tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67912290851434648792023-11-15T07:42:52.967-08:00A Reading PlaceFREELY INDULGE IN STORIES BY AUTHOR ALAN FLEISHMANAlan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791229085143464879.post-78841584402382291502019-06-07T13:13:00.001-07:002019-06-07T13:13:43.474-07:00REGRETS<i>This story first appeared in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Spring 2019</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">My name’s Ian Coyle. You may have heard of me. Until recently I wrote spy <span style="margin: 0px;">novels</span> and was good at it. At least that’s what my agent and my publisher told me. A couple of my books made the tail-end of obscure <span style="margin: 0px;">best-seller</span> lists and my latest, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King’s Bluff,</i> received a few almost-decent reviews. Understand, I’m not bragging about my success. I’m just trying to say my recent panic-inducing bout of writer’s block was unusual. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">April Fools’ Day began just like all of the days since the start of the new year. The early morning fog embraced the bay and the town of Monterey, one of California’s great and beautiful gifts. I’ve lived here alone for the past six years, ever since my ex-wife Kassie left me. I can’t say she broke my heart, but she left a hole which my one-eared tabby cat, Muscles, couldn’t quite fill. She returned to Chicago; I stayed, too crippled to do anything else. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">By now I’d settled into a satisfactory <span style="margin: 0px;">routine </span>playing a little pickup basketball in the park with other mid-life heroes, drinking coffee at Coco’s Cafe on the wharf, or more often volunteering at the pet rescue shelter where I originally found Muscles, an abused kitten. <span style="margin: 0px;">Lately,</span> a female veterinarian named Jill who worked there had attracted my attention and vice versa. We’d gone out several times and there was potential. Jill was nice - comfortable, unpretentious, and wholesome. She never used makeup and wore her sandy brown hair sensibly close-cropped. Her natural look appealed to me. Best of all, she accepted me just as I was, a trait much appreciated after Kassie’s unrelenting criticism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I still made my home in the comfortable remodeled duplex that Kassie had picked out. My best pal Paul teased that it was way too neat for a bachelor’s pad. My second-story office looked out on a stately strand of eucalyptus trees. With the windows open, I could hear the waves pounding the beach five blocks away and smell the scent of salt and sea life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Most days my writing uniform consisted of a pair of shorts, moccasins, and my favorite gray T-shirt with the Wile E. Coyote cartoon character on the <span style="margin: 0px;">front</span> holding up a sign that says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Help</i>. This morning was chilly enough that I slipped my Santa Clara sweatshirt on top, loaded my Nora Jones playlist and opened the browser on my computer. Muscles joined me, assuming his position atop my antique cherry bookcase. First thing I checked my sales numbers and fan emails – nothing of much interest in either. Then I scrubbed out my oversized coffee mug and refilled it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Since no more diversions came to mind, I opened the blank page of my word processor. That’s when the anxiety gnawed the hardest at my gut, the natural response to a brain barren of even a vague idea for a new story. Everything I was capable of writing bored me, and what didn’t bore me had already been written by better writers than me. The barren computer screen mocked and frightened me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I rested my fingers on the keys waiting for inspiration. Nothing came. I searched again through the twenty-three possible storylines I had explored over the past ten weeks, but every one of them seemed stale and basically worthless. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">After another cup of coffee, I gave up and decided to go for a jog long enough for the pain in my legs to exceed the pain in my brain. Today instead of heading up the hill on my usual course, I impulsively turned toward the ocean, then left toward Cannery Row. The tourists still weren’t out in force on a Monday in April, so after laboring by the aquarium I doubled back in the direction of the wharf. I didn’t stop until reaching the park behind Custom House Plaza panting, wheezing and aching, hands on my hips trying to catch my breath. My sweaty Wile E. Coyote T-shirt clung to me beneath my stinky sweatshirt. An old blue baseball hat covered my wet brown hair. I emptied my water <span style="margin: 0px;">bottle</span> and then walked over to the water fountain to refill it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">A very old man sat on the nearby weathered redwood bench, the only one in the shade of a mature Monterey cypress tree. By now the day had warmed up, but he still wore a dated double-breasted tan trench coat and a gray fedora hat with a red feather sticking out of the black band. I might not have paid any further attention except that I needed to sit down and rest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The bench was long enough to maintain a comfortable distance between us, which was good because I must have smelled worse than a rotting seal carcass. He uncurled his crossed legs, a pleasant expression on his face. A polished mahogany cane with a decorative pewter ball on top leaned against his knee. Brown, yellow, and orange pajama bottoms stuck out from beneath his coat, brown leather slippers adorning his feet, but no socks to cover his veiny ankles. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">His gaze fixed on the squadron of squawking seagulls overhead. After a moment of silence, he spoke, his voice a strong baritone with only the slightest quiver. “I love the smell of morning,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I grunted, preferring the privacy of silence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He reached into the inside pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a small silver flask. He unscrewed the top, eyes still fixed on the traversing <span style="margin: 0px;">seagulls,</span> and took a quick swallow. He let go a sigh of satisfaction as the liquid went down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He turned toward me and held out the flask, his sparkling eyes as crystal blue as the high sky. “Have some,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I mumbled a “no thanks,” never taking my attention from the seagulls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He didn’t get the hint. “See the initials on there,” he said turning the flask so I could see the engraving. “Says ‘to RH from DM.’ Know who that is?” When I didn’t answer, he kept going. “The DM is Douglas MacArthur, and the RH is me, Richard Holby. Ever hear of General MacArthur?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Sure. Everyone’s heard of MacArthur.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Ever hear of the Inchon Landing?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Vaguely,” I answered, little interested.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“September 1950. Korean War. One of the greatest military moves ever. MacArthur conceived it and led it. Our amphibious assault caught the gooks by complete surprise. Risky but turned the whole conflict around. I was his liaison officer on Green Beach. Went in with the second wave of the Fifth Marines. The greatest man I’ve ever known. He should have been president. Then Truman turns around and fires him. That’s when I decided to get the hell out of the army.” He took another short slug from the flask and then stuck it back in the pocket of his trench coat. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“That’s some story,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I’ve got lots of ‘em,” he responded. “I’m ninety-one years old last week. Didn’t ever think I’d live this long. Life hasn’t been much since Lalita died. That was three years ago. Been living in that seniors’ retirement home over there on the other side of the park. It’s filled with old people. Hell, half of ‘em don’t know their own name. Senile. I sneak out every Monday morning when they have their staff meetings. They don’t even know I’m gone.” He laughed, proud of himself. “Better get back before they miss me.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He pushed himself up with the help of his cane. He doffed his fedora, and then marched off along the cement path with a strong stride for an old man, erect like the military officer he once was. I walked back home, no more ready to face a blank page than when I left.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The rest of the week went no better, oft times my limited concentration broken by the chaos coming from my next-door neighbors. The Ucelli’s engaged in unrelenting mortal combat eventually culminating in loud, long, sensuous sex. On Thursday, an idea emerged for a satirical story about barnyard animals. About three pages in I realized George Orwell had already done this story back in 1945. I hit the delete key. It was gone, and with it, any hope for a breakthrough this week. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">At daylight on Monday morning, the ringing telephone startled my cat Muscles and sent him scurrying off my bed and into the hallway. It was my agent, Stella Rothstein, reminding me I was already eight weeks behind schedule. “Just send me the first chapter,” she said. “That’ll help me keep the pirates at bay.” That’s what she called the publishers. When my writer’s block first struck, she had been patient. Not any longer. “You know in this business you’re only as good as your last book,” she warned. Before she hung up, she reminded me that she had to eat too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">As if on cue, twenty minutes later the phone rang again, sending Muscles down the stairs. This time my publisher, Andrew Harkin, was on the line, agitated, demanding to know where the first three chapters were for the new book. I wanted to tell him the truth, but i<span style="margin: 0px;">nstead</span> told him I was on the verge of a great plot line and a <span style="margin: 0px;">new</span> set of characters that would knock his socks off. “I’ll expect to see something by next week,” he warned. Nothing like a little pressure to freeze the brain cells. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">By this time the best hour of the morning for writing was gone. After stuffing a banana down, I set out on my morning jog. A bit of fear nipped at my toes. My writing had provided Kassie and me with a comfortable enough living while we were married, but she couldn’t accept the limits of my talent, constantly prodding me to write more serious literature. I never had as high an opinion of myself as she did, though I suppose every writer believes they can one day produce the next <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grapes of Wrath</i>. I wrote unoriginal tripe that sold reasonably well. That’s all. Now and then the ache to write something better, something with meaning, pricked me. When it did, I’d remind myself that, all in all, life wasn’t bad. No mid-life crisis for this forty-four-year-old guy. But now I worried even my meager talents had deserted me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Without thinking much about it, today I took the same route I had the previous Monday down past Cannery Row, perhaps hoping Steinbeck would take pity on me and lend me one of his unused plots. I hadn’t thought about the old man, Richard Holby, since last week. But when I reached the park behind Custom House Plaza, <span style="margin: 0px;">there</span> he was, sitting on the same weathered redwood bench clad in his fedora, trench coat, and pajamas. I sat down next to him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He didn’t take his glistening blue eyes off the squawking seagulls overhead. “I love the smell of morning,” he said, just as he did the week before.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I grunted, still catching my breath, and took a swallow from my water bottle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“So what do you do? Seems like a working man shouldn’t be out running around in the middle of the morning.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I proceeded to give a short biography, concentrating mostly on my career as a novelist. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Written anything I’d of heard of?” he asked. “What’s your name?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Ian Coyle.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Ian Coyle,” he repeated as though committing it to memory. “Ian Coyle.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">For some strange reason, I then told him how sometimes writers got writer’s block, and that I was in the midst of one such episode right now. He hardly took notice and turned the conversation back to himself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“So when I got out of the army is when I went to work for the Yankees,” he said, picking up right where he left off from last week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“The New York Yankees?” I asked, momentarily intrigued by this unusual turn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“That ’57 team had some real howlers. George Weiss, the general manager, hired me to look after them. Thought because I was a former army officer they’d respect me and I could keep ‘em out of trouble. No way you could keep Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Billy Martin out of trouble. Yogi and Bauer either. Hell, they blamed everything on Billy, but it was all of them. They sure could raise hell. Mickey was the best damn ballplayer that ever played the game. No telling how good he could have been. I remember one Saturday night, it must have been in Cleveland, or maybe Chicago, we stayed out till four in the morning raising hell. Next day we play a <span style="margin: 0px;">doubleheader</span>. Mickey wins the first one with a homer in the ninth, still drunk as a skunk. In the <span style="margin: 0px;">nightcap,</span> he hits two more, hungover.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Are you serious?” I said, my doubt <span style="margin: 0px;">evident</span>. First General MacArthur, and now Mickey Mantle? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He continued to fix his hazy gaze on the movie he was seeing play out before him. “Did you ever hear about the Copacabana incident?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I shook my head no.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“It was in the middle of June ’57. The whole gang was at the Copa celebrating Billy’s twenty-ninth birthday. Mickey, Whitey, Yogi, Bauer, Johnny Kucks and their wives. Sammy Davis Junior was performing and a couple of jerks from a bowling team start heckling him and calling out some awful racial words. Made some wisecracks about some of the guys’ wives too. Next thing you know some punches were thrown. Cops were called and all hell broke loose. Needless to say, the press got a hold of the story and it was all over the newspapers the next morning. I don’t know who started it, but as usual, Billy Martin took the blame from management. A month later he was traded to the Kansas City A’s. Can you imagine Billy Martin in a place like Kansas City? It drove him mad.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The old man tapped his cane repeatedly against the side of the bench. He paused and looked over at me to be sure I was buying all of this. By now I was so engrossed in the story I didn’t even care about its authenticity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He continued: “So George Weiss, the GM, fired me too. Said I was a bad influence, no better than Billy, which was true. Fortunately for <span style="margin: 0px;">me,</span> one of the Yankees’ owners, Del Webb, took pity on me. He got me a job in Los Angeles with one of his companies. <span style="margin: 0px;">Best</span> thing that ever happened to me. That’s how I met my third wife.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Third? How many wives did you have?” I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Seven,” he said without hesitation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Seven? Can you name them all?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He paused. His lips moved, but no words came out. He took off his fedora and ran his fingers through his thinned white hair. “Let me see. There was Margo, the first one. Then the model. I think her name was Lorraine. There was the Brazilian dancer. Can’t remember her name. The Norwegian flight attendant.” He paused again, stuck. “Hell, what difference does it make. The last one, Lalita, she was the one I really loved. She was twenty-five years younger than me. A real dark-haired beauty. We were married for twenty-eight years, Lalita and me. None of the others lasted more than three. She gave me my only child, my beautiful daughter Inez. She’s the only one who comes to see me anymore, all the way from Colorado.” He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his wrinkled arthritic hand. “I miss Lalita,” he said, his voice cracking. “It still hurts like hell.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, <span style="margin: 0px;">a feeble</span> response to his pain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Poor Billy died too young,” he went on, regaining his composure. “It was 1989 in an auto accident. I should have gone to the funeral, but I was otherwise occupied. Off in Iraq trying to butter up that butcher, Saddam Hussein, for one of the oil companies.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He dropped that last bomb with such nonchalance it barely registered until I was <span style="margin: 0px;">halfway</span> home. MacArthur, Mantle, Saddam Hussein. Who was this man named Richard Holby? As soon as I got to my computer, I googled <span style="margin: 0px;">him</span> but found nothing of interest, and no one who even came close to meeting his description.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That evening over a veggie pizza and beer, I related to Jill the chronicle Richard Holby gave me of his life. She listened patiently with an amused smirk on her face and an occasional roll of her brown eyes. Between <span style="margin: 0px;">bites,</span> she issued a <span style="margin: 0px;">less-than-inspiring</span> “uh huh, uh huh.” Mostly she concentrated on eating pizza. The waiter cleared the pie tin away about the time I ran out of things to say about the old man.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“You don’t really believe all of that, do you?” she asked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The old man captivated me, and I wanted everything he told me to be true. It dawned on me before now that it might have been me that encouraged him to exaggerate, if not outright <span style="margin: 0px;">fabricate</span>. But right now, I felt protective. “I like him,” I answered her. “He’s interesting and he’s lonely. He misses his wife.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Then you should keep seeing him,” she said. I intended to do just that.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">THE FOLLOWING WEEK was no more productive for me than the week before, or the weeks before that. I thought about the old man, wondering how I could turn any of his stories into one of my convoluted spy novels, but nothing worked. Nonetheless, when Monday rolled around I headed out on my new route that ended in the park by Custom House <span style="margin: 0px;">Plaza</span>, eager to see him. This time I got there first. I watched him stride down the path from the direction of the Sunbrook Senior Residence as though he were still a young army officer on MacArthur’s staff, using his polished mahogany cane more like a swagger stick than a supportive device. His blue eyes lit up and a smile crossed his lips when he saw me waiting.</span><br /><div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Ah, the famous author Ian Coyle,” he said. “I’ve been reading your books. Got them from the library.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“And what did you think?” I asked when he sat down, pleased he made the effort and hungry for him to like them.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“They’re very good. You have a vivid imagination and a wonderful way with words. I was entertained.” He reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out his silver flask. He held it out to me. When I shook my head no, he unscrewed the top and took a slug. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and let out a satisfied sigh. “So what’re you writing next?” he asked.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I again explained my writer’s block and the failed ideas. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Hemingway used to say the reason he lived such a full life was <span style="margin: 0px;">that he</span> had to have something to write about. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, writing and living go together.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“And I suppose you knew Hemingway?” I asked, bemused doubt in my voice.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Cuba, <span style="margin: 0px;">sometime</span> around 1958. We drank together, though Hemingway could no longer hold his liquor very well. Castro was causing real troubles at the time, and most Americans were getting ready to skedaddle.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Did you meet Castro?” I asked, skeptical, anticipating the answer.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“What year is this?” he asked, turning from me, his flickering eyes, searching the sky.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“2018.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Then that was a long time ago.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I could no longer be sure whether or not he was pulling my leg with his stories, but he proceeded to tell me more. He killed a bear while climbing Mount Everest. Pirates kidnapped him in Somalia, but he escaped. He sailed the remote reaches of the Amazon and tended bar in Rio. That’s where he met his third wife. Or was that his fourth or fifth? He was thrown in jail in Shanghai, but his employer, an influential currency trader, bought his way out. He made his big money with one of the early tech startups in Silicon Valley.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">In between, he asked me about my marriage to Kassie and why it failed. Then he asked about Jill. My description revealed more admiration and affection for her than I realized. <span style="margin: 0px;">Lately,</span> our days together began with our volunteering at the animal rescue shelter, proceeded to dinner at one of Carmel’s cozy restaurants, and ended at my house. I liked waking up with her next to me – her warmth, her smell, her dark hair on the pillow, and Muscles curled up between us.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“You like this Jill person, don’t you,” the old man said.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I guess I do.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He cast his eyes toward the ocean, his face contorted. “Well, don’t let her get away then.” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">We sat there in silence for the moment listening to the barking of the colony of seals by the boat landing. “Did you have one who got away?” I finally asked, sensing a loss.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He clasped both hands on the pewter nob atop his cane. “Ava,” he said. “Problem was I didn’t have the guts to go for it.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The old man was in a zone, and by now I’d learned that another good story was on its way. The best thing for me to do was keep quiet and listen.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Ava Gardner. The actress. <span style="margin: 0px;">Most</span> beautiful woman in the world. The day we met she was wearing this bright red dress that matched her lipstick, a little bit of cleavage showing. It was on the way down in an elevator in Beverly Hills. She had just been to see her gynecologist. By the time we got to the ground <span style="margin: 0px;">floor,</span> we’d struck up a conversation. One thing led to another. We’d sneak away some weekends up the coast, away from Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and the rest of that Hollywood gossip crowd. She was a few years older than me, but that didn’t matter. She’d gone through three divorces by then, and me about the same. We needed each other. But Sinatra couldn’t get over her. They’d been divorced a year or two before we met. He hovered over her, keeping track of everything she did. One of his goons visited me. That’s not why I left. I just didn’t think I could measure up. She was too much woman. I was afraid to take a chance.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Ava warmed me like the sunshine,” he said quietly. He reached <span style="margin: 0px;">into</span> his coat pocket. The silver flask trembled in his hand when he pulled it out. This time he didn’t offer me a slug. I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked over and smiled a sad smile. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">With that, he leaned one hand on his cane and the other on the bench, and pushed himself upright. Then he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a paperback copy of Steinbeck’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">East of Eden</i>. “Have you read it?” he asked.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“It’s my favorite.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Well, read it again,” he said. “He’s waiting for you, just down the road.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He tottered off, leaving me to wonder how we jumped from him and Ava Gardner to me and John Steinbeck.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">JILL SPENT THE next four nights at my place. Whether because of her more frequent presence in my life, or the old man, my stress dissipated like smoke in a windstorm. Developing a plot for yet another spy novel no longer seemed so urgent. My agent called. I ignored her. When my publisher couldn’t reach me, he texted with a threat to withhold the advance on my next book. I didn’t care. I contemplated taking up my friend Adam’s offer to give me a job teaching English at the state <span style="margin: 0px;">college</span>. Adam was head of the department. If Jill and I had a future together, this might not be a bad life. </span><br /><div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">When Jill left for work Tuesday morning, I pulled out my own tattered paperback copy of <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk503094666"><span style="color: #993300;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">East of Eden</i> </span></a>and began reading it for perhaps the fifth time. Every time I did so, the whole of it struck fresh and new. In this novel, Steinbeck did what he often did, going to the old testament for his story’s theme. But the bible hardly seemed like the place to find inspiration for the plot of a spy novel.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">That afternoon the sun shone and the weather warmed comfortably into the low sixties. I went to visit Steinbeck. Tourists had begun their seasonal invasion, but Cannery Row beckoned. Then I followed the coastal trail for less than a mile into Pacific Grove where Steinbeck lived for a while with his first wife, Carroll. The ocean shone particularly deep blue against the vivid cloudless sky, waves lapping against the cliff. The aroma of sea life blended with the fresh scent of the Monterey pines. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">If I expected somehow to commune with the great departed author, his ghost failed to materialize. But a message <span style="margin: 0px;">of</span> his did: We humans have choices. Whatever I did next, it was my choice. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much good at anything except writing spy novels. Still, I recognized when a story begins to form in the far latitudes of my mind. One was forming now, but it made no sense. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">High drama next door greeted my return home. My noisy neighbors were in the midst of an epic eruption. She stormed out the door with a suitcase in hand. Through the curtains, I watched her throw it in the trunk of her crippled gray Honda and roar away. In the days that followed, things were strangely quiet. I imagined the tattooed guy sitting by himself, lonely. Occasionally I heard the television set or country music <span style="margin: 0px;">playing softly</span>. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">RICHARD HOLBY WAS an old man from the moment I met him, yet one still with a military bearing and no self-pity. This day was different. His shoulders sagged; the deep wrinkles, bulging purple veins in his hands, and puffy bags under his eyes seemed magnified. Perspiration pooled on his brow, but he <span style="margin: 0px;">still</span> wore that fedora and heavy trench coat on this warm morning.</span><br /><div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Here’s the question,” the old man began as soon as I sat down. “If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be?” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I never thought about it,” I answered.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Well, think about it. This is your life we’re talking about, and you only get to live it once.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I didn’t know where this was leading, but by now I expected such statements to lead someplace interesting.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">His chest labored with each deep breath. “I read two more of your books. I suspect you have great talent, but your stories are all the same, your characters aren’t real. They’re invented to amuse the reader.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“What’s wrong with that?” I asked a little more defensive than I intended. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He summoned the momentary strength to answer in kind. “Write for yourself, for godssake. Let your characters live life. And for that to happen, you have to live life!”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“You sound like my ex-wife.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“What are you afraid of?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I’m not afraid of anything. It’s just that spy novels are what I’m good at.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“And that’s your ultimate ambition? To write more spy novels just like the ones you’ve already written?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He didn’t say anything more. I stewed, glaring vacantly at the circling seagulls. When I, at last, looked over, his hand was shaking so hard the head of his cane wobbled fitfully.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I laced my fingers together and composed myself. “Nobody starts out to write hackneyed spy novels. I wanted to be John Steinbeck, or Hemingway, or any of the great ones all aspiring writers think about. But one of my professors at Writer’s Workshop, the famous Dr. William Lonsdale, told me I couldn’t write worth a damn, and to find another line of work. Maybe I should have listened to him. <span style="margin: 0px;">Instead,</span> I lucked into this gig. It’s not so bad, you know.” I’d carried that encounter with Dr. Lonsdale around with me for years, hurt but grateful he had warned me of my limitations. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Let’s look at it as preparation,” he said, ignoring my defensive edge. “This is the time for <span style="margin: 0px;">change</span>. Big change. Write, don’t write, teach, or go fishing. Whatever you do, do it so you won’t look back with big regret because you didn’t have the courage to change the one thing you should have changed. You have the choice. So choose.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I nodded as though I had taken his words to heart. But it was a lot easier for him to say it than for me to do it. Nonetheless, he was trying to tell me something important, learned from his own wounds. “And you?” I asked. “Is there one thing you’d change if you could?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He didn’t answer right away, examining his shaky hands resting on his cane. Then he said wistfully, “Yes, of course. We all have that one regret. Mine involved a woman, as so many of these stories do.” He paused again to take a deep breath, staring toward the ocean as if searching for some distant land at the horizon. “Her name was Lalita,” he said.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Wait. I thought Lalita was your last wife.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“No,” he answered. “That was Ava. A good woman. But I never loved anyone like I loved Lalita.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I was confused. Was he mixing up Ava Gardner with his last wife, Lalita?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“We met when we were in college. There weren’t many Hispanics going to college back then, particularly Hispanic women. We were madly in love and planned to get married as soon as we graduated. I had a good job with an accounting firm waiting for me in Salinas. I could have supported her. She was gorgeous and good. Don’t know what she saw in a fool like me. When we told our parents of our intentions, all hell broke loose. Remember, this was 1949. In those days, a Mexican Catholic girl didn’t marry a white Protestant boy from Pacific Heights.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“So what happened?”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Both of our parents broke it up. She married some grape grower from the valley. I wanted to die heroically, so I joined the army. Went to OCS. Got a commission as a second lieutenant. You know the rest. MacArthur. Inchon.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“That’s a sad story,” I said, unable to think of anything more appropriate to the moment.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“If there’s one thing I could go back and change, that would be it. I’ve regretted it all my life. Should have stood up to my parents, and hers. I think she would have run off with me if I’d asked. I didn’t.” His eyes misted. His whole body shook. I moved closer and put my arm around him.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I’m sorry,” I whispered.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">We sat like that for a while. When he spoke, his voice was soft, gentle, and firm. “You’re a good man, Ian Coyle. If I had a son, I would be proud if he were like you.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He leaned his head against my shoulder. I could feel every bone in his body. He might have fallen asleep for a moment, then he startled. “I better get back before the wardens realize I’m missing,” he said. “Monday morning staff meeting’s just about over.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Would you like me to walk you home?” I asked.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“I can make it,” he answered. With my support and a grunt, he stood up. “I hope someone shot that professor of yours. You can be a great writer, the writer you want to be. Take it on my authority.” He put his arms around me and gave me a hug. I hugged him back. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">He tottered off down the path toward the Sunbrook Retirement Home. When he disappeared behind one of the houses by the park, I walked home, my heart aching for him and my mind swirling from his lofty assessment of me. His message resonated like a warning: Leave no regrets!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">THAT NIGHT I tossed and turned, alone in my bed. I missed Jill next to me. At dawn, I sensed a story forming, a warmth creeping up my leg and into my subconscious. It had something to do with the Bible. Maybe David and Goliath. I know. That’s already been done, but so has every other story.</span><br /><div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">What if a young man – David – fights and defeats not one, but many present-day evil giants – a corrupt politician in a small town, a narcissistic corporate baron without a heart, a drug lord who profits from human misery. Along the <span style="margin: 0px;">way,</span> David meets a dark-haired beauty named Delilah, who looks and acts a lot like Ava Gardner. In the end, good triumphs over evil. I wrote a synopsis down as fast as my fingers moved. I could see David. I could smell Delilah. I heard the <span style="margin: 0px;">giants</span>’ final wails and felt satisfaction each time David cut off another Goliath’s head.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I texted Jill to tell her lightning had struck and that I would be in my hole for several days. My phone binged almost immediately with her response: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fantastic! I’ll be waiting whenever you come up. Go get em!” </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">By the end of the first page, there was no doubt something good was happening. My mind found that rare spot where I inhabited the place and the characters I created, the writing effortlessly recording what they said, what they felt, and what they did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I put on some jazz and, like a cloudburst, for the next five <span style="margin: 0px;">days</span> the words materialized as if by themselves. I couldn’t be bothered with showering or changing clothes. My Wile E. Coyote T-shirt could have walked away by itself if I ever took it off. My teeth grew moss from lack of brushing, and my hair needed a grease job. Burnt toast and black coffee sustained me, along with an occasional apple or hunk of provolone cheese. The distinction between night and day went unnoticed. My cat Muscles hovered <span style="margin: 0px;">nearby</span>, unsure what was going on, but aware something changed. The writer’s block dissolved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">By the time the initial rush of mania ran its course, I’d finished the first four chapters. I took a hasty shower, and then called Jill. We had dinner in, at her place. Mine looked like a torpedo hit it. I could talk about nothing but the story. She tried extra hard to plug into my rapture, without the <span style="margin: 0px;">benefit</span> of elixir, and I loved her for it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">When I got home, the message light on my answering machine was blinking. “Ian, it’s me, <span style="margin: 0px;">Stella</span>,” my agent <span style="margin: 0px;">began,</span> controlled excitement in her voice. “Ben Forrester, the movie producer, just called. He’s interested in taking an option on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King’s Bluff</i>. He wants to make it into a movie.” Of course, I might have said to her that that’s what movie producers do. She rattled on: “He’s even got the actors picked out to play Vic King and the Mermaid.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Best part, he wants you to write the screenplay. Call me back as soon as you get this. Ian, this is the break we’ve been waiting for.” And a big paycheck for her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">A year ago, or even a week ago, this would have been the dream of my life. Every author would die to see his work on the big screen. I was no different. But what I was working on now wasn’t just another novel. I was finally writing something serious I could be proud of that called for all of the <span style="margin: 0px;">talent</span> I had. Maybe it was the change the old man pushed me to make, the big one I would always regret if I didn’t go for it. Besides that, a screenplay meant moving to Hollywood and leaving Jill behind. After no more than an instant’s hesitation, I hit the delete key on the answering machine. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I got back to writing, quickly finding that secret part of my brain where only I could go. New ideas for plot twists or character revelations popped off like unexpected starbursts on the Fourth of July. The world I created became more real than the life I led. All that mattered was what happened next to the characters I was coming to love, and the villains I despised. This was fun! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">There were some chilling moments when the Devil whispered in my ear that my life would be just as dull if I wrote biblically-inspired novels as it was writing spy stories. I heard the old man warning me that I had to live a huge life if I was to write great literature. But the moment of doubt passed when I put on my earphones, turned on my playlist, and dove back into the vivid imaginary world I created with my words.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">When Monday morning fog rolled through, I awoke early, showered, and dressed in a pair of clean chinos and a blue twill shirt. I printed out a copy of everything I’d written, put it in a three-ringed blue binder, and headed for the park by Custom House Plaza. I was so eager to show the old man what I’d done that I arrived ten minutes before our usual meeting time. A classroom of little girls in their school uniforms stepped off a yellow school bus and paraded toward the historic museum, their teachers and parent escorts on patrol. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Every five minutes, I looked over in the direction of the Sunbrook Senior Residence, expecting to see the old man marching toward me, mahogany cane in hand. I opened the manuscript and read the first few pages <span style="margin: 0px;">for</span> the twentieth time. A few words here and there needed fixing, a sentence cut or added, but overall it read well. Very well. The old man would like it. More than that, he would appreciate that I’d made a choice, one he had prompted. I’d opted to take a chance on writing a serious piece of literature. And while I was sitting there, I began to think something should change with Jill, one way or the other. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Time passed and the old man didn’t show. Something had been bothering him last week. Maybe whatever it was had found him. There was no denying he was old and vulnerable, disaster always skulking right around the corner. The thought rose to concern and then to alarm. I nearly broke into a trot as I hastened down the path toward his nursing home. A couple walking the opposite direction stepped aside to let me pass.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">This was my first venture in<span style="margin: 0px;">to</span> a warehouse for old people. I held my breath, opened the door, and stepped into the Sunbrook Senior Residence. The living room resembled a 1950’s Sears <span style="margin: 0px;">catalog</span> – serviceable, sterile, overstuffed floral patterned couch and side chairs in rose and blue, light purple-gray institutional carpet, heavy gray drapes with gold fringe, and mismatched dark wooden coffee table and end tables. It smelled of old age. A roll of laughter came from a room off the side; two old men and six old women congregated around tables playing cards. Three of the women were in wheelchairs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">A young woman sat behind a reception desk straight ahead. She looked up. “I’m looking for Richard Holby,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Welcome to Sunbrook,” she said with a huge smile, a little too cheerful. “Are you friend or family?” she asked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Friend,” I answered. “He was supposed to meet me this morning but didn’t show up. I wanted to make sure he was okay.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">She gave me a quizzical look. “Oh, Richard is fine. I just saw him.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Could I look in on him?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Certainly. And your name is…?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Ian Coyle.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">She wrote it on a nametag and handed it to me. “Down the hall and take the first left. You’ll see a sign to the memory wing. There’s another reception desk there, and then a pair of secured doors.” I peeled off the tape on the back of the nametag and placed it on my chest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The reception nurse outside the dementia wing unlocked the door with an automated card and opened it. I followed her in. “This is recreation hour,” she said. “Many of our guests like to sit here by the window in the sun.” Ten or so inmates occupied a big room with a giant overhead skylight. Some sat alone by the large windows. Others were at tables with what must have been family or friends. Two attendants circulated. Some residents emitted low moans. Their caregivers answered in soft voices. <span style="margin: 0px;">A scent</span> of wintergreen tried unsuccessfully to cover the smell of disinfectant and urine.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Richard is over there,” she said, pointing to the left. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. His daughter should be dropping <span style="margin: 0px;">in</span> any minute now. She comes every day.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“That can’t be Richard Holby,” I said, my repulsion with the scene in front of me surely showing in my voice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">The man she pointed to <span style="margin: 0px;">looked</span> something like the old man I knew, but it couldn’t be him. This person slouched in his wheelchair, strapped in, body rigid, staring off into space. His mouth hung partially open, a slight bit of drool seeping out of the corner. I moved toward him. The crystal blues eyes I expected were covered with gray. His shaggy hair looked like it had been combed with a rake, his sideburns badly in need of a trim. A disobedient tuft of white stood up in front. I might have turned around, certain this was the wrong person had I not spotted his brown, yellow, and orange pajama bottoms sticking out from beneath his tan terrycloth bathrobe. The same leather slippers he wore since the first time I met him covered his feet beneath his veiny ankles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I wanted to leave, to run, but couldn’t. The short walk from the door to his side, the manuscript tucked under my arm, was like slogging through molasses. I pulled up one of the chrome and blue plastic chairs next to him. “<span style="margin: 0px;">Hi,</span> Richard. It’s me, Ian,” I said <span style="margin: 0px;">softly</span>, cautiously. Nothing. He continued to stare off <span style="margin: 0px;">into</span> space. I touched his gnarled arthritic hand. <span style="margin: 0px;">Still,</span> he didn’t respond. I held out the manuscript for him to see. “Look what I wrote. It’s the start of my new story. I did what you said. From the <span style="margin: 0px;">Bible</span>. I think it’s going to be good.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I was startled when he let out a long low gurgle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“He liked that, whatever you said,” a nearby male attendant remarked. “First time he’s responded in weeks. Keep it up.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">So I did, telling him what the story was about, flipping through the pages and reading him paragraphs here and there. He didn’t move, and he didn’t make another sound. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I got up to go. I kissed him on the forehead and <span style="margin: 0px;">said:</span> “thank you.” He gurgled again. I touched him on the shoulder and left.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">When I exited the secure doors, I stopped to exhale, confused by what had happened, my heart aching for the old man I’d just seen. Someone was certainly playing a horrid joke. That decrepit old man couldn’t be Richard Holby no matter the pajamas he was wearing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Mr. Coyle?” An attractive, shapely mid-aged woman stopped me. “I’m Inez Holby-Perez,” she said. “I understand you know my father.” Her black hair, magnetic dark eyes, and almond skin were clearly Hispanic, but her high cheekbones and square chin could only have come from Richard Holby.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">We sat down to talk on a couple of comfortable chairs in a secluded alcove, a coffee table between us. I leaned across and handed her my business card, as though identification as a writer of novels would somehow attest to my sanity and veracity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“How do you know my father?” she started, her voice gentle as a feather.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I proceeded to tell her about my meetings with her father and about the interesting life he led. She let me talk, but her stern face and crossed arms told me she didn’t appreciate what she was hearing. “I have to tell you,” I concluded, “I’m confused. The man I just saw was him, but it wasn’t him.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Mr. Coyle. Ian. You seem like a very sincere person. But you’re mistaken. You’ve seen the condition my father is in. It must have been someone else, not him.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Your mother’s name is Lalita, right?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“That’s right.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“And every Monday morning there’s a staff meeting here, am I right?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Her eyes flickered when I said that. “How did you know about the Monday morning staff meetings?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“He snuck out every Monday morning during staff meetings,” I said. “We met in the park across from Custom House Plaza.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Now she was the confused one. She tapped her fingers on the coffee table in front of us, deciding where to go next. She pursed her lips before continuing. “Let me tell you about my father,” she began. She told me her father and mother ran off and got married right after they graduated from San Jose State in 1949. None of their parents ever came to terms with their marriage. His parents would accept no one who wasn’t a Protestant from Pacific Heights, and her parents wouldn’t accept anyone but a Catholic from Guadalupe. Richard took a job with an accounting firm in Salinas, became a partner, and stayed there until he retired in 1995. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“Everyone in town knew my father,” she said. “They liked him and trusted him. He was involved in everything, always ready to help someone out. Growing up, he was a softy. My mother provided the firm hand we needed. There were the five of us kids, my four older brothers and me. I was the baby, a surprise. Mother was in her early forties when I came along. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">“They lived a peaceful life in Salinas. I think Dad would have loved to have traveled, but Mother was content. The furthest we ever got was Disneyland. They lived in the same house, a rambling rancher not far from town, ever since 1959. They moved here to Sunbrook when Mother contracted her cancer. She knew Dad was going to need a lot of care when she was gone.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Her breast heaved, her voice quieted to barely a whisper. “Anyone who knew them even a little saw the devotion and deep love between them. They had been married sixty-five years when she died.” She took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, drained. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">She assured me that either she or one of her brothers came to see the old man every day. His thirteen grandchildren dropped by often. Everyone lived nearby, between Mountain View and Salinas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">We parted, mutually confused. She promised she would call me if his condition changed. I promised to stop in again to see him, a promise I wouldn’t keep.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">By now you must be thinking what I was thinking. What happened? How did it happen? Was I a <span style="margin: 0px;">little</span> bit crazy? Did I imagine the whole thing? But I couldn’t have. My head was spinning around and around. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">After I walked, or more likely wobbled, out of Sunbrook Retirement Residence, my disobedient legs carried me back to the park and the weathered redwood bench under the old cypress tree, my manuscript clutched under my arm. The seagulls patrolling the plaza screamed from above. Seals barked in the distance, and tourists chattered nearby. Three little girls in matching blue plaid skirts raced across the red brick courtyard. The fresh smell of Monterey pines and salty sea spray did little to clear my nostrils of the reek of human decay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">That moment the afternoon western sun broke through the morning clouds. Light glittered off a small silver flask laying on the bench. Next to it sat a gray fedora with a small red feather stuck in the black band. I picked up the flask. It was engraved with the inscription ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To RH from DM</i>.’ I looked around to see who could have placed it there. No suspects revealed themselves. Then I unscrewed the top expecting to be greeted with a whiff of brandy or bourbon. Instead, I smelled Lipton’s Tea. I put the hat on my head and let the vertigo spin through my mind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Reason did not prevail. No explanation made sense. I gave up trying to understand it in rational terms. Then came the big question: which was the real Richard Holby, the one who met me Mondays on the bench, the adventurer? Or the one in the memory ward who lived a long stable life with a loving wife by his side. Whatever the truth, there could be no doubt the man I saw an hour earlier was my friend. Or was he? Whoever he was, pity and loss tore at my heart. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16pt; margin: 16px 0px 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">I sat there for hours until the approaching sun began its daily <span style="margin: 0px;">descent</span>, fog inching in across the ocean’s horizon. A light chilly wind raised goosebumps on my exposed arms. I rose from the bench, the fedora on my head, and the flask in my hip pocket. I headed home to where Jill would be waiting, a grocery bag full of dinner fixings in hand. I would tell her about the strange events of today. And I would tell her that I had to live my life with no regrets. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">She wasn’t going to like it when I told her Muscles and I were moving to Los Angeles<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">̶</span><span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>alone. I would write the screenplay for my last spy novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King’s Bluff</i>, and see it made into a movie. And maybe I would find my own Ava Gardner. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson"; font-size: 12.5pt; margin: 0px;">Only after I’d lived life in full could I write the best novel that was in me.</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike></div>
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Alan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791229085143464879.post-27622939817290558022019-02-15T12:34:00.000-08:002019-02-15T12:41:07.655-08:00HAPPY HOUR AT THE DMV<i>This story first appeared <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">in the Avalon Literary Review, Winter 2019 edition</span></i><br />
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Can you remember the last time you had a really good day at
the DMV? Me neither, and I work there. At first light, the hungry hoards press
against the double glass doors clamoring to get in, mercilessly seeking photo
ID’s, drivers’ tests, auto title changes, and learners’ permits. Mondays are the
worst, particularly in June when every sixteen-year-old in California is
hell-bent to get behind the wheel. </div>
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<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">On and on they come
all day long. And there I am, the bitch sheepdog charged with herding these
lambs and goats into their proper lines, with paperwork filled out completely
and correctly. In truth, my real task is keeping the wolves from eating the
livestock.</span></div>
<span style="margin: 0px;"></span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
There are some dedicated public servants here at my DMV
office. Well, actually only one, Maria Cortez who helps driver’s license
applicants take their written test on our fancy new electronic system. She’s a
saint. On the other hand, Bob, Mercy, and Melanie are as enthused as a deflated
tire, waiting out their years until retirement. Melanie’s response to customer
complaints is always, “This ain’t Nordstrom’s, honey.” Most of the rest of us
do our jobs as best we can, but little more.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
My first inquiry on this one particular day came from a
middle-aged woman who obviously felt it important to wear her favorite flowered
yellow dress to come to the DMV, complete with pearls, spiked black heels and a
heavy coat of hairspray. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Por favor</i>,”
she said, in a sugary half-assed attempt at Spanish. “Cama hay <span style="margin: 0px;">yamo</span>.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Good morning,” I said nicely. “May I help you?” She must
have thought that because I look Hispanic I mustn’t be able to speak English
well, even though I was clearly an employee of the California Department of
Motor Vehicles. Otherwise, why would she expect me to know the answer to her
question about whether it was legal to haul green bananas in the trunk of her
car? Well, that might not be exactly what she asked, but something just as <span style="margin: 0px;">wacky</span>. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Now that I think about it, maybe I do look a little Latin
with my dark skin, dark hair, and long Salena Gomez bangs. But I’m actually
Greek. Or at least my grandparents are. My name is Yolanda Giannapolous. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Our reputation at the DMV precedes us. So the crowd behaved,
civilized, though most of them figured out they were going to be here a long while,
including those with appointments for a specified time. A muffled buzz arose as
those in line got acquainted with each other, sharing their still-tolerable
frustration. A confused gray-haired Asian woman who spoke limited English
engaged in conversation with a young Indian woman in an artichoke-green <span style="margin: 0px;">sari</span> and a vermilion dot on her forehead. Their
command of English was mutually mangled. The only thing they could seem to
connect on was that the DMV sucked. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
A hot young blond in clingy gray running shorts and a violet
tank top tried to help them out. In <span style="margin: 0px;">between,</span>
she took slurps of coffee from her Starbucks Grande cappuccino. I was close
enough to catch a whiff of her dank odor. By the time she reached the front of
the <span style="margin: 0px;">line,</span> those around her might wish she
had stopped to take a shower after her morning jog. But then she would have
missed her assigned appointment time, an <span style="margin: 0px;">offense
the DMV does not take lightly</span>.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
An interesting looking grease monkey from one of the nearby
auto repair shops joined the back of the line. I handed him a clipboard with a
form to fill out stating his name and the purpose of his visit to the DMV. His lips
gave me a charming smile while his eyes gave me the once-over. That always
builds up a girl’s ego, particularly at nine o’clock in the morning. The DMV is
a good place to work for a young woman who’s looking for some action. The
younger men are always on the prowl, with pickup lines nearly as suave as George
Clooney. Not! For laughs, my best friend, Nura, and I share the top ones every
day over lunch. But I have a boyfriend, Josh, who keeps me well-satisfied.
