a Christmas story for Scrabblers

Gridlock

            Scrabble night, at Miriam’s this week. Her housemate, Meryl, almost never played but usually added to the company. Geraldine was absent, as typical this time of year. Agnes, who always liked to ‘help the board’, focused on the southeast quadrant.

            “Would you accept ‘TABLEAU’ with an X at the end?” she asked.

            “Are you admitting you have the X?”

            “Not necessarily; I might have a blank…”

            “So, with a blank and possibly an A or E or O, you’d earn ten points. You’d get double that without a blank, over at that double-letter score, completing FA for FAX.” Miriam liked to show she didn’t suffer fools. “Or you could play your blank on FA for a five.”

            “Okay, okay—I may actually have the X. So would you take ‘TABLEAUX’?” 

            “Why, to rub it in? I wasn’t so willing for your Frenchy word to triple in the first place.”

            “But we discussed that—like ‘ballet’, you use ‘tableau’ all the time…”

            “I don’t, but your point at the time was taken. Now, just to move your turn along, do this for me: pluralize ‘ballet’, in English.”

            “Um—‘BALLETS’?”

            “With an S or X?”

            “I’m not sure, but…”

            “Do what fits your conscience. I may or may not challenge.”

            Agnes settled for the second choice, especially since she had a B and O to make a handsome elbow, free from challenge. “There,” she almost thanked. “BOX and FAX for 42.”

            Miriam was unamused. “So, you traded hauteur for outdated technology, cashing in on my suggestion. I guess that puts you in the lead.”

            “I guess it does!” beamed Agnes, splaying her hands like a frog.

            Meryl brought Irish coffees on a tray, suggesting “time for a break?”

            “Oh, but Agnes is on a roll,” Miriam gibed.

            “Then rather time to celebrate!”

            Harry, Geraldine’s husband, was pinioning the last lights of Christmas on his roof, spelling out a humongous string of ‘HO-HO-HO’. A life-sized Santa in a sloping sleigh balanced above the letters, straddling the roofline and anchored by ropes plumbing into the back of the house. In front of the sleigh was a long sign that read, ‘Reindeer Getting Ready Out Back’, a curious way to indicate they had secured white-tailed deer in their acre-and-a-half backyard—not reindeer, not nine (though the littlest of the five was named Rudolf). Permission for holding such animals were several years in negotiation, but since the sheep and donkey in the front yard had been well cared for, and since City Hall—if not every neighbor—was in favor of this hype, Harry had his way. Geraldine remained iffy about it, as explained a couple weeks ago when she hosted Scrabble.

            “The game warden agreed only if we took a herd from the preserve that naturally bedded together—he didn’t want to break ’em up, so we had to rent five instead of the single Rudolf we had in mind.”

            “Your enterprise must be getting expensive,” Agnes semi-wondered.

            “It’s getting dear,” punned Miriam, taking new letters from the velvet bag. “Score my VULTURE for 28, would you, Dear?”

            “Just 28 for all that?” Agnes liked to score. “Seems like it should be more.”

            “If I kept my S from last turn, it would have gone for 80. Lesson: always hold an S.”

            “You’re still in the lead.”

            “Not for long,” Geraldine announced, quickly tiling U-L-T-U-R-E-S below Miriam’s existing V, startling her friends. “Just 11 on a triple—not so nice—but clears the shop for 83.”

            “That’s plagiarism!” Miriam mocked.

            “Well, I could follow your advice and keep my S…”

            “I don’t think we’ve ever had a repeat like that,” observed Agnes.

            “I was thinking of clearing over here, with UNRESULT—keeps the triple open if you want to do it that way.”

            Miriam made a moue. “What would you describe as an ‘unresult’?”

            “Hmm. Good question.” Geraldine looked to the ceiling, as she always did when grabbing new letters. “I suppose… if this reindeer idea doesn’t work out, it will be an unresult.”

            “Huh?”

            “Harry’s put a lot of time into this one—much more than the nativity. We’ll even have to charge a little fee to keep us within budget.”

            “How much? A buck?”

            “As a matter of fact, yes—an even dollar, or any bill will do. I’m not in the business to sort change.”

            “So,” Miriam wanted to know, “the result of all your years of spiking the electrical grid is… to make money?”

            “No, no—I wouldn’t say we’re going to profit, unless you count the joy the effort brings.”

            “There’s profit in that,” Agnes affirmed. “My turn—and I’m glad I saved my S.”

            Meryl was actually one of the neighbors who protested City Hall’s carte blanche allowance of an all-out Christmas display “per every homeowner’s right of free expression”, as their advocates demanded. Her point, not to contradict the first amendment, was about zoning and respect for shared space. “Cars inundate our little streets, stopping every couple of feet, spewing CO for at least six weeks”—she almost sounded like a free-styler. Geraldine wasn’t present for her speech, but Harry was, unaware of her association with the Scrabble club.

            “Excuse me, Miss—”

            “I’m not a ‘miss’, but you’re excused.”

            “Sorry—I’m not trying to offend. I do wonder, though, how you personally suffer from my street, which I don’t think I’ve seen you on.”

            “You have an address on a street, I’m sure,” Meryl leveled, “but you don’t own a street. Neither do I. Or—if we want to think of it differently, I own a measure of yours and you, a taxpayer, I assume, own a measure of mine. But it shouldn’t matter—I’m still talking about the increased traffic and pollution that comes with it.”

            “That can be said about anything. Walmart buys up farmland and it becomes de facto a chunk of the town.”

            “Yeah, I protested their pollution, too.”

            “Well, good on you. I’m trying to keep Christmas more real—less ‘made from China’, if you will, so maybe we share that point of view.”

            Meryl was confused by that turn, but let it pass. “I’m just here to comment on shared space. If each of us owned an infinite cuboid from the grass perimeter we each discretely mow to the heavens, whatever they may be—and no planes could trespass without permission, and likewise nothing we’d possibly launch would float beyond our cuboid—then each expression could ring loud and true.”

            “What’s a cuboid?”
            “But that’s what isn’t happening. People want to see your extravagant Christmas get-up, and if they all fit into your cuboid—your lot, if you like that better—then good. But they don’t. They idle on our collective streets and make for gridlock—something Walmart also has to factor if they want to keep the peace.”

            “I think you’re overstating things.”

            “My expression is over-the-top, you think? That’s interesting irony.”

