Chapter 12 - Was That So Hard?

The young man smiled at his aunt.  She frowned back.  His uncle had wisely held his face in the same neutral position one would expect to find at a funeral or a child's baptism or a perfunctory bowel movement.  He did not get the scolding look that the boy did and somehow seemed smug about it without ever showing it.  The young man walked with his elders into the old wooden house with the screen door eeeeeek and bammm! signaling their entrance.

They had come here to see a dead man.  Well.  A dying man.  They, the older two, had known the old man in his youth and vitality.  He was old then too.  One of those who frowned at everything.  Color photography was wasted on this misery of existence.  He never saw the vibrancy in life.  And viewed those that saw the reds and blues and yellows and greens of the world as frivolous.  They knew his first wife.  And his second.  And his third.  They had not yet met his fourth.  

The young man child walked into the old wooden house with the door banging behind him and felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.  He had no knowledge.  No awareness.  No experience.  But.  His body knew.  His body was aware.  His body contracted every follicle across every inch of skin.  Hair, everywhere, stood at attention.  Only on his neck, did he notice.

They walked through the house silently.  A young voice, not tired or ironic, we are back here.  

The older ones greeted the husk in the bed.  They ignored the young voice.  His fourth.  They paid her no mind.  He saw her.  He never quite realized that he stared.  He closed his mouth quickly when he found himself wondering how long it had been open.  He saw her eyes - green.  He saw her lips - pink, red.  He saw her shoulders - soft and round.  He saw her neck - graceful.

He shook himself back to the world when he realized that he had forgotten his uncle and his aunt and the corpse in waiting.  They had disappeared.  They had not existed while he stared at that spot where her neck disappeared into the shadows of her brown hair.  He knew he had to leave.  He had no control here.  How long had he been here?  How long had his eyes been on her neck?  Her legs?  Her breasts?  Her eyes?

How long has she been looking at him?  What is that look on her face?  Why are the old ones still talking at the corpse in waiting?  How are they not aware of this?

He got up.  He walked away.   Eeeeeeeeeek and Bammmm! goes the screen door.  He is walking down the the dirt road.  He is walking away.  The hair on the back of his neck is not going down.   Behind him, without looking,  he hears the announcement:  Eeeeeeeeeek and Bammmmm!

He keeps walking.  Down the road.  Down the dirt road.  The pines are towering erect on either side of the road.  The ditches run with water trailing from the hills.  He walks on.  

He sees the straw raked up in a pile.  The straw fallen from the towering pines raked into a pile in the ditch, just above the water running down from the hills.  He stops there and waits.  He has no experience.  None.  But he waits.  By the straw.  Under the pines.  With the sounds of the rushing water like hushed whispers.

She finds him quickly enough.  She is older.  Experienced as much as the old man could teach before his old age and cold nature could subdue him.  She kisses him first.

He lays her down in the ditch, in the straw, just above the water and under the shade of the pines.  They strip each other of the clothes they have and hands and mouths find the most vulnerable with care and tenderness that neither of them have known before.  They grow hungrier and bolder.  More daring in their desire.  They are experienced together in moments.  Desire does not have to spoken or even fully thought.  An inhalation.  A look.  A fingernail trailing...and a muscle tightens.   She pulls his hair and it hurts in all the best ways.   He holds her down and she knows she is powerless except in the most important of ways.

It is over.  She is tucking her shirt back into her skirt and walking back to the house owned by the soon to be corpse.  He stands in the middle of the road thoroughly ...  untucked.   He has a certainty that he has not had before.  His aunt will not be able to cower him with a look ever again.  He knows who his wife will be once the corpse is finally a corpse.  His is going to marry this Wetta who he first loved in a straw bed in a ditch on the side of a dirt road.  He is going to marry her.  And he is going to remind her every day of the passion shared this day on the side of a dirt road.  He is going to marry her. 

He smiles to himself.  He smiles as a man with confidence.  She thought this was just a small pleasure in her life.  A sideline.  A brief respite from the horror of her ancient husband leaving this world.  But he knows.  This moment was special.  This moment was life changing.  This moment was larger than she could have ever imagined.

EEEeeeeekkkkk.    and   Bammmmmmm!

2 Corinthians 1: 3-4

I picked my daddy up.  I had to kind of toss him up a bit - like you see in the movies when the hero picks up someone.  I had him in my arms and tossed him up to shift his weight on my arms.  He was not conscious.  There was dried blood from his left nostril and it had pooled at his left ear.

My mom had yelled his name.  Nothing else.  Or maybe she had yelled other things.  I just remember her yelling his name.  There was terror in it.  I ran to their bedroom.  I saw him.  I picked him up.  I carried him to the living room and sat him up on the couch as he seemed to come back to consciousness.  The ambulance drivers got there soon after that.  

