the overhead cranes pock marked with copper splatter. Making copper is an art of transitions, melding heat and copper concentrate together - timing is everything.

Outside it can be a hundred and ten, inside the smelter it’s twenty degrees hotter, and that’s before the monsoon. The monsoon comes in late July, early August; its mugginess brings an edginess to people and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Tempers flare and people do strange things, filing strange grievances, harassment grievances: ‘my supervisor watches me’ grievances. Grievances alleging sexual harassment, of little clay penises left on lunch boxes, not to be mistaken for say, short, fat, gray snakes. No, it’s got to be little, gray, clay penises. Says, she knows a penis when she sees one. There are fewer people at the plant, but they file more grievances. Grieving gives them something to do, sitting in the cool rooms waiting to go back to work. It’s hot and you need those cool rooms and something to do as you wait.

Senior people take their vacations in the summer, maybe going back to Michigan or camping out in the White Mountains with the kids. Sensible people avoid the plant during monsoon season, increasing the concentration of the senseless and irritable, and adding to the problem. The monsoons come up sudden and violent, thunder and lightning crackling, snapping, rain so heavy it’s hard to breathe, sometimes it hails. Then, for about a half hour, the air is cool and fresh and everyone wants to just breathe. There is no such feeling after a grievance hearing where the emotional mugginess lingers well into the ride home.

Martha’s grievance hearing sticks in my mind for some reason, I don’t know why. It wasn’t always that good. A strike was narrowly averted not too many years before, shortly after a double wide trailer was blown up, some say to underscore the seriousness of their position - someone’s position. The unions said they had nothing to do with it. Though they said it was a miracle only a trailer was destroyed, given the company’s heavy handed attitude toward their employees. Employees who come to work sick, too poor to afford health care, now that the company sold the hospital. Not to mention the ones being turned out of their homes. Homes they’ve lived in since they were children, since their parents were children. Now the company wants to sell their homes, their town, turn it into some kind of resort. Sell it to the snowbirds from Chicago so they can watch the sunrise as it tints the smelter’s smokestacks with rose; see the moonlight on the tailings. Damn all snowbirds and their fat assed RV’s and trailers.

I must have heard it fifty times. Who knows who blew up the trailer, could have been anyone? The federal people gave up and left, saying anyone could have done it. After that no one cared much about who did it. Someone did it, and truthfully, anyone could have done it. A mine uses a lot of explosives, round white beads in long sausage like tubes, just needs a blasting cap. Anyone can make a bomb underground and most have, at one time or another. It’s a mining tool and commonly used. Even Shoe Tappers will use bombs to clear a jammed raise. Wrap some powder around the end of a long stick, fix a blasting cap. Tie two, maybe three sticks together end to end, if you need to get way up there, being careful not to get killed sticking your head up a raise like that. Muck can come unstuck all by itself, and there you are, dead as hell, your old lady rich, talking to some strange man, say Blondie, somebody like that or worse than that. Blondie is ok, wouldn’t do that, not to a friend. Still, men watch their wives around Blondie, he has a way with women. Anyway, powder is not that difficult to steal, people are in and out of the powder magazine all the time. The trailer was scattered across a few acres of desert and the point made.

The business was changing and the company had to change with it. That’s what was said though no one believed it. The hospital changed becoming too complicated and expensive to be ran by a mining company. And the town, the company built it back in the fifties. A nice little industrial kind of town, with schools and parks with baseball diamonds, a movie theater, stores and a bar. A place for people to live between shifts. A town with tree lined streets, Myrtles and such, lawns of Bermuda grass, all full of pollen. Those flat roofed, cinder block houses rented for forty or fifty dollars a month and kept twenty-five people busy fixing broken windows, replacing cooler pads, hauling away junked cars. Or it did until paternalism up and died. Now the company wants out of the town business, putting the houses up for sale, gradually evicting those who don't want to buy. Most stay, becoming home owners, up to their ears in debt from buying refrigerators and pickup trucks with huge tires. No one can afford a strike, but no one is pleased and more than a few are pissed off – no one cares about facts.

Anyway, the company decided to do something different, have a meeting, bring in some consultants, try to ease the tension. The price of copper was down to a few cents a pound less than it cost to make it, underscoring that it was costing too much to make it. Everyone knew we were losing money, and everyone knew a strike would kill the mine. Truthfully, some didn’t care if the mine closed or not, those with outside skills, electricians, welders, some of the mechanics. Most did though, most of the mine mechanics are big hammer mechanics, give it another tap, then hit it hard mechanics, skills not readily transferable. Most people wanted the mine to continue running, which was the whole idea behind the meetings. So the question was raised, what could we do differently to stay in business, open up those lines of communication? You know, sort of talk things over? In short, the company was in trouble, needing to cut costs and increase production and therefore, open to suggestion. Things had to change, everyone knew it, but change is always troubling. Everyone was tense, worried about their future.

At the meeting, the unions, there were seven, listened to what the company had to say, looking sympathetic and deeply moved, asking if they were still on the clock. Bringing all the union presidents and their elected entourage together at one time was gutsy. They didn’t care much for each other, liking management even less. So there we were, the unions on one side of the room, management on the other, and nothing getting done. That’s where the consultants first worked their magic, there in that divided room, convincing everyone that we needed to do this again. And strangely, everyone agreed, the Unions talking about easy money, laughing. Hey, why not?

In the beginning, the meetings weren’t so bad, we met in a little auditorium near where the Biosphere was being built. The auditorium overlooked a little valley with a Spanish style ranch house, its red tile roof showing behind some trees. It was snowing and the view, well it was worth seeing. Some one had decided holding the meetings offsite would make the unions feel more comfortable, and it did. The consultants looked pleased, having been paid in advance, offered a bonus in the unlikely event they could generate interest in more meetings. Paid some ludicrous sum, or so I heard it said, doubtless to a numbered account in an offshore bank.

Everyone was cynical at first. We speculated about the consultants, about whether or not their meeting supplies, flip charts, those big paper markers, were included in the tab, especially the tall bar stools. The consultant sat on these tall stools, one foot hooked on a rung, the other foot toe down, buttocks barely touching the seat. Ready to sprint for the flip chart, should someone have anything worthwhile to say. There was a lot of comment about the stools during the breaks, it helped break the ice. Not much was said in the meetings. Oh, there were speeches, that sort of thing, but little was said, all real progress took place during the breaks. During the meetings, if someone said something about the time, as in, “Is it time for a break?” The consultants would write down,’ time’ saying something encouraging, smiling, a trick familiar to dog trainers. The food was alright: donuts, rolls, fruit, sandwiches, that kind of thing, once we had pizza.

The pizza came after a group from the mill was introduced, saying they worked together as a team. Worse, the team was mixed, different trades from different unions working together. Now this was remarkable, and it was remarked upon, causing some red faces and lowered eyebrows. A murmur raced through the room, swelling to an ominous grumble. Someone shouted that the contracts were being violated. Other people shouted, “not so”, and “go fuck yourself” or words to that effect, actually, that may have been me. The consultants hastily called for a break, then, they called for pizza. Over pizza, tempers cooled and the subject changed.

Management thought the teamwork idea seemed promising, and it was discussed at length behind closed door with the consultants. They decided to approach the teamwork idea cautiously, the way a hunter stalks a deer, weight on the back leg, treading slowly, circling. The unions were suspicious of teamwork, alert and wary of assaults on their turf, their rice bowl. Saying, no damn team was doing their work, and productivity was not their concern, that kind of thing. The spark died and the consultants were told to back off and try something else, oneness, something like that. So they did, being sensitive to suggestion and quick to change. No one really knew where this was going, not in the beginning. Some said it was planned from the git go, but I was there and I know no one could have planned it.

More meetings were scheduled, bigger, grander, cautiously optimistic meetings, all about living in the future, being clear they didn’t expect much change now. We met in one of the local hotels, over a hundred of us, union and management. At first no one took it seriously, until we found the meetings were twelve hour long meetings, and each session, three, four days long, with five, six sessions planned over the next few months. Before we knew it we’d became professional meeting goers, passing notes, stretching out the breaks. The consultants called it ‘inventing our future.’ They said they were going to change our culture and we needed a Charter, a Vision: a ‘Who We Be, Wanna Be,’ in the future, sort of thing. No one knew what to say. Not knowing what to say, and time being money, a few executes started tossing suggestions into this awe struck vacuum, quickly followed by their closest sycophants. These shills began raising their hands jiggling in their seats, wanting to speak, needing to, like they were about to piss their pants. When called upon, they bleated out words and phrases that sounded coached, contrived, unnatural. The consultants turned facilitators, ran to their flip charts to write it all down, sometimes writing down things that not been said, sometimes before they were said. Suggestions about ground breaking departures, radical changes, couched in broken sentences and confused words, perfectly good words used poorly.

This was the new technology, how we were going to change our culture, save our jobs, words used incorrectly, and badly over used. Words like: technology, accountable, integrity, stand, everything being a stand. It led to phrases like: “What is giving being in the present reality?” “Managing the existence of conversation with and inside of integrity.” “Handling breakdowns from a future given approach.” And, “Unmingling a commingled reality,” my personal favorite. There were many more, most of them I can’t remember, repression, I suppose. I found myself alphabetizing them, cross referencing them, just to keep from going completely stupid. The idea of using language in such a manner as to disconnect biases and prejudices from issues was intellectually interesting when it wasn’t insulting.