            Harry had enough and tried to believe his silence, starting now, would be the final word. Meryl, sitting down, thought likewise, and both were kind of right.

            Later on, Geraldine intuited who her husband’s nemesis was and told him how she made Scrabble nights—one-third of the time—more than just the game itself. “Conversations after games are interesting.”

            “She kept on using this term ‘cuboid’…”

            “Hmm. I wonder why she never likes to play. Some pretty good words would result—”

            “I think she’s into arguing, not rearranging letters for arbitrary points.”

            “Nonetheless, maybe we can meet her point half-way. I’ve been thinking—maybe this could make a difference: cars could park at Walmart, toward our side, and folks could walk the six or seven blocks to see a lot of houses all lit up, and ours, with Rudolf, could be their destination…”

            Harry did a double-take. “You’re asking to take on more a role this year, even though you always say we go too far?”
            “We do go overboard—that’s become our shtick. But—not just Meryl—others could appreciate this as a way of making harmony—a more inclusive showcase, an esprit de corps…”

            “Alright, alright.” Harry didn’t want more to plan for, though years ago in deciding to go whole-hog into Christmas decorations, he accepted there’d be junctures like this, when efforts weren’t in stringing colored lights or bringing Frosty back to life. “I’ll take on the white-tailed deer; you take on the route from Walmart.”

            Geraldine reluctantly agreed, hoping neighbors—even more so than the megastore—would facilitate this plan. Since Agnes lived four blocks east on the same street, Geraldine telephoned her to see if she’d be on board. “Maybe we can do this, create a little peace on earth—or at least the slice we live on.”

            Agnes agreed. “And should we enlist Miriam and Meryl?”

            “Let’s let them be. I’d like to think they’ll smile at this, but things can backfire and…”

            “I understand. Gridlock works this way.”

            It was an inside joke—Agnes and Geraldine, long before M&M moved to this town, had together watched the vice presidential debate of 1992, when Qualye and Gore and Admiral Stockdale were making their cases to be second-in-command. The take-away, among a scrabbling of other strains, was Stockdale’s fulcrum exposition of why “gridlock”—his voice as graveled as could be—is the reason we’re in political malaise, and why we need to change.

            “Do you remember,” Geraldine enjoyed the memory, “when he didn’t have his hearing aid tuned up? or that he had been a sort of god in Vietnam to his ‘own civilization’, as he said…”

            “I do!—and, looking back, I wonder if he wasn’t so stupid. Seeing all that’s transpired.”

            “Well, hold on, Agnes. Review it by recall—both you and me were pacing in my basement, blushing for an embarrassment that should have been—”

            “I know, I know. It should have been his own. And more than his. He said, if I remember, ‘you can overdo environmental cleaning… If you purify the pond, the water lilies die’—something of that sort.”

            “He did. He put that to Al Gore, as if the environment were nothing he’d done any research on…. And then he said there was this ‘unity over self’—an acronym, he acknowledged, on something military-coded, ending in ‘U.S.’”

            Agnes thought that through. “I don’t remember the ‘over’ part, but… it could have been that way. You’re right: we were pacing around your basement, wondering what in Sam Hill…”

            “More than wondering, I think it’s safe to say.”

            “God, to think that young Gore won that night, and, over time, an old Gore lost.”

            “Gore is gore—one can’t get beyond that nominal.”

            “Well, I think it isn’t hard to separate semantics—”

            “You and me agree. We draw our random letters for the fun of possibilities. But many others—Harry, maybe, and”

            “—I miss those years, honestly. Debates were vibrant, televised, left to think about without rewinding, or meming, or sharing according to some hidden algorithm. We’ve become products of our cubicles…”

            “That’s interesting.”

            “What—that we’re products?”

            “No. The use of ‘cubicles’. Harry said that Meryl was pushing this word ‘cuboids’—”

            “Meaning something different?”

            “I don’t know. It’s worth checking in the dictionary.”

            “As long as it’s not Scrabble’s, only designating a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

            “Maybe aim for middle ground, like H. Ross Perot?”

            “Mon chéri—like I said in ’92: ‘I gotta walk around!’ And we should, too,” Agnes reminded of the imminent, “if we’re going to get this Christmas promenade to work.”

            They drafted up a brief description of the idea and printed out enough copies to stuff all the mailboxes en route to Walmart, ringing doorbells when they knew someone was there. The owners that decorated their homes most extravagantly mulled their minds about the idea—it looked like a gradual form of banning the tradition. Hadn’t City Hall endorsed their rights to display?

            “Yes, yes—we also benefit from that ordinance,” Geraldine assured. “You know that: we’ve been putting a living nativity scene up for years, now.”

            “Well, half-living,” said the neighbor. “Just the donkey and sheep.”

            “That’s true, the holy family and shepherds and magi are supposed to be the people who come by—that’s always been our point. So, we’re for even more traffic of the pedestrian variety. But car traffic just rolls on by…”

            “With possible crooks,” offered Agnes, “like in that movie Home Alone.”

            Some homeowners wondered if this idea would turn into another form of Halloween, with more expectation per house to give the pedestrians—not candy, per se—rather more of a show. Geraldine and Agnes considered that concern—and having no convincing rejoinder, they stuck to their argument that side-walkers would be preferable to street-trawlers.

            “You almost said ‘street-walkers’,” Agnes elbowed her friend as they continued on to Walmart.

            “These are just words, anyway.” Geraldine determined, her eyes on the edges of the massive parking lot. “But I guess we’d better rehearse what we want to say to our corporate barons.”

            For the next hour, there was an uncomfortable shuffle from one middle-manager to another, everyone well aware that neighborly relations wouldn’t need to reach the inbox of Sam Walton’s progeny. “It must be convenient,” Agnes mused, “that ‘the buck stops here’ does not have to be so practiced in a family-controlled empire.”

            “I guess I’d rather our idea be ping-ponged middle-management than stopped by some billionaire in charge.”

            Eventually, they negotiated a favorable deal. The farthest reach of parking would be posted as ‘preferential’ for those who’d walk to see displays, and the store would advertise this ‘spirit of the season’ as such. There was some talk about discounts for customers who’d get as far as the reindeer—some sort of wrist-stamp to prove it—but Geraldine suddenly got nervous about their house being too much the focus. Maybe next year, after this pilot, the neighborhood could set up a more collective idea like a booklet to stamp, passport-style.