We’re getting married as soon as he finishes college next spring. Nura is a
different story. She’s mostly saving herself for a Muslim man her parents will approve
of, but once in a <span style="margin: 0px;">while,</span> she <span style="margin: 0px;">scores</span> and then shares every breathless detail
with me.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The people who walk through
our glass double-doors every day come in a scad of colors, sexes, shapes, <span style="margin: 0px;">and</span> flavors. Most of them are nice. But every
once in a while, there’s an asshole. The assholes also come in all <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk506374331">shades, sexes, shapes, and flavors</a>. I’ve been here
long enough to sniff a skunk before I even see him. Just such a mammal strutted
in the door now, a boringly-brown-haired middle-aged man in a classy business
suit. He wasn’t wearing just any off-the-rack suit. No, this one was definitely
a custom-fit navy blue gabardine from someplace like Nieman Marcus. He
glamorized his get-up with a power purple tie and a blue pin-striped shirt.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
This guy took one look at the long unmoving <span style="margin: 0px;">line</span> and made a beeline for me, the clipboard on
my arm a sure sign of authority. “I have a nine-thirty appointment, miss,” he
fumed.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“End of the line, please,” I said, pointing with my finger, never
looking up from my clipboard. This was not going to be fun.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“You don’t understand. I have an appointment.” He enunciated
slowly, clear and loud, suspecting my English wasn’t too good. Or my hearing.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Si señor</i>,” I
answered. “End of the line.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I have a board meeting in an hour. I’m only here to remove
the lien from my car title.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He touched my arm, threatening or pleading. I couldn’t tell
which. He dropped his hand when my hot glare moved from his flushed face to his
unwelcomed fingers. “All these people ahead of you have appointments,” I said.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“But I have a nine-thirty appointment, and it’s nine-thirty
now.” He looked down at his large, expensive watch, tapping its blue face.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
I turned away from him and walked over to <span style="margin: 0px;">a confused Hispanic</span> woman. I used every word of
Spanish I knew to explain how to fill out the form she would need to get her
driving permit. When I meandered back, Mr. Blue Suit came at me again. He took
out his wallet from his back pocket and held up a twenty-dollar bill. “Will
this help?” he asked.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I’m sorry, sir. We’re not allowed to accept tips.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Let me speak to your supervisor,” he demanded, stuffing the
money back <span style="margin: 0px;">into</span> his pocket.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I am the supervisor,” I lied. His cheeks turned so red I
thought he was going to have a coronary. Something like that had never happened
in my line before. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Do you know who I am? I’m Larry Winkle, president of Smiley
Ice.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Nice to meet you, <span style="margin: 0px;">Mr.</span>
Winkle,” I responded, trying my hardest to look fearless, chomping harder on my
spearmint chewing gum.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“We’re the largest distributor of ice cream in the Bay Area.”
The strength of his voice asserted the importance of his position. I nodded,
unimpressed. Then I turned back to help a confused teenager.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
My friend Nura manned the in-take desk these people in the
long line were queued up to see. She checked their paperwork and assigned them
to one of the twelve customer service desks. Some people around the office
called her Judge Judy because she passed judgment on every customer as though
they were defendants at trial. Others called her the Grim Reaper because of the
punishment she inflicted on those she found wanting, usually in the form of eternal
entanglement in the bureaucratic swamp. I hated to think what she would do to my
new friend Larry <span style="margin: 0px;">Winkle</span> if he didn’t
change his attitude in a hurry. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The line was moving only a little faster, but there were still
seven people in front of him. I caught a last whiff of the blond female jogger
with the <span style="margin: 0px;">ponytail</span> before Nura finished
with her and she moved on to her assigned service desk.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Hey Nura,” I said before the next customer got to her.
“Don’t look up, but see that guy in the classy dark suit?”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Ah, another asshole?” she asked. I nodded. She gave me the fetchingly
twisted smile I so adored. Nura ate self-important assholes alive.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The line had grown and now circled out the door onto the
sidewalk. Halfway back, a beautiful coal-dark woman in blue jeans held a
whimpering infant in her arms, trying to comfort it. I’m a sucker for cute
little babies. I want one of my own, but that’ll have to wait. Going to school
nights at San Mateo JC keeps me busy trying to get my associate degree. I want
to be a radiology technician and earn enough money to give my parents the new
Prius they’ve always wanted but can never afford. After that, Josh and I will
start saving for a house.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Anything I can do to help?” I asked the woman with the
whimpering baby.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“She’s teething, I’m sorry she’s making such a fuss.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“No problem,” I said. “What are you here for?”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“A photo ID.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Follow me,” I led her to the front of the line. Her abundant
gratitude alone would have made my day. But even better, the frustrated Mr. Winkle
glowered at me, showing his snarling teeth, helpless. I went <span style="margin: 0px;">around</span> the other way so I wouldn’t have to contend
with him. He was no <span style="margin: 0px;">happier</span> when he saw
me lead a frail old man to the head of the line. He shoved a small Hispanic man
aside and advanced toward me again.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Do you realize thousands of children depend on me and my
company to deliver happiness to them every day?” Spittle sprayed from his rabid
tongue. He sounded as though he was quoting from the company’s advertising
brochure. “Do you people have any idea how sad they will be if they don’t have
their ice cream because I’ve been held hostage by the DMV?”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
I hated to think I would be personally responsible for
making every kid in the Bay Area unhappy, but rules are rules. What could I do
but pray that Nura would bring justice?</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The column inched forward minute by excruciating minute. Larry
Winkle stood apart, isolated, wanting no part of the humanity swarming around
him. He jiggled his iPhone in one hand and jiggled his car keys in his pants
pocket with the other. He bounced back and forth on his toes as though he had
to visit the men’s room. Finally, Nura motioned to the person in line right before
Winkle, a teenaged boy on crutches with a grungy cast on his right leg. He made
his way painfully, slowly toward Nura. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Winkle was next. I wanted to cover my eyes, but like a car
wreck, it’s hard to turn away. The moment Nura finished up with the teenager, Winkle
dashed toward her. “Wait!” she barked, holding up the palm of her hand. He
stopped dead. Then she took her time arranging some papers on her desk and
checking some imaginary forms. She pushed a few loose brown hairs back under
her hijab. “Next,” she finally called, beckoning impatiently at Winkle with her
extended hand. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Wouldn’t you know <span style="margin: 0px;">it.</span> Just
at the moment of reckoning, an urgent call came over the loudspeaker for me to
report to the other end of the hall to pick up a bunch of unimportant new
customer forms. I was only gone for five minutes, but by the time I sprinted <span style="margin: 0px;">back,</span> Nura had another client at her desk. I
raced to the double glass doors in time to see Winkle charge by, cursing out
loud, arms waving, sweating abundantly, threatening to call the governor. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hasta <span style="margin: 0px;">luego</span></i>,” I called after him. “Have a nice
day.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He kept walking until he reached the curb out front. That’s
when he saw his big shiny black Cadillac being towed from the No Parking zone.
Nura had passed her sentence. The pitiful wail emanating from Mr. Blue Suit
sounded like a lamb trapped in the jaws of a ravenous wolf.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
When will they learn? You don’t mess with the DMV no matter
who you are.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
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<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;">
+ + +
+</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Alan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791229085143464879.post-63002627632174822462018-09-07T13:45:00.000-07:002018-09-07T13:45:23.902-07:00FRANNIE POTTER<i>This story first appeared in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Summer 2018 edition</i><br />
<i></i><br />
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</div>
<h2 style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Toc472515454"><span style="color: #0c343d;">La Mancha</span></a></h2>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
In 1937 I went to Spain to save the Republic and keep my
friend Marty alive. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">A</span> small band of us
arrived in Albacete on a rickety train after days on the sea, hours in the back
of a bouncing truck from Paris to the French border, and a numbing climb by
foot over the Pyrenees in the dark of a freezing April night to avoid French
border patrols. Marty and I were here on the brown plain of La Mancha to join
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in a just <span style="margin: 0px;">and</span>
important cause.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
After all that, the man in the uniform seated at the field
desk in front of me insisted women couldn’t fight. He said I could be an
ambulance driver, cook, or nurse’s aide changing bedpans and bandages. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“No sir,” I answered, staring straight ahead like a
soldier. “I came here to fight.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“They must have explained to you before you left America,”
the man in the uniform said.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“I know how to fire a gun,” I lied. “And I can clobber any
man here with my fists.” That part was probably true. I was bigger and stronger
than most of them, with broader shoulders but fewer curves than most girls.
Back home I usually covered myself in pants and men’s shirts, and when we
reached Paris, I had my mousy brown hair cut short as a guy’s. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I stared at the man behind the desk and he stared back at
me, his pencil suspended over the log of new recruits. A barrel-chested man in
a brown officer’s uniform and black riding boots, who had been watching from
nearby, came up behind him and whispered in his ear. Then he moved on. The red
star on his field hat identified him as a Russian.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The man behind the desk nodded and made a
mark in his log. “Alright, Potter,” he said. “You’re in A Company.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty struggled down the dusty street toward the granary,
our temporary home for the next nine days, weighed down with the full knapsack,
uniform, and bedroll we’d each been issued. He was a small man who couldn’t
have stood more than five feet four or weighted more than a hundred twenty
pounds even with rocks in his pockets. About <span style="margin: 0px;">halfway</span>
there I asked him to pause so I could catch my breath, really an excuse to give
him a break. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He lit a cigarette. “You shouldn’t have <span style="margin: 0px;">insisted</span> on carrying a rifle, Frannie,” he
said.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“That’s why I came,” I answered. “To fight.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“<span style="margin: 0px;">Well,</span> I’m not going
to be able to take care of you once we come under fire.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“So who asked you to?” I shot back. I was the one, after
all, who was there to take care of him.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He snuffed out his cigarette, and we continued walking
toward the old granary, joining the other nine new recruits. We changed into
our uniforms – brown flannel shirts, khaki trousers, and v-shaped caps. Marty
turned his head away, too embarrassed to see me stripped down to my drawers. He
would have liked to throw a blanket over me to shield me from the eyes of the
other men. None of them paid any attention. I was just another soldier in the
group: four pale Jews from New York City, a Negro truck driver from Chicago, a
sharecropper from Tennessee, a union organizer from Cleveland, a bank clerk
from Buffalo, a coal miner from Pennsylvania, Marty, and me. None of us had yet
reached our twenty-fifth birthday.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
That evening the two of us sat by ourselves under a Linden
tree eating our plates of beans and bread with carrots and onions fried in
olive oil. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“That’s not thunder you’re hearing,” Marty said. “It’s
artillery fire.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Are you glad you came?” I asked. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You know why I came.” He gave me that adorable puppy dog
look that made me wonder why I couldn’t love him the way he wanted me to love
him. Instead, he made me feel guilty all over again. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty was cute as could be, but it was his brain that
fascinated me right from the start. The first time we met, I thought he had his
<span style="margin: 0px;">eye</span> on my best friend, Dolores Brown. We
were just starting our second year at San Francisco State College, rare for a
girl, and even rarer for a desperately poor longshoreman’s daughter. <span style="margin: 0px;">State</span> was possible if I worked part-time. I
wanted something more than my mother’s dull, desperate life of survival. I
wanted to roam the world and achieve some great purpose. Every day when I
entered campus through the big door on Haight Street, I felt I moved one step
closer to escaping Rincon Hill. That’s where we lived, in a rundown,
weathered-gray clapboard house not far from the Embarcadero where Daddy worked
on the wharves. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Dolores lived down the street from us in a house no better
than mine. We had been best friends for as long as I could remember, joined at
the hip, my mother used to say. On the opening day of the fall semester in
1936, we headed into our first class and found seats toward the front. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Doctor Jefferson Drummond looked the part of a history
professor: middle-aged, pipe smoking, thinning blondish hair, and a sonorous
voice. Everyone said he was a socialist at best, and maybe even a Communist.
“Who knows what’s going on in Spain right now?” he challenged before everyone
was even seated. Twenty-three sets of eyeballs stared at their shoes, praying
he wouldn’t call on them. He waited and waited some more. No one replied. I
wondered if I was the only one sweating. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
When all seemed lost, one voice spoke from two rows behind
me. “Spain became a republic in 1931 when the people threw out their king. Then
the election this past April was won by a coalition of <span style="margin: 0px;">republicans</span>, socialists, Communists, workers, and peasants. That
threatened the old order of generals, large landowners, and the Catholic
Church.” I turned around to see this adorable little teddy bear taking control.
I later learned his name was Marty Hornstein.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Go on,” Drummond encouraged.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty explained that in July fascist generals led by
Francisco Franco launched a civil war against the elected Republican
government. Hitler immediately sent German-manned bombers, fighter planes, and
transports to help Franco, along with many of their newest tanks and armaments.
Mussolini did the same. Great Britain, the United States, France, and the other
western democracies refused to help the elected government, their excuse being
that this was an internal Spanish matter. The Russians snuck some antiquated
equipment through the Italian naval blockade to the Republicans but not enough
to be decisive. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
After class, I caught up with Marty in the quadrangle and thanked
him for saving the rest of us from humiliation. Dolores, a petite blondish
temptress, immediately gave him her coy, pinky-in-the-mouth come-on. She knew
how to flirt with guys. Me, I was nineteen and had yet to have my first date.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I asked Marty a couple of questions about Spain. He asked
my opinion about the war and nodded his head in approval when I let him know that
any side Hitler was on I was on the other. He finally glanced at Dolores and
invited us both to continue the conversation over coffee in the school
cafeteria. We <span style="margin: 0px;">accepted</span>. I didn’t even
think about it, but if I had, I would have assumed Marty’s only interest in me
was to get to Dolores. That’s the way it always worked before.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">During</span> the weeks that
followed, Professor Drummond’s lectures concentrated on the war in Spain.
Nationalist forces under <span style="margin: 0px;">Generalissimo</span>
Franco took Toledo from the loyalist Republicans and closed in on Spain’s
capital of Madrid. Untrained Republican rag-tag militias held out. By now, I
was a committed Republican, ready to back Spain’s cause.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty, Dolores and I met nearly every day for coffee. We
followed the war and commiserated over the Republicans’ desperate plight. Then
Dolores, receiving little of Marty’s attention, became a less frequent member
of our little group.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The two of us must have been a strange sight walking across
campus, this monster of a girl in second-hand clothes alongside a fragile,
collegiate young man in his natty sweater vest, bow tie, and gorgeous curly
black hair. I didn’t think much about it. We were buddies and that’s all that
mattered. Marty was a Jew, so I never mentioned him to Daddy and Mother. Daddy didn’t
like Jews much. I had never known one before Marty, and it didn’t matter to me.
I wasn’t about to ask him over to the house anyway. I didn’t want him to see
where I lived. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
One day, Marty asked me to a movie. “A Farewell to Arms,”
he said. “Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. You’ll love it.” I paused, confused.
Marty was a friend, my little teddy bear. For a moment I thought he might have
something else in mind, like a date. When he saw the look on my face, his
natural grin shriveled into a bruised smile. “You can bring Dolores,” he said
without enthusiasm. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
OUR DAY AT the movies was months ago, and in a place as
different from Albacete as Oz and Kansas. The enormity of what I was doing
didn’t fully bite me until my first full day as a soldier. The brigade quartermaster
issued us each a rifle and a bandoleer containing a hundred cartridges. We only
simulated firing. There wasn’t enough ammunition to spare for the real thing. <span style="margin: 0px;">During</span> our nine days of training, we learned to
march and to follow simple commands in English and Spanish. None of us
questioned the adequacy of our preparation for battle against a professional
army.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Camila Castillo, our Spanish company cook, adopted me right
from the start. I needed it. She had a thin black brush above her upper lip and
the sagging breasts of an older woman, though she was probably no more than my
mother’s forty-three years. She told me, through gaps in her broken browned
teeth, how to take care of a woman’s needs in the field. She also warned me not
to get involved with men with whom I shared the trenches. The later advice was
advice I didn’t need. I hadn’t come to Spain to find a boyfriend. But if I had,
the odds were good. There were only 80 American women among the three thousand
American men in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Her advice about fascist prisoners was more malevolent. She
said in fractured English, along with exaggerated gestures, “if you capture one
of those dog lovers you cut off his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cojones</i>
and stuff them in his mouth. Then you poke out his eyes and shoot him
immediately.” A Nationalist force overran Camila’s impoverished farming
village. They did to her uncle exactly what she described. They suspected the
poor illiterate farmer of being a Communist simply because he was wearing a red
kerchief tied around his neck. She lost two of her three sons in this war. The
third son and her daughter now fought for the Republic in the north.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Every day we heard the booming of cannon from the front
only a few miles off. Occasionally trucks carrying troops sped toward the front
or returning ambulances raced toward the hospital down the street. One time a
fleet of about twenty German Heinkel bombers crossed above us in the high blue
sky, headed toward Madrid. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
On the evening of our ninth day of training, we were fed a
huge pile of Camila’s chopped potatoes, vegetables, and a chewy but tasty chunk
of goat spiced with garlic, peppers, and parsley. Wine flowed from the
wineskins until anxiety waned. Tomorrow we were to be put to the fire.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Small wonder I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay awake
thinking about the first time I heard of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade when
Professor Drummond brought it up in class. He told us the unit consisted of
American volunteers who traveled to Spain to join in the defense of the
Republic. Their gallantry helped save Madrid for the moment.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
When we came out of class that day, Marty carried a printed
blue flyer Drummond had handed him. JOIN THE FIGHT it said. An illustration of
a muscled man, a rifle raised above his head, dominated the top of the page. It
advertised a meeting to be held Thursday evening at 7:00 pm at the Workers’
Hall off Van Ness Street.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Let’s go,” I said impulsively. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“I’m not going to Spain,” Dolores grumbled.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Maybe we can help in some other way,” Marty said. “Let’s
hear what they have to say.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Okay,” Dolores relented. “But I’m not going to Spain.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I was no longer so sure of that, so I kept my mouth shut.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The room was set up to hold about fifty people, but only
nine showed<span style="margin: 0px;">,</span> six young men plus Marty,
Dolores and me. The small audience did not diminish the zeal of the two men up
front. One was a well-spoken, modestly dressed <span style="margin: 0px;">middle-aged</span>
American in a suit. The other was a slender, handsome, mustached Spaniard in
black pants and a white shirt opened at the collar. A few tufts of dark chest
hair showed. He was gorgeous, and I was captured, not so much by him as with
what he said.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">First,</span> the American
gave a short speech about how the Republic had been democratically elected to
serve the workers and peasants, and how the fascists with German and Italian
help were trying to overthrow it. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Then the Spaniard rose to speak, his English fluent but
with a decided accent. Dramatic gestures punctuated <span style="margin: 0px;">his</span> every fervent word. He showed us a movie <span style="margin: 0px;">of</span> fascist bombs destroying Spanish cities and
killing innocent people. Rows of Franco’s goose-stepping regular army soldiers
contrasted with the brave Republican militias of armed workers and peasants.