I remember staring at the flip charts taped to the ballroom walls, awed to be part of such insanity, trying to make sense of our Charter, and Mission Statement, our Vision of the future, unable to take it seriously. It was, well, surreal. Yes, surreal. Reading it brought no sense of clarity, no sense of completeness, I just couldn’t get it. Maybe, it was the phrasing, the way everything was carefully worded in the present tense, “We are. . . . We be. . . stated positively, as if it were true. All about: union/management partnership, team based organization, employee involvement, and breakthrough results. None of which the Union would have sat still for, had it been said in plain English. There were one or two, “We wills, for some reason. All of it ending with, “This is our stand.” Written like that, few took it seriously, thinking it no more than say, a thinly disguised ploy to get us to think about things differently, which of course it was.

Shortly after it was printed in the company paper, Don lost his election. All the union presidents lost their elections. People thought they were crazy, not having been properly greased for such an intrusion. Pete slipped through this firestorm, though I don’t know how. This was a year or more before Martha’s grievance.

After the laughing and crying died down, things turned ominous, our decision makers actually went for it, the Charter and Mission and Vision thing. Another consulting group was found in California, radical and militant, friends of the first, I suspect, a spin off of a defunct seventies self-help group, the one with the long meetings, marathon meeting, break-less meetings. The one that wouldn’t let their attendee’s use the restroom. Said it forces you to prioritize, builds commitment, character. Some of my friends went to those meeting back then, back in the seventies, went willingly for some reason, coming back full of insight and awkward sounding words, sounding hysterically pleased with the experience. Gradually admitting it was expensive, and difficult, finally that they had been stripped emotionally naked and exposed to the chicken yard mercy of all the other sick bastards present. Told that they were not taking responsibility for themselves that they would have to go to more meetings, many more meetings to make any progress, offered a discount if they brought a friend. I'm pretty sure this was the same bunch.

The next round of meetings was like that, kind of a cross between an AAA meeting and an encounter group. No one ever told a miner that they couldn’t go to the restroom to pee, not twice. They'd pee on your foot. This round was all about taking responsibility which sounds good until you realized the vehicle being used to accomplish it was public self immolation. A spilling of the guts in front of bosses, subordinates, and co-workers, egged on by sadists, who didn’t have to work there day after day. One poor woman volunteered that she had been raped as a child. She was told to take responsibility for it. It was one of the few meetings I missed, which was good, because I would have handled it badly. The Company kept it quiet, settling the suit out of court.

No one had to go to the meetings, but everyone went, all thirty five hundred employees, three and four hundred at a time. The hourly employees were paid overtime, us management types got to keep our jobs. The meetings were voluntary, as in, no one had to work there, but it paid the bills and kept the kids fed. Perhaps it was the evangelical third degree approach that angered me, or possibly the fact that it was degrading, and just plain insulting. When called on in those meetings, I’d stand up, politely decline, and sit back down. I was a representative of management, the people who hired these jokers. So maybe I deserved it. How could I stand up and say this is all a fraud? Besides there was the off chance it would work. The company was spending millions on this madness, saying our future depended upon it. Cognitive dissidence, yes, there was that, and several other related ethical, moral and philosophic maladies - loyalty took a beating.

The financial books were opened early in the next negotiations with the unions. Even the newly elected union leadership could see that it looked bleak, that something had to be done to save our jobs, our way of life, though there was rumored to be two sets of books. Truthfully, the mine was marginal and we needed to borrow money, a lot of money, a couple of hundred million dollars, difficult, given the company’s junk bond credit rating. It was important to woo Wall Street into upgrading our credit rating, which was the real reason behind JUMC, though I didn’t realize it at the time, and damned if it didn’t work. Cost and production figures were squeezed and fine tuned until we saw progress. Anything that looked like progress was applauded. The self serving nature of our progress reports was obvious, but not so obvious as to render it incapable of being ignored, anything can be ignored if it’s for a good cause.

With the JUMC and the new culture technology working, things took off. Attitudes were changing, gradually, but changing, as people bought into the idea that all this malarkey was working. It was becoming easier to work with the unions. Everyone was infused with, or at least tinged with being in responsibility, being in integrity, and so forth. Cost savings were shared and high performance teams introduced. More teams were in training to be high performance teams using this new technology, many in areas where it made no sense at all, not that it mattered. It was novel, interesting, and people wanted to believe, needed to believe. Productivity went up, costs went down. And as luck would have it, the price of copper soared. Suddenly we were making money, lots of money, millions and millions in profits. We were a money making machine. We made the Wall Street Journal and the trade magazines for our innovative JUMC approach, our fifteen year labor agreement, our culture of change technology. There were tours by the bus load, people coming from all over the world to gaze and wonder. Companies wanted our people technology, our how the hell did we pull it off technology, our secrets. Our credit rating improved and we got our loans.

I avoided talking about JUMC in grievances, and as for our new technology - it was tempting, I mean, I wanted to; I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The phrasing bothered me and the logic hurt my head. Still, I heard a lot about unmingling our co-mingled past and futures, from people like Pete, and hated it, though I tried to make it work, knowing it was all hype.

“Why you acting like this, Eddy, firing people? We’re partners, ain’t we Eddy?” Pete started saying things like that after the second or third JUMC meeting, about the same time we had Martha's grievance. He said it in a joking manner at first, gradually becoming serious, waiting for my answer. I was out of step and hearing about it from both the unions and significant members of management. I’d used the idea of taking responsibility in disciplinary hearings long before it was popular and meant it. It was an old idea with some actual merit. Maybe I was guilty of parading the JUMC, the Good Pig, although I didn’t ask anyone to confess their sins in front of a few hundred fellow employees. We needed to work together.

And damned if we didn’t start reading parts of our company manifesto in public, declaring that our unionized employees added value and afforded the company a major competitive edge, which wasn’t true, but Wall Street liked it and the unions liked it. Everyone forgot that adding a competitive edge was never the Unions job. Unions are there to keep management from acting like little gods and ass holes. A few management types spoke up truthfully, receiving poor performance reviews and getting passed over for promotions for their honesty. Some badly twisted mind, or minds, it was doubtless a team effort, put together a happiness squad of former union officials, calling them Organizational Development (OD). These inquisitors searched out the few who bothered to tell the truth, calling them nonbelievers, and road blocks, ratting them out to top management. No one liked them, but that didn't matter either. We were a team based organization, and everyone had to be part of a team. OD attended all the team meetings where everyone spoke of how well we were doing, how well we were working together. And some small part of it was true, indeed a good deal of it was true, or could have been true, if things had been different. Most people wanted it to be true, or many did, and others, management by and large, struggled to gag it down. Still, there was a vague, but growing suspicion on the shop floor that something was just not right.

By then our stock was up to eight dollars and change, a big improvement over the four dollars a share back when the trailer was blown up. Ah, but it came at a cost. Our managers’ eyes were beginning to twitch, always glancing behind to see if anyone was watching them, listening to them when they talked on the phone. They were being worked to death, threatened and bullied to do more. Middle management drones like me received little one-on-one’s, ending with winks and hints to shut up and go along. It came out on the ride home, making car pooling an exercise in primal scream therapy, alternating with cursing in a monotone. I began to suffer more and more from cognitive dissidence, and depression, repeating myself, staring blankly in meetings, behavior that didn’t stand out or call attention to itself having sadly to have become the norm.

It wasn’t long after Martha’s grievance hearing that the JUMC dream was sold for over three times the asking price of our stock, bought by a bunch of silly Aussie bastards from down under. The CEO said it was just too good of a deal to turn down. Said it was in the best interest of the stockholders, something like that, like he had just stumbled across the idea. He and the rest of management, top management, were rich now, very, very rich, millionaires. Trouble was no one wanted to bust ass anymore. It all paid the same to a Shoe Tapper with nothing to believe in, no one to believe in. The Good Pig was cooked; JUMC coming undone like a Ponzi scheme after the principals are arrested. The union was angry, the shop floor was angry, everyone feeling betrayed and used. Long before the dream was sold, people were tired of the buzz words, the hoopla, the well intended charade, now, they were angry. The future had been badly overdone, over sold.

The union officials who had supported working with the company were voted out of office. People who promised they would never agree to anything were nominated and voted into office, carried in on a tide of spite and anger, people proven to be too stupid to be influenced by threats or reason. And, as they say, everything changed, Pete wasn’t a Union Steward any more, Martha retired early, the Mine Manager was sent into exile. Now grievance hearings were hostile before a word was said, no deals, no agreements. The price of copper that had kept us going now was going south. You could hear the sucking flush as the Good Pig swirled round and round, sinking into legend, into martyrdom.

The new company, BHP, wanted us to live up to our promises, being slow to realize that our promises had been made in the passion of courtship, passion which had cooled with the dawn. Let the buyer beware, and so forth. They didn’t though; soon the new owners were angry and developing a taste for pork. Back at the home office, 'down under,' the new company’s stockholders were pissed off; stock prices were falling, heads rolling. It wasn’t long before the new company needed to economize, deciding to downsize, starting with us. When the early out packages were announced, I grabbed mine and walked out of the meeting to pack and be on my way by the end of shift. Truthfully I felt bad about it, running off like a coward, but I had had enough. I just couldn’t stand being there anymore, finding it hard to think, very hard. It’s strange suddenly coming face to face with limitations you didn’t know you had. Not long after I left, the plant closed; the mine flooded, and it was over.