            A final stop on this very full day would be to the police station, which had to fortify a fuller patrol of the neighborhood anyway this time of year. They were fine enough with this idea and promised to park a car near the intersection of Bellevue Street and the access road to Walmart, pointing voyeurs that way and waving others through. The day felt like a win-win-win.

            Until the eggnoggers, as Miriam called them, crashed the scene. This winter was unseasonably mild—no snow or northwinds, but instead a steady overcast that blanketed the increased glow of houses in the neighborhood. Itinerants were bound to be out in droves anyway, pushing strollers on the ice-free pavement, peddling their personalities the way they’d do at tail-gate parties, the parking lot a skansen open-bar.

            Scrawled across many of the signs that Geraldine and Agnes had posted, the phrase ‘Hail the Sparklers’ qualified the tone of innocence. Sparklers—at least in public—had been outlawed several years before, now categorized with unlicensed fireworks. It had been a less contentious fight at City Hall, yet reason enough to let the houses safely sparkle, as a compromise.

            And some homeowners decided they’d compete with Harry’s reindeer, open up their backyards to the revelers who might pay a buck for eggnog, or sparklers on private land, or tinsel snowballs to toss about to the streets. Someone strung a thousand glowing fish and turtles at varying depths into their swimming pool—like stars that slipped below the cloudy sky. While no one came around officially inspecting, a visitor from City Hall would have to wonder if the water and electric wires were—

            “Rest assured,” the owner laughed, “they’re waterproof!”

            Two nights later, a first ambulance sped up the street to CPR a drunk who’d fallen in to swim with stars—that was his dare—getting tied up like a leatherback among a toss of six-pack rings. When his friends knew that he’d survive—or maybe even before the hospital told them so—they posted the whole hijinks on YouTube, tagged ‘finding nimrod on Bellevue’.

            The name of the street informed the algorithm, at least on Miriam’s feed, as ‘Bellevue Xmas’ and ‘Sparkle Bellevue’ followed. And even without the street name, Harry and Geraldine’s house featured in the next video, ‘Redlight Rudolf’. Miriam called Meryl to the computer: “look, this is Geraldine’s backyard.”

            “It’s spacious. But probably claustrophobic for the animals. Who’s the debaucher narrating this?”

            “Sounds disturbingly like the voice that dared his friend to ‘swim with stars’—”

            “Huh?” Meryl hadn’t heard about that yet.

            “Tell you in a sec…. My God, they’re getting in—”

            “Who? Do you know them?”
            “No!” Miriam pointed. “The eggnoggers I warned everyone about.”

            “What are they doing?”

            Miriam pushed the volume button to catch a chant to let me ride that donkey, donkey, until someone got so clever as to replace the donkey direct object with ‘Rudolf, Rudolf, pleeeaze!’ Meryl hit the mute but kept her eyes glued on the screen to see if they would molest these creatures more than verbally. “Where is Harry?” Miriam demanded of the silent screen.

            On cue, he ran into the scene, and Miriam released the mute. “Get outta here, Wreckers! You can’t just—” and his voice trailed off, drowned by the laughter of the director of this film, who decided to end with slurred intrigue: “stay tuned for more redlight on Bellevue!” Apparently, the algorithm had the sense of mind to catch verbal tags for precise locations.

            A second ambulance rolled more slowly down the street on the following day. It raised no real alarms: Baxter Schroeder was ready for some rest-in-peace, having battled several Asian enemies, a VFW that seemed to represent his category, if not his personal, maybe post-traumatic needs, an alcoholic wife (until she died), a neighborhood that seldom understood that he grew up here, in his little house with nothing else around. He never had to scowl ‘get off my yard’, as no one but the mail carrier chanced to set foot on his tiny lot. He’d taken in a homeless man some twenty ago, eventually known—by whom?—as Baxter’s Homo. That’s who called the ambulance, and few on Bellevue held their breath, essential for a eulogy.

            A third was called when one of Rudolf’s bigger brothers had enough, leaping easily the fence Harry had put up and trampling a family, frantic to escape. Their toddler in a stroller got the worst of it: the harness wrapped around the white-tailed’s leg and swung the stroller like a flywheel down the driveway and into the street. The deer used its antlers to disentangle, adding to the horror of the witnesses, none of whom could meaningfully unfreeze. The antlers working instinctively, the buck then ran the opposite way of Walmart, maybe toward the preserve, though that would be miles away.

            The toddler was shaken up—literally, which might have served him better than metaphorically, as the paramedics quickly turned their focus to his parents’ apoplexies. Harry’s, too, when the warden drove up to say they’d have to close up shop—not that such a sanction was so traumatic, but with that ‘Redlight Rudolf’ going viral, Harry’s dignity had dipped below any conception he’d had of himself.

            Geraldine lent comfort, but channeled Agnes in the need ‘to walk around’—not on Bellevue with all its bluster, but somewhere just enough away. She helped Harry shut down the house, unplug the lights, lock the drive-way gate (not higher than the deer fence, but at least another hurdle any others might hazard), then walk toward… as it turned out, Meryl and Miriam’s neighborhood.

            The streets were darker, naturally, yet calmer in a sense of Christmas mystery. Geraldine would regularly drive there, Scrabble nights, usually with Agnes in the passenger seat. The walk was what it needed to be—long and largely wordless, like she’d seen, strangely, scratched into the bathroom wall at Walmart:     

words

   escape me

      when

I don’t know

   what to

      say,

   and do so

anyway—

   trying

      to expire

birds

   remind in

      song

each sunrise:

   simply

      try

   revising

fear to fly—

   aiming

      to inspire

She’d committed that to memory, and recited it as best she could to Harry. He doubted it could be from Walmart—“stuff there’s aiming to be cheap.” Geraldine agreed, it was unlikely penned by middle-management, yet in the wheelhouse of anybody there who’d need to pee, or take the fullness of a part-time break.

            Meryl opened the door and didn’t miss more than half a beat, with “Merry Christmas, Miss and Mister.” Geraldine hugged her and made the obvious introduction, forgetting the apology she’d tacitly rehearsed, that crashing on another’s Christmas… well,

            “Let’s call Agnes, too,” suggested Meryl, even before Miriam’s knowledge of this ding-dong-anti-ditch.