There were shots of determined Americans in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
undergoing training before moving into battle. When the film ended, the
Spaniard closed with an impassioned plea for us to come to Spain to join <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la causa</i> – the cause. “We fight not just
for ourselves, but for ordinary people everywhere,” he said. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Por favor</i>, we cannot let democracy die,
murdered by tyrants.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
By the time he finished, my blood pumped like water through
a fire hose. I realize now that I had been searching for a way to fight back
against injustice ever since Daddy was badly beaten by police during the 1934
longshoremen’s strike. How helpless he and the other workers were to resist the
power of the shipowners, the mayor, the governor, the police, and the national
guard arrayed against them to break the strike. Here in <span style="margin: 0px;">Spain,</span> a whole people were going through something even worse.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Two young working men signed up immediately. The others
milled around talking to the Spaniard or the American. I pulled Marty and
Dolores into a corner in the back of the room. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“We’ve got to go,” I said, about to burst.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Dolores looked at me as though I had flipped my lid.
“You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not going to Spain, for <span style="margin: 0px;">godssake</span>.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Let’s settle down,” Marty said. “This is serious
business.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Real people are dying,” I shot back. “And did you see
those Americans over there ready to fight? They have courage.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty said nothing. Neither did Dolores. I stood there,
erect as a soldier, hands on hips, my glare fixed on Marty until he looked
away.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You’d better think this over, Frannie,” he finally said.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“I’m signing up right now.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He took a deep breath. “Alright. I can’t let you go alone.”
So, the two of us signed up.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Dolores refused to speak to me all the way home until we
got off the <span style="margin: 0px;">streetcar</span> and walked the last
few blocks to our neighborhood.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“If he’s killed it’s going to be your fault,” she said,
spite in her voice.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“What are you talking about?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Are you so blind?” She <span style="margin: 0px;">sniffled</span>
and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “He’s been sweet on you since the
first day he met you. That’s why he’s going. For you, not for some stupid
cause.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I was <span style="margin: 0px;">speechless</span> and
as blind as she said I was. Witless nineteen-year-old girls like me thought the
only kind of love was the romantic love one sees in the movies. I didn’t know
there was any other kind. Marty and I had a special friendship, I knew that.
But not a romance. Yet the moment Dolores said it I knew she was right. He was
willing to risk his life because he loved me. And I couldn’t return that kind
of love. That’s a lot of guilt for a young woman to carry around in her
knapsack. But it’s how we ended up in Spain together in the middle of a civil
war.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty snored in the cot next to mine. I envied him.
Tomorrow we were going to take on the fascists in <span style="margin: 0px;">battle, and</span> I was supposed to keep Marty alive, as well as save the
Spanish Republic. And the hell of it was I didn’t even know how to fire a
rifle.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Crimson; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: left;" />
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<h2 style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">Battle</span></h2>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">The morning we
were bloodied for the first time broke </span>humid and gray. People would be
killed, but I never thought I might be one of them. Our company was ordered to
hold a strong point protecting Madrid against attack by a fierce force of
Moroccans from the Spanish African Legion. “Stay close to me,” Marty commanded
when we jumped down from the back of the truck. I nodded. I had no intention of
being anywhere else. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Artillery explosions shocked my eardrums and shook the
ground worse than a San Francisco earthquake. Thick smoke burned my eyes and
gunpowder stuffed my nostrils. The rat-a-tat-tat from a machine gun nest
resounded to my right. Whatever I expected <span style="margin: 0px;">war</span>
to be, I never expected it to be so loud and haphazard.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Our group crouched behind a stone parapet in an unplowed
field. A sunburned road ran down to our left. I grabbed hold of Marty’s <span style="margin: 0px;">belt</span> to make sure he <span style="margin: 0px;">was within</span> arm’s length. The menacing Moors in their terrifying
turban headdress moved from one trench and hill defilade to another with
well-trained precision. Our side fired and fired, but the rounds from our antiquated
Russian rifles died a hundred yards out, worthless. The fascists had new,
modern German <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mauser</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Karabiner</i> bolt-action rifles that can
hit a man at three hundred meters. The enemy crept closer and closer with
deadlier and deadlier fire. One of the Jewish kids in our group from New York
fell on his back, his legs bent under him, a big messy hole in his stomach, and
a surprised look on his dead face. In the confusion of their assault, I lost
sight of Marty. I shouted his name but with all the noise it was like shouting
into the wind on a stormy night.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
One of the bearded Moors, now nearly upon us, showed
himself, his black eyes fixed on me. I took careful aim and fired my rifle for
the first time. He suspended in mid-stride, paused, and toppled over. I felt
the exhilaration a big game hunter must feel when he bags his first lion. Then
I did it again and again and again. Each time I pulled the trigger a man fell
and my heart pounded in celebration. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
My last round stopped one of the bearded bastards not fifty
feet from our wall. His Mauser rifle lay near his outstretched hand beckoning
me. I had to have it. I crawled over the wall and made a run for it. The
ping-ping-ping of rounds landed near me kicking up puffs of dirt. They barely
registered. I wanted that rifle. I grabbed it, yanked the cartridge belt from
the dead body, and then turned and scurried back. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I was nearly over the wall when a deep burn bit my calf. I
fell to safety, blood on my pants. I’d been nicked. It hurt a little, but not
much - a slight tingle, followed by a little hot and a little cold. Marty
crawled over and poured water on it from his dented canteen, then wrapped a
gray bandage around the wound, tying it in place. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Are you nuts?” he yelled. “You could have gotten yourself
killed.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Look at this rifle,” I answered, sticking out my new
weapon for him to see. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
We held our own that day until three German tanks smashed
into our lines. An antitank gun knocked out one of them, but the other two
advanced, firing on the Spanish company on our right flank until they broke and
ran. We had no choice but to withdraw and regroup on the next hill behind a
clump of <span style="margin: 0px;">farmhouses</span>. The fascists did not
pursue us. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
A cluster of us sprawled beneath a tree in front of the
lone remaining wall of an ochre <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">casita</i>
smoking those long Russian cigarettes with cardboard tips and sharing a canteen
of raw red wine. An essence of bull testes swirled in the air. Men who have
been in battle smell like men in heat. A <span style="margin: 0px;">woman</span>
is little better. The Soviet officer who interceded on my behalf the first day
ambled over. He had the broad forehead, bushy eyebrows, and squinty eyes of a
Siberian Tatar. I learned his name was Oleg Veselov, and he was a major. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Good shoots Comrade Potter,” he said in a tainted Russian
accent. He nodded at my Mauser. “Nice rifle. Kill more fascists.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I saw men die that day for the first time, and I killed.
None of it bothered me as long as it wasn’t me who died, and it wasn’t Marty.
After the battle, our Spanish interpreter, Diego Valera, gave me the nickname
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la <span style="margin: 0px;">asesina</span></i>
– the assassin. Everyone soon called me that except Marty. He still called me
Frannie. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">In</span> the second and
third battles that soon followed, I felt I wore magic armor that protected me.
But by the fourth or fifth battle, I prayed to God I wouldn’t be the one to
die. And I didn’t even believe in God. By then, I hardly paid attention when my
brethren shot a few Nationalist prisoners after the fighting died down, routine
vengeance repaid in kind. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">During</span> the months
that followed, my muscles grew hard as a bull’s behind, my skin turned the
color of dark earth, and my hair bronzed under the Castilian sun. It was much
the same for Marty except his black hair remained black, and he grew a handsome
mustache. He looked healthy for the first time since I met him. The Spanish
women of Madrid couldn’t keep their eyes off him; the prostitutes would have
served him for free if he were willing. At least that’s what the other guys in
our group teased.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
We were now under an unrelenting barrage from the Nationalists’
artillery. Fleets of German and Italian aircraft terror bombed civilians in the
center of Madrid without letup. The Republican air force could only respond
with old <span style="margin: 0px;">bi-planes,</span> and not enough of
them. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
We no longer had any illusions about the limits to which
Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini would go. It made me angry, but for <span style="margin: 0px;">Marty,</span> it ignited a frightening fury and
despair that had no bottom. I worried about the heedless risks he took when we
got into vicious firefights with German units. After such battles, he sought
out German prisoners to execute.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I wrote home to Daddy and Mother whenever I could, telling
them often about the brave and noble Spanish men, women, and children I had
quickly come to love. I assured them with lies that, being a woman, I was kept
safely behind the lines, out of harm’s way. “I’ll be proud of you no matter
what the result,” Daddy wrote, “for standing up for the little guy.” He was
following the war closely, he said. Mother, on the other hand, rarely wrote,
and when she did, she told me how worried she was. She reminded me of the
heartache I caused by sneaking off to Spain in the middle of the night without
even saying goodbye. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty’s frequent packages from home usually contained a few
luxuries and a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle. He shared his Lifebuoy soap
with me, good enough to wash off some of the lice and fleas. He shared his
mountain of candy with the children. I’d never seen him so happy as when he was
playing with the little ones, or so sorrowful as when one of them was killed.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
In early July, our battalion moved to the west end of
Madrid and some of us were granted overnight passes to roam the city. We
deceived ourselves into believing we were on vacation though hand to hand
combat went on only fifteen blocks away amidst the library book stacks at the
university. An occasional artillery round landed near us in the street spewing
plaster and stone in all directions. We ducked in a doorway, and when the dust
settled continued on our merry way. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty, two guys from Brooklyn, and I toured the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Plaza Mayor</i>, hung out at cafes, ate in a
restaurant, and strolled by the Florida Hotel hoping for a glimpse of Ernest
Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, or any of the other celebrity journalists covering
the Republican side of the war. I swore I spied Hemingway, but Marty insisted
it was only another Spaniard with a mustache trying to look the part. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Spotting luminaries <span style="margin: 0px;">was</span>
something of a game. Everyone but Abe Lincoln himself came to Spain to support
the cause. I fell in love with Errol Flynn as soon as I saw him, even if I
couldn’t get close enough to ravage him. Paul Robeson, the blacklisted Negro
operatic star, sang to us. Dorothy Parker, George Orwell, W. H. <span style="margin: 0px;">Auden</span>, and John Dos Pasos wrote about us.
Parker gave me the once over when we met. She took a puff on her cigarette and
blew the smoke out her nose. “Guys don’t make passes at girls who kick asses,”
she smirked. Then she gave me a genuine smile and a pat on the shoulder. “Fuck
‘em. You keep kicking, <span style="margin: 0px;">sweetheart.</span>”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
When our twenty-four-hour holiday ended, we returned to our
quarters in a church emptied of all religious relics and all furnishings. The
thick stone walls provided the best shelter from Madrid’s scalding summer heat.
Late that afternoon, our battalion commander, with Soviet Major Petrov by his
side, briefed us on the big offensive to begin the following morning. The
Republican army, with the help of Russian military advisers, prepared to launch
a surprise attack designed to relieve Nationalist pressure on Madrid and cut their
lines in two. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
When the briefing ended, Marty and I grabbed a bundle of
hay and found a corner of the church where we could bed down for the night.
Four or five Jews from New York City in black skullcaps prayed nearby,
muttering chants in a language I could not understand. Half of the young men we
met were Jews from New York City. Some of them tried to speak to Marty in
Yiddish, but he only understood a few words and could speak even fewer. So, he
smiled and nodded a lot. They weren’t even sure he was Jewish until they
confirmed he was circumcised. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“They’re praying in
Hebrew. Saying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mourner’s Kaddish</i> for
themselves,” Marty said. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“What’s that?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“It’s a prayer to honor the dead. They’re expecting to die
tomorrow. I should join them.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
That made me mad. “You’re not dying tomorrow. And neither
am I.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty shrugged his shoulders and went back to cleaning his <span style="margin: 0px;">rifle</span>. He examined the trigger housing and blew
away a speck of invisible dust. “Why do you think so many on our side hate
God?” he asked, changing the direction of our conversation.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“They don’t hate God. They hate the church for serving the
landowners, not the people.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“So they went out and murdered the village priests.” Marty
inserted the trigger housing into the rifle’s stock. “And you? Do you hate your
church?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“I don’t have a church,” I answered. “We aren’t a religious
family.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty laid the assembled weapon to his side and turned
toward me. He seemed momentarily taken by our spiritual sanctuary. “I don’t
think I can live up to the goodness of these people <span style="margin: 0px;">we’re</span> fighting for,” he said quietly, a catch in his voice.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You? You’re a Boy Scout,” I laughed. “I can’t imagine you
doing anything worse than <span style="margin: 0px;">sneaking into</span> a
movie.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You don’t even know what I did last night,” he said,
dropping his gaze.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You mean your roll with that prostitute?” I was just
taking a wild guess, but Marty’s mouth dropped open, embarrassed. I must admit
I found it hard to picture Marty with one of those busty women with the painted
lips and fake flower in her coal black hair. It didn’t take much to imagine
this was Marty’s first time. I was peculiarly jealous, though at least if he
died he wouldn’t die a virgin.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t tell anyone back home.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I laughed again. “For Chrissake, Marty. What makes you
think we’ll even be alive by this time tomorrow?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He averted his eyes. Then he smiled. “You’re right. Still,
I don’t want you to think less of me.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“For being with a whore? That’s what you’re worried about?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You’ve done worse?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I paused, not wanting him to think the less of me either.
Then I proceeded to tell him about my favorite black and white saddle shoes I
stole from the Emporium Department Store on Market Street back home. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“That’s it? No wonder I love you.” The adorable way he said
it made me want to grab him and hug him. But soldiers don’t do that the night
before a big battle. I reached over and grabbed his hand <span style="margin: 0px;">tightly in</span> mine. He gripped back and held on. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
By now the church was largely dark, most of the men asleep,
some snoring loud enough to wake a saint. “This could be ugly tomorrow,” Marty
whispered just before I nodded off. “The Nationalists kill any foreigners they
capture, you know. But they torture them first. Promise me if I’m wounded and
about to be captured you’ll shoot me.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“I promise. You promise me the same.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He squeezed my hand harder. “I promise.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
BRUNETE LAY NOT more than twenty miles from Madrid’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Plaza Mayor</i>, but it may as well have
been on the outskirts of hell. From the first day to the last, nineteen in all,
we baked like snakes in the sands of the Sahara. Thirst tortured us as much as
Nationalist bombs and bullets.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
For a change, we were the ones on the attack with tens of
thousands of troops, over a hundred tanks, armored cars, and heavy artillery. Some
of our equipment was new and modern, each piece bearing the red star of our
Soviet benefactors. We surprised the fascists, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade <span style="margin: 0px;">once again given</span> the honor of leading from the
center of the assault. The Italian forces opposing us broke and ran. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">In</span> the first
skirmish, we found a handful of our comrades who had been captured. The
fascists had executed them all, but not before torturing them alive and
desecrating their dead bodies in the foulest manner. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Wave after wave of our brave fighters fell in our attacks
like wheat stalks before a thresher. <span style="margin: 0px;">Wildfires</span>
burned across the dry yellow hills, ignited by the artillery explosions. The
sun, the heat and the <span style="margin: 0px;">smoke dried</span> my
throat to a bitter cinder; wind-blown dust caked on my nose and lips. When on
the fourth day there were few of us left, we made a desperate drive on Mosquito
Ridge. We mustered the strength to charge the fascist trenches only because
someone said they had water. Marty and I stuck to each other like salami and
cheese. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
A few of us fought our way to one of their bunkers. I threw
a <span style="margin: 0px;">grenade into</span> the slit killing everyone
inside. A survivor in the trench outside raised his hands in surrender. I saw
two canteens dangling from his belt, so I raised my Mauser rifle and fired three
shots into his belly, relishing the terror in his face. He dropped. Marty
watched, his lips <span style="margin: 0px;">grizzled</span> as the grim
reaper, then raised his rifle and fired three more shots into his face,
demolishing his expression. We took the dead man’s canteens and paused long
enough for a couple of good slurps of warm water. By then the assault had
stalled. Our dead comrades lay in piles, among them the Abraham Lincoln brigade
commander, Oliver Law, a Negro. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Nonetheless, we relieved the fascist siege of Madrid. We
held our own against Franco’s best <span style="margin: 0px;">troops</span>
and pushed them back in <span style="margin: 0px;">fierce</span> house to
house fighting. Then we occupied trenches and emplacements on the heights
protecting a major highway into Madrid. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No
<span style="margin: 0px;">pasaran</span>,” </i>Diego, our interpreter, yelled.
They will not pass. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The best part of our short-lived victory came hours after
the last of the Italians retreated. Camila pulled up in the cook-wagon. She
passed out huge pieces of beef, perfectly seasoned, cooked on two field grills,
the first piece of beef to fill my stomach since I crossed the Pyrenees. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Where did she come up with this?” I asked Diego, licking
the last of it off my greasy fingers.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He smiled an elfin smile broad enough to count every one of
his few remaining teeth. “We do not need bulls right now if we do not have <span style="margin: 0px;">bullfights</span>.” He <span style="margin: 0px;">reached
into</span> the pocket of his baggy pants and pulled out the end of the black
tail. “A gift,” he said, holding it out to me.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I politely declined.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="ES" style="margin: 0px;">“No <span style="margin: 0px;">hace</span> <span style="margin: 0px;">falta</span>.”</span></i><span lang="ES" style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There’s no need.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He shrugged his shoulders and stuffed it back in his
pocket. I loved my <span style="margin: 0px;">bow-legged</span> friend. If
Camila was my absent aunt and <span style="margin: 0px;">Marty</span> my
brother, then Diego was my uncle. His hunched back bore the mark of a laborer
who had hauled as much material in his lifetime as an overburdened donkey.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Too bad about the bull. I had not yet had the opportunity
to enjoy the most Spanish of spectacles. I would never be able to fully
understand these people without understanding their passion for the sport, but
fighting bulls were finding their way to the slaughter. Better the peasants
should enjoy their first taste of beef.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
THINGS DIDN’T GO well after that. Many more Nationalist
troops and those from the German Condor Legion poured into the battle. High
above, the German fighter planes knocked our outnumbered, outmoded planes from
the sky. After nearly three weeks of hell, both sides ceased major operations.
Every one of the original eleven in our group <span style="margin: 0px;">was</span>
dead except Marty, me, and the son of the kosher butcher from Brooklyn. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
In the following months, the Republicans lost vital battles
at Bilbao, Zaragoza, and Gijon in the north. As the year of 1937 drew to a
close, many of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade survivors were ready to go home. Not
me. And as long as I stayed, Marty stayed. I wish he hadn’t.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
By now I was so much the soldier that I could have
forgotten I was a woman except for the sex. It was an available, uncomplicated
diversion. I found I quite enjoyed <span style="margin: 0px;">it</span> and
maybe was even good at it. With so few American women in the country, I was a
unique commodity, a curiosity if nothing else. I had never even spoken to a
Negro man before I left home. Then I let a Negro man have me, in just the way
you think. His name was Luther Hodges, the first man I ever slept with. After
that came a Polish volunteer, and then a Spanish anarchist from Valencia. He
smelled like a pig sty with onion breath strong enough to kill a bull. But I
liked him. I didn’t get around to a normal white American Christian until near
the end. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Sex with Marty was out of the question. You see, I wanted
his respect more than I wanted the respect of any person alive. In those last
few months, Marty and I shared everything: our food, our ammunition, and even
our underwear. We shared our most awful secrets, our brightest hopes, and our
passion for the Spanish people. We convinced each other we were going to
survive this.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
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</span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<h2 style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Toc472515456"><span style="color: #0c343d;">Headquarters</span></a></h2>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
For the first two months of 1938, we battled on bravely
winning a small victory here and there only to be crushed in the end by
overwhelming Nationalist counterattacks. We lost more people. We retreated.