All that’s left now is a mountain of white sand. Over the years, three quarters of a billion tons of muck had been skipped to the surface from that mine, each ton producing just twelve pounds of copper. The rest is this pile of sand behind the mill, or where the mill was before they tore it down. The sand is white, sterile, lifeless; finer than beach sand. I can’t say what chemicals might remain behind there, traces of arsenic, I suppose, not enough to get upset about. The mine was located on the backside of Mt Lemon, a forty-five mile drive from Tucson, Arizona, now it’s gone. The town the company built for the workers back in the fifties is still there, though the hospital closed. The plant below the town: the mill, refinery, smelter, railroad, maintenance buildings are gone, even the smokestacks are gone. And the thirty-five hundred people who had worked there, most of them are gone as well. All because some greedy bastards killed the Good Pig, killed it and ate it all at once.

We all swim in a sea of self-interest, some swimming further out than others. The corporate world knows this, being born of institutionalized greed, greed that reaches down to the shop floor, and the faintest whiff of opportunity. When opportunity fails for lack of substance and profits fall short of expectations, all promises are off, the best of intentions quickly forgotten. There is nothing colder than a negative earnings statement in a quarterly report. In our JUMC meetings we had talked of stakeholders, one of our buzzwords. One such stakeholder was the livelihood of our employees, their families, our way of life. In reality there is no stakeholder, except the stockholder, the amorphous stockholder who lives in abstract numbers and doesn’t give a damn about Good Pigs. When people become numbers, abstract symbols in someone’s program, honesty, integrity, and ethics become inspiring, yet deceitfully self-serving buzz words. No good intention, no promise will stand in the face of economic reality when the quarterly report makes bacon of all Good Pigs.

Momma's God, or why I became Buddhist

Momma’s God (or why I wound up Buddhist)
by
Ed Parker

“Poor folks got poor ways.” Something Pop often said for no particular reason I could find. He’d say it and let it hang there, didn’t go into any detail or give examples. He said it like the meaning was clear given the situation, which it wasn’t. Anyway, I didn’t get it. Truthfully, I didn’t want it. I mean, what’s there to get, besides there was that obviousness about it that I found distracting. Ok, we were poor, very poor, dirt poor. I knew that and didn’t need him to point it out to me, being a fairly bright lad. And it wasn’t like we had suddenly become poor. Oh my no, we’d always been poor. I just didn’t get why he kept on about it. It was depressingly unhelpful. But then, I was stuck too. I couldn’t get past the idea that our problem was money, a lack of money, thinking if we had money, life would improve. Then one night it came to me. He was talking about religion, religion in general and Momma and her God in particular. I know, I know, it didn’t make much sense to me either, not at first. Truthfully, the idea came to me in a moment of such awesome clarity that I immediately rejected it as crazy, having a high regard for sanity back then, being young and all. It goes like this: religion consumes poor people, occupies their life like a family of nine in a one bedroom house, there’s just no room for anything else. I guess I should have seen it earlier; the pieces were all around me, like one of Momma’s crazy quilts.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t have other problems, being young, vulnerable; facing high school in the fall. School had been painful the last few years. Not that I didn’t enjoy learning, I did, it was the inmates, the draftees from backyards and playgrounds, fresh faced and scrubbed that I abhorred. Young people had few distractions back then, beyond the torture of one another. School was like a giant chicken yard, everyone anxious to avoid being singled out as weak, being poor made things worse. School had me feeling like some bloody beaked chicken without a feather in his ass and then to be forced to confront religion? It just wasn’t fair, but then, well, angst is a bitch.

It would be fair to say I had no idea what I was getting into, no idea when I volunteered to go, so boldly, so cavalierly, off to Momma’s church or that it would end so ignobly. I simply wasn’t prepared; maybe nothing could have prepared me, given the circumstances.

I should explain that I’m the product of a mixed marriage, my mother being Pentecostal, my father leaning more toward the philosophical, being a practical man and old when I was born, older when my baby brother Frankie was born. Pop was proud as hell at first, being a father at his age and said so, or so I‘ve been told. And I don’t doubt their word, but then apparently, the surprise wore off. Later, you could see the resignation in his eyes, he never talked about it, but it was there.

Pop had an opinion about most things, most of which he didn’t share with Momma, saying, “Poor folks got poor ways” like he was speaking in code, which he was.

Momma didn’t just believe in her God, she was past that, being well into certainty, seeing no separation between believing and knowing; just didn’t get the distinction. The way she saw it, God is real, and not just real, he fills the room with his presence. She knew he was there, so what’s there to believe?
“The Bible, dear, is God’s word,” she’d say, looking at me hard, eyes spilling love. She had a lot of love and neither God, nor I, made it easy for her. She always looked like she was about to cry and frequently did; it might have been depression, could well have been depression. She never doubted the Bible though. Not that she understood much of it, skipping over a good many details. I suspect she felt the same way about me. She read the Bible word for word, saying each word out loud, spelling it out; struggling to find something in the sound, something she once heard someone say. She didn’t try to understand everything she read, not being an arrogant person. Momma just wanted to understand what God was saying to her. She was a tolerant and forgiving woman, tolerant of those who didn’t hear the call, as she put it. All those poor ignorant sinners going to hell saddened her, and there wasn’t much she could do about it though she tried. She figured the size and population of hell was all part of God’s plan and it wasn’t her place to talk about the need of it. Then she’d look at me, her eyes full of sorrow, knowing I was going to hell too. It was a look that made me uncomfortable. Beyond that, near as I can remember, Momma left judging people up to God, though she couldn’t help worrying about my soul.

To a Pentecostal the infallibility of God is the primary rule that all lesser rules rely on. God wrote the Bible and it’s God’s truth, surpassing all other truth. I always had a problem with that part, but it seemed clear to Pentecostals, clear to Momma. I was always hearing, “The Bible is true because God said so, right there in the Bible, plain as the nose on your face,” just like it made sense. It didn’t though, the whole business seemed to go round in a circle, one requiring a bigger leap of faith than I could ever justify. I figured if you believe the Bible is God’s truth, then finding virtue in poverty and mercy in a heavenly father with a record of wholesale destruction wouldn’t be all that difficult. It just never made much sense to me. Anyway, I never got it.

Momma didn’t care about any of that and cried when I pointed it out to her. She knew I didn’t get it and forgave me, hoping some day I would. See, the Bible held no contradictions for Momma, like it did me. She never saw her God as being cruel, indifferent, and intolerably human. She believed in God and God believed in her. Her God was a benevolent God, a forgiving God, and all the starvation, wars, smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, all the Latin sounding nightmares I can’t spell could never shake that conviction. She wasn’t a reader and seldom watched the news, saw no need to. Momma would never have committed the least of God’s crimes, never have treated her children so poorly. Curiously, the idea of someone burning in hell for eternity seemed reasonable to her, one she accepted, though she found it sad. I never saw the need to hold a grudge quite so long and thought the whole concept mean spirited.

For Pop, it was simple too; he loved Momma and endured Momma’s God. If he believed anything it was, “Keep your chin down, lead with your left and keep jabbing. Stay on your toes, never let ‘em catch you flat footed.” Like I said, Pop wasn’t a tolerant man, but by then he was in his seventies, early seventies. He frequently lied about his age, opening the subject of his age to question. His mother died of tuberculosis when she was twenty-six and him still in dresses, the purpose of which escapes me, but I saw the picture. Sadly, the only memory he had of her was in a black box with silver handles, that and the picture. His father, for whatever reason, ran off to Mexico. All in all, an unfortunate set of circumstances that lent an indifferent quality to Pop’s upbringing.

Growing up in an orphanage certainly biased Poppa against what people called, ‘good intentions.’ He was strongly of the opinion that every ass whipping he ever got was due to someone’s good intentions, someone wanting to help him.

“They were never the least bit shy when it came to straightening me out, putting me on the right path. Got a lot of ass whippings out of pure educational charity, spent a lot of time flopped over a barrel learning to count: ‘How many, Mr. Parker? Twenty-three, sir.’ Whatever they were trying to teaching me didn’t take, unless it was counting. If counting, counted for much, I’d damn well be a mathematician today. Hell, I’d be some kind of mathematical genius, maybe found a cure for Republicans, damn their blood sucking eyes.”

Poppa never cared for Republicans.

Momma, being Pentecostal and from Oklahoma, wasn’t comfortable with your average church congregation. She felt the Southern Baptist were nice enough, though quiet. She said the same thing about the Four-Square, even a few Assembly of God’s. She did a lot of church shopping before she found Brother Nelson’s Friends of Jesus and Assembly of God in Hidesville.

Brother Nelson was Brother Nelson, coming from Oklahoma and a long line of Pentecostals, (I should point out that Oklahoma is less of a geographical designation than a cultural and religious statement, least it was). Now, Brother Nelson was a large, bald headed man with bad teeth and a booming voice, known for leaping into the air, shouting, “Halleluiah”. Sometimes he’d spin all the way around before hitting the ground, whether from spiritual emphasis or some rhythmic punctuation is unclear. Seems he did it at every opportunity, which apparently qualified him to be pastor, according to Pop. Now sure, Brother Nelson had his faults, wearing his faith like a coat of paint being the most obvious, assuming you cared to look. Most didn’t, so everyone except Pop thought he meant well. Pop struggled to tolerate Brother Nelson, eying him and his good intentions with great suspicion. Brother Nelson was full of good intentions.