            They fetched two bottles of Merlot from their cellar and topped off the week’s supply of mulled wine. A Christmas Carol was on television, which they watched until Agnes came, then turned it off to sing some of their own, Meryl at the piano. Harry also played—news to everyone but Geraldine—and as the Scrabble board unfolded, he and Meryl learned harmonies from each other’s favorite things to play. Miriam cleared the board twice in the early rounds to leap into the lead, but it was Agnes’ night, again—“you must be on a roll”—as she scored a 158 on QUIXOTIC at the bottom of the board.

            “So you didn’t save your ‘S’?” Miriam needled.

            “Didn’t need to, obviously. But I wouldn’t challenge anybody’s use of QUIXOTICS, should the need arise.”

            Agnes, after midnight and a victory buzz, slowly drove her neighbors home. Not disparagingly, but also not with envy, M&M advised to ‘follow the glow’—“it’s not as high as what met the Magi, but…”

            Bellevue was unusually subdued. Whether Christmas overload, or Walmart having mandatorily closed, there wasn’t any spectacle to scandalize, by eggnoggers or white-tailed devotees. The cop on duty was asleep in his patrol car, maybe just as well. Agnes drove her friends to their darkened house and, unwittingly, aimed the headlights at the figure standing at the nativity. In his hand, clearly, was a sort of rope leading into the covered manger scene.

            Geraldine audibly held her breath, and Agnes did the same. Harry opened up the door and seemed to know exactly what the rope was for—the hidden frame of a white-tailed deer that wouldn’t happily exist without its herd. Harry took the offered leash, shook the rescuer’s hand, and waved for Geraldine, at least, to join in the joy of finding what he thought was lost.

            Agnes got out, too. “I’m sorry about Baxter.” He nodded, then started to move back down Bellevue. “Would you like a ride?” she offered, self-consciously.

            He sort of smiled as he considered, and said “thank you,” and headed for her car. “I know it isn’t really far, but… Christmas Eve, and all…”

Christmas 2017

We are the weary travelers checking in.
We are the host who makes room where he can.
We are the town as slumber settles in
We are all part of God’s much greater plan.

We are directed by our better dreams.
We are obliged by government decree.
We are sometimes alone, or so it seems.
We are who God is asking us to be.

We are the ones who stay awake at night.
We are the shepherds working in the field.
We are the sages following the light.
We are all witnesses of God revealed

And we are angels called upon to be
The voices in the wilderness.  We sing
From where we are that everyone may see
The light we’ve seen and hear the news we bring

And at the scene of the nativity
We take our places underneath the star.
Joy to the world depends on you and me
And peace on earth begins with who we are.

a story of pure journalism

The Presence

“In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.”

—Alex Haley

            We all, in America, learned something from Plymouth Rock—or should have, in one metonymy or another. I’ve been an on-the-beat journalist for three quarters of my life, always aspiring to ‘crack the code’ of that iconic rock—a Rosetta Stone of sorts—and to simultaneously ‘find the good’, as Sir Alex certainly has shown. I’m retired now, but not remotely finished. You may have seen me in syndication here and there—I won’t brag about Pulitzers that may or may not have been awarded; I will say, more to the point of this finale: perhaps you’ve yet to see the best of my reporting. And that’s because the object was never really up to me, but rather how it came to be, and how somebody listened.

            In kindergarten,.. third grade,.. maybe seventh, you dug your class a time capsule—likely for a lark and what the teacher touted for curricular articulation. I remember bringing in a baseball card—the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, because I had a double—and a poem I wrote about… I really can’t remember. We buried a metal box that tried hard not to look like a little coffin—it ridiculously had a lock and key to keep the worms from getting in and regarding the content as a corpse. I asked my teacher—I think this was in third grade, but in a way it wouldn’t matter—about the difference, coffins and capsules: why do we bury the bodies of our relatives, never to be exhumed, and now these trinkets, planning on some uncalendared reunion to dig them up and say, ‘hey, we were thinking of Bob Gibson back then. Now we’re old enough to toast that memory, unaware (unless we google) if the man himself is alive or dead.’

            Of course we almost never see such an eventuality—there are countless capsules begging to be found, being crushed by forgetfulness and shifting ground.

            I’ve been looking back at the rough notes I attempted on the person in my neighborhood that neither I nor anyone I knew... really knew. For her sake, for mine, for anytown “in a pretty how town”, to quote the great e.e. cummings, I’ll leave this all anonymous. But be assured, the landscape and its creatures are quite real. The ‘quite’, I realize, is a qualifying particle naïve to journalistic code. So be it—I’m retired—and weirdly I have nothing to answer for (or everything, depending on the meaning of the universe—and yes, I’m going to take that on).

            Because increasingly, no one really does that anymore, journalistically. I’m not talking about religious cults, or dogma, or primers, prim and proper. I’ll start this dredge with an interview I had in high school, mid-seventies, when Stefani and Linda (not their names) agreed to be on record:  

            “I don’t know,” shrugged Stefani, “she’s always hanging around—”

            “That’s not quite how I’d put it,” said Linda. “Hanging around is, um… something between, um…”

            “So I don’t mean really ‘hanging out’ like we want her there.”

            “Yeah, that’s why I wanted to say: she’s there in a way that isn’t good or bad, just… present.”

            “Exactly,” said Stef. “We even call her, behind her back, ‘The Presence’.”

            I laughed at that, “sounds like a name of a band: ‘The Who’.”

            Linda had the wherewithal to contemplate ‘The Guess Who’ as an alternative, but then asked me to cross that out. “It’s all kind of a guessing game, isn’t it? Trying to figure people out.”

            “Or change them with a nickname—she must hear it when we whisper.”

            “Well, why do you whisper? Why not just go up to her and say, ‘hey Presence, we’re going to be downtown studying for mid-terms’?”

            “Yeah, good point. And she would show up…”

            “And just sit there in a booth close enough to listen, but not contribute anything; asking seems to blank her out—”

            “You mean ‘freak her out’?”

            “No, I mean…” Linda, of the two, had more empathy, always searching for the most precise word. “I mean, when asked something, she’d stop looking at the event or person trying to talk to her and just… blank her eyes.”

            “Blink?”

            “No. Blank. But not glazed over or cata-…what’s that word?”

            “Catatonic?”

            “Yeah. Not like that, either. I’m sure she’s thinking about things.”

