Chapter 14: A Stunning View

He walked into the room and his attention was immediately taken by the windows.  Not the view.  The view was stunning.  New York at sunset and so far above the rest of the world with just a few other towers visible as he looked out those giant windows.  It was stunning.  Would have been.  If he had noticed.

But the windows.  They stretched from the floor to the ceiling,  They formed the outer wall and invited the whole of the horizon into the room.  He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.  A trickle of sweat ran down the small of his back under his sports coat and around the gun nestled there.  He was suddenly conscious of how far his hands were from that gun.  And he was wary of moving his hands any where near it.

That was when she came out from behind the bar.  She cast a gaze to the windows as she crossed the room and offered him a Scotch.  She smiled.  "So nice to finally see you again, young man.  Amazing view isn't it?  The sun coming in can be a bit blinding from this angle, but the colors on the horizon are amazing."

He took the Scotch from her and turned his eyes to her.  The years had been kind.  She still held her figure.  He noticed newer, deeper lines around her eyes and lips and the grey creeping into her hair.  Still, no one would have thought for a moment that she was two decades older than him.

This was no good.  He was actually daunted.  He was on his heels.  Time to fix that.  "I was wondering why your boys let me keep my gun and then I saw those windows.   Just how many sights are trained on my anyways?"

"Very good.  Very scrappy.  I have always liked that about you.  A bit direct.  But then, that tends to help in your line of work.   The only chance you had to take control of this encounter was a blunt statement of the facts to unnerve me.  And you came to that conclusion very quickly.  That's good."

They smiled at each other.  She gestured to the sofa and they each sat down looking out at the orange and purple and grey and red as their small piece of the world turned its back on the sun.

He sipped the Scotch.  And sat.

She brought her drink to her nose, inhaled, and smiled again.  "The vanilla is just coming out.  I think I love the smell at this point even more than the taste itself."

He looked at her.  He sipped.  And sat.

She laughed.  And sipped her drink.  And sat.

"Six," she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

"I know.  Not all my decision.  Some of my people are a little over protective.   I had to be loud," she paused and smiled - he could tell it had been some time since she had had to be loud to get her way, "I had to be loud to convince them to let you keep your gun.  My concession was more than one sniper out there," she nodded to the windows again.

He inhaled deeply.  Sipped the drink in his left hand and slowly opened his right and let it rest on the arm of the sofa.  The movement of his right hand was not lost on her.  He swallowed deeply, cleared his throat.  "Six?" he said.  "Six is actually kind of flattering."

"Exactly.  I was urged to use 3 but decided, if I was going to have to use more than one, I should be extravagant.  I think it serves to convey several messages."

He laughed.  It was not theater.  It was a genuine laugh.  He ran his right hand through his hair and then looked at it, realizing how quickly he had moved it.  And laughed again.  "You let me walk in here, with you, all alone, and me with a gun no less.  You aren't scared of me.  But you put me up on this stage facing the sun with six snipers staring at me.  You respect what I can do.   This meeting was expensive.  And I ain't even talking about the Scotch."

"It is an important meeting.  Our lives depend on how this meeting goes."

She sipped her Scotch.

Chapter 13 - Talking with D

The cool man walked into the room and pushed the door smoothly and slowly closed behind him.  The curtains were open and the window was full of orange and pinks and purples as the sun slid behind the world.  The lights were off but the shape in the bed could be seen clearly enough.  An old man sat inclined to a sitting position.  "Well, D.  Bet you didn't think you'd be seeing me again.  I didn't expect to come again.  But here I am."

"What brings you back?  You just like seeing me this way?"  The shadows from the fleeing sun and the advancing night kept the older man's face in shadow.

"No.  No.  You like this...  It just makes me sad.  Its why I don't come to see you more often.  I would prefer to remember you in your prime.  When you were a force to be reckoned with."

"Back before you ruined me you mean."

"Now that's harsh, D.  I didn't do this to you.  My mama did.  Or Ginger, on her orders.  Or the people he hired on her orders.  Any of those folks are easier to blame than me - when you think about it."

"Thinking ain't so easy for me now. Easy to blame you though.  You set it all to play."