“A hypocrite, nothing but a damned hypocrite,” Pop would say, though he was considerate of Momma’s feelings, saying it quietly, usually while feeding the chickens across the creek. The chickens and I learned a great deal about Brother Nelson from Pop. He would spend the better part of an afternoon reviewing Brother Nelson’s ethical distractions and moral discrepancies, his tendency to take advantage of another’s misfortune was of frequent concern. Then Pop would catch himself, laugh and shake his head, saying, “Poor folks got poor ways, wouldn’t you know it”

When Momma wasn’t around, and I was, he’d sit on the porch step and smoke his pipe, telling me stories. He had a knack for making the truth sound like lies, felt he had an obligation to keep the facts interesting, interesting being more important than factual, though he vigorously denied making any of it up. He had great pride in his presentation. He’d talk of running away from various orphanages, which he did with great frequency when he wasn’t fighting bullies or cussing out the authorities, any and all, authorities. He had been a boxer, a baker, a barber, a cook, sailor, miner, even spent some time in Russia during World War One, but mostly he was a farmer, which is how he met Momma.

He told me how Grandpa drove a school bus or something very like a school bus, all the way from Oklahoma to the promise land (California, this was during the Great Depression.) Coming to a road block of unemployed vigilantes, armed and hell bent on keeping the Okies out and down, Grandpa just kept on going. Pop noticed the scraped fenders and the bullet holes in the glass when he parked the bus behind the barn.

“I was sharecroppin’ cotton, there in the valley when I seen that bus coming down the road with a head stickin’ out of every window. Flagged it down and married your mother. Yes sir, I was happy to see them. Back then everyone was out of work, but no one liked to pick cotton, not for what I could afford and cotton don’t pick itself. They were all Pentecostal, the whole family, and they had every right to be, coming from Oklahoma. Good cotton pickers. No, your Momma’s Pentecostal fields had been plowed and planted years before she ever met Brother Nelson. He just showed up to pray for rain, the no account bastard.”

Now Mamma didn’t see Brother Nelson in the same light Poppa did. She saw him as a man touched by the hand of God, just like he said he was. There was no mistaking that Brother Nelson was a man given to advertising himself, considered it something of a public service. I can’t say that he started the church, but he did bring the congregation to life, which is what Momma wanted and what Poppa resented. Anyway, Momma became quite a church go’er, going to church four, five times a week, twice on Sunday, more if the opportunity presented itself. She was at home with the Friends of Jesus and Assembly of God church in Hidesville, where faith and self expression were one and the same and religious fervor and entertainment co-mingled. Easily said, yet mere words fail to grasp the reality of it.

While given to exaggeration on lesser subjects, Pop was wary of outright fabrication, at least not regarding Momma’s religious activities. He seemed to take scrupulous notes, considering himself an objective observer, indeed a paragon of truth and unbiased insight into the holy realm in which Momma spent so many happy hours. He often said so, using if not exactly those words, words to that effect, usually in a whisper. Much of what I know of the particulars of Momma’s God comes from him. Truthfully though, what I witnessed myself confirmed Poppa’s testimony regarding Bother Nelson, perhaps Pop's humor added somewhat to the sorry details, which badly needed amending. Anyway, I believed him.

Poppa despised Brother Nelson, a secret I can finally share if I haven’t already, now that all three of them have gone on to whatever comes next. Truthfully, Brother Nelson did much to save Pop’s soul, however unintentional that act of grace might have been, or unlikely the outcome. After meeting Brother Nelson, Pop concentrated all his efforts on being forgiving and patient, holding to most of the Ten Commandments, hoping honesty might give him an edge over a lying skunk. Admittedly this change in Pop came late in life, due to Pop’s fervent desire to avoid winding up in hell with Brother Nelson, given his dislike for the man and the expected duration of eternity. Pop considered Brother Nelson, “a hypocrite, a son of a bitch, and as big a sinner as God ever made.” And Pop had met several, being raised an orphan by Methodists back in Iowa, who were in his considered opinion, “A cold blooded bunch of sons-a-bitches.” From what he told me, I figure he had cause. On at least one occasion Pop offered to take Brother Nelson out behind the church and whip his ass, saying so in words to that effect. Pop’s reasons were never made clear to me; he never talked about it in any detail, being quick to change the subject. Frankly, despite Pop’s advanced years, I wasn’t shocked to hear it, still, I wouldn’t have known about it if Momma hadn’t brought the matter to God’s attention one night.

Momma considered God infallible, though somewhat hard of hearing and raised her voice appropriately; it may have been for emphasis. Anyway, I knew, my baby brother knew, the neighbors knew, and we all would have preferred not to know quite so much about it. And like I said, Pop wouldn’t talk about it. Momma had a high opinion of Brother Nelson, thinking he was touched by God and wouldn’t hear other explanations, certainly not Pop’s less charitable ones. She called it blasphemy, asking God to forgive such a miserable sinner, giving Poppa hard looks. Pop would roll his eyes and look away, careful not to let her see him. Come bedtime she’d go over it all again in her prayers, praying loud enough for God to hear, ignoring the neighbor’s pleas for quiet. It took me a long time to appreciate the humor of this.
Pop and I were given a great deal of love and forgiveness by Momma, by Momma’s God too, I suppose, anyway I can’t complain. Still, my interest in Christianity was sparked by a baser calling, one stemming from an excess of hormones and a lack of common sense. Momma started it, though it was hardly her fault.

Sunday nights, Momma would cast her eyes at me and Pop, a look patient and understanding, a look that spoke of our own good. Always in vain, Pop being reluctant, preferring the fights on the radio, or a baseball game, pleading headaches and so forth, I found something else to do, disappearing into my room after dinner. Still, every Sunday night she’d ask. Then one night during dinner she got the combination right, passing the mashed potatoes and saying:
“You can sit way in the back. No one will even notice you’re there. I’ll introduce you to Brother Nelson and some of the young people. Sister Olsen’s daughter Becky will be there. She said she would be - pretty little thing, all that nice blonde hair. She asked about you last night.”

My first thought wasn’t so much a thought as a vision of blondeness, of golden hair, tossing, writhing, on white sheets in the moonlight. Then: who is this Becky and why was she asking about me? All of which went unsaid for some reason, shyness I suppose. It didn’t occur to me at the time that mothers’ talk, and usually about their children. It would have saved me a good deal of grief if I had asked. But, no, I decided to change the subject, saying something along the lines of, “Brother Nelson? Pop, wasn’t that Brother Nelson who tried to sell you that little red sports car? Seemed like he wanted a lot of money for something that wouldn’t start.” It just came out. I said it to be funny, knowing how Pop felt about Brother Nelson. And then I wanted to let this blonde Becky thing simmer a bit.

Pop looked down at his plate, trying not to smile. “Ya, wanted six hundred for it. Said it would impress the neighbors, given a good waxing. Impress them with just how dumb we really are, I expect.” There was a hint of laughter in his voice, short lived and tapering off toward the end, clearly wishing he hadn’t started.

Being me, young at the time, maybe fourteen, I kept going on about it. “Momma, that car must have fell in love with Poppa. It sure didn’t want to leave. I get my license in a couple of years. Bet I could get it fixed by them.” And I didn’t waste any time thinking before shifting gears. “That Brother Nelson sure is a talker, isn’t he Pop? Poppa said he wasn’t interested, said so, four, five times. Brother Nelson must be a little deaf. Anyway, Brother Nelson finally got in it and me and Poppa pushed it down the hill; you know to get it started. Well, it starts to pick up speed then it lets out a bang and a big old cloud of smoke, everything disappears, Brother Nelson, the car, everything, gone. Brother Nelson, hacking and gasping like he was going to die, you should have seen it Momma. I wanted to call the fire department, but Pop said, “Let her burn.”

I laughed, being preoccupied with being witty and making a valley in my mashed potatoes for gravy, mashed potatoes being all about gravy, not paying much attention. Took me a moment to notice the silence, to notice Momma’s face had stiffened up. She was looking at Pop. Pop was looking at me, lips pursed, black eyes narrowed and shining. And I knew I’d screwed up, knew it was going to cost me, though I wasn’t sure what. Frankie, my little brother, scooped more mashed potatoes onto his plate, welcoming another shot at the mashed potatoes. He was fond of mashed potatoes.

Momma said, “Maybe it just needed a new battery? Anyway, it was nice of Brother Nelson to think of us.” giving Poppa a hard look.

“A new battery?” Poppa rolled his eyes, his voice fading away.

I heard something fall, saw Pop bending down under the table, his face out of sight beneath the red checkered oilcloth, took him a few moments. Next thing he’s washing his fork in the sink, talking over his shoulder, talking to me.

“You could talk to Becky about Brother Nelson’s car; show her the new battery. Brother Nelson must have gotten one by now. Maybe the radio works, worth a try?”

Pop’s voice startled me, first sounding on edge, then smooth as honey. And I was uncertain about what he meant by, “Worth a try.” So there I am of thinking of Becky, worrying about that sound in Pop’s voice, knowing I am in serious trouble. I confess fear played a large part in my calculations, fear of cleaning chicken coops. I was still upright so I figured he must be thinking the chicken coops needed cleaning, something horrible like that. And then, no one wanted Momma upset and she was headed that way, but not at me. Poppa was in for a prayin’ and I knew he blamed me. Frankly, this lull was getting to me, usually when Pop got mad, he’d go off like a firecracker and backhand you across the room, well, me anyway. He’d been lashing out at one thing or another since his mother died. Anyway, Poppa tended to explode and Momma was inclined to cry, neither one was much at holding back. None of that was happening, which worried me.

“If I remember rightly, it’s still parked behind the church, hard to see it for the weeds,” Pop seemed to be talking to himself staring out the window like there was something there.