            Stefani suddenly grabbed my writing arm. “You’re not doing a story for the newspaper, are you?”

            I honestly wasn’t, so I paced my response to ensure them in a Haley-way (though I had yet to read his works), “No, not for publication or any exposure of one of our peers, especially if she’s troubled.”

            “Is she?” Linda wondered. “I don’t know…”

            “Or if others are troubled by her. No, I just want to make a memoir—personally, so far—of how our town is… ours. Or something approximately so.”

            “You’re well meaning, I think. And a little weird.”

            “Can I quote you on that?” They both nodded ‘sure’ and went off to what they had been doing.

             

            I have to say this—somewhat off the record; I took notes on everything, which is not the spirit of how one should go to parties or find a space in a yearbook to sign. The Presence slid through teenage protocols, showing up when this was this and that was that, putting on an oddly fitting uniform, hiding acne with a double blush, loving probably something in us, though God forbid such feelings go detected or awry. I myself had a secret crush on Andy Gibb—would hate the world to know me for that fact and, well,.. back to proper journalism.

            Another anyone in our pretty how town committed suicide—so the jury stands—when efforts in his car radio heists tripped into the zones of nearby gangs.  Perhaps he was also in a gang?—no one really knew. And if that night a friend was with him, he’s been mum up to this day. Isolated, then, he pulled himself with broken legs to a playground at the outskirts of our school district, and found the strength to hang himself from the swingset bar. Or perhaps his rivals chased him there and, worse than Jesus, broke his legs to prove their point: you don’t trespass established maps, whatever loot abbreviates some tawdry legacy. This happened during the summer; most found out in ripples returning to school. I couldn’t interview him, of course, nor any ‘next of kin’—his friends, like me, were numb and devoid of things to really say.

            Yet the person I’m reporting on—not him, not any of his friends—burst lonely into tears when others in the corridor were merely shaking heads.

            The decades plodded on—or sprinted, as they also do—and I hid within the bureau where I worked, several states away. I had my toll of Reagan overload: voodoo economics and “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” His effect in putting an end to the Cold War became a strawman argument—who could disagree that he played a role in ‘who-will-blink; let-us-see’? History had its dress rehearsal with Khrushchev and Kennedy, and I tried to bring that into my reporting, critically. We feigned victory—Cuba kept its Castro while our ships set their sights on southeast Asia. To this day our troops salute with an inward palm, never having lost (excluding sense of purpose, here and there). I balanced correspondence work with newsroom editing, posted stories dutifully.

            Then flew back to my how town and abandoned any thought of World War Three. I longed to see this person I’m now reporting on, her anonymity. Being absent many years, I didn’t want to come off as creepy, obsessed with someone still unknown—so I dialed up understanding friends, like Stefani:

            “Well, yeah, she still is—whad’ya want?—showing up to things and keeping to herself. I haven’t tallied nothing on a spreadsheet, exactly, but shit, she’s gotta have some rhyme and reason for being a constant and not being so… I don’t know… in tune with things.”

            Linda, separately, gave details. The Presence showed up everywhere—town halls, football games, the crowning of the Chamber of Commerce ‘Business Queen’, the sweep-up efforts of floods that naturally would catch us unprepared. She was intuitive, I guess—catching things with not much notice, getting in and on with what the cause required, watching how a procedure was done and, given a gap, doing likewise. Those who knew what autism was wouldn’t say she had that, even in its spectrum; those who didn’t would imply that she must have some bolts loose, but ‘who am I to judge? Especially when she doesn’t do anything not good.’ Linda ended with that thought: “she’s often framed in a double-negative, if she’s brought up at all.”

            She lived with her mother, equally quiet if practically never seen. They had to have some subsistence, some life insurance pay-out, some employment past or even present. Events she showed up for would sometimes cost an entry-fee, which she always had ready. From what I understood, she was often waived through wordlessly.

            With great torment, after having failed a dozen times approaching her, I took the risk of calling their landline, listed by default in the Yellow Pages. Ten rings turned to twenty, the number I pre-determined would constitute invasion. She answered two rings later with as regular a ‘hello?’ as could be imagined, even though I imagined only what I’d say—a script, of sorts, with thoughts confined to me.

            “Um,… hello. I… you… don’t probably remember me, from high school—” and here I let some seconds pass, assuming that the sheer syllables of my voice would suffice to jog her memory. In the intervening silence, it occurred to me that I should have said my name, which I then supplied, and waited for some way to carry on. “I’m a journalist now—well, have been since university.” She didn’t respond recognition or otherwise; I went on with my premise: “I’ve reported mostly stories from beyond our shores, or people who come back from abroad and have something to share…. Well, what I haven’t done so well with is reporting on the homefront—this very town, the people in it…. And,… well, I just wondered who from high school was still here and, well that’s my starting point, at least.” It was not a lie. “I’ve kept in touch with so few; I’m kind of going from distant memory and,… you came to mind.” More silence, and my script had run out. “Are you still there—I mean, here?”

            In the same inflection as the ‘hello’, she responded “present.”

            “That’s good,” I rushed, “because I didn’t want to babble on…. I’ll let you go—didn’t mean to catch you by surprise; I guess, unless you wanted to say anything about the town—your impressions, or… I’m not collecting anything for breaking news, or Hollywood gossip…. Just,… trying to reconnoiter the past and present. And best when it comes from—”

            “You will see what pertains to your question through the stones, eventually.”

            I was dumbstruck by the diction. Even the object of the preposition—was she channeling the rock band, and should I joke, ‘you mean The Kinks?’ Or else The Cars from their Candy-O tour, where she’d been spotted in the upper deck? These, or anything that could have led to other talking points, fell from my capacity to further speak, so I rashly uttered “thanks,” and set the receiver back into its pay-phone rack.

           

            Journalism in the dot.com age was a ball of wax, and with or without my Pulitzer, I had to reconstrue a raison d’être for staying in the field. I’d gotten married and worked from home as much as I could—a boon for raising kids. But what I had to say anymore was increasingly a challenge. Remember that Y2K doomsday scenario? That kept me busy for four months. Then what? Reporting on Al Qaida from my home seemed incongruous. By the time the kids were grown, I could afford to get into the grisly details of Guantanamo, Kony 2012, ISIS, Crimea, the world’s works.