The cool man sat down in the chair at the foot of the bed and he leaned back against the not quite soft enough cushions you only found in hospitals or old folks homes.  The shadows now hid his face too.  He smiled.  "But we had our moment though, didn't we?  We took every dime they had that night at my Mama's table.  EVERY dime.  And thanks to it looking like you won it all off of me, my mama never got around to making me give any of the cash back.  That was my seed money, D.  That was the big lump of cash that I have just kept growing.  That was my first step out from under Mama's thumb.  I owe you for that Diamond.  I really do."

"Hahahahahahahaha.  Your mama had to have figured something out or I wouldn't be sitting here like this.  Drooling on myself."

"Yeah.  Took her a while though.  Don't get me wrong.  She probably figured out that I had used you as a Judas goat.  The minute Ginger told her that you had busted me - that must have smelled funny to her.  And she probably appreciated how ballsy a play it had been.  That would have tickled her.  For a while.  Buuuutttt...."

The cool man crossed his legs and shook his head.  "But she must have started wondering.  'how could the boy have been sure Diamond would keep his part of the bargain,'  That's like her.  Even when everything is said and done, she has to know.  How did this all fit together?  How did a teenage boy get a grown man to play his part?  How did a teenage boy get a grown man to give him an incredibly large sum of money?  Unfortunately for you, she figured it out.  Sorry for that."

"You ain't sorry for nothing.  Not one little bit of it.  Part of you wanted this to happen to me.  Part of you hated yourself for what YOU did to get away from her."  Drool dripped from the older man's chin.

The cool man smiled.  "We do this every time I come here.  Not why I came though,"  He watched the drool pool on the breast of the old man's pajama top.  He made no move to wipe it up.

"The reason I am here is that its moving fast now.  Real fast.  Almost too fast.  I found the Farfenelli girl.  Married her.  I know.  But I think I actually love her."

"Found my brother.  He is just as scary as I think Mama ever wanted him to be.  Makes me nervous and I don't get nervous.  But here is a wrinkle - he has found the twins.  The Rusoff twins.  They don't seem to know a thing about the money but...  Its an unknown and they are incredibly intimidating too.  My brother with those two working together would give my mother and Ginger pause.  And then you throw in that red head that works for them.  I can't tell if she is sleeping with my brother or just wants to be sleeping with him, but she makes the Rusoff twins... nervous, maybe.  I don't think anything scares them exactly."

"A couple of more pieces have to be set up jussst right, and then...  the dominoes will all fall.  It is working out better than I could have hoped.  And that is making me...  nervous."

"So you come here to see me.  Why?  It is not like I am going to offer you any advice you haven't thought of already."

The cool man laughed.  A little too loudly.  A nurse walked in.  "Sir, I'm sorry, but visiting hours ended a couple of hours ago."

"Oh, I know.  I just like sitting here and keeping him company.  Could I stay just a little while longer?"

The nurse looked at him in his nice suit and his perfectly tied tie.  The laughter here of all places had offended her - it was so disrespectful.  But he was a handsome man and as he leaned forward in the chair the last bit of orange sunlight caught the earnestness of his eyes.  She was about to let him stay until she turned around and saw the drool on the patient's chin and chest.  Who sits there laughing while a brain damaged old man drools on himself?  "No sir.  I am afraid you will need to leave."

The cool man stood and smiled at the nurse and nodded his goodbye to her.  In his head he said, "So long D.  It was good seeing you again."

"Go to hell," he imagined the silent old man saying.

End Chapter Thirteen

Stray Thoughts - Yet Again

Warning Signs:

Driving through Wilmington yesterday and wound up in a less than reputable neighborhood.   My subconscious pushed down heavily on the foot poised above the accelerator.  Cilla pointed out the yellow sign that read, "Caution: Deaf Child."

"How mean that little brat gotta be they put up a sign like that?"

She hit me.  Weren't no sign for that.

Shouting for "Free Bird"

If you have not sat in a bar in front of a live band in the South (with a capital "S") and shouted out "Free Bird" when they called out for requests, then...

Well...

What are you waiting for?

Margartita's Before 11am

We were walking through the beach town/tourist trap that is Rehoboth Beach today. It is only an hour away from our home and sports a board walk like I have only ever seen on TV and the dirty sand the brown water that I remember from the South Georgia and north Florida coasts.  We walked by a restaurant and an older woman came out as we studied their posted menu.