I’m sitting there wondering where he’s going with this and yet, thinking it would be dark back there behind the church, among the trees and bushes. I can still see him standing there behind Momma, turning away from the window and looking at me with one eye and this evil little smile. Poppa’s sense of humor was more frightening than his temper, being sly and cunning like a bucket of rocks over the door. That look had to be about me smarting off, about getting even. I wasn’t thinking about church and Becky. I just knew it was time to clean out the chicken coop. I had a horror of crawling on my hands and knees through the stink and the soft wet squish inside of a chicken coop. Then there was that whole business of being hosed off in the yard, no one made it into the house smelling like that. I knew it would be a long evening alone with Pop, no going off to my room. I could see him thinking, working up a case for coop cleaning. Suddenly going to church with Momma started sounding pretty good, talking to blonde Becky behind the church, in the shadows, in the moonlight. I didn’t know Becky, had no idea what she looked like, but being blonde, Marilyn Monroe came to mind, as she often did, when Bridget Bardot was busy. I kept Bridget pretty busy myself, reviewing her pictures in magazines, that sort of thing. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom back then, reviewing and what not. Yes sir, going to church with Momma seemed just the ticket.

Momma’s church was on the other side of town, maybe three, four miles. You had to go through town, but it was a small town, one stoplight by White’s grocery store. Traffic was light, still it required some attention. Momma drove a white Plymouth Valiant, a basic automobile, entirely manual, three speed-on-the-column, AM radio, no buttons; no antenna. The demise of the antenna was recent; Momma lost it when she missed a turn coming down a hill, rolling the car over once or twice. On a good day, Momma was a poor driver, having little interest in the task itself, often letting her mind wander. Once, she drove into the side of a Chevron gas station pump. Drove straight into it, according to several witnesses who took turns shaking their heads, smiling, saying, “Ya, darnedest thing ya ever saw, almost looked deliberate, like she had something against Chevron, like she was aiming for it.” Words to that effect, near as I can remember. Then again they knew Momma, knew she knew she wasn’t the type.

Momma said, “Well praise the Lord, I must of been thinking of something else.” The police officer smiled as he wrote that down. He knew my mother.

The car itself offered testimony against Momma’s driving skills, explaining how the police officer knew Momma. The roof had skid marks where she rolled it over, dents in all four fenders, along the sides, from encounters with one thing or another, scratches too numerous to mention. Seatbelts were unknown; she wouldn’t have worn them anyway, preferring to rely entirely on Jesus.

The owner of the gas station adjusted the front bumper with a crowbar, so that she could drive home. Pop hammered out the bumper, touched up the scratches with a can of aerosol paint he kept handy for just that purpose. He didn’t go on about it, knowing that all that could be said had been said long ago.
I wasn’t thinking of her driving when I said I’d go, my mind being on blonde Becky, the way her hair would glow in the moonlight just like in the movies.

We were late for church and it was my fault. To my chagrin, I found I was out of my usual petroleum based hair preparation, hardly more than a finger full left in the jar, and me needing to have my hair just so. What choice did I have? So I said I wouldn’t go if we didn’t stop at White’s grocery store to get more. We missed the social hobnobbing Momma so enjoyed, and like I said, it was my fault.
“You’ll just have to wait until church is over to meet Becky.” Momma sounded a little short and I didn’t care to press her. She hurried on inside, and I followed.

The building housing the church had been a movie theater sometime back in the thirties. It had been a small theater, the floor ramping down to the pulpit, in front of where the silver screen used to be. It couldn’t have held more than a hundred people at the most. The builder had skimped on decoration, thinking the place would be dark most of the time. Now it was lit like the inside of the sun by rows of fluorescent lights, the hymn books being old and blurry. The seats hade been replaced long ago by short wooden benches on each side, longer ones in the middle, narrow aisles circled the outside like a race track.

The fluorescent light fixtures had been salvaged from an old school torn down by the congregation. They got the furnace there too, more than what the church needed Pop’s opinion, but Brother Nelson insisted, saying something like, “The Lord provides a way.” Had to rent a good sized truck, took a special permit to get it through town. Pop was constantly grumbling about the heat, accusing Brother Nelson of cranking up the furnace until the windows groaned. Said he did it just before they passed the plate. Said the son of a bitch would sometimes pass the plate twice, hoping they’d forget they already gave. Next thing you know everyone’s talking in tongues.

Inside, I sat in the back, as far back as possible and still be inside, listening to Brother Nelson preach, feeling uncomfortable being there, looking for Becky and all that blonde hair. Most of the congregation looked to be from Oklahoma, Texas, that general area. Poor people for the most part, poverty being a common affliction in people from that region, along with a tendency to put on weight. There were maybe, thirty, forty people there, mostly women, a few tired looking men, a scattering of children too young to get out of being there. The only blonde I could see had her hair braided and coiled like a ship’s hawser around the top of her head, Momma’s age and about twice her size, Momma being substantial in her own right. She was sitting down front on the center pew, a large woman in red corduroy, sharing a hymn book with a skinny balding man, looking like a an overstuffed chair next to a bare bulb brass lamp. Momma sat on the other end of the pew and when the singing started, she and that blonde woman cut loose in a high soprano voice that made the windows tremble. No introduction, No please turn to page number, nothing like that, they just let ‘er rip. When the singing died down, that blonde woman started shouting like she had lost all sense. Speaking in tongues they call it, being of no known tongue, I suppose. I’d heard of it, still it caught me off guard, in shock, and frankly, awe. Found myself struggling to keep from sliding off the bench, like my spine had gotten all rubbery and loose and I could feel the sweat running down my ribs. At the time I thought it was just me.

Pentecostals tend to be a pretty excitable bunch. Speaking in tongues when the hand of God is upon them and requiring a Pentecostal interpreter with a good sized Pentecostal dictionary to find any meaning in it. Brother Nelson seemed particularly well versed in tongues, never hesitating to leap in and sort things out. Soon as someone shouted out some gibberish, he’d preach on it, going on far longer than required if you ask me. He was a shouter, a shouter and a toucher, trotting out from behind the pulpit to grab one of his flock, women mostly, did it whenever the spirit moved him, whenever he had time to wipe the sweat away. A big man, he’d hold them up by the shoulders like an old shirt, crushing them to his chest, rocking slowly side to side. Overcome by the experience, he’d throw back his head and shout, “Hallelujah,” drawing it out, savoring each syllable. Clearly an emotional man, his red face shiny with sweat, he worried me going on like that. He’d stand for five minutes with his arms thrown out, back bowed way back, shouting “Jesus” at the ceiling, a miracle given his back trouble. Pop told me about Brother Nelson’s history of back problems.

Momma had volunteered Pop to go help dismantle that old school building, and Pop went, though he wasn’t happy about it. He grew less happy after Brother Nelson explained how back had given out on him several years before. Seems the tragedy left him totally disabled, forcing him to supervise the various work parties the church constantly required.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Praise the Lord.” That‘s what he told Pop, apparently in response to something Pop said, and likely it was more rudely worded than Pop intended, given Pop’s short temper and plainness of speech, which immediately got worse, or so it was reported. Anyhow, it got back to Momma, causing her to pray for his sinful, doubting ways, and she prayed loud. She prayed for us all, and she prayed with special emphasis for those needing God’s attention. Pop got a lot of God’s attention for about a week. Pop called it, “Being prayed on,” though never in Momma’s hearing. He held it against Brother Nelson, calling him “A snitch,” and worse, much worse.

All the benches were bolted to the floor, for safety reasons I imagine, except those reserved for kneeling in front of the pulpit. According to Pop, by the end of the night they’d all be down there shouting amen’s and hallelujahs at the floor, carrying on something terrible. I was curious about that, never thinking Momma might be one of them. I’d been warned; I’ll give Pop that, still the reality of it came as a shock.
Suddenly these people, women mostly, in ones and twos, high on Jesus and giddy with God, would heaved themselves to their feet and began to shout and holler, swaying back and forth, bending way back, arms flung wide, hands shaking, feeling the rapture, or so I’ve been told. I had no idea what was going on. They were speaking in tongues, shouting in tongues, with the occasional, “Hallelujah, praise be to Jesus.” Every time someone would shout, “Jesus”, there’d be a chorus of, “Amens.” And there, right in middle of them was Momma; it was enough to chill a young heart. I’m by nature curious, but cautious, so when grown women started dancing on the benches in high heels, stomping like flamingo dancers, well, I bolted.

Next thing I remember, I’m outside peeking through the windows, ducking into the bushes whenever I saw car lights. It was a terrible sight, wives and mothers, my own dear Momma, carrying on like that. They were dancing on the benches, nylons rolled up to their knees, pale fat knees flashing, arms out, head thrown back, old men and children leaping out of their way, husbands shouting at them to get down, running along beside them hoping to break their fall. A suicidal gesture given their relative size, showing what true love is all about, I suppose. They weren’t doing the ‘Can Can’ or anything like that, still it wasn’t right. I mean, I was a teenager, and a new one at that, which made it worse, teenagers being conservative by nature, having little tolerance for the eccentric behavior of adults. I know that now, but at the time it was just wrong, and it just kept getting worse. Someone pulled into the parking lot, maybe to turn around, maybe they were cops, I don’t know, but I was caught in their headlights. Caught and exposed peeking in a window. I must have snapped, it was all a blur by then. Anyway, I’m running across the parking lot, gravel flying, eyes darting in all directions, heart pounding, desperately looking for the car. If there was a thought in my head it was the hope that the car would be unlocked. Momma never locked anything, I knew that, I mean I knew that, but it didn’t matter. I would have thrown myself through an open window, had there been an open window or a hole in the ground.
I found the car, though I am not sure how. It is hard to stop, running crouched low like that, knees thumping against my chest. I slid the last few feet, jerked open the car door, and wedged myself behind the backseat. It wasn’t fear, well, not exactly, or even shock, although shock was close; it had that intensity. Call it an overwhelming sense of weirdness, of wishing I wasn’t there. I just couldn’t understand why people were acting like that, why my own mother was acting like that. Felt the same way about Viet Nam.