            Between each of these, I felt a need to get back to my how town, and re-find the good. Especially for my children, I was glad for occasions that had a parade—St Patrick’s Day was modest, Syttende Mai much bigger, July 4^th and Veteran’s Day when everything was streamered red, white, and blue. The same routine started every one of them: a child-like man named Marty would receive the municipal flag from city hall and its tailored harness to help him bear its weight for two hours, angled above his head. He was the self-declared ‘mini-mayor’, his girlfriend Marjorie his manager of sorts—vaudeville characters without their trying, beloved by everyone who’d see them parade (beyond these holidays) their mini-dramas on our streets.

            One drama missed by the masses had been when an ambulance came to the apartment of The Presence and took her mother to the hospital, where she died of a heart attack. Linda, who works in the cardiac ward, told me this on a recent visit, but didn’t want to say more, citing confidentiality.

            I kept in closer touch with our librarian, veteran of the referenda that constantly put her budget—sometimes her job—in question. Throughout the years, as many as mine, she’d done everything to modernize and keep the patrons happy, and they were. The great lament she shared sparingly was that this institution battled ‘relevance’ to those that lorded over, and unlike me, she couldn’t bear the thought of working from the privacy of her home. When she called me up last month, I thought that theme was on her mind as she began with: “I’m out of my element today and need some advice.”

            “Shoot,” I said, self-conscious about that word choice.

            “Well, the strangest thing was taped to the front door this morning, an envelope addressed simply ‘for the library’.”

            “A donation? Perhaps from a secret admirer?”

            “Well, semi-secret, I guess you could say. Inside was a key on a chain connected to a little baggage tag, an address written, but no name.”

            “Hmm. I’d be careful about that—could be a trap. Or maybe someone found a lost key? But why the address? Was there a note?”

            “Not a note, but a poem. Should I read it?”

            “Of course.”

            She a-hemmed and recited slowly:

“I saw you all,

as much as you

saw me—a presence

hidden in proclivity

and absent in

the very need to

be unique—I

mirrored you or

made you think,

when thinking

was beyond me.

Presently, if you

unearth each

stone that leads from

you to me—I know

some distance

must exist—note

this neighbor’s

wish that none

were thrown,

but polished

very carefully.

Forging toward

eternity, we’re

willows of a common

stream—witnessing

the wakes and

sleep and deep

beneath—we

butterfly our

chance to dream,

one by one

or you by me.

That’s it,” she cleared her throat again.

            “And you don’t know by whom?”

            “I assume by the one who lives at the address, but…”

            “That sounds worth a check-over by the police, just to be on the safe side. I wish I could be there to… I don’t know, accompany if you wanted to ascertain the origin—”

            “—naturally, I do. But you’re right, I wouldn’t go alone.”

            “Tell you what—I could use an Easy Jet this time of year, anyway. Why don’t you do the footwork with the cops and, whether or not it’s a story, I’d still like to connect it with the old haunts and this forever-capsule project.”

            “Only if you’d want to—I wouldn’t object.”

            She called later that day to tell me they’d been at the apartment. By this time I had already guessed whose it was, even though she wasn’t home. I got on the first flight to find out more.

            They were like breadcrumbs: the librarian’s embrace, the poem she showed which resonated deeper at the sight of it, the swing-by to the hospital to pick up Linda, the note they found inside the apartment—witnessed by the detective who had come the day before—stipulating, “These stones are for the library—take them there, or use this home for its annex. I’ve already gone—still present somewhere else—and yet each luster follows me.”

            Arranged around the rooms, on every windowsill and tabletop, were thousands upon thousands of gleaming stones. Polished to their inner colors, they had but tiny inscriptions, sometimes reinforced with silver paint or gold, each with a different name—usually just a first, maybe with an initial—and under that, a unique hieroglyphic somewhat like those Jimmy Page made on Led Zeppelin 4. It would take hours, I knew, to find those whom I was closest to, but we all hunkered in and turned up stones.

            “Here’s Marty—what is that symbol below? a flag—seems so!”

            “And Stef, clearly with long lashes of her eye”

            We worked to catalogue them, carefully. Linda called the bus station to verify that, indeed, The Presence had been recognized—everyone would know that much of her—the morning before, stepping on a Greyhound leading… Greyhound wouldn’t say. “Client confidentiality,” Linda relayed, pinching a smile.

            I was thrilled to be finding friends and acquaintances, deciphering their symbols, wondering what mine would be. Before that prospect would come, lest we’d forget, I turned up the car radio thief—named, of course—and under that a butterfly that seemed to sing. And nothing more essential could such journalism bring.

Advent-ure

Wishing all of us well this Advent season. We're busy this side of the ocean, with Katya prepping a lot of scout activities, Emma composing songs on the piano, Ben making chess boards, Joe reading The Brothers Karamazov for a lesson he'll lead tomorrow. I'm writing a lot for my Globe Writer's group, and now as our leader is moving to Portugal, they've asked me to take the helm. Prayers, please, as I want to keep the inertia as its been (tricky word, inertia)!

Some new items of Lost Menagerie may appeal, especially as some poems glide into stories toward Aging America. Tonight's features Bronko and happens to have Babička there in the background. Prayers also for her, as she's had a hard year on and off her feet.

Finally, in the spirit of Jon's work with T.S. Eliot, enjoy this radio reading of "Journey of the Magi", my favorite poem this time of year.

love,
Dan and fam

Thanksgiving

Psalm 65: 9-10

Last night I shared a quiet poem with you
About the rain.  I want to turn to it again,
Considering how challenging it’s been
To simply let it be and see it through.

I want to understand it better though
Just as the sound of it cannot explain
The source of it, or how, time and again,
By every quiet word of it, we grow.

God visits earth and waters it with rain
And makes us rich.  God fills the river full
Of rain, then fills the furrowed land
With grain.  And in each field God takes the soil
And softens every ridge, that we may know
To praise the one from whom all blessings flow.

a family tree

a family tree

                   needs

            buds

to muscle through

       the sea-

sons and

            daughter

                   squirreling

       to the canopy;

while roots

            remain

       a blur of earth

            and parents

work for what

       they’re worth,

            the buds are

what the heavens

       see, raining to

            sustain

a family tree.

Nuptials!

We're eager to arrive tomorrow afternoon. Thank, you, Jon and Cara, for this blesséd occasion! Been busy on this side of the pond, but still we've had room to create and appreciate the season, some of which is represented here.

