Chapter 54

54

Standing knee deep in a quick moving creek, I simply soak up the sun that pours down upon me from the sky above. Usually, at this time of day, on this glorious of an afternoon, people pack this place with inner tubes and coolers of beer. Yet, on this peculiar day, this kingdom is empty. I stand-alone with my oneness.

It was just yesterday that I felt miserable, slow to get out of bed, lackadaisically making coffee and meandering mundanely about the house without any hope or promise. A tiny piece of me was floating somewhere just out of reach, and although the writing might have flowed a bit better yesterday, creativity is a poor substitute for contentment. I’d stop writing forever if each day could bring such empowerment.

But what is it that has brought about such a change in my personal state of being? It seems that she might have had something to do with it.

Most people choose coffee shops to read, write or study. However, it is truly a poetic soul that understands the intellect that lies halfway though a pint of beer. I found her sitting alone at the other end of the bar, book in hand, a kindred spirit who was delving into the pages of an Ibsen play while I was styling Borges.

She must have been in her early thirties; I had shaved off most of my beard. She was atypically beautiful; I was chewing my thumbnail down to the quick. We were at two different points in our lives, yet forced to meet at opposite ends of this sparsely populated hole in the wall.

I had ordered another round and sent a duplicate drink to her as well. As the new drink arrived she took a break from Henrik to look across the bar at me. She said thank you, first with her eyes, and then mouthed those two words with a soft parting of her thinly painted lips. A slight breeze moved through the windowless bar as those inaudible words hit my ears.

Then she returned to her world, dove back into Ibsen, and I returned to my Borgesian scribbling. There were no further words exchanged, no sleepless nights lost between the sheets of a hotel bed. That night, our paths crossed in the simple purchase of a beverage, a glass half full that has changed me, however so slightly, for the better.

And now I stand, alone in this creek, waiting for others to show up with their dogs, lawn chairs, Styrofoam coolers and raucous Sunday laughter. Sooner or later the population explosion will happen upon this creek side. Perfect days never last forever. But until then, until the quiet is interrupted by children in song, I’ll remain here, soaking up the memory of a wordless conversation and a half filled pint of beer

Chapter 53

53

Waking up on a Sunday morning.

Or is it Saturday?

Maybe Monday.

My brow is wet. The nightmare of memory that came calling last night…poking, prodding…is still lingering just above me like a shadowy haze on a warm summer night. They’re still low enough, those memories, to reach out and grab, connecting once again to those horrors of a life less lived, a life wasted on degeneration and contempt. I could wallow in those decimated dreams, but I’d hate to linger in bed this morning. It smells like John is cooking breakfast.

Eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, fresh squeezed orange juice, a giant cup of coffee and a small glass of milk to cool the back of my throat from the dozens of cigarettes I smoked on the back porch last night. I follow the smells out of bed and into a pair of blue jeans that I haphazardly stepped out of before collapsing into the sheets. Those same jeans lead me out the door and down the hall into the kitchen.

It made sense to see John standing there, one hand on a large frying pan and the other holding a metal spatula like some sort of swashbuckling breakfast pirate. It was also reasonable that he would be wearing an apron, a pair of moccasin-esque slippers and pajama pants. What didn’t make any sense to me was who I saw sitting at the breakfast table, placing a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth.

I thought it was a bit of an incubus that had followed me here from the bedroom, galloping past my head, ceiling high, and seating itself at the table before I could make my way down the hall. She couldn’t be real, sitting there, eyes lightly shadowed and hair covering her ears. I can feel my heart racing, the nerves bubbling up in my stomach like a cauldron, and John, with his spatula in hand, is aggressively stirring the concoction.

I am frozen in disbelief. She continues to eat, unaware of my presence, which is perhaps for the best. I can make my way back out into the hallway and back into the bedroom, pretending this never happened. Pretending that I didn’t just walk into my best friend’s kitchen and that she isn’t eating scrambled eggs and reading the Sunday comics.

But I linger too long. I can’t make my legs move. And she looks up and sees me for the first time in over twenty years.

She drops her fork. Eggs scatter like fruit flies.

“Richard…I can’t believe it’s true.”

Her voice knocks the wind out of me and I double over in physical pain. I drop to my knees as the tears begin to stream from Jamie’s beautifully engaging brown eyes.

Chapter 52

52

All the experts say that you’re not supposed to write about these sorts of things.

- No one wants to read about that, Richard.
- Maybe you should edit that one out before we go to press.
- Did Hemmingway ever use that kind of language in his work?

No…he didn’t. But, in case they haven’t noticed, I’m not Ernest Hemmingway. I can only write the way that I write, and so far its been working well for me. If people want to read a Hemmingway novel then they should pick up a copy of The Old Man and The Sea. If they’ve wandered into the B section of their local bookstore looking for A Farewell To Arms then perhaps they should reconsider their dedication to the English language.

The chapter in question was written on a Sunday afternoon. The sky, as I recall, was a washed out sort of gray. It’s the sort of gray you see when a heavy rain saturates the sidewalk below your feet.

I wasn’t planning on writing that particular weekend. I had just finished a marathon spurt of writing during the week prior and wanted to give my head some time to refill with life experience before creating again. Inspiration, however, is an unplanned event and on this particular Sunday my thoughts were playing leapfrog across an extremely small stream of creativity running though a remote section of my mind.

So I found a tree. It was an oversized oaf of an aspen that literally called out my name.

“Richard, over here!”
“Over where?”
“Here! The balding aspen to your right.”