Service was over around ten o’clock. I must have been in the car since about eight thirty. Momma came out praising the Lord, saying Jesus with every breath. There was a lot of that going on as the other cars started to leave. I could hear that woman that sounded like Momma, shouting, “Jesus, Amen and praise the Lord.”

If Momma knew I was there, she didn’t let on. To my mind, she was drunk, though I knew she hadn’t been drinking, never had a drink in her life, but drunk all the same, drunk on Jesus. This woman was a stranger to me; Momma had become a different person, a woman in her own right, separate and distinct from being Momma. It’s a terrible thing, finding your mother is a person. As we lurched forward, Momma’s driving record came to mind, taking over, dominating my thoughts. I knew I was going to die.
I could see the headlines in the town paper, Mother and young son killed in car wreck coming home from prayer meeting. Mother suspected of being under the influence of Jesus. From a prayer meeting, a stupid prayer meeting! I pulled my ears down to my knees, trying to make myself disappear; holding on to that back door handle with a death grip. If I was going to die, it was going to be suicide. I had enough problems with school, having a horror of ridicule, being a freshman, or would be if I lived. I stayed hunched down in the backseat all the way home, coat pulled up around my ears, forehead pressed to the floor as we went through town. It was late, but not late enough. I didn’t look up often, but when I did there was Momma, head back and hand in the air, praising the Lord, bellowing Jesus at the top of her voice, ignoring me, ignoring my whispered pleas to stop, never giving me a glance. Now I admit I wasn’t in good position to see. Wasn’t a good witness, crouched on the floor like that, but I swear her hands never touched the steering wheel, never shifted a gear, never hinted at braking. I could feel that old car weaving, rocking from side to side, turning where it needed to, stopping when it had to; driving itself like an old carriage horse going home to oats and hay. It was a miracle, though I didn’t think so at the time, being unable to get past my own misery. I didn’t want anyone to see Momma, desperately didn’t want anyone to see me, especially me. It was depressing, and then, it got worse. I began to wonder how many times Momma had gone through town singing, hollering, and waving her arms? Hell, everyone knew. Everyone in town must have known everyone except me. I felt sick, which oddly enough cured my fear of dying, replacing it with a terrible dread of living. I could feel my heart being sawed open by the rusty knives of discovery and ridicule, and the certainty of death seemed somehow comforting. A teenager can die of embarrassment and frequently does, several times, given compelling circumstances. I held on to that thought.

Years later I got to thinking about how Momma got us home and realized I had no idea, no idea how we lived through it. There just wasn’t an explanation. I remember her throwing open the front door, shouting, “Praise the Lord,” and, “Jesus,” like she did every time she came home from church. Well, except when she rolled the car. She was pretty subdued by the time she made it home that night. God must have been thinking of something else? Easy to do, I guess. No one was injured; the car still ran, so maybe it was just a little slip up. She didn’t even mention it until Pop asked her about the branches in the bumper and the mud on the roof the next morning. She said she wasn’t sure. No one doubted her. The question may have been poorly worded.

Pop watched me come through the door, his chest heaving, “Did you see Becky?” he says, trying to control himself, failing. “Pretty little thing, takes after her mother. Yes sir, looks just like her mother. Now I know you had to have seen her mother, Sister Olsen, big woman, blonde, wears a red coat, sings like your mother, been known to break glass at fifty paces.”

It took me a minute, but finally I caught on, the blonde in the red corduroy jacket. Poppa let it all go, laughing, that silent, breathless laugh, whooping it up. Looking like he was going to cry. I ignored him, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, just walked on by. Life was all about me and I’d suffered terribly. It had been a difficult experience, a puzzling experience; just the church thing would have been enough, even without my mother’s participation. Then, there was the drive home. I lay there in bed trying to put the pieces together until I fell asleep.

I never saw Becky. Later, Momma said the poor girl had the flu, looking disappointed. I just changed the subject, and never went back to Momma’s church. I know, “Poor folk got poor ways."

Master Wabi

I’d just come up from the river, I can’t remember what I’d been doing there, something I shouldn’t have, I expect. It was summer, late August, school was starting soon and I spent as much time as I could down on the river bottom. Railroad tracks run between the river and highway and a train was going by, boxcars and flats, mostly empty. So was I, waiting impatiently for the train to pass, tired, hungry. Hungry comes on sudden when you’re twelve years old and haven’t eaten in a couple of hours. And the train was slowing, taking its time. Not every train stops in Fortuna, but this one was looking like it would, there was that long line of empty flat cars and Fortuna was a lumber town. I was looking down at those approaching cars with some misgivings, worried I wouldn’t live to see it pass. Given my weakened state and distracted mind, perhaps I can be excused for not seeing him earlier. He was standing on one of the flat cars, his hands crossed on top of a stick. One of those canes eccentrics carry, all twisted and knotted and entirely too long. The stick came up to his chin, had his hands folded over the top of it, smiling at me as the train rolled slowly by. That’s what caught my eye anyway, that stick and his teeth. Teeth so white they gleamed, a black, patchy beard, long grizzled hair shooting out as if electrified. Can’t say what he was wearing, something dark, an old bath robe, something like that. He might have been a black man, or maybe Chinese, not that I had seen much of either. As he passed me, his eyes vanished and suddenly I was looking into two holes into outer space, well you know outer space was in the news a lot then. OK and the sun was low and behind him. It might have been the light, and then I was real hungry. He smiled as if he knew me, never moving as he passed by, his eyes seemed to linger, touching me. I felt them long after the trained had passed, felt them as I ran home. It was a feeling hard to describe, an unsettling feeling that left me feeling vaguely uneasy, a trifle terrified. It was a weird feeling, like my feeling that way was my own doing, not his. This was true of course, it was just strange knowing it so clearly.

I saw him several times after that, staring back at me from a passing bus, or truck. Just fleeting glimpses of hair like that, those eyes, teeth white like that. It bothered me the way he kept turning up, like I was being stalked. Like any minute someone would give me a check for a million dollars, saying it was from him, that kind of stalking, no sense of him being a threat. Still I wasn’t interested in introducing myself, invite him home for dinner, nothing like that. And then, he did look crazy. I mean, why me? It wasn’t that I stood out, kind of a pale skinny kid, I read a lot and kept to myself, didn’t get along with other kids my age, or any age, for that matter. I’d read in my room or go down to the river. Saturday afternoons I’d mow a few lawns, earn enough money to go to the movies. Movies were cheap then and didn’t start until one o’clock. I could mow several lawns by noon. Maybe being boring qualified me for something in his eyes, strangely I began to hope so, or some other heretofore unknown or unrecognized virtue that set me apart. Like the feeling I had that my real parents had left me with this poor but honest family as they fled the country to avoid prosecution. I mean I loved my parents, but I had convinced myself I wasn’t like them. Looking back on it, I think most kids feel that way, some kids anyway, kids like me.

When I turned sixteen, I dropped out of high school, being full of myself and a tad lazy, sure I was a genius. I hitched everywhere, having more time than money: Eureka, Garberville, Bridgeville, Redway, Blocksburg, Willowcreek; all the hotspots behind the redwood curtain. I spent a lot of time in the back of pickup trucks with the kids and dogs. You could do that back then, smile, keep your mouth shut; people would treat you pretty good. Spent a lot of time listening to truck drivers, truck drivers seemed to have a need to talk; they gave me a lot of rides. There’s an art to hitching, you have to pick your spots from a driver’s point of view, especially truck drivers. Long straight stretches of highway are good, gives a driver time to think about giving a nice young man a ride. Trucks need a long, straight stretch to stop, an important fact to bear in mind. It helps to smile and I smiled a lot back then, in a vacant eyed sort of way. I’d discovered weed not long before and often smiled, keeping an eye out for VW vans, buses painted like rainbows. They need long straight stretches of highway, takes them a while to think about stopping.

I’d been down to Garberville working for a gorilla grower I know, trimming buds and getting high. Coming back it starts to rain, and being on a roll, my ride takes the Redway exit, letting me out under the overpass. So I’m standing there a few miles south of Redway, next to nowhere, waiting for the rain to stop, holding a grocery sack of apples. Some kind of bread truck pulls up, the door slides back and I hear someone get out. I don’t pay much attention, being stoned, my mind set on leaving. So I’m reaching down for my bag of apples, apologizing for what I had been saying about Redway, I had just learned about karma. Then I hear the truck engine groan, shifting gears, pulling away. Watching it leave, thinking, son of a bitch, I just spaced on a ride.

“Them apples?” It’s a cheerful sounding voice, still I’m thinking about the ride I just missed, wondering if this was some kind of karma joke. And then the light is bad under there, having that late afternoon murkiness about it. Redwoods tend to block the light, being tall, crowding the highway like a sky high curtain of dusty red-brown bark and swooping green branches. All the light is outside in the rain.

“Apples?” I say, being none too quick and badly distracted by the weed, youth, and stupidity. Anyway, standing ten, fifteen feet away is this light blue bathrobe. Someone’s in it, but I haven’t got there just yet, the bathrobe has my attention, the dark hairy legs and the white flip flops. Then I see that it’s him. The guy on the train, the one I’ve been seeing. He’s standing there waiting for me to get used to him, I guess. I mean if he had been any closer, he would have had to catch me. The urge is there, pot tends to make you a little paranoid. It’s that paranoia that goes with the euphoria, I suppose. Still, you don’t just walk up to someone out in the middle of no where. Not me anyway. I’d heard too many truck driver stories, usually about Southern California, but then he was wearing flip flops. My mind has gone blank, trying not to let on, but he scared the shit out of me, showing up like that. Time’s doing a slow stretch and I’m trying to remember what the hell he said, and feeling the tension. It was really good pot, conducive to introspection, meditation, boxes within boxes, thoughts of infinity.