Franco’s army kept attacking, giving us no rest. By mid-April they reached the
Mediterranean Sea, cutting the Republic in half. The remnants of our brigade
withdrew into the collapsing Catalonian pocket. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty hadn’t smiled in weeks, his good nature replaced by
sacrilegious sarcasm. A leather wine bag tucked in his knapsack was now a
constant temptress. We continued to eat together and sleep next to each other,
but he rarely talked to me or anyone, his eyes hollow and his face a milky
gray. In the next battle, and the two after that, he took reckless chances,
daring the fates or fascists to kill him. I didn’t know how I was going to keep
him alive if he didn’t want to stay alive. Then the devil took a hand.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
This one particular afternoon in August, our trucks
unloaded us in a small farm town a hundred miles to the west of Barcelona. Its
one paved street ran down to a narrow wooden bridge over the Ebro River. Our
group found a spot in the dark barren cellar of a pock-marked two-story
building. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty and I slung our knapsacks and rifles to the floor,
exhausted. He set to cleaning his rifle and sharpening his bayonet, his dry,
cracked lips fixed in a stony grimace. I pulled a stale piece of bread from my
pack and offered half to him. He shoved it in his mouth and took a squirt of
wine. “Enough of the wine,” I said, perhaps a little too sharply. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He glared at <span style="margin: 0px;">me through</span>
red-veined eyes. “The son of the butcher from Brooklyn
deserted.” His eyes swiveled, trying to remember his comrade’s name through his
inebriated haze. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">“Abe <span style="margin: 0px;">Leopold</span>,” I said. “And he didn’t desert. He
just went home.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"></span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“They’re going to hunt us down and kill us all. Hell, even
the Russians are bugging out.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“<span style="margin: 0px;">No,</span> they’re not. I
just saw Major Veselov.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Every muscle in Marty’s body tensed, resenting the
increased attention the Russian was paying me. “It’s time we went home,” he
snarled.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You go home,” I answered. Then I said it again, quietly.
“Please. Go home.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Come with me.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“I can’t.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He lifted his wine bag above his head again and squirted a
long stream down his throat. About then our company commander descended the
open wooden steps and called my name. “Potter. Can you run these dispatches up
to battalion headquarters?” he asked. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“<span style="margin: 0px;">Yes,</span> sir.” I <span style="margin: 0px;">leaped</span> to my feet, glad to be out in the air
and away from my morose friend for a while.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The battalion staff always picked a nice <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;">palacio</span></i>
for its headquarters. I delivered the leather pouch with the dispatches to a
lieutenant and then lingered around chatting, trying to pick up the latest
gossip. They didn’t know any more than I did. I was about to leave when my old
friend, and I use that word loosely, Major Oleg <span style="margin: 0px;">Veselov</span>
entered through the front door. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Ah, Comrade Potter. You are still with us.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“By luck,” I smiled. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“And your friend?” he asked, referring to Marty.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Still here.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Such a pity,” he said, suggesting other possibilities if
Marty were gone. He smiled in the tortured way Russians did when they tried to
cover their insincerity. He paused a moment, and then touched my face. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hermosa</i>,” he said. Beautiful. His
Spanish had improved a little, but not his bullshit. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
An unlikely thought crossed my mind. “Major. I need a
favor. A big favor. Not for me. For my friend Marty Hornstein. He is not well,
but he insists on fighting the next fight. If he does, he will die.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“And what would you ask of me?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Assign him to the battalion staff. Away from the fighting.
Just for a little while. Until he gets well.” I was begging and I knew it, but
I had no choice. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“And what do you have to offer for such a favor?” He put
one hand in his pocket and one on his hip, examining me up and down. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“What can I offer?” I asked. “I have nothing but what you
see.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mujer</i>. That is
enough.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He had called me a woman, though I looked like a dead rat
and smelled like one, my hair in tangles, and my dust-covered uniform in tatters.
I couldn’t believe what I had to offer could pay for what I was asking. He
seemed to think it did.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
We went down a hallway to a room in the rear of the house,
a single bed with a filthy mattress in the corner. The major unfastened his
high buttoned <span style="margin: 0px;">tunic</span> deliberately and
dropped his pants. It didn’t take him long to finish. He seemed as satisfied
with our bargain as I was. He even tried to be a gentleman, not the usual
Russian brute. True to his word, he immediately sent orders for Marty to report
to headquarters. Then the major treated me to some Russian honey cake. He said
his mother had sent it, but I suspect it was his wife. I savored the cake,
chewing each bite slowly. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Ten minutes later, I was on my way out the door. The street
was oddly quiet and still. My boots thudded on the dusty cobblestones, grating
on a sore spot outside my little toe. The major’s smell floated from my body
and into my nose. Halfway back to the company, Marty trudged toward me up the
middle of the street, his knapsack, bedroll, and <span style="margin: 0px;">rifle</span> slung over his sagging back. When he saw me, his face twisted
into a scowl. I stopped, my arms outstretched to him. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“You whore,” he growled when he was nearly upon me. “Who
asked you to butt in?” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
My heart sank when I realized my sacrifice earned me no
grace. “Marty, please,” I pleaded.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
He brushed past me and kept walking.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I turned to see him enter the battalion headquarters just
about the time I recognized the drone of approaching German Junker bombers,
many of them. Our machine guns and antiaircraft guns opened deafening
fusillades from the rooftops. <span style="margin: 0px;">Still,</span> the
bombers churned toward us. I ducked in a doorway when I heard the whistles of
falling bombs. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
A cloud of powdered cobblestone rose in front of me with
the first explosions. Another hit down the street, and another around the
corner. A child screamed and then a mother. I crouched lower in the doorway but
could not make myself small enough. A machine gun and antiaircraft gun ceased
firing when an explosion ripped through the roof of a nearby building.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The flotilla of Junkers passed. Dust and debris covered me.
I was ready to bolt when the next wave of Heinkel bombers let loose their
cargoes of high explosive ordnance. I ducked in my doorway again and covered my
ears. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
One explosion burst close to the headquarters, a near miss.
The next three were right on target, so precise and devastating the bombardiers
must have known the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;">palacio</span></i> was the command center. Marty was
in that building.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I raced down the street and through the open door. Plaster
dust blew down on me. Broken glass and crumbled bricks crunched under my feet.
A wall was gone and blue sky glimmered through the shattered roof. I tripped
over a body. Across the room, the dead Major Veselov lay against an unscathed
field desk covered with rubble. He was missing half of his head. He seemed to
stare at me from his one remaining eye. The foul odor of explosives and gore
churned my gut.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Other bodies <span style="margin: 0px;">scattered</span>
the room. “Marty,” I screamed. “Marty.” No one answered. Then from the far
corner near the hallway, I heard my name called ever so faintly: “Frannie.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty was on his knees, his rifle by his side, blood
streaming down his forehead and across his crust-covered cheek. His hands
rested on his thighs. He turned and looked at me without expression or
recognition. Then he toppled over. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I picked Marty up, carried him out of the building, and
down the street to the medical aid station. It was like walking through the
main boulevard of hell, fires burning, smoke obscuring the light of day, acrid
high explosive gases choking, bodies sprawled on the cobblestones - two of <span style="margin: 0px;">them</span> little girls holding hands. Some survivors
ran, some walked like zombies. Some voices shouted commands and others pleaded
for help or salvation. By now the bombers had passed. Crews rushed to rescue
those from beneath the wreckage. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Don’t you die, Marty. Don’t you dare die,” I shrieked at <span style="margin: 0px;">him.</span> His eyes sunk <span style="margin: 0px;">back into</span> his head, unresponsive.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
When I burst into the aid station, Marty lay lifeless in my
numb arms, one dangling leg nearly severed. The big lobby of the town’s only
hotel churned with the <span style="margin: 0px;">dead</span>, dying, and
those trying to thwart the flow. “Help me. Help me.” I screamed it over and
over, <span style="margin: 0px;">hysterical,</span> until a scrawny Spanish
nurse ran over. She took one look at Marty and shook her head. “Get a doctor,”
I threatened, “or I’ll kill you.” She must have believed me because she ran
off. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
A red-headed doctor with an Irish brogue raced over, the
scrawny Spanish nurse behind him. “Put him there,” he said pointing at a
blood-splattered table. I lowered Marty as gently as I could. He moaned when
his dangling leg dragged on the table top. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The doctor checked his breathing with his stethoscope and
shined a flashlight in his eyes. He tore away the remnants of Marty’s pants leg
and checked the grievous wound. “You have to save him,” I demanded, my heart
hammering like a cannon.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
The fatigued doctor turned his <span style="margin: 0px;">burned-out</span> blue eyes on me. “We’ll try,” he said. “Now go wait
outside until I come and get you.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
I did what he said, taking a seat on the sidewalk, my back
against the wall. I smoked one cigarette after another. What I really needed
was some whiskey. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
It may have been an hour later, or two, or maybe only
fifteen minutes when the Irish doctor came out. “He’s going to live,” he said. “He’s
a lucky fellow. You saved his life.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Can I see him?”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“There’s one more thing,” the doctor continued. “We can’t
save the leg. We’re going to evacuate him to a hospital where they can amputate
it.”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
“Oh my god. Save me.” </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Marty was still unconscious when I went in to see him. The
pandemonium had diminished to mere frenzy, the dead removed and the damaged
placed in makeshift beds. Some of his <span style="margin: 0px;">color</span>
had returned. His head was bandaged. I held his hand and bent down and kissed
him on the lips. “You deserved better than me,” I whispered. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
Stretcher bearers carried him out to a waiting ambulance
where he was loaded on, along with two other men. The scrawny Spanish nurse
climbed in behind him. They closed the doors and sped off. Marty was gone. But
he was alive.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
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<h2 style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Toc472515457"><span style="color: #0c343d;">Adrift</span></a></h2>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;">Our battalion was no longer the assembly of idealistic
young Americans I had first known. We took so many casualties the ranks had to
be filled with Spaniards, many of them women younger than me. With Marty gone,
I felt all alone except for my Spanish friends, Camila and Diego.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;">One day a Nationalist onslaught overran our lines. A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardia Civil</i> in<strong><span style="font-family: Crimson; margin: 0px;"> his leather three-cornered hat </span></strong>ran Camila through
with a bayonet, killing her. Diego fell the same day, a grenade hurled into the
trench where he manned a machine gun. Our counterattack pushed the fascists
back far enough to recover their bodies and give them a proper burial in the
hard-packed red clay, their graves marked with a large rock rather than <span style="margin: 0px;">a cross</span>. Neither would have wanted a priest, so
I said a few words of farewell. I could no longer cry.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;">A few weeks later in September of 1938, the Republic’s
prime minister, Juan Negrin, ordered the <span style="margin: 0px;">withdrawal</span>
of all foreign fighters from the country. He had nothing to lose, wagering the
international community, through the League of Nations, would then pressure
Franco to remove all German and Italian forces. Negrin lost his hollow wager.
One day I was spending all I had in frantic fighting, killing all the fascists
I could, my own life no longer of much importance. The next day my war ended
abruptly, with a whimper, our battalion pulled out of the line. </span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">On October twenty-ninth, the men, women, and children of
Barcelona gathered to bid farewell to our international brigade, volunteers who
came from all over the world to save their republic. War raged nearby, but it
didn’t stop what must have been a million people from turning out on the
streets, on the balconies, and <span style="margin: 0px;">hanging</span>
out of the windows above. Spanish units in their finest uniforms paraded before
us, but w<span style="margin: 0px;">hen the crowds lining the
Diagonal saw us marching by in our tattered garb, they screamed and roared like
a storm sweeping down a canyon. </span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">We marched with our heads high and our arms raised in <span style="margin: 0px;">clenched-</span>fist salute. Mothers held up their
children for us to see and to see us. One little girl with big black eyes
caught mine and threw me a kiss. I smiled. Flowers carpeted the street a foot
deep. Tears ran down the cheeks of my new friend, Yvette Bisset, a pretty young
French-Canadian volunteer from Montreal who marched at my side. She had seen
her own share of mayhem in the past year from behind the wheel of an ambulance.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">When the parade was over, we were taken by bus through the terraced
mountainsides to the town of Ripoll north of Barcelona, twenty-five miles from
the French border. There we waited for nearly a month, the cold biting at us
through dark skies. The food was meager, some of it with the odor of rot.
Representatives of the U.S. government at last verified we were Americans
entitled to repatriation and issued us the necessary certification. These
officials considered us all Communists and were none too eager to have us back.
</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Still</span> in a raw state
of confused despair, I ended up in Marseilles with my new-found friend, Yvette
Bisset. We rented a small, dingy flat above a rowdy bar near the docks. Rats
and cats kept us company, but at least it was warm, dry, and free of gunfire. </span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">In early February, I finally boarded a ship for America. I
kept to myself during those eight days on the sea, gazing into the churning
waves and mist, the skies above a grim gray. Every morning began with rage in
my gut, ready to fight again. Every evening <span style="margin: 0px;">ended
in</span> dark solitude, haunted by the sad weathered brown faces of Spanish
children and the piles of enemy dead. Sometimes I felt sorry for myself for
still being alive, but much of the time I was too exhausted to care.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">IF I THOUGHT I
was escaping from Nazis and fascists by coming home, I was mistaken. A few days
after I landed in New York City, the American Nazi party held a massive rally
in Madison Square Garden. Over twenty thousand <span style="margin: 0px;">homegrown</span>
goons in their brown shirt uniforms and swastika armbands raised their arms in
salute to their American <span style="margin: 0px;">Fuhrer</span>.
Anti-Semitic propaganda from the popular radio broadcaster, Father Coughlin,
filled the airwaves. I read in a newspaper report that my idol Charles
Lindbergh, and also Henry Ford, personally met with Adolph Hitler and received
medals from him. They admired him, as eager to appease him as Chamberlain at
Munich.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">No hero’s welcome
from our government awaited me. I knew no one in New York, so I sought out the
butcher’s son in Brooklyn, Abe <span style="margin: 0px;">Leopold</span>.
He fidgeted, <span style="margin: 0px;">nervous,</span> when I showed up at
his apartment <span style="margin: 0px;">door. He</span> didn’t invite me
in to meet his folks. He said right after he returned home, the FBI had paid
him a visit. They did the same with other members of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade he knew. It seems FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover suspected all of us of
being Communists. He cared more about catching Reds than <span style="margin: 0px;">catching</span> Nazis. I left Abe alone and moved on.</span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">Not everyone felt
the same as Abe, or I might have been forced to head home to San Francisco. I
wasn’t ready for that. You see, I couldn’t face Marty. There was a lot I needed
to figure out first. But everywhere I went, I found a union hall where the
members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were heroes. These big, burly union men
knew of the casualties we suffered and our bravery. I let them believe I was an
ambulance driver if they couldn’t imagine a woman fighting in the trenches,
even a woman like me who could never pass for Vivien Leigh. An ambulance driver
was good enough for them. Whenever I asked, they found me small temporary jobs
to sustain myself.</span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;">First I </span>grabbed
a train to Philadelphia, and then after <span style="margin: 0px;">a while</span>
moved on to Baltimore. <span style="margin: 0px;">In</span> mid-March of
1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. Two weeks later, Republican forces in
Spain surrendered and the United States recognized the Franco government. A
week after that, Mussolini seized Albania. </span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">After Baltimore, came Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St.
Louis. In each place, I looked up a few comrades from the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade when I could find them, or their parents if they were dead. The
grieving mothers and fathers embraced me like an unexpected visitation from the
beyond. I lied to them when I told them how bravely their sons had died, and
how painlessly. </span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">On the Greyhound between Kansas City and Chicago, I started a letter to Marty. Twice before I wrote him
telling him about the final months in Spain, my special feelings for him, and
how sorry I was for what happened to him. But the letters sounded like
self-pity so I threw them away unmailed. This one was no better. I crumpled it
up and tossed it in a trash barrel during a rest stop in Springfield. </span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">The truth was I
could never give him back his leg or his soul. And I couldn’t give him the kind
of love he wanted. Yet I loved him deeply in my own special way, in a way maybe
even better than the way he wanted me to love him. In the good times, away from
battlefields, he made me happy and content, and I made him happy and content.
We were best friends. What could be better than that? </span></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">By the time I
reached Chicago, I admitted something had to change. I <span style="margin: 0px;">went into</span> Marshall Field’s and bought the first dress I had worn in
nearly three years. It was gray with pink and blue flowers, buttoned up the
front, with a big collar. Next, I had my hair done, my nails <span style="margin: 0px;">painted,</span> and I applied some subtle red
lipstick. When I first <span style="margin: 0px;">walked in</span> the
beauty shop, the beautician took one glance at the mess and said, “honey, you
look like you’ve been in a war.” Then she went to work, all the time gossiping
about Bette Davis, Greer Garson, and Henry Fonda. I exited the shop feeling
pretty. A few men gave me a healthy examination, and one gave me a whistle, the
first time that ever happened.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"></span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">In late July, a letter from Daddy caught up with me in
Omaha. He simply said, “C<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ome <span style="margin: 0px;">home,</span> Frannie. It’s time</i>.” The next day I
bought a train ticket to San Francisco on the California Zephyr.<br /> </span></div>
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<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">Guernica</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">For nearly four days, loneliness
and anticipation rode with me across the prairies, across the rivers and over
the Rocky Mountains, lost in thoughts of San Francisco, Mother, Daddy, my
little brother Ernie – and Marty.</span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">Again and <span style="margin: 0px;">again,</span> I came back to Marty. Remember, this was
1939. Good Protestant girls like me didn’t get mixed up with Jewish boys.
Still, <span style="margin: 0px;">here</span> was this wonderful man who
loved me so much he was willing to follow me into a war. I prayed he would
forgive me for everything. And if he did, what then? Life would be unimaginable
without him in it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Daddy was so glad
to see me alive he would have forgiven me anything. Mother forgave </span>nothing.
She still hadn’t gotten over my running off to Spain in the middle of the night
without telling her. Ernie, my little brother wasn’t so little <span style="margin: 0px;">anymore</span>. His voice was changing and he was
nearly as tall as me. Ernie was the only one brave enough to ask me about the
white scars on my leg and my neck. No one could see the other scars with my
clothes on. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;">For</span> the first few <span style="margin: 0px;">days home,</span> all I did was sleep, wallowing in
the cleanliness of the bed and Mom’s cooking. <span style="margin: 0px;">Meat</span>
appeared on our plates more often than before I left. Daddy twice took me to
meet his buddies at the longshoremen’s union hall. A few checked me out, but
most treated me like a celebrity, a respected war veteran. </span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I was not welcomed home a hero by everyone. A couple of
months earlier, while I still wandered America, the FBI rapped on our door
inquiring about me. They wanted to know if I was a Communist. “She ain’t here,”
Daddy said. “Don’t live here no more. Now get off my front porch.” When I heard
the story, I gave him a big hug.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">Coit Tower, Telegraph Hill, the Ferry Building, and the bay
were more beautiful that late summer than I can ever remember. I woke each
morning smelling the fog drift in. The city of San Francisco was so normal it
felt oddly dull. Crowds on Market Street and Union Square went about their
business without a care in the world. Daddy worked nearly every day now for
good wages, and Mother no longer had to serve us watery soup. Yet everything
seemed without purpose. The opening of the International Exposition on Treasure
Island captured more attention than the death of democracy
in Spain or Hitler’s threats of war in Europe. I wondered if anyone in San
Francisco was reading the newspapers.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">A few weeks
passed. The end of August neared and <span style="margin: 0px;">still</span>
I hadn’t let Marty know I was home. I was afraid he wouldn’t even see me. Fear
collided with yearning. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I did what every
coward does. I sought an intermediary.</span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;">My old friend
Dolores Brown worked at the Rexall Drug Store on Mission Street. It was close
to </span>quitting time when I stopped in. She tried hard to act glad to see
me, but she never was much of an actress. I asked her out for a cup of coffee
at the big Woolworth’s on Market and Powell. On our walk over, we struggled to
pick up the loose thread of an old friendship. She was disinterested in my
ordeal in Spain, or about much of anything of substance. She was entering her
senior year at San Francisco State College. All she talked about was her dull
classes and the goofy boys she hung out with. I gathered she was still a
virgin, so her life couldn’t have been all that thrilling.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">A waitress in a pink and white uniform brought us the
coffees we’d ordered. Dolores filled her cup with milk and two pounds of sugar.