"Yes, yes we are open.  Don't look at the sign.  Our sign, our pretty 'letric sign is already finito." she said with an accent that was not of the Northeast or the Southern drawl that I sported.  "But our cook - our cook is authentic," and my mind wandered to thoughts of a fake cook and Jerry Lewis in the lead role only to be eclipsed by Lucille Ball - Lucy as a fake cook with Ethel tasting the horrors coming off the stove.  "Our cook is from XXXXX, Mexico and all of our food is homemade," here at the restaurant my mind filled in as it made my lips smile at the older woman.  "We don't buy our salsa, we don't buy our tortillas," you damn thieves my mind snorted through laughter which made me smile all the broader at the old woman.  "You'll love our food.  It is real.  It is Mexican food.  Wonderful."

And it was.  And my mind relaxed under the influence of tequila and Cointreau and salt and lime.  And I smiled at Cilla as the alcohol - just the right amount of alcohol - made me smile at the fortune that put her across from me at a little table at a beach in Delaware eating authentic cuisine from a cook from XXXXX, Mexico.

Pick Your Moments

Went to the beach this morning.  I am still a FAT guy with all caps.  But I am down 15 pounds since we came back from vacation.  And a beach means sun.  And dark fat is better than pale fat.  Everybody knows that.

Today at the beach they were having the Mid-Atlantic Life Guards Competition.

Not a lotta fat on those no-shirt-wearing-abs-like-molten-rock-frozen-in-place ^%*&^%*&^%*&^%.

Shoulda found a nice museum.  Never heard of a Mid-Atlantic Curator's Competition.

Mom is an Artist

Some of you who remember the bulletin boards she used to make for various elementary school teachers before she went back to school and became a teacher herself,  know what an artist my mom was.  But it is better than that.  She took an art class in college and even she, her harshest critic, had to admit (and later waffle on the fact) that she had real talent.  She used to find these old dead trees.  Dead trees that most people ignore.  But dead trees that had shadows dancing so slowly around them.  The shadows moved like molasses on a cold morning as the sun effortlessly, all but unnoticeably, shuffled across the horizon.  That slow, almost unnoticed shuffle?  My mom captured that in drawings on white paper with black pencil.

I can't pass a dead tree on the highway now without seeing the dance and hearing the medley of sunlight and darkness and commenting on it.  I am lucky that Cilla shares an eye for this tiny bit of artistic madness.

Here is the picture she took when I pulled to the side of the road just outside San Antonio.  A framed version is being delivered this week to Mom to commemorate her birthday tomorrow.

 I never saw the beauty in something like this.  Not until my mother showed me a drawing of a dead tree that I had passed for years traveling from Nicholls to Douglas on highway 32 in Georgia.  Of all the indelible ways Carolyn has touched my life, this was the easiest to put in a frame and present as a gift.

Jason Isbell - An Anachronism

Isbell is a singer of what my Daddy would recognize as country music.  He is something different in today's world.  An anachronism is something that does not fit with the times that it is presented.  Like Lincoln talking on a cell phone.

Isbell makes music where the lyrics are important.  Words ain't been important in music - at least country music - for at least a decade.  You can make an argument that words are important in hip hop but if the dance beat ain't there, I still don't know if you have a leg to stand on.

Pick out your favorite alcohol and your favorite friends and sit out in the dark of the night by a fire and listen to Jason Isbell sing misfortune and loss and love.  Its worth it even if you can't afford the good beer.

Drunk on a Friday

I drove away from my last class at Valdosta State University and the summer heat was something less than oppressive, so I "rolled" down my windows with the press of a button.  I stopped for gas while still in Valdosta and on a lark bought a beer - a 24 ounce can - and sipped it while driving just above the speed limit on my way to Douglas.  Hootie and the Blowfish were captured on the CD in the radio and played whatever I wanted at the least of my whims.

I had finished the 24 oz and had flung the empty from the open window as my hair was whipped around with the wind and the music.  I stopped at the next store I saw and bought another beer - this time of a smaller size - my concession to caution.  And continued at speed to my destination singing along with the energy of the hot air that whipped through the cab of the truck.