“Them apples?” Sounding like he’d said it before, and saying it little louder like I was deaf.

“Ah, ya. I ah, got a ride with this old couple; been picking apples. Ah, told me about an old orchard up in the hills.” I’m listening to myself talk, finding my conversation tedious having heard it before someplace, wondering about that too, wishing I’d shut up. “Ah, gave me a sack of apple——apples.” My brain was still looking for something to say, but my mouth was too dry.

“So many apples. You were lucky to meet such generous people.” Something in his voice makes me relax a little. The way he said it I guess, couldn’t have been what he said. Still, I’m staring at him, looking at that bathrobe, gradually catching the hint.

“Ah, sure. Ah, help yourself,” holding out the bag.

“Thank you,” he says, stepping forward, reaching out for the bag. Now, I’m maybe not paying attention like I should have, what with him showing up out of nowhere, scaring the hell out of me. Still, that stick just appears in his hand. He could have had it behind him, but I seen his hands. No stick, then he’s holding that stick. Well, it startles me. Anyway, my fingers go numb and I drop the bag. And he catches it before it hits the ground. Weed can make you stupid, well not stupid, easily distracted, OK stupid too, but it doesn’t make you see things, not like that. Suddenly he’s in my face, closer than I want him to be——and my cotton mouth gets chalky. “Sorry,” I say, stepping back, having grave doubts about my sense of time, struggling with my personal space thing. Feeling like my life is getting away from me. Not comfortable at all, looking over my shoulder to see if it’s still raining. Thinking I could drink the rain if I held back my head and stuck out my tongue as I ran, wanting to run, wanting very much to run. The image is embarrassing, given the cause for it is eating an apple with one hand holding the bag with the other, not bothering with the core, eating it all, big white teeth chomping, cheeks working. Two, maybe three bites and its gone. Then he smiles, holding out the bag to me like this is normal. I don’t see any stick. Where is the damn stick?

“Good apple.” His voice sounds appreciative. Then he sort of wrinkles his forehead and starts in. “There is no taste to the word, apple, and no smell, nothing to bite. Makes you wonder.” Turns his head and looks at the rain. “Wonder? Wonder what? It’s a word?” I say, taking the bag, stepping back a little, keeping an eye on him.

“What does the apple call itself?” he asks, looking up with great interest at the bottom of the overpass.

“Calls itself? Apple’s an apple——?” I have no idea where this is going, but not wanting to upset him. Thinking he’s a little upset to begin with, maybe a lot? I mean what do you say to something like that?

“Apple’s a word. What I ate was not a word. You think that bag is full of words?”

“No it is full of apples. They’re called apples. Everyone calls them apples. I mean. . . .” Then I start to get a hold of myself. “They’re apples. Hey, I don’t know what an apple calls itself. I call it an apple. I may talk to an apple, but I don’t expect it to answer. I mean I hope it doesn’t answer.” I feel great sincerity saying this, feeling no doubt, no reservation.

“They’re apples,” he says and grins like maybe he’s upset me and didn’t mean to. I grin too, feeling a little better. The feeling passes quickly. The bathrobe thing is tugging at me. Light blue and yes, terrycloth, the kind you tie. There is a ‘hers’, embroidered on the pocket. His legs are dark and hairy and then there are those white flip flops with yellow plastic daisy’s on the toe band. He notices my noticing, following my eyes down to his flip flops.

“They were a gift. I couldn’t refuse.”

“A gift? Ah, no, of course not. That would be rude.” I say, almost laughing. I mean I don’t, but I’m feeling better, thinking I can out run anyone wearing daisy covered flip flops.

“I saw these people bathing. Bathing makes people feel good, doesn’t it? They were enjoying themselves, laughing, chasing each other in the water, looking for someone named Marco Polo. So I got in the water with them and introduced myself.” He pauses a moment, looking concerned. “Perhaps I should have introduced myself first? They seemed surprised to find me there.” He frowns and purses his lips, then looks at me. “Why do people bath with their clothes on? That seems strange, don’t you think. Still, they wanted me to have these things. It seemed important to them. I couldn’t say no.”

Inside I’m laughing, knowing why they would insist on giving him the bathrobe, at least until the police arrived. Still, my head is hurting, trying to sort this out. This is so strange. Oh yes, you have to give it that. No one hitch hikes in a bathrobe and flip flops. Ok, flip flops, but not in the rain. It’s not where some people would have gone with this, but I have hitch hiking on my mind, wanting to leave. I’m having serious doubts about this conversation, very serious doubts. It feels like it’s moving around on me. Maybe, maybe he doesn’t exist and I’m talking to myself. I want to reach out, see if he’s real——but not that bad. I decide to stop talking, thinking I’m making this worse. Maybe he’ll just disappear.

Then I see this black and white coming down the off ramp. I’ve got a Maraschino cherry jar in my coat pocket. Rick’s old lady filled it with buds, one toke African ditch weed, best in the world. Shit ya smoke when there is no need to go anywhere, or do anything, maybe listen to a little music, watch the sky. The shit does something to time and space, slows things down so you can see the details. Suddenly wishing I had had that toke before I left this morning. The jar is long and narrow, the buds just fit inside, five perfect buds, the purple green hairs looking lightly sugar coated, sticky. You have to take them apart with tweezers because they stick to your fingers and you can’t smoke your fingers. And here I am talking to a fruitcake in a pale blue terrycloth bathrobe. I can see my mother’s face crying in the visitor’s room window. Wanting to know what she did wrong. The Maraschino cherry jar feels huge, obvious, like a big hard on, like singing first tenor in the choir with a big stiffy, feeling naked with no where to go. The cop has to see it. He’s slowing down, rolling down his window. I’m fucked. Knowing I’m about to be face down on the hood of that patrol car, cold steel biting into my wrists, tasting dust and bird shit. It’s raining, but terror is a demon of suggestion.

“Good afternoon.” He's all short hair and mirrored glasses, looking like he just transferred up here from LA, smiling. He knows I’m fucked and knows I know it. Must be thinking, ah, a young druggie and an old lunatic pervert, got the makings of a major drug ring. Bet he’s got an application in with the FBI. “Good afternoon Officer. I smile too, though it feels crooked and strained. “Where you heading?” he says, still smiling, enjoying himself.

“I’m ah——waiting for my brother-in-law to pick me up on his way home from work. Should be here soon. I ah, was out hiking; picked some apples. Thought maybe I could get my sister to make a pie.”

“In the rain?” he says, his teeth huge, white new like tombstones.

“Rain? Ah, yes, rain. Well you know it wasn’t raining when I started. I’m from Arizona. Tucson, just visiting my sister for a few days. She wants me to join the Army. You know, “Be all I can be.”

He laughs and says, “Stay out of trouble.” Then just drives away. Not a word about the guy in the powder-blue terrycloth bathrobe, nothing about my eyes, my flaming embers from hell eyes, my glass stiffy. Now I’m worried, feeling my bowels turn watery and loose. Maybe it was the apples, hoping it was the apples, knowing it wasn’t the apples. Oh, maybe they helped, giving me an air of sincerity and innocence, maybe, if I was alone, but I’m not alone. I’m standing next to a guy in a light blue terrycloth bathrobe with a pink ‘hers’ embroidered on the pocket. And he didn’t even call it in. I would have called it in. Maybe, he doesn’t want to let on. Maybe there is an all points bulletin out for a maniac in a light blue terrycloth bathrobe with a pink ‘hers’ on the pocket. I haven’t been keeping up with the news, not since Kennedy was killed.

He’s smiling, rocking heel to toe, bouncing a little on the toe, looking at my bag of apples. “These will make a fine pie, I think?” His eyebrows crowd together, studying the apples with great concentration. “How do you make this pie?” “Pie?”

“Ah yes. Your sister, she makes good pies?”

‘I don’t have a sister.”

“You told him you have a sister?”

“I lied.”

“You lied.” His voice sounds wistful and sad; disappointed.

“He ignored you?” I figured I might as well say it.

“I wasn’t here.”

“Oh sure, now you’re lying.” That’s when he hit me.

“Get up, I will hit you again.” His voice sounded distant. I lay there thinking about that, about how strange his voice sounded. Distant, as if it were coming from the next room and the door was closed. Then the pain set that thought aside. Pain makes me sick, most kind of pain; this kind of pain. My nose, my face was filled with pain, terrible pain. I look down at myself laying there on the pavement, feel the little rocks digging into my back, nose pointed at my ear. I think about that for awhile. Getting up never crossed my mind. Hoping help would be here soon, FBI, Sheriff’s Department, Forest Rangers. I’m willing to go to jail, very willing, looking forward to it.

“You hit me?” It sounded odd, kind of stuffed up. Besides I didn’t mean to say it, hadn’t given it a thought. Didn’t want to call him a liar either, odd that I did; down right peculiar, never called a crazy man a liar before.

“Of course I hit you. There is no one else here, is there?”

“Why did you hit me?” I had decided to keep him talking. A trick I learned watching Lassie, keep them talking while Lassie gets help. Run Lassie, run. “Call me a liar and wonder why I hit you? Of course I hit you. Did your parents teach you to be rude or are you an orphan. For your parents sake I hope you are an orphan. Even allowing for cultural differences, you are a rude and stupid boy.”