I took <span style="margin: 0px;">mine</span> black as tar. I lit a
cigarette, and stared off into space, my arms locked around myself.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“You’re different since you’re back,” she said. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I didn’t respond until my comprehension caught up with the
sound of her voice. “What do you hear about Marty?” I asked.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“You haven’t seen him yet?”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“No. Should I?”</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“That might not be such a good idea,” she said. “I don’t
think he wants to see you.” Her smug look suggested she enjoyed saying it.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“How do you know that?” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Because he told me. I saw him when we were signing up for
classes. He showed me his wooden leg and said you gave
it to him. He wasn’t joking.” Then she delivered her big shot. “He also told me
he has a serious girlfriend. A Jewish girl his mother fixed him up with.”</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d;">I didn’t much like
Dolores after that. Maybe I never did. <span style="margin: 0px;">Still,</span>
her message about Marty rang true. I could hardly blame him. Why hadn’t I been
able to give him the words of love he wanted to hear? That’s all it would have
taken. </span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Two days after my
conversation with Dolores, I woke with a pit in my stomach, not an unusual
feeling </span>for me these days. Another nightmare must have visited me in the
night. When my head cleared, I recognized the smell of bacon coming from the
kitchen. The sun was up so Daddy mustn’t have been going to work today. I put
on my robe and went downstairs. He sat alone at the kitchen table reading the
front page of the Chronicle. A dirty plate of what had been eggs and bacon sat
in front of him. Smoke curled from the cigarette between his yellowed fingers.
He looked up when he saw me, a <span style="margin: 0px;">troubled</span>
expression on his wrinkled face. I poured myself a cup of coffee from the metal
pot sitting on the <span style="margin: 0px;">stove</span> and sat down
beside him at the table.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Not good news this morning, Frannie,” he said, handing me
the newspaper.</span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">The large headline across the front page screamed: NAZIS, SOVIETS SIGN PACT; HITLER TELLS
BRITISH IT’S TOO LATE FOR PEACE; ALL EUROPE ARMS! </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I scanned the articles about the crisis. Hitler demanded
Poland capitulate to German terms under threat of invasion. The British and
French repeated their pledge to defend <span style="margin: 0px;">Poland</span>
and began mobilization. Roosevelt hurried back to Washington from a vacation
cruise to urge peace among the belligerents. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Where were these assholes in Spain? Hitler could have been
stopped there,” I fumed. Daddy cringed at my <span style="margin: 0px;">coarse</span>
language. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“This ain’t your fight, Frannie,” he said, gently placing
his rough hand on my arm.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“I didn’t know much
about Hitler before Spain,” I said. “I know him now. He isn’t going to stop.” I
pulled my arm from under his hand and took a cigarette from his pack of
Chesterfields. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Stupid? You think what I did was stupid?”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“I didn’t mean it that way honey.” He took <span style="margin: 0px;">a last</span> puff and snubbed out his cigarette in
the metal ashtray. “It’s just that I look at those scars on you and I want to
weep.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I covered the white blotch on my throat with my hand. “What
am I going to do? Just sit here and wait for Hitler to sail into San Francisco
Bay?”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">The next afternoon the mailman knocked on our front door to
deliver a letter with an international postmark. “Thought it might be
important,” he said, tipping his hat to me. The letter was <span style="margin: 0px;">postmarked</span> Montreal from my friend Yvette
Bisset. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s time to fight again</i>, she
wrote. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Canada will be in it. America
won’t. <span style="margin: 0px;">Come</span> join me. </i>She signed it:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Your comrade forever, Yvette. </i>I stuffed
the letter in my dress pocket.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">That night I tossed and turned until the early hours. When
I went <span style="margin: 0px;">downstairs</span> in the morning, Mother,
Daddy, and Ernie were huddled around the radio. “Warsaw is under bombardment by
German Heinkel and Junker bombers,” the agitated British announcer chattered.
“Nazi troops and tanks crossed the border at dawn this morning at many points
and are now rolling through the Polish countryside.” Mother looked up at me
with the long ashen face of a woman whose child is soon to be taken from her.
She held Ernie’s hand tightly. Daddy stared at the radio as if beaten dumb. The
radio station cut to its correspondent in Berlin and then to its London
correspondent where the British moved to a full war footing. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I picked up Ernie’s baseball bat and would have smashed the
radio with it if Ernie hadn’t rushed over and thrown his arms around me. “Don’t
go away again,” he begged. I hugged him and ran my fingers through his hair. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I needed room to breathe, away from my family. I wandered
downtown. The usual Friday crowds weren’t there. The few men and women I passed
looked sober as morticians, hands buried in their pockets against the crisp
overcast morning and the chill of war. I decided to escape to one of the bars
on Market Street but none of them were open yet. In front of one of <span style="margin: 0px;">them,</span> a huge poster advertised the exhibit of
Pablo Picasso’s already-famous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guernica</i>
at the Museum of Modern Art, the first stop on its American tour to raise money
for Spanish war relief. The huge painting depicted in stark black, white, and
brown the fascist terror bombing of the town of Guernica in northern Spain
during the second year of the war. Sixteen hundred women, children, and old men
died helplessly in the attack. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">The museum exhibiting Picasso’s masterpiece was in the War
Memorial Veterans Building, a short walk past city hall and across Van Ness
Avenue. I pulled my coat tight around me and followed my feet without much
thinking. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">When I stepped off the elevator and into the room, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guernica</i> surrounded me, massive, from
the floor to the high ceiling. I looked but did not see Picasso’s wild-eyed
bull, the terrorized woman, the tortured horse, or the flame in the lamp. <span style="margin: 0px;">Instead,</span> I saw my fallen comrade, Diego, his
arm severed at the elbow, his hand still gripping his rifle. I saw a mother in
front of me who died screaming in Zaragoza, with her dead baby in her arms. I saw
dead Americans from my group with their guts and their brains oozing out onto
the streets of Villanueva. I saw bombs from German planes exploding on innocent
children and old women. And, at last, I saw Marty covered in plaster, his body
limp, a leg dangling by threads. All of this at the hands of barbarians -
fascists. No one came to help my noble Spaniards except those of us from the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Now it was happening again, bombs whistling down on
Warsaw in the early morning light, the Nazi blitzkrieg poised to sweep across
Europe and to America. Who was going to stop them?</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">The room began to spin. I stumbled backward, staggered over
to an oak bench in the center of the room and collapsed onto it. For the first
time since Spain, tears fell in unrelenting cascades. I shook all over, as
feverish as at the battle of Brunete and as frozen as at Teurel. <span style="margin: 0px;">Still,</span> I could not take my eyes from Guernica.
If anyone else was in the exhibit room, I didn’t see them. I slumped <span style="margin: 0px;">over</span> and closed my eyes against the horrors.
How long I lay there on the bench, in a stupor, I do not know. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, a familiar hand.
“Frannie, it’s me, Marty.” It couldn’t be, but when I came to my senses, <span style="margin: 0px;">there</span> he was. I threw my arms around him and
kissed him hard on the lips. He kissed me back and held me tight.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">We pulled away, our arms still around each other. He looked
at me with kindness I did not deserve. “I knew I would find you here,” he said.
I hugged him again so hard I could have hurt him. He was all flesh and bones.
He gave me his handkerchief to wipe my blotchy face and blow my red runny nose.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Come on,” he said. “I think we’ve had enough of this.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">He struggled to his feet leaning on a dark wooden cane. I
wanted to help him but resisted the impulse. We took the elevator down and <span style="margin: 0px;">exited</span> to the gardens next to the Veterans
Memorial Building. He held on to my elbow all the way. He winced once, and we
stopped for him to catch his breath. “I’m still getting used to this new leg,”
he said without self-pity. But I pitied him. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">He said he was starting school <span style="margin: 0px;">again at</span> San Francisco State. He was thinking about becoming a
college history professor. I told him about my little brother Ernie and the
novel I was reading. Both of us talked nonsense as if it were any other
ordinary day. The German invasion of Poland made it anything but an ordinary
day. Neither of us mentioned Spain.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">His mustache was gone. He again looked like the preppy
young man with the adorable smile I first met. Only now the indelible sadness of
Spain etched itself in premature worry lines and a sag in his shoulders.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">We walked a little further along the dirt path into the
garden. Then I helped him sit down on a green wrought iron bench nestled
between a couple of leafy poplar trees. Pink, yellow and white chrysanthemum
flower beds scented the air. I sat beside him, a safe distance between us. When
he was settled, he rested his hands on the curved top of the cane. The sky was
now a vivid blue, the fog gone, the warming sun glittering off the dome of city
hall across the street. No one else was in the garden, and only a few people
walked Van Ness Avenue. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“I’ve got to say it, Marty,” I began. “I’m sorry for ….”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Stop,” he said firmly, anticipating what was coming. “I
went to Spain for you, but I went for myself too. And the longer we were there
the more I believed in what we were doing.”<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>He said it with the conviction of one who’s earned the right. “If I had the
chance I’d do it all over again.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I lowered my head. “I’m so ashamed,” I said.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“We all did things we’re ashamed of.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“At least I never lied to you.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">Marty stretched his wooden leg and rubbed the stump, then
settled back. A near-empty streetcar clanged its bell as it pulled away from
the stop on Van Ness. An odd hush suffused the usually bustling street. “That
Spanish nurse told me you saved my life,” he said.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">Thoughts of the Russian major snuck back into my mind, so I
changed the subject. “You know what bothers me most is I don’t like losing to
those bastards. I want a rematch.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">He chuckled. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“I’m serious.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“I’m sure you are.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“More children and women and old men are going to be
killed,” I said referring to the coming conflict. “And many young men.” </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“I’ll do something to help when America <span style="margin: 0px;">gets in</span> it,” he said. “If it weren’t for this,”
he tapped on his false leg with his cane, “I’d do something right now. You? You
don’t have to wait.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">As so often happened when I talked to Marty, what must be
done became evident. “Canada is going to fight with the British now. I’m going
to join up.” The way I blurted it out must have sounded as if I’d thought
everything through already. I hadn’t. But as soon as I said it I knew it was
right.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“I wish I could come with you,” he said. He took my hand in
his and looked at me with those deep dark eyes.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I hesitated, reluctant to speak what was in my heart. But
if I learned anything, I learned you had to say what you had to say while you
still could. I kissed him lightly and tenderly on the lips. When he kissed me
back, everything in the world finally felt right again. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“There are all kinds of love,” I said when I pulled back.
“I’m only starting to figure that out. What I know is I’ve never met anyone as
good as you, or anyone I loved more.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Please Frannie. You don’t have to….”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">“Don’t stop me. I need to say it. I love you. When this is
over and I come back, I want to marry you if you’ll have me.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">He ran his fingers across my cheek, then kissed me on the
forehead. He smiled. “I’ll never stop loving you, no matter what. But you can’t
come back here, at least not to stay. There will always be another war, another
righteous cause, and you will always need to be there to fight it.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I wanted to argue with him, to tell him he was wrong, to
tell him I loved him and would come back to him to live our lives together
forever. <span style="margin: 0px;">Instead,</span> I wrapped my arms
around him and hugged him desperately.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">I wished he wasn’t right.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0c343d;">* * *</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="color: #0c343d;"></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 88px;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike></div>
</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Alan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791229085143464879.post-2943901361338866752018-02-04T12:38:00.000-08:002018-02-04T12:41:17.367-08:00THREE NIGHTS<i>This story first appeared in the Avalon Literary Review, Winter 2018</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<h3>
<br /></h3>
<h3 style="margin: 0px;">
THE FIRST NIGHT</h3>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He had done this sort of thing <span style="margin: 0px;">before</span> and imagined how it would end. She never had, and couldn’t
imagine. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The woman appeared to be no more than thirty-five. He was
older. She moved with the grace of a Parisian model, though her disheveled
flaxen hair needed a combing. She would have been remarkably attractive if not
for her pronounced Gallic nose. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Moisture glistened above her upper lip. Together they cast a
sensuous fragrance of rose petals and sweat, the product of some entangled
exercising. No one took notice when they entered the cozy hotel lounge. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
They sought the most private table, next to the fireplace,
and plunked down in the deep upholstered black chairs. The black and white arabesque
carpet muffled the sounds of traffic outside on the busy Boulevard Malesherbes.
She gazed upon him like a smitten teenager’s first sighting of the handsome
French President, Emmanuel Macron. One could sense her <span style="margin: 0px;">cooing</span> when she spoke. He said something to her which caused her to
glance down and see that she had missed a hole when she buttoned her white
blouse. She unbuttoned and rebuttoned without a hint of embarrassment. He
watched, amused.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Soft golden glimmers of fading daylight drenched the paneled
walls through the huge skylight above. The impressive girded structure could
have been designed by Gustave Eiffel himself. The <span style="margin: 0px;">top-floor</span> suite they exited moments before peered over the Paris
rooftops at the iconic engineer’s tower. When the liveried waiter delivered
their food, she attacked her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;">croque</span> monsieur</i>, pausing only to gulp from
her glass of sauvignon blanc. He nibbled on his cheese plate and grapes, sniffing
his deep garnet Bordeaux before each sip. Her ravenous appetite fascinated him,
as did everything about her.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
When he wasn't eating, his hand rested on her bare knee, hidden
beneath the black marble-topped table. Her hand lay comfortably on top of his.
Every so often, she leaned close to talk to him, an excuse to touch shoulders.
When he did the same, their foreheads touched. She studied their reflection in
the mirrors on the large art deco doors leading into the kitchen. She pushed
her hair out of her eyes, pleased with the picture of herself on his arm.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He reflected the power of a corporate executive and the harmony
of a much younger athlete. His casual smoke gray pants and pin-striped shirt
were carefully crafted by the best tailors on London’s Savile Row. His clean
shaved dome offered a touch of mature sophistication, as did the gold Montblanc
watch on his wrist. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The waiter gave them their privacy except to remove dirty
dishes and bring them each a snifter of <span style="margin: 0px;">Courvoisier</span>
cognac. They clinked glasses and took a sip. That's when his hand began moving
from her knee to her inner thigh. She took a deep drink. She sighed as his hand
moved higher under her skirt. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, her
eyes slowly opening and closing. He watched her squirm and enjoyed it. She
collapsed against him and whispered something in his ear. He stood up, taking
her hand in his. They raced toward the lobby elevator, laughing. She pressed
the button repeatedly as though that might hurry its arrival. He ran his hand gently
through her soft blond hair. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
When the elevator doors opened, they burst in nearly knocking
over the elderly couple trying to get out. The old man peeked back as the doors
began to shut in time to see him <span style="margin: 0px;">envelop</span>
her in his arms, press her against the wall, and swallow her kiss.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<h3 style="margin: 0px;">
THE SECOND NIGHT</h3>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;">Clearly,</span> this was a
test, but for which one of them? Maybe all three. Only an hour before, the
older man learned his lover had a young son.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
They again sat in deep comfortable black chairs in the
lounge. This time the little boy of about seven or eight occupied the chair
between them. He clearly belonged to the flaxen haired woman, but he hardly
resembled her. He had big brown eyes and a mop of black hair he kept pushing back.
He looked serious, but not unpleasantly so. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The older man with the shaved dome spoke to the boy tersely,
as if the youngster was one of his business subordinates. His steely eyes could
reduce a child to mush as thoroughly as they did any grown man or woman. He
strummed his manicured fingers on the marble <span style="margin: 0px;">tabletop</span>
marking time until the waiter delivered them menus.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The boy’s mother wore a pale, painted smile, her hands
clenching each other like a tightened <span style="margin: 0px;">vice</span>.
She sat upright on the edge of her chair, her body rigid. Fragile though she
was, she looked as ravishing and stylish as a model in a French fashion magazine.
Her beige, collared sweater set off her emerald eyes. A heavily pleated red
skirt matched her red shoes, revealing just enough of her shapely legs. Not a
hair of her pure golden hair, combed back behind the ears, was out of place.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The boy <span style="margin: 0px;">cut</span> his
hamburger in half like he had been taught, glancing at his mother for approval.
The man noted the boy’s dexterity and good manners but said nothing. Neither
did the boy. She said little more, only occasionally taking a spoonful of her
onion soup. Her hand trembled when she raised her wine glass to her mouth. The
man chewed mechanically on his grilled cod fillet. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The waiter cleared their plates, her bowl of onion soup only
half eaten. That’s when the little boy began fidgeting in his seat in noticeable
physical discomfort. He leaned over and whispered something in his mother's
ear. She looked around and prepared to get up. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"I'll take him," the man said.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The boy seemed surprised and turned to his mother. She
nodded her consent. The boy and the man walked off toward the toilet. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
She slumped back in her chair and exhaled. The painted smile
she wore all evening loosened into a crooked frown. She sat up when she saw
them <span style="margin: 0px;">returning</span> and painted the smile back
on her face.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The boy was holding the older man's hand, chattering away, a
big grin on his face. The man was clearly enjoying whatever was going on. When
they took their seats, the boy told his mother something, his fingers flapping
and shoulders wriggling. He giggled. She giggled back. The tension escaped from
her like steam off a teapot. The man said something. A devilish look played
across his face, and out came something that sounded like a pig's <span style="margin: 0px;">snort</span>. The boy giggled once, then again. He
held his hand up to his mouth, failing to stifle a delighted squeal. Then his
mother laughed out loud, and the man laughed.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
By the time dessert was served, all three had passed the
test. They left with the boy walking in the middle, the man holding his right
hand, and his mother holding his left. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<h3 style="margin: 0px;">
THE THIRD NIGHT</h3>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The two of them nestled comfortably into the stuffed chairs
at their favorite table by the fireplace, relaxed, the hard part over. He
raised his glass of Bordeaux in a <span style="margin: 0px;">toast</span>
to her before taking it to his lips. She smiled and raised her glass of sauvignon
blanc. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He thought of what a wonderful mother she was and what a
perfect wife she would be. He was tired of being alone. He could see them
settled with her adorable little boy, <span style="margin: 0px;">Gilen</span>,
in a nice town not far from Paris, perhaps Versailles. He would like that. The
little boy reminded him so much of his own estranged son when he was that age.
He pushed that hurtful memory from his mind. This time he was going to be a
good father. “I love you,” he whispered in her ear, and for the first time in
his <span style="margin: 0px;">life,</span> he meant it.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
She thought of the fabulous trips they would take together
to London, New York, Tokyo, and around the world, she on the arm of one of the
world’s most successful commercial real estate developers. She was sure she could
convince her mother to take care of <span style="margin: 0px;">Gilen</span>,
or maybe have him live with his father for a while. She was tired of being the
dutiful, self-sacrificing mother. It was suffocating her.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The impressive diamond ring he gave her earlier this evening
sparkled on her finger. “I love you,” she said for only the second time in her
life. It was the first time she said it and didn’t mean it.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He took her hand. The fire burning in the fireplace warmed
them. What comes next, they each wondered.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike><br /></strike>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
+ + + +</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Alan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791229085143464879.post-68002746858703586392018-02-04T11:54:00.000-08:002018-02-04T11:54:52.325-08:00AN INCIDENT AT SHAY'S BEND<i>This story was first published in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2017</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">I.</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 0in;">
A 1958 Corvette was not
equipped for a head-on collision with a mature maple tree. It went fast, but it
didn’t handle curves like Shay’s Bend very well, especially on a rainy night
when the driver had been drinking a little too much alcohol. Jason <span style="margin: 0px;">Ansbach's</span> classic didn’t have airbags or
seatbelts. Just before he hit the tree, he thought, "Not my beautiful
Vette!” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
A light came on in the farmhouse at the bend
named after the original owner, one Howard Shay. Calamity at the bend was not a
rare occurrence. Raindrops splashed on the shattered windshield and drizzled
onto Jason’s forehead. He would have been appalled if he saw the front of his
precious car crumpled all the way up the washboard-louvered hood. The impact
demolished the dual headlights on the driver’s side, but the pair on the right
still illuminated the uprooted maple, the tree as crippled as its assailant.
The round dashboard clock, smashed as it was, kept ticking. It read 11:56.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The odor of gasoline vapor barely penetrated
Jason’s consciousness. June Valli crooned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crying
in the Chapel</i> on the original Wonderbar radio. He wanted to change the
station, but he couldn’t make his hands work. In fact, he couldn’t find his
hands. Just moments before, his elbow had rested jauntily on the side window
ledge, an unlit cigarette dangling <span style="margin: 0px;">from</span>
his lips. He was fumbling for his lighter when his car hit the muddied gravel
on the shoulder of the road. He braked hard and jerked the steering wheel to
the left, too late. The right rear white sidewall exploded on impact.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
His ensnared body pressed against the horn button
on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, but no sound came out. A crimson stream
ran down from his nose and into his open mouth. The taste of metal soured his
tongue. His unshaved whiskers itched his neck, but he couldn’t raise his hand
to scratch. He closed his eyes to fix his last thoughts on his angelic wife
Angie. “I’m sorry,” he muttered through bloodied lips. He prayed with all of
his failing heart that she would forgive him and mourn him. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He heard a wail, faint at first, in the distance.