🙏 DKJBE (Bronko guards the house;)

Failing Show and Tell

Some might say that second grade is

not too late to teach the skills of show

and tell; my case may be case-in-point:

I gathered nothing going to school

and thus had that to show; I told what

came to mind, and often that sufficed.

My brother and his bastard friend

advised me from fourth grade: walking

through the alley, empty-handed, they

saw my desperate need to have a thing

to show, and so they spied with me

a stone that, with imagination, glowed.

“It’s rare,” my brother said, “from Africa,

I’ve heard. When rubbed for hours

a certain way, it rivals gold”—with slang

and swears a ten-year-old conveys.

“They call it ‘rubbish’,” his friend straight-

faced. So I rehearsed that for my class.

My teacher didn’t find this funny, and

I was baffled twice as much for lack

of what the problem was. “It’s rubbish—

you’re supposed to rub it,” and I’d go

on that Africans—well, that would

have to be my brother’s piece to tell.

We slugged that out with pillows,

and he agreed that messing with my

education was not a laughing matter,

if ‘show and tell’ was dinosaured

by second grade. I asked him what

replaced, and he shrugged: “I can’t say.”

So when the neighbor’s Afghan hound

bit me on the head, and it happened on

another prep for show and tell before

my alley trek, I couldn’t say the audience

was second grade or—blast!—the nurse

who more than didn’t find this comical.

Long and short, they made their calls:

the dog pound seized the hound and

found it had no rabies, but also that

the gash behind my ear was grist

enough to call the creature quits. My

parents parried, but the cause was lost.

And now I wonder, years gone by, how

the neighbors judged my earnest show

and ad hoc tell; a million miles from

second grade (report cards disappear)

the luck that lacks some grace before

a random fall—and who recovers, after all.

DMVL

Twilight Tankas

you lift the lifeless

out of battlefields unwon—

never claiming loss,

making me uphold the same—

shrouding stones in loving moss…

stories are complete

despite the fractures untold—

for you were that mare

when I knew not how to steer—

the here, there, and everywhere…

now the great beyond

begins with what we unfold—

children rightly raised

check on us on their way out—

fulfilled, and gently amazed…

Retirement Speech

            Somebody asked me the other day, ‘hey Rex, how did you go from being a ghetto kid to riding horses?’ I should be more specific: somebody at the ‘Occupy’ rally in McKinley Park, doing those fingers up and down twinkles when they agreed or disagreed with something. And there were others on the fringe giving us some different finger signs. But let those go for now. As for the presumption that I had been a ghetto kid, it was true: 35^th and Douglass was a different neighborhood a half century ago—whichever Douglass it might’ve stood for then—but, yeah, Stevie Wonder got it right with ‘Village Ghetto Land’. When I was in my final year of high school and I heard those violins on the radio, “killing plagues the citizens, unless they own police,” I didn’t know what side of any street I wanted to walk.

            Or stand on—walking implied I had somewhere to go. I was a scratch basketball player, playing back-up for a point guard that eventually got to the Sweet Sixteen—can tell you more about him over a double scotch—and so I was able to travel across the city to play in gyms of stifling screams and sweat. I saw a lot of life from the bench—spectacular play, bunglers, trash talk, colors in the stands, focus and abandon—every game had celebration and not a little anxiety about how things would end. Cops showed up arbitrarily—hard to know who made those calls, well before all these cellphones today. Weirdly, I knew I had a safe spot on the bench, more or less. But I wasn’t sure that’s where I’d want to stay.

            Back to those horses, and why a black man from the hood would dare be on one. My fellow mounties know this story already, so they’ll keep me honest on the details. I was deployed as a U.S. Marine to Beirut in the early ’80s—ROTC had taught me just about everything about being in a conflict zone except how to deal with large animals. Especially in knee-deep snow. We were called to the mountainous area of Qatarba to rescue civilians besieged by Druze militia and blizzard conditions—the latter more likely to kill them. We stuck together as much as we could, slip-sliding on this turn and that, and at one point when my armored vehicle needed a tow, a middle-aged man on a horse came bolting out of the underbrush, like a mortar of snow. The horse tumbled and crushed the man’s leg as they bowled into the ditch on the other side. Me and Sergeant Addams looked incredulously for a second and skated over to see what we could do. The horse maybe blacked out a bit, but God Almighty did she get back on her feet and drag the poor guy by the stirrup. Addams got down by his chest and did a half-nelson to pull him further down the ditch, and I—for the first time in all my born days—reached for the reigns and swung my body up the ditch. And wouldn’t you know, the horse complied!

            Turns out they were on a doctor run. His wife, he gasped in Arabic I was trying hard to learn, was battling a birth that wasn’t going well—he acted it out as Sarge was tightening a tourniquet for his broken leg. I asked where the doctor was, and he pointed vaguely at the town a steep mile away. We quickly talked it over—Sarge and me and another marine—and drew straws, so to speak: since I still had the handles on the mare, I was the one to logically find that doctor and escort him back: it would be ten times faster, Addams said, than waiting to get towed out of this mess.

            And though I didn’t find a doctor right away—fearing all kinds of fury from this horse that never once decried my presence and ineptitude—some townsfolk understood my caveman talk and why in the world I’d be on a Lebanese horse. I’m guessing the doctor made house calls like this pretty often, but still he wanted me to ‘drive’ as he climbed behind the saddle, and we made our way to the injured man, where the doctor nodded at the tourniquet and said he’d be back. We trusted the horse to retrace its gallop through the woods and made it to the terrified wife, who delivered a beautiful girl about a half and hour later. By then some distant neighbors caught up and massaged the whole thing to relief, including a special transport for the man who sobbed his thanks in—I don’t think it was Arabic anymore.

            The rest of the tour was not so joyful. The civil war was escalating, and our barracks blew up that October. In the fallout I broke my leg in the same place as that horseman; I wanted the chance to go up that mountain and commiserate, see the baby crawl, but I was never going to know active military service again, stateside or abroad. The lay me up at Walter Reed and cut me a severance deal—well, a little like they’re doing me now, pushing early retirement. Or, to call out the policy: no one over sixty on mounted duty. But we can talk about that over a double scotch.