I joined the lonely middle-aged aspen and hunkered down beneath his leafless branches. As the only aspen surrounded by hundreds of pine, I couldn’t deny the old fellow his request for company. The pine have their needles and their cones to keep them entertained but the poor aspen was so bare that the birds weren’t even bothering him.

And I pulled out my pen. And I pulled out a small notebook that I tug around with me for just such inspired tree sitting situations and I began writing:

- I sit alone in a bookstore sandwiched between shelves of paperbacks with my knees tucked closely to my chest to stay out of aisle’s way.

Billions of words surround me like a Merriam-Websteresque fog enabling me to reach out and grab the word “mesmerize” before forcing it onto the page.

I am safe here in this haze, and if I tuck myself in tight enough no one will ever find me. At least…that was the original idea.

Perhaps the fog is clearing or I’m getting too old to tuck correctly, but suddenly I’m discovered and relieved of my isolation.

There is a man standing beside me, holding a loaf of French bread.

The French bread is wrapped in a brown paper bag like a poor man’s Christmas stocking. He is holding it by one end and it swings like a pendulum from his oversized hand.

I don’t understand why a guy his size and shape would be standing next to me in a bookstore holding a loaf of French bread. I just can’t get my mind around the idea. He and his French bread have no business here. It’s like a caveman showing up at a bridal shower. Someone should have stopped him at the door. “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow your French bread toting kind around here.”

But they let him in with the French bread and now he’s standing, looming above me, with that bag of baguettes swinging by his side. I can smell that fucking French bread, and it smells good, which makes me hate his intrusion even more. Why couldn’t he have brought in a bag of flavorless croutons to put on a poorly made Caesar salad?

Finally I get the courage to look up at his face, his oily, over-bearded face, and meet him eye to eye. They’re brown, his eyes, shit brown, in case you were wondering.

I know he’s going to speak to me, I can see his upper lip quivering beneath his matted carpet of facial hair. I ready my ears as his gravely voice comes spilling out.

“Excuse me,” he says to me, “You’re blocking the Bukowski.” –

That’s the chapter they want me to cut. That’s the chapter they’re having trouble with. It may not be Hemmingway, but it still makes sense to me.

Chapter 51

51

I’m writing this in pencil on a yellow legal pad because, oddly enough, I can find nothing else in a contractor’s spare bedroom. I suppose if I wandered the house for something proper to write with/on I would eventually turn up a pen and paper, but it’s four in the morning and I’ve just woken with a splitting head of wine hangover. In this state, if someone were to give me directions to John’s office desk, I’d still manage to stumble my way off course and into the back yard.

Besides, this house is haunted.

John has become a pack rat over the years, collecting artifacts of time and placing them purposelessly upon mantles and bookshelves all over his home. Each piece of history harbors a specter, an aging apparition with a singular, isolated, story to relay.

It freaks me out.

I can feel them all around me, these ghosts of John’s past, and since we share a portionate piece of life together, a few of them are trying to enter my room by any means possible.

I hear them knocking, clawing and pacing outside the bedroom door. I would be kind enough to let a couple of the good times in if only I could be sure they’d come alone. But they won’t make those kinds of promises. You find yourself letting one memory in and before you know it you’d better put on a pair of flippers. The kind of flood that follows will wash you away in no time.

Eventually, without invitation, I begin to relay stories to myself, the fragments of which enter as smoke that billows in underneath the door. I sit upright in my bed and watch as the cloud envelopes me.

What starts as a shadowy haze becomes something of a projection screen, a dimly lit canvas for the movies of my mind. The reel tickers and flickers like a newsreel from the McCarthy era.

The memories move across the screen, the camera panning past my first scraped knee, my first finished cigarette and my last taste of Coca-Cola. I meet an old woman in a bar sometime during my 22nd year. I remember the hint of patchouli tucked behind her ears and the stale scent of potting soil that came off her breath. Our conversation was brief. We talked about rain. I paid for her drink; she paid me in banter, asking about my current profession. “I write novels,” I watch myself reply. “Oh,” she says in return. “I can’t read.” Suddenly, we both seem utterly alone.

The scene fades to black but the reel is far from finished, spinning and clicking behind my eyes. Suddenly there is a flash of light and Jamie and I are riding on a train in southern Canada. She is wearing a simple blue dress that does nothing to complement the displeasure painted on her face. She turns to me. “Look, if you call me that again I swear to God I’ll throw myself from this train.” She quickly turns away from me and stares absently out the window at a pasture of cows warming in the sun.

The train enters a tunnel and the entire room goes black. I can feel the temperature drop around me, which sends a reactionary shiver that rides my skin like an ocean wave. Suddenly there is something cold, metallic and menacing sitting in the palm of my hand. Whispers begin to surround me, but they’re only clips of sentences like thousands of puzzle pieces from hundreds of incomplete images. None of them fit together. None of them make any sense.

Together they are the overpopulated community of my mind. Every voice I’ve ever heard parading around the room, coming and going as they damn well please. The door is wide open now and the memories are multiplying, swarming around me like I owe them all some sort of favor. I don’t. I’ve paid my dues to them all, but they continue to haunt me like a spectral version of the I.R.S.

And then it arrives.

The one voice I’ve been waiting for.

It calls me worthless and accuses me of common banality.

I have no evidence to convince it otherwise.

“Maybe it’d be better if you just blew it all away.”

I huddle myself around the barrel, my knees tucked in under my chin, and dissolve into the hole where my head used to be.