It grew louder and louder until he was sure the shriek would drive him mad. He
begged it to stop. Finally, a carbonation of red sparkled off the raindrops on
the shattered windshield. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
An ambulance had arrived. "Hold on,” the
paramedic shouted through the splintered side window. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“We'll have you at the hospital in a couple of
minutes. Hold on." At that moment, the injured man lost consciousness, on
his way to oblivion. </div>
<br />
<h1 align="center" style="margin: 32px 0px 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;">II.</span></span></h1>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 0in;">
Jason <span style="margin: 0px;">Ansbach</span> was born to the good life, but one from
which much was expected. The youngest of three sons, he never failed to
ultimately disappoint. His father indulged his escapades and his failed
businesses, too numerous to enumerate. After his father died, followed soon by
his mother, no amount of brotherly advice or admonition could mute Jason’s zest
for life. His oldest brother John, the prominent investment banker, could never
resist Jason’s persuasive pleadings for a loan, even knowing he would never be
repaid. The latest one was for a rare vintage silver blue Corvette. His middle
brother Jeff, the deputy state attorney general, untangled his youngest
brother’s brushes with the law. Most such episodes involved alcohol, jilted
women, or business deals of a dubious nature. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The young man possessed the handsome features of
a near-movie star, but his face was worn beyond his 38 years by too much drink
and dalliance. Maybe his weathered vulnerability is what made him so appealing
to women. He didn't intentionally flirt. He couldn't even begin to understand
his own appeal, but he recognized its value. Women fell for him, and men liked
to be around him. Some of it might have been his boundless loyalty. He was the
one always ready to come to a friend’s aid immediately and without question,
regardless of the circumstance. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He was a most persuasive wheeler-dealer who could
convince a bear he needed a warm coat. He made lots of money when he <span style="margin: 0px;">worked</span> and spent even more. He shared
generously with his man <span style="margin: 0px;">friends</span> and
overwhelmed interesting women with extravagant experiences anyone else would
consider excessive. He was always up, always ready with a bawdy joke, and
always ready for an interesting new adventure - at least until the next of his calamities
struck. Small wonder that no one could stay mad at Jason for long, no matter
the provocation. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, there <span style="margin: 0px;">were</span> still lucid moments when Jason knew
exactly who he was. It wasn’t who he wanted to be.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
His parents and his brothers thought Kaitlyn the
perfect wife for him. She was gorgeous and as socially polished as any
debutant, even if a bit dim. For her, a cultural discussion usually featured
the Kardashians’ latest antics. Jason was soon bored. The birth of their first son,
and then a daughter, did nothing to curb his promiscuity. His philandering was
partially out of boredom, partially habit, and partially to fill a festering
emptiness. They divorced soon after Kaitlyn caught him fooling around with
Angie Briggs. Nonetheless, he remained an attentive father, though occasionally
forgetting a birthday or a teacher’s conference. He spoke of his former wife
only with respect, even when she readily disparaged him to the kids.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Angie, his latest wife, was different. He loved
her like he had never loved anyone. She was genuine, attractive, bright, witty,
and interesting. Most of all, she loved Jason with an intensity that fulfilled
him. “My wandering days are over,” he told his brother Jeff on his wedding day.
True to his word, he didn’t cheat on Angie for at least a year and a <span style="margin: 0px;">half</span>. And then it was only a weekend with a
business acquaintance. It meant nothing. Neither did the ones after that. He
was always discreet, and couldn’t figure how Angie found out about them. But
then Berkinbury wasn’t that big a town. Last week she threw him out. He hadn’t
stopped drinking since. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Tonight’s heavy rains did nothing to lift his
spirits. Concern for his best friend brought Jimmy Gooch to join Jason at
Murphy’s Tavern, their favorite watering hole. Jimmy nursed his second
Budweiser. Jason gulped his fourth.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“This time it’s different,” Jason slurred. “I
love Angie more than I ever loved anyone in my life.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jimmy didn’t want to inflict more insult on his
injured friend, but he had heard such talk from Jason too many times. So, he
listened and nodded his head as if in agreement.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I’m going to treat her better than she’s ever
been treated before,” Jason continued. “I’m going to stay sober, and no more
fooling around, no matter what.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“You got a big mountain to climb there, buddy,”
Jimmy answered.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“She’s gotta’ take me back.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The wide-hipped waitress came over and asked if
they wanted another round. Jimmy waved her off. Jason ordered a Grey Goose on
the rocks. The waitress bent low for him to get a good look down her plunging
black top. She ran her tongue over her upper lip and smiled. He winked and
returned her smile. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she sauntered off,
wiggling her behind.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Don’t you think you’d better head home,” Jimmy
said. “Boss warned that if you don’t show up for work tomorrow you’re done. At
least give him a call in the morning.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“To hell with him.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“You’ve lost three jobs in the last two years.
You can’t keep this up.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“But I always find a better one,” Jason snapped. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jimmy drained the last drop of beer from his mug
and stood up. He fished some bills from his wallet and left them on the table.
“I gotta’ get up in the morning,” he said. “You okay to drive?” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jason wasn’t listening. He was dialing Angie on
his cell phone for the millionth time tonight, but again she wouldn’t answer. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He sat alone and sipped his vodka, brooding. He
tried calling Angie still again, and again her phone went right to voicemail.
He rose from his chair and threw his phone across the room, bouncing it off the
paneled wall. Then he grabbed his coat and headed out into the storm,
determined to see her right now. If he went by way of Shay’s Bend he could be
there in fifteen minutes, maybe less if he floored it. No cops would be out on
a night like tonight.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The world was spinning in his head when he
lowered himself into the front seat of the car. He peeled out of the parking
lot, not thinking to turn on the windshield wipers.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">III.</span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
Jason <span style="margin: 0px;">Ansbach</span> was in the throes of death, his smashed
Corvette about to become his tomb. But he was not yet prepared to yield. Not
without Angie to mourn him. He had to have time to plead for her forgiveness. A
field of white absorbed the darkness of night. The pain, which just a moment
before was blinding, yielded to a distant hush. His fingers stopped twitching.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He awakened in what seemed like a hospital with
tubes running out of him, aching all over, amid a rainbow of noises and the
whiff of chemicals. The bed linen felt like puffs of cotton balls. Even the
dimmed lights hurt his eyes. There was someone in the room, but he couldn’t see
who it was. Everything was white: the walls, the bed, the sheets, the blanket,
and even the beeping and blinking machines to which he was tethered. There were
no windows so he couldn’t tell if it was day or night.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I have to see Angie,” he said out loud to the
presence in the room. He struggled to clear his head.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Someone held his hand and gently stroked it with
comforting fingers. "Mr. Ansbach, you've been in a car accident.” It was a
woman with a husky voice, probably the nurse. He couldn't see her, but she
sounded young. "You're going to be okay." </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
His mouth tasted like he had licked the grease
off a gear. Needles stung his face and arms. He wondered if they were trying
acupuncture on him. He raised his hand to the hurt in his chest where the
steering wheel had bruised him. Then he must have drifted off to sleep again.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
When he opened his eyes, he sensed his brother
John was in the room. “They say you’re doing excellent,” John said when he saw
his injured <span style="margin: 0px;">kid-brother's</span> eyelids
flicker. “You may be out of here tomorrow.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I have to see Angie,” Jason said. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Let’s get you home first.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I’m not leaving until I see Angie.” Jason’s eyes
flashed, agitated. He pulled at the wires constraining him.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
John seemed to disappear for a moment. That’s
when Jason heard his mother and father arguing in the distance, maybe out in
the hall, just like they always did when he was growing up. It was something
about Dad running around with the Bates woman. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jason asked John why they don't come in his room.
"You know <span style="margin: 0px;">why,</span>" John answered.
But he didn't know why. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
His chest throbbed when he tried taking a deep
breath. He had much to apologize for and many people to apologize to, starting
with John. “I’m going to pay you back every cent I ever borrowed from you,” he
insisted. “Jeff too. I’m going to get a new job, one of those steady jobs where
I go in every day at nine and I’m home by six. No more messing around.” He was
most sincere about it.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
His brother nodded deeply, recognizing the change
in his young brother. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I promise. I promise,” Jason repeated. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Of course,” his brother said. “I believe you.”
He patted him on the hand with affection. “Rest now. Everything will be okay.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jason wanted to beg some more for John’s forgiveness,
though it seemed his big brother had already forgiven him, and so had everyone
else but Angie. He breathed a deep sigh of relief. Then the urgency returned.
“I have to see Angie,” he said before John disappeared.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
On his way out the door, John frowned at the
nurse in the white uniform who was entering. Jason could see her clearly now.
She was <span style="margin: 0px;">cute</span> and looked a lot like the
waitress at Murphy’s Tavern. Her tight skirt emphasized her bountiful bottom.
When she bent over to take Jason’s temperature, he couldn’t help but look down
her open top at a most attractive bosom. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Stop it,” Jason admonished himself. “You
promised Angie.” The nurse gave him a fetching smile. He told himself this time
he must be strong or he would never win Angie back. “I’m so tired,” he told the
nurse. “Let me sleep.” </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jason lost all fathom of time. It might have been
minutes, hours, or days when his consciousness returned with a shrill wailing
in his ears. He thrashed around, desperately trying to break out of whatever
constrained him.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“There,
there, my darling,” the saint-like woman’s voice comforted through the fog. She
caressed his hand tenderly in hers, running her fingers over his muscled
forearm like she used to.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Angie? Is that you?” he whispered. Just speaking
those words exhausted him.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"It's me, honey. It's me, Angie." She
sniffled. “I'm here, I'm here."</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"Angie. Is that you?" he asked again,
straining to shake off the haze. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"Yes, my darling. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"I'm sorry," he sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
Then, gathering the desperate strength of the damned, the words gushed out.
“I’m going to change. I promise you. This time I mean it. I’ll never hurt you
again.” He wiped away a tear.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"No, no. I'm the one who should be sorry. I <span style="margin: 0px;">should never</span> have doubted you. I should have
understood. We'll start over. It will be better this time. I love you."</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"I love you." </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"Your whole gang's been calling: Tim, Egan,
Barnie, Jimmy Gooch. <span style="margin: 0px;">They're</span> waiting for
you." </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"I don't think I'm going to be ready for them
for a long time. Maybe never. I've hurt you enough." </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"It's okay, darling. They're your friends. I
was wrong to try to keep you from them." </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"But..." </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He couldn't get over the change in her. He faded
out again into the peace of the forgiven.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"Let him rest," the nurse with the
husky voice said to Angie.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
When he awoke this time, all of the tubes,
monitors, and bandages were gone. He felt no pain. Someone must have shaved him
because his cheeks felt smooth as a newborn baby’s behind. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The cute nurse with the blond ponytail and husky
voice was named Viola. “Time for me to give you a sponge bath,” she said. They were
all alone. She walked over and locked the door. Then she approached his bed and
took off his scanty hospital gown. She started to rub him down, but not with
soap and water, just her bare hand. She climbed <span style="margin: 0px;">into</span>
bed with him. Then she raised her skirt and climbed on top. She wasn’t wearing
any panties.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"But I promised Angie," he moaned,
distress rising in his raw throat. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"Angie understands," she answered. From
this angle and in this light, Viola looked just like his first wife, Kaitlyn,
at this age - trim and firm.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“I have to find Angie. I have to talk to Angie,”
he begged. The nurse with the pony tail just smiled and ran her moist tongue
over her ruby red lips. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“You’re so
good,” she purred.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
She felt enormously heavy, as though she were
sitting on top of him, grinding her knees into his chest. He couldn’t breathe. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"Get off. Get off," he tried to say,
but the words came out like foam on the ocean. The sudden blast of a siren assaulted
his brain, so loud it felt like it was right there on the ceiling above him,
screeching in his ears.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Hold on, hold on,” Viola squealed above the din.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
He yielded. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“What do they expect of me?” he might have asked.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<h2 align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;">
*</h2>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 0in;">
"Hold on, sir. We’ll
have you out in a minute," the paramedic shouted. He sounded like the
nurse with the husky voice, but he was wearing a rain-slicked gray paramedic’s
jacket, not a white skirt. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
A moment later the paramedic withdrew the oxygen
mask and turned off the valve. "We lost him," he yelled to the
driver. </div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The driver turned off the flashing lights. “Too
bad about that beautiful car.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Poor bastard never stood a chance."</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Jason <span style="margin: 0px;">Ansbach</span>
was dead at the scene with a crushed chest. His car’s dashboard clock read
11:59.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
+ + + +</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Alan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6791229085143464879.post-58961026153522301322017-12-19T17:34:00.000-08:002017-12-24T13:39:31.724-08:00DEMONS AND THE RED BICYCLE<i><span style="font-family: "arial";">This story first appeared in </span></i>Odyssey of Chaos and Other Stories<i>, February, 2017.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My mother's demon only appeared at the mention of my
father's name. But when that demon did appear, I feared my mother would abandon
me just like my father did. So I tried to be a good boy and to never speak his
name. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My best friend Todd who lived in the trailer down
the street had two fathers, one who lived with him and one who didn't. My
friend Jack lived on the other street in the trailer park. He had a father who
came to visit him every few weeks and brought him presents. One time he brought
him a red Super Streak bicycle. It had some dents, many scratches, and bald
tires, but it worked fine. I must have been six years old when I decided I must
have a red bicycle too. That and a father.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When I got up early one Sunday morning, a strange
man was sitting at the small table in our trailer drinking coffee with my
mother. <span style="margin: 0px;">Obviously,</span> he had spent the
night. "Hey, big boy. You're up," my mother said when I entered in my
bare feet and pajamas. Her voice carried a lilt she usually reserved for me
alone. She turned to the man, smiling. "Meet my son Donnie."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Morning Donnie," he said, not
unfriendly but not exactly excited to meet the little gentleman of the house.
He even looked a bit surprised. Maybe he hadn't realized I existed.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Men were not a common sight around here,
particularly so early in the morning. I didn't know what to make of it, but I
was hopeful. "Are you going to be my new daddy?" I asked.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The man mumbled something that didn't sound like
an affirmation. <span style="margin: 0px;">Instead,</span> he got up from
the table and put on his jeans jacket. "I gotta' go," he said,
heading for the door as fast as he could.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Call me," Mom yelled after him. He
jumped in his pickup truck and floored it out, spinning his wheels in the
gravel and nearly hitting the utility pole. Mom was quiet the rest of the day.
I was <span style="margin: 0px;">confused</span> but determined.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Over the next few <span style="margin: 0px;">months,</span>
I learned everything a little boy can learn about finding a new father. The
first thing I learned was that I had to find a husband for my mother. That man
would then be my father too. It was a package deal. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The next thing I learned was that church was a <span style="margin: 0px;">good</span> place for a woman to find a used husband.
So I begged Mom to take me to church on Sundays. She didn't go to church often,
though we belonged to the First United Methodist Church on Second Street. We
went there occasionally for the free meals they offered once a month to the
less fortunate.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That included those of
us "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;">parkies</span></i>"
who lived in the trailer park by the river. The church was also where I got
most of my clothes, used but serviceable. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sundays were something different.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Mom worked hard six days a week cleaning
houses. She also worked some evenings waiting tables in a small cafe. Sunday
was her one day to sleep in and find a little peace. But if her son wanted to
go to church, she would do it. She didn't understand when I insisted she <span style="margin: 0px;">wear</span> her one good dress, earrings, and high
heels. My mother was an attractive woman underneath, slender with a simple
beauty poverty could not diminish. Even her name was beautiful - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lila</i>. But fatigue and the pressures of
providing for a little boy when she had no education took its toll. She looked
twice her twenty-six years. Gray hairs already showed, and crevices etched the
corners of her eyes. No amount of greasepaint and decoration could cover the
shadow inside her.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Church didn't work out. Mom didn't get a nibble,
and I got bored. So when spring arrived I tried taking her to Little League
baseball games. There were lots of men there. I introduced myself to <span style="margin: 0px;">every one</span> of them who looked like a good
candidate. If he was friendly, I then introduced him to my mortified mother,
who finally figured out what I was up to. When I encouraged her to spend some
time in bars, she put her foot down. "I'm sorry, Donnie. I know you want a
father," she said. "But I'm not in the market for a permanent man.
Once is enough."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I was crushed, my plans destroyed, my ambitions
demolished - no new father and no red bicycle. But defeat was not in my nature.
I just needed to figure out a different way.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I knew I had a good thing. My mother loved me so
much it sweetened my young life like the scent of baking brownies. She taught
me to read and count, made sure I had all of the food I needed, bathed every
day, and wore clean clothes. She ingrained a politeness which still defines me
as an adult, and she hugged me all the time.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If you
asked anyone who knew her, they would have said Lila Schulman was the kindest,
gentlest person they ever met. But if you mentioned the name of Sonny Schulman,
her <span style="margin: 0px;">ex-husband,</span> and my ex-father, talons
emerged from curled claws, flames belched from distended nostrils, and hissing
sizzled from between snarling fangs. I witnessed her demon for the first time
when, one winter day in our trailer, Mom recounted to her best friend Marla how
a process server came to the door trying to present Sonny with a court order
springing from another swindle he ran out on. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Her demon broke out again when my grandfather
tried to enter our life. One Sunday morning in May just before my eighth
birthday, Mom answered the ringing telephone. Her usually mellow voice quieted
to a biting whisper. She stared over at me and covered the mouthpiece of the
phone. "Go outside and play," she snapped, using the tone of voice
she reserved for those rare times I misbehaved. The demon was about to appear.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I sat on the step of the trailer, listening
intently, smelling the frying bacon coming from Mrs. Murray's trailer one over
from ours. She would give me a piece if I knocked on her door, but I didn't
want to miss anything. Mr. Murray worked on his old truck in the driveway,
black smoke belching out of the tailpipe when he revved the engine.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"No, no you can't," I heard Mom shout
at the person on the other end of the line. Then she was so silent I thought
she had hung up. I started to go back inside but paused when she began speaking
again. Her demon crept back into its hole. "I'm sorry to hear that Deek.
Truly I am. She was a good woman." After another pause, she spoke again.
"Okay. But just this once. Next Sunday at ten o'clock. He'll be waiting
out front. We live in the same old place." </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It was my Grandpa Deek on the phone, my father's
father. He wanted to see me, my mother explained. His wife, Grandma Claire,
died three months earlier. Her last wish was that he make amends for the sins
of his son. Until that moment, I didn't even know I had a Grandpa Deek.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My mother's own parents disowned her the minute
she told them she was pregnant with me. She was nineteen at the <span style="margin: 0px;">time</span> and had just completed her first year at
the junior college. My father was thirty-one, still bumming around looking for
action. Her fundamentalist mother and father shunned her even though she did
the proper thing and married my father, and even after I was born six months
later. Mom hadn't seen them or spoken to them since.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek and Grandma Claire, on the other
hand, took to their new daughter-in-law as if she were their own. They loved
her right from the <span style="margin: 0px;">start</span> and hoped she
could straighten Sonny out where they had failed. They were quickly
disappointed.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sonny had been an adorable, model child from the
moment he was born. Deek and Claire Schulman bragged that their son took the
best from both of them. Then something happened; they didn't know when or how
or why. By the time he reached the age of twenty-five, Sonny was drinking too
much and having a hard time holding down a job. When I was born, they prayed it
would wake him up to his responsibilities. It didn't. Deek never understood how
Sonny could run off and abandon his child. I was only two at the time. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Neither Claire nor Deek ever blamed Lila for
throwing Sonny out or for divorcing him. But Sonny was their son. They needed
to do what they could to help him. So they took my father back into their home
while he tried in vain to repair himself.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My mother was as bitter as every abused woman has
a right to be. Claire and Deek understood that. They were on her side. But she
couldn't forgive them for standing by my father. It tortured them when she
refused to let them see their only grandson. They sent a check for me every
birthday and Christmas, plus a little more in between. Mother cashed the checks
but never replied. She didn't even answer Grandma's desperate phone calls in
her waning months. Grandma and Grandpa finally threw Sonny out when he stole
Grandma's jewelry and sold it to pay off gambling debts and buy more drugs.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As her end drew closer, Grandma Claire worried
more about Grandpa than she did about herself. "You'll need Donnie as much
as he needs you," she said. She made Deek promise not to give up. He
promised.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">MOM WAS A nervous wreck the whole week after Grandpa
Deek's phone call. She couldn't decide whether or not she had made the right
decision. I was anxious too, afraid she'd change her mind, and I'd lose the one
chance I had to meet my grandfather - who might lead me to my father.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That next Sunday, I sat on the step of our trailer
waiting, the sunny day so humid it could straighten a Brillo pad. Sweat soaked
my slick-combed brown hair. Mom had me wear my best tan shorts and blue striped
T-shirt, both freshly laundered. She made me take a bath, checking afterward to
be sure nothing was missed anywhere. I smelled as fresh as a new bar of Ivory
Soap. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I began obsessing about my father soon after my
seventh birthday. If I couldn't find a new one for my mother and me, then I
wanted the old one back. I pestered Mom to tell me everything about him, even
suggesting that maybe she was the reason he ran out on us. <span style="margin: 0px;">At first,</span> she was patient, answering my
questions with bromides meant to comfort.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Unsatisfied, I kept at her. So she ignored my questions, warning me to
stop. <span style="margin: 0px;">Finally,</span> one day when she had had
enough, her fearsome demon took over. She cursed, she stomped, and she slammed
the kitchen counter with the palm of her hand. She shook all over. Tears
streamed down her cheeks, and then down mine. We collapsed into each other's
arms, exhausted, she begging my forgiveness over and over again. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The next day she poured her heart out to her
friend Marla, who absolved her. "Sonny was a bastard," Marla spit.