Called them ambulance drivers.  Not E.M.T.'s.  I call them that now because that is what I thought then.  Simple.  Primitive thought.  An ambulance in our yard.  It got there because of ambulance drivers.  That was as complicated as my thought got. 

It turned out to have been a seizure.  But I carried my father.  He had lost weight following his first heart attack.  His second had prompted surgery and inaction.  His arms no longer held their power that I remembered from my youth.  I had heard stories about those arms.

The sawmill was a constant in my life.  My father and his friend Ralph bought a sawmill in Nicholls, Ga.  My daddy moved us there to live in a trailer on the yard of the sawmill.  My earliest playground had massive saws and log trucks and stray dogs and sand that smelled of diesel fuel. 

The mill moved to Douglas and years later while a teenager I worked there during my summers.  I remember Kevin Bullock telling stories of my daddy.  Kevin started at the mill as the log turn at the head saw.  My daddy ran the head saw and as it cut parts off the log, the log has to be turned.  Kevin did that.

Unless the log was too big.  Too heavy.  Too unwieldy.    Then it would be left to my father.  Kevin described the veins that popped out.  He was not discreet or modest.  He did tell one bit that I will tell here -my father bit down on his own tongue.  I had seen him do that too often to doubt the veracity of the lewd tale of how my father had flipped the largest, most onerous logs.  His arms were powers.   

I picked up my daddy.  I carried him to the living room.  Ha!  That name. 

As the heart disease took more and more from him, I held out my arm to allow him to steady himself as he walked.  I lifted him up to help him dress.  I bent down to my knees to remove his shoes.  

Later in my life I found my life - Priscilla.  I am coming to love her family.  The easiest of them to love was her Uncle Billy.  A kind old man.  Jovial.  I met him briefly before we were married.  He was the uncle that every movie ever gave us.

I was with his family days before he died.  We came to visit him on one of those horribly optimistic "Good Days".  His eldest daughter had moved back home for a few weeks to help care for him.  As more and more family gathered, she asked me to help her dress her father and get him into the chair to wheel him out to spend time with everyone.

Interesting choice of me.  I was the only male.  I was also a stranger to her.  Dressing him caused him pain.  His pain, caused her pain.  I knew that look whether I ever saw it on my face or not.

A week later we were in the family area at the hospice center.  His three children were trying to decide how they could take their father home to die.  I sat quietly for a bit.  I smiled.  "You want to take him home.  You know you will feel guilty if you don't do SOMETHING.  But the something you want to do, you can't do.  On one of his best days, one that you, yourself, said was a good day, you could not dress him if I had not been there.

I talked a bit about how my daddy died.  Or how he lived till he died.  And how we lived with him.  I told them to leave him with the people at the hospice.  They would see to his care.  They, his children, would see to his soul.  Be there.   Everyday, I said.  But let them care for him. You love him.  

I told them how helpless they would feel.  And that it was alright.  They were helpless.  Be at his side as often as you can.  When he is there - when he is with you - talk.  Talk about ancient history or yesterday.  Talk about what he remembers.  Ask the questions about his childhood or his adolescence or the day he met your mother. Don't waste time sitting here trying to figure out how to take him home.  That is beyond you.  That ain't your fear talking. This is from a man who walked too many miles in your shoes.  This is froma man who  spent years wondering why he was on that road.  I am here to tell you - comfort your father.  Don't cater to the things you think you ought to do.  

2 Corinthians 1: 3-4  " 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

My cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I never knew her from my childhood.  I met her in a funny way.  She was waiting on her interview at Walmart DC 6010 years ago while I worked there.  She was waiting in personnel.  I was in personnel for some reason and running my mouth as those of you who know me would expect.  

From behind me she asked, "Are you Ray?" she asked.  I liked her voice before I turned around.  I was in my early twenties.  I liked most any female voice sight unseen back then.  I answered that I was.  In a cool way.  I am sure it was in a cool way.

"Are you Ray Mancil?"  I had had dreams like this.  Are you Ray Mancil, the man who could run the two man cut off saw at the sawmill by himself?  Are you Ray Mancil who could name every secret identity of every Marvel and DC comics superhero EVER!  Are you Ray Mancil with what Nightline and 60 Minutes refer to as the largest ever measured male... Well.  This is a family blog.  

I answered yes.  She said I might know her brother.  As a pick up line, this absolutely sucked.  But she was cute.  And blond.  That bought patience.

Who is your brother I asked.

"Micah Japuntich,"  Oh.  Oh.  GOD.  The evil of that.  I am a PROUD SOUTHERN man.  But not that Southern.  But just that proud.