I ran out again and slung the remains out the window and stopped again and bought again and ran down the road drinking again.

Singing.  I never sing.  Well.  In church I sing.  Loud and proud.  A joyful noise is a delight to the Lord.  If I have been drinking quickly, I sing.  If I am alone in my truck with the windows down, I sing long and loud until the traffic lights take away my anonymity.

This day, all three converged.  I was in my truck flying down the highway with the hot summer air whipping my hair around, I was soon beyond drunk from my continuous stops for one can of beer, and God had to be with me to keep me from killing myself or worse - some of you.

I drank and drove and sang until I was passing by the Huddle House in Douglas and saw my Mom's car.  I shot across two lanes and flicked a blinker on at the last minute and shot into the parking lot of the Huddle House with the suddenness of the Millennium Falcon coming out of hyper space.

I walked into the restaurant and saw my parents before they saw me.  I remember thinking that this was not a normal reality.  Everything was moving just off of normal.  I had never interacted with my parents when one of us was drunk.  At least not since I was four and Dad had given up drinking.  But this was the first time MY reality was just a bit off from theirs.

I sat down across from my father who was withered from heart disease and would be gone from this earth in less than two years.  I kissed my mother on the cheek unexpectedly - for both of us - as she was lifting her coffee to her lips.

My dad asked if I had to work today.  This was a strange question. My shift did not start until 4pm.  It was barely 1pm.  I told him no.  I did not have to work today.

Why not he asked.  Because I have decided to call in sick.  That's why.

He suddenly needed to go the the bathroom.  I remember thinking that was strange.  He seldom had sudden needs for the bathroom.

I should have noticed then but only notice now that I am writing this.  He was working with a partner.

"You're drunk;" my mother stated without any real anger - but a disturbing weariness.

"What?"

"You have been drinking."

"Well.  A little," I answered.

"You are drunk."

"Okay.  A litlle bit of a whole lot, " I smiled.

"Ray, you could kill somebody... or yourself."  Interesting the way that got phrased, I remember thinking.

"Okay, okay, can I just have a moment?  Can I just take a second before you get loud and I get loud and we replay our greatest hits of angry at one another?  Because that ain't why I stopped."

She turned from me and sipped her coffee.  And sipped it again as the silence settled, slowly.

My fault.  I had not expected silence.  Have you met my mum?

"You answered my questions.  The ones about baby's and love and sex.  You answered them.  You took me to every baseball practice I ever went to and drove me to practice football with the Douglas Demons.  You coached that t-ball team of Jason's when they had stacked the other team with all the best players and you were left with the rejects, I have been able to ask you or tell you anything for over 23 years now.  You had those notes sent home from teachers and you asked me to explain them.  You didn't accuse - you asked for an explanation.  I noticed that.  I suppose that is what I want to tell you.  I noticed.  I remember every single time you took me practice, helped me with math homework when I hated needing help and punished whoever helped,  I remember you taking me to baseball practice and watching while I never came close to hitting anything.  I remember you helping me pick out my tux for the Prom.  That's my point.  I noticed.  I have always noticed.  I have not missed a single second of a single moment where you demonstrated that you loved me.  You think I never noticed.  But I noticed every single one of 'em"

She took another sip of her coffee and I noticed her eyes were wet.  I kissed her again on the cheek.

"I just had to be drunk off my ass before I could admit any of that to you.  I am sure a shrink will say that is all your fault."

"Go to Hell, " she replied.  "And be careful on your way home."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

And I drove home just below the speed limit.

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.

Chapter 11 - Children of Housekeepers

Ginger stood silently while his employer finished loading dishes into the dish washer.  He brushed his right hand over his close cropped red hair and exhaled slowly.  He marveled at her.  No one would have thought anything strange about hiring a housekeeper.  She made enough money, legitimate money.  No one would ever have suspected anything funny about her having a housekeeper.  But she didn't want one.

They had argued about it once.  To the extent their relationship allowed argument, he had argued  about it.  She talked about the one time when she was a little girl and the Lady of the house had her pearls go missing.  They were only missing for a couple of hours.  But somewhere in those hours the Lady had looked at her mother and she, a girl of five, had seen the look.  She had wondered if she had known what that look meant at five years old.

Or.