            You could say I took predictable routes getting my butt back home. I scrounged around Washington for awhile to see what my continued study of Arabic could get me. If I were patient—seven years—I might have been sought after as an asset for Desert Storm. But I was three cities homeless by that lightning quick war. I kept relatively clean—bodily, mentally, what’s carelessly called a ‘record’—but really had to scrap for subsistence. Worked whatever shifts could be found, all but loitered in a dozen different libraries, took what I read under bridges where I slept, reflecting as a disguised Henry the Fifth: “I think the king is but a man as I am”, and maybe I’d share that thought out loud, to strike some conversation.

            There were—and are—too many vets under those bridges, and I was not the only one to question,

                                “what have kings that privates have not too,

                        Save ceremony, save general ceremony?”

I do appreciate you gathered here, to hear that echo from Shakespeare’s stage to how we face the modern age. Those of us who get here. I was thinking of calling this speech ‘my kingdom for a horse!’—quoting an anti-hero king, but who’s got time for that? My mam and pap called me ‘Rex’ to celebrate the royalty I’d never have to abdicate.

            I’m grateful for the Fireweed Ranch that took me in—Chief Maengun, Randy, Galilahi—and the late Reverend James who somehow got their contact. To say I was scared going to the wild, wild west is not becoming of a soldier; to pretend I wasn’t is also not becoming of a soldier, whatever other epithet I may have been. I was there a decade before The Horse Whisperer, so they could not call me that—and, fact of matter: I squealed my first weeks through. But a season of grace enabled me to negotiate with mavericks and the troubled kids that were there to learn to control their lack of control. And now that I’ll have time (when Gloria asserts our grandkids have had their proper time), I’ll channel Reverend James and seek some new supply for Fireweed.

            I’m grateful for my fellow cops at Precinct 5, for knowing that I’d do alright on any beat and in the office, too. Then more than knowing what I really wanted to do: work the stables, train for K9s, get out to the schools to show what magnificent creatures we all are, if historically under lash and leash. Some days and nights grew ugly when riots got too rough or drug raids got the glocks out. I won’t be so glib to say we’ll talk those through a double scotch; I’ll say too many lives were lost, no matter what majority we saved.

            And finally, for my Gloria, I’ll try again what angels must have led when I scribbled out some courtship tankas to impress you. We’re too public here to rehash those, but this twilight hour I want everyone to know:

you lift the lifeless

out of battlefields unwon—

never claiming loss,

making me uphold the same—

shrouding stones in loving moss…

stories are complete

despite the fractures untold—

for you were that mare

when I knew not how to steer—

the here, there, and everywhere…

now the great beyond

begins with what we unfold—

children rightly raised

check on us on their way out—

fulfilled, and gently amazed…

DMVL

serendipity

A very good word (noun or adjective) in the most recent family letter. It's good to move around a little when we can, then cuddle up back home.

This 6th installment of Aging America, my new volume of short stories, kind of wrote its own ending. I had presented the first and second parts to my writers' group over the past weeks, and while we knew the idea was intriguing, none had a confident suggestion where it might go. Josef likes a band called Cage the Elephant--we all do in Roztoky, having heard the albums multiple times! I allude to that band, Joan Baez, Herman's Hermits, but to fill out one of the protagonists, I made an original that fit both my poetry anthology and a theme in the story.

Stara Evropa has 15 stories (17 counting the reserves) to honor and attempt the way James Joyce's Dubliners threaded his together. I want Aging America to have its own set of inspirations, but it's nice to think that possibly 40% of it is now drafted.

Here's 'Truculence', a little play on the title of a previous story about the church cats; this one features an organic farm, perhaps like the one near Blanchardville:

http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/2017/09/serendipity.html

Ever Since the Dove Came Down (Matthew 3:16-17)

This is what it means to be a child of God:
You've got a place to be.
You've got energy.
You've got a name.
Your life will never be the same.
Ever since the dove came down,
     you are a child of God.

This is who you are.
You have a Father who
is pleased with you
and considers you his own.
You will never be alone.
You can sing, "How sweet the sound"
     to be a child of God.

     By the waters of a river you've been saved.
     By a voice from heaven above
     you've been received.
     You are loved. You are forgiven.
     You've been pulled out of the grave
     to be reborn, to be alive, and to believe.

And from this day on
you have a Savior who
will walk with you
and carry you along.
You are weak but he is strong.
He has picked you off the ground.
     You are a child of God.

This is what it means to be
in heaven's hold.
You are forever loved.
You're forgiven of
your former ways.
Every day's a brand new day.
Ever since the dove came down
     you are a child of God.

Committed to Christ, 1977; Baptized August 26, 2017

All the time and everyday

Matthew 11:28-30; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19

Dear Jesus set your yoke upon me.
Teach me all I need to know.
I'm thankful for the life you give me,
Grateful for the love you show.

Dear Jesus let me walk beside you.
Teach me what it means to pray.
I'm joyful to be learning from you,
Joyful that you lead the way.

And this is how I ought to pray,
Thankful that your yoke is easy,
Joyful that you're walking with me
All the time and every day.

Dear God as the world weighs on me,
Send your spirit more and more
To lift the load and to remind me
Of all I should be thankful for.

Dear God though my walk is weary
I rejoice that I can stay
Upon this path with Jesus near me
Every mile and every day.

And this is how I ought to pray,
Thankful that your yoke is easy,
Joyful that you're walking with me
All the time and every day.

This is how we're taught to pray,
Thankful, joyful, always easy
Knowing that we walk with Jesus
All the time and every day.

I pray now Holy Spirit fill me
With a will that's not my choice.
Walk beside me and remind me
To give thanks and to rejoice.

Holy Spirit, live within me.
Be the way for me to pray
Ceaselessly and never ending,
All the time and every day.

This is how we're taught to pray,
Thankful, joyful, always with the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
All the time and every day.

Echo Chamber

Completed as a goal this summer! It's relevant to our ubiquitous attempts to know and communicate, and I feel it's also quite readable. The format is similar to the first play I wrote, Codex Orange, and while both have a large cast of characters due to their community focus, a core of a half-dozen characters in each play will hopefully be memorable.

I've put an open-access PDF for these plays in a 'more literary works' page atop Stara Evropa:
http://staraevropa.blogspot.cz/2017/08/more-literary-works-by-daniel-martin.html

Please share this link to anyone who might appreciate. Not just Montanans!