“I am sorry. Very sorry, I called you a liar.” I didn’t have to think it out, it just came to me. I felt like a puppet. A puppet with a sore nose and echoes in its head; it was really weird.

“Indeed you are, you pot head puppet. That’s why we should talk. Truthfully, I have little faith in talking. Words being words and not what they mean. Apples for instance, apple is a word. It has no taste. No smell. I was just talking about that wasn’t I? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Apples?” It sounded familiar and safe. Help would be here soon. Wait, wait, he called me a pot head puppet. I wasn’t sure where to take that so I dropped it.

“You’ve got your life in a sorry state, Leroy. What are you going to do with yourself?

“Lee Roy.” I almost tried to get up. “It’s Lee Roy. Two words: Lee Roy.”

“I could hit you again?” He sounded curious, as if he wanted to be helpful. Then he went on, not hearing anymore out of me, “I will call you Wrong Foot. Yes, Wrong Foot, a name is only a word, with a words limitations, still Wrong Foot captures something of your essence.” He stops to look at his finger. A right forefinger, but I could be wrong, being at a bad angle. Suddenly he points his finger at the rain. “A finger pointing,” his voice full of meaning. A private thing apparently, I don’t get it.

“Ah, really, you can call me Wrong Foot if you want to.” It feels so stupid.

“I like it better than Wrong Way or William, much better than William.”

“And ah, you are . . . ?” I felt I had to say something.

“Wabi. Master Wabi. Today we shall speak in W’s, he giggled. ”A little joke.” Giggled? I lay there staring at the cement supports of the underpass, thinking I’m screwed. After a while, I hear him sigh.

“I shall be direct.” “Direct?” There was an ominous tone to his voice that worried me. “What do you feel now?”

“Pain.” I didn’t want to go on about it.

“There is no confusion is there?”

“No.”

“That is direct. There must be no confusion. This pain you feel is it real?” “Feels real.” Actually I was feeling better, laying there in the wet. It didn’t look like he was going to kill me. I doubted he even wanted to kill me. He was making a point. A point? Realizing I had no idea what point, but it didn’t matter. He was going about it much like my father would have, spontaneously, but without Poppa’s anger. Poppa had a lot of anger, though to be sure he kept it to himself when Momma was around. Momma would pray for him. She would pray long and loud, anywhere, anytime the need arose, being from Oklahoma; people from Oklahoma answer only to God. Poor Poppa was locked in a cage of embarrassment, only time and silence could free him. I found myself wishing Momma was there, wishing I had sent Lassie after Momma, wishing there was a real Lassie.

“Lee Roy,” he said peering down at me. “There are only two things in life. What you know, and what you think you know. I have decided to help you know the difference.” Then he smiled. “Now you know pain. Now, this is not pain.”

He touched my nose with his stick and the pain stopped. Then I realized I wasn’t stoned anymore. It took me a minute.

“You get it Lee Roy, or do we start over? Do not rush to answer, time is not an issue. Time just keeps everything from happening at once. His eyes seemed very brown, warm, not like anything else, very brown, warm eyes, with their own unique nature.

“There is a lot to know about pain, about not pain. I get that much.” I don’t know where that came from, but it was true and I knew it was true.

“Well then get up. Who do you know that makes pies?”

The Red Dog

The Red Dog by Ed Parker

We had driven down from San Diego, down to Rosarita Beach for Thanksgiving. A fast hour’s drive into Northern Mexico with the windows rolled up tight, to a rented condo in the Norte Americano reservation between the poverty and the greasy blue sea. The kind with armed guards at the gate, search lights in the watch tower, razor wire fences, it gave that impression. The first day was warm and sunny, then it rained, and then, then we went shopping. How they got me in the car, I don’t know. True, I wasn’t a well man. The night before had started shortly after breakfast the day before, near as I can recall. Its dust and ashes were still with me. Mexican Sunshine, someone called them, made with fresh squeezed tequila, raspy. Anyway the family was off shopping and I needed a drink of water, something with ice. Wasn't’t going to happen, not here, for here was pottery, dusty flannel, used straw sandals, rough woven cotton ponchos twisting in the wind. It was some kind of Mexican strip mall with open front stalls and tin roofs that may have been cool in the summer time, but thundered in the rain. Not a beer in sight.

We had parked too close to the road, and the road, like all roads in Mexico fared poorly when it rained. The dust that had previously filled the potholes was now a watery mud thrown about disdainfully by the stolen Chevy pickups, sixty something Impalas, four door Buicks, aging mufflerless trucks. From time to time, the car would shudder and sway beneath a gray brown deluge as some truck driver shouted and laughed, pounding his horn. Still, the hiss of car tires, the spraying mud, the cursing, drowned the chatter of the shoppers, something of a mixed blessing. Shopping to the wife’s mother, sisters and sister in law was like a fox hunt with too many hounds. I could hear their laughing banter go by at a trot, their whoops of laughter, a progress report as they wound their way through endless aisles of red pottery, driftwood furniture, weeping Mary, mother of Jesus, statues, Last Supper tapestries, Elvis and bright red 57 Chevy’s on black velvet,: pieces of Mexican heaven. I tried to read and failed, just couldn't focus.

Out of the corner of my eye, my mind's eye, I found myself watching a red dog just up the road. I slowly felt drawn in by him. He sat in a passing place, a waiting place beside the road, far enough back to see, to be seen, turning his head to follow the passing cars, looking in the windows. I could see him shivering, his head upright, golden eyes searching each car. He didn't beg; throw back his head and howl, as many would. Red and wet, an Irish setter, Lab mix, something like that. He flinches a bit from the wet and flying grit that falls around him, looks up the road watching the passing traffic. Floppy ears slightly raised, his eyes follows the cars, always the cars. Almost full grown, old enough to know his name, to know to listen for that familiar sound, he sits watching, waiting for that particular car. Old enough to know, as all well-mannered dogs know, what’s expected, and to trust, he has that dignity. You could sense it wasn't about the atta boy cookies, though he could use one now. Hell, times get tough; we could all use a cookie. He knew “stay” and stayed, had that look about him. No other reason I could see. No telling how long he had been sitting there. He was there when we arrived and we had been there too long. Still, he doesn't beg or throw back his head and howl, as many would have, as I would have. From time to time he glances my way, his soft brown eyes moving on without interest. And I look away, not wanting to see those eyes, I look beyond the road to where the sky passes into the dull shine of a sea slipping up the flat, barren, shore. There is no emotion there, no caring, no sign of sunny Mexico.  And I'm just me, waiting, waiting for my family to return, me and that red dog.

What would cause someone to leave a dog in such a place? Could someone just forget a big red dog? I don’t think so. No, it was a family dog. It had that look. There were other dogs, dogs looking like they belonged there, peering out from under steps, staying out of the way of the customers. Not like that red dog. He had the dignity and patience of one long used to forgiving. He didn't get there on his own. Clearly out of place, he looked worried. How could he not be worried? All order in his life had vanished, the cookies, the dinner bowl; the cushion at the foot of the bed. Now you belong here, now you don’t. Sorry, it’s just not working out. How do you explain that to a dog? He sits and waits, his loyalty like a dirty flag, depreciating all that we claim to hold dear. Commitment, honor, it’s the value we give life, the value we get from life. And his confidence was wearing thin: you could see it in his eyes, the slow turn of his head, the slow wag of his tail at some near familiar sound, some near familiar sight. The tail wags, slows, stills.

I can’t help thinking some child is waiting somewhere for their dog, listening to explanations that grow steadily more frightening. Thinking, am I next?  It can’t be far from their mind. What if I am too much trouble? Who will take care of me? Learning early that anything can be justified, anything can be set aside, that cruelty and indifference, however well intended, however soften with lies, remain fundementally unchanged. Put the smell of bullshit into a kid’s head, and it never goes away.

Maybe, someone lost a job? Maybe, there was a divorce? Maybe, some suddenly single mother slipped out of the house late one night to take him away, unable to feed one more mouth? He must have jumped into the front seat thinking he was going for a ride? Dogs love to go for a ride. Did she toss a cookie out the door, “fetch, boy”? Must have, he would still have the ball. Did he try to follow as she left in the car, whining when she wouldn't let him back in? Did she stop and tell him to stay? Stay. Someone told him to stay. Did she cry when she told the children that Old Red ran away? Or Rojo? Or did she call him names, saying he was no good; then loudly waste an afternoon looking for him. It’s hard being a mother, hard being poor. Who was watching the children? I shouldn't go there. Headlines at the checkout counter: Children die in fire while mother abandons family pet. Maybe she had a boy friend, maybe he took the dog away. That relationship will never work out, not starting like that, shouldn’t anyway.

Stupid dog. For all my sudden awareness of everyday sorrows, of remorse and pity too common for daytime television, I do nothing. Everyday tragedies, tragedies that well up and wash over, and eroding all sense of humanity, and so seldom move us to act. If they did, wouldn't we?

Maybe the family was rounded up and deported back to California. The irony tugs at me, making me smile. The smile slips away unnoticed. There are a thousand reasons, more, stories of sorrow hedged with indifference, stories without commitment, stories of everyday passing places, of trash filled estuaries flushing into the sea. Places like this. There’s no reason, or there are too many reasons, I’m not sure it matters anymore. Still, only the illusion of security separates us from that red dog. How many of us will hear the car door slam, tires biting into the gravel, flinging cold and wet behind and watch as all we’ve ever known leaves.  only to find ourselves behaving with far less dignity than that big red dog. Should we, in that moment of separation, of abandonment, feel more or less pain for having known the reason why?