 Or had she merely filed that image - that memory - away.  Was it years later when she understood what that look meant?  As she remembers it now, she can't pull the indignity and scorn away from that look driven at her mother the housekeeper.  

He had sat quietly at that recollection.  She was connecting dots from her memory to her reasons for not hiring a maid that he could not see.  He was smart enough to sit quietly through the parts he didn't understand.  She had told him that his willingness to allow a silence to fall was one of the things she loved about him.  She saw it in play when she was telling this story of pearls and smiled at him.  "I never want to be the kind of person who simply misplaces something and demeans another with just a look.  Having someone at my beck and call in my own home?   That could do that to me.  Know your weaknesses, Ginger, and take steps against them."

That had closed the conversation on that day.  But Ginger's mother had been a maid too.  That money had but bread on their table when he was a child.  He asked her about that.  Her weaknesses denying a livelihood to others.  She had bit her lip and sat silently for a time.  "Interesting" was all she had said.

A week later Ginger was put in charge of finding four young ladies who were looking for work cleaning homes.  They were each given the homes of three widows of limited means.  Ms. Wetta picked up the tab for all 12 homes to be cleaned.  Ginger had smiled at her when she had given him the assignment.  None of the bosses in London would have ever spent money in this way.  He did some digging.  The widows were of police officers, firemen, and such.  He smiled.  There must be an angle, he thought.

It was going well until two of the widows began to complain of things going missing from their homes, their purses.  Ginger was tasked with searching their homes for the missing items - older women could make the mistakes of the elderly, after all.  He was discreet.  They never knew he had been in their homes.

 He was next tasked with searching the home and the person of the young woman accused.  He found the things she had not pawned yet and then worked his way out from her home to each pawnshop along the way. She had gone to all the trouble of going to pawn shop that was the fourth farthest from her house.

He made his report to Ms. Wetta.  She asked him to tell her about the girl.   He laid it out as best he knew it and then answered her follow up questions.  The girl was from a lower middle class family.  Not much in the way of luxuries but not hurting either.  She had made good grades in the school but the family had made no provision for college.  She sang in her church choir but did not get any solos.  She liked to dance.  She would go to the bars in Houston and two step with the 10 gallon hats she found there.  Pretty girl but not strikingly so.  

Ms. Wetta nodded to all of this and finally inhaled deeply and exhaled as the judgment had been reached.  "Crush her left ankle.  She never walks again without a limp, Ginger.  If she ever again takes a step without a limp, you go back and crush it again.  Am I understood?"

"Yes ma'am," he answered with a clear voice.  He had tried once, in shock of one these coldly delivered pronouncements, to simply nod his head.  She had not allowed that.  Clarity did not allow that.

 "Ginger?"  He paused and waited for whatever was to come next,"She can keep the job as long as the things are returned to the widow.  Have one of the other girls cover for her while she recovers."

But that was years ago.  Today he stood quietly while she finally finished the last dish.  "So he got into the game the way we expected, eh?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered as he took his seat across from her at the kitchen table.  "I barked at him pretty good but he let it roll off him.  Even made a joke about the little window being an 'affectation.'"

"Never use a ten cent word when you can wedge in a five dollar one, that's my boy."

They both smiled at that.  Ginger went on to tell the tale of how the boy and Clay Diamond had stripped a small fortune off the others at the table before turning on one another.

Ms. Wetta sat and listened closely and never again interrupted him except to offer him a cup of tea, which he refused.  She sat back down with her own cup of coffee.  Ginger had not seen any tea but was certain, based on her offer, that if he had said he had wanted tea, it would have appeared.

At the end of the story she sat back in her chair and lifted the coffee cup to her lips and having never taken a sip, sat it back down.  "Diamond busted him?"  Ginger nodded.  She shook her head.  Actually sipped her coffee and shook her head again.  "He let Clay Diamond take every single cent?"

"He needed a lesson in humility, you said so.  That's why you let this play out.  It will do him some good," Ginger volunteered.

Ms. Wetta sipped her coffee.  She smiled as she looked into the dark black liquid.  And then she laughed.  She laughed long and loud and hard.  "What the hell, he earned it.  He truly earned it."  And she laughed even louder as Ginger sat quietly.

End Chapter 11