"And don't you forget it. Let him go to hell."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"But how could I yell at Donnie like that?
It's not his fault."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Someday Donnie will understand." She
reached over and patted Mom's hand. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I understood enough already. But <span style="margin: 0px;">still,</span> I ached to know more about my father.
Who better to tell me than his father? But I worried that if he was such a mess
of a man, how could his father - Grandpa Deek - be any different? </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Butterflies battled with bumble bees in my bowels
while I waited. Mom warned me that my grandfather was an old grouch, never
smiled, and not to expect much. She said he was going to take me to the
Starlight Diner for a hamburger and a <span style="margin: 0px;">milkshake</span>,
a rare treat. While that was all well and good, I had my own agenda. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek drove north to Berkinbury from
Scranton, about two hours away. If traffic was heavy on I-81, he could be late.
But at ten o'clock, as promised, he pulled into our driveway in a brown Jeep
Cherokee. Mom later said it was the same one he drove last time he came here
five years before to pick up Sonny's clothes after Mom threw him out. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I rose from the step and looked back where Mom
watched from behind the lace curtain covering the kitchen window. She nodded to
indicate that this was my grandpa and it was okay for me to go with him. I
ambled down the short cement <span style="margin: 0px;">walkway</span> and
cautiously opened the car door. Sometimes a kid just has to do what he's told
to do.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Hey, there. How you doing," Grandpa
Deek said when I climbed in. His coarse voice sounded like he'd swallowed a
load of gravel.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Fine, sir." I buckled my seatbelt and
then sat erect, eyes out the window. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My grandfather looked like every grandfather is
supposed to look: big as a bear, square jaw, thinned gray hair and lots of
wrinkles - everything except a smile on his thick lips. A Starbucks coffee
thermos sat in the cup holder. A sniff of stale cigarette smoke lingered, butts
clumped in the ashtray.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek gripped the steering wheel with both
hands, fixated on the road ahead. My mind whirled; my fingers fidgeted. I tried
to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind. I coughed.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek cleared his throat. "You don't
have to call me sir," he finally said. "You can just call me Grandpa.
How about that?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Yes, sir," I answered.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">More silence. He really is a grouch, I thought,
just like Mom warned. I was a little scared, a little bored, and about to give
up on my quest to find out about my father. Right now all I wanted was for this
to be over so I could get back home and watch cartoons.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We hit a jaw-shattering pothole. Grandpa Deek
swore something under his breath about shock absorbers. He looked over at me
after we turned onto Cemetery Street. "Where did you learn to be so
polite?" he asked.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I looked over at him for the first time since I
got into the car. "From my mother," I answered. "She said she
didn't want me to grow up to be a <span style="margin: 0px;">friggin</span>
asshole like my father."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek choked down an urge to laugh.
"Does your mother let you swear like that?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;">"No,</span>
sir. That's why I said <span style="margin: 0px;">friggin</span> asshole
instead of fuckin' asshole like she says."<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek couldn't help himself. A big smile
cracked his stone face. He patted me on the leg. Then laughed out loud.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Look in the glove box," he said.
"There's something in there for you."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I did what I was told. My eyes must have bugged
out when I saw what it was. I slowly withdrew a triple-sized pack of Reece's
peanut butter cups. I'd never held a triple pack in my hands before. "Are
these for me?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Yes, of course."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"All of them?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"All of them."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Can I have one now?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"You can have them all now if you
want."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I unwrapped the pack as carefully as if I was
pulling the white ribbon on a blue Tiffany's box. When I finished the first
peanut butter cup, I wrapped the pack back up. "I'll save one for my mom,"
I said. "Is that okay, sir?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"You're a nice boy," he answered.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That made me feel a little braver. "Mom says
you're a grouch," I ventured. "But not to let that bother me."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa allowed that to settle for a moment.
"That's what your Grandma Claire used to tell me," he said with a
straight face. "Do you think I'm a grouch?" he asked, sincere.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"No sir." But he <span style="margin: 0px;">was,</span> a little bit. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">At the next corner, we turned right, onto First
Street. It had once been the main shopping street in town, but now it quartered
the same <span style="margin: 0px;">hodge-podge</span> of derelict
storefronts as many of the other old industrial towns of the northeast. Only a
few people strolled the sidewalks. "I grew up here in Berkinbury," he
said. "Same as Grandma Claire. This street is where all of the action was.
Jewelry stores, clothes stores, two shoe stores, the army surplus store."
He pointed to an empty shop on our left. "Kramer's Sporting Goods is where
I got my first baseball mitt." His gaze swept back and forth. He spoke
quietly as though talking to someone who wasn't there. "We had a Monkey
Ward's over on that corner. And Newberry's Five and Dime with a lunch counter
where they had the best ham salad sandwiches in town."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I wanted to know about my father, but something
warned me it was too soon to ask. So I listened and pretended to look
interested. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I see the Temple Theater's still
there," he went on. "That's where I took Grandma Claire to the movies
on our first date. She let me hold her hand. Three years later I married
her." He sighed, relaxed, and let the start of a smile curl on the corners
of his lips.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I dipped my big toe in the water. "Was my
dad born here too?" I asked.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">He didn't say anything for a minute or two, his
mind lost somewhere else. Then he came back to me. He acted as though he hadn't
heard my question. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;">"</span>So,
are you married yet?" he asked, a twinkle in his eye.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;">"No,</span>
sir. I'm only eight years old," I answered. "You have to be able to
cook dinner and have babies to get married." Grandpa Deek nodded his head,
trying unsuccessfully to mimic my formal manner. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A half dozen cars bunched together in the parking
lot of the Stardust Diner when we pulled in.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>The <span style="margin: 0px;">diner</span> served as the social hub
of Berkinbury, the place where everyone went to see and be seen. I thought it
was only for rich people. Mom brought me here once after she won the big
jackpot at the church Bingo night, but that was two years ago. The exterior
resembled the dining car of a stainless steel passenger train. It had seen
better days.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa took my hand when we crossed the parking
lot. His big, soft paw swallowed mine. I liked it. I wanted to shout to
everyone: "Look, this is my grandpa." I had never had a grandpa
before.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A veil of frying onions and greasy burgers met us
at the door. Grandpa Deek nodded to the cook behind the counter and two guys
seated in front, people he had probably known from a long time ago. We slid
into one of the navy blue vinyl booths toward the back, next to a huge window.
He planted his big arms on the marbleized blue Formica table top as though he
owned the place. I did the same.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We both ordered hamburgers, French fries, and
chocolate shakes. While we waited for our food, Grandpa told me more about
Grandma Claire, and how much she loved me. "We were there when you were
born," he said to show this was not his first presence in my life. I
listened, hoping his stories would include some fragments about my father. They
didn't. I primed myself to ask him directly just when the waitress brought our
meal. The opportunity vanished.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We slathered our burgers in <span style="margin: 0px;">ketchup</span> and then swallowed them as eagerly as
if we hadn't eaten in days. Grandpa shoved fries into his mouth while he
continued to talk, eager now to tell me everything about himself and Grandma
Claire, phrasing everything as though they were one person.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I used to write stories for a living,"
he said. "But I don't do that anymore."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Why not?" I asked.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">He looked down into his diminishing plate of
fries, pensive, as though searching for something. "It's hard to
explain." What he didn't want to say was that he stopped writing when
Grandma Claire got sick, about the same time they finally had enough of my
father and got rid of him. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa had been so happy a minute ago. Now he
wasn't. I tried to bring him back. "Can you write a story for me?" I
asked.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">He smiled. "I don't write that kind of
stories."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"What kind of stories do you write?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Mysteries. About bad guys and how the
police catch them."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I didn't respond immediately, chewing my lower
lip, contemplating whether it was appropriate to ask. "I'd like a story about
a red bicycle," I finally said.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Do you know how to ride a bicycle?" he
asked.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Jack lets me use his sometimes. His dad
taught me how to ride."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Maybe someday you'll have one of your
own."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I'd like a red <span style="margin: 0px;">one.</span>" I said it not as a request, but as a statement of
unattainable yearning.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Just about then an immense bubble inflated in my
stomach, the inevitable product of a greasy meal consumed too quickly. I let
out an enormous uncontrollable burp that nearly shattered the window. Without a
pause, Grandpa Deek answered in kind.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We
both broke out in nonstop giggles that drew serious stares from a couple two
booths away. Grandpa wiped his runny nose with his napkin, his eyes dancing. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When we settled down, Grandpa said, "You
know, you and I have the same name? Donald Kendall Schulman."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"That's neat."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">He reached across the table and tousled my hair. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Does my father have the same name," I
asked without thinking.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek pulled his hand back. His face
contorted, teeth bared, the same way Mom's did just before her demon emerged. <span style="margin: 0px;">The mere</span> mention of my father seemed to have
that affect on people. "No!" he growled.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"I'm sorry." I lowered my head,
embarrassed.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">He took a deep breath, and then reached across
the table again and patted me on the arm. "It's not your fault," he
said. But the cheerfulness did not return. He looked at his watch. "I
promised your mom I'd have you home in a couple of hours."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When we walked back to the car, I reached up and
took his hand. He squeezed back a little too hard, as though he was afraid I
might vanish if he let go. Neither of us said anything on the drive back to the
trailer park. He didn't take his eyes off the road ahead, and neither did I. We
turned onto Cemetery Street, nearly home. This might be the last time I ever
see him, I thought, my last chance to find out anything about my father. I had
to chance it.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Tell me about my dad," I demanded, a
large lump in my throat. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa gripped the steering wheel tighter. He
gritted his teeth hard enough to grind a gear. His full demon rose, smoke
coming from his nostrils and the odor of onions from his breath. He floored the
gas pedal, screeching around the corner into the trailer park. He slammed on
the brakes in our driveway nearly hitting Mom's rusted red Corolla in the rear
end. Then he turned his hulking body toward me. His massive right hand clenched
into a white-knuckled fist.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My heart beat rapidly. I was about to be squashed
by a monster. He unleashed a tornado of words I had never heard before, words
like bastard, son-of-a-bitch, scum, gutter rat, psychopath, low life, and a few
other choice descriptions. I tried desperately to get away but my hands
trembled so violently I couldn't unbuckle my seat belt. When he reached his
talon for me, I shrieked the shriek of those whose end had come. Tears burned
down my red cheeks. At the last possible <span style="margin: 0px;">moment,</span>
the seat buckle snapped open and I burst out the door, running for safety. I
ran into the trailer and into my mother's arms, too terrified to be able to
utter a coherent warning. The front door stood wide open.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My mother screamed and grasped me in her arms.
Deek Schulman stood in the doorway, contrite, head down, his demon nowhere in
sight. Mom, knowing nothing about what happened assumed the worst and bellowed
at him at the top of her lungs. "What did you do to my son? What did you
do?" She let go of me and grabbed the broom she always kept by the front
door. She swung it like a baseball bat, close enough to Grandpa's head to make
him recoil and raise his arm in self-defense. He tried to explain, but she
would hear none of it. "Get out of here, get before I call the cops. And
don't you ever dare show your face around here again." For the first time,
Mom's demon was on my side protecting me, and I was thankful.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa Deek tried to apologize. He looked like a
mangy dog that had been beaten, but no apology could set things right with Mom.
He fled to his car. "You <span style="margin: 0px;">Schulmans</span>
are all poison," she screamed after him when he drove away. Then she held
me tight and gently stroked my hair for the longest time. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When I couldn't sleep that night, Mom was sure it
was because Grandpa had done something terrible to scare me. There was no limit
to her imagination. I tried to tell her it wasn't Grandpa's fault; it was mine
for pressing him about my father - that I had simply panicked. She refused to
hear it. Her demon began to show its fiery fangs once more and I retreated into
silence. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">For the next few days, Mom acted like a warrior
who just fought a battle but wasn't sure who had won. I knew I had lost twice.
I lost any chance of finding out about my father, and I lost my grandpa who I
would have liked to have in my life. I heard Mom on the phone recounting the
incident to her friend Marla. "I hoped he was a better man than his
son," she said. "But he's not. He's just another Schulman
asshole."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Mom rarely let sadness enter our home. This time
she couldn't hold it back. Every time I tried to talk about it, Mom cut me off.
"Enough of that," she would say. "Go out and play with Todd.
Would you like to have him over for dinner?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I thought about doing something defiant, like
writing Grandpa a letter, or calling him, or even getting on a bus to Scranton
to see him. But I didn't know his phone number or address. And besides, I
wasn't a child likely to do something <span style="margin: 0px;">defiant</span>,
something his mother won't approve of. I surrendered to the <span style="margin: 0px;">inevitable</span> and tried to settle back into my <span style="margin: 0px;">welcomed</span> place as the apple of my mother's eye.
I did my chores every day without being asked, and took a bath without
complaint.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Two weeks later I came home early from Mrs.
Mancini's house. She was a kindly <span style="margin: 0px;">gray-haired</span>
woman, almost a grandma, who lived three trailers down from ours. She watched
me every day after school. When I opened the front door, I bent down and picked
up the mail the postman had slipped through the mail slot in the front door.
The top three envelopes were bills. The bottom one was bulkier. It was
addressed to Mrs. Lila Schulman. The return address <span style="margin: 0px;">said</span> Donald K. Schulman. I had accepted Mom's admonition to get
used to the idea that Grandpa Deek was as gone as my feckless father. Now this.
So he <span style="margin: 0px;">wasn't gone</span>. I spent the next hour
staring at the thick envelope trying to imagine what might be inside. Could it
be something that would convince Mom to change her mind? I sure hoped so.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Usually,</span> I
left the mail on the counter top. This time I handed her the stack as soon as
she walked in, the one from Grandpa on top. I tried to look nonchalant about
it. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">She took one look at it and her eyes narrowed
into slits. She marched over to the sink and dropped the letter into the trash
can underneath, unopened. Then she put the other three envelopes in the drawer
where she kept the bills. She walked down the hall to her bedroom to change out
of her work clothes before starting to prepare dinner. She didn't say a word.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My heart sank into my sneakers. How could she
just throw the letter away without even looking to see what was in it? It
wasn't fair. I went over to the trash can, dug out the letter, and opened it.
Inside were three pieces of paper, typed on both sides and signed at the bottom
- <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grandpa Deek</i>. I started reading,
hurried, afraid Mom would catch me.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I was in third grade then, and the best reader in
my class. I could understand most of what the letter said, but not everything
made sense. Some of it I remember just as I read it at the time. Other parts I
remember from reading it years later. Mom saved it for me. She said it was the
finest piece of writing she ever saw. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Grandpa began by apologizing for his behavior and
pleading for Mom's forgiveness. He did it eloquently, with heartfelt passion,
and no excuses. Then he explained that he panicked when I insisted on learning
about my father. He was afraid his grandson would mythicize a worthless bum.
What he didn't say was that he feared even more that his grandson would follow
in his father's footsteps. So he totally lost control amidst his determination
to paint Sonny as the miserable man he really was.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Again he apologized for his behavior. He wrote
how he and Claire had worked hard to be good parents, but he acknowledged that
they had badly failed. He never would understand how things went so wrong.
Cancer killed Claire, he said, but the worst part was she died with a broken
heart. He could never forgive Sonny for that.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">After spending many hours with his pastor, Pastor
Mike, Grandpa accepted that some people are just born that way; good parents
and a good home sometimes can't overcome nature. On the other hand, children
like Donnie seem to be born with divine grace. He could see that in just the
short time we spent together. He praised Mom for the wonderful job she was
doing under impossible circumstances. He wanted to help ease her burden in any
way he could.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finally, he told her how much he loved his
grandson. He would do anything to be allowed into my life. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Donnie is the last piece of Claire I have</i>, he wrote. He asked for a
second chance. The last thing he wrote was, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I
will never stop loving that little boy no matter what.</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When I finished reading the letter, I walked down
to Mom's bedroom. She lay on the bed in her jeans and sloppy turquoise T-shirt,
staring at the ceiling. She glanced at me with a sad smile when I walked in.
Then she saw the pages of the letter in my hand. She sprang up as though ready
to attack, her nostrils distended and the demon starting to show its terrifying
face. I shuttered. But I stood my ground. If I didn't do something, I would
lose my grandfather forever, just like I lost my father. That possibility was
more horrible than the demon. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Read it," I commanded, holding out the
pages of the letter. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">She grabbed them from my hand and started reading.
I took a deep breath and waited, my tongue dry as toast. She seemed to take
forever, studying every word. She flipped over the first page, and then flipped
back to re-read something. The more she read, the more her tight lips softened.
She sniffled. She wiped her nose. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That night after I went to bed, she telephoned
Grandpa Deek. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but whatever it was she was
saying it with the gentle kindness that was the best part of my mother. The one
thing I heard her say clearly was that she was sorry for misjudging him.
"All these years I've painted the whole Schulman clan with the same
brush," she said. "It took your letter to make me understand that the
best parts of Donnie come from you and Claire as much as from me." Then he
said something that made her laugh, the first of many times I would hear her
laugh at something Grandpa said. It was that night I realized nothing I did
could ever make my Mom stop loving me, no matter what. And I learned I could do
battle with my most ferocious fears and win. Mom's demon died that <span style="margin: 0px;">night</span> too and never appeared again. The same
goes for Grandpa's.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The next Sunday, I ran into Grandpa's arms as
soon as he parked his Jeep in our driveway. He stroked my hair and hugged me.
Mom came out to greet him too. They buried themselves in each other's embrace.
Then he took me around to the back of his Jeep. He lowered the tailgate to
reveal a brand new red Schwinn bicycle with all the trimmings. It seemed like
every one of my dreams came true at once. The only thing missing was another
hamburger at the diner. That came later in the day.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">THAT WAS THIRTY years ago, but not a day goes by I don't
think about it. Two months later Mom and I went to live with Grandpa Deek in
Scranton in a real house. I still live there with my wife Mollie and our
daughters, Emily and Teri. It's close to the school where I teach when I'm not
busy writing detective stories and kids' books. A few of them have been
published, to good reception.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Mom lives with us. She went back to school and
became a paralegal, a job she still works at and loves. They say she's the best
in Lackawanna County. I stopped looking for my real father soon after we moved
in with Grandpa. Word has it that Sonny Schulman died in an Arizona prison many
years ago. Mom never did find a new father for me, but I got something better -
the best grandpa ever. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">One afternoon he came home with a fat package in
his hand. Inside was the first of the five children's books he wrote in the
last years of his life, each more successful than anything he'd ever written
before. I stared at the book with that same awe I felt on the day my red
bicycle first appeared. There on the cover was an illustration of a boy with
dark hair and dark eyes who looked amazingly like me. The boy in the picture
wore the same tan shorts and blue striped T-shirt I wore on the first day I met
Grandpa. Big letters sprawled across the cover - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Donnie and His Red Bicycle</i>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></div>
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">N</span></span></span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">ow whenever writer's funk paralyzes me, Grandpa
appears. He points toward the book, which holds a place of honor on my
bookshelf. I read the words on the last page and my funk fades away: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Donnie got his red bicycle and something
more - a grouchy old grandpa who loved him beyond all imagination.</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></i></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">+ + + +</span></b></span></div>
<div>
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"><i></i><br /></span></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Alan Fleishmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04505061752061890196noreply@blogger.com0