"OH.  Then we are COUSINS."

I love that story.  Even when I recite it in my head.  I can remember the trailer home paneling in the old Walmart offices in Douglas, Ga.

Facebook is miracle and curse.  I have a grand niece I have not seen but for Facebook.  Miracle.  I first heard about my cousin Aimee's battle with cancer on Facebook   Curse?

I promised and lied about shaving my head.  Her brothers shaved their heads with her and I wanted to too.  But then I realized it would be an intrusion.  I decided it would be a lie and let them be the THREE in the picture.  

I prayed for her.  I asked you all to pray for her.  I asked even those of you who don't pray to pray.  I promised to owe you one.

She has two you kids.  She has a loving husband that I like and that I surmise doesn't approve of me.  At least I hope he doesn't.  I love the idea in my own head of being the black sheep.  But why did she have to deal with cancer?

Her father, my cousin, a man that might as well be brother to my mother had a tumor on his kidney.  It was large and as I type this they only know it was cancer.  They don't know how much a bully the cancer was and so they don't know what kind of treatment is in store for my cousin.

My cousin - the father of the girl and her brother who told me my DAD had died.  My cousin - the father of the children who were all bald on the same day.  My cousin who served two tours in Vietnam and then was a preacher.  My cousin who did things in Iraq where he had to fly out of Indianapolis while I lived in Indy - taxi service to James Bond.  

My mother loves this man like a brother.  I love his children like long lost siblings that I never abused in childhood.  My wife and I count the days until we can again drink good beer and wine with his son and daughter-in-law.  

Her father faces terror.  A veteran of Vietnam.  Facing terror.  And the mother of two of this grand children, the slight girl that he protected from the monsters under her bed, his little girl - she takes his hand.  She tells the former minister that this is how the LORD OUR GOD LEADS US THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH WITH NO FEAR.

2 Corinthians 1: 3-4  " 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

The world is not easy.  It is not pleasant.  But the tested among us shine.  They provide light on the path.  I was a poor, poor reflection.  But I was mentioned by Cilla's cousin as a "sweet man".  I am not.  I was then.

The world is not easy.  What lesson will a father learn from the comfort offered by his youngest child?  His little girl?  And I am the ultimate optimist.  What lesson will he one day teach from this time?

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ..."

Untouched

Good wine with a good steak with a potato baked for an hour with sour cream and scallions and butter and salt and fresh cracked pepper.  A soft kiss on lips that you can tell are trembling against the want that dances in the blood that gives them their color.  A smile.  From her.  The feel of the corner of your mouth going up.  A smile.  But at her.  Or something she said.

Hot water.  Painful.  But just barely painful.  Your skin going pink.  Sweating under the steam of the shower stinging you into wakefulness.  Hard to breath but clean.  Turn the water off and just begin to sweat.  Run your hand through your hair and feel the formerly hot water cool on your back as it races past your most naked parts and down your legs so cold that it leaves a trace of goose bumps.

Goose bumps.   Goose bumps while living so far south that you had never seen geese.  But as you exhale you see the world.  Blues and greens and yellows and browns leap out at you from the things that are unchanged from the day that God himself traced a finger over them.   The absence of color screams at you from the time before the Almighty cleared His throat.

The steak tastes of char and blood.  The potato tastes of scallion and butter and cream gone to sour.  Salt.  The almost bitterness of wine finds the blood and evaporates as it is swallowed.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Yet another bite.

Inhale.  The noise of the modern.  Everyone doing everything.  And no farther than the time it takes thumb and forefinger to find phone.  The sun peaks in from the corner that is not guarded by sunglasses.  She holds your hand and you step lively - never betraying the future that you can't see.   The glare clears.  Ferris Wheels and roller coasters dance out before you.  Laughter. Loudly.  What else can you do?

Kiss her.  And then...  But...  She kisses...  Kiss her.  Kiss her.  Hold her tight.  Feel her breath on your neck.  Hold her.  Try not to melt as she melts into you.  Her breath coming up to tickle your ear.  Smiling.   Her teeth just on bottom of your left ear.  Pulling back.  Smiling in shock and awesome confusion.   Biting your own lip as she clicks her teeth together in threat / promise.

The last breath of winter trying to move the curtain dramatically.  Failing.  The cold of the early spring trying to masquerade as the rebirth of life.  Failing.  Life - carrying on.  Simply.  Her fingers intertwine with mine.  I kneel to the flowers.  I inhale.   I am rewarded with the smells of my youth.  I am mortal.  This earth is mortal.  My love is mortal.  This time is untouched.  She smiles at me and I take yet another sip of wine.  Her glass sits untouched.